My grandfather (Mum's dad) fought in the second world war as an infantryman. He was Canadian, signed up as soon as he was able and probably lied about his birthday to get in early. His dad was an awful human being and basically abandoned raising him after his mom (my great grandmother) died or left, we don't know which. He was dropped off at an orphanage at the age of 5 or 6, and when he was fourteen his dad swung back by to collect him to work on the farm and was treated more like a slave than a son- so he took the first opportunity to get out of there by signing up at the military recruiter. We think he might've lied about his age to get signed up, but regardless he joined the Canadian army and became an infantryman.

To hear him describe it, the war was at once the best and worst of times for him. It was the best time of his life- but the evil he saw over the course of his tours in the European theater thoroughly dissuaded him from staying on once the war ended. He came home to Canada, married a British girl he met during training, and they retired to raise a family and live life as a brickmaker.

He didn't like speaking about the war, nor thinking about it, and particularly didn't like that any of us grandkids were interested in his experience. But every now and again, he'd deign to tell us a few stories about it. I can't speak to the veracity of them, but a few other people whose families were close to ours that I've talked to, whose grandparents served in the same theater all recognize the stories as familiar.

In this case, it was D-Day. Grandpa- Dave- was one of the units of infantry set to be on the first wave of landing boats arriving on the beach. They'd all been told what to expect and knew it would be an awful meatgrinder- but still had the hope that the attack would be enough of a surprise that the grand plan of securing the literal beachead would help the allies win the war against the Nazi regime. So they were all ready to go, all loaded up and ready to board the landing boats, just waiting for the final signal to be passed down.

Dave was generally friends with the rest of his unit and had a good commanding officer. But all the CO's were being given final orders, which left the antagonist of our story, a man I'm calling Fred because Dave never told us his actual name, time to come over and harrass the unit. Fred was fairly up the rank chain- below general, but someone who had command, or at least the ear of command, and had sent units off on missions. As my grandpa Dave alleged, Fred hated Canadian troops for their glory stealing ways. Which is to say that Fred's grandfather had gotten upshown by Canadians at Vimy Ridge in WW1 and he'd hated Canadians all his life. Fred was universally reviled by the Canadian forces in the war that had any interaction with him, and so naturally took every opportunity to make their lives hell- every petty thing you can think of, he made sure to do to them, from shortshrifting them on supplies to getting them assigned to shitty postings.

Grandpa Dave had run into Fred dozens of times in the years of the war leading up to D Day. Fred had even tried to assign them to the probing raid of Dieppe, but they'd been assigned to an airfield defense mission by someone higher up the chain and 'missed out' while the other Canadians died there. Fred made sure to come over and gloat the next time they'd run into him, really try to put the fear of god into them.

So naturally on that day of the next beach invasion Fred came over to gloat and antagonize again. He talked about how he'd almost miss seeing their sorry faces because they were all going to die in this assault and blah blah blah- and just doing everything he could to needle them into doing something stupid.

Then Fred did something stupid. He resorted to threats, telling them they had better stay out of his way if they knew what was good for them. He started rambling about his motivations- about how this offensive would finally bring his family the glory they'd been denied in the previous world war.

Fred aspired to be the first member of the allied forces to set foot on the beaches of Normandy. He would enter the history books and world history, elevating his family's glory to never before seen heights. All he had to do was race out ahead of the landing boats.

He was prepared to- he knew he'd get shot at, so he was wearing some fancy armor inserts he'd bought that would guarantee his survival against anything short of a machine gun emplacement, or so he alleged.

My Grandpa said it was like a lightbulb had gone off for everyone. This Fred problem was about to solve itself. All they had to do... was nothing.

Fred proceeded to commandeer the unit's GPA. For reference, that's an aphibian quarter ton 4x4 jeep, bringing his own driver since obviously he didn't trust any of the Canucks, and as the order came down to deploy, Fred drove off the deck and into the water.

It was at this point Dave's unit's CO came back, realized the GPA was gone, and demanded to know what had happened. But everyone closed ranks and just told him one of the Americans had commandeered it. So Grandpa Dave's CO rode with the infantry, grumbling all the while. The landing boats all launched and began making their way to the beach.

Each invasion force was arriving through a hole in the mine net that protected the beaches- the mines having had their tethers cut and left to drift away on outgoing currents the day previous.

But minelaying and minesweeping are tricky work, and in more than one case, sea mines had been laid too close to one another and had detonated, especially as the Axis forces determined the optimal placement for their naval mines.

So Fred did exactly that. He ordered his driver to range out in front of the troopships, racing across the surf towards the beach all ready to step out of the jeep and into the history books, the landing ships directly behind him.

Amphibious Jeeps like the GPA had issues- and one of the issues was that they were very heavy for their displacement, which meant they could only handle shallow water when going at any speed but 'as fast as possible'. Fred was fine driving across the surf- but then Fred hit the crater left by a naval mine detonation and slowed down. The entire jeep submerged, dropping down into the depression.

And then the landing ship directly behind Fred's jeep... kept going. Went straight over the poor schmuck and his unlucky driver.

Fred was not the first man to set foot on the beach that day, and he didn't step out of his jeep and into history- but he certainly stepped into family legend.

It's at this part of the retelling Grandpa Dave would get pretty somber.

"Yeah, he had it coming, but nobody deserves to die like that." he'd say.

I once asked him if he could do it over, would he tell his CO everything and get Fred recalled? "Absolutely," he replied, laughing. "That poor driver!"