Bang. Boom. Stab.

There was a joke I heard from my uncle (Mom’s younger brother)
The Polish Army was worried about not having enough rifles to arrange for training. Instead, they issued their new recruits wooden rifles. They told the recruits to yell “Bang! Bang” while they were shooting at other recruits. The same story went with hand grenades- all of the grenades were being used in the war effort, with none left for training. In this case, the recruits were given a segment of weighted broomstick told to yell “BOOM” when they intended to throw a grenade. The same went for bayonet training: they would poke the other recruit with their wooden rifle while yelling “Stab! Stab!”

As luck would have it, one recruit fell through the cracks of Polish Army bureaucracy and was sent into the field without any weapons. Shortly, there was a large battle. They found this private surrounded by dozens of dead German soldiers as he yelled “Bang! Bang! Stab! Boom! Bang!” and so on. Scores of Germans were falling in the wake of his ferocious and false attack.

The Polish generals thought they were on to something, so they created an entire unit on this principle. They won several battles. The generals laughed at the stupidity of the German army, to fall for such a trick.

One day, the Polish unit charged over a hill, then immediately returned, running for their lives, screaming that they had no weapons to hold off the German unit headed their way. Just then, the saw 100 German troops cresting the hill with thier arms extended in what appeared to be a NAZI salute. As the troops grew closer, the Germans could be heard:

“Tank! Tank! Clank! Clank”

Poland fell the next day.

Seeing the below exchange was what reminded me of that story.