My Dad told a few interesting stories. He was a 1st Class gunner's mate aboard LST 520, one of the hundreds of transport ships that land on the shore and carry tanks, trucks, and other heavy equipment.
Now gunner's mate was a more hazardous occupation than you might think. For during a battle, it was necessary to keep the guns operating without fail.
And occasionally the guns would jam and because the barrels were hot you could have a "cook off" situation where the round explodes and destroys the gun and kills everybody near it.
So it was the gunner's mates' job to clear the gun and throw the round overboard before it blew up.
Well one time, he told us kids, he got the round unjammed and then threw it over the side and it exploded before it hit the water... so poconopundit was almost never born :- )
Now fortunately, World War II had its light moments, too. And my Dad was what you'd call an "operator". He had a money making business on the side, which I might add, was deeply appreciated by the crew and even officers (though they might not admit it because it was black market stuff.)
So somehow he got himself assigned to be one of the ship's two postmasters. And that was really useful because it meant he could go ashore in London (waiting for D-Day) even as everyone else was restricted to their ships.
Now sometimes he and the other postmaster would go out and get drunk. But the real mission was get the mail and also go shopping for things like booze, cigarettes -- and surprisingly, bananas were very popular.
Now all this contraband was delivered clandestinely, wrapped in big tarpolin and carefully hoisted aboard ship and sold to the crew.
But one time the crew didn't like the idea of my Dad making money off them, so they decided to boycott his banana supply.
And as you can imagine, bananas being perishable, he was worried that he might lose a lot of money.
But what he did was have a talk with the chief cook in the galley. And sure enough, the next day for breakfast, there was only one meal on the menu. It was corn flakes with cold milk. And alongside the cold milk sat a huge pile of bananas selling at 10 cents a piece.
Well, the bananas completely sold out: the officers even arrived from the wardroom to buy some. So my Dad made a nice profit on that boycott.
So maybe this story is why I trusted that Art of the Deal guy early on :- )