“Frogmen, Firepower & a Patreon Giveaway”

Podcast Episode EP-209

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's up everybody? Before we start this episode of the What's the Scuttle Butt podcast, I want to do the big giveaway for the month of April, even though we're now into May, but this is for the advanced copy of our friend Mir's book, The Houdini Club: The Epic Journey and Daring Escapes of the First Army Rangers. So I have all of our names in a bin here. We're going to give it a shaky, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. I'm going to pull out a name here. And the winner is Mr. Connor Trent. Congratulations, sir. Connor Trent, you are the winner of the April giveaway of the Houdini Club. I will reach out to you on Patreon. Please log in and check your messages. I'll get your address and we'll get this book and some stickers sent out your way. Congratulations. And a reminder if you guys wanted the opportunity to win on the next Patreon giveaway, please head over to what's the scuttlebutt.com, what's in your head.com or defen410.com. Click on the Patreon link, sign up and subscribe. All you have to do is be an active subscriber to be eligible for the next giveaway. Thank you guys so much. On with the show. 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 eyesore. Your wife doesn't want them where everybody can see them. So sometimes in your closet behind some clothes, sometimes they're in the garage, sometimes they're 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 in 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 to 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. Welcome everybody to another episode of the What's the Scuttlebutt Podcast, your favorite World War II based podcast, and we are back here for another wonderful episode. Joining me tonight, as always, Mr. Dennis Blocker. Dennis, what's going on in your world, fella?

SPEAKER_07 2:53

Oh, just uh, you know, working, working on the book, working at uh my employment, and uh had a great time with uh Jeff this past weekend at the Wings Over Texas uh Fiesta event here in San Antonio at Stinson Field. How was that? Yeah, it was pretty awesome. A lot of turnout, very large turnout. This is our second one. And um, you know, Jeff was there and he's always got you know great display, and he brought his Jeep. And um we had some guys that he we he's been talking with that showed up dressed up as uh Tuskegee Airmen. Nice, they look sharp, yeah. It was awesome. They're they're so they took some great picks with some um Texan, you know, the the trainer aircraft. There was a couple of them there, and so they were able to get in the cockpits and you know do their do their thing and huge crowd of people gathering around to take a look. And I had some really great uh pictures with uh Jeff and uh one of his friends, a active duty colonel. Yeah, and um good friends to have. Yeah, for sure. And uh these Tuskegee Airmen guys, and they're kind of hunched down in front of this uh aircraft, this Texan, and they're they're putting their hands like they're they're describing, diving on. Yeah, you know, it was turned out great. You hear the cameras you know behind you, everybody gathering up and taking pictures, and it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

I think my next event will be on uh June 6th, June 7th, obviously D-Day, but more um more locally, I think we are going to have a farewell for um another one of our reenactors who passed away. Now, his name was uh Jerry English. He was probably in his early 70s, he'd been participating in the community for a while. Um I believe he was a gym coach or some sort of teacher at a high school. I know he was beloved in his community to the point where the um announcer's box at the local high school was called Jerry English. Um dedicated to him. But one of the nicest guys, I mean, when I started 12 years ago, obviously he was, you know, late 50s, early 60s, and so he's always the nicest guy. Drove a Jeep, been around for years, but uh passed away. And so I think we here in that the Florida reenacting community are going to bid a farewell to him on the uh in the Zephyr Hills event. Um, I just picked up, I've been looking at them for a while. At the front has been making flannel um uniform shirts. They look just like the wool, but they're flannel. Um, for obviously, because as you can attest to being in Texas, it's hot, damn hot. And so the flannel has the appearance, and I'll be honest with you, I'm looking at it now. Um I haven't put any patches on it yet, but it looks like the wool. And I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of guys in Florida who are young enough or their bodies are small enough that they can their bodies can accommodate original shirts. And my wool uniforms don't look so much like the original shirts as theirs do. And I'll tell you what, I think this flannel almost looks more like the original um wool shirts than the modern day wool shirts do. Because like my modern wools are like they're kind of thick, and to me, this flannel looks more like the original wool type. Where'd you pick that up at? At the front, same place we were talking about the uh navy uniforms. And uh this one was on sale. I I got the um NCO version because obviously I'm I do second lieutenant, that's why it has the um shoulder parts on it. But yeah, so I I put it on a mannequin to get the wrinkles out. I gotta sew my Ranger Division on there, and I got new butter bars, and then um I think this will be the first time I've worn an actual full wool uniform, even though that's flannel. Because all the other impressions I've done, just because it's Florida, I usually wear the HBT pants with the flannel shirt, kind of do the mid-war impression. But since this is D-Day, I'm actually going to have on the the flannel pants with the I mean the wool pants with the shirt and the M41 jacket, the whole nine yards. And so that'll be in June, and then um then that's kind of it for Florida. We flip-flop, right? Texas is the same way up in Ohio, Tennessee, you know, you get most of y'all's impressions are in the spring, summertime, and fall. You know, maybe more fall and spring, but down here in Florida, we try to do it in the wintertime because it's only a cool 80 degrees instead of 120.

SPEAKER_07 7:30

So yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

The first event I ever did was down in Naples about 13 years ago. And I was doing Marine Corps. I haven't done an Army impression yet. My first impression was Marine Corps, and no one was doing Marine Corps yet. The Pacific hadn't hit the heights that it had hit, it hadn't quite blown up yet. Um, Marine Corps uniforms weren't super available, and so like I was the only Marine at this event, and I met a guy named John Thompson, um, sadly, who passed away a couple months back too. But he did first infantry and let me fall on his guys. But I said, Oh, that's say this. It was in a summer event. I'm the only Marine down there in my nice HBTs. You had all these guys doing airborne impressions and D-Day impressions, and it's hotter than hell, and they're all pouring water on their helmets trying to cool them down from the hot sun. But I have the HBT cover on mine, so my helmet wasn't getting as hot. Those guys are like hiding in their tents trying to get out of the direct sunlight because they're wearing the wool and all that, and I doing my marine impression, so my impression was physically cooler than their Eastern impression because of all the wool and heavy, heavy garb. So that is the nice thing about doing Pacific and um wearing each HBT trousers. And so, yep, I got that coming up here shortly, and I'm looking forward to that. It's been a while. I I don't think I've done any um events since November, so um, it's just been hectic around here, but anyhow, we just want to remind everybody. Um, we said we're gonna do it at the end of April. Technically, there's two more days after the recording, so it's a giveaway for April. We're gonna give the book actually away on the first episode of May, which technically give you an extra week to sign up. So if you guys haven't done so, head over to WTSPworldwar 2.com or dyphen410.com. Click on a Patreon link or simply look for d410 Media on Patreon, sign up to any of our tiers. We're gonna give away the last remaining copy we have of the advanced, not for resale copy of Mirror's book, The Houdini Houdini Club. Um, that was a great interview. That interview, by the way, is blowing up. The video interview is blowing up on YouTube, some of the highest video views we've had on one of our videos in a while. But you guys want this awesome book, just go sign up and subscribe, any one of the tiers. And um we know we don't bring it up a lot. I've decided I need to make some commercials. Dennis is wearing one right now. We do have shirts. You know, we're really bad about self-promotion here. We don't we don't beat people over the heads of saying, hey, buy Dennis's books, buy our shirts. We're usually promoting other people's stuff, which is great, but we do have books. You know, you can reach out to Dennis on his Instagram page or and uh or send us an email to mail call at WTSPworldwar 2.com if you want an autographed version of Dennis's book, or you can get on Amazon through the link on our website, or go to the merch link on our website. We have the WTSP shirt that Dennis is wearing there. We have the red ball shirt, we have a bunch of shirts, hooded sweatshirts, sock hats, um windbreakers. Jeff loves the coffee mugs, all that stuff is available. WTSP WorldWar II.com. And uh while you're also there, click on the YouTube link or head over to youtube.com, look for D410 Media and sign up and subscribe. And that is all the ways to help us here at the show to keep the channel going. Now that we got all that uncomfortable stuff out of the way, Dennis, you cut some uh update, I guess, and you've had a lot of more projects going on. What's going on, fella?

SPEAKER_07 10:58

Yeah, I'm just working on my uh next book about the uh gunboats at Iwo Jima uh the February 17th, 1945 recon mission with the underwater demolition teams. I have you know re-resurrected a bunch of the documents and uh binders and pictures and everything that I had in totes forever. Uh the original plan years ago was to write that story, that book right off the bat, um, when I wrapped up all of the then research on it back in 2016. But you know, life happens, and then um my dad wanted to write his memoirs of his time in Iraq and Afghanistan with war dogs uh during uh 05-06 and Iraq and then 2010-2011 in Afghanistan. So um I helped him with that, and we wrote co-wrote those books together, ended up being two books, and yeah, just tremendous experience being able to do that with my dad and computers side by side, both Mac desktops, so he had the uh ironic capability of airdropping chapters to me as we were typing away, and that was a great experience. And there's a lot of stuff on YouTube uh where we're talking about off those um times. Um and then that kind of led me to think, man, I should write my book, my story about my time working in emergency medicine and battles with PTSD and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Sure.

SPEAKER_07 12:25

And I wrote my book clear. And then um I I wanted to get at least get a uh my first book on a short story series. I've always wanted to do a short story series on World War II uh kind of cool things that, you know, and we've talked about it before that maybe don't maybe don't there's not enough that you could do a you know 300-page book, but something that is very interesting that people would find compelling, and that maybe is uh part of the World War II history that is a little bit maybe unknown. And so I started that series uh a couple months ago, um the Valor Vault series, uh props to Jeff on giving me the idea and the title. And uh of course that first book was Bonsai Uh Cliff, uh Desperation's Edge.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

And so your next book is the follow-up or number two in that series, correct?

SPEAKER_07 13:13

Well, that was uh what I was thinking originally, and and I and I already have uh uh book two, three, four research started on those different topics. Um but um recently moving, I came across all of my research on the gunboats. Another reason that I waited a little bit was that I did the Heart of Hell with Mitch back in 2016, and so that story was of my grandfather's gunboat on this mission. But when I first did all the research between 2002 and 2016, and I interviewed over a hundred World War II veterans during that time period, a lot more than a hundred, um, the idea was to tell the story of the entire group. So that's always been on my heart. And I did interview the guys to do that. Um so I picked that up and I've been hitting that very hard uh the last several months. I've got a Excel spreadsheet that has the left column is the names of the ships or the units, for instance, UDT 12, 13, 14, 15, so they each have their own entry. Um then all the LCI gunboats, all the destroyers are listed there, all of the uh destroyer escorts, which were command ships for each individual UDT team. Um also the uh cruisers, battleships, uh minesweepers, anybody who was there on the 17th for this mission, they have an entry on the column on the left side going down. And then it was a matter of getting the action report and the deck log, and then for each one for the 17th, and then just starting at the top with each ship and entering in, um, so that if you can imagine on the left column is the name of the ship, and then I've tossed across the top, each column represents five minutes of time. And so any time that something is mentioned, for instance, on the um USS baits that happens there, that they put in their log, or and it's fortunately some of these ships even kept radio traffic logs.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_07 15:18

And yeah, so that's very interesting. And so then I would plug in um though that those entries into the the ships, and that's how does that radio traffic log read?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Is it stuff you uh do you kind of interpret it a little bit for the ease of the consumption of the reader, or is it pretty much easily understandable?

SPEAKER_07 15:37

Yeah, surprisingly, and uh very understandable. A lot like open traffic, like not code words, of course, for ships, but sure you know, SWAMI 3 requesting uh uh direct fire on gun emplacement uh 193A. And so then now, but I also have the map, right? I have the map with all the sectors, so I can see exactly where they're wanting to place fire because LCI 441 reports receiving heavy artillery fire from cliffs.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

You know, I don't know if anybody would know this answer. I'm sure somebody would know this answer. I don't know this answer, and I wonder if you would. It would strike me as odd that they wouldn't have a shorthand, right? When the the amount of messages being relayed, unless they did, and then somebody transcribed that back at headquarters for the official documentation. Did they have any sort of shorthand or were these guys just writing us out long hand as fast as their pencil could scribe?

SPEAKER_07 16:33

Yeah, that's a good question. Um it's written in a way that you know that it was taken down um real time, and it wasn't they didn't have time with because then the 19th happens and the invasion, that there's no time to go back and make and clean up the entries.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Well, I just didn't know if maybe if there was a uniform uniform code of shorthand and then they sent it back back, you know, if it was transcribed in later data.

SPEAKER_07 16:58

These entries are recorded faithfully the way that it was sent on the radio. Yeah. So a lot of times it's there's even slang in that's cool. Some guy from New York is saying something from the Bronx.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

These jokels are coming down our way.

unknown 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Um, I wanted to ask you too, for those listening who maybe not familiar with the subject, UDP is I mean, underwater demolition crew UDC. Uh is there any good do you know of a good book or even a I don't I doubt there's a movie, at least not of that period of time. Obviously, we know the the Charlie Sheen, Navy SEALs, maybe and all that goofy stuff, but is there a good source of underwater demolition crews training? Like their version of boot camp and and how you know, is there a a good book that you know of that someone could read up? Like if they're wanting to do an impression of an underwater demolition crew and want to get an idea of what their boot camps and their training missions were like and their selection periods, is there a good reference material for that?

SPEAKER_07 17:58

Yeah, there is. Uh years ago I contacted a lady who did a uh almost I would say uh exhausted book on underwater demolition teams. She did too, and one of them was of the uh down in Fort Pierce, Florida, where they were training the UDTs, uh, they had their own base paper, and so there's a lot of uh great entries in there about training and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Um that would be a good impression for us here in Florida to put together. Absolutely depending on what their uniforms consisted of and how hard it would be to complete that.

SPEAKER_07 18:30

Swim in trunks, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

The underwater demolition teams, also known as UDTs, were formed during World War II in response to the need for specialized units capable of clearing obstacles ahead of amphibious landings. The origins can be traced back to 1943 during preparations of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. However, the concept gained formal structure following the heavy casualties of Tarawa in 1943, where it became clear that enemy defenses such as coral reefs and beach obstacles needed to be reconned and removed before a landing. The Navy established the UDTs in 1944, drawing personnel primarily from the Seabees, Navy Scouts, and other volunteers with swimming and demolition expertise. Trained at places like Fort Pierce, Florida, these elite teams operated in swim trunks, fins, and masks, earning themselves the nickname Frogmen. These frogmen candidates underwent some of the most grueling unorthodox trainings of the war. This training took place at facilities like Fort Pierce, Florida, and included the following key components: combat swimming and endurance. Candidates were required to swim several miles in open water, often under heavy surf and at night, simulating stealth approaches under battle conditions. Demolition expertise. The trainees learned to handle and place explosives underwater using time fuses and primer charges, often while dealing with visibility issues and pressure changes. Obstacle identification and clearance. Emphasis was placed on recognizing various types of obstacles, such as mind steel tretrodons, coral, stakes, and determining the best way to neutralize or avoid them. Candidates were also subjected to sleep deprivation, stress conditioning, and live fire drills to test their physical resilience. Team coordination. UDTs operated in tight-knit groups, where coordination, trust, and nonverbal communication was essential. The attrition rate was high, and only those who demonstrated exceptional courage, stamina, integrity completed the training. Unlike other special operation units, early frogmen were not armed during the missions, relying solely on speed, stealth, and precision.

SPEAKER_07 20:39

As far as movies, the Richard Woodmark did one back in the 50s, which which was uh pretty good actually. Uh and regarding books, there's several books out there on um the the UDT frogmen.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Um Well, I was gonna ask you too, did was did the Slang Frogman come out of World War II or was that acquired later?

SPEAKER_07 21:00

Yeah, no, that was that was from World War II. The one that everyone all the guys doing the research recon to recommended was called naked warriors.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_07 21:14

Of course it's gonna disappear.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Actually, it did better when yeah, it's good right there. You can see it. Are they jump are they jumping out of a aircraft?

SPEAKER_07 21:21

Yeah, that's this follows their history. Okay, so that's more like Korean Vietnam era. Yeah. Well, no, it starts off with World War II. I was talking about the picture on the cover because that looks like a helicopter unless they're jumping out of a that one's a highly recommended by guys who were UDTs themselves. They recommend that one. Uh there's this one by Chuck Cunningham called um The Frogmen of World War II.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Did they have any specialized obviously they had their own specialized equipment, but when it came to weaponry, did were they more likely to carry like Grease Guns and Thompson's because they were smaller, or did they carry the the car beans with the paratrooper stocks?

SPEAKER_07 21:58

The only weapon they carried wasn't. Knife.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Okay, so it was basically they're focused on demolition, and if something happens, you better sort it out with the knife.

SPEAKER_07 22:08

That's why the gunboats were there was to keep the Japanese down and keep their attention off the frogmen.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_07 22:13

Um yeah, and the and of course the knife really is only just in case they need to cut wire or rope or anything. Um they had a plexiglass uh almost like a tablet that was strapped to their leg. A grease pencil. Nice grease pencil, yeah. And then and a satchel that they would collect samples and from this from the beach or um and this and that, and they had a little uh twine with the lead at the bottom, and they would make measurements of the um the grade of the the beach, and then they'd document it. And if there was mines, they had explosives that they would take with them, they'd haul explosives and um which with mortars.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

So is it fair to say that they did more than just clear underwater mines that they were kind of used as a pre-invasion, you know, underwater surveying group to get an idea of what the conditions were for the landing crash?

SPEAKER_07 23:07

That was exactly what they were. They wanted to give the landing uh force uh peace of mind that regardless of what the Japanese were gonna do, they would at least geographically gonna be able to get to the beach. They would know, um, and you know, as at Guam, they they blew up hundreds of Japanese defenses that had been put out into the into the reef. And they cut blew up channels so that the the ships would be able to get in.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

How early would they be deployed? Was this like two days before, three weeks before? How far m early on in the planning stages were they utilized in in getting this information for the landing?

SPEAKER_07 23:51

For like at Guam, it was like um four or five days before, and um a week before. And they, as a matter of fact, uh my grandfather's gunboat group, um, they were working around the clock, and they were actually ordered to sleep at their guns. So the frogmen were working all night, even through the night. And um the gunboats are there just laying down heavy fire over their heads and just keeping the Japanese down and occupied, and they didn't lose any frogmen uh at Guam.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

What sort of, you know, because it's it's interesting to try to think, obviously, now nowadays underwater gear, just in general, whether it's military or recreational, is far surpassed. But I think sometimes when people look back on World War II, they almost don't give it enough credit for you know advanced technology. Now, some people s think iron clearly not iron bell helmets, but what type of gear did the underwater demolition crew have as far as breathing apparatuses and just gear in of itself for being in the water and working underwater all day long? Yeah, nothing like that.

SPEAKER_07 24:59

It was just uh face mask and um flippers, if they were lucky, um and uh the uh plexiglass and the knife, and they were they had a little satchel like I mentioned before. But as far as like you know, the navy SEAL gear where they can stand all breathing, and there's so there's no bubbles for the Navy SEAL, shortly.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

But did they have like a single air tank, like you know, a snorkel? Nothing, no, no tanks. So that wasn't even a thing then, just a snorkel or hold your breath?

SPEAKER_07 25:28

Hold your breath. And and they were shocked when they jumped in the water at Iwo because they had been training at Ulithi, and the water is warm, and they jump into this water at Iwo Jima is February, and it was ice cold. It was in the 50s, the water. So the guys uh as a last ditch effort uh covered their bodies with grease and uh to try and at least give them an extra layer. And um, yeah, I mean there's no mistake, I I I I think it was it Ernie Pyle, maybe one of the one of the correspondents said that the UDT frogmen were half fish and half nuts, and that was kind of a requirement. They had to be half fish and half nuts.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, I bet. See if I can find a quote. Let's see here. Yeah, no, that's you because you know that is such a topic that has very little mainstream coverage in any real way, shape, or form, right? Compared to other aspects and other groups uh of the era. I mean, we've heard w we're all know the the phrase frogman, but I think let's be honest, most of the cats are our age and a little bit older. We just know that from G.I. Joe cartoons in the 80s. Yeah. And so unless you're around for that movie in the 50s.

SPEAKER_07 26:52

In the Atlantic uh theater, they were called NCDUs, uh not naval combat demolition units. In the Pacific, they were called UDTs. Um, they were there at Normandy. If you remember that scene from maybe this will jostle folks' memory, but that scene from Saving Private Ryan where the guy's got the helmet on and it's got that orange kind of uh um I don't know what you'd call that uh shape on his helmet, but and he he yells at them get away from the two guys that were next to the the steel axe.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

What do they call those? Oh, I went completely blank. But yeah, the uh anti-tank traps. They were the two guys by that, correct?

SPEAKER_07 27:32

Yeah, and he tells them because they're bunching up, and he tells um Tom Hanks character uh to move somewhere else because he's got to clear these obstacles, get moving. And he reaches up in his helmet and he pulls out that uh charging uh primer cord, which he's gonna use to detonate the explosives that he's packing around the buttons. So, you know, that was their you know D-Day function at Iwo Jima. Uh not I don't cover this in my book, but uh something that they were used at Iwo Jima, which was very interesting, was that all of the smashed vehicles on the beach, there were hundreds of them, um, turned over and this and that. Uh what the frogmen did ended up doing was the they would they tried blowing up the the vehicles that were stranded, just blow them up and get them rid of them that way. But obviously they quickly found that that creates shrapnel, which is flying through the air. Yeah. And then you got to make sure everybody's clear and it's just a big waste of time. So what they ended up doing was all the LCI gunboats that weren't currently on fire missions, um, they would come up because they can get all the way up there. And uh the frogmen would take the anchor cable from the front of the bow of the gunboat, and they would wrap it around whatever you know, whatever uh vessel they wanted to pull off. And that's what they would do is they would they would rig it in a way that it would self um they could chop the chop the line. They of course they weren't using the anchor, but they would chop it and they were pulling off all of these all this wreckage, and it was just fast. They were able to do it very quickly and keep the beaches open so that more supplies could come in and keep coming in is pretty awesome. Facilitators of supply. Yeah, exactly. So, but that's been a lot of fun, you know, as far as UDT guys, um, and plugging in all the the the deck logs and all that, but it did reveal to me that I had some gaps in my research, and it had been so long since I'd looked at it, and I started writing. I actually took a week off of work about a month and a half ago or so, and uh quickly became evident that I had been premature and wasn't ready to write it yet.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Um, when that happens, is that deflating or is that motivating? Like, oh sweet, does it kind of get you sparked interest again? Or is it like crap, now I gotta go back and um my timeline's messed up?

SPEAKER_07 30:04

Well, it's kind of a bummer at first because I you know I specifically took off work to get going and I was super excited about it. And of course you're telling your buddies, you know, yeah, I'm gonna start writing, and um, but then it's also a blessing, like you said, because it makes you get back immersing into it again, and it's and and what it's done for me is I've I've been able to get a lot more material that I didn't even have before. And I with my new um newfound ways of finding people using um things that we've talked about on here, uh I've been able to matter of fact, just as an illustration, since we were talking about the UDTs, um I I have to tell their story as well. And so I I've got the crew roster for the UDT 12 and just went down the line, just contacting, seeing them sending out emails, getting responses. And um, one guy on uh this past Friday, I got a package from him in the mail, and it's from like just months after this happened at Iwo Jima, they put together one of the guys realized that they what they had done was historic. And um shortly after World War II was over, months after it was over, he put this together and he got he sent out questionnaires to the frogmen and they sent him their remembrances of Iwo Jima and this and that. So I he sent me this binder with all of these guys' first hand accounts that aren't 50-year-old accounts, these are months out, and it's just adding appreciably to what I would, it's just gonna make it so much better.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

So you'd got access to fresh in the mind recollections and not hazy, you know, 50 years later, where sometimes the story gets altered a little bit through just human.

SPEAKER_07 32:00

Then you kind of gotta fill the gaps from doing a little bit more research. And well, then that course makes me curious. Well, if team 12 did that, I'll uh well, I wonder if 13, 14, and 15 did. So then researched yesterday, as a matter of fact, and found out that a guy on team 13 uh put together a uh history, which I've heard from a newspaper article I found is over a thousand pages. And so that's what I'm working on right now is contacting families and trying to get a a copy of that um that I can use because um it'd be great if I can if I can take the reader along as a frogman and stick them in the cold water uh while the gunboats are doing their thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

When you're organizing this material and trying to figure out the continuity of your book, and you see you have holes. And the only thing I I've never written a book, the only thing I can relate to is I've edited hours worth of video. And for example, when I do my fishing videos, I'm I'm doing a three-camera shoot. I have three different cameras on my kayak, and then when I get home, I gotta go through all the footage of the three, delete the crap, and then when I'm trying to edit a video, I'm putting things together, and then I realize, well, camera wasn't on when X, Y, and Z happened. But what it allows me to do when I'm laying it out and then I can see the holes, it almost makes itself evident for how the story is either going to be arranged or what I need to go back and either put in an editor's note or create some B-roll for it, or it changes the narrative that I thought I was going to be able to put together, but perhaps a different story or a better version of that story comes out due to what availability material I have and what I either may need to produce or re-jigger so that the missing content doesn't affect the storyline. Is that kind of what you deal with when you're trying to figure out the continuity of your books?

SPEAKER_07 33:55

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Don. And that's why it's so important. It is a time-consuming effort that must be done, but you have to do the timeline, you have to do the action reports, you have to make every entry must be put in because that's going to show you where your holes are at. And how do you then, for instance, if the 438 says at 1104 they got hit on the bow and uh the bow gun number number 140 was knocked out? Well, then, of course, okay, who was on the number 140? So you get the list of the names of the guys, and then you start sending out, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

How do you force yourself to slow down? Obviously, you self-published, right? So you're you're not worried about meeting timelines from a publisher. You're excited about the material. Obviously, when it comes to video or music, whatever, it's it's quicker and easier to produce. But even when I'm editing a video, I I gotta say, hey, you know, if you take the excitement out of this and let it breathe, your final product will be so much better than trying to get it done just there for the sake of getting it out. Obviously, a book's different, but it's not that different because you love the subject matter. You're part of a podcast. One of the things we do on the podcast is we love sharing stuff that we love with other people. But how do you, Dennis, as an author, say, hey, Dennis, slow down, let's let this stew marinate. Let's make sure all the ingredients are correct so that when we're putting in someone's bowl, it's the best damp stew we have, and not just, hey, check out my stew, guys, it's great. How do you force yourself to slow down and and know when your product is ready to be served?

SPEAKER_07 35:32

Personally, the the reason the way that I slow down is that I I personally talk to these guys and they're all gone now. And so I I feel the weight of making sure I get it right. And you have to have personal integrity in that regard because really the the could I put out a manuscript right now and get it knocked out, and and it would be it would be good. It would be something people would say, wow, that's amazing, and that's great. But I would know in my heart that um it it it it's not it's not right, it's not it's not good to go. And there's so I take the time to do this extra months of research.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

This is not enough salt, you would know. Yeah, exactly. It tastes great now. It's missing some oregano and water.

SPEAKER_07 36:24

Yeah, exactly. That's a really good analogy. It's like the a chef who's will know that no, this sure I won the contest, but in my heart I know it wasn't the best that I could have done. And of course, there is a point where you do have to pull the plug, right? You gotta say, all right, now I I could I could research this for 40 years and still find stuff, but I I've done this enough that I know when I get to that point, and I'm not there yet. A good illustration is this book right here. Um, it's called Iwo Jima Recon. Um, can you see it okay?

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, don't move, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_07 37:01

Okay. The title says Iwo Jima Recon, the US Navy at war, February 17th, 1945. Um, the fellow who did this, he's got some great maps in here, amazing layout, great pictures. Um but this is not, these are not LCI gunboats. And this is not February 17th, right? These are LCS. They they weren't there on the 17th, they weren't there on the 18th, they were there on the 19th. So this is not, it'd be fine if it was just it wouldn't even be fine really if it was Iwo Jima. It should be just Iwo Jima. Yeah. Then fine. That's fine. The U.S. Navy at war. Well, when you put a date on there, but you put recon and you put the date. This didn't happen. And then on the inside, he repeats Samuel Elliott Morrison's history on the mission, and he says that the LCI 409 had 60% casualties. Well, the 409 wasn't there, wasn't even in that theater, right? It was the 449. Morrison got it wrong. Everybody, instead of doing more homework, quotes Morrison, and they you see it in newspaper articles from that time, and even now, you'll see LCI 409 pop up. Um this here.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 38:27

This is LCI 708. Weren't there. 708 is a bow LCI, it has a is an LCI where the doors open on the bow. Those weren't there until days later.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Um Do you think when it due to the published date on that book, do you think a lot of the inaccuracies in the photos is strictly just what they had access to and looking to fill the pages?

SPEAKER_07 38:52

It could be. It could be. And the thing is that they're really nice pictures, and the layout of this is gorgeous. And the fact that um now see this picture here. This this is correct. That's Daryl Hewish, he was on the 474, he was killed in action. That's him laying there uh dead on the deck of the 474. And then this picture here on the bottom is from the 17th of February 45. Um this right here. Yep. Not February 17th. That's the LCI 708 again. So sure they're great pictures and they're compelling, but I can guarantee you that if this was the 17th of February, those guys would not be leisurely standing there, and that beach would not look so serene. Yeah, these guys would all be hunkered down or they'd probably be dead.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

It's like the um, it's like the literature equivalent when you're watching a uh history channel show on Guadacanal, but they're showing Marines with M1s and then uh the helmet covers. It's like, okay, well that clearly that footage is from Peleliu or Tarawa. It's like, okay, well, I guess it's probably the only content, you know, video footage they had access to when producing this this show.

SPEAKER_07 40:06

So but yeah, it's it's I don't know if the fellow who did this, if he hired uh a team to get him pictures from the archives, or if but it could be just the publisher house did it, and he might have just supplied the manuscript and the publisher's like, okay, we get the art department on it. There are at least a couple dozen pictures here that are not that are not from the 17th. Yeah. Um but I mean it's beautifully done, and but that's kind of like a gauge for me, too, on making sure I get it right. There's always gonna be errors in this map, but no one's ever gonna be able to say that it's not uh thoroughly researched.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Especially the further out you get from it, kind of like we were talking about with uh mirror a few weeks ago, is you know, we can only relay the information that we have access to and the information we were able to acquire. But you know And you talk to any cop, right? Good night witness statement from four different people who just saw something happen 15 minutes ago, and they all have a different they all have a different uh telling of the event. And so your body does crazy things to you to try to, you know, hide from trauma, or you know, you see things in a different way. And so I mean, if you see that 20 minutes after an accident, you can only imagine how things change years and in a lifetime ago.

SPEAKER_07 41:29

Yeah. So that's you know, that's what I've been working on, you know, and you know, you have that integrity thing where sometimes you get some really great stories that somebody mentions in an interview, but they don't say the name and they can't place the time. And so I can't use it, you know, and that really, really sucks because I know it's a great little nugget, but if I can't if I can't put what ship it was or what time or what uh hit it was associated with, then you know, I have to think of another way of wording it where I can say that it's an event that happened, but some time period during that, you know. Um there's just you just have to have integrity on how you you know lay it out because you know, for one, you know, all these guys are all gone now that I interviewed, and as over a hundred and goodness gracious, 40, 50 guys. And um yeah, one thing though, I think I'm gonna call the book sitting ducks. And um I I got that from all the guys, and even the funny was even the other day, uh one of the families, uh, I found the family of the captain of the 441 gunboat. Um, and I was talking to his daughter-in-law, and and she was talking to me, and she dropped that line. She says, She says, they were just sitting ducks out there. And I started laughing, and and I says, Man, I says, You do not know how many times that phrase came up when I was interviewing these guys. Self, those guys described their own experience. They were sitting ducks. And Charlie Crandall was the um engineering officer on the 471, and he hated that, but I was gonna call it the sitting ducks, because he was just oh, he hated that title. He said that makes it sound like we weren't fighting. And and I was like, No, no, it's it's it's it's a testament to your bravery, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:25

It's it's and and to that note, let me ask you this. We all we've all heard the famous story from the airborne. All the reasons I signed up to the airborne is extra$50 a month. I think we um someone, I think Miramai had mentioned the Rangers got a little bit extra month for hazard pay. Was the underwater demolition crews were they in that category of hazard pay jobs, or was this just another job in the Navy and you made the same as the guy, you know, driving you know, a landing craft or you know, swabbing the deck? Was this a hazard pay job?

SPEAKER_07 43:56

Yeah, I can't speak to that. Yeah, I wish I knew that answer it to go. Answer. Um, actually, I'm gonna write that down and look that up because that'd be good to put in there.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

And because clearly, this is this is another one of those necessity, you know, is the mother of invention, right? Uh, warfare's changed dramatically from 1915, 1916, and 1942. You have all this new technology, and then you have to come up with ways to beat the new technology. And so obviously, airborne was relatively new. Uh, Rangers, you know, behind enemy lines, they're talking about the Merrill's Marauders, you know, the the concept of American commandos was relatively new. I'm sure Frogman was extremely new. And so you have all these guys, all these young guys, not only are they put into a new situation, but they're kind of making it up as they go along, and at least in the early stages. And to do this stuff without, you know, years of experience, right? Our modern-day soldiers, they go to boot camp, and whatever their job entails, whatever the current status is that is built off of years and years of learning and failures and success. Okay, we're gonna take all these failures, all these success, we're gonna weed out what doesn't work, and as long as we follow this to a T, it's gonna greatly increase your ability to accomplish your task and survive through it, right? But then it's like, okay, you know, that's always kind of when it comes to the military, it's always kind of interesting. It's like, we know, okay, the government, military science, whatever, but at the end of the day, it's like, who's actually the guy, right? Who's the guy who came up? You know, there's a great video on YouTube. Um, I got excited because I thought it was this pine island, but there's another pine island in Florida. I found a video where they were field testing uniforms to be used in the Pacific. Figure out, okay, wool doesn't work, we want HPTs, these canteens don't work. And when you think about that logistically, it's like, okay, Dennis, it's 1939, you're tasked with forming an underwater demolition crew. Okay, what does that entail? This, this, and this, and this. Get it done. Where do you go? Do you do you go to Florida and talk to you know, marine biologists or guys who build docks and seawalls and piers and bridges and get like their contracting expertise? You know, do you talk to EOD guys who do it on land and try to figure out how it's it amazes me. We just assume all, you know, like anything else, that this this shit just doesn't appear. Someone's got to come up with these policies. And when you don't have history, when you're creating something new, it's it's mind-blowing to think of the guys who come up with these policies and test them and figure out what works and what doesn't. And we we you kind of hear it right in Band of Brothers. All right, we went to jump school. Little did we know our jump leaders they just got their wings three weeks ago. It's like, well, who well, who taught the guy who taught them? It's just it's amazing how they were able to do this in such a short period of time and be, for the most part, successful at it.

SPEAKER_07 47:09

Yeah. Yeah, the guy that that that organized it was Draper Kaufman. Um, his dad was a uh admiral. And uh Draper Kaufman had actually been sent to England before America's entry to the war, and uh he started out in uh bomb disposal, and um he was you know he'd go to those bombs in London and uh and disarm. And um so he had nerves as you know, steel, just steady hand, nerves as steel, and it was his idea to come up with these frogmen, and so he came up with Hell Week, which uh is still around today for the Navy SEALs. Uh he put the guys through Hell Week and um to try and break them and see if if he could get them to quit. And uh, but like you said, a lot of it was you know, let's let's let's put some explosive on these pylons and let's see what happens and what what amount we put. And sometimes they put too much, and we're kind of shocked.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Yeah, I guess you'd have to reverse engineer a lot of it, right? Okay, well, we want to figure out how to dispose of this bomb, so let's call go talk to the guys who build the bombs. You know, we want to figure out how to take down a pier the most effective way, so let's go talk to the engineers who build piers and figure out okay, well, they can tell you, well, if you want to take out a pier that's 200 yards long, you need to take out these pilings every 50 feet or whatever. So I'm sure that had a lot to do with it, too.

SPEAKER_07 48:25

It's interesting to look at the um the ratings of the guys that were in the UDTs, uh, because you know they were originally signed up for you know, whatever, and gunners mates or you know boiler makers and this and that. And uh they a lot of the guys that ended up in UDTs were C Navy CBs. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

The Navy CBs who got in a lot of trouble who are a little more adventurous than the rest.

SPEAKER_07 48:53

These guys were animals, they were all instantly just like they are today, you know, just like a whole new breed of guys that are just these super alphas and uh just you know not afraid of anything and always pushing the limits. And let's see what happens if we put an extra couple pounds on this. Let's just see what happens. Wild.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

I wonder what the average time that those guys could hold their breaths for underwater. I mean, I'm sure they probably had a standard. Yeah you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna train somebody who can go for 30 seconds. You want the guy who has the big lungs. With that being said, I wonder. We all know that the uh so sailors, naval, the navy men and the marines were all issued cartons of cigarettes. I wonder if they kind of said, hey fellas, slow down for a little bit so you can hold your breath longer, but it's like, here's your two cartons, get to it.

SPEAKER_07 49:44

Yeah, no, they didn't stop smoking, that's for sure. You know, and at Saipan they actually tried, and you were talking about innovation and this and that, but they at Saipan they they used something called the floating mattress. They tried what tried it out, and it was like a mattress, and they would lay down on it, and it had a little motor on the back of it, and they tried you know to decrease their their profile, so they would lay on this mattress and they'd zip around through the surf, and it was a total disaster. Um, and they were just getting constantly getting electrocuted by the the motor, and it was constantly just shorting out and and just electrocuting the crap out of them the whole time. Um, so they they ditched the idea, but they tried it out. You know, someone says, Let's try this.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

You ever see the the video? There's there's a video, you've probably seen it. It was testing equipment. Someone tried to make like aluminum sleds hooked on chains that they'd pull behind tanks so that the tank infantry guys would lay in them and be kind of bulletproof, but it clearly didn't work out too well. But it's like had eight or nine of them daisy chained two to a tank, and these guys are laying on the heads. You just had to try everything at that point. Interesting.

SPEAKER_07 50:58

This one's from the 50s. Uh it's got uh showing the UDTs. The first page shows UDTs on the beach at Iwo Jima clearing um submerged, half-submerged ducks. And the second page shows uh the famous Capra picture at Omaha Beach of the guys walking ashore there. Um let me ask you this.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

So the UDT crews were sent out, copyright 1964. An LCI or an L C what what kind of vessel were the UDT guys on?

SPEAKER_07 51:31

Yeah, so they they um originally started out on just like on a you know destroyer, but they they had some destroyer escorts that were available uh production. It was you know, 44 was full swing, so they had uh they gave them some fast uh uh destroyer escorts and uh DE's and um the bar, the uh the blessmen, um the baits, and um so each team had one of these, and it worked out how big was the team was uh you know, I guess my question is you have your your specialist, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:10

They're on the boat, their jobs get in the water. You're saying earlier that the your grandfather would sleep on their by their guns while the guys were in the water all day. What was the um what was the division in on that vessel? How were they all trained were most of them trained in UDT, or was like there are five or six guys who were assigned to a vessel to go out and do you know, what was the actual size of each group of UDTs that were assigned to a vessel to go get a particular job done?

SPEAKER_07 52:36

Yeah, they'd have as much as a hundred guys on a on a team. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Um but I didn't know if they're kind of like a special group where they would take six or seven of them, send them out on a you know, LCI.

SPEAKER_07 52:46

So I like as particularly at Iwo Jima, they had the morning recon mission on the west eastern beaches and then the afternoon recon on the western beaches. So, you know, you you only had you know, all the guys partook in some way or another, but they they have these fast LCPRs, and uh they had 250 cals in them. And uh so UDT guys manned those. And they on the LCPRs they'd have the some of the UDTs were assigned to do radio that day or to uh serve as life, you know, almost like uh lifeguards, and and they had um spotters and camera guys and this and that. Um so in just like any other unit, they had their medic, their medical people, and they had their tech, their tech guys, and they had their um uh but as far as like and that's the beauty of the idea of giving these guys their own ships, because then they integrated with the crew of the ship, and you know, they they'd have this whole ship they can do training and um exercises, and it worked out beautifully.

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SPEAKER_01 54:50

When Rogue Heroes came out, we sung appraises on this show. And I know season two is out now, but it's been moved to a different streaming service that I don't have. But the reason I bring that up is I can imagine you could almost take these young guys on these, you know, the underwater demolition teams and make a TV show in that styling of the Rogue Heroes with these, you know, these wild young guys just out to get the job done in a, as we were saying earlier, in an organization that didn't previously exist, and and kind of see them hopping on these fast boats and just getting the job done and having once again in that type of job. Clearly, you're driving your train, you you know what the hell you're doing, but you gotta have a little bit of that that's invincible, don't give a shit attitude, right? And so it would be I could see you don't uh a production being made almost in that fun, crazy stylings of the Rogue Hero TV show, which if you haven't seen it, is a fantastic show.

SPEAKER_07 55:51

Yeah, I don't think I've seen it.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

It's about the uh British Special Forces and how they the SAS and how they came to be. It's a very, very good show. Um, the reason I say it's the way the show's done in a not whimsical way, but I don't know about season two, but season one, the entire soundtrack was ACDC, which clearly isn't error correct. But when you see these guys on a Jeep shooting 30 cows and just having desert warfare and doing sabotage missions to Thunderstruck and shit like that, you're like, okay, this works. And so, you know, it's it's the it's it's a really, really well done show. And so, yeah, it'd be kind of cool to to see a show, some like this, you know, handled in that manner. Be once again, it's subject matter that no one's talked about, you know, because you often think, well, how many World War II shows or movies? A lot. There's still a lot that has been covered. There's still a lot of guys who did a lot of jobs that we haven't talked about, and this would be another one of those uh subject matters that would be make for a fun, interesting, and original storyline.

SPEAKER_06 56:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 56:54

I mean, just imagine uh, you know, my idea for the short story series. Imagine a miniseries like that, where it just kind of like the uh untold stories of World War II, you know, a miniseries where each episode is just a different thing where you could do the the bonsai cliff with the Japanese civilians and um you know and much as I would hate to put our friends like Scott Gibson and Dale Dye out of work, but with AI you could produce that with a very low budget now because you know you could just it could all be generated the video footage, the B-roll could be generated at a such a lower cost now, like if you're trying to do it, you know, um independently, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:34

So now you don't have to spend hundreds of million dollars on uh George Lucas's CGI crew or trying to rent you know landing craft and finding 200 reenactors who have all the uniform, you can just produce it all on uh on AI and and get that story out there at a more cost-effective rate.

SPEAKER_07 57:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

It's a little scary. Um not to get off topic, but it's kinda on topic. My I I do IT work and more uh internet security stuff. My boss has been giving lectures around the country on AI. And um for the first time I heard him say this is kind of scary because he's been pro-AI. He was out on his boat down here in Southwest Florida, took a picture of him and his wife. Now they're just standing on the back of their boat. All you see is water, a little bit of shoreline, and some vegetation. There's no lighthouse, there's no restaurant, there's no landmarks of any kind. His boat, his American flag on the back of the boat, some water and some scrub. Uploaded that photo in a chat GPT, and it told him where that photo was taken within like two miles. And no, there was no metadata location added to the photo. It started talking about the color of the water, it could determine the vegetation on the beach and where that vegetation is is is from. And it said, you know, you could possibly be here off Cape Coral, but no, you're up here off of Naples. It like it knew within a mile based on nothing but vegetation and the color of the water. Wow. And it's like, wow.

SPEAKER_07 59:18

I won't I don't I don't use AI when I'm writing. I don't know so lame. But I yeah, my all my writing is just for my head. I don't I don't use AI. I don't use AI even to uh spruce up my writing to make it more I mean I I maybe I should, I don't know, but I I just don't want it to have that tainted on there at all.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Well, and to that point now, they are starting to put thumb fingerprints on it so that college professors and none of that can do a better job, or even you know, if you're trying to hire a writer for your magazine or your website, you want to make sure their thoughts are original. It's one thing to have something check your grammar and proofread, to kind of like have a a robotic editor, if you will, but to have it rewrite your story, uh, you you definitely don't you definitely want to stay away from that.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:07

But yeah, no way.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

The stuff is moving at such a fast clip. It's moving, and it's just like every day I'm just glad it's like I'm glad I was born in 1970.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:20

Like that that spaceship with all the people that are just laying there because everything is done for them, and it's like, man, people are their their brains are just so devoid of information, and there's no desire to learn, and it's just man, why would you just be content with the computers doing everything for you and figuring everything out and not right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

And that's and that's a problem.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:41

It's just knowledge into your noggin.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

I heard a great quote, and it don't matter when you're around, doesn't matter if you're this is 1895, 1912, 1943. At any point in humankind, technology, the whole purpose of technology is to make life easier. And that made sense when we're scraping and hunting and gathering, and but we've gotten to the point now, you know, why should I leave my house to get food and have it brought to me?

SPEAKER_07 1:01:12

Have drones to bring it to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

We went fishing this weekend, me and Mike, and his his his niece is in town. You want to go kayak fishing? Sure. She's 13. So I bring my kayak. I played this game with my own daughter. I I know better, but whatever. She gets on the kayak. She wasn't afraid of the water. Wasn't afraid of the kayak. She paddled that thing twice. Said nope. He tied that kayak to the back of his and paddled her around all day long. Once again, she wasn't afraid of the water. She just was not down for the physical exertion of paddling her own kayak. And in the video I just uploaded, you'll and we don't make any reference to it. You'll see Mike and you'll see her on the back of the kayak on her phone on the water in Southwest Florida, the same place where people in Ohio and Tennessee save up like two years worth of tax returns and all their bonuses to bring their kids for a family vacation. And I and I told Mike, I said, you know, here's the hierarchy of everything, right? But for fishing, and I say this all the time when you're on a kayak and you're out there, you see the guy fishing on the shore, the guy in the shore wishes he was in the kayak, the guy in the kayak wishes he was in the boat, the guy in the boat wishes he was on the bigger boat. And so it's like, here's we're we're going down and here's these guys on the shore fishing, and you know they're just staring at her saying, I would give anything to be on that boat. She's on that kayak on a cell phone, and I could be out there catching me some snook or jack, and it's just like and she had a good time per se, but the idea of doing any physical labor, nope.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:52

Well, even to get man, even to into that point, it's like I I I like to listen to and watch this this is way off topic. Kill Tony.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

Yeah, well, watch Kill Tony.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:05

Yeah, Kill Tony's just great. And part of the uh interview when uh when when Tony when he interviews the comedians after their one minute uh speech or or um diatribe, he he questions them about their life, and you know, these guys are 24 and 26, and and he says, tell me something interesting about yourself. What is it about yourself that is just amazing, that is just gonna m impress us? And um they got nothing. Like they smoked weed or they uh walked around the park or they just smoke weed or play video games, or they play, and I'm like I what what astounds me is just this no desire to have adventure, like just to be totally fine with like I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but like to get to your end of your life and to have your life be represented in a pamphlet, yeah, and not a multi-chaptered mini-series book, volumes of things that you accomplished, places that you went, things, mistakes that you made, uh bad decisions that you made, you know, the risks that you took that didn't work out, and those that did, and the your trips to Alaska and to Africa and to climbing a mountain range and taking your dog to uh state park and camping overnight and being attacked by by Bobcat in the middle of your camp. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

It's like there's a desire for that.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:54

It just blows my mind that people are so content out of mediocrity and not making an imprint at all with the breath that they've been given for this housing unit called the human body, and they're just it just astounds me.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:08

I don't know if it was Lazarus Lake, the creator of the Barclay Marathon, who said it or somebody else. I was watching a video, it was an older guy, kind of crazy, and he said, You are the director of your own life, and at the end of the day, your movie sucked. That's because you're a horrible director, and it it it and it's so and and now for y'all at home, I'm not bagging on computer guys. Before the show, I was showing Dennis the squad 44. I've been playing Grand Theft Auto RP, but I'm down at you know, I I put a time limit on it, and I make myself go out and run four miles or work out for an hour before I play video games. I tell myself I gotta earn it. So I haven't traded in anything, but yeah, I do the same.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:46

I mean, I'm I've been putting in some hour or two this week on Laura Croft Tomb Raider.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:52

In my mid-20s and early thirties, um, I would go to work and then I would come home and play Call of Duty. Four hours a night, and then on Saturday it was 16 hours, and just ordering Taco Bell. And I went from 175 and I gained 60 pounds. And then between typing and playing Xbox all day, I got carpal tunnel. I dropped stuff. And so I stopped playing video games for like two or three years. And so, but I'm not real on it. But what I what at that time I discovered, I had a thought, and I read, holy shit, I'm getting older. I skateboarded from third grade until I was 21. I snowboarded my freshman year until I was until I moved to Florida in 2001. My knees are pretty well shot. I haven't and I've been running for 13 years. I know that when I get older, I will probably have to have knee surgery and wheelchair bound, right? And I understand that video games are gonna be pretty fucking cool when I'm 75. So I've decided that when I'm 75, I don't want to be upset saying, I spent my prime sitting on the couch. Now that I can't walk, all I want to do is be outside. So no, I I try now, I run, I go fishing, we go, I do World War II reenactings, and then occasionally I'll play some video games. But now I flipped it to I want to save my video game years for when I can't walk when I'm in 70 and 80, because the the shit's gonna be super crazy. But to that point, we all gotta get outside, man. We all gotta go out and enjoy the sun. Enjoy my there's and we've talked about on the show one of my you know, we've talked about so many times. When you go out to a World War II reenactment, right? And you're sleeping in that tent on that ground, it sucks. You're tossing and turning, but there's something about waking up at five in the morning, because that's as long as you can go sleep in a tent, unless you're on a cot, and even that's uncomfortable. But there's something about sleeping on the ground, waking up and drinking that black coffee. And even though by Sunday your your body hurts, you're tired. Monday, you feel like a whole new person. You're like just being outside, being on the dirt, not being in front of a TV. You know, if you have enough your willpower and enough love for the hobby that you're not gonna be that guy on your phone all weekend, you know, trying to be authentic. It's a refresher, and and it doesn't even have to be rule routine. It could be going running, it could be just going fishing, it could be walking your dog, it could be sitting outside and painting a landscape. You gotta get outside, you gotta move, and you gotta do things. And being inside is not it's not the end all be all. It's yeah, go through outside.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:34

Go go to a book talk, go to a coffee shop and meet somebody, some people, or join a club, or just get some different experiences and just I'm gonna wrap the show up on this observation and we'll rest all the time and sad and yeah, get some sunlight.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:49

WLVN 1940s radio, the place to go if you want authentic real-time 1940s music, sports events, news, and much more. If you have a World War II event coming up, and as much of us do at our Living History events, sometimes we get a nice old-fashioned radio, we'll put a Bluetooth speaker in it, and we'll stream some appropriate music. Problem is, is every once in while when you're streaming that music, a Pandora ad might kick in or a YouTube ad or whatever host commercial from where you're playing this music, unless you've taken the time to record your own music and save it as a file. We can do you one better. Head over to WLVN 1940s radio or check or simply click the link on our website, go and stream their music live. Thanks to the station manager over at WLVM, Mr. Anthony Leota, who has painstakingly taken his time to get authentic sports events, radio broadcasts, news broadcasts from the time, and he builds a radio station in real time, just like a modern day radio station. Modern day radio stations has an entire schedule built from 12 a.m. until 12 a.m. the following day of all the music, commercial spots, and stories that are going to be ran throughout the day. Anthony has done the same thing, except for his music comes from the 1940s and 1930s. His news reports are actual news reports that were archived from the 1940s. His sporting events are actually archived from the 1940s. So if you want a very authentic, very original concept way to listen to music and content from the 1940s, head over to WLBN1940sradio.com. But anyhow, thank you guys so much for hanging out with us for another episode. Um, real quick, as we said, we don't hack hawk our stuff enough. Head over to Amazon.com, look for Bonsai Cliffs Desperation Edge, Valor Vault by Dennis Blocker. You can get it on there directly off Amazon.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:37

Go to Blockerbooks. Yeah, blockerbooks.com. And uh I've got all my books there. You can click on them and it'll take you right to the Amazon page.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:44

Or email us at info. I'm sorry, email us at mail call at WTSP World War II. I'll pass it to Dennis. He can uh get in touch communicato with you on how you can uh purchase the book with him directly. And the difference from that is he would have the ability to autograph it, correct? Yep. You have some you have inventory available to you that you could autograph before sending it out. Yep. So that's that's a that'd be a cool way to add to your collection. So go to Amazon, you can get it shipped directly to you. Go to Dennisblockerbooks.com or email us, a mail call at WTSP WorldWar II.com or hit up Dennis at one. He has two Instagram pages. You have uh Dennis Blocker, which I believe is linked on what's WTSP World War II, but then you also have Blocker Books, correct?

SPEAKER_07 1:11:25

Blocker Books, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:27

And you can private message him that way too if you want to get autographed books sent directly to you. But thank you guys so much for hanging out with us. I know we went a little rye at the end of the show, but that's right. We can do that here. We we we have no overlords, we can talk about Viagra if we want to. But uh, thank you guys so much. Go outside, get some sun, go to the gun range, go fishing, go paint a picture, walk your dog, absolutely, go do handstands with your kid, just get outside, enjoy life, and uh we'll talk to you all in two weeks.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:59

This has been a digital four tin production.