German is a wonderful language that can create marvelous compound words for new things and concepts. It's deservedly famous for its amazingly long words and for its abbreviations so long that they require abbreviations of their own. This is a story about an interesting German word ...
When the Allies were planning the invasion of Normandy in 1944, among the diversionary tactics they employed was the dropping of hundreds of dummy paratroops over the battle area. The puppets were designed to explode in bursts of gunfire when they landed, simulating the arrival of a much larger force.
In the classic 1962 film "The Longest Day," there's a great scene which follows the reactions of puzzled German generals as they receive reports of exploding rubber dummies - Gummipuppen* in German - falling across the Normandy region, and asking each other "Gummipuppen?" ...
Although the scene was deadly serious, to this English speaker, groups of confused generals muttering Gummipuppen? to each other sounded funny.
Of course, there are other sorts of Gummipuppen, too, which don't themselves explode, but can cause explosions of a different sort in careless users.
Caveat emptor.
Have a good day. More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
* It's pronounced GOO-me-POOP-en.
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