"Rangers, Resistance, and 'The Houdini Club': A Conversation with Mir Bahmanyar"

Podcast Episode EP-207

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Digital Fortune Media proudly presents the What's the Scuttlebutt Podcast with your hosts, Don Abernappy, Jeff Copsetter, and Dennis Walker.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

Welcome everybody, and welcome to another episode of the What's the Scuttlebutt Podcast, your favorite World War II-based podcast, and we are back together live. Not live, well, we're live, but you guys are here in this post live. We're back together as a group, I should say. And we have a great guest. But before we get to the guest, because we don't want to stop the interview once we get this wheel rolling, because we're all excited to promote this book and to talk to this author, I have a mail call I just want to read real quick. As you guys know, a while back, um I found a photo because um I was doing a I was converting or remastering an interview I did with a um gentleman who flew a plane, a uh B-27, and that one of the members on his crew named that plane Anytime Annie. And so I was looking for a photo of Anytime Annie, and I came across a post uh photo that I actually bought on eBay, and I did a quick TikTok on it and threw it up on YouTube short. And uh Mr. David saw this and he he commented on the video and I thought it was great. I am thrilled to find your one minute and 53 second video and the photo of B17 number 42-107032, aka Anytime Any. Yeah, he knows more information I put in that video. It was that very plane, according to records, ran out of fuel on the return trip after a bomb run over Germany and was ditched in the North Sea on May 13, 1944. The pilot was my uncle, Henry E. Hansen Jr. from Chippewa Bay, New York. And all of his crew members were rescued after Uncle Henry surfed that flying fortress across the Whitecaps. This was his 23rd mission. He and his crew were part of the 367th Bomb Squadron of the 306th Bomb Group stationed at Turleyfield, England. He went home after 25 missions in July of 1944, then returned to fly 25 more with his first child, my cousin Elaine, being born the day he flew number 50. How about that? So Anytime Annie is somewhere off the east coast of Great Britain on the bottom of the Northern Sea. Because the gentleman I interviewed was talking about how they flew Anytime Annie and then it got taken away to be upgraded with the newer equipment, and then they just got a new plane with a new name. And so that was great that uh a family member saw my little photo that I posted up on the internet. And um, Jeff, you had a group you wanted to um give a shout out to, some cool patchwork they do, correct?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, I've got a couple promos, and we're gonna make it short because we're we're really excited about our guests today. Uh, but first, if you're in downtown uh But Texas, it's just outside of Austin, there is an incredible, it's one of the most unique World War II museums I've ever been to. And here's why. It's basically it's nestled right in the middle of a World War II themed mini golf course. That's right. It is literally fun for the whole family because every hole goes in chronological order of campaign starting in Hitler's Blitzkrieg in 1939 to the road to victory in 1945 on hole 18. Every hole, there's an informational panel. They're dedicated, each hole is dedicated to a veteran who served in that battle in that campaign. The AstroTurf is, you know, all different colors to represent maybe you're on the deck of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, or you're with the Mighty Eighth. There's life-size pictures of the flag raising at Cerribachi and Tuskegee Airmen and Rosie the Riveter. And you go all throughout this course, several artifacts are also integrated into it, and it's the biggest little museum at the end that you're going to go through. It's a one-room museum, but man, let me tell you, the the amount of artifacts, the quality, um, there's so much in there. The diversity of the artifacts that you'll see is just second to none. It's called the Memorial Mini Golf and Museum in Butta, uh, Texas. And so when it comes to the patches, I I gotta uh throw a shout out here to Mr. Johnson. He reached out to me through social media, uh, and I told him I'd do him a little favor here because it looks like he is really got the market. If you are in need of a custom painted leather, uh any kind of an insignia squadron bomb group patch for your uh bomber jacket, this is the guy. He doesn't have a website, so you got to get to him through Facebook. And the title of his page is Leather Squadron and Group, etc. Patches World War II era and ladder. So it's not just World War II, it's World War II and beyond uh custom leather artwork. It he doesn't have anything in stock. He could he paints everything to order. There's nothing sitting on the shelf. So make sure you go to his Facebook page and check out uh John Signer's Leather Squadron and Group uh Patches. Man, now we can talk uh uh with uh our guest today, uh Amir Bamignon. It's really truly an honor to uh to get to introduce uh you today. And you you're just I mean, there's so much, so much that you've been involved in, so many accomplishments. Um, and I'm gonna let you talk about them. But if you could, sir, uh my very first question or to lead into this conversation today, could you start at the beginning? Where where did this all start? Did it start with your service in the in the military? Was it prior to that? How do you get to the point where you are now, author of several books, producing movies, advising for some of the top war films uh that we've seen? Where did it all begin for you, sir?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Okay, you're way too nice. I can't top the golf course, so I'm gonna hang up now and come back next month.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

I told him to say that for the end of the show, but you know, here we are.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Anyway, you you guys are way too nice. And by the way, thanks for having me on. I actually I am more honored to be on, so it's very nice. Uh, you know, I can keep it really short. I know time, you know, like anything else. We have limit limited amounts of it. But um, you know, my dad was Iranian, my mom German, immigrated to California when I was little. Went to school, my dad was sick throughout, and he made me promise not to join the military because he always said Americans are crazy, they'll go to war. Uh, little did he know. But but anyway, so when my father passed, I finished my four-year degree, and then I went into the 2nd Ranger Battalion for two years as a machine gunner. The worst job you can possibly have is a grunt. Well, maybe mortars, and back in the day, recoil's rifles were terrible too. But um didn't go to ranger school. It was during the time when we had all these budget cuts, and then they had uh they they had a program eventually called Green to Gold, where you could leave active duty, sign up again, and go to RTC. But I had gone basically, my basic advanced infantry training, airborne school was done at Fort Benning. I went through the three, four-week Ranger indoctrination program at Benning, broke my ankle parachuting, hung out at the head shed, and got tortured, low crawled every inch, I think, on that compound. Went through my second uh ranger indoctrination program and got my teeth kicked in for being too motivated. I ended up at 2nd Ranger Battalion, Bravo Company, which was actually really great, I will say that. And first sergeant looked at me and he's like, Oh, you're a giant, you know, at six foot two. I probably weighed 180, 190 at the time, something like that. He said, Here's a machine gun. So that's how I became a machine gunner by my size, really more than anything else. I went on to uh to sign up for Green to Gold after two years. Um played soccer after one year, got injured badly, and then got a medic got medical out. Uh two years later, I tried to get back in for desert first desert storm there. Uh first Gulf War, and they wouldn't take me in, so I didn't pass the medical. Damn it. But anyway, so that's ended my military career. And then I did retail for a while, and that was horrible. I got wiped out by a big fire in Oakland. I had like seven stores in the San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley Bay area. Got wiped out. FEMA didn't help me much at that time. Um, it's also a lot of money, really, when you have seven stores. So I decided I love movies. I love all these books, you know. I I enlisted because I read all these military books. And when I went to the recruiter, I wanted to enlist in special forces, Green Berets, because I spoke German fluently. And they're like, ah, we only take prior service guys, but how about these rangers? I'm like, Rangers, that's right, LERPS, Vietnam. You know, I'm really I've read all this crap, you know, wonderful stuff. Really love those guys. And so I went to the Ranger the time, but little did I know it became a light infantry unit, right? It was no longer four to six guys behind enemy lines, so it's kind of a joke was on me there, but still formative. I still talk to some of the guys, you know. I I was active for a little while with the associations and things like that. But fast forward retail shop. I get basically burnt out of business, and I'm like, eh, I got nothing else to do. Let's go to Hollywood. Make movies. I love movies, idiot. Um, and you know, overall it was interesting. I stayed away as much as I could from tech advising, I because you get pigeon-holed very quickly. I know you had Dale Dye on, and I'm sure he could have told you all about that. So I acquired a lot of properties, you know, including, like I said, uh Marine Corps book in Korea with the old breed, other things. And, you know, I tried to make my way there, and on occasion I would do a little bit of tech advising. But I primarily passed that on to other people. So I did tech advise a little bit on Blackhawk Down for uh Harry Humphreys, who's a Navy SEAL, who handled all of Brookheimer, Jerry Brockheimer, the producer, all his films. Worked on that for a little while. I worked on We Were Soldiers once in Young for a couple weeks until they said you're not in the union, get lost. So I got lost. But um, I had the good fortune of doing The Good German, which is is that the right way? No, it's the wrong way. That's George Clooney's hero uniform back there. Uh so that was a lot of fun, and I tried to produce and I sort of ended up writing a little bit. But what had had happened is I had done all this research on Blackhawk Down, and the Rangers who had been there from uh Bravo Company 3rd Ranger battalion were really awesome. A lot of them came, sent me pictures. You know, I I even talked to guys from 10th Mountain Division who are medics and they sent me pictures and I compiled a list of all the images, I compiled a database of all the rangers with their phone numbers, email addresses, passed it on to a production. And eventually they didn't take me with them to Morocco to film, and that's perfectly fine. So I got I was a bit annoyed. I had done all this work and I had all these images, and I'm like, now what? So I just reached out to a publisher in the UK online, early days, you know, when online just kind of started. And they hired me to write an article which didn't get published, and then I sort of on occasion would write a book uh as I was trying to make it in Hollywood. So, you know, I'd written uh I think this is my fifth Ranger book now, and I cover anything from ancient through modern stuff. I think the book before this was on uh second bad boy in GWAT in Afghanistan, Iraq, which I think was a great book, actually. So I've I've been in that, and when I got out, I stayed with associations, you know, ranger associations. I was on the board of directors, so I did things like that, and Hollywood was really interesting, but also very tough, very challenging, you know. So unless you know people or you have a lot of money or you have that hot property that everybody wants, it it's it's a grinder there.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

So and sometimes in the environment where it's people constantly just trying to step over each other to get up on it's just it can be very, very tiring.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Absolutely, it's true. You know, I I I don't want to be too bitter about it, but I can get very bitter about this very quickly. But there were some great people, I still talked to some. Oddly enough, I still have one or two projects uh in development over there that who knows what'll happen 20 years when I'm dead now, you know, that they'll probably make it. But so I had a great time, but the writing started really because I worked on BlackRock Down. I had all this information, all this material. And uh so I started to develop this relationship with one publisher, and on occasion I'd write a book, and it was always about the grunt, the infantry guy. You know, I wasn't I never really cared about the navy, no offense, just never did. Didn't care about Air Force. I was always interested in the Babylonian infantryman, you know, fighting against whoever to the doughboy, you know, dog face, jar head, whatever. I I've always been interested in the ground pounder, you know, and that's why I joined the infantry ultimately anyway, because that's what I knew. Um so I I wrote a little bit here and there, tried to do Hollywood, and then I got a bit sick of Hollywood after a while, and I wrote screenplays for I ghost wrote for like some A-listers who'd done some big movies and some big TV shows. I tech advised a little, but ultimately I met someone and we moved to Canada, and uh she now has a great career writing. Something I didn't get in Hollywood. Anyway, but uh so um the interesting thing is when I came, I'm going backwards a little, but when I came down to LA uh 90, I don't even remember part of my French, early 90s, I think it was, and I had talked and mailed people from Merilt's Marauders, you know, on China Burma India Theater. And this is in the day, some of you might remember this. We used to write letters. So I would write letters to these old timers, and I'd send them a questionnaire of like 50 things I was interested in. I'd send them in a stamp address self-envelope kind of a thing, you know, and ask them if you have the time, please fill this out, send it back to me. And I started with Merrill Small Roders, the 5307, because that's kind of what the Ranger Battalion also was drawing its history lineage from. So those guys started to send me some material back. So I kind of got a little bit into it, talked to a few people at association meetings here and there. Then I moved to LA to become a big shot at Jerry Brookheimer, and um someone on one of those early bulletin boards on Airborne Ranger something list servers said, There's this old timer in LA, you're in LA, go see him. He was in the Rangers. I had no idea anything about him. The guy's name was Phil Stern, who turns out to be one of like Hollywood's great photographers, actually, like jazz. Best friends with Jimmy Dean. He almost killed him when Jimmy Dean raced with a motorcycle through an intersection and sunset and Laurel Canyon, I think it was. Something like that, or maybe Coldwater Canyon, doesn't matter. Somewhere up there in the hills, they became best friends. Phil had been already a star photographer. World War II breaks out, he didn't want to sit out. He goes to um Europe and becomes combat camera, right? He works for US Army Signal Corps, and it gets attached to the Derby's Rangers. So I managed to get a hold of Bill Stern, meet him, go to his house, like in the heart of LA, really near studios. And he had something like, I don't know, 800 or so black and white and color pictures of basically World War II. And a good portion of those were Derby Rangers, and then he did a hell of a lot on the Sicilian campaign. So we developed a great friendship, uh, although he could be quite a pain in the butt, you know. The older you get, like we are, you can become a bit difficult. But uh he was really a great guy, and he opened up his archives to me, and he's like telling me all these stories about JFK, you know, John Wayne, James Dean, Darby with the Rangers, this, that, and the other. And through him, I met a lot of the original old boys from Darby's Rangers who were first, third, and fourth Ranger battalion. Although I also met guys who are in the second, fifth, all that, and Merrill's Marauders. But because of Phil, I started to really shift my focus toward Derby's Rangers. So I accumulated things here and there. I wrote a small skinny book for Osprey. It's like 64 pages. Phil provided pictures. I made a donation, of course, to the association on that. Because really the intent was never to make money, and any book author will tell you you make no money unless you're like, you know, some bigwig. You get a three-book deal over 15 years to write the greatest series on World War II. Uh and then you're writing on the American Revolutionary War now or American War of Independence. But most of us, we make nothing. It's like Hollywood, right? 1% of the authors or Hollywood people get 99% of the money. So it's never about money. But I developed these relationships. I wrote a little bit here and there, still trying to make it. And that's how I developed my affinity toward Darby's Rangers because of Phil Stern. And it was the early days of tech. I had a large flatbed scanner, so I said, hey, look, let's preserve images. You have awesome ones. Yeah. Technically, technically speaking, they all belong to the US Army. And he's like, Yeah, but I hold the negatives, they're mine. It was a really funny guy.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

And once you scan them, he owns the rights to the digital version, and so you get around it.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I scanned him in, uh, about like 100-150, I think I have upstairs. He sent them off to the the guy who did the drop zone. I forgot his name now. Uh O'Connell, I think it was, O'Donnell, something like that, um, who then had a career writing books. Um, but the focus shifted to Derby. Fast forward, you know, life goes on. I'm doing Hollywood, dropping out, moving to Canada, writing other books. And a friend of mine from Second Ranger Battle back in the day, who was in a weapons squad with me, he emails me and goes, hey man, I was just up in Northern Ireland. They have a museum there, they need help. And I'm like, What is what's going on here? I've heard a little bit about it. This is Carrick Fergus, uh, Northern Ireland, north of Belfast. So I reached out and uh they basically, that's kind of where Darby Strangers were formed and founded, right? Uh I think the only special, call it special forces. I'm always cautious with that term, but let's call it for lack of better terms, elite force. It's the only elite force founded outside of the United States, I think, um, during World War II. I think even to this day. I think Alamo Scouts were in the Philippines, maybe something like that. But anyway. So I talked to the museum curator, and she's great. They're terrific up there in Northern Ireland, and they're like, you know, we have this small U.S. Rangers Museum. Do you have material? Of course, I send them a ton of stuff. Meanwhile, Phil has passed. I think he's been dead for four years or something. But I get invited, I go to Carrick Fergus, Northern Island, check out the Ranger Museum, meet some of the people there. They usually have some kind of annual or so shindig, 40, 50, 60 people get invited. The mayor shows up, the the ambassador from the US shows up sometimes. And it was really inspirational. And I'm like, you know, I've let I've accumulated all this stuff, you know. I've been to Fort Benning, to the library, microfiche, you know, all this illegible crap. I've had it for years, for decades. And another good uh friend of mine, Jamal Thierry, who was one of the original Derby Rangers in the meanwhile, had also passed. And uh his friend called me and said, I have all this stuff from his apartment. I want you to come pick it up. So I've accumulated all this stuff over decades, literally. So I'm in Carrick Fergus, it's wonderful, they did a great job on the museum. They really preserve our history there extremely well. I mean, anyone interested in in the Darby's Rangers and or the US Army in in Ireland, Northern Ireland, should go there. They also have this massive black stone where the camp used to be where the the Darby's Rangers first formed. And it has a plaque with the Rangers on it and all that stuff. So it's really cool. It's a great place. It reinvigorated me. So I kind of started to look through things, did a little more research, finally really looked through everything I had. And then I wrote, you know, another book on G Watt, uh that ranger, and things I kind of got busy a little bit on other things. But eventually my agent is like I I've written some novels, and my agent, Alex Shane, uh at Writer's House, great guy, actually. Or is he? He he goes, Mir, you're an idiot. You can't write novels, man. Just write nonfiction. He's a liar. I know it'll get picked up soon. But anyway, so he said, you know, pitch some other things. So I pitched some other things, but you know what because of my visits to Carrick Fergus, I've gone three or four times now, and I'm going again this year. I said, you know, I should I I I I owe these uh old timers a book, at least to preserve it better than it has before. And in the pre game show, we briefly discussed that. I think there's only one great book out there on Rangers by Bob Black, who used to be a Ranger, and it's called Ranger Force about Darby's Rangers. And it's really terrible. Terrific. Um but it's very sanitized because he was friends with these old timers, and you know, you don't want to don't want to talk smack when a lot of them are still around, and you're very respectful, and there's that pressure. Still very, very excellent book. I mean, great book. I have his entire collection. He's been very helpful to me. Um, he's very old now. I don't even know if he's still around. I should check on that probably sometime. Um and then there's my book, Houdini Club. But that that's how it came about. All those years of accumulating stuff, talking to Bob Black, friends with Phil Stern, friends with Jim Altieri, who had written probably one of the great memoirs, but also very sanitized. And you know, it kind of ends badly when you think about it, but it people shouldn't view it like that because the Rangers get wiped out more or less. Two out of three battalions get wiped out in Italy. But they did a phenomenal job, so I don't view it that negatively. But they didn't was a painful thing. Of course, you're experiencing your friends getting killed or captured or wounded, or you can't save them. We'll get to that eventually. So my agent tells me, hey, your novel is okay. I'm gonna see if I can set it up. In the meanwhile, how about you make uh a little bit of money for me and get my 15%? Kidding, he never said that. Um, and I felt I felt it was 12. Yeah, it was 12. Uh and I felt Darby's was really, you know, Carrick Fergus, Darby's, all these guys, and and I'm like, there aren't any real books out on him, other than Bob Black's. And I think the book he that uh that I like very much was 2009. He had written other books on Rangers in Korea and in World War II, and you know, from the founding to the 19th century. So he's he's really a great Ranger historian, but nothing modern. And I had all this stuff, and I've had all these stories, you know. Like some guys would say, ah, Phil Stern wasn't a real Ranger, you know, he didn't train with us, he just takes pictures. You know, I'm laughing at that because I kind of know what that two-tier system is in the military, right? You're what have you done lately in the military is always a thing. And then others are like, oh, this guy just murdered this guy, and this guy was awesome, oh this guy was a coward, you know, you hear all these stories. And to be very fair, I think the guys talked to me because I was from the Ranger Battalions. You know, I'm their descendant, literally. And I never had a tape recorder. I never sit there with with pencil or paper. We just had conversations like we're having now. And and you get a lot more out of that, actually. Now, to be fair, it's all memory dependent on them, memory dependent on me. Sometimes I write things down later on after the fact, or I would maybe follow up with a question. But I had all this information. My agent is prompting me to do nonfiction. I'd done modern war stuff, you know, SEALs, rangers, and uh I finally felt, you know, now's the the time to really do World War II. My agent was great, he got me a book deal with a nice publisher out of New York who were awesome. And the original pitch for this book was not the Houdini Club. It really was Darby's Rangers, you know, as as generic as you can come up with it. Um I don't know if if I died here or not, but my image froze. You're fine. But uh okay. But um the publisher, the owner of diversion books, and my editor, the guy who commissioned us, basically uh came up with this idea looking at my proposal, which was like 30 pages long, I think. And I had a small chapter on POWs that was roughly uh had two or three guys in it, I think it was. And they came back to me midway through the research. I've been to Europe, I've been walking the battlefields and all that kind of stuff. And I'm writing the I'm writing the book, and they come back to me and they throw this hand grenade in my in my study. They're like, hey Mir, we have a great idea for you. Let me let us run that by you. We want to do more on the POWs. We want to really call this the Houdini Club, because that's what they were called, the guys who had managed to escape. So we kind of reimagined the book, and I think they did a great job. They really uh made it a much better book. I'm I'm not saying it wasn't gonna be a good book, but I think they made it a much more interesting book. So it is the story of Darby's Rangers, of the first Ranger Battalion founded in Northern Ireland, Carrick Fergus. It's about their combat actions in North Africa, Tunisia, you know, Algeria, Tunisia. It's them then growing in North Africa to two more battalions, going into Sicily and then going to mainland Italy. Ultimately, two out of the three battalions get wiped out, captured, a lot of them get captured, and you have a ton of people escaping. That's the Houdini Club. And there's some amazing stories in there about, you know, the guys who escape. Like, some escape right out of the prison camps. They're still in Italy, and they like, because they're in dis disrepair, being fixed, and these guys pretend to be Italian workers and walk out to POW camp. I mean, it's amazing stories like that. Others on these uh uh 1040s, I think they're called the the boxcars on trains that used to transport horses and men on occasion. And and one I remember one uh a group of guys picked up the smallest, tiniest ranger they could lift, and they would there was a window that had barbed wire on it. So they pick him up and drive his feet into the barbed wire to knock it loose, and then eventually they all climb out and jump off. Like a battering ram. Yeah, like a battering ram, exactly. And then you have other stories that are really like this brutal, just brutal stuff. I mean, there are some guys who get escape Italy, get captured, escape in Germany, get captured, and get like violently destroyed physically, right? Like one guy had almost all his teeth knocked out. I mean uh one of them was in a in a German POW camp that had a lot of Russian prisoners, and he was basically saying they didn't feed them anything, so all these guys were starving. His job was uh burial details. So he'd have a little cart with a wheel on it, he'd load ten guys on it, and he's by the way, not being fed that much either. Sure. And he'd go dump 10, 20 bodies a day into this massive pit, and half the guys are still alive. And he basically describes the scene where these Soviet guys are absolutely starving, and they managed to get a German shepherd, a guard dog, to come close to him and just grab him and tear the dog apart and eat him raw. I mean, it's like horrible stories like this. So so but they came up with this idea, the publisher and my editor, that you know, these are stories that people should read and should know about the POW escape story. So we managed to combine that with the history of Darby's guys.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

And you did a very, very great job. Um, one of the things I was not prepared for, which I was quite surprised with, is the fact that the first three to four chapters is based. If if you're all listening at home and you want to know how the Rangers came to be and who was involved and who was responsible and how the selection process went, clearly you can tell that you, you know, the book, you the research was there because you learn a lot about the Rangers and the Houdini Club, and I was thrilled about that. Um, you know, Jeff, Dennis and I have talked in the past, we don't do, we haven't done a whole lot on the North African campaign in parts of Italy. And I'll be honest with you, I I I feel dumb, I feel ashamed, but I want to say it. We, you know, we see we hear so much about the European theater and Normandy invasion, we hear about the uh, you know, the French resistance and the free French, but it never occurred to me, with the exception of some inscripted, because we know how the Germans love to inscript people, but it never occurred to me, and I'm reading this, I'm like, wait a minute, we're fighting Italians. It never it never occurred to me that the section of the the French government who actually went to fight along with the Germans who weren't inscripted, they were, hey, we're down with your cause, let's go. And because we don't, I personally haven't read up a whole lot on those campaigns. It I had to stop a minute and do a little research, like, oh yeah, they were actually the French, you know, I mean, not the French, the Italians, you know, and the French. We we're fighting against French army units and parts of these campaigns. And I I think a lot of that's overlooked in a lot of the uh the basic history that people learn, you know, in history class and some of that. And so just that and of itself was was um history and education for me. Yeah, no, no, that's really great.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

I blame uh Spielberg, of course, since everything is saving private Ryan and Brothers, it's his fault entirely.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Well, even on the old style history TV, you know, the old the production for history and cable TV, you know, it was the French resistance and the freed French, but you know, very rarely, at least in the contents of which I've seen, have you seen video, you know, film contents of allies fighting against the French armies.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yeah, yeah. Well, interestingly enough, uh, I mean, I'll I'll get to North Africa real quick. The Rangers sent like uh a number of people to Dieppe in 1942, and very few of them landed, and that's where the first Ranger casualties occurred. I don't think they learned much from it, quite frankly. But the next big mission for the Rangers was really the invasion of Algeria, uh Operation Torch. And that's where you find the Vichy French colonial troops um putting up some resistance to the Rangers who conducted, you know, basically nighttime amphibious assaults, is really what they did primarily. And they ended up doing a lot of mountain warfare fighting in North Africa. Also, people always think it's just desert. There are mountains in North Africa. Now, I didn't get to go to North Africa, time and money, you know, that kind of thing. So I focused on Sicily and mainland Italy. I also had support over there. I had a good friend of mine, uh, Italian-American guy, so his his language skills were incredible, actually. But North Africa, so the Rangers basically are tasked with eliminating gun batteries, and they do this at night. Um and you know, they've trained for this very hard. They've spent probably two, three months prepping for this, and they do a good job, actually. They come to seize the guns on the high point to protect the port, follow-on forces come in, but they take some casualties there already, right? The the French, the Vichy French are not just letting them walk over. Ultimately, the Allied advances actually stop, and the Allied commander asks uh for a ranger company to come and help eliminate some resistance. So the French actually did put up a fight. I know people tend to always uh make fun of them, but I tell you, they you know, it wasn't it wasn't a cakewalk for the rangers to come land at night, two different locations, one in the harbor, one around the harbor, doing a night uh road march to a hostile objective to take that out. So they did a great job on that. Now what happened? They did such a great job doing this nighttime amphibious assault. There wasn't that much combat going on in Algeria. There was, but not that much. That eventually, for quite a few months, they became a training uh dog and pony show kind of unit, which really was bad for morale. They lost 20% of their guys, quit, or were fired. You know, there was a little bit of desertion, and people were also like, hey, I've trained this hard, I got mine, you know, I got my combat scroll on my uniform now. I don't want to do this anymore. So, but they did a great job. They get replacements, they train up, and now they do uh road marches at night, 12 kilometers behind, you know, over the mountains and all that, behind enemy lines, to wipe out Italians in this case, to seize key strategic passes that the Allies really needed to secure. So I think that's like the great strength of the Rangers. You can go from amphibious assaulting ports and gun batteries at the ports to covering terrain, like mountainous, treacherous terrain silently at night to take out a heavily fortified and occupied, say, Italian outpost in this case. And these guys had been trained by the Brits using knives, you know, the Fairburn Sykes commando knife, bayonet. And I remember reading uh one Ranger's account saying how great the Brits were at training Americans in the call that art or the the violence of the bayonet, the meat, the meat is what he called it repeatedly. And so the Rangers do that. They they climb up, they go around, you know, enemy aligns, and then they descend at the crack of dawn or just before dawn, and basically hand to hand mostly wipe out these Italian outposts, bayonets, pistols, knives, you know, cutting people's throats. I mean, it's quite horrific, actually.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

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SPEAKER_01 35:43

Mir, I I wanted to highlight that because uh so I'm a little bit uh behind the other two fellas here as far as getting uh into the book. I'm only a couple chapters in, uh, and I don't want to give away too many details uh about it. Of course, we want everybody to read this book. Uh and and by the way, I picked it up to just to kind of get a glimpse of what it was about, and then I didn't put it down until I finished chapter one. Uh it is that good. Um, but I really wanted to highlight um, you know, the the the genesis of the rangers, and I really I never thought of it before, but to mirror the British commandos, right? And we know what they did, but to not use that term commando, and for me personally, the term I have since I was a kid, I've been infatuated with the term ranger. Um as a kid, I had uh I had visions of being an army ranger. Now, of course, I was a ground pounder. Um, you'll never hear me say I was an infantryman, I was a cavalry trooper. Um but and then of course after after the war, I you know had a really great career for almost 10 years as a park ranger. Uh worked several times with Texas Rangers, uh, and I live in the middle of Texas, and I'm probably the only uh I'm a big hockey fan, uh, and I'm a huge New York Rangers fan because I'm just enthralled with that. But you know, the term Ranger, um, I I came across this. I'm I'm pursuing a degree in history as well. I've got three terms left, almost there. But I did a paper on the kind of the um the beginning of a of what it meant to be an American infantryman on this continent. And I came across the very first Rangers that when the term was used all the way back to Benjamin Church and King Philip's war, 1675-76. And that's exactly what you were just talking about. That was a term used for a special group of individuals that used unconventional tactics um to you know to fighting King Philip's forces. And and it's just a true testament that 300 years later, that's the term that the American military baptizes for this unique elite group of men. And uh I mean it's just it's fitting, it's beautiful. And I'm really, like I said, I'm really, really enjoying this book, and I I have yet to read a book strictly on uh the Ranger experience in World War II, but I will say I'm going to follow your book up. Uh, I do have Darby's We Led the Way, an original printing from 1980, and and I've you know I've played around with it, no, no, no, I don't I don't know enough about it, right? I just never got into it. I uh I'm just enthralled with your book so much so much now that it it it is really opening it's a whole other niche, uh not just for conversation on the podcast and important history, but especially for for Don and I as living historians, you know, um to to to replicate a ranger um you know impression like like Don says he's now working on too. So to keep that history alive, it's um it's just it's really something. And your book is really it's really got a special spot on the bookshelf, I know for all three of us here, because it's your opening is just incredible. I mean, you I you can't put it down.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Yes. Well, don't get used to that. But yeah, the opening is very good. There are a few chapters that are like that, but you know, at the end of the day, I still have to do a I don't want to belittle it, but it's an information dump. I still need you to get a lot of this information and the publisher, spare a thought for the publisher, because I was commissioned to write so-and-so many words. I went well above and beyond that, and that you know, it's very costly for the publishers. I I'm aware of those things, so they've been terrific. I probably published, I probably wrote a third more than I was supposed to do, or something like that. So it's a big book. But but to your point, real quick, on the coinage of Ranger, the idea was what a lot of people don't know, Darby's Rangers was really a provisional unit modeled after the commandos, to train with the commandos, to do these strikes, to learn a little bit about it, you know, to build morale, to get bloodied, and then they were supposed to go back to all the other units, the regular units, and I they're not regular, but you know, regular army units, and share some of that wealth and knowledge. Um, and that really never happened. So, but it also had problems for them ultimately. The key thing to bear in mind is it was modeled after the commandos, they trained with the commandos. Everything was amphibious assaults, raids behind enemy lines. They were very small. They had to fit, I think it's two companies, uh, one company would fit into two assault boats. So when your average American regular infantry battalion uh company yes, company had something like 190 guys, call it under 200. Rangers were no more than 70, maybe 75 with add-ons, you know. So it was really tiny. So when we say ranger battalion, this is not like your American first infantry division, you know, anything like that, the the big red one, nothing like that. They were so small. And the pool was also tough, right? Because you're an elite force, you've been trained, so it's hard to maintain that. Um, the other thing I should tell you about We Led the Way by Darby and Baumer. I I have read an unflattering letter that was sent to Bob Black by a general who was part of the uh team that created really the Rangers. And he said, you know, this book is Darby's very colorful in it. Um, you know, I mean he they spend one night video, I mean taping, audio taping him and typing up his notes or something like that. That's that book isn't that accurate. I was laughing at it, but it's a really valuable book. I mean, I I I love it, I've read it a bunch of times. I quote from it on occasion because again, nobody knows nothing at the end of the day, right? All four of us can be in the same thing, observing the same thing, and we'll have completely different perspectives on it. So you don't know anything, and no doubt I'll make mistakes, no doubt Darby recalled something incorrectly, all that stuff. But the idea was that commandos belonged, of course, to the British, and the Americans were well aware that they can't call their new unit commandos. It's a British term. And so someone said some newspaper guy came up with Rangers. Other people said there was uh Northwest Passage with Spencer Tracy that had come out like five years earlier, that that was an inspiration.

SPEAKER_04 42:25

I should like to think our Tolkien, maybe Tolkien was the inspiration. Yeah, we need to the main character who saves the day and becomes king is known as a ranger.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

Yeah, you know, I would never put it past anyone, but I would I should hope that our American leadership uh uh would remember their history, the British history at least, and then our you know, American history, and that's how the term Ranger was eventually used for it, of course. So but yeah, that's uh that's a really great point, you know, the British and it's and you had Gorham Rangers, you know, you had Church's Rangers, Rogers Rangers. His statue is right above my head, that's Rogers Rangers in bronze. Um and you know, they were British. We we should acknowledge that, but to me it makes no difference, you know.

SPEAKER_04 43:12

Um my daughter goes to Rudder Middle School.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

There you go. Rudder. I have his book here somewhere. Um but um yeah, so it was very interesting. And you know, the thing that always surprised me is how how stiff actually the French resistance was for periods of time, and of course the Italians, you know, they people always give the Italians grief. I don't know why. I mean they were not always well equipped. They fought. The Rangers certainly overran them and killed a bunch of them. They didn't take prisoners, you know. I mean, I I think they killed 100, 130 people in one of their night raids and only captured 10 as per order. And they, you know, they just murdered them ultimately, when you think about it, because wars legalized murder. We gotta acknowledge that. Two. But they were really terrific guys. And in the first raid they did at night against Italians, they wore you know wound caps. Um, they didn't wear their helmets that came a little bit later on. But uh it was very commando British raid, amphibious and assaults, but also the ability to climb mountains to work in desert. You know, they're able, like the modern Ranger Battalion, you can fight in any terrain, any weather, whatever it is. By the way, Dennis, I think that's the second or fifth ranger battalion behind you in your wallpaper there. Um, but in Germany, I want to say, um, and I don't know that much about 2nd and 5th. But anyway, so they're in North Africa, they've done a great job. You know, they've had some desertions, they've had some horrible things, they murdered some civilians here and there, but they killed also a lot of French and Italians and Germans, and there are, I mean, there's the the thing you can say about the Ranger battalions, Darby's Rangers, is the individuals were well trained, well motivated, and they had a real good core of leadership, from officer down to the NCO. And anybody who knows anything will always tell you the NCOs, that's literally the backbone of any unit. And they had some really awesome guys, I mean, really hardcore guys, who would get eventually promoted battlefield commissions as the war dragged on.

SPEAKER_03 45:22

To that point on leadership, I wanted to point this out earlier. You're talking about how the Rangers' initial um idea was to be provisional. And you point out in your book that Darby did never let that out because he was concerned about morale. You know, you have these guys doing a special type of training to be the special unit. No way in hell I'm gonna let them know that you know we're this isn't meant to last, this isn't meant to be a thing, that you guys are basically just gonna be trained up and then hopefully spread your wisdom amongst the the the regular troops. And and I I like I love the fact that he really kept that from them to keep them feeling that you know the training and what they're doing was truly a step above everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it it and I absolutely am 100% positive he knew because you know he was a staff officer, he sees all the paperwork coming back and forth. He accompanied Truscott, then Colonel, who became a general eventually, uh well-known general, uh on his trip to uh Northern Ireland. So I'm 100% certain he knew, a couple of key players knew. The other thing that's interesting about Darby's Rangers is Darby interviewed all the officers that eventually would join him. Twenty-nine of them ultimately got signed. So he interviewed them all personally, which is incredible, right? And then those guys will be formed into boards, and they'd go out in turn, interview all the volunteers, and they'd make decisions on that, and eventually they get like five, six hundred people, and they'd go to Carrick Fergus Sunnylands campus where they really draw uniforms, equipment, start to get in shape, and all that kind of stuff before they go over to the commandos. But yeah, it was always meant to be provisional. Eventually, this becomes a problem because the bigger you get, they do well in North Africa. Now the Allied planners are saying, hey, we're gonna go to Sicily, and these Rangers have done a remarkable job. We're gonna do more amphibious assaults, we need more rangers. So they create the third and fourth because second, Dawn, as you know, was already created in the United States and had a very minor, maybe two or three guys from Darby's Rangers who were physically no longer fit from North Africa, and they were shipped out to the U.S. to help train the new rangers. So the 3rd and 4th Ranger Battalions were created, uh, trained up, recruited. There are some great guys there, some uh Cherokee Indian I like very much. I talked to his son, actually, who was a Vietnam veteran, special forces. So that's in the book. Really awesome guy, and he also eventually escapes. And uh there's a neat little story about uh Thomas Bearpaw, love the guy very much. His son is awesome. Um, but so they create third and fourth, and they go to Sicily. And Sicily is literally like, you know, when you see the opening in Private Ryan, uh, no matter how incorrect it is, it's still very visceral. And so when the first and fourth ranger battalions go into this little town called Jela, south uh south of Sicily, they hit mines on the beaches, they hit obstacles, they have Italian defenders, and Sicily is poorly defended. The Germans, like in North Africa, pull out all the equipment from the Italians and keep all the best things for themselves. So the Italians are kind of there, and I think some some Italian researcher said something about there was a machine gun per kilometer or mile or something like that per Sicily. You know, they didn't really have everything, they didn't have all the concrete they needed for pillboxes either. Suffice it to say, first and fourth, earn their earn their entry into the city of Jela. And I've been on that beach, and it's literally you throw a rock and you hit the town. It's that close. So if the Italians could have fortified Jela a little bit more properly, uh it would have been a bloodbath, I think, like Diepp was, you know, like parts of D-Day or where. But Rangers hit the beach, hit mines, but you know, typical initiative, a couple of the NCOs wipe out 12 pillboxes along the seawall, stuff like that. Waves come in. And the Rangers ultimately seize this town, but bitter fighting, real bitter fighting. And I was at the church that saw some really nasty fighting, and uh, and it's all house to house, and they they they have practiced all this with the commandos called Me and My Pal, you know, where it's basically two guys, right? One covers while the other moves, that kind of stuff, which we still do today, uh, me and my ranger buddy kind of stuff in modern days. So they really set all the standards of speed of road march, how to assault a pillbox, you know, all this stuff. I mean, we've refined it, of course, when modern, you know, even and I'm talking about stuff that I know from the 80s and 90s, and having written a book with a guy who did it in, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq. But the Darby's Rangers really set that pattern. They showed you how to do these things. And so they eventually seized the town, and then there they are, like the morons, light armed, nothing, and all of a sudden Italian counterattacks are coming, German counterattacks are coming. I think they got lucky that the Italian counterattacks there had smaller tanks, lightweight tanks, your tankettes, if you want to call them, but the Germans had some heavier armor. But what was great about Darby is he realized in our zoo very quickly in Algeria when they first invited it that he needs great communication with the Navy. This is my only Navy reading, uh, with uh which we do today too, right? We have a lot of uh support. But in Sicily, Darby has great radio communications, and he calls in basically fire from the ships off uh you know in the bay, and they hammer these counterattacks. Some still get into the town, the rangers hang on. That's the opening chapter, by the way, when Darby himself is out there with Captain Shaunstrom, who I love very much, um, are hammering these tying tanks. And um, you know, they they hung on there barely, but mostly because the Rangers were able to do a lot of house-to-house anti-tank fighting, you know, uh wiping out tanks literally by just climbing on top of them, calling in naval air support. So they do a really terrific job on that. Third Ranger Battalion goes a little off to the left of Sicily and capture Likata, which was also a nice beach, great beach. So, but they had mountains there, also problems. And so the Rangers seize these two port towns that are uh really valuable to the Allied advance, and then the Rangers are tasked with seizing mountain fortresses. And you know, I've been to them. There's a the the battalion surgeon of Derby's Rangers called it a Disney-like mountain fortress, which is Butera. And I drove up there, I drove all over Sicily. Get insurance when you rent a car in Sicily, um, which I did. And we went to Butera, we looked at it, and you can just see how exposed you would be as an invading force. I mean, you just you're on this on this slight mountain range, and you look down and you can see these anything you really want in the bay, this city. I mean, they needed to take these places out, and they did, and they conducted an amazing night march, and they they wipe out German and Italian defenders in this tiny town that had maybe a population of I think at the time four or five hundred people.

SPEAKER_05 52:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

And I think uh yeah, and they had I think about a hundred, hundred and fifty defenders. That was my graduating class. Yeah, it's tiny, right? Um, and uh it was really incredible, and again, it's hand-to-hand, house to house. It's nighttime operations, you know, and and and the first uh the the big red one under Allen practiced a lot of night operations, and Darby was a huge night guy. So you needed to do that. You're a small group, well trained, you can do mountains, you've proven that in North Africa. You're good hand-to-hand, you're good at supporting fire and all this stuff. And they take these mountain fortresses and uh and eventually they sweep to the left and uh to protect the British right, basically. And um they capture a lot of prisoners, you know. And Shunstrom, who I love very much, I think, uh murders a bunch of time POWs when they get unruly and want water and food because the Allies did not have any available at the time. But he was a heroic son of a bitch. He literally, he's the guy that wins you battles, he's the guy that wins you wars, and uh we can talk about him a little bit later. But so they they take Sicily basically, the Allies do. The British are on the right, the Americans on the left, Patton and Montgomery get in a race to get to the northeastern part of uh Sicily, which is closest to mainland Italy, called Messina, which was also the cause of the First Punic War, by the way, way back when, thousands of years ago. And first and fourth don't do much. They refit guard prisoners, third rang, some of them get sent on the mountain ranges to protect Patton's flank as he's on the coast driving toward Messina to the east. And uh it just wears them out. And the third rang actually used mules uh on that particular mission, and all the mules died. So that just tells you how shitty the terrain was and poor animals. But that was the rangers basically in Sicily. They had three months in North Africa to prepare, to get replacements, train new people, create these bataines. They did a phenomenal job in Sicily. I mean, really great stuff. The Allies did a terrible job, though, because the German veteran German units from North Africa had managed to slip to Sicily. Now they escaped Sicily to go into mainland Italy. Eventually I would come and bite them in the ass, the Allies. So, anyway, Allies take over Sicily, and now the plan is to go to mainland Italy, and the British and Americans land at Salerno. The rangers are north of that, a little tiny town called Maori. I've been there, it's like shale rock, it's like a really shitty beach, unlike Sicily, which is a wonderful sand beach, you know, it's lovely, but they can also hide mines and do that.

SPEAKER_05 55:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

So, but it's unopposed in Maori, uh, north of Salerno, and they have to take this huge uh mountain pass called Chiontsi. And it's literally like you land, rock, mountain a hundred yards, I mean a town a hundred yards with one main road, and then you just look up and it's nothing but huge mountains. I mean, it's insane. Um, and they're tasked, all battalions are tasked with seizing this mountain range, the left and right of the pass, overlook Germans, call in uh fire from the Navy gunships to destroy and interdict any movement of the Germans further south toward the south toward the British and Americans. And the Rangers do it great, really fantastic. They take casualties, though it's mountain warfare. Um, that for the first time they have heavy artillery in the in the form of half-tracks, they got 75 millimeter guns on them. Shunstrom starts to piss people off because they're in this pass, mountain pass. The rangers are digging into these rock faces, really hard stuff, and uh they're basically in artillery duels with the Germans, with their artillery. And Shunstrom has four trucks, he divides two, sends some to the left with a fourth range of a tiny, and the first and fourth on this mountain pass, overlooking um the uh Pompeii and everything that's in the valley down there, and where the Germans are operating out of. And uh Shunstrom would pull out his half-track and start bombing German artillery positions, and as soon as they would start responding, he would back up, get to safety. But the Rangers who are in the foxholes are getting hammered. Yeah, they're getting hammered by all this German artillery, and they are getting pissed. So some people hated him for that. Others said he was the most courageous thing, uh courageous guy. Uh reporters covered that in great detail, some great stories on that. And my opinion was you know, I wasn't there, I haven't been in combat. I'm sure I wouldn't be very happy with having shrapnel artillery all over my head. But that was the job. Darby never told him to stop. They used the they used his ability to lure out German counter battery fire to pummel them, basically. So they did a great job in that as well. And eventually they're pulled off the line. The Allies finally push in inland. Salerno struggled a lot, but eventually they manage to a degree. I mean just get pulled off to Naples to refit, get back in shape, and then they're sent to the winter line because you know the lack of wisdom was to use the soft underbelly of Europe to push north into Europe, uh, instead of landing in France and to relieve some pressure on the Russians or the Soviets. And I think it was a mistake because you're hitting mountain range after mountain range after mountain range, it's all defended by the Germans. Um and um so the Rangers are sent out to the winter line with the 45th and lots of other, of course, American infantry units who get bloodied, and it's horrible. And I've been to Venafro, I've been to a guy who has a museum, they walked me all over the place, and I swear I couldn't make it up the half those hills. I can't imagine what it's like hauling all the crap up there. And you're a small unit, you're exhausted, you have a lot of malaria casualties from Sicily, you get trench foot, you take casualties, there's a lot of back and forth nighttime raids. So rangers get drowned down and eventually they get they get pulled from the line, of course, uh, to refit and replace. And they're tasked within a few short weeks to land north of that with another amphibious assault. For some, I think that's their fifth assault. Um, and they go land in Anzio completely, you know, unopposed landing. They they kill a couple Italians in the fog of war uh civilians, but ultimately Anzio, the Allies don't push hard enough. The Germans are rushing troops in from all over Europe, and the idea behind Anzio was that while Anzio landing happens, the Allies would push the winter line up north towards Rome, and Anzio Landing would then cut towards Rome and south to do a pinzer movement on the German defensive lines. Anzio was kind of a call it a goat fuck, if you don't mind. And uh it took a little while, but within a week or so after landing, the Rangers are tasked with an the Allies are tasked with an all-out push. Let's push forward. We have enough gear now, finally on the beach, and it's an artillery duel. And Darby described it in his book, we led the way as a billiard table. The whole area is a billiard table. There are mountains in the distance, and the Germans are using the mountains to call in artillery, and you know, people are exposed. So eventually the Allies decide to push forward. Rangers are tasked with this really important mission to take a town of Sisterna, which to this day is there. And I actually spoke to a farmer whose dad they still own the land where the final battle was fought. It was really surreal in many ways. But they're tasked with taking Sisterna, which is a railroad highway hub. And first and third battalion are supposed to follow along these ditches. Ditches, remember, it's a it's flat. There are farmhouses and ditches, and the ditches are anywhere from a foot to maybe three, four, five feet, depending on which ones you're in. And they're they're gonna, I call it north, it's not quite correct, but for our argument's sake, they're going north. And um the first battalion leads the way, third battalion follows, fourth battalion is in reserve, waiting to push up the only road that leads to Sisterna. Um, and meanwhile, allies on the left and allies on the right are supposed to do the same thing, they push forward and to interdict the highway that the Rangers are going to hit the center of at the town of Sisterna. And they do a great job. It's again the nighttime infiltration. I think they did a great job.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:02

Um I think Dennis has a question, and then um, because we're short on time, I want to maybe get into one of the really cool um escape stories. Because obviously, the Houdini Club, we talked a lot about the Rangers, but the the impetus of the books, at least what your publishers wanted to get out there, is the escape stories. But Dennis, you have a question?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:20

Could you tell us, other than your book, um, what do you recommend other uh folks that are really interested in the war, World War II? What do you recommend as far as a book on Dieppe?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

Oh, okay. My prejudice, because my wife is Canadian. And Dieppe was a huge Canadian-British operations where I think uh the average unit, uh Canadian unit lost something like 70%. Um there is a three-volume set by a guy called Mark Zulke. I would recommend that book. There's also a great book by uh David O'Keeffe. I forgot the title of the book, but he's written a really good one also on DM. How do you spell that last name, that Mark? Zulke is, I think, a German name. Z or Z, as we like to say in America. Z-U-E-H-L-K-E.

unknown 1:03:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

That's correct. Thank you. Zulke. Yeah, and it's Mark. And he's got three volumes out on it. And it's like this is the kind of landing craft that they used made of wood with this kind of engine. Like he is a button counter. That's great. And O'Keeffe's book is also fantastic because what it's telling you is that the raid was intended to be really a theft of German intelligence.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:33

Uh one of the things that really stood out to me about that was just uh which you you just described beautifully. And I think one of my problems with Dieppe books in the past was I I just get lost in all the different things that are going on and happening and the different the different beach, the different you know zones and all that. And but you you you you beautifully bring us along, and I was able to uh to stay uh on board and and follow it. And and it was just my heart hurt. And it was just terrible oh man, it was just just it it's still to this day a huge thing in Canada.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:09

I mean, I can tell you, Canadians, D Epp, absolutely, everyone knows what that is, and they get offended when you call it a raid or something or a battle or whatever. You you have to use the correct nomenclature up here. But uh anyway, if you have any other questions, always. Yes, sir. Yeah, Mir.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:25

Um we have a lot of of young listeners that are uh that that are future, the the future writers, the future historians. Yeah. Um in a book of this magnitude, you're you're you're crossing continents and and different battles, and you're trying to keep everything squared away as far as timeline and characters and resources. So could you describe how like for these young folks coming up, that uh how are how how what resources would you recommend for them if they're trying to tackle something like this? Like what what associations did you use?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:01

What you know libraries and absolutely let me tell you, as Americans we're very lucky, uh honestly, because we we spent well unlucky because we spent fortunes on the military, lucky that a lot of it trickles down toward preserv preserving the history, like you guys are doing, right? But we also have federal and state and whatever you know this. We have institutions. So my greatest help was uh Carlisle Barracks, uh U.S. Army Heritage, Education and Heritage um place down uh in Pennsylvania, Carlisle Barracks, yes. They have all of Bob Black's research on Rangers, for example, but they hold just about anything you could imagine on American military history. They also have a ton of questionnaires. So, for example, I got lucky, I I've I drove down from Toronto several times down there, that you know, they sort of were very, very helpful, beyond helpful. So I could get within reason anything I wanted. And I'd I'd be saying, Hey, I'm looking for maybe you have questionnaires on this, that the other the other. And they would point you in the right direction. I will also tell you, uh back then it was called the Donovan Technical Library at Fort Benning. Uh I don't know what it's called nowadays, but I'm sure there's a name for it. But the the reference librarians at all these um uh institutions are superhuman. I was looking for maps on this Battle of J Love that was no longer online, I couldn't find it. And within an hour of me uh saying, hey, listen, you guys don't have these maps anymore, the librarian came back and said, Look, I found them all for you, I put them back up, here they are. So future writers should rely on on I feel on on librarians. They are fantastic. They can they can guide you. I mean, I've gotten information from some some librarian in Michigan State University. I asked for one thing, I got 30 back. I got 30 things back, and I got follow-up questions, I got those answered all the same day.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:03

That's a good point. And I think that what's really important, and I know you're gonna agree, is to get a librarian to do that extra work, you have to be gregarious yourself, you have to be kind, you have to be a people person, you know, respectful, you have to show your enthusiasm for the content, then they get all fired up and excited about it, and then they they do what you just said, they get you the dirty things when you ask for one.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

Yeah, West Point is also great. So, and you know, it's all the librarians really that I've encountered anywhere are really, really fantastic. The thing that I have struggled with on occasion are some people who want to hold their own history to themselves, right? So some people don't want to share history because somehow they feel it's they're the guardians of it. And I feel that history is for everyone, it's not mine to keep, it's not yours to keep. So it's it's for everyone. And I think that's why these institutions that have these holdings, you know, documents. I mean, when I was at Carlisle Barracks, there was a guy with his own camera set up taking pictures of 18th century documents. Wow. How cool is that? Wow, you know, but you can't you can't uh Xerox those things, but you can take pictures of them. They're very, very kind, very good. It's important. I would always urge people if you can make donations to these people. I know they get federal state funding, but who knows? You know, do that or go visit them, you know, make a five-dollar donation when you go to their museum.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

I'll just make a comment and then I'll I'll pass it off back to Don or in Jeff. But um regarding the book, I I've just absolutely loved it. And um one of the things that, and you know, I got into Sicily and what stood out was you know those guys basically clearing minds with their bodies at the very beginning. But one of the things that really kind of hit me hard was these Rangers dying in these obscure places in Africa and just you know, continents away from their families, and they have no idea that they're dying in this just for God forsaken place. And uh you you beautifully bring us there along, and um yeah, well done. I I it's it's been a joy to read, and um you know, I actually look forward to it every night when I'm thank you. Yeah, that's a great reading.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

I blame I blame the publisher for not cutting anything out. So you kept everything in, which was very nice, actually.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:31

But I do have a complaint though, is that I have so many books that I need to read already, like about 25 books on my beside my bed that are stacked. And now I I have to find out what else you've written, so it's like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:46

Don't worry about it. If it's World War II related, this is the one you need to read. I like I said it earlier. There are two books on Darby's Rangers that I will recommend heartily. Mine, of course, because it's the most current, and I think it is it draws on a lot of research from other people who never got published, who just shared information. And Bob Black's book on uh Ranger Force. I always will give him a shout out. He opened up his archives to me. So World War II, you're good, you don't need to read anything else.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:19

You were saying earlier how your book is a little more um honest about certain things, and you and I were discussing off the air that I think that's important because one of the complaints that outsiders have about things like what we do is the phrase romanticizing warfare. And so when you're honestly talking about some of the gruesome things that these young men were trained to do and did, some of them seem to enjoy doing it, it's it's harsh, it's grotesque, but it does a good job of deromanticizing the war. And so I think it's important not to gloss over or hide the negative aspects and be more honest about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

You guys are experts on World War II. I mean, you you've you've covered this a long time, and uh you do know the horrors of war. I mean, you read Eugene Sledge's book, you know, that's first-person account. That's to me, you only need to read that book to really see what happens. And I'm very pleased that you uh appreciate me putting some of those things in there. And I'm also very appreciative, again, of my publisher, because some people don't want to put that in there, right? They feel that you're attacking them, but you're really not. You're just showing the circumstances and the things they had to do. And some of these guys, as will be in the book, you know, will develop severe cases of PTSD. They're heroic guys that we would consider heroes who in the midst of a battle break down because they can't handle the shelling anymore. They go away for one hour, 200 meters behind lines, recover their composure enough to go back and fight. That's hardcore. That's really hardcore. And that tells me you have good surgeons, good medical people who have an understanding with the Rangers at that time, that some people just need to be just kind of walked away from the fighting, given a break, and then they can return. Um I mean, real quick, Shunstrom was my big time hero. He's a murdering son of a bitch, an heroic son of a bitch, really just hardcore. Youngest, one of the youngest officers in the European theater of war. After the war, he can't make it in Hollywood. Sounds familiar, but I didn't go to war. He can't make it in Hollywood, and he robs gas stations, you know, and gets caught, and there's a trial, and the judge, of course, dismisses it, says he's uh not guilty because of temporary insanity, and it's the government's fault for not having helped him after the war. So, and that was one of the first cases, I think the first case where they use PTSD in a criminal defense. Um these are the guys, right? This is what we're talking about. This is a guy who murdered an Arab just looking out a window. This is a guy who drove a 16-inch bayonet into the gut of some Italian in North Africa, you know, shot at his own men at Cisterna when they all got trapped and they were surrendering to the Germans after running out of ammo. These are stories that are worth telling. And he's a guy who escaped and spent months behind enemy lines killing Germans, fighting with Italian partisans, and then making it back uh to his own lines. It's an incredible story. The Houdini Club itself, the stories, and we I didn't put everything in there. I mean, there's there's we limited time and space, but uh I think we have eight or nine stories in there, and I try to be very judicious in the types of escapes, you know, escaping from an Italian POW thing, escaping while on a train, escaping while you're in Germany, or how do you hide in Rome at the height of German occupation? You know, so I try to really have a good broad cross-section of all the the guys who make it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:08

Jeff, you got a follow-up? Great book.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:12

Uh no, I mean, I think we can probably skip our what you're reading segment because I think we're all reading the same thing, but you know me. I I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that I have a much cooler bookmark than you guys probably do.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:27

Okay, that's cool. I'll use the bookmark. Yeah, that's also cool. You know, that's based on a West Point thing, from what I'm told. I think that was created. I don't know, you will have to figure it out. That's the Sonicle. The Darby's Rangers were the scroll, which you can see, I think, somewhere else. Uh but they were the what we wear today. Okay, also good. Uh but the Sonical was for the segment. Yeah, it's it's it's good. We like it. Uh so in any event, but I I appreciate you guys having me on and letting me blab on incessantly. I could spend hours talking about him. That's how much I like these guys, but I'm also aware that they're not perfect human beings.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:10

So can you give us just a brief uh elevator pitch on one of the uh more one of the exciting uh escape stories that you tell in your book?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:21

Well, if you want to involve Ukraine-Russia kind of thing, we have one there about a guy who got captured and ends up in a German POW thing. I mentioned it earlier, where the Soviet prisoners are getting uh basically starved to death, and they capture this German uh shepherd and tear him apart and eat him. Um he eventually gets to be uh released, not released, but he is assigned a farm job, which still has guards on there and they're you know 10, 12 POWs who basically work the farms, the fields for farmers. And he tried to escape three times, but he's always hungry because he always returns to a farm to s to get like whatever he can find, and he always gets captured because you know Germans being Nazis and all, they they keep their eye on their own shit, steal others. But um so he gets captured several times and they threaten to kill him. And and they what what was interesting is how they always said uh they always hit him from behind. It's a weird thing. So he he always gets punched from behind, but anyway, they knock out his teeth, he goes back to jail. Eventually he manages to escape when the Soviet armies rush across basically Europe and the Germans are moving west to get away from them, and he manages to escape. He goes through Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, and and he's like he's lost so much weight, he has like no teeth, he has to earn, you know, he's cleaning up rubble from the streets to get like a piece of bread and stuff like that. Eventually he makes it to an American ship, I think it's in Odessa, something like that. And that guy's hardcore. And he said the reason I continue to escape is because I felt it was my duty.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:02

Well, I was gonna ask you that if you thought maybe the Rangers training and the mind state that it took just to be a ranger at that time, if that was a contributing factor to so many of them actively trying to escape, whether or not they were uh successful at it or not, but just part of the driving factor of what drove them to continue to try.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:23

For sure. I mean, a lot of them, of course, had had training, right? Uh how to avoid detection, all that kind of stuff. I think we have to understand one thing. By the end, toward the end, which is January 1944-ish, uh, the Ranger Tines had maybe a very hard core of veterans and good quality replacements, but there are also a lot of young ones. I think overwhelmingly you will find it's the individual. Training, yes or no, maybe, but it's the individual within you, right? Like what drives you to A, join a union like that, and B, what drives you to put that foot in front of another when all the odds are stacked against you, when you have to finish a road march in the military and you're like smoked and you're you're carrying so much weight. So I think it's the attitude, and then of course it helps when you have been toughened up a little bit, and you kind of know what your body can take. Once you know what your body can take, you can accomplish a lot more. But yes, I think training helped, but also the individual fortitude really has to come to the forefront during those situations. Because, to be fair, there were some younger rangers who wept and who could not could not even bother to escape.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:38

But you still had a large number of them who did. The book, The Houdini Club, the three of us are lucky enough to have the advanced review copy not for sale, and you, one of our listeners, could be in that group too. We have an extra copy, and you're not getting mine. You're actually getting a nice, fresh, unopened copy that you guys were gracious enough to send to one of our Patreons. So if you haven't signed up for Patreon yet, please do so. Head over to WTSP World War II.com and uh or wtsp WWII.com. Click on the Patreon link, sign up and subscribe. We're going to give this away at the end of April so that people have enough time to hear this interview and get you know want the have access to the book. All you gotta do is be a member, an active subscriber, and your name will automatically be entered into the winning. Now we have the advanced copies. Where can people who want to purchase copies go to acquire a copy? What's the you know the release date and all that? Best websites, best way to get the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:33

Uh the book comes out April 22nd. You can get it anywhere. I, of course, always encourage you to go to your local bookstore, brick and mortar store if you can. But if you can't, order it online if you need if you don't have the money to spend, or ask your library to order it. I don't know if my publisher wants me to say that, but but yes, anybody should have it. My publisher is very good about getting it out into pretty much all the stores.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:57

So and as always, head over to WTSPworldwar 2.com. We'll have links to social media, the websites, and all the good stuff. And uh thank you so much. Um, Dennis, uh Jeff, you guys have any um parting words before we wrap this up?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

Uh Mir, how can we stay in touch with you? I've got a thousand other questions. I know Dennis does too. How can we stay in touch?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:20

Okay, look, I have a website, it's my first and last name.com, and I'm a guy who actually responds to uh if you contact me, I'm pretty much same same-day responder.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:32

And more importantly, you can have his email address so we can make it happen. Because when you were talking earlier, we've mentioned I've mentioned it in the past, but we've never really done an episode on it due to lack of um overall content. I have one or two books on the Merrill's Marauders, and so when you brought that up, I'm like, you know, if that's still fresh in your mind, or maybe after refresher course, we can have you back on and do a Merrill's Marauders episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:55

We can we can certainly entertain the idea, but then you're gonna make me go in the basement and dig up things.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:02

Maybe some things that are meant to be dug up. And as you're saying earlier with history, um, my bullet of American pickers said it best. Uh, when it comes to collecting antiques and historical artifacts, we are merely keeping track of those during our lifespan. And at some point we have to pass them on to somebody else to have access to and to share with the public. And so that comes to you. Jeff got put on that list for people's books. He's constantly getting people's uh World War II books. And then he he posted them out to us. But thank you guys so much on behalf of myself, Mir, Dennis, and Jeff, and my whining dog in the background. I'm sure you guys can hear. Thank you guys so much, and we'll talk to you all in two weeks.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:43

This has been a digital four 10 production.