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Before proceeding to a spicy part let us summarize some statistical figures. Already in WW1 STD was one of the deadliest weapon disabling whole armies: 150.000 Brits and 350.000 GIs were disabled only in France for lengthy times lasting several weeks. And there was no Penicillin.Syphilis was treated with injections of mercury, which usually did nothing to prevent the fatal progression of the disease years later. But the contraction of an infection meant a hospital stay of about 30 days. It was a worthwhile trade-off for some, if it enabled them to escape the carnage of the front line.Dominion soldiers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada might have received about six shillings a day for their wartime service, the British soldier just sixpence. It was a financial advantage that entitled colonial troops to their pick of the prostitutes.If military rule was not persuasive enough, perhaps fear of contamination would be—hence posters alerting GIs to the dangers of venereal disease.Let's take a closer look at WW2 using Susan L. Carruthers and othersAP PhotFrom the moment Allied occupation troops entered Germany, two things became apparent: first, that GIs would waste little time in finding new sexual partners and, second, that with just as much gusto, American reporters and photographers would alert stateside audiences to these liaisons. No occupied territory excited greater or more prurient interest than the female body. Nor did anything more speedily tarnish the image of America’s postwar occupation than the avidity with which American servicemen of all ranks engaged in what was euphemistically termed “fraternization” with defeated former foesMilitary leaders had expressly forbidden American service personnel from fraternizing with Germans, of all ages and both sexes, in any way whatsoever. GIs were reminded about this prohibition at every turn, from the Pocket Guide to Germany to orientation films, radio spots, posters, and large billboards that lined the routes along which Allied soldiers poured into the Third Reich in the war’s closing months.At first, Germany—and German women—appeared suitably hostile or simply absent from the visual record of Allied conquest. Life magazine’s March 19, 1945, issue carried a striking, full-page image of an amused American corporal cinching a female figure with a passing facial resemblance to Marlene Dietrich. On closer inspection, her extravagantly arched eyebrows turned out to be the least improbable feature of this GI’s inamorata—a mannequin wearing almost nothing other than a long wig and a Wehrmacht officer’s cap. “American soldiers are forbidden to ‘fraternize’ with real German girls,” the caption explained. Although the text went on to remark that fraternization was “hard to prevent,” Life offered no further illumination. That would soon change.A ban on fraternization between American GIsand civilians in occupied Germany did little to thwart interactions of all kinds. (Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)Four months later, the magazine devoted several pages to a photo story illuminating the “No. 1 gripe of American GIs in Germany, the official policy of ‘nonfraternization’”: a rule that meant “soldiers are forbidden marriage, visits, drinking, shaking hands, playing games, hobnobbing, exchanging gifts, walking, sitting, dancing or talking to the Germans.” To show how egregiously American soldiers were violating the ban, Life devoted an entire page to a photograph showing a GI pinioning a young woman against the wall of a dreary apartment building, his body angled toward hers, their faces just inches apart. “In a back yard near Wiesbaden, U.S. soldier corners a pretty, laughing German girl,” the caption read.But the other photographs in the story served a rather different purpose: to show that the truly ingenious players in occupied Germany’s game of cat and mouse were the fräuleins who set out to tease and ensnare guileless GIs. German women, in effect, were doing the real pinioning. Wearing “flimsy” summer dresses—or even less at Germany’s beaches and pools—they paraded their untouchable assets. “Girls flaunt themselves partly to taunt the Americans,” Life explained, “but chiefly in order to get ‘frau bait’ of candy, gum and cigarettes.” Stars and Stripes published similar photographs of solidly constructed young women in two-piece bathing suits that both reminded GIs about what was off-limits and encouraged them to disregard the prohibition. “Verboten—but not too bad from this angle,” ran one caption.The claim that women solicited their occupiers’ attention—for both amusement and profit—quickly became a dominant explanation for the breakdown of soldiers’ sexual restraint in occupied Germany. No less an authority than Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery endorsed this thesis; the British general accused the country’s female population of practicing a “new form of German sabotage by wearing fewer and fewer clothes, thereby undermining nonfraternization policy.” Time reported that this treacherous striptease had disarmed both Tommies and GIs: “German girls in brief shorts and halters systematically sunned themselves in full view of U.S. engineers…. Military policemen…had their patience tried by a girl who patted her backside and whispered ‘verboten’ every time she passed…. The effect on [troops] was exactly what the Field Marshal feared.”Sad revengeThis story encapsulated the contradictions that characterized the press’s take on sex and the occupation soldier. On the one hand, nothing seemingly sullied the good name of the American occupation government more than illicit intimate contact between American personnel and German women. As war correspondent Percy Knauth pointed out in Life, they were “girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies.” That German women were “preoccupied”—the former lovers of Nazi Party bigwigs or Wehrmacht small fry—made them all the more dangerous, or, worse yet, all the more alluring. Yet, however lamentable this sordid state of affairs, GIs were not wholly, or even primarily, to blame.The “unspeakable” was also highly marketable. Rarely did magazine editors pass up an easy double entendre. When Collier’s magazine published a story in October 1946 entitled “Heels among the Heroes,” it illustrated Edward Morgan’s essay about low morale and lax morality among American occupation forces with a photograph of three “comely German Fräuleins” in bikinis protesting an “off-limits” sign planted at a beach. The GI they petitioned was dressed only in bathing trunks. “It takes a strong man to remain firm,” the caption nudged.Can You resist it??? Wearing mask, washing hands and most importantly using a modern Social distancing!!!The press accused German women of taunting occupying soldiers. British Field Marshal Bernard L.Montgomery called it a “new form of German sabotage.” (Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)One troublesome word, “occupation,” thus found itself inextricably entangled with another: “fraternization.” It was an “awful big word for most GIs,” an army field surgeon wrote to his wife from Germany in July 1945, but it “usually just means one thing to them.” A much simpler, four-letter word could readily be substituted for this cumbersome term—or it could be abbreviated to “frattin,” with no truncation of meaning.Neither before nor during World War II had American military commanders hit on a reliable formula for constraining soldiers’ sexual activity in all its unruliness. A ban on fraternization had been tried in Germany before, when American troops occupied the Rhineland after World War I. The prohibition failed and was quickly rescinded. During World War II, soldiers overseas had become accustomed to having sex with or without the military establishment’s direct facilitation. It was inconceivable that troops would cease and desist from all sexual activity upon entry into Germany, no matter what stern injunctions SHAEF—Allied supreme headquarters—might issue. Recognizing this, one senior officer proposed that if superiors insisted on a fraternization ban, “we should import into Germany at the earliest possible moment our own women in as large numbers as may be.”As that chimerical recommendation suggests, the antifraternization rule was not exclusively, or even primarily, a military device contrived to starve soldiers of sex. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order prohibiting all social contact—issued on September 12, 1944, the day after the first American troops occupied a small pocket of southwestern Germany around Aachen—reflected the tightening of Washington policy on the so-called “German Question.” As such, the ban sought to impress on citizens of the Third Reich their “collective guilt” by force of complete ostracism.A Pocket Guide to Germany for American soldiers contained warnings about fraternization.To help Germans “see the error of their ways” they would be “held at arm’s length,” as General John H. Hilldring, commander of the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division, put it. The terms of Eisenhower’s prohibition made his figurative expression literal. Germans wouldn’t just be held at arm’s length; they wouldn’t be held at all. Even handshaking was banned. The prohibition of more intimate physical contact was left unspoken but implied.Washington’s line on fraternization toughened under popular pressure. Soon after American troops occupied Aachen, photographs appeared in stateside newspapers showing soldiers enjoying the hospitality of German families—taking convivial meals together, with GIs’ arms familiarly draped over children’s shoulders. Within days, President Franklin D. Roosevelt cabled Eisenhower about photographs “considered objectionable by a number of our people.” The president asked that SHAEF both stamp out fraternization and ensure that “publication of such photos be effectively prohibited.” Eisenhower responded that he had already insisted “that fraternization be suppressed completely,” but the ban would henceforth be more total in its remit.Military commanders found themselves in the uncomfortable position of imposing a prohibition they believed unenforceable. They employed every conceivable argument to urge men away from contact with Germans—playing, in particular, on fears of contamination. Anti Fraternization propaganda construed German women as doubly dangerous: carriers of noxious ideological strains as well as sexually transmitted diseases. Posters presented a lurid image of female siren-saboteurs poised to infect American boys’ minds with the bacillus of Nazism and their bodies with syphilis and gonorrhea. In the spring of 1945, after the Allies had liberated the concentration and extermination camps, anti fraternization warnings also incorporated photographs of Germany’s victims to underscore the message that Americans must shun the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes.But the terms of the ban were extraordinarily difficult to respect. Military personnel whose work required them to interact with German civilians on a day-to-day basis found it especially awkward. On occasion, drivers, translators, and other subordinates rebuked military officers for unthinkingly offering their hands to German civilians or returning salutes before they had had time to curb reflexes of military courtesy.Some checked their instincts but wondered whether they had been correct to do so. On May 22, 1945, Major John Maginnis recounted in his diary that he had gone to pick up some photographs from a small shop in Berlebeck: “In the normal European fashion, [the elderly proprietor] courteously preceded me to the door and extended his hand as I departed. I did not take it and somehow it bothered me that I did not. Had I given him the customary brief handshake, would I have been fraternizing? Probably.” Maginnis did not pursue the logic of his unease further. But others certainly wondered whether the ban was not calculated to engender more hostility than remorse, particularly among Germans who had not been party members and bristled at the undifferentiated guilt Americans attached to the entire population.One nettlesome question was whether children deserved to be stigmatized in exactly the same way as their parents and other adults. Sidney Eisenberg told his family in the Bronx about a fleeting encounter, two days before Germany’s final capitulation, that had rattled him: “As you know I take this non-fraternization business very seriously—far more than most. I slipped up once. I walk home from work every day—3 1⁄2 miles—for the exercise and completely ignore the Herrenvolk en route. But the other day a sweet little girl—about 7 years old—dragging a tiny kid brother, smiled at me faintly—hopefully. I grinned at her efforts and she immediately broke into the loveliest smile imaginable—one I shall never forget tho I felt guilt about even this afterward.”Ban or no ban, American soldiers found Germany alive with sexual activity in the spring and summer of 1945. One particularly galling phenomenon to many GIs was the fact that German POWs were being released and returning home by the early summer. “Darling it sure does burn the boys over here to see all the German soldiers walking down the road going home and then we have to stay here and watch them,” infantryman Aubrey Ivey wrote to his wife from Landa on May 26, 1945.Worse yet, these demobilized veterans were publicly resuming their romantic lives, and seemingly flaunting their freedom to do so, under the disgusted gaze of the occupiers. On June 6, Leo Bogart, a sergeant in the Army Signal Corps, wrote his parents in Brooklyn on the subject: “To the GI who is faithful to a woman back in the States, or who just wants to keep his nose clean and sticks to the non-fraternization rule, there is something extremely irritating in the sight of a Nazi soldier, in his uniform, walking slowly down the street of an evening in the embrace of a good-looking Fräulein.”Former Wehrmacht soldiers were not the only ones enjoying an instant “peace dividend.” Some female Displaced Persons—many of them former forced laborers from Eastern Europe—were also running “miniature houses of joy,” as one military government officer put it. “I broke that up fast for the two were Polish and therefore had to be shipped to a repatriation center if they weren’t doing useful work,” Second Lieutenant Maurice Kurtz informed his spouse, quipping that “useful” was all a matter of perspective. Predictably enough, the Poles’ clientele was not limited to other DPs. Since the fraternization ban did not extend to other nationalities, American soldiers quickly entered into liaisons with DPs.Life also alerted its readers to the way in which GIs would spuriously “renationalize” women to circumvent the ban against fraternization, pretending that German girlfriends were not, in fact, German. “The boys never admit fraternizing, and it’s always a French girl, or a Belgian, or a Russian, or a Pole involved. They’re very cagey,” Dr. Felix Vann, a major in the 863rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, informed his wife in late May.In an attempt to stamp out this ruse, Twelfth Army Group headquarters began issuing colored cloth armbands to DPs that would identify them by nationality: a practice uncomfortably redolent of the Nazi insistence that persecuted populations literally wear their identity on their sleeves. Another unit tried something similar with lapel buttons. Predictably, these readily discarded markers of identity did not prove an effective impediment to GI ingenuity. Indeed, enlisted men’s can-do entrepreneurialism simply ensured that a brisk black market developed for DP armbands and buttons.Officers were just as quick to circumvent the fraternization ban as enlisted men. But where the latter often required deviousness to maneuver around rules, officers simply bent them on a grander scale. Officers, after all, both devised and enforced the rules—or ignored them.Felix Vann expanded on his observations about enlisted men’s associations with DPs, or Germans they passed off as such, with equally scathing diatribes about officers. Many of them, he noted in July 1945, were “going off the deep end.” Married and single officers alike routinely maintained relationships with women they had met earlier in France and Belgium, issuing themselves passes so they could return west at whim to visit their girlfriends. Unlike enlisted men, officers enjoyed the self-assigned leisure and mobility required to sustain long-distance romances. Others, Vann noted, were “shacked up with WACs [Women’s Army Corps] and nurses,” leading to another common complaint of enlisted men: that their superiors monopolized all the available American women.With some officers openly pursuing affairs in Germany and beyond, enlisted men inclined to break the rules no doubt felt all the more vindicated in pursuing their own amorous adventures. In this permissive environment, punishment for violations of the fraternization ban was rarely severe, especially after V-E Day. Enlisted men faced fines of $65 for fraternization, a sum equivalent to two or three months’ net pay for most, but few offenders were actually docked.Despite omnipresent warnings—enlisted men and officers alike widely violated the ban, with few punished. A courtroom scene shows a rare exception. The fine was $65. (The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images )Officers tended to be especially lenient in excusing one another’s “indiscretions.” Major Maginnis, who in his diary had expressed misgivings about his interaction with a German shop owner, also recorded his vexation that a general, Frank Howley, failed to take a serious view of two field-grade officers openly “having social parties” with German women, letting the men off with nothing more than a “good dressing down.” Meanwhile in the Bavarian Alps, Colonel Clifton Lisle, commander of the 2nd European Civil Affairs Regiment, tried to hold the line by court-martialing an officer who had consorted with a woman Lisle described as a “notorious Nazi whore.” (His diary noted his incomprehension over “such things,” but not the verdict.)Despite some officers’ best efforts, the line was not to be held. As army historian Earl Ziemke writes, nonfraternization policy “did not end, it disintegrated.”The first substantial retreat came on June 4, 1945, when SHAEF quietly released word that contraction of VD would no longer be “used directly or indirectly as evidence of fraternization”—an indication the ban had done nothing to curb escalating rates of infection. In fact, halfhearted attempts to respect nonfraternization had just the opposite effect. One army medic noted that after Eisenhower’s initial order was decreed, the bowl of condoms that had formerly sat at the end of the chow line was removed—with predictable consequences for the sexual health of soldiers and their partners.However, these pragmatic rationales for rescinding the ban hardly made for the best PR. The public narrative, as spun for the home front, attempted to turn a negative into a positive by first authorizing friendly relations between military personnel and children. Eisenhower made this announcement on June 11, conjuring a heartwarming image of the generous GI to whom youngsters everywhere were irresistibly drawn. This surely elicited knowing chuckles from men only too well aware that it was hardly the dispensing of Hershey bars to infants that had preoccupied the high command. The new amendment also seemed almost to encourage GIs to set their sights ever lower, since interaction with young girls could now, however disingenuously, be justified by the official sanction given to friendly dealings with children. In this vein, Life tellingly captioned a photograph of a GI greeting a young German woman, “Goodday, child.”What was left of the ban lasted only another month before Eisenhower announced that soldiers could henceforth engage German adults in conversation. Gamely, but misleadingly, he asserted that this move reflected the great strides that had been made with denazification. By permitting verbal exchanges, the ameliorated policy would encourage yet more progress since, Eisenhower suggested, GIs would now be able to express their outrage to Germans about the horrors of the extermination camps. Few, one suspects, had either the language skills or the inclination to take up this opportunity. Rather than reflecting the success of denazification, the retreat from nonfraternization actually demonstrated how unworkable the hard-line policy had proven in practice.A photographer used the German word for bath or spa—bad—to playful advantage in documenting the ban on fraternization. (National Archives)Reporters greeted the end of the ban as tantamount to an order from Ike to copulate; at any rate, they announced that GIs had gleefully taken his “fraternization order” that way. Some officers agreed, infuriated that enlisted men were now quite openly consorting with German women in public. Indeed, according to Brigadier General Jack Whitelaw, it was impossible to go outdoors in Berlin without tripping over fraternizing couples: “Yesterday being Sunday, I took the afternoon off and went for a walk around the lake,” he wrote to his wife on September 17, 1945. “The thing called fraternization is still going on there full blast; in fact, it’s increasing and I’ve about decided that I must find some other form of exercise.”Whitelaw did not give up his perambulations around Berlin’s Grunewald, but his attitude toward German civilians soon softened. By winter 1945, he and many other officers were more alarmed by the possibility of Germans starving or freezing to death than by no-longer illicit liaisons. Over time, American recollections of the occupation would also soften as Germans transformed from bitter foes to firm Cold War allies. Hollywood, meanwhile, turned postwar Germany into safe territory for squeaky-clean teens. In 1960, America’s best-known soldier serving overseas, Elvis Presley, rued the unavailability of German girlfriends for lonesome American boys in GI Blues. Without any need for a formal ban on fraternization, chaste fräuleins apparently kept GIs at arm’s length, issuing their own stern injunctions against inappropriate trespass. “They all wear signs saying ‘Keepen Sie Off The Grass,’” Presley crooned regretfully in the title number. The wholesome Germany of GI Blues was a far cry from the days just after the war when American journalists decried the “unbearable availability” of German fräuleins, lamenting how swiftly VD had followed V-E. ✯

There were many such efforts in a militaty sense (including without limitation those mentioned here). My "favorites" are:Siege of Diu (1538, Portuguese)The Siege of Diu occurred when an army of the Sultanate of Gujarat under Khadjar Safar, aided by forces of the Ottoman Empire, attempted to capture the city of Diu in 1538, then held by the Portuguese. The Portuguese successfully resisted the four months long siege. It is part of The Ottoman-Portuguese War.[…]The Pasha however, intended on departing on November 5, but was unable due to unfavourable weather. That night, two small galleys reached Diu with reinforcements and supplies, firing their guns and signal rockets. The following morning, a fleet of 24 small galleys was sighted and believing it to be the vanguard of the governor's rescue fleet, the Pasha hurriedly departed, leaving 1,200 dead and 500 wounded behind. Khadjar Safar then set fire to his encampment and abandoned the island with his forces shortly after. In reality, it was just a forward fleet under the command of António da Silva Meneses and Dom Luís de Ataíde, dispatched from Goa with reinforcements, supplies, and news that the governor would depart soon to their aid. Although they took no part in the fighting, the small force was triumphantly received within the ruined fortress by its last survivors. The Portuguese were by then critically low on gunpowder and supplies and with less than 40 valid men; in the final stages of the siege, the Portuguese record that even the women assisted in its defence. Catarina Lopes and Isabel Madeira are examples of two female captains who actively participated during the siege, they led a squad of female soldiers. [26]Battle of Camarón (1863, French Foreign Legion)The Battle of Camarón (French: Bataille de Camerone) which occurred over ten hours[1]:21on 30 April 1863 between the French Foreign Legion and the Mexican army, is regarded as a defining moment in the Foreign Legion's history. A small infantry patrol, led by Captain Jean Danjou and Lieutenants Clément Maudet and Jean Vilain, numbering just 65 men[1]:5was attacked and besieged by a force that may have eventually reached 3,000 Mexican infantry and cavalry, and was forced to make a defensive stand at the nearby Hacienda Camarón, in Camarón de Tejeda, Veracruz, Mexico. The conduct of the Legion, who refused to surrender, led to a certain mystique, and the battle of Camarón became synonymous with bravery and a fight-to-the-death attitude. [2]Attack of the Dead Men (1915, Russians)The Germans waited until 4 a.m. on 6 August for favorable wind conditions, when the attack opened with regular artillery bombardment combined with chlorine gas. "The gas caused the grass to turn black and leaves to turn yellow, and the dead birds, frogs and other animals and insects were lying everywhere. Terrain looked like Hell."[1]The Russians either had no gas masks, or had poorly made ones, and most soldiers used their undershirts as masks, with many soaking them in water or urine.[2]Sub-Lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky, the highest ranking Russian soldier to survive the initial attack, rallied the other surviving soldiers, and they elected to charge the advancing German lines.[2]Over twelve battalions of the 11th Landwehr Division, making up more than 7000 men, advanced after the bombardment expecting little resistance. They were met at the first defense line by a counter-charge made up of the surviving soldiers of the 13th Company of the 226th Infantry Regiment. The Germans became panicked by the appearance of the Russians, who were coughing up blood and bits of their own lungs, as the hydrochloric acid formed by the mix of the chlorine gas and the moisture in their lungs had begun to dissolve their flesh. The Germans retreated, running so fast they got caught up in their own c-wire traps.[2]The five remaining Russian guns subsequently opened fire on the fleeing Germans.[3][4][5][6][7]Kotlinsky died later that evening.Defense of Brest Fortress (1941, Soviets)Although the Soviet soldiers in the opening hours of the battle were stunned by the surprise attack, outnumbered, short of supplies and cut off from the outside world, many of them held out much longer than the Germans expected. The Germans used artillery, rocket mortars 15 cm Nebelwerfer 41 and flame throwers. The civilians inside the fortress tended the wounded, reloaded the machine-gun drums and belts and took up rifles to help defend the fortress. Children brought ammunition and food supplies from half-destroyed supply depots, scavenged weapons and watched enemy movements.[15]Schlieper wrote in his detailed report that,...the 81st Combat Engineer Battalion was given the task of blowing up a building on the Central Island ... in order to put an end to the Russian [sic - Soviet] flanking fire on the North Island. Explosives were lowered from the roof of the building towards the windows, then the fuses were lit. When they exploded, we could hear the Soviet soldiers screaming and groaning, but they continued to fight.[15]Chaplain Rudolf Gschöpf wrote,We only gradually managed to take one defensive position after another as a result of stubborn fighting. The garrison of the so-called "Officers' House" on the Central Island only ceased to exist with the building itself ... The resistance continued until the walls of the building were destroyed and razed to the ground by more powerful explosions.[15][16]On 24 June, with Germans having taken most parts of the fortress, some Soviet troops were able to link up and coordinate their actions under the command of Captain Ivan Zubachyov;[17]his second in command was Regimental Commissar Yefim Fomin.[1]On 26 June small Soviet forces tried to break out from the siege but failed and suffered many casualties; that day Zubachyov and Fomin were captured.[18]Zubachyov was sent to a POW camp in Hammelburg where he died; Yefim Fomin was executed on spot under the Commissar Order and as a Jew.[19]German soldiers in the Citadel in June 1941As the East Fort could not be taken by infantry, the Luftwaffe bombed it twice on June 29 and forced its approximately 360 defenders to surrender.[20]Gschöpf wroteLate on the 30th of June the division received the order to abandon Brest. Early on the 1st of July we paid tribute to the perished in the Division cemetery that was laid out on the eve… The main units of the Division abandoned Brest on the 2nd of July 1941.[16]The total German losses in the battle for the Brest fortress were about 429 killed and about 668 wounded.[4]Soviet losses numbered about 6,800 POWs and about 2,000 dead.[6]The magnitude of these losses can be weighed by the fact that total German losses on the Eastern Front up to 30 June 1941 amounted to 8,886 killed; the fighting at Brest accounted for over 5 per cent of all German fatalities.[21]After eight days of battle, the Germans had captured the fortress but the strategic objectives - control over the Panzerrollbahn I, the road to Moscow, the important railway line and the bridges over the Bug river - were accomplished the very first day of the war. Because of the high German losses the German High Command demanded General Fritz Schlieper to present a detailed report regarding combat at Brest 22–29 June 1941. It was made on July 8, 1941.[22]A copy was captured by the Red Army near the town of Livny, Russia in winter 1941–1942.[23]Some individual soldiers and perhaps small groups of Red Army soldiers kept hiding in the fortress after the fall of the Eastern Fort. After the war graffiti were found on some fortress walls. They became iconic symbols of the defense. Two of them saidWe'll die but we'll not leave the fortressandI'm dying but I won't surrender. Farewell, Motherland. 20.VII.41.Defense of the Adzhimushkay quarry (1942, Soviets)The catacombs were ill-suited for defense, as there were no supplies prepared and all wells were located outside. Any supply of water had to be taken by force since a sortie was needed to reach a well. The Soviet group attempted several counterattacks, including one resulting in the defeat of the Wehrmacht garrison in Adzhimushkay on the night of 8 and 9 July 1942. Colonel Yagunov was killed in that assault.Most Soviet guerrillas died, as the groups ran out of ammunition, food and water. The group resorted to extreme techniques of survival that included preparing meat of the dead livestock earlier killed in the mine entrances and gathering water condensed on the mine ceilings. The defenders also attempted to dig their own wells in the catacombs, as deep as 14 m, in order to reach the phreatic water layer.The German forces surrounded the quarries with barbed wire fencing, blocked the entrances and exits and bombed and shelled them. General Hermann Ochsner [de], chief of the chemical forces, proposed that a non-lethal irritant gas be used to smoke the partisans out of such hiding places. Permission to carry out the attack was denied,[1]however survivors' testimonies claimed otherwise.[2][3][4]Adzhimushkay Defense Memorial in 2012. Plaque in the foreground states that Ivan Parakhin and other three Soviet fighters were captured alive after the Soviet defeat and later executed by Nazis in a Simferopol prison.On October 30, 1942, German forces entered the catacombs and captured the remaining defenders. The estimates of the number of guerrilla fighters surviving the 170-day siege and final clash, and their subsequent treatment by Nazis, varied from 48 to 300 out of the initial 13,000 strength of the Soviet group.13th Guards Rifle Division at Stalingrad (1942, Soviets)The Railroad Station[edit]Soviet infantry in StalingradThe following morning one of Rodimtsev's junior officers, Lieutenant Anton Kuzmich Dragan was personally ordered by Chuikov to hold a key railroad station in downtown Stalingrad against an impending German assault. Dragan proceeded to gather a platoon of less than fifty men and moved them over to the railroad station. Here, the small but determined force prepared itself for the German attack.Soon after digging in, a substantial force of German infantrymen arrived to seize control of the station. The Russians proceeded to repeatedly frustrate the Germans in an epic room-by-room struggle for control of the depot for nearly three weeks. Breaking through walls, crawling over rafters, and burrowing under the floorboards, the Russians would yield but a portion of the structure to the Germans, only to emerge elsewhere and start the struggle all over again.Exchanging gunfire down hallways, hurling grenades back and forth between rooms, Dragan's men inflicted significant casualties on the Germans. In spite of this heroic resistance, Dragan's platoon was eventually reduced to a handful of men. After running out of ammunition, and with their rations gone, one of the Soviet Guardsmen took out his bayonet and carved on a wall,Rodimtsev's Guardsmen fought and died for their country here.Under cover of darkness, Dragan and the five remaining soldiers under his command eventually slipped out of the building, made their way through the German lines, and were reunited with the remainder of the division.The Mamaev Kurgan[edit]The battle at the Mamaev Kurgan began approximately three weeks after the brutal fighting between the German and Russian infantrymen had begun in the outskirts of Stalingrad, on 15 September. During this portion of the battle, the division fought several Wehrmacht divisions for control of the park's central hilltop summit, which changed hands multiple times. Meanwhile, other divisional units fought in different sectors of Stalingrad. The division was in the midst of the combat throughout the city in the remains of the bombed-out buildings and factories, on the slopes of the Mamaev Kurgan hills, in the Red October Tractor Plant and in the key strategic building known as "Pavlov's House" (Yakov Pavlov was the commanding NCO of the platoon which defended the building). Most accounts state that of the 10,000 men of the division that crossed the Volga into the Battle of Stalingrad, only between 280 and 320 of them survived the struggle. This profligacy with life seems incredible to Western eyes, but was unremarkable during the conflict on the Eastern front.Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943, Jewish civilians)The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who ordered the burning of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably fewer than 150,[citation needed]with Stroop reporting 110 casualties [16 killed + 1 dead/93 wounded].[5]It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said their inspiration to fight was "to pick the time and place of our deaths". According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people".[6]Stronghold Ternopol, March-April 1944 (Germans)Back in Ternopol, the tragedy was playing out predictably. With Soviet artillery emplaced on the high ground around the city and firing over open sights, shells rained down and German losses mounted. By April 1, just over half of the 4,600 defenders had become casualties. The German pocket was shrinking steadily under the pressure of concentric attacks by five Soviet divisions, and General Kittel was dimissed. The new commandant—the third, if you’re keeping score—was General Egon von Neindorff. He came, looked around, and made the same request as his two predecessors: evacuate the town. He also got the same response: “The Führer’s decision: Ternopol is to be held” (“Führerentscheid: Tarnopol ist zu halten.”)By now Soviet bombardment was uninterrupted—including mortars, guns of all calibers, and air attacks. The center of Ternopol was an inferno, with the remaining 1,500 German troops compressed into a zone fewer than 1,000 yards across, every inch of which was being combed by Soviet fire. A second and final German relief attempt on April 12, once again by Kampfgruppe Friebe, faltered in the midst of a sudden heavy rainstorm that quickly turned the roads into mud. Friebe got within a few kilometers of the city but no closer, and he had no choice but to surrender Ternopol's defenders to their fate.Losses were total, or about as close as it is possible to get in land warfare. Of the original 4,600 men in the German garrison, 4,545 were listed as casualties, a rate of 99 percent. As Friebe's Panzers churned slowly forward, they came across small groups of shell-shocked, stumbling victims, nearly unrecognizable as German soldiers. Ten men here, another five there, seven more up the road: the 55 men fortunate enough to have broken out of the inferno before Soviet tanks rolled in. They were the lucky one percent.Warsaw Uprising (1944, Polish insurgents)The Warsaw Uprising (Polish: Powstanie Warszawskie; German: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa), to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance.[13]While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.[14][…]Although the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled over 2,000 to 17,000 soldiers killed and missing.[11]During the urban combat, approximately 25% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945 when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.Battle of Peleliu (1944, Japanese)The reduction of the Japanese pocket around Umurbrogol mountain has been called the most difficult fight that the U.S. military encountered in the entire war.[21]The 1st Marine Division was severely mauled and it remained out of action until the invasion of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. In total, the 1st Marine Division suffered over 6,500 casualties during their month on Peleliu, over one third of their entire division. The 81st Infantry Division also suffered heavy losses with 3,300 casualties during their tenure on the island.Postwar statisticians calculated that it took U.S. forces over 1500 rounds of ammunition to kill each Japanese defender and that, during the course of the battle, the Americans expended 13.32 million rounds of .30-calibre, 1.52 million rounds of .45-calibre, 693,657 rounds of .50-calibre bullets, 118,262 hand grenades, and approximately 150,000 mortar rounds. [11]6th Parachute Division (Germany) during Operation Veritable (1945, German)After the war, Eisenhower commented this "was some of the fiercest fighting of the whole war" and "a bitter slugging match in which the enemy had to be forced back yard by yard". Montgomery wrote "the enemy parachute troops fought with a fanaticism un-excelled at any time in the war" and "the volume of fire from enemy weapons was the heaviest which had so far been met by British troops in the campaign."[17]Heiligenbeil Pocket (1945, German)The Soviets finally took Braunsberg on 20 March. Heiligenbeil, covering the small port of Rosenberg, was attacked with phosphorus bombs on 22 March and successfully stormed on 25 March, the town suffering almost complete destruction. Rosenberg itself was taken on 26 March, with the remnants of the Fourth Army falling back on the Kahlholzer Haken peninsula, where the perimeter was defended by troops from the Panzerkorps "Großdeutschland" and the 28th Jäger Division. The last evacuations took place on the morning of 29 March from Kahlholz and Balga, where a remnant of the 562nd Volksgrenadier Division was destroyed forming a rearguard (its commander, Helmuth Hufenbach, receiving a posthumous promotion to Major-General).[13][14]Soviet sources claimed 93,000 enemy dead and 46,448 taken prisoner during the operation; German sources claim that many troops in the Kessel were successfully evacuated to the Frische Nehrung. Given the chaos prevailing at this stage of the war, it is unlikely that accurate figures will ever be determined, many soldiers having simply disappeared.[15]Further elements of the Fourth Army continued to resist around Pillau, and latterly on the Frische Nehrung, until May.Battle of Iwo Jima (1945, Japanese)Japanese combat deaths numbered three times the number of American deaths although, uniquely among Pacific War Marine battles, American total casualties (dead and wounded) exceeded those of the Japanese.[14]Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner, some of whom were captured because they had been knocked unconscious or otherwise disabled.[2]The majority of the remainder were killed in action, although it has been estimated that as many as 3,000 continued to resist within the various cave systems for many days afterwards, eventually succumbing to their injuries or surrendering weeks later.[2][15]Despite the bloody fighting and severe casualties on both sides, the American victory was assured from the start. Overwhelming American superiority in numbers and arms as well as complete air supremacy—coupled with the impossibility of Japanese retreat or reinforcement, along with sparse food and supplies—permitted no plausible circumstance in which the Americans could have lost the battle.[16]So much for military or quasi-military last ditch efforts.Now for civilian last-ditch efforts.Every person caught up in a major disaster, be it a natural disaster or a man-made disaster, if fighting a losing battle for their survival and/or the survival of others, is making a last-ditch effort, and often a heroic one.Every person dying from a disease that kills more slowly, like tuberculosis mostly in the past or cancer mostly nowadays, when racing against time to put their affairs in order (not for their sake but for that of those who will survive them) or to accomplish a task they want to accomplish before dying, is making a last-ditch effort, and often a heroic one. Case in point, Cornelius Ryan:He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1970, and struggled to finish A Bridge Too Far during his illness. He died in Manhattan,[1]while on tour promoting the book, two months after its publication in 1974. He is buried in the Ridgebury Cemetery in northern Ridgefield, Connecticut.Four years after his death, his widow Kathryn Morgan Ryan published a memoir about his last years, entitled A Private Battle (1978). She based it on notes that he had secretly left behind for that purpose.Every person struggling to get their lives back from a mental health disorder or another form or source of desperation, with limited or no success, is making a last-ditch effort, and often a heroic one. The outcome of losing such struggle can be suicide (which may itself be viewed as a last-ditch effort to control a least one thing, which is whether or not to continue an unbearable existence, like in the case of Ramón Sampedro).You don’t have to go to wars and battles to find heroic last-ditch efforts. If you look around a bit, you may find that some are taking place right next to you.