"During World War II, for example, three German submariners escaped from Camp Crossville, Tennessee. Their flight took them to an Appalachian cabin, where they stopped for a drink of water. The mountain granny told them to "git." When they ignored her, she promptly shot them dead. The sheriff came, and scolded her for shooting helpless prisoners. Granny burst into tears, and said that she would not have done it if she had known they were Germans. The exasperated sheriff asked what in "tarnation" she thought she was shooting at. "Why," she replied, "I thought they was Yankees."
-sourced to Arnold Krammar, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (New York, 1979), p. 133
Oh, that's worthy of a 'dawg story right there. That's precious. :)
7 comments:
LOL!
Hilarious!
Reminds me of a bit from a P.J. O'Rourke book where he - in 1968 or so - he tells his Southern, antebellum-mindset grandmother that he's a revolutionary Maoist, and she says "Well, as long as you're not a carpet bagging Republican!"
I was going to reply sooner, but just now stopped laughing. If they had said it was an Ozarks cabin, I'd have thought it was MY grandmother.
;^)
Shooting submariners is like shooting fish in a barrel. Aviators would be more sporting.
Hooray for hellbilly grannies!
Michael, if you used some sort of catapult/ballista/trebuchet and shot them while they were flying through the air, I think they'd all have about the same flight pattern.
Be an interesting and more sporting way to deal with death penalty cases, too. I'm gonna put that on my platform for when I mock run for office next time around alongside my desire to bring back flogging. Bet you could sell a lot of air time for beer and outdoors equipment commercials if you televised it. Probably need to use at least #4 or better instead of #7 shot to get clean "broken birds".
We need to give them a fighting chance. Toss them from helicopters.
A couple of thoughts come to mind:
Harry Truman's grandmother ordered him out of the house when he first showed up in his blue-coated Missouri National Guard uniform. "Harry, this is the first time since 1863 that a blue uniform has been in this house. Don’t bring it here again.”
There has been an "urban legend" for years that German POWs were issued surplus North Carolina Confederate grey jackets which had been stored since 1865. North Carolina was notorious for not sharing its goodies with the Confederate government. I've never seen any solid proof of this. Most sources seem to support the notion that they wore their own uniforms, or pre-war blue denim US Army fatigue suits - those blue denims might have set Granny off.
In any case, Wehrmacht feldgrau might look enough like Rebel grey that she'd have made them lunch. :) Although the mountain people tended to be Union sympathizers.
West Virginia Syndrome?
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