Operation Overlord

It was a good day to change the world.

A cool ocean breeze rolled across the Channel while above the grey clouds covered flight after flight of bombers and fighters. The buzzing drone of their engines was so constant it became little more than background noise, like the lapping of the ways against his cruiser’s hull.

He checked the pocket watch affixed to his white breast pocket. Almost time. Despite his lack of sleep, the captain felt alive. Still, a warm cup of tea would have been nice to chase the vestiges of fatigue and the chill from the wind.

“Sir, something three points off starboard!”

The call came as he was half through the hatch. With all haste, the Captain ran around to where his lieutenant watched inquisitively through his binoculars.

“What is it?” The Captain said, squinting.

“Here, sir. Take a look. Not sure what to make of it…”

Captain Weld had seen many things, from the Southern Cross to the Northern Lights, from St. Elmo’s Fire to the Frozen North. He’d seen the best and worst of humanity, and knew he fought on the side of good. Few things on God’s green earth surprised him anymore.

Yet as he peered out the binoculars and saw white sails bobbing lazily on the tides, his jaw dropped. First one mast, then more as an armada of ships carried on the breeze joined in with their great armada aimed at the Norman coast. It was inexplicable in all manner of military operations. All of their plans had been carefully laid, and reports were that even the German ships lay in port. Having such ships within their area of operation was nonsensical by any stretch of logical reasoning. Surely it was a jest, some tourist pleasure cruise now caught up within the greatest struggle Europe had ever seen.

No, even that made no sense. None of it made sense.

“Sir, something else!”

“Is that….”

“It is.”

“Κωπηλατώ! Κωπηλατώ!”

It appeared beside them as if out of thin air. Even over the din of the waves and planes, the Captain heard the diminutive vessel’s Bosun clear as day. On each command, the Triremes oars rose and struck, propelling the ancient ship beside Captain Weld’s cruiser.

“Calm men…stick to the miss–”

The captain’s voice cut off as, of all the things he’d just seen, the most inexplicable passed into his sight. At the back of the trireme stood a man in a bright red and white uniform, eyes ignoring all that moved around him, ignoring all save the soccer ball he juggled foot to foot.

“What in all hells is going on!” Captain Weld yelled, “battle stations!”

No one moved.

“What in bloody hell men, that’s an order!”

After a moment of fearful silence, the Lieutenant finally spoke. “Sir, well…it appears you’re not the captain anymore.”

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Love it, hate it (and we hate it), they’re going to keep shoving AI down our throats.

I have a simple question (well relatively simple, stay tuned) question I ask any AI tool to test its ability: Who was the Captain of HMS Ajax at Normandy? (Captain James Joseph Weld).

Why this question?

1. I know the answer
2. The answer is not on wikipedia. It requires a small amount of effort and research skill
3. There is a long list of ships named HMS Ajax, many of which served in the English Channel
4. Ajax in mythology was also a captain in his own right.
5. Ajax FC (coincidentally my continental club of choice) also has a captain.

This coming together of influences will usually tell me the quality of the LLM engine. Google for example, even on most recent release, is not great:

ChatGPT at least bows to its own limitations and provides some admittedly helpful research options:

Copilot was similar.

In the past, though I didn’t save the screenshots, I’ve gotten responses ranging from quotes from Homer to FC Ajax’s squad list. As we all stew in how we interact with new technology, I hope this offered a wee bit of levity.

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A/N:

Written for Ray's prompt:

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