4

The Ritchie Boys (Or, The Real-Life Inglourious Basterds)

Imagine you're a Jewish person who managed to escape Germany or Austria during World War II and ended up in the U.S., where most of the population hasn't tacitly agreed that you deserve death just for existing. What do you do now? Go to Coney Island? Catch up on all those movies you missed? Never leave the safety of your bedroom again? If you said "get back to Europe and kick some ass," then you're Ritchie Boys material.

In the words of a Ritchie Boy: "I wanted a weapon. I wanted to kill Nazis." They weren't after glory -- why, you might even call them bastards. But, like, with terrible spelling.

U.S. Army
Is it just us, or is the one on the left the spitting image of Brad Pitt?

Camp Ritchie was a secret facility in Maryland where the U.S. Army trained recruits in the noble arts of interrogation, psychological warfare, and counterintelligence. Thousands of Jewish refugees ended up there, since their first-hand knowledge of the German language and society came in pretty handy. After training, their jobs included writing leaflets aimed at defectors, coming up with ways to demoralize troops, and even assisting in getting captured Nazis to talk -- one particularly effective technique was called "just threatening to hand them over to the Soviets."

Some Ritchie Boys were sent also into the field to spy, sabotage, or just wander around messing with Nazis in any way they could. When Austrian expat Gerald Geiger was captured by the Nazis, he managed to turn the tables on the interrogator by getting him to divulge information:

NPR

3

The British Paradogs Of D-Day

Hey, here are some dogs parachuting during World War II:

U.S. Air Force

U.S. Air Force

U.S. Army
Show this to your pet to make it feel as inadequate as you will for the rest of this article.

2

The Civil War's Rainbow Battalions

Quick, which historical army are these gentlemen below supposed to be dressed as? Something from the Middle East or North Africa, maybe?

CBS Television Distribution
No cheating and looking at the title of this entry!

Nope, that's the uniform worn by Union Army forces from the exotic land of New York. As in, soldiers actually wore that during the American Civil War. They were so inspired by the French Zouave army that they decided to just crib their entire fashion sense.

Charles Magnus
The French kinda owed us for stealing the whole "independence" idea, to be fair.

You've probably been taught in school that during the Civil War, Union soldiers wore blue and Confederates wore gray. This was, like a lot of the stuff your teachers fed you about the Civil War, not quite right. In the early stages of the war, it was pretty common for some Union soldiers to be dressed in gray and some Confederates to be dressed in blue uniforms, because they had literally been recruited from what a short time ago was the same country.

In fact, some military units from both the Union and the Confederacy wore shit that was downright bonkers. These were mostly "old boys club" militias made up of rich guys who wanted to look flashy on the battlefield, because it's important to remain dapper whilst being bayonetted in the butt. Others dressed as "tributes" to their various ethnic origins -- the 79th New York Volunteer Infantry, for instance, straight up dressed in kilts and Scottish caps. They even had the (cold) balls to nickname themselves "Highlanders."

via Glover Park History
A name they definitely didn't deserve, since they're all currently dead.

1

Today's Most Unusual And Epic Animal Cavalry

When you think about it, it's pretty weird that horses are the only animals that human armies ride. It's also pretty not-true. And yes, we're talking in the present tense.

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
No concept is safe from gritty reboots, not even Santa.

In early 2016, the Russian Northern Fleet Motorized Rifle Brigade started training (in temperatures reaching negative 30 degrees) on how to ride reindeer sleds into battle, complete with sleigh bells. Apparently, resupplying vehicles would be difficult in the arctic, so Russia just said, "Fuck it, let's use reindeer. What else are they there for?" After all, the use of these noble creatures in battle actually has a precedent dating back to World War II, when the Soviets invaded Norway to drive the Nazis out and gained a decisive advantage thanks to their hardy cavalry. The tough bastards could easily move in the snow and could even swim from ship to shore (to be clear, we're talking about the reindeer, not the Russians).

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
"All right, that's half an hour, time to switch places with the reindeer."

Russia isn't the only country still using their fauna this way. China, being massive, also has a massive land border. One particular area, the Pamir Mountains along the Sino-Pakistan border, is extremely mountainous and very difficult to traverse, and also lacking a lot of modern infrastructure. None of that is much of a concern for yaks, who are able to climb up relatively steep slopes while carrying useful loads and full-sized humans on their backs. So, the Chinese border patrol figured they might as well take advantage of that.

Media of China
*Cue Cops theme*

But that's a quick stroll to the store compared to what the Sirius dog sled patrol in Greenland has to undergo. 12 soldiers, split into six teams of two and riding dog sleds, have to patrol for 26 months non-stop across the endless ice. Once again, the unit traces its roots back to World War II, where it was originally tasked with hunting down German weather stations that provided crucial meteorological information to the Nazi war machine (how do you say "yep, still cold as shit" in German?). Today, the patrol is there to support Danish claims to the Arctic and Greenland, even if it means sledding through the wilderness for months with only each other, the dogs, and the polar bears for company.

(Not a joke. There are polar bears. And they're hungry.)

BBC
But hey, someone's gotta protect all that nothing.

Also check out 6 Military Units Whose Training Would Traumatize Rambo and 6 Insane Military Training Techniques Designed To Break You.

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