Fourth of July Reflections, Wartime Realities, and Battles Around July 3rd

Podcast Episode 213

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Digital Fortune Media proudly presents the What's the Scuttle Butt Podcast with your hosts, Don Abernathy, Jeff Copsetta, and Dennis Blocker.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome everybody to another episode of the What's the Scuttlebutt Podcast, your favorite World War II based podcast. And we are here together. Um, Dennis can't join us tonight, but no worries. Zach, our new. Uh I would do a drum roll, but my camera will bounce out of place. So Jeff, give us a drum roll. Our new official What's the Scuttle Butt podcast producer? Mr. Zach Morris. He will uh do all the production producer type things in the background, plus be up to speed on our um episode content for that week in case, like this week someone says, Hey, I can't make it. Boom, Zach steps in, fills the void. We continue on like nothing ever happened. You guys will never be the wiser, except for me pointing out today. But we wanted to announce that Zach is now the official What's the Scuttle But podcast producer? We've needed one for years, and here we are, we're moving up in the world. It only took a short seven, some odd years, but hey, we're getting her, ladies and gentlemen. Um, but yeah, so um we thought, you know, just change up a little bit this week. Fourth of July is coming up Friday. It's big for us here in the United States, but uh a lot going on in the 40s around 4th of July, and so we figured let's talk about some of the context and content of the past and some of the uh wars, big and small campaigns that you may not have been on your radar that happened right around the time that we would have been celebrating independence, which that's kind of a fun uh thought exercise, gentlemen. How do you obviously we've experienced that during modern-day war times, right? Gulf War, Desert Storm, Iraqi freedom, Vietnam. Well, we weren't there for Vietnam, but I think it's fair to say that patriotism was treated a different way in the 40s. Could you imagine what it was like during those four some odd years that we were in actively involved in the war? What it would have been like to celebrate Fourth of July and Independence Day and the patriotism while the war of that magnitude was going on?

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Yeah, you bring up an interesting point, and it's definitely one I've never never really thought about before.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

But yeah, because we've discussed Christmas, we've discussed Thanksgiving, but I don't think we've really thought about Fourth of July.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

No, and you know, it makes me think, were they big celebrations or were they a little more reserved because all of our resources are are somewhere else and probably being better used. So that's interesting. I imagine people would put their their buntings and their flags out. Um, and I'm sure you know local organizations would probably have some type of a parade, and uh, you know, maybe even some World War I veterans marching through Main Street. But I don't know. I don't think it's probably anything like what we do today.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Well, and if you think about it too, it the distance from that date to that time was shorter. And as you were just uh alluding to, World War I vets, um, some of their great-grandfathers, you have direct descendants of people who like it was only one or two generations away that family members were actively involved in that situation in those wars, and so it was a lot closer to home. Obviously, the further we get away from things and the more generations you get away from things, the less impact things have on people. But you're so you're closer, you got this big war thing going on. But to Jeff's point, every housewife they're making things stretch, right? You got the you got the ration stamps, shortages on everything. You you want to celebrate, but then you gotta ask, okay, well, we want to get together with the neighbors. Do we clearly we're gonna have a potluck, right? But even in a potluck, you're going to you're basically going to take away from your family's food supply for that week to celebrate that one night, but you may say it's worth it. So it's an interesting thought experiment.

unknown 4:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

It really isn't, it really is an interesting question. I I ask myself that question all the time, Don. It's like, what must that been like? Even July 4th aside, you know, just what it must have been like to live in a time, especially in this country, where like everybody was united, everybody had a same goal, you know, everybody was on the same page, and like especially, you know, dial that up for 4th of July a holiday like that. You know, it really is interesting to to to have felt what that felt like to live in that time, you know, what that must have felt like.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And it's a smaller world, right? Back then, more larger farm communities, small less people lived in the big cities. So you have you maybe you had extra supplies because you're a farmer, but with that being said, the world was smaller. Obviously, they didn't have the internet. The biggest thing they had for media was newspaper and radio. And so this was probably one of those few times a year where in these smaller farming communities, you put down, you know, you take a day off and and get together with your neighbors. And so once again, it may have been worth the expenditure of supplies to because that could possibly be six or seven days a year that your hardworking family can take off and and commune with the community.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 5:23

And so I can tell you, I've got an interesting story from the 4th of July 2004. Okay. Uh and I'll I'll make it short here, but um, you know, that was that was about halfway through my deployment, so I there was a lottery for furlough to come home for 10 days, and the number I picked was probably not going to come home at the time. Uh, but my driver and best friend uh from from the from the army had swapped numbers with me. Uh, I think I drew like 20 something, and one through 20 was guaranteed, and then like 21 to 35 was like iffy, and then if it was over 36, whatever, you're probably not gonna get one. Um, so didn't think my number was going to go. He pulls a number two and uh he gives it to me. And because, you know, um, you know, Tammy and I weren't married yet, but we were engaged, and you know, she had joined the army. She was in basic trending, she breaks her foot, they're holding her over at PTRP. Um, so it had been about seven months before, and I hadn't seen her before I deployed. So I get to Kuwait March of 04, and she comes home like the very beginning of April. Like we missed each other by by that much. And then I start my year-long deployment. So my boy Chuck said, Here, dude, you're you're going home. Like, you gotta see Tammy. We just got started here, you know, and you haven't seen her in almost a year. And this guy had a wife and two kids at the time, so it really meant a lot.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Well, that was gonna be my question. So that was kind of gonna be my question. Did he give you his number as a favor, or was he one of these poor individuals who didn't have a close family to go home to, but you just answered that question, so that means that means even more.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

Oh yeah. No, yeah, it was just that's how we were, it was just that tight, and um so coming home uh was worst thing ever. It was like the worst possible idea in the history of ideas for then, you know, for the army to send you home for 10 days in the middle of that nonsense was ludicrous. But it was during 4th of July, and um you know the feelings I had then are totally different than what I have now. But it was like I looked around and and I think about this in context with World War II. Let's say you've got a guy who's wounded, he comes home, you know, he finally gets home, maybe he's there for 4th of July, but but Guadalcanal or France or the skies over Europe are still pretty fresh for this guy. And he's seeing these people celebrating and he's seeing these parades and you know, maybe some fireworks. And I know for me, I'm I looked around and was like, God, you people have no freaking idea what's going on right now, and it it made me angry, and and it was just naive, right? People are not blatantly ignorant, but they're it was just the the naivety of it because they just simply didn't know what we were doing overseas. So to go from that environment and then you're just shoved on a plane 24 hours later, you're just expected to just hang out with your family for 10 days and put on a pair of blue jeans again, very difficult. Um so you know, those are kind of the things I think about because I pull from a lot of my personal experiences. Like, did some of those guys have those same thoughts? Um, coming home at any time, but maybe 4th of July or maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas, you know, and you're like, geez, mom, you're worried about the freaking chickens, and um, we gotta rebuild the coop, but god, you got no clue what it's like to throw a track off of a Sherman in the hedgerow country. Like, what are you complaining about?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Well, and to your point, I think we kind of got a little bit of a glimpse of that with John Basilone's feeling, right? Because he wasn't sent home for Fourth of July, he was sent home on a war bond tour, and as much fun as he had after a while, his conscience got to him. Like, look, you know, I'm here dating Starlet and getting the Hollywood treatment, but my boys are training and going over, or some of them are still over there fighting, and so he did what he did, I guess to you know, maybe sleep better at night. And that he just had a love for the organization. We know, you know, with his history in the army and in the Marine Corps. But yeah, I think we got a slight bit of a glimpse in that. But to your point about coming home during those times, the civilian side of that is you obviously we all kind of get complacent, we're going on with our lives, but we got to remember at that time that was the slogan. Remember, don't let the terrorists win, go to work, keep on living your life, got to keep the economy winning. Or that was the catchphrase they were all or the terrorists will win. This is what they want. And so that was kind of the propaganda towards the citizens at that time while you guys are there serving. It was keep on living your life, keep on going about. And when you get home, turn on CNN and Fox News. Well, I don't even think Fox is around there. So turn on CNN and the the uh four major news channels and get caught up on the war, but other than that, get back to work. And so I can definitely see how you guys were frustrated and like, what the hell? You know, we're we're over here fighting, you guys are just chilling here like nothing's going on. But it was almost like that was part of the the overall plan as far as the the uh government and keeping the economy going.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Jeff, that's so interesting that you bring up that story that that's how you felt, you know, in 2004, because um, you know, you mentioned like it kind of like made you angry that like seeing that like in the like being on the home front, because um, I just finished the chapter I started reading John Brunning's uh 53 Days on Starvation Island, and right away in the first few chapters of the book, they're talking about how the guys on Guadacanal, like kind of how Don mentioned Basilone, they all came home, you know, for like a war-bond tour, those pilots on Guadacanal, and you know, one of the characters, Marion Carl uh and John L. Smith, they're sitting there in like an Army Navy game or like an Army game, or I think it was like Alabama versus something like that, and they're just sitting there, you know, they hadn't even been on off Guadacanal for like three weeks, and here they are in America, stateside in a football stadium where it seemed like nobody was paying attention to what the guys were doing on Guadacanal. They're just cheering, and you know, these football players are getting in a fight on the field, and he's like, You're wasting this energy on each other, you know. That, you know, it's it's interesting that you bring that up, that it's like you felt that in O4's like the same feeling that these guys had way back then, you know, 4th of July aside, they were bringing him home in like November, December of 42, and they were feeling that exact same way too. It's just, you know, it's it's really interesting that you bring that up.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Not to go outside the realm of this particular campaign, but the very you'll all remember is in Platoon. Remember, he's talking about how he went home, and he's talking about how his language changed. Blank and A, Ma. Hand over these potatoes are effing great, Ma. And he was talking about how he had been in the system for so long and he got that vernacular, and he'd been in country for so long that when he got to go home, I think I don't remember if it was a furlough or medical, but he got to go home for a brief period of time before getting sent back. And he was talking about, you know, it was weird to him. Everybody was just going about, and here he is in that mood, and and how his mom was just completely caught off. But yeah, he was kind of explaining that same experience. So it's interesting clearly we have a separation, you know, Revolutionary War, Civil War, all the local war campaigns here that affects the home front very differently. But then once things move, World War II, World War I, Korean campaign, war on global, once the home front is not actively involved, it's you know, that's when those sort of feelings come up because they are not actively involved, and people get complacent and don't have at the top of mind things that they're not actively involved with. So we were looking at the calendar and all the different campaigns and events that happened around this general time during the span of World War II, and we figured we'd cover some of those and mention all of them. Um so I guess which one of you guys want to go first? I want to cover one at the end uh because I have a tendency to ramble. So I'll let you guys go and uh we'll start out. Maybe uh we'll start with Jeff, then we'll go to Zach, and then I'll I'll bring up the rear.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Sure. So yeah, like uh like Don mentioned, and the spirit of the uh 249th birthday of America coming up this week, uh, we wanted to kind of discuss some of the 4th of July dates that happened during World War II and some of those key campaigns and some of those wars within wars, uh, like Don mentioned earlier. Uh so uh, you know, listen, if if this is your first time listening to What's the Scuttlebet, number one, welcome. Uh number two, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Uh and before I get into this, Don, we got to fix something. Uh Zach needs a WTSP t-shirt.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

This is bad.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

I was gonna say that. Like, I mean I need more, I need more memorabilia and stuff. Yeah, but we can definitely do that. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And as a reminder, our audience need more WTSP content as well. And I have to say, we we're not very good marketing people. That's one of the things Zach's gonna help us out with. We don't mention that we do have a merch store, then head over to WTSPworldwar 2.com, click on the merch link. I think the merch link, uh there's a banner on the top of our page. I think if you click the arrow, you'll see Jeff and his crew on the train. I believe that's the thumbnail for the merch link. Click on that, it'll take you to our store. You can get hats, you can get the shirt that Jeff has, his beloved coffee mug, etc., etc. And so what we will do, we'll extend the same courtesy to Zach that we extend to our top-level tier Patreon members. If you sign up for Patreon and you choose the top tier after month two, we will send you a message saying, Hey, fella or lady, go to our merch store, pick out the t-shirt you want, tell us the size, the color, and which one you want, and your address, and we'll send one your way. So we'll do the same thing for Zach. And so, yeah, we have a big store. Um, I think we're gonna work on some Jeff and I were talking about this the other day. We want to work on some new shirt prints, maybe incorporate the Army Air Corps and their their logos or stylings. Who knows? Maybe we can come up with like a really cool WTSP kind of themed nose art shirt or something. We're gonna come up with some uh aviation variant WTSP shirts. I think it's been on a year and a half, two years since we've put out a new shirt. The last new shirt we have is the one Jeff has with the uh coffee guy. And so that one, but yeah, we will get um Zach a shirt and the like, some stickers and what have you. But yeah, um, so I end to Jeff's point, we do have some new listeners, and so welcome everybody, and um thanks for hanging out.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Yeah, all right. So uh for those of you who do know and have listened to this show, I'm huge on the air war, the 8th Air Force, and their contribution to the war effort. I feel like it cannot be uh talked about enough. So I chose July 4th, 1943, and I got this from the 100th bomb group uh website, 100th uh bg.com. Uh and this is an interesting time, uh, July of 1943, uh, within the 8th Air Force. Of course, as we know, this is still Ira Akers, 8th Air Force, right? So the bombing campaign's been going on for about a year, and it's almost, in my opinion, it's almost criminal what some of these guys are being put through. The strategic daylight bombing campaign uh that was really kind of the um the brainchild of General uh Anderson, if you will, General uh Orville Anderson, uh, as he was kind of the strategic um bombardment theorist. Uh so we were still kind of hooked on the um dropping those bombs down the picklebarrel, the the manufacturing facilities, the marshalling yards, the submarine pens at this time. That was still the main objective. And as we know, history has shown now, it's a whole different Eighth Air Force January, uh I'm sorry, uh July of 1944, a year later. We've got P-51s, we've got Jimmy Doolittle at the helm, completely changing our tactics. So, but we're still on that um let's bomb military industrial targets of opportunity. So on this particular day, July 4th, 1943, the field order uh called for an attack on the submarine base at La Palis near La Rochelle in the northwest coast of France. The mission order uh called for the maximum number of aircraft with long-range wing-tip fuel tanks to fly for the route flown was entirely over the water from the coast of England to landfall near Bordeaux, with low altitude maintained through the flight to escape detection by RDF. Now, at Thor Babbitt's where the 100th bomb group was uh stationed there, um just a couple days before, they got a new uh commander. So, and if you've seen Masters of the Air, you probably know Colonel Huglin. Uh he was relieved, I believe, on the 2nd of July. You know, he had the severe stomach ulcers. So uh Colonel Hardin comes in, Chick Harden, and you know, the all-American, right? He was he was on the Army football team back in the mid-20s. This guy was a real game changer. Uh so this is actually Colonel Harding's first mission uh uh in control of the 100th bomb group on the 4th of July 1943. So again, it's kind of a transition time period. Uh so 27-year-old Major John Egan would carry Brigadier General Anderson as a special observer in his fortress. General Anderson would be on his first combat mission over Europe. 31-year-old Robert Pearson was scheduled to fly the lead of the second element, and two of the new replacement crews who had just arrived at Thorpe Abbots on June 26th would also be flying their first combat missions under their leadership of the 21-year-old Owen Roan and Henry Hennington, both pilot and co-pilot for that crew. Uh, let's see, loaded with thousand-pound bombs, those flying with the other groups took off first in light fog, low visibility, because the 100th main formation of these teams followed. Off was without incident, although a haze caused some difficulty in assembling. So we have a little bit of a messy takeoff, uh, but pretty much clear skies over the channel. Uh, then things start to go awry. At the designated IP, the groups began their turn toward the target, but due to the large distance between the groups, confusion and converging courses also resulted at the IP and on the bombing run. During the climb to altitude, Robert Pearson's fortress experienced issues when his oil pressure ran dangerously low. Nursing his fortress along, he kept dropping lower and further behind the formation. His two wingmen followed him down until about 18,000 feet, but then they had to return to the formation. Observers said Pearson's bombed doors were open. His crew would recall that they their bombs were jettisoned in the water. And at about 5,000 feet, uh at 5,000 feet, Pearson told his crew that he would try and reach that small island of Ile de Laurent. As he would fly uh over the island with wheels down, the anti aircraft gunners opened up on his B-17. Pearson's bombardier John Dunbar was hit. After Pearson rang the bailout bell, his waste gunner, Lonnie Rutledge, moved toward the escape hatch and fell through, but getting caught in the gears. Pulled free by the engineer Jack Goss, they successfully bailed out before their B-17 crashed on the island. So uh all but Pearson's fortress would be counted in coming over Thor Babbitt's. Major John Egan would be grateful to just return with a sleeve torn off of his shirt. During the mission, he saw his top turret gunner John Shea's dangling feet, which meant that his oxygen hose had become disconnected. Collapsed, Shay's head had caught between the turret and the gun site, his hands still grasping the turret controls. Despite the fact that he was risking unconsciousness himself, Major Egan climbed into the narrow turret, replaced the gunner's oxygen supply, and narrowly missed death when the reviving man touched off the turret controls, setting the mechanism revolving. Both Major and Sergeant were sent spinning around, banging against the sides of the narrow passageway. By the time the pilot had stopped the wharring turret, the gunner had suffered a chip fracture of the hip bone, and Major Egan was minus a sleeve. Major Egan was quoted as saying, quote, I had visions of being ground up into one great meatball, but I'm going to miss that shirt. It was my Sunday best. End quote. Later on, Red Bowman would record in the 100th diary, quote, the 4th of July, and we celebrated with a raid on La Police, France. It was one of the most successful to date, and the men who came back from the raid all agreed they had never had more fun on the fourth or set off bigger firecrackers.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah, you don't get much bigger than that.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

Now it that is so on so many levels, that tells us so much, right? Um This is this is coastal France. This is what's considered a milk run, right? Um it's the 4th of July and you're still dealing with fog. Um the assembly point was a little messy. Once they hit the IP, it's even messier because of the time between the bomb groups taking off. We saw that all the time, right? Oh, yeah, this bomb group's gonna take off 15 minutes after us, and then they get grounded for two hours, and then they send them anyway. You know, like I said, it's just those, to me, those criminal, criminal thoughts that Bomber Command had to just go ahead with stuff and send these boys over there. It bothers me. Yeah. Um yeah. And then you see, but then you also see that kind of, you know, almost an immature feeling, right? Like they're still just boys that come back and, like, man, this is the best 4th of July we've ever had, bombing this uh submarine pen. But still, when we think of the heart of what the Eighth Air Force was doing and what they were supposed to do, bombing these U-boat pens probably really wasn't any different than Doolittle's raid over Tokyo or Osaka, right? Yeah. What did it do? Oh man, the enemy was like, wow, a lot of B-17s in the air, right? And just because we put maybe, let's say, the majority of those thousand-pound bombs into that mean point of impact, oh, that makes us feel good. Did we destroy any of those submarine pens? Probably not. So, again, this is a year into the aerial campaign, and we're still doing some of the same stuff that we've been doing for a year, bombing these submarine pens, thinking that we're actually taking out German industry or bombing a marshalling yard that's back in operation four weeks later. And it really just has to make people think, and and and I'll end it with this how is this relevant? How is this relevant today? Why, why, why care, right? I'm a history teacher. This is what we do. Why do we care about this? We just saw a week ago how a specific weapon carried by a specific aircraft, strategically placed. Now we saw at the end of World War II strategic bombing could end a war. What we see today, strategic bombing can prevent one. That's relevant. What these guys were doing, or not accomplishing, but what they were doing overall, was setting the stage for things like Operation Midnight Hammer, for things like a bunker buster hanging off of a B-2 to do what they just did in Iran. That's what these guys, that that's where this started. And this is where we learn all of the lessons, and we chewed up a lot of meat learning those lessons. And if it wasn't for those guys, hey, I mean, we we all talk about saving Private Ryan, right? We all talk about Band of Brothers and D-Day. Not a single German plane in the air, though. That's a big deal. Boots on the ground is not always our most valuable asset. We need those force multipliers, we need control of the skies. It's been proven in every campaign. And and again, to think about today, like how is this relevant today? But think about what we did with Midnight Hammer. Even just trying to keep it the uh the element of surprise, right? The element of surprise itself can be the most dangerous weapon. It can flip the tables when you're outnumbered and and outgunned. Um, that's a force multiplier in itself. And for us to keep something like that secret for the most part in today's world, that's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Now with social media and you know, it's like how do you keep troop movements and staging quiet? How do you tell your you tell your troops you're sending them to X and you're really sending them to W? I mean, there's gotta be a little subterfuge in order to keep things quiet, especially with how quickly stuff travels nowadays. Absolutely. And to Jeff's point, these subpins, I just saw a video on YouTube, I think a week ago, modern day drone footage. Forgive me, don't know what city in Germany, but they're showing a subpen today. The thing is so big, the concrete is so thick that even in 2025, no corporation could find enough value in this oceanfront property to to spend the amount of money that it would take to dissect this damn thing because the concrete and rebar is so thick and the structure, it takes the footprint, it's so huge that no one can justify the cost and the demolition of this thing to reuse the property. It would cost so much money to demolish this thing that they wouldn't make it back on whatever they possibly put there. So this thing's still sitting completely abandoned, and it doesn't look like it ever saw a bullet. But it's just, I think they're saying like eight to ten feet thick ceilings of pure poured concrete and rebars. Just you're not gonna go in there with a stick of dynamite and bring in some Las Vegas demolition crew. It's not gonna happen. And this thing's just sitting right there on oceanfront property to this day because it just got too it's just too big of a damn undertaking to get rid of.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

Yeah. And just it's it kind of combined the points that you guys were making. It's really interesting that Jeff brought up the point of um, you know, did did were any of these pens even destroyed? Um, you know, I read the actual book that's the miniseries is based off of Masters of the Air by Donald Miller. And that was one of the things, even lessons learned after the fact, why is that important? It's like, well, we learned that even like that scene, I'm glad they put it in the series where he holds up the ball bearing at like the briefing, and he's like, This right here is the reason, you know, we take care of these ball bearings, we destroy these factories, we destroy the German war machine. That wasn't necessarily the case at all. That they could have wasted, they wasted the better part of a year trying to target those installations when really Donald Miller near the end of the book is like that. When we look back in retrospect, you know, hindsight's always 20-20, but the things we were targeting with the daylight bombings that were so risky already, we weren't even really, were we making an impact necessarily? So it's like even those valuable lessons that we fought entire wars over is like, well, let's learn from what we targeted. You know, had they, you know, targeted maybe, I think he brings up, you know, railroad stations and things that supply running through Switzerland, like maybe if we would have targeted those, it would have slowed them down six months earlier. But it's just it's really interesting that you guys bring up that point, like lessons learned.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Well, it kind of brings up the questions like was there a little bit of hint of A, this is how we've always done it, and B, we got to do something. It's not really having we gotta do something. You know, we have to show people. I'm not saying that that was the case, but it makes you wonder to Jeff's point. It's like, well, if we're doing these daylight raids and we have very little to show for on our after action reports, are we doing this just to say we're doing it? Or what's the bigger plan here? But we'll never know. Because the people who made those decisions didn't write that down. Zach, what do you got for us, sir?

SPEAKER_03 28:48

All right, well, before I launch into mine, um, which is kind of like a little uh two-part July 4th story, um, I just want to make a couple comments about Jeff pointing out the uh the merch. Really appreciate it. I was gonna bring that up too. Need some what's the scuttle butt merch. But also speaking to possible new audience members, uh, this is one thing I would like to mention because not a lot of people know this, and and I've gotten this a lot being the editor-in-chief of the LST scuttlebutt, no relation uh to the podcast. But a lot of people don't know what the word scuttle butt means. And because it was such a widely used term back then, you know, back in the 1940s, the common you know, way to refer to the word rumors uh was scuttlebutt. You know, kind of what's what's the scuttle butt dope? You know, what's what's the latest rumors? What do you got? So uh I know that that's kind of a fun fact that I like to point out for for readers that are new to the scuttle butt.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Um and at that point in the 90s, the catchphrase was water cooler talk. But the interesting point about that is a scuttle butt was an early Navy ship, it was a water bladder that was, you know, it was a butt that had a hole in it with plugs, and the the sailors would go down there and that's where they would get their drinks. A scuttle butt and the the maritime terms way back in the day was a scuttle butt. So it's kind of it all comes in full circle, you know. That's it's kind of the water cooler talk, or what's the what's the you know, as Zach just said, the dope, or the word on the street if we're coming from the seven eighties and seventies, you know. Or what's the 411 if you're coming from the 90s? I don't know what the Gen Z or say, but yeah, that's what the scuttle butt is. Originally I was gonna go with pogebait. I was gonna call the show poge bait, but uh I figure that's a little too deep that people wouldn't know what the hell that meant.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Well, I'm glad you pointed that out because that's also another one, too. There's so many different phrases. We could spend a whole show on just the different slang that they used back then in the military. There's so many different ones, but um so to get into my story, so it wouldn't be, since Dennis isn't here tonight, it wouldn't be a World War II podcast discussion with either him or I present if we didn't talk about the LCIs. So this is a two-part story. Uh the July how Jeff was explaining July 4th, 1943 in Europe. I'm gonna take you around the globe what was happening on the other side of the world on that exact same day. So he told you July 4th, 1943 in Europe. I'm gonna take you July 4th, 1943 in the Pacific. So July 4th, 1943. They just got done taking Guadacanal and the Russell Islands in the South Pacific and the Solomon Islands. And the next target was a little small island called New Georgia. It's a group of little islands. Talking about, you know, Don mentioned earlier these small campaigns that are pretty much all but forgotten today. Nobody really knows much about the New Georgia campaign, but that was really, really important as well. So that was like the springboard that they needed to eventually get to Bougainville, to eventually get to Rabal, you know, with the South Pacific Force. So why was July 4th, 1943, important or significant for New Georgia? Well, that was the LCIs, for those who don't know. It was a little Navy vessel, landing craft infantry. That was the LCI's big debut. You gotta remember, in the beginning of World War II, the amphibious force didn't exist. They needed to develop all these different landing craft, like the Higgins boats, the LCVPs, the LCIs, the LSTs, all these abbreviations for these landing ships, they were brand new. They'd never used them before. All of these landings are now going to be like the first landings for all these different types of landing ships. And July 4th just happened to be the LCI's big debut. That was the first time that they were used in the war. They came all the way across the Pacific. And the first LCI flotilla that was used in action was LCI Flotilla 5. So that was my grandpa's flotilla group. And so what happened on this day? Well, it was the big invasion of New Georgia. They brought in the entire group, group 14 of Flotilla 5 to land troops, and they landed on the northern side of Rendova. And everything was kind of going according to plan until about two in the afternoon. Now, my grandpa, Stephen Gansberger, he was on the LCI 329. Their little group, they had just pulled off of the beach at this time, and out of nowhere, 16 enemy bombers, Japanese bombers, a mix of Sally bombers and Betty bombers, came over the landing where they had just dropped off all these different troops from the 169th Battalion. There was a bunch of Seabees that were dropped off. So the beach was crowded with men and supplies. And so these 16 bombers flew overhead. And you want to talk about all the veterans that were there, always talk about the 4th of July fireworks show from that day. Because once these 16 bombers flew over them, every ship in the harbor, all of the anti-aircraft guns on the island, they all started firing at the same time. And you have to remember that back then, I think it was like every third or every fifth bullet, depending on the gun, was a tracer bullet. It had that streak of light behind it, so you could see where you were aiming. It helped with aiming. So you can only imagine what the sight of thousands and thousands of tracers all going at these planes at the same time, what that must have looked like. Every veteran I've ever interviewed or I've come across from that day, the men who were there, they say kind of what you alluded to earlier, that was the best 4th of July fireworks show I'd ever seen in my life. Like nothing ever compares to that. But it was sad too because why else was that significant? Well, since it was the first time LCI Flotilla 5 and the LCIs in general landed men in the Pacific, this just happened to be the day where the first LCI casualties happened. And so one of the things that these bombers did, these Japanese bombers, that was kind of unique for that time is they started to drop what later in Vietnam became known as like daisy cutters. So these bombs that would explode right over the landing, these men's heads, like maybe a couple hundred feet up, they would explode, and all the shrapnel and these razor blades and all the sharp things would come down and it would just explode over it. And unfortunately, they dropped the bombs directly on top of the LCIs, and it caused all sorts of casualties in the CBs and the Army. But there were three LCI sailors that were killed in action that day. Ernest A. Wilson of the LCI 24, Malin F. Paulson of the LCI 24, and Hurley E. Christian of the LCI 65, which about a year later became my grandpa's ship. He went from the 329 to the 65. And so it was some of the saddest interviews that I've done from the men from the 24, uh, especially Lewis Plant. He recently passed away. Uh he it was his friend, both of them, Malin Paulson and Ernest Wilson, were both of his friends. But the interview that he gave me was so moving because he he talked about how they were all patriotic and they were so excited to see action. They couldn't, they couldn't wait to, you know, get an action against the Japanese. But then after that day, he they never asked about seeing action again because he had to go aboard Randova and bury his friend, um, Malin Paulson, who was the radio man, who he said if he wouldn't have left that radio room, if he just would have stayed in there and maybe hit the deck, he probably would have stayed alive. But he heard the bombings above and he ran out of the radio room and and just opened the door of that deck house and peeked out to see what was happening. And the moment that he opened that door to peek out, the daisy cutters went off and it I caught a piece of shrapnel in the head. And unfortunately, he he was killed in action. And and Lewis Plant had to go bury him uh on Randova. And and that was just it was really sad. It was really significant though, because uh after that, the whole flotilla, everybody who was there, it it really meant business after that. There was none of this, none of the propaganda that you got back in America, you know, the the the misconceptions about the Japanese soldier at the time or the Japanese pilot, like they really learned firsthand what this war looks like and what it's all about. And so um, for anybody who's interested, I have a plethora of interviews that I spliced into a YouTube video. If you want to learn more about that particular day, um I I have a YouTube video uh at Zach underscore editor that you can check out uh that tells more. But so that was the LCI's big debut. So that was part one of the story. So then let's fast forward to one year later, June, July 1944. And we're gonna talk about a different LCI group. So it's a shame Dennis isn't here because he talks about it in his book, Bonsai Cliff, great terrific book, which is specifically about the Battle of Saipan. So why was the Battle of Saipan so significant? Well, in June of 1944, the invasion kicked off on June 15th, but Saipan was the very first battle or invasion that took place in Operation Forager, which was the Marianas Islands campaign. And why did the Allies, why did they go after this little group of islands in the middle of the Pacific? Well, it was because their location in particular was just in range for the new B-29 Super Fortress, the American Allied bomber that they were going to use now to bomb Tokyo, to bomb mainland Japan. And they needed these islands, and they needed Saipan in particular because of its location. It springboard to Guam, it's springboard to um the um Kenyan, the other one that they ended up invading. So that was that was a very significant battle. But then it also led to a few days later, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which was also known as the Great Marianas Turkey Chute, or you know, basically for those another phrase back then, a turkey chute, basically a giant ass kicking, a one-sided ass kicking. So that's and they they basically wiped out the effectively wiped out the Japanese carrier-based air power uh once that battle kicked off, too. So that was happening offshore as the Marines were fighting on Saipan. But for those who want to learn more, it it's it's a terrible battle, also, because it's one of the significant things that happened was mass civilian suicides. Uh so the Japanese, speaking of propaganda, the natives who lived on Saipan, the Japanese got there first and they filled their heads with all these feeble things that America would do if they captured the island. They're gonna torture you, they're gonna kill you, they're gonna bayonet your children, your little babies. You know, so so whatever you do, don't surrender. All these other uh terrible things they filled their heads with. And when the Americans did finally invade and they realized they were gonna capture the island, a lot of these civilians on Saipan that they committed suicide by hurling themselves off these cliffs. And most of them occurred on the very northern end of the island at this Marpe point. And Dennis does a great job in his book talking about what it was like for the men in the LCIs in Flotilla in group eight of Flotilla 3 having to witness this. Because of course, these Americans are horrified watching this happen off the coast. And they're doing their best to try to use megaphones or loudspeakers to try to say, hey, we're not gonna do anything, you know, please surrender, please don't kill your children, please don't kill yourselves. And they didn't listen and they did it anyway. And it was, there was a lot of battles that dealt with civilian deaths, but this one in particular was very, very unique. And like I said, anybody that wants to learn more about the Battle of Saipan, please check out Dennis Blocker's book, Bonsai Cliff. And if you do also want to learn, just you're the type of historian, maybe you had a relative at Saipan, maybe you want to learn more. There's a couple other books that aren't about Saipan, but they have really good chapters about Saipan in there. One of them is William Manchester's Good by Darkness, and then the other one is uh Colonel Joseph Alexander's Storm Landings. That's another really good one that has uh specific chapters about Saipan. Um so again, the LCIs were so important, and you don't really get their perspectives very often, but when you do, it's all I rec I highly recommend checking them out. So that was that was a July story, two years apart, that was that was very significant for the Allies in World War II.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

And to that point where you're saying about the civilian casualties and civilian deaths, um obviously the impact's even worse when it's done voluntarily, quote unquote. But I think there's been thousands of interviews where even the most hardened combat veterans say, you know, it's one thing to see a combatant in a uniform die in war, but it's completely different to see the the civilians, the the innocents, the people who are caught up in this war who have no choice in the matter. It's always harder to see them go through that, you know, comparatively speaking. Because as I just said, you know, they don't have a choice in matter, they're just literally in the wrong place at the wrong goddamn time. And it's just heartbreaking, especially when kids and families are involved.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Oh yeah. And there's one in particular that that Dennis writes about that it's like a civilian that it's so sad because this woman, she she threw her two children off the cliff, and just as she was taking a running start to hurl herself off the cliff, like they basically tackled her and captured her, and then America captured the island, and you know, it and basically she ended up doing it for nothing. And you could tell they came back decades later and she was still around. And you know, just bigot you could tell that it just still she was still torn up about it years later. And it's like that's just one story among a host that existed for how many civilians were on that island at the time.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah, and the overall just sense of the sense of helplessness, right?

SPEAKER_03 42:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

So before I get into mine, uh just a few other things that happened around the um the time. So 1942, um actually that's June. Uh here we go. 1943, Operation Husky, invasion of Sicily, happened between July 9th and July 10th. So right around this area, uh preparation buildup, and the days leading to the 4th of July, Allied forces were assembling in North Africa for Operation Husky, the massive amphibious assault on Sicily. Um, we are all familiar with uh June 6th, you know, that ran all the way up into July, which would have been Operation Overlord, 1945, um, from July 4th, right around July 4th, all the way up till July um No, that one's yeah, I'm sorry. Uh Battle of Okinawa ends. End date was June 22nd, rev the re revellence to July 4th. Though the battle concluded a couple weeks earlier, the U.S. was transitioning to the final phases of the Pacific War, preparation for the invasion of Japan. Uh the strategic impact, Okinawa served as a staging area for the planned invasions of the Japanese home island, which ultimately preempted the atomic bombing. The one that I'm going to talk about today is a little interesting because obviously, as we said, for Jul July 4th is an American holiday because it represents our our independence. But we'd be remiss not to talk about one of the biggest battles of that time, particularly armored battle, which is the Battle of Kursk between the Germans and the Russians. And the Amount of people involved in this because Germany was trying to put a hold on the Eastern Front and not spend as much personnel there so they can concentrate on you know the Western front and what's going on over in France and you know um the Normandy invasions and all that. But the amount of people involved in this operation. So uh quick breakdown. After the devastating defeat of Stalingrad 1942 and 43, Nazi Germany sought to regain and regain the initiative of the Eastern Front. By spring of 1943, Adolf Hitler and the German High Command planned a major offensive aimed at eliminating the bulge in the Soviet lines around Kursk, the city of Western Russia. The bulge, if you will, was created during the previous Soviet advances. The plan dubbed Operation Citadel aimed at encircling and destroying Soviet forces' position there, thereby weakening Soviet momentum and stabilizing the German front. However, Soviet intelligence, aided by local partisan and British Ultra program, had foreknown of the offensive and prepared massive defensive belts. He makes basically made about six or seven what they're calling belts, but think of it like kind of a smaller Majno line, if you will, without the concrete blocks. But these are different defensive perimeters, fallback points, if you will, made up of buried tanks or just the turrets throughout. You had landmines, different defensive positions. But throughout this bulge in the map, kind of like I was saying, it's kind of like the battle of the bulge, but the bulge went the opposite direction. Um, so Russia uh the Germans were kind of planning on making this attack, but as I said, the the uh Soviet intelligence with the uh assistance of Britain caught on to the plan. Start day with July 5th, 1943, went all the way to August 23rd, 1943, approximately seven weeks. German offensive, um, Operation Citadel. Those involved. Here's the layout, if you will, because this this is a huge battle to get into in a small little segment on this podcast. Maybe we'll do a whole episode, but just the here's an overview on equipment and and um those involved. German forces, total of 900,000 soldiers, tanks and assault guns, they have between 2,700 to 3,000. I heard reports that that was the amount of um artillery and um tanks that they have, but a lot of them weren't in battle order, so they could have possibly been down to 1,500. This included Panzer Force, Tigers, Panthers, and the Ferdinand effant tank destroyers, artilleries that had 10,000 guns and mortars, aircraft 2,000, primarily uh Luftwaffe IV and Luftwaffe 6. Notable German units involved were the 4th Panzer Army, led by uh General Hermann Hoth, the 9th Army, led by General Walter Maudell, um, and the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, Soviet forces. You want to talk about outnumbered. So we just said there's roughly about 900,000 soldiers on the German side, which is not a small force by any caliber, but because this is Soviet territory, they had between 1.9 and 2 million soldiers spread throughout those regions. Um, tanks and self-propareled guns, they had between 5,000 and 6,000, including T-34s, KV-1s, SU-76s, and SU-122s. They had 20,000 guns and mortars in our artillery arsenal. Aircraft, about 2,800 from the Soviet forces and the VSS. Um, let's see, no key engagements. The battle of I'm gonna slaughter this and I apologize. The Pro Prokova, uh, one of the largest tank battles in history, took place south of Kursk between German 2 SS Panzerkorp and the Soviet Fifth Guard Tank Army. Resulted in heavy losses on both sides, but the Germans' advance was halted. The outcome and significance of these battles that lasted for these seven weeks. Um, technically it was a Soviet victory, right? They stopped the German advance. They were able to actually retake some land that the Germans had been holding on to. Um, this marked the end of the German strategic offensive uh capabilities in the East. Soviet Red Army began a series of continuous offenses pushing towards Eastern Europe and eventually Berlin. This just demonstrated the effectiveness of the deep Soviet defense combined with the industrial might and intelligence. And let's be honest, thanks to the Lin Least program, we were able to help provide them with some of the hardware involved for this. Uh, the Battle of Kursk was the largest-scaled German offensive on the Eastern Front and marked a turning point in World War II. The massive scale men and machine involved made it one of the largest battles in history. It demonstrated the Soviet Union's ability to absorb a counter-attack, shifting the balance of power prematurely. And so this was a significant battle, and just the amount of tanks involved and human loss involved is just tremendous. And but it was that time that it really kind of, you know, the Russians were hoping this would kind of speed up the end of the war, and the argument could be made that it definitely helped them move into Berlin a lot quicker than if um they didn't have those those that time to build those seven belts to stop the uh the German offense. And quite honestly, thanks to their intelligence and the intelligence provided by you know the Allies to help prevent that attack from going forward quicker than it did. And the Russians were, I mean, the Germans were definitely caught off guard by the amount of um Russian hardware. One of the things that helped Russia in this battle is the summer before they actually got a hold of a tiger tank and they got a hold of it, and they were checking it out, and they're trying to fight figure out the weak spots where they found that the front driver's side window slit, if you will, and the commander port, if you hit them maybe once with a decent sized piece of artillery, that slit would open up and then make room for a better round. And that's how they were trying to take out these German tanks, was just trying to fire into those vision slits on the driver's side and the commander post up in the turret. And because they had the success of capturing one of those early on, they had time to figure out the weak points, which let's be honest, those tanks didn't have a whole hell of a lot of weak points. They definitely had a lot of armor on them.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

Oh, yeah, that's that's really interesting that you bring that up, Dehan, because uh one uh another contributing factor to why you know Russia was able to succeed and Germany ultimately failed. One of my one of the craziest stories I heard uh from a book I read, it wasn't even a World War II book. It was uh Morgan Hausel's The Psychology of Money. He has a chapter where he talks about over the winter the Russian uh or I'm sorry, the German tanks that were outside of Stalingrad, you know, before they started moving, the rats ate away at like the the the wires of the tanks and stuff. So they had an entire almost a couple panzer divisions where they couldn't even use them. They could they couldn't salvage any parts, they couldn't get them moving, they couldn't do anything because you know they didn't think about the fact that these vulnerabilities, like you talked about, these exist. Like sometimes you have to think outside the box. What could go wrong? Let's play some war games here. What what is some vulnerabilities? You mentioned that that slit on the tank, just like the wiring. You know, can it can rats or mammals get in here and eat away at this? And they ultimately did. And it's just it's little things like that that it's just nobody really ever thinks about. And it's just how much of a difference that can make, especially because you said that particular Eastern Front, we hear so much of the Allies with thousands and tens of thousands of guys, they had millions, they had millions of men on each side that were fighting each other. It's like I can't even extrapolate that in my mind. I can't even imagine what a battle with millions at a time looked like. It's just it really is wild when you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Literally cities attacking cities. And um, one of the other things that the High Command of Russia did that was smart is because they had access to this German tank and realize your armament, they said early on, hey, in this defensive, let's not shoot our self-propelled rockets, look like tanks, let's be honest, and our tanks at their tanks. If by all chance, let's try to use our our artillery and our tanks on their infantry. And it just so happened to work that the German infantry kind of outran the movements of the tanks up this in one of the huge battles up this kind of this hill where the Russians had the high ground. And because of the the soil conditions and the infantry kind of moved quicker than their tanks, they were able to do just that and use their artillery primarily against the German infantry and not lose their equipment trying to do head-on battles with tanks that they know that they couldn't take out. And so they strategically tried to use their artillery and their armament against smaller equipment and uh humans opposed to trying to go head to head. That's why they just buried them up to their turrets. Like, there's we're not gonna outrun these. So let's hide them as best we can and use them strategically, and it it proved to work out well for 'em.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

I think about the logistics of that. Trying to give these guys food. Um yeah, or fuel for the tanks. I mean, tanks are great, but you know, they don't run on chocolate bars. So the amount of you know, they say it's something like seven or eight to every one guy on the ground is what it takes, right? Seven or eight other bodies behind you, supporting you, uh, feeding you, making sure you've got ammunition, fuel all of those, you know, the classes of supply. It just blows my mind how many others did it take. If you've got 900,000 Germans, how many others are making sure these guys have proper gear? Or or didn't. You know, maybe they didn't have some of those reasons.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Yeah, we know the Russians weren't exactly too touchy-feely with the uh needs of their men. I mean, we've all heard a story where you get a rifle, you get some ammo, he gets shot. Congratulations, you got yourself a rifle. But to Jeff's point, now we know that through Lindley's they had Shermans, but not a whole lot of Shermans were mentioned in this particular battle. So, with that being said, I don't know what the standard tank crew of a Russian tank crew was that when they weren't using Shermans. I'm imagining it's probably still the same four or five guys, but that's four or five guys in a single tank that you have to feed. So not only you got to feed that tank the fuel to get it there, but that one battle unit has four subunits inside that need water, that need food, that need clothing. So that one little tiny tank is almost a small city in and of itself when it comes to Jeff's mention of logistics and and getting these guys fed and the equipment they need. It's just a tremendous amount of effort and work. Yeah, such a lot of things.

SPEAKER_04 54:55

And communications.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:57

Communication. How do you how do you communicate? You know, you got a flank that's caving in. How do you get enough, how do you have enough time to say, hey, we're reak, we're we're weak on the right side, I gotta pull resources from the left. By the time word gets there, right? And these guys mobilize, it's it's too late. It's interesting. Yeah. For for some of these, you know, and I'm thinking like lower level, you know, company grade officers, right? These these um these lieutenants and these captains, uh, these company commanders. How do you manage? You'd have to think so far ahead because of the lag of communication and then the lag that of whatever you're trying to relay to your men, you know, you've got maybe two, you know, 200, 250 guys under your command in a in a company-sized element. That's just seems that's just that just sounds like a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 55:50

And to that point, we've we've heard the stories that even on the American side, right, when we had the quote unquote the highest best technology, that there was always communications with the radio equipment that was on these tanks. You know, you got air cover coming in, they're dropping short, trying to communicate. You can only imagine what that was like in Russian and German, you know, on the Russian side where they're you got two million guys out there, 2,000 planes in the air. I'm sure there's a little bit of friendly fire, and like like Jeff said, lack of communication. I mean, just the uh a battle on that scale that lasted seven weeks, just slogging it out is just insane. I couldn't even imagine. And to I mean, and then that region in and of itself, how many different battles throughout history has come through those lands? I mean, those the poor people in those areas is just I mean, it's just in their history going way back.

SPEAKER_03 56:46

Oh yeah. Logistics is something that nobody really ever thinks about, and that's you guys bring up some great points there. It's like what does it take to arm and feed and supply millions of men? That's it's just wild when you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

And especially places like Russia at that time, right? I mean, that's why they r relied so heavily on Lind Leases because they didn't, you know, to man they had manufacturing, but not at the scale that we did. And so, I mean, you have all these people trying to feed your your population plus feed your military. And to have that large scale of troops, it's just it's unimaginable. And let's be honest, they had accountants with like abacuses, you know. We weren't, you know, they weren't there with their latest computers running spreadsheets on how to get this crap done. You had guys pencils and pens and protractors and abacuses and Texas instrument, whatever premium version of a calculator they had at the time to to do all this stuff, and it's all being delivered via rudimentary communications and runners, and just like Jeff said, you know, you want to move this battalion of tanks to this area. How long from the thought and the planning room to the initiation and the movement of how what was that time span? It's just when you think of it like that, it's like, well, I guess seven weeks wasn't that I mean, as as quick as communications. I mean, it's it's just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_03 58:28

Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. That it's like in the day, uh in the days now, the modern days of satellites and like you said, spreadsheets and things like that, that did not exist back then. Really, the only only means of communication are you know the wired telephones, which I mean, those get cut all the time, they were saying in World War II, and you know, radio. I mean, radios broke down all the time, and that was a risk, because back then you could triangulate radio, where if a guy was risked radioing something in a tank, he might be a target uh 30 seconds later, you know, or you said a runner, and it's like how how efficient is that with millions of boots on the ground? You know, it's it's just yeah, that's another thing no one thinks about. It was in a time a rudimentary time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

And here we are having a little podcast where the three of us are in three geo three different zip codes in two different states, and sometimes we'll have you know a guest on on the other side of the planet, and you know, with the with the little difference of a half a second delay, here we are, entertaining an audience, and they're trying to conduct a world war with papers and runners, and you know, you gotta have a language where you can't say certain words because the radio communication was so shoddy that you didn't want to say the word number five because someone might think you said fire, and you know, so you have to redact certain words from your vocabulary to prevent you know miscommunications over this rudimentary technology that was all they had, which was high flutant at that time. It's just when you think of the amount of what got done with the technology available to them, it's just it's just it's mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

That's another really good point that you bring up, Don, is the fact that it wasn't just as simple. Even when they could communicate, it wasn't as simple as like, hey, bomb this area right now. It's they spoken code, they had a phonetic alphabet. If you you'd had to spell something out with code, sometimes, you know, a lot places in the Pacific, they're using Navajo code talkers to be able to communicate these messages because it's like it wasn't just as simple as saying something on a radio, it was coded and encrypted. And so so just multiply the difficulty of that and apply that to you know a battlefield where you're getting you know explosions and being fired at. Like I can't even imagine you know, keeping your head in a situation like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

I know you've I know you've used an EE8 field telephone at a museum. I have two of them. I had one set up at a at the uh D-Day event. Brand new batteries, brand new wires. There's no gunfire, there's no bombings, there's a few people. What? Yeah, can you hear me? I mean, you're standing at a museum with some people around talking, and the quality is so low, the power is so low with brand new modern-day D cell batteries, granted, it's not hooked up to a switchboard. But could you imagine trying to communicate with those when you got hundreds of rifles, submachine guns, 30 cows, mortar bombs going off? And that's huh. I mean, they're not they're not the loudest form of communication.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:26

I can definitely imagine communicating under fire with a really hot new Motorola and a lapel mic.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Yeah, could you imagine that with uh with an old handset made by Kellogg running through some two two paired wire that has already been spliced together 18 times because it keeps getting bombed?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:47

I mean, here's the thing to keep in mind though, bullets didn't bullets weren't slower. No communication was, but bullets weren't. So it's a whole nother dimension.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:57

Yeah. So somebody who's been carrying a firearm for over 13 years daily, one of the biggest inconveniences is when you come home, you need to take your firearm off of yourself and put it somewhere safe, somewhere secure, especially if you have kids. Now, I know most of us are responsible. We have a gun safe somewhere, but let's be honest, usually these gun safes are big, they're bulky, they're kind of out of the way because they are a bit of an eye sore. Your wife doesn't want them where everybody can see them. So sometimes in your closet behind some clothes, sometimes in the garage, sometimes in the mud room. And let's be honest, taking your firearm out and walking to those locations to secure it is a pain in the butt. But you have to be a responsible firearm owner, especially if you have kids in the house. That's why you need to get yourself a stopbox pro portable gun safe. You can make it non-portable, you can drill some holes in it, mount it to a place of convenience in your house, but it requires no batteries and no electricity. You simply come to your house, walk up your safe, choose your finger button combinations, open a safe, remove your firearm from your person, put it in the safe, close your safe, just that easy, it's secure. So do yourself a favor, head over to stopboxusa.com forward slash D410 and get all the information today on your stopbox pro. When seconds count, trust the only non-fail firearm storage box, stopbox pro at stopboxusa.com forward slash D410. So uh Jeff, it's been a while. What you reading?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

Oh yeah, so uh I want to talk about this and I want to talk about I just a quick uh I want to announce something to you guys. I've been itching all all episode, and I didn't want to mention anything before we started recording. I wanted to kind of you know let everybody know at the same time kind of thing. Uh, but first, what am I reading? So uh as you guys know, I'm about to do my capstone to finally get my bachelor's in history, right? All right. It's been a while. So I got my thesis approved and everything, and it's shocker. Um, the justification of the uh bombing campaign in World War II, uh, specifically the campaign in 1944 and 1945 that got away from let's bomb uh concrete subpen. And I know this sounds cruel, um, but this these are the things that had to be done. Um bombing places like Dresden, of course, Nagasaki, Hiroshima. It it there's nothing moral about war. Uh so therefore there's nothing moral about bombing these cities. The only moral aspect is it's less moral to let that type of war go on. So that's the basis of my of my thesis. Um so uh I've been reading everything I can about it, and I picked up this book. I didn't even know I had this book on the shelf. It's not even in the right section, it's under my Pacific section. It's like it just spoke to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

So what you're saying is your Dewey Decimal system has failed you completely, and you need to fire your librarian.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:52

Uh absolutely. I need to get old Hoover in here and organize things for me. Um, so it's just called the United States Air Force. Uh, it's the first edition I've got here uh from 1976 by Herbert Molloy Mason Jr. Nothing special about this book. It's a boring blue hardbound book, although I do love hardbound books. But it's it's so interesting. It takes you from uh the very beginning of the book, talks about Orville Wright and a Lieutenant Selfridge, who was a cavalry officer interested in in aviation, and their plane crash uh while trying to sell the flyer to the United States Army. I didn't know any of this happened. I didn't know Orville Wright was involved in an accident. Uh Wilbur was actually overseas trying to do the same demonstration in France. Uh and so here's Orville and this really kind of ahead of his time uh lieutenant in the U.S. cavalry um that really saw this kind of almost from a prophetic standpoint now, of course, but Boy, this this could really, really help out the ground troops, right? This is this is an interesting piece of equipment. In 1907, the plane crashes, Orville busts some ribs. I think he breaks a leg. Lieutenant Selfridge uh mumbles, get this darn thing off my back. Uh, you know, when they crashed into the dirt. Uh, and that's the last words he muttered. He's the first person killed in an airplane crash. This this army lieutenant. Uh, so then it kind of takes you through just that floundering process of everybody else is kind of like harnessing this new technology, and the United States military is like not buying it, not buying into it, not seeing the value. You know, the rights actually went off uh kind of in hiding for almost like two years. They just boxed up the right flyer and were like, well, we'll try to make money somewhere else, I guess. Nobody wants this thing. Um, and then it takes you into World War I, um, where it was just again, the American military decision making at this time, and the corporations, we were pulling guys that worked for like Packard Motor Company and Ford, of course, and all these big corporations to kind of build this board of directors as to how best to manufacture airplanes. What you know, what factories are we gonna um use to uh meet the needs of the French? It was essentially the French that said, look, you guys have the means to do this. No other country does. We need so many thousands of engines, so many thousands of airplanes delivered every month. A year goes by, and it's the man who actually created Mount Rushmore, was a good friend of President Woodrow Wilson, and he's kind of that eccentric millionaire. He was interested in aviation, and he kind of does a deep dive. Like, so what is going on? How is our progress, Mr. President, with delivering uh airplanes to our boys in France? Again, this is right before the U.S. got involved. Now, Pershing is is on the ground. You know, we've got, you know, of course, like doolittles there, right? Like right before our um involvement in World War I, before April of 17. Um, and this board goes, oh crap, we haven't actually delivered a single airplane. Not a single one.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:25

So, yeah. So, what they do is we had a De Havland that was sent to the United States to kind of use for reverse engineering, so we could say, okay, this is the type of plane, like this is what we need to build motors for, the Liberty Motors. Um, we were gonna build these eight-cylinder motors, and instead of building 30 different types of motors, American Ingenuity, let's build one, make it versatile. We found out early on the eight-cylinder is not gonna make it, so then we shifted immediately to 12 cylinders. Okay, we need a 12-cylinder, we need a stronger, stronger motor. And the board was like, oh crap, we yeah, we haven't delivered anything. Let's take that to Havilland, put it back together, and ship it over there. And they reported that an undisclosed amount of aircraft was en route to France as we speak.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:12

One airplane.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:13

Wow. Ironically enough, the ship that it was crated on was sunk en route, and it never actually made it there. No way. This is right before we get involved. So, I mean, you think about the Lenlease, that was light years ahead of what we were trying to do for the French and and the Royal Flying Corps in 1915 and 16. We just were like, we just didn't have it. And so this book kind of points it out. It goes through the air war, World War II, uh, Pacific and European theater, but it's just a great background book, early aviation, World War I, and the interwar years called the United States Air Force.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:51

You know, I can totally understand not having the foresight to understand the benefit of using these airplanes as a mode of delivering weapon systems, but just the the logistics and intelligence, the fact that you can have a above-ground view of the battlefield and you're the only one who potentially is going to have it, yeah, there's no value in that. We got ladders in those hollow trees that we climb up and we got good binoculars. Who needs it? Who needs these newfangled flying machines that give us a bird's eye, literally a bird's eye view of the battlefield? Because that's the way we've always done it. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:33

Pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

So, Zach, what do you got going on in uh your library there, fella?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

Oh wow. So, well, first I gotta say, well, congratulations to Jeff. That sounds like that's gonna make an incredible thesis. Like uh actually envy your teacher who actually he's probably gonna love he or she is probably gonna love that reading that. So that's that's great. Best of luck to you on that. So uh on the topic of what I'm reading, I before I go into what I'm reading um that I touched on a little bit earlier, um, I want to tell you about the two books that I just finished. Um one of them I believe I I mentioned about a week or two ago, Beyond the Beachhead by Joseph Balkowski. I just finished that. That's the story of the 29th Infantry Division in Normandy, and that is just one of the most incredible books I've ever read. Uh, he does such a great job explaining every little detail what happened to the 29th after all after they landed on Omaha. Um but then the second book I just finished. I gotta give a shout out to my best friend Brian. He's the one who got me the book. Uh, wandered into Barnes Noble and and saw one that looked great. It's called Ghosts of Honolulu by Mark Harmon, the guy who actually played Special Agent Gibbs in NCIS. I had no idea he was an author. So uh that one is the story about the the Allied effort in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or I should say Oahu, Hawaii, that island, the effort of the Allies to try to catch the spy that was basically feeding Japanese the information on the American fleet movements and how many battleships were in Pearl Harbor. Um I I I've read so many books on Pearl Harbor, that was the first one that actually was the story about the hunt for that spy and the in-depth story of that Japanese spy. You don't really get that very often. Usually you just get surface level touched on in most Pearl Harbor books. It was such an amazing book. So I highly recommend that. Thank you, my friend Brian, for getting me that. Ghosts of Honolulu by Mark Harmon is the name of that. Uh, so what I'm reading currently.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:22

Real quick, while you're while we're still on that before we move on, I sure trying to remember the name of the book, but I'm sure he probably brought it up in that book. People don't realize, you know, we talk about the the grossness of internment camps and was it really necessary? Um, I didn't realize this until I read the a different book. I can't remember the title off of hand, but the population of Hawaii at the time had more first and second generation Japanese uh immigrants than uh Native Hawaiians or even Americans, Europeans, like it was a majority of the population of those islands were first and second generation, you know, the Japanese and the Nisis, they called the second generation. And to Zach's point in that book, you're trying to find these spies who are giving out this information in a uh chain of islands that the quote unquote enemy j uh, you know, uh their populations making up this island. It's once you consider that, and then the uh the uh population density in California and Arizona and even Mexico at the time, it doesn't justify it, but it makes it a little easier to understand why that decision was made in an effort to uh to prevent uh you know spies and information getting out on troop movements, especially when you're California all the way up and down the coast was a huge uh shipping off point for our our ships and our troops, let alone staging for the Marines and Army and and the aforementioned logistics. You got everything heading from the east coast to going west. You know, you can't you gotta stop that risk, go loose lips sinking ships.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:04

Thank you so much for bringing that up because that book does go into it in great detail. That's like the major structure of the story of the protagonists who they focus on. This kind of like these these conflicts that come up or these differences that happen between the first generation and the second generation Americans that are that are Japanese Americans that were in Hawaii at the time. Because you're right, they they vastly outnumbered everybody else, and it wasn't even close. And but that played into it too. That that there was so much of that of that that was important that that book touched on. So thank you for mentioning that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:34

Yep. Do you want your second book?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:37

Okay, so uh now that I went over those two, the Beyond the Beach and Ghosts of Honolulu, uh, I'll touch on what I'm currently reading right now. Um, so I mentioned it a little bit earlier. Uh John Bruning's new book, 53 Days on Starvation Island. Incredible. And I might have misspoke earlier. I think I might have said in my example, the Army Navy game. It was an Army Navy now that I think about it. It was uh Georgia Tech versus Alabama, was the football game that they were at that that John L. Smith and Marion Carl and uh this guy Dick, um this other guy, this third man that was involved, they were at this game. And and that's the example where they're it's just they they back from Guadacanal like 10 days later to 20 days later, and you know, at first, you know, one minute they're starving on the island, you know, where life expectancy is measured in hours, and then now you transport them a few weeks later, and now they're celebrating a football game like nothing ever happened, like like nothing's wrong in the world. And so it was just really surreal that that that he that John Brunning actually got these stories. It's it's crazy, just even like 60, 70 pages in. It's it's amazing that one individual wrote this book because there was so much level of detail. Um, and so for those who are wondering, it's uh 53 Days on Starvation Island is is basically the story about the marine aviator pilots that fought on Guadacanal for like the first two months uh when they first invaded when the Allies first invaded Guadacanal.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

So Because of the George S F. Elliott getting sunk and all the supplies and all the food and all that, and then the Navy pulling out. So yeah, the pilots didn't have anything, the the Marines didn't have anything, they were surviving off of whatever Japanese goods and to that juxtaposition, right? Starvation Island literally to now you're not only you had a football game, but I'm sure there's plenty of hot dogs and popcorn to be had. So just to go from literally you and your friend starving and then kind of having that guilt, right? You're here at this game, and your buddies are still back air eating, you know, weevil-filled rice and whatever K and C ration they can get their hands on, and you probably just crush four or five hot dogs and getting ready to crack your second bottle of coke before going home and or going back to the hotel and doing whatever else for the night. So, yeah, I mean that's just a huge juxtaposition.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:47

It's it's a huge difference that like you it's it's crazy to think about too. But it's why one minute you're starving, the next you're basically in the 1940s being treated as like royalty, like the height of of of even the richest monarchies at the time. It's like these guys are going from one end of humanity to the exact polar reverse opposite. And it's just how do they deal with that? Like they didn't, these guys aren't going to therapy the moment they get home. It's like they're expected to be they're heroes now. They're thrown in front of cameras and movie crews and you know, models of the time, and you know, being spoiled at football games with all of this food and and all these things that they're getting now, that that they're guys that are dying over there, their friends that are still over there, that that's all they can think about. And it's just oh, it's really it's such a powerful book already, and I can't recommend enough. I can't wait to to get into the to the to the rest of the story because I just started, so it's really good so far.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:39

Now, this is gonna seem a little set up for our audience, but trust me, we don't do that sort of show prep. I just got two books in the mail. Um, one of them is Bonsai Cliffs. Um, I was trying to figure out which one of these two I wanted to read, but full disclosure, I've read this book twice before it was published because I had the honor, and I believe Jeff did too. We got the early copy and we read it and made our suggestions, and it was such a good book. I literally read it twice before sending my details to Dennis. So I think because I've already read this book twice before I even got it, I think I'm gonna go with this book called Clear, which I haven't read. So um, Dennis isn't here. This wasn't some sort of setup thing that I just so happened to get these in the mail on Friday. So yeah, I think I'm gonna I'm finishing up a book right now that I'm gonna crack open clear, and then once I'm done with that, I'll read Bonsai Cliff for a third time, but in the actual paperback version and not the PDF version that we read before. And you cannot, there's you know, we all know there's you can't beat the smell of paper book versus digital. And we've been saying it for years here. History books, digital copies great, but they need to be printed because you you can easily edit and delete content out of a digital copy. You can't go to people's houses and you know edit their hard copies to to justify new opinions at the time. So I'm uh excited to uh jump into uh Dennis's book, Clear.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:06

Great, by the way. I read that one too. Amazing both of those books, amazing.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:11

Well, that's actually before we wrap up, kind of a perfect segue, because like I said, guys, I've been I've been itching. I've been itching to let y'all know on this. And Dennis already knows. Um I made a decision uh about a week and a half ago uh to just go ahead and do this. I'm just gonna bite the bullet. I am in the process of writing my memoir from my congratulations to Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:36

Way to go. I'm glad to hear it. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:39

Yeah, I mean, you know, because Don makes a great point, right? Books, they're they're artifacts. And and uh my wife's been kind of on me for for quite some time. Of course, Dennis kept planting the seed and so many other people. Um I have to do this. I have to do it for my unborn grandchildren. I I want something on the shelf that's going to explain something that for them happened long time ago, and I need to do it uh before I'm 85, try and remember some of the stuff. So I have that, you know, I'm cognizant that I I need to do it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

And your friends who were there before they were 85.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:17

Right, right. And and really what it's morphing into, it's just supposed to be about my time in uniform, but there's so much about me that prepared me for all of that in so many ways. So this is really truly going to be the story of my life. Um, and you know, chapter two is is really about the World War II veteran that lived down the road from me and what that meant, and and to be given some of those things from him, not just stories, but that was the first artifacts I'd ever been given from a World War II veteran, and I was only 16. Um, and so it's it's going to really, you're gonna hear about both of my grandfathers and um you know, all the way through uh through my service, and I've got every letter that was written to me when I was in basic training. I have every letter that was written to me. I have boxes of stuff from when I was in Iraq, uh all the mail that I got from this little town here that I live in, elementary school sending me stuff. You know, these kids have long graduated now, but in 2004, they were they were five years old with crayons drawing pictures of the American flag, sending them to me just because I was from their town. Um, you know, it was really special. And so all those things are in there, of course, you know, meeting President Bush and and the Fox News interview with Neil Cavuto and all those things that happened in such a short amount of time from 01 to 05. I think it's time that I finally get this out, and it's hard. It's hard, you know. Um Chuck meant a lot to me. And I'm gonna talk about that story of him giving, you know, giving me his his ticket home. Um he ended up with my number, of course, and he did get to go home. And and and this will be in the book, but he's you know, when he first got back, he said, he just kind of looked at me and he said, dude, I should kill you. What the heck, man? What happened? He's like, as I was leaving Biop, Baghdad Airport, he says, I'm leaving Biop. He said, We just get airborne and we start taking surface-to-air missiles. We're doing all this evasive action, the C-130. He was like, I'm gonna die in Jeff's seat. This is this is cops in his seat. What the heck? So, yeah, that was that was my that was my playing ticket that I was supposed to have. So uh, you know, all those things, all those things will be in there. Um and just the importance of appreciating this country, and and when I fell in love with this country at such a young age, traveling all all over the West with you know my mom and dad as a kid. Um, so it's gonna be in there. It's gonna be it's gonna be patriotic and it's gonna be funny, and it's gonna probably make some people cry. You're gonna fall in love with my wife when I met her for the first time when she was 15, and we ended up working together. And so it's because I I'm nothing without her, right? You know, the girl I left behind, and here we are, 20 years later. So it's a lot, and and I just want to say to anybody who's ever written a book, TAC, of course, among them. Um, what an undertaking. And mine doesn't have to have historical references, right? This is just a story of my life, yeah. But it's hard work, it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:37

I'm thrilled for you, man. I am ecstatic to hear this. This is a great congratulations, Jeff.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:42

That's awesome. Thrilled to hear it, man. You're gonna do a great job. It's an undertaking, but it's it's so rewarding when it's done. It's the whole experience, it's not even the end product when you hold it in your hand. It's it might be like a pile of pages, but like in your mind, it's like that's all memories, it's all experiences. It's like, you know, to some people, their stories to you, they were experiences, you know. It's just way to go, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

And not only that, but the the tangible pride in literally this thing didn't exist before I sat down and made it exist, and now it exists. That's like just the most beautiful thing ever, and I'm thrilled for you. I'm excited. And uh it'll be interesting to see how you come out on the other side because I'm sure it'll be life-changing. Just getting those thoughts and memories and words down. It's gonna be super therapeutic for you, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:31

Yeah, I think so. I think so. Anyway, so yeah, couldn't wait to tell y'all.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:37

You have to let us know when you have a working title.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:41

Uh not yet men.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:42

Well, that's what I said. When you have a working title, you have to find it before.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:47

That's that's the working title right now. Um, not yet men.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:53

Say say that one more time, Jeff. I didn't catch that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:56

You cut out. I thought you said not yet, man. Like, I don't have one. So not yet too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:01

Yeah, not yet men.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:02

That's awesome. Oh, okay, yeah. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:06

Yeah. You know, we're we're not we're no longer boys. But we're not yet men. And for those that died in that in-between, that's who it's gonna be. Really, that's who it's gonna be for. That's a great title. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:23

Well, I'm thrilled for that, and uh the audience, you know, we'll be hanging on and we'll be waiting for the your your publishing release date. And uh congratulations on that. And uh it's a huge undertaking, but we know you will uh you have the perseverance and you'll definitely get it done because that's what you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:42

Yep. And if you need any help, you got plenty of authors nearby that can offer their two cents and and help you out. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:48

Oh, you'll get some advanced uh I'll be I'll be asking both, you guys for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:53

And that and I think we know a podcast or two. We can get you booked on to help promote it once you're ready. Right. But on that note, that's gonna wrap up this episode of the What's the Scott About podcast. You want to thank each and every one of you. Uh, do us a favor. Someone said someone actually tagged me in a post about code talkers. Hey, Don Avrat, have you guys ever done anything about code talkers on your little show? I said we've discussed it, but we haven't done an in-depth episode. So I've done some research and I found some people who were uh experts on the topic, and uh so I've reached out to one today. And so what I'm getting to is if you, much like this particular gentleman, said, Hey, I've been listening to a show for a while, uh why don't you guys talk about X, Y, or Z? Send us an email. Mail call at WTSPworldwar 2.com. And now that we have a producer, we'll put him on it, and we'll get your subject matter covered. And if we said it, we've been saying this since the beginning. And Zach's a perfect example. Jeff's a perfect example. Then Dennis, Zach, and Jeff are all people who were guests on the show multiple times before they became members on the show because of their knowledge. And that is, now I'm not saying you're gonna become a guest, uh uh host on the show, but if you want to be a guest on the show and you think you can help entertain and educate our audience for an hour, hour and a half, please email us a mail call at WTSPworldwar 2.com, say hey, I know about the Battle of Kursk in greater detail than you whenever I can cover it. Please come on. We've been saying it's the beginning, there's way too much different campaigns, different topics of this World War II that we all are fascinated with so much that we can't all possibly know everything about everything. And so please email us, we'll get you on the show, and you can help bring some new new history to our show. And with that being said, please head over to WTSPworldwar 2.com. You'll see some banners if you're doing on the computer, they'll be on the right hand side. All those are our affiliate links. Any of those you click on, we do get a little kickback from those particular websites, they'll help keep the lights on and keep uh doing what we're doing here. And head over to youtube.com, look for D410 Media, and you can even look for analog 410, what happens over while we take some of the old videos going back to 2018 and we. Kick them over to analog 410 so you can find those quicker. So analog 410, you can find what's the scuttlebutt podcast going back back to when we actually used to do this live. It was funny. We did the episode the other day, and uh which we haven't released yet. I think the episode we did last week we're going to put out after this episode. So we have a an episode in between two episodes with authors. Um, but yeah, we had Kurt Sudeski on here at the beginning of the show. He's like, You guys do this live? I was like, That's brave. It was like, well, we used to do it live, but we we pre-record it now. But yeah, so um you can see those old live shows and you can see how the technology and has changed between then and now. But yes, head over to WTSPworldwar 2.com and email us, mail call at WTSP World War II. Jeff, where can people we this is another thing we don't do? Jeff, where can people find you on social media?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:49

It's real easy, just at Jeff Copsetta. No surprises there.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

Or you can head to our website and go to our about us where we need to add Mr. Zach. You can find myself, you can find Dennis, you can find Jeff, you can find all of our social media links. We will promptly add Zach over there so you guys can find his content as well. But until then, Zach, if people want to track you down, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:12

If they want to track me down, they can find me on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube at the same handle. It's Zach underscore editor, and that's Zach with an H. Uh and like I said, if you want to learn more about the Battle of Randova on July 4th, check out the YouTube video that I post. I got a whole bunch of videos with with uh World War II veterans that I've interviewed. Uh and then also uh check out my website, zacsmorris.com. That's another one. So very easy to find me, just like Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:38

And we understand a lot of people like to streamline their phones, they don't like to be over inundated with apps. So, with that being said, if you're an Amazon Music listener and you've been listening to our podcast on a different app because we weren't formally on Amazon Music, we are now on Amazon Music. So if a majority of your listening is done through that particular app, you can now locate what's the scuttlebutt via Amazon Music so you don't have to have multiple apps on your phone. And same with YouTube Music as well. We are on YouTube Music. Um look for what's the scuttlebutt. Thank you guys so much, and we will talk to you all next week. This has been a digital 410 production.