“Who goes there?” “Be challenged and recognized?” Such, or similar fateful words have been used through history to keep an enemy from slipping behind friendly lines. The more appropriate military jargon is “sign/countersign.” The concept is relatively simple. A guard or sentry would issue a secret challenge word and the respondent seeking entry or passage would respond with the secret response. For instance, during the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II (1944) the challenge/sign for the Allied armies was “flash”, the response was “thunder”, and then as an added measure of security the countersign (to challenge the person giving the first code word) “welcome.”

This was serious stuff. In 1948, U.S. Army veteran and West Point graduate David Daniel “Mickey” Marcus was advising Israeli forces during the fight for independence. One evening, Marcus was challenged by a guard. When the sentry did not hear an appropriate response, he fired. Marcus didn’t speak Hebrew, so he gave a response in English. The sentry didn’t understand. The shot was fatal. The incident is featured in a film on Marcus’s role in the war, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966).

In the chaos of battle, without time to formally issue sign and countersign, soldiers could get very inventive-asking questions an enemy wouldn’t know or words that were too difficult to pronounce by foreign language speakers.

This ranks as the most ridiculous exchange we ever found.

Who is David Niven? David Niven for decades was one of the most recognizable and bankable actors in both the British film industry and Hollywood. Like many male British actors of his generation, Niven served in the military. Niven left the military to pursue a career in films. When World War II broke out he was one of the few British actors who managed to return to England and see active service including time in combat zones. Niven served in a special forces unit.

Read more…