The Dumbest Details About Famous Wars
They say that war is hell, but we’d like to propose an update to the idiom: “War is dumb.” We mean that both in the philosophical sense that brutality is a poor method of conflict resolution and also in the sense that young men with big weapons in a stressful environment are bound to eat it in a spectacular fashion. Such as in the case of…
Henry Gunther
On November 11, 1918, Gunther had been at the Western Front for two months. He had recently been demoted for daring to suggest in a letter home that the World War kind of sucked, so when he saw a chance to charge the Germans, he went for it with hope of impressing his superiors, even if it was against orders. There was just one problem: It was 10:59 a.m., and unbeknownst to Gunther, the Armistice with Germany was about to go into effect one minute later. The Germans even tried to wave him off. Unfortunately, he got close enough to a pair of automatic machine guns to trigger them, becoming the last American to die in World War I.
Special Orders No. 191
In September 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee issued an order instructing the movement of his troops to be sent to all of his major generals, one of whom promptly lost his copy in a field wrapped around three cigars. It was immediately found by a Union soldier who handed it over to Major General George B. McClellan, who probably spent the next hour pinching himself. It was basically all the information he needed to “whip Bobby Lee,” in his words, at Antietam. He arguably still borked it, but Antietam wasn’t exactly known as a close game.
The Gate to the North
In the final days of Constantinople, things were rough. The Catholic mercenaries were clashing with the Orthodox natives, the Turks had “super-guns,” it was a whole thing. And in all the chaos, someone left the gate to the city wide open. Honestly, Constantinople probably wouldn’t have held on much longer regardless, but it didn’t help that the Turks could just walk right in.
Operation Tamarisk
The Soviets had a reputation for being starkly utilitarian, but they could appreciate a good metaphor. For example, when troops in the field weren’t issued toilet paper, they decided to wipe their asses with classified documents instead. This presented a valuable if disgusting opportunity for spies from the U.S., U.K. and France, who took to sifting through trash cans full of Soviet poop for information. It was described as “one of the most successful espionage operations” of the war, but at what cost? It certainly casts James Bond’s Cold War era in a new light.
U-1206
The Nazis prided themselves on their advanced technology, including U-boats that boasted, among other things, extremely high-tech toilets. In fact, they were so complicated that they required a dedicated toilet operator on every boat who definitely started to doubt his choices at some point. On April 6, 1945, the toilet on U-1206 malfunctioned, purportedly because Captain Lieutenant Karl-Adolf Schlitt (yeah) tried to operate it himself. The boat soon filled with poop water and then — because those brilliant German engineers built the poop pump over the battery compartment — chlorine gas. The submarine was forced to surface and immediately attacked by the Royal Air Force.
Schlitt denied any role in the incident because, well, wouldn’t you?
