Inglourious Georges
The ending throway joke will be much funnier (or just funny at all, even in the slightest) if you read
this first.
The four Hanoverian Georges sit in a half-circle. George IV is taking snuff; a glass of claret sits by his side. George III is restrained in a frighteningly durable-looking straitjacket. George I and II look mean and obscure, respectively.
"So what's the trouble, Five, my dear old thing?" George IV still sounds like a dandy; the past hundred or so years have changed him little, beyond allowing him to work back down to his strapping Hugh Laurie looks of the early days.
"Well..." George V shifts uncomfortably. "I need you to go to France."
"What, all of us?" George II looks flabbergasted. "Surely we'll be recognized at once!"
"Honestly, Two, I don't think that's going to be as big a problem as you think it is."
"We'll be incognito," whispers George III, conspiratorially to nobody in particular. He slowly rocks from side to side.
"Quite so, quite so," says George V. He dearly wishes he had a cigar, but it's hard to smoke when you don't breathe.
"You vant us to be your spies? Against the Germans?" George I's accent is particularly strong this evening.
"If it's not a bother, of course."
"Ach, no, heavens no. To think that Hanover's no longer a duchy! I could spit."
"We'll Culloden the lot of them."
"Culloden 'em, dear fella? We'll Trafalgar 'em."
"I should say we'd...
Waterloo them?" George IV waits for laughter, and then remembers there's not a fawning courtier for at least three sub-basements.
"Vell, why ever for?"
"It turns out that the Germans can replicate a fellow, fully formed. Cloning they call it. Mercifully, they don't use it for much other than making more spies, and we keep catching the blighters, but we can't keep up with our spies unless we stop researching things. A lot of science talk, really. Also, Baldwin says it would be an awful lot of money to fund resistance movements in France if it falls. Jolly old nuisance, really."
"Und you want us to do what, exactly?"
"You're going be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. You're going to be doing one thing and one thing only: killing Nazis. As long as it's cricket, I mean."
The original four Georges confer. Then, in unison: "We'll do it."
RAF De Haviland Hertfordshire [Flamingo] Transport, Somewhere over German-occupied France, August 22, 1941
The other three Georges have already made the jump. George IV stands dramatically in the open doorway of the aircraft, his stylish leggings the only concession to 19th-century fashion, a tommy gun clenched in his hands.
GEORGE IV: [dramatically] When George the Forth to Earth descends, the Nazi reign in France ENDS! [he jumps.] HALOOOoooooooooooOOOOooOoooooo!