2. Yogi Berra 

Anyone even remotely familiar with baseball knows the name Yogi Berra. But before he was Yogi Berra, he was 18-year old Seaman 2nd Class Lawrence Berra of the United States Navy. From 1942 to 1945, Berra served with the Navy, including a stint as gunner’s mate on the USS Bayfield, a transport ship that participated in Operation Overlord, better known as the Invasion of Normandy.

During D-Day, Berra manned a Landing Craft Support Small Rocket Launcher, a vessel with a six-man crew and armed with six M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns and twelve rockets. It was Berra and his crew’s job to go in front of the troop carriers and weaken the German defenses by destroying machine gun nests and beach obstacles. Following Normandy, Berra was wounded in Africa when a bullet grazed his hand, but obviously he made a full recovery.

Berra played all but one year of his 19-year career with the Yankees and finished with a .285/.348/.482 slash line, 358 home runs, and 1,430 RBI while being named to 14 all-star teams. Oh, and he also won 3 MVP awards and a record 10 World Series titles.