Mel Brooks, yes, the comedy film director beloved for Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, fought in World War II. He enlisted in 1944, cutting his senior year in high school short, and was made a combat engineer. One of his contributions to the war effort drew on his wicked sense of humor.

Some of his duties as a combat engineer in the European theater included helping to build bridges that swung out over a river or creek, bridges strong enough to drive a tank across. One dark night, Brooks was in the middle of putting one of these bridges together when he heard Nazi soldiers singing somewhere on the other side of the river.

“The ja, ja at the end of each phrase was a dead giveaway,” Brooks writes in his autobiography All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business. He thought the singing was terrible, so he grabbed a huge bullhorn, went to the bank of the river, and started belting out minstrel tunes by the Jewish singer Al Jolson.