One-Man Army/Real Life

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Examples of One-Man Army in Real Life include:

One-Man Armies of World War I

  • Alvin York singlehandedly wiped out an array of German machine gun nests in WW I, making the leader of that unit (according to Cracked.com, 133 people) surrender to him.
    • This really doesn't do him justice. He took fire from 32 machine guns and slaughtered twenty of them before they gave up.
    • And they surrendered because he's an American. Germans at that time often thought Americans were sissies compared to British gentlemen. So it was basically like: "If the Americans are like this, then how about the British? Fuck it, I'm outta here!"
    • And he was a pacifist.
  • German WWI commander Erich Ludendorff called August 8, 1918 the "Black Day" for Germany when it was reported to him entire German units were finding individual British soliders they could surrender to.
  • Not a one-man army but a one-tank army, the Whippet tank Musical Box, which engaged in a bloody nine-hour rampage behind German lines during the Battle of Amiens, 1918. It couldn't last forever, and understandably the Germans were very upset with the crew when they finally bailed out of their burning tank (one at least was shot and killed, and a German officer had to intervene to save the others from being butchered by his men), but it remains quite the exploit to this day.
  • General Pershing described World War I soldier Samuel Woodfill as "the outstanding soldier in the American Expeditionary Force." One account of how Lieutenant Woodfill won the Medal of Honor (and the French Legion of Honor) was explicitly titled, "One-Man Army." On a reconnaissance in October 1918, he singlehandedly took down three German machine-gun positions, each of four or five men. Woodfill killed, disabled, or captured some nineteen Germans that day, including two he had to beat to death with a pickaxe because his pistol had jammed and he was too close in to use his rifle. Oh, and he'd gotten a dose of mustard gas earlier that meant he wasn't at his top form when he did this.
  • A One-Man Air Force: the Red Baron, one of the earliest Ace of Aces.

One-Man Armies of World War II

  • The probable top kill score in human history goes to Heinrich Severloh, the everyman German soldier assigned to man WN 62, the machinegun nest that the Americans optimistically codenamed "Easy Red." Firing over 12,000 shots from his machinegun and 400 shots from two rifles, he managed to rack up between 1500 and 2500 casualties in a single day's fighting, only retreating when all three of his guns failed due to heat warping. His testimony is, however, rather unreliable when one considers that he also claims that there were 30 men defending Omaha, when his own emplacement held 19... reliable figures aside, no-one doubts that he caused a 'lot' of casualties. When he was taken prisoner, he was afraid to speak about the battle for decades for fear of retaliation, and the American GIs and their families simply nicknamed the unknown enemy "the Beast of Omaha Beach."
    • However it is hard to say how many people Heinrich Severloh killed, but it was doubtless many, very many as he was a crack gunner and marksman and there were targets aplenty to shoot at.
  • During the 100 day Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, Simo Hayha of Finland (generally considered to be the greatest sniper the world has ever seen) made over 505 confirmed sniper kills, and is credited for around 200 other kills with a submachine gun, ranking up at least 705 kills to his name. He ended his part in the war after getting shot in the jaw (read: head) with an explosive round and surviving. After getting shot he was in a coma for a week. The day he woke up is the day the Russians retreated from Finland. Coincidence? He then lived to the age of 97 years old.
    • His nickname throughout the entire Russian Army was "The White Death." Their attempted solution to his problem: launch artillery at where they thought he was. And even that didn't bring him down completely.
      • Artillery strikes managed to tear up his jacket once, and that was about it. That was more effective than the commandos (all of whom he killed) and all but the last counter-sniper (who died like all the others, but did shoot Simo Häyhä in the face before being killed). Think about that: Nothing short of being SHOT IN THE FACE even slowed this guy down, and he got better from that. He is reputed to have been disappointed about why he was refused a return to active duty when he woke up: That was the day the war ended.
    • Of course, the other thing Russians call "the white death" is... sugar. Making this the unlikely intersection of Foe Yay and Tastes Like Diabetes.
      • Well these are the Russians we're talking about here. When a single man can make the Russian Army (the Russian army ) look like fish in a barrel, one wouldn't be surprised at the prospect of them developing something of a crush.
  • That's compared to the second greatest sniper in history, Vasily Zaytsev, who while fighting against the Nazis, only managed to rack up a mere 242 confirmed kills to his name.
    • It's now widely known that Vasily Zaitsev's exploits (and especially his body count) were mostly fictional, created for the purposes of propaganda by the Soviets.
      • How Zaytsev can be the second greatest if Ivan Kulbertinov had 487 confirmed kills and Lyudmila Pavlichenko (just one of the many soviet distinquished female snipers) had over 300 confirmed kills?
    • It's the other way round. Zaytsev's exploits were for the most part true, but he was active on the front for the very short time, basically less than half a year. Remember, he wasn't an infantryman, he was a Marine, and he was transferred to Stalingrad from the Pacific Fleet only in Summer 1942. By the end of the summer he was raking kills so quickly that the Soviet media made him a posterboy of all snipers in the army, despite his relatively average kill count. In the end the brass realized that they couldn't risk the morale by letting him to be killed at the front, and recalled him to Moscow where he helped organize a sniper schools and served as an instructor.
  • Audie Murphy. While still bandaged from an earlier wound, he was wounded by mortar fragments in two feet of snow at -14F. When the ammunition for his personal weapon ran out, he climbed on a burning tank destroyer, that could explode at any minute, and used the .50 caliber machine gun to continue to lay a withering fire at the enemy, while calling down highly accurate artillery fire against the enemy. He received a further leg wound during this phase of the battle, which LASTED OVER AN HOUR, under constant attack from, as the citation for his Medal of Honor reads, "6 tanks, supported by waves of infantry". When the survivors of his squad regrouped with reinforcements, he personally led a counter-attack that forced an enemy withdrawal. According to his citation, he personally killed more than 50 soldiers in that battle.
    • He also had malaria since the Italian campaign. Didn't get it cured until after the war was over.
    • In the film adaptation (called To Hell And Back) he played himself, and he asked for some parts of the film to be removed because "people wouldn't believe it". We're talking about a biographic movie.
  • Canadian Leo Major in World War II. He started his career on D Day, capturing a German half track. Then, he went on to singlehandedly liberate the Dutch down of Zwolle. During a whole night he stormed the city, firing a machine gun and throwing grenades, making the germans believing a whole detachment of the Canadian Army was attacking, causing them to retreat.
  • American Tony Stein from World War II is famous for two things: his improvised Browning M1919 rifle and how he received the Medal Of Honor for taking out immense amounts of Japanese forces with it, while running all over the battlefield, barefoot, and carrying back the wounded soldiers.
  • Hans Rudel, Stuka dive bomber pilot of the Luftwaffe, is probably responsible for the single handed destruction of more stuff than any other person in history. He destroyed over 2000 targets, including, but not limited to, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, a destroyer, two cruisers and a battleship. Reading the achievements section of his Wikipedia article indicates he was pretty badass. Quite good looking, too.

Other One-Man Armies

  • Not so much a god of war, but they didn't call Masutatsu Oyama "The Godhand" for nothing. Able to kill a bull with one bare-handed strike (on the times he had to "settle for" two blows, he often chopped off one of their horns), he also engaged in 300 fights with the best students of his dojo in a row over the course of 3 days, stopped only because everyone else's asses were so thoroughly kicked that they couldn't or wouldn't continue.
  • Miyamoto Musashi gained his reputation after pulling one of these on the entire Yoshioka school. After he beat its two heirs in one-on-one combat, the entire school attacked him with bowmen, gunmen and swords. Musashi ambushed them, killed their figurehead leader and got away.
  • If the official record of the eight-hour Battle of Shewan, Afghanistan is to be believed, an individual U.S. Marine designated marksman (not a sniper) went 20 for 20–20 kills with 20 shots—while his platoon and three Afghan police squads was fighting off a company-sized Taliban ambush.
  • A Two Man Army example: American sniper Carlos Hathcock and spotter Johnny Burke were on a mission behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War when they encountered a company of NVA soldiers (about 80 men) marching across a rice field. Hathcock and Burke each shot one of the officers, and the NVA soldiers, instead of running for the nearest forest, tried to hide behind a small embankment about 1000 meters from any more good cover. The two Americans picked off the NVA soldiers at long range for five days before calling in an artillery strike on the few remaining NVA soldiers. Only one Vietnamese soldier survived.
  • Older example: The real Cyrano de Bergerac (the scene appears in the play as well) once fought a hundred armed men at once and won, killing so many the rest turned and ran. This was with a sword and no armor.
  • Zhao Yun is probably unknown to most of the Western World (apart from Dynasty Warrior) but in China and most of Asia his name literally defines this concept. At the Battle of ChangBanPo he was tasked with finding and protecting his master's family, who had gotten lost in a retreat from an overwhelmingly superior force, and ended up fighting his way out of the entire army single-handedly. In the process, he killed about 50 officers and hundreds of soldiers, all the while cradling a baby boy in front of his chest. Rather hilariously, when Zhao Yun presented Liu Bei's baby to him after returning, Liu Bei slapped him, saying "I can have many more children, but there is only on Zhao Yun."
    • Zhao Yun pales to Xiang Yu in the Chu-Han contention. Apparently, only he can kill himself --- despite facing an entire army.
    • Guan Yu also belongs here: when Liu Bei, his friend, had to retreat from a city about to be attacked by Cao Cao's army, Guan Yu went to the only bridge leading to the city, planted his staff, and dared the army to attack him. There was very obviously no one backing him up, but the army, rather than face him, turned and ran.
  • William Marshall definitely qualifies and is one of the most Badass of people ever. A medieval knight with a record of 500 tournaments with no losses (and these were in the 12th-13th centuries before full-plate, when they were extremely dangerous), he had such a great reputation that other fighters used to gang-up on him to try to take him down. He was once so battered that they had to delay the award ceremony while a blacksmith hammered his helmet back into shape so he could get it off. Not only was he a brilliant tourney fighter, but also a great battlefield leader and warrior. At the age of 75, he led the charge at the Battle of Lincoln and personally killed the Count of Perche, the French leader and a man some 40 years his junior.
  • Cathal Brugha was one of the only rebel leaders to survive the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. And why's that? When defending his post, he took a whole platoon of British soldiers alone. He ended up in coma for a while and was not thought to survive, but he pulled through (though he was later shot down by his former comrades during the Civil War).
  • This is actually not a military example, but it still qualifies. In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson said this about his political arch-nemesis:

Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican party [i.e., the Federalists]. Without numbers, he is an host within himself. [Emphasis added.]

  • Ancient Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus qualifies for this. Known primarily for his battles against the Romans, in which he won, but at such cost as it made the campaign untenable, Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus is full of heroic deeds, such as:
    • Winning a duel against a Macedonian officer, which impressed his army and enabled his conquest of Macedon
    • Engaging in a competition with his own Elephants to break the Roman line at the Battle of Asculum
    • Conquering the Carthaginian fortress of Eryx, Sicily by being the first man over the walls and cutting down all who approached him without taking a wound
    • Scaring off an entire Mamertine (the Sons of Mars) army that harassed his army's retreat from Sicily by cutting their biggest warrior in half with one blow
    • Leading the assault on Sparta
    • Going into an utter frenzy in another battle against the Spartans in which his son died, getting knocked from his horse and then proceeding to slay all the 'picked band' of Spartans sent to capture his son's body
    • Finally being killed because he was paralysed from behind, because he was too much raw badass to actually kill in face-to-face combat
  • Those that earn the title of a Ace Pilot are a one-manned Air Force.
  • Cracked.com has produced a few lists of them:
  • On one side: forty armed thieves, robbing, pillaging, and raping on a Nepalese train. On the other side: one retired Gurkha with a kukri. They shoulda brought more thieves.
    • Well, each Gurkha is a one-man army. One regiment of Gurkhas is a good reason to say "screw this, I'm outta here"
      • Truer than you know. The story goes that during the Falklands War, entire formations of Argentinian soldiers surrendered just on hearing the Gurkhas had been deployed there.
  • Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard successfully defended a bridge against 200 Spaniards ... at a time when Spanish infantry were generally considered the deadliest fighting men around.
    • That was only one of his accomplishments. At a battle with the English, when his side had absolutely lost, he refused to surrender to any armed Englishman, because it might look as if he were afraid of that man. So he fought his way over to an enemy officer who'd set down his sword and taken off his armor. Making sure the man was absolutely helpless against him, Bayard surrendered to the fellow. That way it was obvious he was yielding to the situation, not to any one adversary.
    • At Mézières, he wasn't alone, but only commanded 1000 men against an army of 35,000—and he was defending a position that everyone agreed couldn't be defended. Bayard and his men held it against 35-to-1 odds for six weeks before their enemies retreated. The position never fell.
  • Zvika Greengold, an Israeli tank commander during the Yom Kippur War. Commanded a ragtag group of four tanks in the Golan Heights he dubbed the 'Zvika Force' while Israel was still reeling from the surprise attack. Later fought with his own tank, changing vehicles half a dozen times and continuing to fight despite injuries such as burns and exhaustion. He fooled the Syrian army into believing that he alone was a large force of tanks and was credited with 40 tank kills over the course of a full day's fighting.
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