History OneManArmy / RealLife

* On one side: forty armed thieves, robbing, pillaging, and raping on a Nepalese train. On the other side: one retired [[UsefulNotes/NepaliWithNastyKnives Gurkha with a kukri]]. [[http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha.html They shoulda brought more thieves.]]
* Also from [[strike:Gurkha]] Badass Of The Week: [[http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pun.html Dipprasad Pun]]. He was credited with single-handedly fighting off between 15 and 30 Taliban insurgents, killing three, wounding several others, and causing the rest to flee. During the engagement, he reportedly spent all his ammunition (more than 400 rounds), used 17 hand grenades and a Claymore mine before battering the last fighter with the tripod of his machine gun.

* Now for a one ''plane'' army, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666 Old 666]], a [=B-17E=] Bomber. For short, we'll only give you its most infamous mission, a mapping mission of Bougain Island. With 22 minutes still on the clock and no fighter escort, Old 666 got ambushed by at the very least 17 Japanese fighters (15 [=A6M=] Zeroes and 2 [=Ki-46=] Dinahs). Old 666 then proceeded to ''dogfight them for said 22 minutes''. Let say this again, a ''heavy bomber'' in a dogfight with 17 Japanese fighters. Until they ran out of fuel and/or ammo, having taken down many of them in the ensuing dogfight. Bombers aren't even meant to dogfight (though American ones were usually bristling with flexibly-mounted Browning .50s to fire everywhere at once) and this one takes 17 fighters on. Ironically, the bomber didn't really kill that many of the fighters (One Dinah and at least 3 of the Zeros), but, what makes her famous is that the ''ENTIRE'' crew got at least the Distinguished Flying Cross, while the Pilot (Jay Zeemer), and the Bombardier (Joe Sarnoski) were both awarded the Medal of Honor [[note]] Joe Sarnoski's was posthumous[[/note]]. The bomber itself was also one-plane-air-force for the other missions it flew. It bristled with seven extra .50cals compared to a standard B-17E at the time. While adding extra guns was common practice, one of those guns was wired to the pilots' control yoke... so Jay Zeemer had a gun to shoot with. These were all added because [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor the crew wanted to take on the missions no one else would fly.]] These included a Skip bombing mission on a carrier [[note]] B-17s normally drop their bombs from an altitude of 10,000ft or higher [[/note]], a low-altitude raid on Rabaul Island, and a ''diving'' attack on Japanese search-lights during a night raid… all these were things that the B-17s smaller cousins like the B-25 Mitchel were used for, and yet, this crew did them anyway.

* Now for a one ''plane'' army, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666 Old 666]], a [=B-17E=] Bomber. For short, we'll only give you its most infamous mission, a mapping mission of Bougain Island. With 22 minutes still on the clock and no fighter escort, Old 666 got ambushed by at the very least 17 Japanese fighters (15 [=A6M=] Zeroes and 2 [=Ki-46=] Dinahs). Old 666 then proceeded to ''dogfight them for said 22 minutes''. Let me say this again, a ''heavy bomber'' in a dogfight with 17 Japanese fighters. Until they ran out of fuel and/or ammo, having taken down many of them in the ensuing dogfight. Bombers aren't even meant to dogfight (though American ones were usually bristling with flexibly-mounted Browning .50s to fire everywhere at once) and this one takes 17 fighters on. Ironically, the bomber didn't really kill that many of the fighters (One Dinah and at least 3 of the Zeros), but, what makes her famous is that the ''ENTIRE'' crew got at least the Distinguished Flying Cross, while the Pilot (Jay Zeemer), and the Bombardier (Joe Sarnoski) were both awarded the Medal of Honor [[note]] Joe Sarnoski's was posthumous[[/note]]. The bomber itself was also one-plane-air-force for the other missions it flew. It bristled with seven extra .50cals compared to a standard B-17E at the time. While adding extra guns was common practice, one of those guns was wired to the pilots' control yoke... so Jay Zeemer had a gun to shoot with. These were all added because [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor the crew wanted to take on the missions no one else would fly.]] These included a Skip bombing mission on a carrier [[note]] B-17s normally drop their bombs from an altitude of 10,000ft or higher [[/note]], a low-altitude raid on Rabaul Island, and a ''diving'' attack on Japanese search-lights during a night raid… all these were things that the B-17s smaller cousins like the B-25 Mitchel were used for, and yet, this crew did them anyway.

[[folder:India]]

* UsefulNotes/JulianRomero, a soldier and mercenary with a career in England, Italy and the Netherlands, was believed to be a sorcerer for his war feats and ability to survive seemingly everything. He was often leading his soldiers from the front and breaking through with ease despite his increasingly scarred and crippled status.

* Larus the Cantabrian, an Hispanic mercenary in the service of Carthage during the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic War]] according to the Literature/{{Punica}} poem, might be an example OlderThanSteam. According to the chronicle, when the Romans caught the Carthaginian camp off guard and decimated their army, Larus lost his entire mercenary unit, yet he stood where he was and slew Romans left and right with his double-bladed axe until they managed to take him down. Historians are unsure whether Larus was a real life person or a poetic embellishment of the events, but it's notable that the poem's narrator has a sort of OutOfCharacterMoment and states openly that Larus was the only relevant Punic in the battle rather than making up more characters of the like.
* 15th century soldier UsefulNotes/DiegoGarciaDeParedes was sought out by UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs, UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI and the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic House of Habsburg]] due to his utterly insane battle exploits, in which is impossible to tell apart legend from reality. His long career features a long list of incidents where he fought and bested literal waves of enemies by himself, chief of them an instance during the campaign of the Garigliano in which he placed himself in a bridge, challenged the French to come at him, and started mowing them down by dozens with his zweinhander until more Spanish soldiers came and the thing become a literal battle. In another, the Turks caught him with a hook during the siege of Cephalonia and hoisted him up to the walls to capture him, only for him to fight back there and defend a portion of the wall for three days before being captured - and then, only for him to free himself for the dungeons and keep wreaking havoc until the Spanish took the whole fortress. He also reportedly fought a hundred of duels and was never defeated.
* Cristóbal de Olea, UsefulNotes/HernanCortez's BattleButler, saved his master from being captured and carried away by Aztecs, jumping on them and cutting down multiple opponents until Cortés' Tlaxcaltec allies arrived to rescue them. Olea was eventually killed in the melee, which was deeply felt by the Spanish camp, as he was a very friendly and popular guy aside from an imposing fighter.
* María de Estrada was the main ActionGirl out of several that served under Cortés. She became famous for her feats in battle, which reportedly downright scared people in their own side.

* Tiburcio de Redín was a 17th century soldier and marine nicknamed the "Spanish Jupiter" by self-evident reasons. Reputed to be a barely restrained BloodKnight, yet also surprisingly cunning, he had a long history of wiping the floor with opponents in bar brawls and could reportedly turn the tide of naval engagements only by coming himself to the fight. At the end of his life, he became a Capuchin monk, yet in one occasion he had to revive his talents to waste an entire gang of thugs that were trying to rape a woman.

* While Audie Murphy is widely recognized as the best American soldier of the second world war, before his most famous achievements took place, it seemed that honor would go to Charles "Commando" Kelly, who was the first America GI to earn the medal of honor in the European theater. On September 13th 1943, during an assault on the German-held town of Altavilla, Italy, the 22-year old private Kelly crawled over 2 miles through German mortal and machine gun fire to provide a recon report on the enemy positions. Once that was done. he led a three-man team to assault a German machinegun post, killing the gun crew and then fighting off a German counterattack by about 70 troops. According to reports from the other members of his team, Kelly personally killed approximately 40 of them. Then he spent the rest of the day ferrying ammunition to the front for the the army as they captured the town. Amazingly, this incredible day was NOT was what Kelly received the Medal of Honor for. That was occur the following day during a massive German counterattack, which was focused primarily on a building Kelly had been assigned to guard. Kelly spent all day defending it with a massive array of different weapons, including including a tommy gun, a bazooka, an '03 Springfield rifle from World War I, a carbine, and an M-1 Garand. At one point, he manned a 37mm antitank gun in the courtyard and destroyed a sniper's perch in a church steeple. Later when the Germans were massive below for an assault, he fought it off with a crate of 60mm mortal shells by removing their safety devices, turning them into live bombs that would go off with enough pressure. Then he tossed them out the window directly into the mass of Germans below, causing massive casualties and breaking up the attack. Kelly fought on until late in the night to allow his fellow troops to evacuate before joining them. He was the last one to leave.

* The final charge of King UsefulNotes/RichardIII at the Battle of Bosworth certainly qualifies. Backed up only by a few mounted knights from his personal household, Richard charged straight into the highly-defended lines of Henry Tudor's personal guard, killing Tudor's standard-bearer with his lance and then using the ''broken end'' to unhorse the famed giant (over 6'2") and renowned jousting champion John Cheney before proceeding to cut a swath through the men and coming ''within a sword's-length'' of ''Tudor himself'' before reinforcements arrived in the form of Lord Stanley's ''entire army'' (usually believed to have numbered around 6,000 men). Even that, though, couldn't take Richard down (even his being unhorsed is usually believed to have had more to do with the fact that the area was marshy than any action on the part of Stanley's men), with him proceeding to kick the collective asses of the entire army and taking ''at least'' six or seven wounds to the head (plus an unknown number of soft-tissue or blunt-trauma injuries which cannot be discerned from the skeleton) while (''very'' loudly) proclaiming his enemies' blatant treason at their faces apparently for no other reason than that he felt like it. In between this and stabbing people in the faces, he also was calling for someone to fetch him a horse so that he could charge right back into the rather large ''army'' defending Henry Tudor in order to ''[[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething personally]]'' [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething take down the "Welsh bastard" who dared to challenge his right to rule]], only being taken out by a [[BladeOnAStick halberd]] shaving off ''[[NoOneCouldSurviveThat the back of]]'' ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill his skull]]''. This incident was apparently impressive enough that despite the Tudors doing pretty much everything they could to discredit Richard in order to legitimize their own reigns, the tale of "King Richard's badass death" survives in every single record from that time period. Did we mention that all of the above was accomplished by someone who was more-or-less universally known as being [[PintsizedPowerhouse rather small and frail]] (even for that time period) and who had [[HandicappedBadass scoliosis with a curve of up to]] ''[[HandicappedBadass eighty degrees]]'' that, had he lived in modern times, would have qualified him for the [[UsefulNotes/ParalympicGames Paralympics]]?

* Zhao Yun is probably unknown to most of the Western World, apart from [[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors Dynasty Warriors]]. In China, though (and most of Asia, for that matter), 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 one Zhao Yun.

* While Audie Murphy is widely recognized as the best American soldier of WW2, before his most famous achievements took place, it seemed that honor would go to Charles "Commando" Kelly, who was the first America GI to earn the medal of honor in the European theater. On September 13th 1943, during an assault on the German-held town of Altavilla, Italy, the 22-year old private Kelly crawled over 2 miles through German mortal and machine gun fire to provide a recon report on the enemy positions. Once that was done. he led a three-man team to assault a German machinegun post, killing the gun crew and then fighting off a German counterattack by about 70 troops. According to reports from the other members of his team, Kelly personally killed approximately 40 of them. Then he spent the rest of the day ferrying ammunition to the front for the the army as they captured the town. Amazingly, this incredible day was NOT was what Kelly received the Medal of Honor for. That was occur the following day during a massive German counterattack, which was focused primarily on a building Kelly had been assigned to guard. Kelly spent all day defending it with a massive array of different weapons, including including a tommy gun, a bazooka, an '03 Springfield rifle from World War I, a carbine, and an M-1 Garand. At one point, he manned a 37mm antitank gun in the courtyard and destroyed a sniper's perch in a church steeple. Later when the Germans were massive below for an assault, he fought it off with a crate of 60mm mortal shells by removing their safety devices, turning them into live bombs that would go off with enough pressure. Then he tossed them out the window directly into the mass of Germans below, causing massive casualties and breaking up the attack. Kelly fought on until late in the night to allow his fellow troops to evacuate before joining them. He was the last one to leave.

* 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 (and, unintentionally) his own commanders) into believing that he alone was a brigade-sized force of tanks and was credited with 40 tank kills over the course of a full day's fighting. His HeroicBSOD ("I can't anymore") turned out to be a PostVictoryCollapse.

* Not a one-man army but a one-tank army, the Whippet tank [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Mark_A_Whippet#Combat_history 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.

[[folder:Gurkhas]]

* [[https://web.archive.org/web/20080313184408/http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/lookupstoryref/200456162723 Brian Chontosh's]] exploits kind of sound like Call of Duty infiltrated reality, complete with picking up enemy weapons and discarding them when they run dry. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, following an ambush on his convoy, he launched a one-man assault of some Iraqi trenches with just his [=M16=] rifle. He twice picked up discarded enemy rifles and continued his ferocious attack after exhausting his own ammunition. When a Marine following him found an enemy rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Chontosh used it to destroy yet another group of enemy soldiers. When his attack ended, he had cleared over 200 meters of the enemy trench, killing more than 20 enemy soldiers and wounding several others.
* Los Angeles Watch merchant Lance Thomas managed to survive no less than 4 different gunfights with armed robbers in his store from 1989 to 1992, killing 5 and getting another 4 arrested. In the second incident, Thomas was shot 4 times by a .25 caliber pistol, three in the shoulder and one in the neck, but still managed to kill 2 members of the 5-man robbery team opposing him and force the other three to flee, where they were later arrested. In the third incident, Thomas was shot in the neck at point-blank range with a 9mm Glock but still managed to grab a gun and kill the attacker. In both cases, Thomas recovered and returned to man his store after less than a month in the hospital.

* If you talked to any gangster in Chicago or New York during the 1920s, they'd tell you that the [[CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns Thompson M1921/[=M1928A1=]]] was expensive and heavy, but could instantly turn one man into a man with the firepower of an entire army. It should be noted that most gangsters carried far cheaper handguns or a SawedOffShotgun, and only professional hitmen, nicknamed "torpedoes", wielded the feared Tommy gun.

* During the 100 day Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, UsefulNotes/SimoHayha 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.

* Sergeant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_York Alvin York]] singlehandedly wiped out a German machine gun nest in WW I, making the leader of that nest and his men (133 people) surrender to him after killing over 25 soldiers with his rifle and pistol.
** This really doesn't do him justice. He took fire from 32 Maxim machine guns and took out twenty of them with fire from his M1917 Enfield rifle before they gave up.

** It was said that when scout Luke Short was ambushed by a band of fifteen Indians, he drew his pistols and fired back, killing three of them in quick succession. Some of the Indians gave chase on horseback, and Short killed two of them before finally reaching safety.

** And they surrendered because he was an ''American''. To iterate, Germans at the time often thought that the recently arrived American troops were sissies compared to the seasoned British. So their thought process was basically, if an American who'd probably never seen action against them before could pull ''that'' off, [[FridgeHorror imagine what people who'd been fighting from the start of the war could do]].

** And they surrendered because he was an ''American''. To quote, Germans at the times often thought that the recently arrived American troops were sissies compared to the seasoned British. So their thought process basically went: "If the Americans are like this, ''then how about the British?'' Fuck it, I'm out of here!"

** Jonathan R. Davis was a miner who was striking a claim in California in 1854 when 15 bandits suddenly ambushed him, killing his two companions almost immediately. Davis killed 7 of the robbers with a pair of revolvers, and 4 more with a Bowie knife, while the remaining bandits fled This was perhaps the largest case of "mass justified homicide" by one man in a single incident in U. S. history.

* One-ship-navy. In 1591, the English ship [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_ship_Revenge_(1577) HMS Revenge]] was part of a fleet of 6 ships stationed in the Azores. When they sighted 53 Spanish ships approaching, the other 5 vessels fled, but the Revenge stayed behind because half the crew was sick with fever and [[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Grenville Captain Sir Richard Grenville]] wouldn't leave them for the Spanish Inquisition. People are still arguing about whether or not the Revenge couldn't escape in time or whether Captain Grenville was just crazy enough to order the ship to turn back and attack, but either way, the Revenge ended up fighting all 53 Spanish ships on her own. The Revenge was 400 tonnes; the Spanish flagship San Felipe alone was three times her size, making this a good example of a [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PintsizedPowerhouse pint-sized powerhouse]]. The Revenge still managed to sink or disable sixteen enemy ships in a battle that lasted for a full day and a night, before eventually surrendering when she ran out of ammo. Of her 190 crew, only 16 survivors made it home.