One way of passing the time in the absence of your wife is to look up random things on Wikipedia. Some of the WW2-themed things I have learned recently:

1. When the Germans were invading France in WW2, the Italians joined in near the end. They tried to cross the Alps, were stopped by snow, and lost over 2,500 casualties to frostbite. When they invaded the south of France the entire invasion was held up by a French NCO and his squad of seven men. Overall the Italians achieved very little, and managed to lose several thousand soldiers in the process. This illustrates that Italians are good at many things, but not fighting.

2. After WW2 a few Japanese soldiers hid in the mountains of places like Guam. I had heard of this, of course, but I had no idea that some of these guys held out until 1974. That's 29 years after the end of the war! Apparently the last guy was found by a Japanese student. The guy refused to believe the student, so the Japanese had to get his commanding officer (who was now a bookseller, and presumably more than a little baffled) to fly out and order the man to surrender. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.

3. In 1940 one Canadian division landed at Brest and marched 200 miles inland towards Paris before learning that Paris had fallen and France had surrendered, so they turned around, got back on their ships, and left. That must have been one funny staff briefing.

4. During the battle of Arnhem, one British officer (who is also Jeremy Clarkson's father-in-law) ended up walking around with a mortar tucked horizontally under his arm, launching shells at German tanks at point blank range. And he survived. That's the spirit, eh what?

5. One Japanese pilot (Saburo Sakai) was in a dogfight when he was shot through the head with a .30 cal bullet. He was blinded in one eye, the left side of his body was paralysed, and he could barely see through all the blood. Even so, he flew his plane for 4 hours 47 minutes to the airfield, landed correctly, climbed out, made his post-flight report to his commanding officer, and only then asked for medical treatment.

There are probably more that I've forgotten, but too bad. Wikipedia is brilliant.