Maybe because I grew up on these films, I've always been fond of the names that crop up in the war movies of the 1940s-1950s:
Like in Destination Tokyo in 1943: the submarine crew had names like Wolf, Cookie, Tin Can, Pills, The Kid, Dakota, Sparks, YoYo, and Toscanini.
In The Fighting Seabees, the names of John Wayne's construction crew sounded like the Three Stooges running amuck on a construction site: Sawyer, Whanger, Ding, Yump, Joe Brick.
The Caine Mutiny (1954) had two of the best nicknames ever for enlisted men: Meatball and Horrible.
Mr. Roberts (1955) had Doug Roberts, Doc, Frank Thurlow Pulver, Reber, Rodriguez, Dolan, Insignia, Stefanowski, "Booksie," Gerhart, Linstrom, Jonesy, Cookie, and The Old Man.
Battleground (1949) had a melting pot cast with Holley, Kenny, Jarvess, Rodrigues, "Pop" Stazak, "Kipp" Kippton, Doc.
But Battle Cry (1955) was one of the best with "Highpockets" Huxley, commander of "Huxley's Harlots," including Mac, Ski, Andy, "Sister Mary" Hotchkiss, Spanish Joe, Speedy, Crazy Horse, Seabags, and L.Q Jones, which was such a great character name that the beginning actor playing that role adopted it as his stage name for the rest of his career.
Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) wasn't much of a showing for movie character names other than Sgt. Stryker. But there were three members of the cast with very impressive names--Rene Gagnon, John Bradley, and Ira Hayes, the three surviors of the Iwo Jima flag-raising, who played themselves.
Between Heaven and Hell, a 1950s film, is a damn good movie that includes Harvey Lembeck who plays a New York native Bernard Meleski who somehow winds up in a southern National Guard unit fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. Also involved in the battle is a strange infantry unit run by Waco (Broderick Crawford) as a paranoid Captain who won't let anyone salute him or address him by his rank for fear of snipers. Waco also won't let his own troops bring their firearms into his command hut for fear they too may try to shoot him. To be sure they don't, he's got two bodyguards armed with machineguns. Other officers and NCOs like Waco avoid insignia's and titles of rank, so unit members are known mostly as Willie, Swanson, Kenny, Tom Thumb, Raker, and Savage.
Two of the most memorable movies about World War II are set in POW camps with great plots and colorful names. In Stalag 17 (1953) you have the cynical Sefton, Dunbar, Stanislas Kasava ("Animal"), Harry Shapiro (Lembeck in one of his best roles ever), Hoffy, the plotting Price, the doomed Manfredi and Johnson, Joey, Blondie, Marko, Cookie and The Geneva Man, all (more or less) pitted against the camp commander, Col Von Scherbach and his faithful Sgt. Schultz.
Another POW film that is almost as good in a different way is The Great Escape (1963) with Hilts the Cooler King; the Scrounger; Big X; the SBO; Velinski the Tunnel King; Colin Blythe the Forger; Sedwick the Manufacturer; Dickes the Tunneler; Ives the Mole, Cavendish the Surveyor; Werner the Ferret; and Col Von Luger the Kommandant.
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Seriously, though. One of the many reasons why 12 Angry Men is my favorite movie ever.
