The Laugh That Won the War: The Legend of Leonard Funk

Prologue: 90 to 1

January 29th, 1945. Holtzheim, Belgium.
First Sergeant Leonard Funk rounds the corner of a snow-covered farmhouse and freezes. Ninety German soldiers stare back at him. Half are armed, half are scrambling for rifles on the ground. Four American GIs kneel in the snow, hands behind their heads—prisoners, just minutes ago, now hostages in a deadly reversal. The Germans, once captured by Funk’s company, are free and preparing to attack.

A German officer steps forward, shoves an MP 40 submachine gun into Funk’s stomach, and screams a command. Funk doesn’t speak German. The officer screams again, his face red with rage. Funk looks at the odds—ninety to one, a gun in his gut, his men at the mercy of their captors. Then, he starts laughing.

What happens next will take less than sixty seconds. Twenty-one Germans will die, the rest will surrender, and Funk will earn the Medal of Honor for one of the most extraordinary acts of combat in World War II—all because he couldn’t stop laughing.

Chapter 1: Steel Town Beginnings

Leonard Alfred Funk Jr. was born August 27, 1916, in Braddock Township, Pennsylvania—a steel town with smokestacks lining the Monongahela River, just east of Pittsburgh. Funk grew up fast, learning responsibility early as he cared for his younger brother through the grinding years of the Great Depression.

By the time he graduated high school in 1934, jobs were scarce and college was a dream out of reach. In June 1941, with war raging across Europe and Asia, Congress extended the draft. Funk’s number came up. At 24, 5’5”, 140 pounds, the Army physical examiner likely saw a future clerk, not a combat leader.

They were wrong.

Chapter 2: Becoming Airborne

Funk volunteered for the paratroopers—a force that barely existed in 1941. The concept was radical: jump from planes behind enemy lines and fight surrounded. Airborne training was brutal, designed to weed out all but the toughest. Five weeks of running, climbing, and falling. Then the jump towers, then the planes.

The first time Funk stepped out of a C-47 at 1,200 feet, every instinct screamed to hold the door frame. But he jumped, trusting in fabric, cord, and faith. He earned his jump wings and joined Company C, First Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, at Camp Blanding, Florida.

In late 1943, the 508th shipped to England, joining the 82nd Airborne—the All-Americans, veterans of Sicily and Italy. Funk, at 27, was ancient by paratrooper standards. Most of his squadmates were barely 20. But he had something they didn’t: maturity, steadiness, and a quiet competence that made men follow him into hell.

Chapter 3: Normandy—First Blood

June 6th, 1944. D-Day.
1:30 a.m. The C-47 shudders as flak explodes around it. Funk stands in the stick, 60 pounds of gear strapped to his body. The plane is at 400 feet—dangerously low. The green light flashes. Funk jumps.

The prop blast hits him like a truck, then the chute deploys and the world goes silent. Below: occupied France, enemy territory in every direction. The airborne operation is chaos—formations scattered, men drowning in flooded fields, others dying in German camps before they can cut free of their harnesses.

Funk lands hard, twisting his ankle. The pain is immediate, but he can walk and fight. He buries his chute and starts moving—40 miles from his drop zone, alone in the dark. Within hours, he’s gathered a group of lost paratroopers, men from different units and companies. Eighteen men, all looking for leadership. Funk gives it to them.

For ten days, he leads them through German-held territory, traveling at night, hiding by day, fighting when necessary. He insists on serving as lead scout despite his injury, putting himself in harm’s way to protect his men. They link up with Allied forces on June 17th. Every single man survives. Not one casualty. Funk earns the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and his first Purple Heart.

Chapter 4: Market Garden—Against the Odds

September 17th, 1944. Holland.
Operation Market Garden—the largest airborne assault in history. Thirty-five thousand paratroopers drop into the Netherlands to capture bridges across the Rhine. The plan is ambitious, maybe too ambitious. Everything depends on speed and surprise. Everything goes wrong.

Funk’s company secures its objective, but then he spots three German 20mm flak guns firing at incoming Allied gliders. If those guns keep firing, hundreds of men will die before they even land. The gun position is dug in, manned by twenty Germans. Funk has three men. Military doctrine says you need a 3:1 advantage to assault a prepared position. Funk attacks anyway.

Leading from the front, Funk and his patrol kill the security detachment, storm the gun emplacements, and silence all three weapons. The gliders land safely. Funk earns the Distinguished Service Cross—one step below the Medal of Honor.

Chapter 5: The Bulge—The Rules Change

December 16th, 1944.
The Germans launch their last desperate offensive—three armies, 400,000 men, 1,400 tanks. They crash through the Ardennes, aiming for Antwerp. The Battle of the Bulge is the largest battle the American Army will fight in World War II. Eighty-nine thousand American casualties.

The cold is as deadly as the Germans. Weapons jam. Vehicles won’t start. Men freeze to death in foxholes.

Then comes Malmedy. December 17th, 1944.
A convoy of 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion runs into the spearhead of an SS armored battle group. The Americans, not equipped for a fight, surrender. They’re herded into a field, then the SS opens fire—machine guns, pistols, rifles. Eighty-four Americans die in that field. Some survive by playing dead, lying in the snow for hours.

The news spreads. The Germans are executing prisoners. Malmedy changes everything. Before, war in Europe had rules—soldiers surrendered, prisoners were treated according to the Geneva Convention. After Malmedy, the rules are gone. American soldiers swear they’ll never surrender to the SS. Some units pass down orders: no SS prisoners.

When Funk hears about the massacre, something hardens inside him. He decides he will never surrender to the Germans. That decision will matter very soon.

Chapter 6: Holtzheim—The Impossible Fight

January 29th, 1945. The Ardennes.
The German offensive is broken. Now the Allies push back. Company C, 508th Parachute Infantry, is ordered to capture Holtzheim, Belgium. The company is under strength—the executive officer has been killed. Funk is now acting executive officer.

He walks to headquarters. Inside are clerks, supply personnel, cooks—men who’ve never seen combat. “You’re all infantry now,” Funk tells them. “Grab your weapons. We’re taking that village.”

He forms a makeshift platoon—thirty men who’ve spent most of the war behind desks. He leads them through waist-deep snow, a driving blizzard, temperatures well below freezing. German artillery shells explode around them. Funk leads from the front.

They reach Holtzheim. Funk organizes the assault. His clerks and makeshift warriors follow him into the village—fifteen houses, Germans in every one. Machine guns, rifles, grenades. Funk and his men clear them all. Thirty prisoners captured. Not one American casualty. Another unit captures fifty more Germans.

Eighty prisoners total, corralled in the yard of a farmhouse. Funk, exhausted, spares four men to guard them. There’s still resistance in the village. He heads back into the fight, unaware of what’s about to happen behind him.

Chapter 7: The Laugh That Changed Everything

While Funk is clearing the rest of Holtzheim, a German patrol approaches the farmhouse—ten, maybe twenty men in white camouflage capes. In the snow, they look almost identical to American troops. The four guards are overwhelmed, disarmed, forced to their knees. The Germans free the prisoners—eighty men plus the patrol. Ninety in total. They grab weapons, organize quickly, and prepare to attack Company C from the rear.

The German officer begins giving orders—position machine guns, set up the ambush, wait for my signal.

That’s when Leonard Funk walks around the corner.

He’s come to check on the prisoners. He’s not expecting to walk into ninety armed Germans. He freezes. His four guards are on their knees. The prisoners, who should be unarmed, are organizing for battle.

The German officer spots Funk—his stripes mark him as a leader, a prize. He strides forward, shoves his MP 40 into Funk’s stomach, and screams a command in German: surrender, drop your weapon. Funk doesn’t understand. The officer screams again, louder, veins bulging. Funk looks around—ninety Germans, half armed, his men helpless.

The math is impossible. Ninety to one. The rational thing is to surrender.

But Funk remembers Malmedy—eighty-four Americans murdered after surrendering. He’s already decided: he will never surrender.

So instead, Leonard Funk starts laughing.

Nobody knows exactly why. Maybe it was a ruse, maybe stress, maybe genuine amusement at the absurdity. Funk later said he tried to stop but couldn’t. Something about the German screaming in German touched a nerve.

The effect is devastating. The officer screams louder. Funk laughs harder, bends over, shoulders shaking, calls out to his men: “I don’t understand what he’s saying.” Some Germans start laughing too. The tension is bizarre. The officer is thrown off—this isn’t how prisoners behave.

For a few critical seconds, the officer doesn’t know what to do. Funk uses those seconds. Still appearing to laugh, he slowly reaches for his Thompson submachine gun, slung over his shoulder. The officer relaxes—he thinks Funk is surrendering.

Funk’s hand closes around the grip. He begins to unsling it slowly. The officer relaxes slightly. He’s about to have another prisoner.

Then Funk moves in one motion—faster than thought. He swings the Thompson down, brings the muzzle into line, and squeezes the trigger.

The M1A1 Thompson fires .45 ACP rounds at 600 per minute. At close range, each round hits like a sledgehammer. The first burst catches the German officer in the chest—thirty rounds in less than three seconds. The officer is dead before he hits the ground.

Funk doesn’t stop. He pivots, still firing, spraying an arc of lead across the nearest Germans. Men scream and fall. Blood sprays across the snow. Brass casings tumble through the air, steaming in the cold.

The magazine runs dry—thirty rounds gone in seconds. This is the critical moment. A Thompson takes two seconds to reload if you’re practiced. Two seconds is forever in a firefight. Funk yanks the empty magazine out, slams a fresh one in, racks the bolt, and keeps shooting—muscle memory, thousands of hours of training compressed into one fluid motion.

At the same time, he’s screaming at his men: “Pick up their weapons! Pick up their weapons!” The four guards scramble for the rifles dropped by the dead Germans. Seconds ago, they were prisoners—now they’re fighting for their lives.

The Germans are in chaos. Their officer is dead. The American who was laughing is now killing them. Nobody gave orders for this. Some shoot back—bullets crack past Funk’s head. One round kills the soldier beside him. Funk keeps firing, moving, killing. His guards have weapons now—they’re shooting too. The Germans are caught in a crossfire they never expected.

Sixty seconds. Twenty-one Germans dead in the snow. Twenty-four wounded. The rest—more than forty—throw down their weapons and raise their hands. The prisoners are prisoners again.

Leonard Funk stands in the carnage, smoke rising from his Thompson, surrounded by bodies. “That,” he says to his men, “was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Chapter 8: Aftermath and Legend

The aftermath is almost anticlimactic. Company C secures Holtzheim. The surviving Germans are marched to the rear under much heavier guard. Funk reports the incident to his commanding officer—just another firefight, just another day in the war.

But the story spreads—through the regiment, the division, the entire 82nd Airborne. The sergeant who laughed at ninety Germans and killed half of them with a Tommy gun.

When the Medal of Honor recommendation reaches Washington, nobody questions it. What Funk did at Holtzheim is beyond dispute. Outnumbered ninety to one, weapon in his gut, instead of surrendering, he attacked.

The official citation reads:
“He was ordered to surrender by a German officer who pushed a machine pistol into his stomach. Although overwhelmingly outnumbered and facing almost certain death, First Sergeant Funk, pretending to comply with the order, began slowly to unsling his submachine gun from his shoulder, and then with lightning motion, brought the muzzle into line, and riddled the German officer. He turned upon the other Germans, firing and shouting to the other Americans to seize the enemy’s weapons.”

September 5th, 1945. The White House.
President Harry Truman places the Medal of Honor around Funk’s neck. “I would rather have this medal,” Truman says, “than be President of the United States.”

Chapter 9: Quiet Hero

Let’s count what Leonard Funk earned during World War II:

Medal of Honor for Holtzheim
Distinguished Service Cross for the anti-aircraft guns in Holland
Silver Star for leading eighteen men through forty miles of enemy territory in Normandy
Bronze Star for meritorious service
Purple Heart—three times
The Croix de Guerre from France, the Order of Leopold from Belgium, the Military Order of William from the Netherlands

Leonard Funk is the most decorated paratrooper of World War II. Five-foot-five, 140 pounds—a former store clerk who became a legend.

After the war, Funk went home. He didn’t write a book, didn’t go on the lecture circuit, didn’t turn his Medal of Honor into a speaking career or political platform. He didn’t cash in on his fame. He got a job with the Veterans Administration, helping other veterans navigate paperwork and get the help they deserved.

For twenty-seven years, Funk sat at a desk and helped veterans, rising to division chief of the Pittsburgh regional office. Good salary, steady hours, a pension waiting at the end. His wife Gertrude stuck with him through it all. They had two daughters, lived in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a working-class neighborhood in a working-class town.

The Medal of Honor hung in a case somewhere. The Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, all the foreign decorations. He never talked about them. When people asked about Holtzheim, about the laughing, about the ninety Germans, he shrugged it off. “Did what I had to do.” That’s it. That’s all he ever said.

Epilogue: Legacy of Laughter and Courage

November 20th, 1992. Braddock Hills, Pennsylvania.
Leonard Alfred Funk Jr. dies of cancer at age 76. He’s buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 35, Grave 23734—among the heroes of every American war. At the time of his death, he’s the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II.

A fitness center at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) is named after him. A highway in Pennsylvania bears his name. A post office in McKeesport was dedicated to him in 2023. But most people have never heard of Leonard Funk.

They know Audie Murphy. They know Alvin York. They don’t know the short, quiet paratrooper who laughed at ninety Germans and killed twenty-one of them with a Tommy gun.

Here’s what the story of Leonard Funk tells us:
War doesn’t favor the big. It doesn’t favor the strong, the reckless, or the fearless. War favors the ones who keep thinking when everyone else has stopped.

At Holtzheim, Leonard Funk had every reason to surrender. The math was impossible. Ninety against one. A gun in his stomach. His men already captured. Any rational person would have given up.

But Funk wasn’t thinking about the math. He was thinking about Malmedy—about eighty-four Americans murdered in a field, about what the Germans did to prisoners, and about his men, the four guards on their knees, the soldiers scattered across the village who would be hit from behind if these Germans escaped.

So he laughed—maybe as a tactic, maybe from stress, maybe because the whole thing struck him as absurd. And while the German officer was confused, while everyone was off balance, Leonard Funk made his move.

Sixty seconds later, he was standing in a field of bodies, alive when he should have been dead.

President Truman once said to Leonard Funk, “I would rather have this medal than be President of the United States.”
Because what Truman understood—and what everyone who reads the Medal of Honor citations understands—is that courage isn’t about size or strength or training. Courage is what you do when there’s a gun in your stomach and ninety men want you dead.