D-Day

**D-Day** is the colloquial name given to the **Normandy landings** on the 6th of June 1944, as part of the Allied invasion of the northwestern coast of Normandy, France, during the Second World War. Soon to go down in history as one of the most significant and most memorable turning points of the conflict, on that Tuesday, the brave men of the American battalion stormed Omaha beach, only for most of them to die to German artillery fire, in a futile, yet important effort of starting the liberation of Europe.

A little overlooked detail in history, however, is that, among one of these boats, one American civilian had wound up in the middle of transport and participated during the invasion. What his intentions were, no one really people knew, and the already anxious would have no interest nor the time in asking questions either. Lucky for the guest, he was no other than Vinnie Cannoli, gangster, fugitive and survivor of the Thugtown Massacre, for he may not have survived this event hadn't it been for his extensive experience of killing anything that dare attack him. No wonder that he would be the only one to get through this warzone alive...

## Guns, Gore & Cannoli 2

Following a nasty confrontation during his visit of long abandoned Thugtown, with a troop of Nazis making a deal with a powerful Don of the American Mafia, Vinnie vows to hunt down and finish off both of them, the Nazi Commander and his partner, known only as the Dark Don. Vinnie returns to his base of operation, Syndicate City, at his friend Joe's bar. After he vents to him about the encounter, without missing a beat, Joe immediately suggests they fly to Europe and "kick their asses". After squashing Vinnie's initial doubts, who had been indecisively weighing his options, considering the war happening over there, he takes Joe up on the offer.

After an hour-long flight, Vinnie finds himself nearing the German-occupied French mainland, just in time to watch D-Day unfurl, as the first LCVPs land onshore and German anti-air cannons start firing at planes, like theirs. The barrage hits one of the engines of the B-17 that the duo are flying with, and Joe tells Vinnie to parachute down, which Vinnie does. The plane continues to altitude, but gets further inland. The gangster, on the other hand, manages to parachute safely, but before he reaches land, he starts to struggle with the tethers a little bit, before suddenly ejecting from the parachute entirely, landing face flat on one of the Higgins boat, packed with American soldiers. One of them bewildered by the gangster's sudden appearance, shouts in a rough voice, "Who's this guy?", but before Vinnie can refuse to identify himself, the charge begins. Had they known that this man was Vinnie Cannoli, the Tyrant of Thugtown, who had just fallen into their boat, they might have wasted no time in placing him under arrest under different circumstances, but alas, more manpower was always appreciated, not that they could have acted with what little time they had left and with who they were dealing with anyway.

The soldiers blindly rush out of the vessel in dozens, all with the single goal of making it ahead to advance, as flak shells fall down, bunkers firing machine guns, and (not so) hidden landmines, thin their numbers increasingly more. In typical zerg rush fashion, they ignore this, leaving Vinnie, as the protagonist of his own game of war the only survivor of this detachment, ironically the only one with no known wartime experience, the emphasis being on not during wartime. Vinnie still excelled at killing, making it a cakewalk for him, as he mows down incoming Wehrmacht soldiers and clears out any bunker he finds, as well as destroying batteries that are present. He soon finds a tall, large bunker near the end of the beach and after pulling a lever, he goes inside it (after killing soldiers that conventionally appear after he pulls the lever).