Voytek: The most badass soldier in WWII

[Sainters7]

Crazy story. I have never even heard of this before:
http://community.atom.com/Post/An-Ode-to-Voytek-The-Most-Badass-Soldier-in-WWII/03EFBFFFF0182C7B8000800A747EC/

[fokakya]

Sweet little story! Except the last sentence: "He lived to a relatively old age, eventually dying of natural causes, and I’m sure that he’s up there somewhere right now, drinking a case of whiskey, smoking a cigar, and eating Nazis in heaven."

Nazis in heaven?!? I don't think so.

[Itse]

"After the war, Voytek retired to the Edinburgh zoo, and the rest of his company settled in the area around him. They visited him frequently, tossing him cigarettes and beer over the fence, and occasionally jumping the barricades to wrestle with him again."

This image totally cracked me up. I can just imagine the zookeepers going totally bonkers over drunk polack WWII veterans climbing fences to wrestle a drunken bear.

"Is okay, me and Voytek, we old buddies!"

This totally redefines the concept of grizzled old veterans.

[burn_baby_burn]

A beer drinking, cigar smoking bear? I have a tough time believing this story. Maybe a bear was used to carry shells to the front lines, who knows. Still hard to believe a story that used the F word in an internet blog. Another question, why would the Polish army want a statue of a polish military bear erected in Great Britain?

[RubberDuck]

A beer drinking, cigar smoking bear? I have a tough time believing this story. Maybe a bear was used to carry shells to the front lines, who knows. Still hard to believe a story that used the F word in an internet blog. Another question, why would the Polish army want a statue of a polish military bear erected in Great Britain?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-510452/The-hero-bear-went-war-loved-smoke-beer.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(soldier_bear)

[North East Goon]

That would make for a great movie - Rosie O'donnell could play the bear!

[Hack&Lube]

And after WWII, Voytek Volski signed with the Colorado Avalanche?

[Locke]

That is pretty bad ass. The Polish are messed up people.

[Sainters7]

A beer drinking, cigar smoking bear? I have a tough time believing this story. Maybe a bear was used to carry shells to the front lines, who knows. Still hard to believe a story that used the F word in an internet blog. Another question, why would the Polish army want a statue of a polish military bear erected in Great Britain?

Ya I know what you mean. After I first read the story, I googled it just to be sure, and found several credible sources. I just felt this blog told the most interesting, and amusing story about it so I rode with this one.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

For a minute there I was going to argue that the most badass soldier is Ronald Spears, but now I believe Voytek has taken the spot.

[Byrns]

Captain America was more badass. He took out way more Krauts than any stupid bear. Duh!

[PsYcNeT]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy

Seriously. Audie goddamn Murphy.

Comedy writer Marc Russel put it best:


He was sent into southern France in 1944. He encountered a German machine gun crew who pretended they were surrendering, then shot his best buddy. Murphy completely hulked out, killed everyone in the gun nest, then used their weaponry to kill every baddie in a 100-yard radius, including two more machine gun nests and a bunch of snipers. They gave him a Distiguished Service Cross, and made him platoon commander while everyone apologized profusely for calling him "Shorty."
About half a year later, his company was given the job of defending the Colmar Pocket, a critical region in France, even though all they had left was 19 guys (out of the original 128) and a couple of M-10 Tank Destroyers.

The Germans showed up with a load of guys and half a dozen tanks. Since reinforcements weren't coming for a while, Murphy and his men hid in a trench and sent the M-10s to go do the heavy lifting. They got ripped to shreds.
Then, this five-and-a-half-foot-tall kid with malaria ran up to one of the crippled M-10s, hopped in behind the .50 cal machine gun, and started killing everything in sight. Understand that the M-10 was on fire, had a full tank of gas and was basically a death-trap.

He kept going for almost an hour until he was out of bullets, then walked back to his bewildered men as the M-10 exploded in the background Mad Max style. They gave him literally every medal they could (33 in all, although he had doubles of a few, plus five from France and one from Belgium), including the Medal of Honor.
After the war, he came down with Shell-Shock, and was prescribed the antidepressant placidyl. When he became addicted to the drug, rather than enter a program like some kind of sissy, he went cold-turkey, locked himself in a motel room for a week and got over it. He wrote an autobiography entitled To Hell and Back, and later became an actor.

[Rhetts_the_Best]

that would make for a great movie - rosie o'donnell could play the bear!
:#1:

[Hack&Lube]

I've seen monkeys smoke. I want to see a bear do it.

[Sainters7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy

Seriously. Audie goddamn Murphy.

Comedy writer Marc Russel put it best:

Holy f***!!! That's a story that'll put hair on your chest. Dude probably shaved with a Goddam knife ala Paul Hogan.

[CaptainCrunch]

I still own his book "To hell and back"

The marines still feel a lot of shame over not taking him when he tried to join them at the age of 15.

He almost ended up not being aloud to fight because he had trouble keeping up in basic training and kept fainting, they were going to send him to cooking school.

His autobiography is interesting because he gave more credit to his men then his own action.

He is officially the most decorated man in the U.S. military, there was a soldier in vietnam who had more metals, but he didn't have every single metal like Murphy did.

He made 30 some odd movies, but two stand out "Red Badge of Courage"(everyone should have to read that book btw) and "To hell and Back"

An amazing soldier he had a kill count of 240 germans and 6 tanks, who didn't look like your tough grizzled soldier.

http://www.warfoto.com/audiem4a.jpg

http://www.warfoto.com/AudieDecoration%20Ceremony%206bs_small.jpg

Think about this photo, this is after he received his cmh

http://www.warfoto.com/dt24of43AusominacB.jpg