On a bright spring morning in 1945, a small white dog was gallumphing along a small gravel-lined path through a well-manicured lawn. He made fairly good time for a dog. He occasionally paused to sniff at a patch of flowers, or perhaps to chase a butterfly. Birds chirped. A bumblebee buzzed lazily by. The dog continued.
He was on a mission.
The little white dog, whose name was Sergeant Mumphries, approached the gate at the end of the path. He passed out of the lawn, between the well-manicured hedges, passed the well-manicured English gardens, near the well-manicured Soviet nuclear missile silo, and promptly began to bark.
He licked himself for a few moments.
He barked some more.
The well-manicured lawn did not respond. The well-manicured hedge made not a peep. The well-manicured English garden hummed slightly, with the buzzing of honeybees.
The well-manicured Soviet nuclear missile silo, however, did respond.
Sergeant Mumphries barked, then chased his tail. A large intercontinental ballistic missile roared out of the well-manicured Soviet missile silo, and tore into the atmosphere.
Sergeant Mumphries went home, his mission complete. Later that day, he ate some kibble, and rolled on some dead worms in the garden.
......
Thousands of miles away, a silvery disk-shaped craft was zipping quietly through the sky. Most people would have mistaken it for a perfectly ordinary flying saucer, but this one was special: it had a large swastika on it.
It raced for awhile over a rugged, frozen landscape, and then landed. Several red-clad, gas-masked figures emerged from the craft, also with swastikas. They planted a flag in the hard frozen ground; black swastika on white circle on red field. ****.
If anyone there had spoken German (other than the ***** with the flying saucer, of course), they would have heard the following:
"Ve claim zis land, ze south pole of Antarctica, in ze name of ze Fuhrer. Heil Hitler!......Oh, scheisse!"
This last exclamation, which loosely translates as "What a bothersome situation," was followed by a tremendous white flash, a miles-high column of heat and smoke, and a shock wave big enough to clear away the storm that had been threatening to cut loose.
......
The well-manicured Soviet nuclear missile silo quietly closed itself up, and became hidden once again.
Sergeant Mumphries chased a squirrel, then later dreamed of chasing squirrels. He had had an awfully busy day.