Citation Needed - Smedley Butler

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed the Maverick Marine, was a senior United States Marine Corps officer. During his 34-year career, he fought in the Philippine–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, and World War I. At the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received sixteen medals, including five for heroism; he is the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal as well as two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Because you're robbing yourself of the game experience by cheating. I'm not robbing myself of the game experience, I'm just removing the boring farming stuff. It's not boring Cecil, it is a boundless imaginary of... Your teaser. Oh man, that is ripe. Yeah, definitely ripe. Wow, excellent, sir. Hey guys, which, oh my god, what is that smell? I was glad you enjoyed, sir. Hey guys, which oh my god, what is that smell?

I was glad you and Drew had sir. Why is he talking like that? And what the hell is going on? Yeah, he wanted to help with the essay. So he's doing a thing. Indeed, Dr. Inwright and here I am. The smelly butler. Oh god.

No Eli. Smetley. You had to see that. Yeah. Smedly Butler. He's a so war hero turned anti-war crusader. I see. It appears I have been gravely mistaken. Yeah. I appreciate the effort though. I guess. Did you smear yourself and catch it? Indeed, Mr. Something Italian, indeed. I'm gonna bury you in litter. Hello and welcome. The citation needed podcasts would choose a subject

for me to single article about an Wikipedia and pretend we are experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be leading this charge today but I can't do it without my troops. So here they are, Admiral Snackbar, Corporal Punishment, and Major Disappointment, Heath, Noah, and Eli.

It's a trope. It is. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I love it. My nickname beats you guys. It beats me. Man, the prophecy came true.

And we all just want to thank our patrons for giving us our marching orders each week. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, share a stick around till the end of the show. And with that, on the way, tell us, Eli, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event we'll be talking about today. We'll be talking about Smeadly Butler, who I've just been informed before this record is not a cartoon woodland animal. So, yeah, I got to write my jokes again.

So Noah, which Bill Bryson book did you get this particular story from? Okay. Okay. So so jokes on you. See, so I did not learn about this from a Bill Bryson book. I learned about this guy up from a Facebook meme because I am broadly red. Brody, that's how I describe it. So who was Smetley Butler?

Well, so he was the most highly decorated Marine and US history during his lifetime. But his dad kind of ran the Marines at that time. Uh, and, and if you feel like you kind of liked him and then you kind of didn't get used to that feeling because his story is a fucking yo-yo of sympathy. Right. He wins awards for bravery, but it was in some of the most blatantly evil, capitalistic shit the US military ever did. But then he realized war was a racket to the point of publishing a book called War is a racket. Okay. But he was kind of fascist when he worked at, as Philadelphia's director of public safety. But he managed to single handedly thwart a fascist attempt to overthrow the US government. Okay. But he might have made that part up. It's

going to be a roller coaster of a story. So what I say, I don't, you don't forget it. Where does Smedley's story start? Where everybody's story starts. So their moms, vagina, which Smedley parted with on July 30th of 1881. He was born to mod and Thomas botler. Thomas was a lawyer judge and eventually a congressman. Mod was a lady in the 1800s. And the Wikipedia article has a weird like almost eugenics level note about

how white Smedly was quote, both of his parents were of entirely English ancestry and their families had been in North America since the 17th century. And quote, okay, when I did 23 and me, they sent me back sunscreen in an arm band. So I get it. I got a blood pressure cuff and a fill in the blank will. So, you know, I get it. Okay, we both got an arm band. Yeah. Nice. Am I in the will? So as a teenager, I'll save you. So as a teenager, young smadly attended high school at the Haverford School in Philadelphia, which was apparently already snooty even way back then. But in July of 1898, Smettly dropped out of school to fight in the Spanish-American war. He had to lie about his age.

He was barely 17 at the time. But you got to feel like the military could have found out for sure, given that his dad was at this time, an influential congressman that chaired the goddamn house naval affairs committee. Whoa, you can't just join the army at 17. That's dangerous. Also, what the hell are you doing out of the textile factory? Let you out. Right. We're ignoring age. We're ignoring age, see, so it's like when Dane cook picks a girlfriend, okay? It's a time on. This is crazy tradition. All right. So this nepot baby element is worth keeping track of throughout, by the way, because there's no doubt that Smelly was a brave dude. And

by all accounts, he was good at most of the soldiery stuff, but his citations also seem way out of line with his actual deeds. And there's every reason to believe his superiors were looking for opportunities to slather him with awards as a way of buttering up his dad. So anyway, so he shows up in Cuba as a marine second lieutenant, but he gets too late to actually do anything. Apparently, they liked the way he stood around and waited, though. So in 1899, his commission does a first lieutenant and sent to Manila to fight in the Philippine American war. Now, that is a war that we sent to Manila to fight in the Philippine American war.

Now, that is a war that we don't actually talk much about in this country because it's real hard to pretend we were the good guys. And that one might be illegal to teach about in Florida. And that's going to be another theme of this episode. By the way, Smelly Butler manages to forest, gump his way into basically every terrible foreign policy decision the country made between the Spanish American war and fucking world war one. Okay.

So like a really good soundtrack, but the story's like super long and overrated. Like, I'm a little bit of Oscar, even though pulp fiction should have on. Yeah. Or Shawshank. So, or Shawshank or for what is it a fucking Peter 100? You're just not. Quick show. What a cool. Quick show was good. Yeah. Right. Any of the others. Yeah.

So for those unfamiliar, the Spanish American war was a war against colonialism that the Spanish ended by agreeing to give us some of their colonies. That included the Philippines, but the Filipinos didn't seem to understand how lucky they were to be colonized by anti-colonialists. So we went in and killed them until they did. And that's where Smeadley came in. He saw his first action in the Philippines when he led 300 Marines to take a town from Filipino rebels. The best Wikipedia is willing to say of his effort, though, is that he quote briefly panicked, but he quickly regained his composure and led his Marines in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.

End quote. One of his men was killed. Another 10 wounded and another 50 were quote incapacitated by the human tropical heat. Sorry, 1890s Eli was like, I'm sorry, can you put down that I got too hot and had to sit down and drink a gay raid next to the fact that Steve died and those guys got you. Thank you. B O S. Are you writing? Yes. Do you have a note from your mom? Thank you. B O S. Are you writing? Yes.

Do you have a note from your mom? I mean, it says you have to give me a purple heart. This is a war. You have to give me a purple heart for Schfitz. It says it. Yes. Yes. It's a little frag.

You're so fast. Slur. All right. So that one battle. All right. So now that one battle would be about all the action that he'd see in the Philippines. But in 1900, the Marines would ship him off the China for America's part in the boxer rebellion.

There he took part in the battle of Tencent, which is a romanization of Tenjin, where he would earn his first medal for bravery. So during the fighting, he saw another man get shot. He climbed out of his trench to save the guy, but in so doing, he saw another man get shot. He climbed out of his trench to save the guy, but in so doing he got shot in the thigh. And then a third guy came out to save both of them, but then that guy got shot in the leg, but LeRnded up rescuing both of the guys. And then two weeks later, he celebrated his 19th birthday. Okay. Like good stuff. I get he was trying to save the first guy. That's brave, but I feel like

he should have to wear a medal of stupid along with the bravery one if he's getting a brave one. Like for the total plus minus being negative on our team getting shot. You have no less. Yeah. Meanwhile, over in the Chinese bunker, the guys like head, Alan. I said, aim for their hands. Now, former Reigns were awarded the Medal of Honor in this battle. Apparently, Smedley wasn't eligible for it because of his rank. But like 20 years later, they would retroactively award him the brevet medal, which seems to be a one off, like medals we really should have given out of the time type thing they

did. So it's like a presidential indictment. You don't give it out of the time you wait. Yeah. Right. Right. So it feels like you're about to say bravery, but they switched like during it and like, they were like, brand high of it.

Yeah, I have. I have. So from there, Butler would go on to participate in a series of so-called police actions in Central America and the Caribbean that would be later dubbed the Banana Wars because we were literally killing people to protect the financial interest of banana companies.

Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, those were the only reasons for those conflicts. They were also tobacco and sugar cane interests at stake. Yeah. And a good name for a store to get some nice sensible chinos was also at stake. Still to this day can not understand.

You know, so it's during this period, by the way, that, uh, the Smetley Butler would earn his first nickname, old Gimlet eye. I have no idea why. Like, there's an explanation in the wiki and I read it and I'll tell it to you, but I still won't know why. So apparently there was a revolution in Honduras and the Americans did it to get the American council, the fuck out of there. So he takes a group of Marines into an active battle zone.

Apparently, he looks so goddamn mean and intimidating. The both warring factions just call a time out and stop fighting long enough for the Marines to go in. Get their console and get out. That's awesome. Right. I have no idea if this affected his persuasiveness, but apparently Butler had some kind of weird tropical disease at the time that left his eyes just demonically bloodshot.

So he was apparently way scarier looking than usual. And this is why they called him old gimlet eye, but like a gimlet is an old timey hand drill for really small holes. I have no idea what the therefore is even doing in that sentence. Yeah, gimlet is also a cocktail. So maybe he looked like Ernest Hemingway. Yeah. Yeah, Gimlet is also a cocktail. So maybe he looked like Ernest Hemingway. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like Jitter Vodka and Lyme Juice. So maybe a Gimlet got thrown in his face like after he got amnesia, fucked an evil twin in a soap opera or something like that. I'm sorry. I just want to be clear. The story Wikipedia repeated was that this guy showed up to a war and everyone on both sides was like, well, that guy looks like Noah has since he was 14 time out war to hear what he wants.

Well, no, it didn't like to be honest. It was just like nobody wanted to shoot a Marine and start a fucking war with the United States over it. That's why they were able to get in and out. But, but, but he would go on to lead a battalion in Nicaragua. And of course, in, in Panama, it was in Panama that you could see him start to question the good and what he was doing. By now, he's married. He's got two kids. He writes a letter to his parents regarding his last campaign in Panama that contains this damning sentence.

Quote, what makes me mad is that this whole revolution is inspired and financed by Americans who have wild cat investments down here and want to make them good by putting in a government which will declare a monopoly in their favor. Adding quote, the whole business is rotten to the core. And quote, and this would be the last time our business interest dictated any of our foreign policy lesson. Yeah, thankfully, lesson, thankfully. Now this episode is legal and Florida, right? Now, of course, realizing he was killing people to protect somebody else's profits wasn't

enough to get him to like change careers. So he kept on being a Marine in 1914. He'd earn his first Medal of Honor in Mexico. Now, it's important to note here that in the years following the Mexican revolution, the US came really close to just invading Mexico and trying to colonize the whole damn country to the point that Smelly Butler actually went into Mexico undercover posing as a railroad exact that was looking for a lost employee. He did a whole big spy mission to determine the country's military readiness under that guy.

I feel like you showed up for the mission dressed like an Aztec warrior with like a suit jacket over it. And they're just like, you're an American railroad guy for the under what are you doing, man? So so in 1914, when then president Woodrow Wilson decided to send the Marines into Veracruz to intercept an arm shipment to the Mexican government, they figured, you know, who better to lead it than Smetley Butler, who had firsthand knowledge of the place. All right, man. This here is the lobby of the Lequinto Inn.

I stayed in while pretending to be a businessman. We take the waffle maker at dawn before it's too dirty. And one of them is off for some reason. So, okay. So Smetley's forces landed on April 21, 1914. They spent five days rooting out snipers and resistance fighters through door to door street fighting shit. Then they occupied the city for six super duper illegal months. By the end of the occupation, the US reported 17 dead and 63 wounded to the Mexicans, 126 dead and 195 wounded. So, you know, win for us.

So, you know, win for us. Okay, but do we know the dehydration numbers? We don't. Those are probably pretty high. You're right. That probably balances it out. Anyway, so Butler was awarded a medal of honor for his actions in holding the city, though even he didn't know why. In fact, he tried to return the medal during World War I saying he'd done nothing to

deserve it, but his superior said no. And then they said something about it being bobbles with which men are led. And then they made them keep being proud of it. Gotta like Henry Kissinger hero. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So Butler would go on to a second medal of honor for a separate incident in Haiti in 1915 for taking a city held by 400 rebels with a force of just a hundred men, which sounds good. But like if you want an idea how mismatched the two sides were, I just need to point out that 50 Haitians died in this fighting. One American was injured when he got hit by a rock and lost a couple of teeth. Wow. Throwing rocks. Okay. Well, this illegal colonization just got a lateless friendly. So pretty much. Yeah. But despite all his accolades when the

US entered World War One, Butler was not given a combat command. Officially, he was said to be too unreliable for that. Instead, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and given command of the US embarkation camp, which I'll certainly mispronounce. Camp Pontonaison, Nezon, I don't know. But he was so damn good at running the camp that he received distinguished service metals from both the army and the Navy. And I'm sure the fact that his dad was still the chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee and thus among the most influential civilians in the country when it came to naval funding had nothing to do with that.

Well, while this guy militarily keeps up with the Kardashians, we should take a quick break for some apropos of nothing. Hey, you wanted to see you, sir? Uh, yes, Medley. Come in. Got good news, my boy. You've been awarded the Distinguished Medal of Honor and Bravery. Oh, wow, what an honor, sir. What pour? Well, for, so humble.

Why for your protection of the village at Cartaguga, of course. But sir, we actually just killed everybody in that village. Yeah, you did, you did. But the village itself stayed pristine. I see. Um, but that, well, thank you, sir. Not so fast, my boy. That's not all.

You also won the hardcore medal of bravery and honor for your actions in Nicaragua. I was only there for a day and all I did was run over a school kid and a crosswalk, sir, but you did it honorably and briefly. Sorry, sorry, it just seems like a lot of these awards are barely masked, jingoistic public declarations that were not sorry for the civilians that we killed in our wars. Yes. Oh, okay, well you know, then you have any others for me? Let me look in the desk drawer, give me a second. Well, we left off. The system was not keeping the man down.

What happened next, Noah? So after World War I, the US decided to take a quick hiatus for violently enforcing draconian laws that nobody wanted abroad and do that at home instead, often in the form of prohibition. And Butler actually got involved with that too in a weird turn of events that saw him take on the role of Philadelphia's director of public safety while still being a commission to Marine Corps officer. So as you all know, prohibition led to this huge increase in organized crime. And in Philadelphia, that led to mayor W. Freeland Kendrick asking the president to lend the

city a military general to help rid the city of crime and the municipal government of corruption. So in 1924 at the behest of Smedley's dad, Calvin Coolidge authorized him to take all the lead necessary to clean up that town. And he took the job with gusto, so much gusto. In fact, that he rated over 900 speakiesies in his first 48 hours of the job. You wow. Okay. In my head, prohibition is ridiculous.

It's just like 13 years of cops breaking up high school keg parties in the woods, except it's grownups, you know, like running away and diving into the bushes. Yeah. I thought it was weird when Al Capone rose to power in your high school. Heath, I meant to say that. I felt normal at the time. Now, so here's the thing about prohibition. It was like speeding, right? And then everybody wanted it to be illegal for other people to do it, not them.

And butlers raids didn't discriminate between upscale and working class establishments. So included in his blitzkrieg were elite institutions like the Ritz Carlton and the union league. So real, real quick, he starts to become a super unpopular. He was also terrifyingly violent and once Chastis local police for not killing enough bad guys, he said, quote, I don't believe there is a single bandit notch on a policeman's guns in this city. Go out and get some end quote. And just to make sure that he also alienated the button down church going law and order crowd, he also used very objection of a language in his public addresses. Now, after two years on the job, the mayor fired him or forced

him to resign and on the way out, he made several very high profile statements about how hard the mayor could go fuck himself and how much he wished he could finish the job. And to his credit, he had significantly reduced crime and corruption in the city, but it's a cost of like military style checkpoints going in and out of town and special bandits squads thuggishly roaming the streets with sawdoth shotguns. So the vast majority of people were not sorry to see him go. Oh, man, nowadays people would have like, bend its squads, matter flags with the Punisher logo. Yeah. Smendly would be so proud. You know, man, it lined with shotguns. Now, he also played a small, but noteworthy role in the bonus armies march on Washington. Now, the bonus army could be its own episode and maybe one day it will be, but suffice to

say that many veterans of World War I were given these service certificates as bonuses after the war, but the certificates were basically bonds, and they didn't mature for like 20 fucking years in most cases. So when the Great Depression rolls around and everybody's broke, these veterans are like, actually, you know what, I'd like my money now, please. And when Congress said, no, about 43,000 of them joined together in Marge Town, Washington. And since they're mostly broken unemployed, fuck ton of them just camped out there. They made a little tent city. And they said, we're not going anywhere until you give us our fucking money.

Okay. No, if Smedley Butler gets beat up by Bernie Sanders right now, I'm going to be fucking happy. Don't be silly. He's Bernie was way too old to be beating up protesters in the night. He just slapped us as a back twice. Do it. Right. Yeah. So during this occupation, Smetley Butler pays the gamble very high profile visit. Now, he's retired from the military at this point, butetley Butler paced the camp a very high profile visit. Now, he's retired from the military at this point, but he's very well known. He's a very popular figure in American politics, and he's received like a king by the bonus

army. He offers upwards of encouragement. He urges them not to do anything that's going to cause them public sympathy and he leaves. And then a couple days later, Douglas MacArthur rolls through with a few army cavalry units, gasses the veterans and disperses the camp. It's around then that Butler starts to doubt the morality of the US military and his doubts start to spill into public view. This leads to the, yeah, right?

Could you imagine? Weird line. Weird line. Yeah. So in 1935, he publishes this book, War is a racket, which spells out his opposition to war profiteering US military adventurism and what he saw as a tendency towards fascism in the US government. Wikipedia summarizes his view with a quote from an interview in a socialist magazine called

Common Sense. And the quote is kind of long, but I, but I think it was sharing in its entirety. Quote. I spent 33 years and four months in active military service. And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racca tier, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico's safe for American oil interests in 1914.

I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of brown brothers in 1902 through 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903 in China in 1927.

I helped see to it that standard oil went on its way on molested. Looking back on it, I might even have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents and quake. Okay. But I feel like Al Capone would have given Smedley a hint about making the money on all that stuff. He was getting beat as just like a military guy with a paracene with a bonus check. He's trying to cash at the end of it all. Yeah. He doesn't invest for 20 years. Yeah. Right. Um, no, so that leads us to the thing that Smetley Butler is most remembered for the business plot. So the business plot, which

you also see referred to as the Wall Street push was a political conspiracy in 1933 to overthrow the government of Franklin, Delano Roosevelt and replacing with a fascist dictator. And the group of businessmen and gazillionaires behind the plot tapped just the potential head of their new fascist government. Well known anti fascist, smeadly butler. Interesting. No, I get it. People thought they were going to let Bernie be president, you know, these people get ideas. All it costs to own the Supreme Court is like one yacht trip. What are these people doing? Come on, man. Yeah. Jesus. Now a lot of the details here are unclear and all of the details are unproven, but according to testimony that Butler, volunteer de Cairo's in 1934, he'd been approached by a dude named Gerald McGuire

about heading up this coup. Jerry McGuire really? Yeah. Well, this was before the movie, it feels like a movie stole it from this guy. So McGuire was a bond salesman who said a representative group of wealthy business Well, this is gonna end with smadley ask him to show him the money. So like I So so Maguire was a was a bond salesman who said he represented a group of wealthy businessmen who were terrified of FDR social as sympathies as well as his attention of ditching the gold standard. See, um, and and they wanted to put it into it. And they figured their best bet was to tap into this

wellspring of unruly military veterans who figured they were getting shafted by the US government. 2023 lobbyist is listening to this episode like, uh, amateur. Yeah, right. And then come so far. Now, you're probably wondering why the fascist plot would approach a dude who was literally making his living, giving speeches and writing books about how bad fascism was to lead this thing. And in retrospect, they probably regretted it.

But it's important to note that angry, did veterans had been keto installing fascist governments and pretty much all the places that had fascist governments. And given the press surrounding Butler's visit to the bonus army encampment, the conspirators figured that he was exactly the kind of person they could get veterans to rally behind. Plus a quick look at his work as Philadelphia's director of public safety showed that he at least had a little bit of fascist in him. Yeah, everybody does. That's the whole thing with fascism. Everyone's a fascist about the stuff they care about.

Like, yes, I'm all about fascist vaccines with neckdarts and fascist Oxford commas, fascist 87,000 IRS agents eating the rich. I'm just about a bunch of stuff. Yeah. So Butler agreed to meet with the coup plotters and get all the details. And then he took those details straight to fucking Congress. In November of 1934, he testified to Congress about the plot, which then launched an investigation into the matter. Now in the immediate aftermath of this testimony, most of the mainstream press dismissed

it as fanciful. The New York Times, for example, called it a gigantic hoax. But in the weeks and months that followed us, both Congress and the media investigated, the story became ever more plausible. Right. Like Hugo Chavez stealing those votes from China for Arizona. Exactly. Exactly. What more plausible. What a plain to Germany and back or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Now, so of course, that, but that's just the thing, right? Because it became more plausible, doesn't mean it fucking happened. The Congressional Committee did ultimately say they had convincing evidence to back up Butler's claims, but they never made with that evidence.

And, and, and the same committee would eventually become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Joseph McCarthy would make famous for bullshit investigations. Yeah. Yeah. So Butler's testimony also had a lot of eerie parallels to the cabal of wealthy Jewish financiers trope so so common and unfounded conspiracy theories. And from one I can tell most modern historians who look into this conclude that either none of it ever happened or Butler exaggerated the hell out of how close it came to fruition. Yeah, feels like the guy at the bar telling a story super loud in response to absolutely nobody saying anything to him ever. Yes.

Right. And the guy who needed to sell his anti-fascist thing to like make a living, they all that being said though, as any American living in a post January 6th world knows even the least organized coup attempt can still get some other fuckers killed. So I guess kudos to smetly for nipping it in the bud. Well, I'm glad he kept one eye open like that. Oh keeper that just got 18 years. He also had one eye open. He did. He something. He did show them something. Yes, it's right. During a safety demonstration. In a safety demonstration. You had to see that coming. Oh, man. Now, he did not see that coming.

Well done. But regardless of the congressional findings, it doesn't fit. German writers don't fit anymore. Rule of three is I see why you went for it. Yep. But regardless of the congressional findings, nobody was ever charged for anything related to the business plot. No punishment was ever handed out.

And it's for his part, Smelly would continue to tour and lecture, uh, talking about the dangers of military capitalism and tell his death from cancer in 1940. And according to Wikipedia, quote, after his death, his family maintained his home as it was when he died, including a large quantity of memorabilia he collected throughout his storied career until 2014. And quote, at which point presumably they said, who the fuck are we even doing this for? And they saw what they still make a buck off of. I guess.

The old Lord and the Ring strategy. And if you had to summarize, you learn in one sentence, what would it be? Smeadly Butler is one of the few historical figures that could at varying points in his life occupy every spot on the alignment chart. I think you can't. Anyway, for the person. Always. All right.

Noah, what was I picturing when I first heard the name Smedley Butler? Hey, snidely whiplash in gone with the wind married to Scarlett of her. Be a guy who wears a giant scarf in the summer for absolutely no reason and claims to be a DJ, but he's clearly not. He's unemployed or see the helper guy at the orgy who brings Gatorade and moist towelette scrub point. Oh, interesting. Interesting. All right. All right. So see is there to like subtly imply the smell of it to an orgy. Yeah. Right. I think it's out of them. You know, what? I think I think it's I think that's there to distract me. I think it is a sniithly whiplash and going with the wind. That is correct. Well done. Okay. Now, what kind of armed forces

awards did they have to make up for this guy to get a the military Academy Award? B the killing fields metal. C. Oh, Jesus Christ. The whole prize or D. he and the three others that got shot in the leg all got the thysman trophy. Oh, just to emphasize the fact that Cecil actually went there, I'm out of it? No, it's the killing. All right. All right. Noah, why did you really choose this topic? Hey, you'd like to get bright red eyes going as a fearsome and brave expression meme again. Be you got a sneak peek at Bill Bryson's new book about army guys and you're striking while the iron is hot. Or a C. This guy had the closest name to Smelly, but it's possible to have and you physically couldn't help yourself. Honestly, answer, it was not C. It was not that. So it must be A. It was A.

Feel like I'm sorry you're lying. It was. Oh man. Eli, you won this week. I win so you can choose my best friend Cecil. All right, well, for Eli, Noah and Heath, I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. By then, I will be an expert on something else.

To eat now and then watch season liberally on YouTube, which is my cooking channel, and join Heath, Eli, and Noah on God Awful Movies. If you'd like to help keep the show going, make a perfect episode of donation at patreon.com, so I'd citation pod, or you could leave us a five star view every you can. If you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes,

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