The British Army are soon eager to determine "the military potential of the Killer Joke". They test the joke on a rifleman (Terry Jones), who laughs and falls dead on the range. After confirming its “devastating effectiveness at a range of up to 50 yards”, they then translate it into German, with each translator working on only one word of the joke for their own safety (one translator saw two words of the joke and had to be hospitalised for several weeks). The German "translation" (in reality mostly just nonsense words) is used for the first time on 8 July 1944 in the Ardennes, causing German soldiers to fall down dead from laughter: