It was June 6, 1944—or so Brandon Herrera thought as he stumbled out of the landing craft, boots sloshing into the icy surf after a long day drinking and filming “Tiny Guns” in a period-correct WWII uniform. The first soldier off the boats, they’d later call him, though “soldier” might’ve been generous for a man three Bud Lights deep and clutching a half-empty White Claw like it was his last will and testament. The invasion of Normandy was underway, and Private Herrera was ready to liberate France, one .45 slug at a time.

The beach was chaos, or at least it sounded like it through the alcoholic haze. Waves crashed, men shouted, and somewhere in the distance, a German machine gunner was turning the sand into a lead-filled pinata. Brandon, squinting through aviator sunglasses he swore were “tactical,” hefted his M1911A1—the only gun he trusted, because “over Penetration’s for suckers,” he slurred to no one in particular. With the grace of a man who’d pregamed D-Day like it was a frat party, he staggered forward, tripped over a sandbag, and somehow landed in a perfect Weaver stance.

*Blam! Blam! Blam!* Three shots rang out, and the machine gunner slumped over his MG42 like a ragdoll who’d just lost a bar bet. “That’s how we do it in ‘Murica!” Brandon hollered, waving his pistol like a conductor’s baton as his squad scrambled past him. They didn’t stop to thank him—probably because they were too busy dodging imaginary bullets or wondering why their point man smelled like a brewery explosion. Undeterred, Brandon cracked open another White Claw, chugged it, and crushed the can against his helmet. “For freedom!” he bellowed, before burping loud enough to wake a coma patient.

He spent the next hour weaving through the dunes, alternately shooting at shadows and yelling at his squad to “keep up, ya commie lightweights.” He lobbed a grenade at what he thought was a pillbox—turned out it was a seagull, but the explosion was patriotic as hell anyway. By noon, he’d claimed to have taken out two Panzers with nothing but his sidearm and a pocketknife, though no one could confirm it because they were too busy laughing at him trying to reload with a beer bottle.

And then, just as Brandon was about to plant an American flag he’d inexplicably brought along in his rucksack, a voice cut through the chaos. “Oi, mate, what the bloody hell are you doing?” Brandon spun around, M1911A1 leveled, only to see a fisherman in a raincoat holding a cod bigger than his head. Behind him, a rickety pier stretched out into the foggy bay, and a sign loomed through the mist: *Welcome to Nova Scotia—Canada’s Ocean Playground.*

Brandon blinked. The “German” machine gunner? A drunk hunter with a deer rifle. The “Panzers”? Tractors hauling lobster traps. The beach he’d stormed wasn’t Normandy—it was some godforsaken stretch of Canadian coastline, and D-Day was still a thousand miles across the Atlantic. Turns out, Brandon’s boat had veered off course after he’d “borrowed” the helm to “show these nerds how to drift.” The invasion was a hallucination fueled by cheap booze and cheaper bravado.

“Aw, hell,” Brandon muttered, holstering his pistol. “Guess I liberated Nova Scotia instead. Close enough.” He cracked open his last Bud Light, saluted the confused fisherman, and stumbled off to find a bar—because if there’s one thing Brandon Herrera knew, it was how to turn a wrong turn into a war story. The guys fashioned him a “manly” freedom medal from the top from one of his beers.

Extra credit goes to: @braxtonlatray

The spicy twist at the end: JD the Bot Guy