5 Two-Man Teams Who Took on Whole Armies (And Won)

5 Two Guys Storm a Stronghold Full of Nazis

During the Battle of the Bulge, Company I of the 120th Infantry was moving through Petit-Coo, Belgium, on December 23, 1944, when they were suddenly pinned down by fire from a house bristling with Nazi guns. It was a bad situation that became balls-out terrible when they started getting pounded by mortar and tank fire as well.

Enter Staff Sgt. Paul L. Bolden and Tech. Sgt. Russell N. Snoad. Presumably worried that the cost of an airstrike on the house would come directly out of their own paychecks, Bolden and Snoad volunteered to take care of the pesky Nazi problem themselves. Their superiors apparently decided "Screw it, whatever" before giving them the green light, and the two men began crawling the length of two football fields through the hellstorm of enemy fire. It was two men against what would turn out to be 35 heavily armed Nazis.

When they reached the house, they took positions to prepare for their grossly ill-conceived assault. Bolden, after presumably losing a round of Rock Paper Scissors, set himself up directly underneath a window near the door of the house, while Snoad went across the street so he could provide covering fire. Bolden threw a frag grenade through the window, followed by a white phosphorus grenade. While the three dozen Nazis were trying to recover from the blasts, Bolden rushed to the door, threw it open, shouted the 1940s version of "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!" and opened fire with his Tommy gun while Snoad covered him.

The duo was able to take out 20 of the 35 Nazis before the enemy was able to return a burst of fire, killing Snoad and severely wounding Bolden in the shoulder, chest, and stomach. He withdrew to a cover position and waited for the 15 surviving Nazi soldiers to come out and surrender. That last sentence was not a typo. And that's not us embellishing, either. All reports say that Bolden waited to see if the enemy would surrender. While outnumbered. While grievously wounded. While his one and only ally lay dead.

The Nazis didn't, and we can totally understand why. After all, even after having nearly two-thirds of their force wiped out in an instant by these two Americans, they did end up killing one and seriously jacking up the other, and the odds were still a cozy 15-1. Bolden presumably then glanced at his watch, shrugged his shoulders, and raised his Tommy gun as he calmly walked back into the house to finish the job.

By the time Bolden ran out of ammo, all 15 of the Nazi soldiers were dead, and the way was paved for his unit to continue on and eventually succeed in its mission.

4 Two Men Fight the Enemy While in a Burning Plane

First of all, when you're flying in a bomber over enemy territory, don't kid about crashing. That shit is bad karma.

On May 1, 1943, the 306th Bomber Group was returning from a successful and mostly uneventful mission over occupied Europe when pilot Lt. Lewis Johnson joked out loud that they should "ditch this plane just off the coast to make a dramatic story I can tell my children someday." The irony of those words were presumably not lost on Johnson when, shortly afterward, a hail of enemy fire ripped into their plane, exploding a fuel tank and turning the whole aircraft into a flying fireball. Johnson frantically tried to keep the craft airborne, with no idea if any of the five-man crew behind him had made it through unharmed.

One of them had: the squadron's resident screwup, Sgt. Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, a guy who was so disliked by his unit that he'd never flown a mission before this one. Realizing that the ball turret he was manning was now worthless, Smith climbed up into the burning body of the plane, which at this point must have looked like a pretty accurate representation of hell. He was just in time to see his radio man dash past him and jump out of the plane. One of the gunners had already done the same, and the second one was hung up in the gun hatch. Smith helped him out and, in a dickhead way that did his dickhead reputation justice, asked him if the heat was too much. It apparently was, and Smith politely helped him open the rear escape hatch and jump out.

While Johnson was up in the cockpit desperately trying to keep the shredded, flaming plane in the air, Smith wrapped a sweater over his own face to protect it from the smoke and grabbed a fire extinguisher in an attempt to get the fire under control. That was the moment the Germans chose to attack again. The aircraft, at this point broken and burning and in the hands of exactly two men, was being blasted into Swiss cheese by a swarm of German fighter planes.

Smith dropped the fire extinguisher and hopped onto one of the two guns pointing out the side of the fuselage. Still surrounded by flames and smoke, he returned fire, switching to the other gun when the enemy planes passed to the other side. But soon the fire took priority over the Nazis, and Smith began throwing flaming bits of whatever wasn't nailed or melted down out of a ragged hole in the hull. The heat became so intense that it started setting off ammunition crates. Smith ran over to the exploding crates, carried them to the hole, and tossed them overboard as well. Then he hopped back on the guns to take on another enemy wave before returning to the fire, juggling these horrific tasks like a short order cook during lunch rush.

Smith desperately dumped the plane's water and urine buckets on the blaze before apparently becoming so angry at the fire's unwillingness to die out that he whipped out his dick in the middle of a burning airplane and rage-pissed on it. We're not joking. He pissed on the fire. He finally finished the fire off by beating it out with his hands and feet. All that was left after that was to hop on the guns a third time to repel yet another enemy fighter attack.

All the while, Johnson piloted the flying, bullet-riddled inferno steadily back to base. Throughout the ordeal, the bomber sustained more than 3,500 fucking bullet and shrapnel holes. The propellers and flaps were destroyed, the radio room was a smoldering ruin, one gas tank was blown out, and the nose was smashed in. Everything about the bomber was so completely destroyed that when Johnson finally touched down, the stress of landing broke the goddamned plane in two.

Smith was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism, although the honor did nothing to curb his overall reputation as a shitbag. When the Secretary of War showed up weeks later to award him the medal, Smith was found on kitchen duty as punishment for showing up late from a pass and missing out on a subsequent scheduled mission. Classic Snuffy!

And, incredibly, that is only the second-craziest bomber story we have ...

3 Two Bomber Pilots Fly Their Aircraft After They Get Attacked Midair

It was New Year's Eve, 1944, and the United States was busy giving Germany a pounding they would never forget. Among the pilots assisting in the pyrotechnics display were Lt. Glenn Rojohn and his co-pilot, Lt. William Leek Jr., flying their B-17 Flying Fortress. When the lead aircraft was downed by German fighters, Rojohn and Leek began to maneuver their bomber into the lead position when they felt a large object smash into them.

Unbeknownst to them, another B-17 piloted by Lt. William MacNab had lazily drifted straight into their underbelly, causing the two aircraft to become stuck together like dragonflies getting it on. Thinking quickly, Rojohn and Leek shut off their aircraft's engines to avoid causing an explosion and let MacNab's B-17 engines (which were still miraculously running) keep them aloft from below. They also ordered their crew to bail out, and they happily obliged, along with the crew in the lower B-17.

Left alone to pilot the terrifying double-decker bomber, Rojohn and Leek had to put their feet up on the instrument panel and pull the yokes back with all of their strength, trying to use the flaps of one plane to keep two aircraft aloft. Rojohn, the senior officer, ordered Leek to bail out. However, with the knowledge that leaving would mean Rojohn's death (it was taking both of them to pull off the ridiculous maneuver), Leek's response, basically, was "fuck you."

Meanwhile, Germans on the ground believed that they were witnessing a brand-new American eight-engine super-bomber in flight. Yes, Leek and Rojohn were flying the connected bombers so well, the Germans thought it was actually designed that way.

With the yokes pressed all the way to their crotches, the two pilots kept the aircraft aloft for miles until gravity finally brought it down, basically splintering both aircraft on impact. When the Germans arrived at the site of the crash, they found Rojohn and Leek coolly leaning against their wreckage, preparing to smoke a cigarette before realizing they were standing in a pool of their own aircraft's gasoline. Yes, we're trying to tell you that bomber pilots were fucking insane.

2 Two Shoeless Men Fight Off an Ambush in 20-Below Weather

The scene: Korea, on a freezing November day in 1950. Pvts. Hector Cafferata and Kenny Benson's unit was under orders to protect the Tokong Pass, an escape route for other Marine regiments. Five men were sent out beyond the perimeter to keep watch, and Cafferata and Benson were chosen to sleep first. The ground was so frozen that they couldn't dig foxholes, and they had to use tree limbs as windbreaks. This turned out to be the least shitty part of the night, because unbeknownst to them, a massive Chinese unit was close by. And while the two men were snoozing in their sleeping bags, the Chinese attacked.

Imagine your alarm clock waking you up too early. What do you do? Probably stumble around your room, disoriented, clumsily knocking over everything while trying to find the snooze button, right? Now, imagine your alarm clock is the screams of an enemy army and the roar of close gunfire. Game over, right? Not if you're Cafferata and Benson. The two men sprung out of their fart-sacks at once and, without so much as putting their boots on, took up their rifles and started emptying clips, downing eight enemy soldiers on the spot.

When they stumbled (in their socks, mind you) upon wounded Marines, both men elected to stay and protect them. And when a grenade landed close by, Benson tried to fling that shit away. He was too late, though, and it exploded near his face, blinding him. Deciding that eyesight was for pussies, Benson stayed by Cafferata's side, gathering weapons, loading them, and keeping his buddy well stocked with fresh ammo and replacement guns.

Over the next seven hours, Cafferata laid down a never-ending stream of devastation on the enemy force. The men moved up and down the line of troops, presumably alternating between super-slow and super-fast motion, dropping enemy soldiers and batting away grenades with a trench shovel. When one grenade fell close to Benson, Cafferata was the one to chuck it away. He was too late, and the explosion took chunks of his hand. That also was no reason to stop fighting.

The two men, one maimed, the other blind, fought alone until the sun rose and they finally realized they had beaten the Chinese back.

Unfortunately, Cafferata was shot in the arm and chest while trying to retrieve his boots from his sleeping bag. He was hospitalized for 18 months and learned later that officers had tallied more than 100 enemy dead surrounding the ditch they fought in. They elected not to put that number in their report, however, because they very reasonably felt that no one in their right mind would believe it.

1 A Pair of Dentists Go AWOL to Attack the Germans

What these next two guys did in no way turned the tide of the war, and as far as we know it didn't even result in any German casualties. Still, it has to go down as one of the most balls-out crazy things ever attempted in modern warfare. This is the story of the two guys who decided to single-handedly invade Nazi-occupied France.

First, we want you to imagine the most unintentionally hilarious job anyone could have, for any nation, in any war. Got it? Well, Sgt. Peter King and Pvt. Leslie Cuthbertson have you beat: They spent World War II in the British Army Dental Corps.

After trying several times to transfer to fighting units, they decided to take matters into their own hands. So, in April of 1942, King and Cuthbertson went AWOL. In an effort to prevent accusations of desertion, they wrote letters to Prime Minister Winston Churchill explaining the purpose behind their actions. Then these two dentists, who had no particular espionage or other special training to speak of, stole weapons and grenades from their camp, deciding they'd get proactive on that shit. They stole a motorboat and set out across the English Channel to France in what was to be the very first invasion of occupied territory of the war, unauthorized though it was.

Once there, King and Cuthbertson, who were inspired by stories of raids conducted by the English Special Services, sought out something to raid. It came in the form of a German troop train. Armed with all their considerable dentist training, they waited for any German onlookers to go past them, then placed a grenade under one of the tracks and pulled the pin. The train successfully disrupted, the two men made the tactically sound decision to get the hell out of the area before they were cut down by enemy soldiers.

King and Cuthbertson stayed in Nazi-occupied France for a total of three days before deciding to return to England, somehow not getting killed in the process. They stole another motorboat and made their way across the English Channel. They miscalculated the amount of fuel the boat would need, though, and it wasn't long before they were stranded on the water, where they stayed for more than two weeks before being rescued by the Royal Navy.

They were immediately court-martialed, because it turns out most armies frown on this kind of thing. An intervention by Churchill prevented them from being tried for desertion, but they did end up losing rank. They were, however, allowed to leave the dental corps and transfer to the light infantry ... and over the years, King wound up winning two medals for valor. So, yeah, we're thinking the guy was kind of wasted as dentist.

Xavier Jackson has an email at XavierJacksonCracked@gmail.com and a Facebook page here. Like it.

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Related Reading: Ready for some one-man rampages? We've got those too. Fats McCarthy stormed half a kilometer of German trench on his own. If you're more interested in two men fighting each other, we've got these tales of duels. Still reading? We've got more one man rampages right here. You can read about the man who screamed an entire army into submission.