Posted on 06/09/2010 5:20:23 PM PDT by naturalman1975
He stood just 5ft 3in tall in his Army-issue boots and his legs were already weary from battle.
But Corporal Bob Roberts knew precisely what to do when he and his comrades captured a 7ft 6in German. Walk Tall.
The David and Goliath encounter between the diminutive Allied soldier and the biggest man in the German army provided a brief moment of comedy during one of the fiercest assaults of the Second World War.
By the time Bob had finished frisking the lance corporal for hidden weapons, even the other prisoners were sniggering - as were Bob's mates and the German giant himself.
Yesterday the remarkable story of Little and Large emerged for the first time, more than 65 years after they met.
Bob, now an 87-year-old great grandfather, never saw the German again but always remembered the light-hearted image of him towering nearly a yard above him on the sloping battlefield.
'Actually he was 7ft six and a half,' Bob told me yesterday. 'I think he saw the funny side of it. He was obviously quite used to the attention - they told us he was the tallest man in the German army. I got the impression it was nothing new to him.
'Up until that moment it was pretty deadly serious. We had just captured five pillboxes that were shelling Dover from where we were in Calais and we'd taken about 250 prisoners. But this seemed to break the tension.'
Minutes earlier, he had been forced to shoot a German officer dead after he pretended to surrender and pulled out a pistol. All around him, scores more prisoners were still only just laying down their arms.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Wow...love the pic...
C**kpunch.
Good shot!
real nice story nat. and coming up on their 65 year wedding anny. also, wow!
it would have been hard to not crack up seeing that, even amongst all the horror around them.
No pooftahs!
not even close!
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