Funniest WW2 Photo

In hard times some measures do seem a little
extreme

 

Nothing like a dame: How Britain's wartime censor failed to see the funny side of soldiers dressed as women

 

Could be worse.

The naked gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, 1944

 

I think those two guys at the breach are hamming it up a bit for the camera. Pretty funny. What is on the man's belt at the right of the picture. Looks like shotgun shells. Detonators, maybe?

 

Look - heffalumps! (Actually, I don't know the date of this photo)

 

Vent tubes for bagged charges? The chaps in the right place to load them into the breech block.
VP should know these from the Chieftain/Challenger 120mm gun!

 

Always loved this one.

Calais 1944


Cpl Roberts, who was 21 at the time, was a member of the North Shore New Brunswick Regiment of the Canadian army and stormed Juno Beach on D-Day in June 1944. Roberts at 5' 6", accepts the surrender of what said to be the tallest man in the German army, a lance corporal at 7' 6" tall.

"My mates took some pictures of me with him with a camera they had taken from the Germans. Luckily he didn't give me any aggravation."

For just a few minutes before the picture was taken, Cpl Roberts faced a life-or-death duel with another German soldier who pulled out a pistol as he pretended to surrender. Roberts raised his .38 in the nick of time and shot the enemy soldier dead.

Cpl Roberts carried on fighting with his regiment through Belgium and Holland until February 1945 when he was badly injured in his right leg by a piece of shrapnel at Kappeln on the Holland/German border.

After the war he married wife Vera, and as of 2010 lived at the War Memorial Homes in Bournemouth. They have four children, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.