A year before Commando hit the big screen, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, saw a very public example of just how far one man might go to avenge a crime committed against his child. That man’s name was Gary Plauche.

Dashing, handsome, and successful, Michael Caine is the archetypal movie star. When younger, however, he was also apparently quite the competent soldier as well.

Burke had a penchant for violence and a mean temper. These things always seem obvious in retrospect, but David Burke was also a dangerously self-centered opportunist. Though he never married, he fathered seven children by four women. Apparently, nobody could stand living with the guy for very long.

Why do soldiers fight? The movies and government propagandists would have us believe it is for grand causes. Young folk go to war to free people from oppression or defend their homeland against soulless invaders. To a degree that is true. Soldiers may indeed go to war for such stuff as this. However, what keeps them in the suck is invariably their friends.

Depending upon what you read, Bowie was shot either two or three times and received between four and seven separate stab wounds. Colonel Crain, the man who shot him in the first place, helped the injured Bowie off of the field. Bowie supposedly said, “Colonel Crain, I do not think, under the circumstances, you ought to have shot me.” 

Oftentimes truth is more compelling than fiction. Such was the case of the real War Daddy, SSG Lafayette Pool.

Jackson commanded a brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run. At a critical moment in the fight, Jackson beat back a determined Union assault. Barnard Elliot Bee, himself a distinguished Confederate General who ultimately lost his life in combat, referred to Jackson as a “stone wall” in the face of the enemy. The name stuck.

The Victoria Cross was introduced by Queen Victoria in 1856 to recognize acts of exceptional valor during the Crimean war. Since then it has been awarded 1,356 times. LCPL Leakey is only the fifteenth soldier so recognized since the end of WW2. Each physical medal is formed from the bronze of Russian guns captured at the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. In military circles, it’s quite the big deal.

In 1945 a one-eyed French Canadian named Leo Major did indeed snatch up a matching pair of Sten guns to shoot the holy heck out of a bunch of Waffen SS troopers defending the Dutch town of Zwolle. His story is one of almost insane bravery spanning two wars.