re: 5 Real life soldiers who make Rambo look like a wimp

There are probably hundreds of stories equally as impressive that remain covert and classified.

A couple of badasses:

Saburo Sakai, Japanese fighter ace. Badly injured in aerial combat, suffering head wounds, Sakai was out of action almost two years, returning to fly combat missions with only one eye.

Douglass Bader lost both legs in a prewar accident, returned to the RAF, flying combat with two artificial legs.
Shot down and taken prisoner, the Germans finally took his legs away because of repeated escape attempts.

Rambo can't steal that valor!

can hardly believe it wasn't locked, but there it was

Some very brave, determined men on that list

May not compare, but this one always makes my jaw drop: (Victorian Cross)
"Jackson, already wounded from shell splinters, strapped on a parachute and equipped himself with a fire extinguisher before climbing out of the aircraft and onto the wing, whilst the aeroplane was flying at 140 miles per hour (230 km/h), in order to put out the fire. He gripped the air intake on the leading edge of the wing with one hand, and fought the fire with the other"
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Daniel Inouye




Hawaiian Senator and WWII vet... Medal of Honor Recipient... Died in 2012.


Anyone who has seen Ken Burns' World War 2 documentary probably remembers him.


Inouye was promoted to sergeant within his first year, and he was assigned as a platoon sergeant. He served in Italy in 1944 during the Rome-Arno Campaign before his regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France, where he spent two weeks in the battle to relieve the Lost Battalion, a battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment that was surrounded by German forces. He received a battlefield commission to second lieutenant for his actions there, becoming the youngest officer in his regiment. At one point while he was leading an attack, a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart, but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket. He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charms, until he lost them shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm.

On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy, called the Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint of the German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach. Ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and his Thompson submachine gun. When informed of the severity of his wound, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.
As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, coming within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade, a German soldier inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade, which struck his right elbow, nearly severing most of his arm and leaving his primed grenade reflexively "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore". Inouye's horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the enemy soldier aimed his rifle at him, Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. He awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. His only comment before being carried away was to order them back to their positions, saying "Nobody called off the war!"

The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him.

Although Inouye had lost his right arm, he remained in the military until 1947 and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain.

John Basilone, USMC.

Wiki

Nobody's mentioned it, so I will - Badass of the Week Find the archive and be ready to lose a chunk of time.

I like Jack Churchill the most. Dude lived until 1996 and died at age 89.
He definitely won the game of life.
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