Yogi Berra signed with the Yankees in 1943 & then put his career on hold to join the U.S. Navy that same year. He volunteered for a mission nobody would describe to him, which turned out to be landing craft support — small rocket boats that go in ahead of the troops. On the morning of June 6, 1944, he was 19 years old, manning a machine gun on a 36-foot boat with five other men, 300 yards off Omaha Beach. Their job was to fire rockets into the German defenses right before the first wave landed. He said later that he'd never seen anything like it, and that with all the planes and the tracers it looked like the Fourth of July — until his officer yelled at him: "You better get your head down in here, if you want it on." He also ran messages between Omaha and Utah beaches, took part in the invasion of southern France, and was wounded at Marseille. Purple Heart. Then he came home, played 77 games in the minors, and won ten World Series rings.