By Lizzie Butler
image via Wikipedia
If there is one tv or movie trope that has been overused, it's how much the British love their damn tea. If you want to demonstrate just how British your character is, there is no better way than to have them all sit down drinking some Earl Grey while complaining about Americans. But surely it is exactly that - a trope, merely a caricature of British culture purely for entertainment...right?
Wrong. Turns out World War II British tank crews were dying to get their tea time in.
image via Photobucket
“Oh, Reginald, I could kill for a nice spot of tea right now.”
On June 13, 1944, the British were headed to take the French town of Caen. Around 0830, after an uneventful German-free morning, they stopped on the roadside for some maintenance and an all important tea break.
image via AldysNerdBlog
They fit it in between second breakfast and elevenses.
As the officers held a quick meeting in a building nearby, the tank crews began to boil water outside of their tanks for their tea. In the middle of Nazi occupied France. Just after D-Day.
You see where this is going right?
image via FormerDays
Because these guys clearly didn’t.
German Tank Commander SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann was barely 200 meters away when he spotted the Brits’ little party and decided he wanted in. In roughly 15 minutes, he managed to wipe out somewhere between 20 and 27 British tanks, halftracks, gun carriers and anti-tank guns.
image via Chindits
Did I mention he managed this with only four tanks?
Needless to say, the British weren’t too awfully pleased by this development. After the war was over and entirely too many tankers had died outside their tanks, they came up with the boiling vessel - a means of boiling a gallon of water at a time for heating up meals and, most importantly, their damn tea. It debuted in the Centurion tank in the 1950s and has since become standard in every single British military vehicle.
image via DailyMail
Do you want to perpetuate stereotypes? Because this is how you perpetuate stereotypes.
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