Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 179 - The Battle of Bamber Bridge

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

Joe is joined by Robert Evans, the host of Behind the Bastards to talk about that time the US sparked a race war within its own army during WWII. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/events-global-african-history/the-riot-of-bamber-bridge-1943/ https://www.stripes.com/history/2021-06-24/bamber-bridge-race-riot-blacks-wwii-1792183.html https://theconversation.com/black-troops-were-welcome-in-britain-but-jim-crow-wasnt-the-race-riot-of-one-night-in-june-1943-98120 https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/85/a3677385.shtml

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow todayved by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe and with me today is Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, and I have lost track of how many other things you're currently doing. What's up, Robert? Too many fucking podcasts, Joe. I got into a bad podcasting loop. Fell off the wagon real hard. But hey, how long can this

grift possibly keep going? I don't know. Yeah. I hope long enough for me to have uh shuffled this motor motor coil and not have to worry about finding a job again yeah another way to make a living i mean i've been through like this is like my third or fourth media career basically i mean they've all been related in some way but i just like, I live under the expectation that everything I get good at will eventually collapse in profitability due to some Google or Facebook motherfucker

making a decision. Um, it's cool. It's, it's fun to, it's like, it's like being a mouse in the age of dinosaurs, uh, where something might just sit down on you. It's good stuff. It's a good way to make a living. something might just sit down on you it's good stuff it's a good way to make a living and yeah you also know about the the the pains of of being an author and the age of of ebooks dominating everything it's like yeah i sold a hundred thousand copies i am poor i sold a hundred thousand copies and you know assuming i get two more coffees on my punch card, I'll be getting a free one soon. That's what my sales have afforded me. Yeah. I mean, it's weird because there's actually a ton of money in publishing. It's just not there for people who actually care about writing books.

It goes to people who had never thought about writing a book until they became the press secretary for the president. And then decided, decided well i might as well take a million dollars to have someone else write a book for me who will get paid 20 grand you know that's got to be our next grift is we have to like um slide into some like millionaires warm embrace so they can bulk buy our books whenever they come out so they get that sick little dagger symbol next to them whenever they pop up on a bestseller list yeah that's a good idea now joe how do you feel about reading podcast scripts i feel bad uh it depends on how do you feel about racism uh you know i mean are we talking against italians because uh unfortunately not oh no okay well then yeah generally no generally no um so we're gonna talk a little

bit about something that maybe you've heard of maybe some other people uh listening they've heard of and that is um racism in the United States military. More specifically, race riots that have happened with frightening regularity throughout our nation's military history. We do have a lot of them. We do. There's a famous one in Houston

that, if anybody paid attention recently, the Houston Police Department openly tweeted about their officers that were killed for being racist. Yeah, that's right. They were talking about like and they're and now their watch has ended. Yeah. Doing one of those like let's have let's remember these brave officers who lost their lives murdering black people. Yes.

And, you know, obviously, a lot of these things are institutional, systemic, perhaps. And a lot of this has to do with a little something that I know you're familiar with. I would really like to assume most of our American listeners are familiar with, but maybe not so much our international listeners. It is a little thing called Jim Crow laws. And in case you are unaware, I will give a short primer because I think even some Americans kind of don't understand what these are. Jim Crow laws were so-called because of a famous racist shit minstrel show

called the Jim Crow show where a black character was played by a white man and blackface were codified into what is now known as like racial segregation or separate but equal era um now actually now that's uh we're not talking about the current and re-elected prime minister of canada but a different guy that likes to wear blackface all the time now after there's so many so many politicians who like to wear blackface the governor of what uh not virginia there was a year where two or three governors um yeah anyway if your governor wears blackface this joke also applies to you um after the confederates got their shit kicked in federal troops occupied parts of the south an area that we call reconstruction um during which they were by force of arms forced the once slave-owning

south to kind of sort of abide by the new laws of the united states mostly being that you cannot legally own humans as property again black people could vote own property and do all sorts of other things that are previously illegal because the american constitution has always been more of a vibe than actual law yeah i mean you know we every now and then we have a vibe check. You could say that's the Civil War was really just kind of an elaborate vibe check. Every amendment, a little bit more of a vibe check. A little bit more of a vibe check, yeah. But, you know, as we know, the North eventually lost its taste for reconstruction after a couple of years, and it failed miserably.

Yeah, not long. There was this beautiful, brief flowering of democracy that was then beaten down by murderous white mobs and, you know, the cops. Yeah, weird how the same Confederate soldiers who just fought that war to own people's property then became, you know, the judiciary, the cops, the sheriffs and, you know, all of those other fun enforcement arms. Yeah. You know, a lot of this is because, obviously, racism and the North wanted to just move past that time where a slaver's rebellion killed hundreds of thousands of Americans because they wanted to own the people. of Americans because they wanted to own the people. Now, this led to the compromise of 1877, where federal troops were pulled out of the South and the same motherfuckers that we just talked about ended up going right back into power. Now, this is pretty much just to win the presidential election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Not a fair trade. Now, it should be pointed out that this was not the first time there is a serious jump backwards when it comes to rights in the United States.

A lot of presidents before this were not fans of Reconstruction, to include Andrew Johnson. Now, they were more than fine with local authorities stripping the rights of black people. The compromise simply made it official government policy. This allowed white Democrats known as Redeemers to sweep elections in the area eventually. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, but just motherfuckers. You nerdy ass. Like, we hadn't even invented being nerdy, but you nerdy ass motherfuckers.

Okay, sorry. Someone somewhere is going to start a militia called the redeemers it sounds like some fucking far cry ass villain faction see I think the right thing to do if we had a superman you know somebody who was invulnerable to bullets would be to

just all of these guys these fucking proud boys the oath keepers the fucking redeemers all these nerdy ass militia motherfuckers swirlies and like piss swirlies right like you don't you don't flush first like really gross piss swirlies for all of them that's that's that's where i am and you go to i don't know whatever region of the united states has an asparagus festival you go ham fucking buck wild on some asparagus you fill the toilet with piss and then you just dunk their face in it

now the Redeemers sweep the elections in the area and they systematically undid everything that Reconstruction had done along with some horrible pogroms this eventually enforced what amounted to be apartheid in the same areas of the south

that had once rebelled while being enforced by Confederate veterans who had just fought in that war during the rebellion. And now that they controlled literally every arm of the state, there was no recourse for Black people. Now, I should point out that all these segregation laws that they would pass were eventually upheld in the US Supreme Court and Plessy v. Ferguson, and they did leak into areas in the North away from the Confederate power base. If you're like me and you're from the North, you do not get to gloat in this situation. No, no, definitely not, yeah.

Nowhere in the U.S. was safe from legally mandated racism in some form or another. Yeah, like California didn't have quote-unquote Jim Crow, but we had all of the things that made up Jim Crow more or less, just in the different set of policies. Right. And I'm originally from Detroit, and we will talk about the Detroit race riots because it's

tied into this. We didn't necessarily have explicit Jim Crow laws, but we did. You know? You just call them something different. Like I said before, this is the entry into the separate but equal era, which is 50% correct in that it was separate. These were all state and local level laws rather than federal laws. However, federal

law made them all possible. So parsing between the two seems largely pointless in this context. And it's mostly a cop out, in my opinion, saying my state wasn't as racist as say Alabama during the American apartheid is not the flex you think it is. There's some pretty awful examples from around the country. And some places were worse than others.

But some examples are like public parks were forbidden for black people to enter theaters and restaurants were segregated. Cases were worse than others. But some examples are like public parks were forbidden for black people to enter. Theaters and restaurants were segregated. There were segregated waiting rooms and buses and train stations. And if some buildings had two completely different exits and entrances for people... Famously, the Pentagon has 10 times more bathrooms than it should because it was built with segregation in mind. 10 times more bathrooms than it should because it was built with segregation in mind. Um,

like there was also water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, and even fucking cemeteries. Um, if you died, the United States was so racist. Your corpse could not be buried with everybody else's,

um, solid stuff. Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, that's like a, that's, that's real deep level of racism right there yeah you can't even rot in the same dirt as me and like these laws were incredibly arbitrary um it wasn't black just black and white it was just like it was phrenology but based on skin color and culture there was immigrants who were decidingly not black like from india mexico

eastern europe and the caucuses they just kind of i fuck you and be like well you're kind of black to me and then you would immediately fall under jim crow uh it's it was kind of it was i mean this is before apartheid south africa but kind of the same idea where it's like no we're just gonna kind of go by how we feel about you at first glance. And that's it. It's a science. Now, some states required separate textbooks for black and white students. New Orleans famously mandated the segregation of prostitutes, according to race, which I'm sure the local police department were enthusiastic about enforcing.

In Atlanta, African-Americans in court were given a different Bible than white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and black people was strictly forbidden in southern states and some northern ones as well. In fact, interracial marriage would not become legal throughout the United States by federal law until 1967. Yeah, there is people alive today that remember this. This is not ancient history, people. Now, famously, I know I lived in Texas for almost a decade. I also lived in Kentucky.

I'm so sorry. And not just any part of Texas, Central Texas. Yeah. Yeah, it's about as Texas as Texas gets. And it's all of the worst parts of texas too it's i have nothing nice to say except austin is cool uh but i also live in i also live an hour and a half away from austin yeah yeah in fairness when you live in texas you're always an hour and a half away from wherever you want to be that's true uh and nine hours away from leaving texas which is always a motherfucker um yeah in a lot of areas like parts of texas parts of kentucky um and honestly

i these things still kind of exist that there was towns and city limits warning black people not to go there or to not let the sun down on them uh these became known as sundown towns and horrible, horrible, violent, racist places. I've heard rumors they still exist, and I do not doubt it. Now, these laws were so incredibly racist, along with America's wonderful policies on its indigenous population, that they became something of an inspirational movement

for a guy named Adolf Hitler and the basis of the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany. Whoops. Yeah, that's I mean, I have notes like maybe don't be the basis for the Nuremberg laws would be my note. Really just one note, honestly. And don't do all of the racial science they'll adopt. And yeah, just generally, like, if you're doing things

and the Nazis are looking at those things and going, oh, that's pretty rad, let's do the same thing, maybe have died 20 years before that point, ideally. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of this is one of the laws was so extreme, even the Nazis didn't use it. It was the one drop policy. It was like one drop of African descent in your family tree made you black in the United States legally.

And the Nazis were like, whoa, we can't do that with Jewish people. Yeah. So it was about like three generations or something like that. They had a bunch of different laws. Yeah. like three generations or something like that. They had a bunch of different laws. Yeah. Now I bring up these laws because more than once, there's been a lot of institutions in the United States.

You try to make Americans forget about them, but also during a lot of this time, America would find itself at war. You know, the thing that we'd like to do so often back when we didn't lose so much. Now, black Americans found themselves fighting for a country that hated them since the beginning of its very history. And there's probably, this is probably a reason

why significantly more black people fought for the British than the rebels during the American Revolution. Something we don't like to talk about too often. In fact, one of the canonized patriots of the American revolution, Crispus Atticus, that was killed during the Boston massacre was a interracial black man. Now his racial identity has been somewhat obscured for generations for reasons you can probably imagine.

Yeah. And since then, without, without fail, black men and women in uniform would be horribly discriminated against and be the victim of systemic abuse. During World War I, famously, while being able to be drafted, black soldiers would almost always find themselves relegated to unarmed and pretty much unused segregated labor battalions commanded by incredibly abusive white officers. We don't want to give them guns. That's right. That could really be a problem for you because of how

you're treating them, you know? Because of how racist you are, giving them guns can end really badly for you. They probably got this idea from the Ottomans or something. I don't know. This also happened during the civil war uh then eventually

kind of like world war one they're like huh it turns out we need soldiers uh i guess we can give guns to the black guys um now this is because the american military thought that as a race that black people were unable to fight as well as white people they went so far as to publish a memo to other allied forces during world war one to tell them how racially inferior their black soldiers were and they gave this specifically to the french military um now some of this had to do with the fact that they're working under president woodrow wilson probably one of the most racist presidents of all time is i'll say he is up there he's he gives fucking jefferson davis for his money like i will say he is up there. He's he gives fucking Jefferson Davis his money.

I will say he is certainly the most racist president who's never legally owned another human being as property. Yeah, yeah, he is. I suspect a couple of the slave owners would have been like, whoa, dude, you're taking it a little far here. But you have Robert E. Lee's like, you have to tone that down to a dull roar around these parts. Not very gentlemanly. So,

you know, Wilson doesn't own all of this. Obviously, uh, the only thing more racist than, uh, than Woodrow Wilson, it turns out is the rest of American history.

Yeah. At the same time, America's European counterparts did not have the same ideas about race and soldiering abilities. Now, I do not mean to say they are not racist. We're talking about the British Empire and the French here. And they were drawing soldiers from their overseas empires, feeding them like a colonial wood chipper on the Western Front. That's hardly progressive but they were at least smart enough to know that a bullet from a rifle of a black guy

or an Indian soldier kills a German just as well as a bullet from a white guy yeah which low bar we're talking very low bar yes and that is why when the American expeditionary force hit Europe and the French asked for American soldiers to act as replacements rather than independent units, the American government was like, no, no, no, we're going to be the AEF on our own.

And they took them, they wore French military uniforms, fought with French officers, learned French. They're famously known as the Harlem Hellfighters and probably did the most fighting of any American unit throughout the war. Now, for the first time in probably these men's entire lives, they were treated no differently than their white contemporaries. Now, this had to do with the fact less than the open and racial harmony of the French and the fact that it was 1918 and the French had been chewed up and spat out by a swirling vortex of death that was the Western front of World War I. There were three living French males at this point. Yeah. Well, we've already blew up an entire generation. I guess we can look at black people as equals just for this one thing. Just until we run out of black people to die for us.

You better not come around asking for a pension after we use you. Oh no. Now, a lot of the shock that these guys suffered from being treated as somewhat equals by the French was just how intensely racist America was. For the first time these guys could eat food drink water wash and sleep alongside white people in the same trenches this was literally unheard this was even unheard of during like the civil war when uh you that people always talk about uh you know black people

being paid the same amount and things like but yeah but you also had to sleep in a different camp and you had to use a different hole in the ground to shit in um and like i said these guys also fought like monsters they took the most casualties of any american unit in the war they're awarded multiple medals of honor and terrified the germans to the point they're nicknamed the black death which sounds cool but so also sounds vaguely racist yeah yeah yeah but at least it was german so you know it's like a some slightly different kind of racism yeah i mean this is also like 10 years removed from the german genociding africans in uh their their southeast africa yeah a little bit of did a little bit of that genociding. Yeah, they did with the Herrero. Yeah.

Yeah, a little bit of a lot of genocide. A lot of the same guys involved. If we're grading on a scale, I mean, less genocide than their competitors. Like if you're thinking about it like a car company, talking about how many people die in your car versus the other car,'s like well you know less genocide than the british yeah and it's actually telling uh because a lot of the guys that would um serve in you know what is modern day namibia would go on to act as like military advisors to like the ottoman empire and they would write firsthand accounts of the armenian assyrian uh greek and yazidi genocides god damn this is terrible yeah like compared to us this is

awful um now uh there's a reason for that so many black soldiers continued to volunteer for service to the united states and they while they were drafted vast majority of them volunteered um this is because at various points of american history whether whether it be W.E.B. Du Bois and a few other people, Black leaders always encourage Black men to volunteer for military service to prove to white people that they are equal in this whole America thing. That never worked. And that continues largely to this day. You still see that in the military. You still see that in police departments encouraging Black people to enlist or try to get jobs with them to defeat racism. And that's not how that works. Now, that didn't happen. And in fact, racial tension, which by racial tension here, I'm going to say a few times, just means Black people wanting to be treated equally. That's what racial tension here i'm going to say a few times just means black people wanting to be treated equally that's what racial tension is yes the tension of wanting to have basic human rights that makes a lot of people tense you know yeah you've gone too far sir um now the this feeling began to grow between world wars one and two and that has to do with you know workforce changing demographics in the military black people people wanting more rights, um,

still not equal, right. Just maybe like, Hey, can I have my pension perhaps? Um, like famously the, the bonus army March of world war one veterans in DC was racist as shit.

Um, yes. Even though it's like a lot of the labor movement too, was like really fucking racist. Um, you know, there were bright moments in in both where people got got their shit together in that but those were not the norm

yeah yeah 100 um and of course that none of this made things better so let's uh go ahead and jump to world war ii um now the military was still segregated and I mean like the segregation had been codified to the point I have to say words I'm uncomfortable with. Um, there's specifically segregated colored units for black people. Now, generally I would not use this word, but that's literally how they were labeled. So they would say be an engineer company that you and I would be in. That would just be called like the 69th Engineer Company, for instance. And then there'd be an engineer company called like the 70th Engineers for black people. And it would be the 70th Engineers in parentheses colored. That's how it'd be legally labeled on all military orders. And while every branch of the military was racist as hell, the Marines and Navy barred enlistment entirely until 1942, and the Air Force didn't exist yet. So they're still the Army Air Corps. So congratulations, Navy.

You're officially the most racist branch of the military, something that probably won't shock anybody who's ever had to work with you. Good for you, Navy. Now, just because the Army allowed black enlistment did not mean that they were equal it was very segregated that meant that every basic training school military base everything would be would mirror the treatment that you'd receive in the civilian world you'd be segregated there'd be different entrances there would be different medical staff uh whatever um jim crow was the law of the US military, period. And just because this is World War II, we're talking about... You know that most of these guys that were in the military

in uniform would not stay in the US. No other nation involved in the war on our side anyway had a form of segregation quite like the US at the time. We were trying to blow up Germany so we can quite like the US at the time. We were trying to blow up Germany so we can forget them for a second. Even what everybody points to is famously the most well-known bit of segregation because Americans like to forget about their own history, and that is apartheid. It wouldn't legally begin until 1948. So we're ahead of the curve on this one. That meant wherever the US went, ahead of the curve on this one. That meant wherever the U.S. went, U.S. soldiers would be forced to possibly, maybe, treat

people of other races like equals because that was not the law there. Oh yeah, that's not going to go over well. Yeah, it's because Americans aren't going to be like, ah, we've entered a different land. We must adapt to their customs. That's not something we famously do. And like everything else, the Americans,

specifically the american military has ever been involved and they'd be god damn if they were going to make this easy for anybody every american military and government uh building base or otherwise built overseas during the war and every overseas theater would have to follow the laws of the united states and this included racial segregation even if this meant something incredibly stupid like building two times as many bases three times as many doors and exits and hiring a hundred times more fucking people they needed just so they would be able to build and staff all of these various different things like they would build two bases in one town just because black and white soldiers could

not live together rather than just building one. It was just absolutely stupid. Great. Great use of defense dollars. Yeah. It's, I'm glad it's a tradition we've managed to continue. We don't need, we don't need to spend money on like building two Fort hoods or whatever for

racial segregation when we could just burn it all in a pit labeled F 35. Yeah. See, that's the woke answer to racist military shit. Yeah, don't worry. The CEO of the knife missile company is

black. I don't know if that's true or not. Well, it might be. The secretary of defense was... I think he worked for Raytheon. So there you go. We solved racism, folks. Now, black and white soldiers couldn't be housed together, and every effort was done to ensure that they would have completely different bases like I just talked about.

In situations where these guys would actually have to run into each other, like go to the same building or whatever, black soldiers would have a completely different entrance that they would have to use as well as different staff within that building that would work with black and white soldiers. The same rule applied to chow halls and aid stations and medical staff. If you were a black soldier and you got hurt in your station, say like the UK, you'd have to go to the black hospital. soldier and you got hurt in your station, say like the UK, you'd have to go to the black hospital. Even if like that concept simply did not exist in the UK, you cannot go to the British hospital because there's a

white hospital, even though the British didn't do that. You'd have to get taken to the black military hospital. Jesus Christ. This is back in the day when soldiers would get like weekend leave and stuff and they would space it out so black and white soldiers wouldn't run into each other in the streets oh yeah you know one i mean to be honest

that probably made things a lot safer for the black soldiers yeah true true running into drunk white privates in the middle of fucking i don't know if uh uh whatever german town name insert here robert i got some bad news this is where i get to say it gets worse um oh no because you know how like obviously we have racist cops in the united states what if i told you during a time of war all of those racist cops just got drafted and became racist mps i would say that sounds about right and and who do you think the police is um the black soldiers certainly not not black MPs. No.

That's the one time that white soldiers were allowed around black soldiers. That's to be cops. It seems like they're able to coexist together. Yes. It's fine. Now, these rules couldn't be enforced when they left the base, as there was no fundamental way for the US military to force military law onto a local town as no segregation rules existed in the UK at a time. Now, for the reason why I'm talking about this is this all happens in a town of Bamber Bridge, England, a place without any kind of legally mandatory racial segregation. Now, I am not going to dare to fucking say that England is not racist.

No, no. But it's Britishish racism so there's the accents funny yeah like they're such more uh progressive than us my producer lives in the uk and i'm sure he's gonna insert something here but um yeah you know like there's this incredible amounts racism the abuse of colonial soldiers, Gurkhas and various other branches of the British military, notwithstanding, still somehow less racist. And you gotta be committed to racism to fuck with Gurkhas because those motherfuckers are terrifying. within the last 15 years or so. Because the Gurkhas would famously join the Nepalese, the Singaporean, or the British militaries. And they could serve the British military and the Gurkha contingent for 20-odd years, whatever, retire.

They would get absolutely nothing for a pension and then immediately get deported back where they came from. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I think it was just very, very recently fixed. But now they have to like apply to be able to stay in the UK. Yeah. So my very favorite story about the Gurkhas comes from 2010

when this 35-year-old gurkha soldier on the maria express which was like a train line in india um was uh the train got attacked by a group of 30 to 40 armed robbers and he fought them all off on his own with his with his uh his his his knife his gurkha knife the what do they call them i think it's a Kukri. Yeah. The Kukris. Yeah. Like it's some shockingly, this has not had a movie made about it, but yeah,

this dude just like went a hog on a platoon's worth of, uh, a fucking armed robbers with his service knife in a train. That's incredible. Pretty rad story. Yeah. There's a, there's another story of there's a gurkha in afghanistan that

was for some reason like standing out by himself and he got like surrounded by taliban and he beat like six people to death with like the bipod of a machine gun yeah yeah you again you got to be really committed to racism if you if you want to fuck with these guys the the british committed to the bit for decades um yeah they sure did and obviously there's the windrush scandal where they deported literal british citizens back to jamaica and shit like that like the awful fucking place if you think any of that's surprising read about what they did to the entire army they left behind the indian army they left behind in afghanistan like oh god yeah yeah no just just the british army the british empire has a long and proud

history of uh asking locals to fight for it and then abandoning them to nightmarish fates um just cash you know just like what's that is that is that that America's Entrust music? I am a real American. Hulk Hogan comes out and just suplexes a Navajo code talker with asbestos poisoning or something. Hulk Hogan holds out a

high five to the mountain yards and pulls it away real fast. Yeah. Oh, God. Now the the small town of bamber bridge uh welcomed the 1511 11th quartermaster truck regiment now this was a black truck regiment their truck drivers had white uh officers um now the town was very open and welcoming these guys and bamber bridge was not alone by 1944 10 of the entire u.s military presence in the uk was made up of black servicemen

i should point out for a minute that something about the the white leadership of these units back in the day say during like the heyday of the buffalo soldiers and stuff like that uh famously someone that keeps coming up on this fucking podcast john pershing the middle name that was once literally just the n-word yeah yeah he was an officer in the buffalo he was the officer in the buffalo soldiers uh back in the day that was actually considered not a bad uh command billet like that wasn't a knock against your command ability or anything um people didn't want it because of racism but like that wasn't a knock against your command ability or anything um people didn't want it because of racism but like it wasn't a punishment uh it had since become that um

since world war now in world war ii rather uh attitudes began to change regarding the units people were being in charge of and the quality of officers appointed to lead them. And it began to go down considerably. Numerous black units fought in the Civil War very well, being led by white people, and they were able to win soldiers over and keep discipline and motivation within the ranks without being total racist psychopaths.

Most of the time. Well, partly good for them. By World War II, that was gone. Black units in England were led by what one investigator later called a, quote, dumping ground of shitty, abusive alcoholic officers that failed or been fired from every position

they had previously held. But it's the middle of World War II. You can't go around kicking out officers left and right. You'll run into a shortage. Certainly not for alcoholism. If they start kicking people out of the military for alcoholism. No, if they start kicking up people, kicking people out of the military for alcoholism, actually,

that's a really good way to cut spending in the military. Now they think of it. Yeah. We could, we could, we could trim that budget by half. We just abolished the Marine Corps by proxy and I'm all for it. Uh,

that's the sound of people logging off. Uh, now, uh, because of this morale within these units being led by these fucking dicks, it just cratered into the ground. Nobody wanted to work. Everybody hated being there. They worked incredibly long days just getting screamed at and hit, being treated like absolute dog shit throughout the work week, being led by racist officers.

And there were black NCOs, non-commissioned officers, but they held very little power. Something that was not the case in white units. But the white officers pretty much lorded over these units like their own personal fiefdoms or whatever. But like soldiers throughout history,

they got their weekends off. You'd have to get a weekend pass and go out into town. And these guys love to go out into town drinking and fucking. That's what soldiers do. That's what they've literally done since before there were civilizations. Yeah. It's a tradition that will truly never die. It's one of those like if you go anywhere where a soldier has ever been stationed, you will find a doodle of a dick somewhere.

I don't know why. I've done it myself. You're just called to do it. It settles into the back of your brain. Connecting you to your ancestors. Yeah. It's embracing tradition. This is especially the case in a foreign setting where black soldiers saw

that they were in a completely different reality from the one that they faced back home, a non-segregated society that they've been welcome as fellow fighters against fascism rather than a barely tolerated draft animal for the war effort. Like they're, you know, actual bosses. Yeah. you'd want to hang out in that shit now maybe this is me being a little bit jaded or because this is england we're talking about uh but there's a whenever you research stuff like this there's always it always makes it seem like there's this welcoming

racial harmony thing and yeah i do have to point out what was probably the case as black soldiers page paychecks spent the exact same as white soldiers paychecks and they got paid on the same exact day every single month and they knew if you owned a fucking bar and you're near a whole bunch of soldiers you're gonna make a killing it's I mean that still counts as woke for the era, just like being like, well, their money's good. I'll take it. There were a lot of guys who were like, their money's no good here. Yeah, because you definitely couldn't do that in the US. You couldn't go like, hey, I have my government paycheck or whatever from being home on leave or whatever.

Cops would beat people up and steal it if they were black. I don't give a shit that you want to spend money you're not entering this bar yeah exactly now this brings us to the evening of june 24th 1943 my birthday actually um happy birthday yeah had a couple of weeks months late yeah, soldiers from the truck regiment had gotten a pass to go out into town, but hitting up the, this is the very British name, ye olde hob in bar. Oh, come on, guys. I mean, for the love of God, you're a

civilization. Would it help if I told you all I also had a thatched roof? No. Now, normally this would have been time to party and forget about their shitty officers, but instead their mood was pretty bad. The reason for this is just a few days earlier, starting on the 20th, race riots had spread through the city of Detroit, Michigan. The Detroit race riots are sparked by decades of racism within my home city. And by 1920, it had become the fourth largest city in the country, built upon the backs of an industrial automotive boom.

A lot of people moving in also happened to be black people from the South, fleeing oppression, leading to the rebirth of the KKK and an offshoot, the Black Legion, which had previously never existed within the city of Detroit. As well as, you know, countless fucking hate crimes in the city, many in cahoots with the Detroitroit police department and the city government weird how that keeps happening detroit police department uh famously have ran three different death squads over their history they sure have they sure have you uh they really love their death squads you know you know what they say about detroit police department they love their death squads and uh drugs for former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Yeah. The Detroit Police Department. Less ambitious than the Einsatzgruppe.

I think you can fit that on a badge. Yeah. Now, when World War II started, the automotive industry boomed once again as they began manufacturing things for the war effort. High wages for just about anybody who would show up to work and you barely had to read or write to get these assembly line jobs. That's how my family ended up working in these places. You could get employed there without even speaking English. It was great. You could get employed there without even speaking English.

It was great. With Executive Order 8802, President FDR, signed by FDR on June 25th, 1941, had prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense industry. The executive order was applied in a slapdash and random manner in a lot of places, and nobody even tried to keep tabs on it. Black people were continued to be excluded from numerous industrial jobs, including skilled and supervisory positions within the manufacturing plants. But the swell of people going into the city create a massive housing shortage in Detroit, something that will never exist again. Enter things like redlining,

which excluded black people from various different neighborhoods of the city. This forced black people to pack into dilapidated housing in a downtown area, which was known as Black Bottom. Thankfully, it's not as made we used to that area anymore. For people who live in Detroit or are unaware of this,

it's located on the east side, bounded by Gratiot, Bush Street, and the Detroit River, and the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks. I believe there's a sign there, though someone probably vandalized it again. Yeah, I mean, you can turn Grand Trunk Railroad into Grand Funk Railroad. I hope somebody does that. I'm surprised I never saw that going on. Yeah, the most relevant band ever mentioned on this show.

Now, in order to relieve some of the pressure, the federal government planned to build the Sojourner Truth Housing Project, a project famously known for going great. Now, this is going to build 200 new units for black people working specifically within the defense industry within the city. This was greeted by, as you can imagine, a massive blowup of protests by white people in the same area. protests by white people in the same area. This is around the Packard Motor Car Company plant there, which is always, they may have finally bulldozed it, but it's always uses like the destruction porn that people like to post from Detroit.

But this, that car company in particular dared to put black people on the assembly line alongside white people for the first time, despite the fact they had been working in the factory for years. This led to a wildcat strike of 25,000 white people walking off the job. Cool. By June 20th, the city was tearing itself apart on a warm Sunday evening,

teenagers and other kids gathered on bell aisle, which is an Island in the Detroit river to start fighting one another. And that still kind of happens from time to time, though this time it was time it was racial shit. People formed into small racial gangs and started fist fighting and stabbing and hitting each other with weapons. Now, this area also began to get crowded with people

who like to go out that way to get away from the city to enjoy the sun. It's kind of like a... It's more like a park. I don't know exactly what it is anymore. I think there's a golf course on it or something. But, you know, it's away from the city. You can go chill out next to the Detroit River before it all just smelled like piss

and enjoy the summer. But soon, adults enjoying the week enough joined in with these teenagers in kind of like a spontaneous racial fistfight on an island. Great. This grew to include the Belle Isle Bridge, which eventually packed in around a hundred

thousand people in and around it good lord this quickly turned into a rolling hate crime as the whites who massively outnumbered the black people went wild from there the riot spread into the city sailors joined in various hate crimes against black people on the fly. Anytime sailors joined in as a part of your story, it's probably both going to be racist and very violent. Navy, once again. Come on, guys. The riot escalated into the city after a false rumor spread that a mob of white people had thrown a black mother

and her baby into the Detroit River. A lot of other fucked up shit had happened, but that was a false rumor. Once that rumor began to spread, at least they didn't do that. Once rumor began to spread, black people rallied around for revenge, thinking that

a woman in a trial had been murdered. So they began looting and burning white-owned shops, as well as jumping people as they went. An equally false rumor that black people had raped and murdered a white woman on the Belle Isle Bridge swept through the white neighborhoods. So an even larger angry mob of

white people spilled on the Woodward Avenue near the Roxy Theater around 4 a.m., beating black people as they're getting off streetcars on their way to work. They also went into black neighborhoods of Paradise Valley, one of the oldest and poorest neighborhoods of Detroit. It still kind of is attacking anyone they get their hands on.

Then the police showed up. They intervened and began firing wildly on the black people in every direction. Of the 34 people who were killed, 24 of them were black and 17 of them had been shot by the police. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. shot by the police jesus christ yeah okay well yeah the riots only ended when the federal government invoked the insurrection act to deploy soldiers to separate the two sides

and also call off the cops yeah it seems like the the problem maybe was mostly the cops it always is it's it's it's wild how all of these guys' children end up becoming Portland police officers. It's kind of incredible that a segregated military showed up and be like, God damn, how racist are you to the cops? Yeah. Yeah. So all of these events were very fresh in the minds of these soldiers as they are out drinking because many of them were from Detroit. The riots were not only on the minds of the soldiers, but on the local military police, the 234th

Military Police Company, all of whom were white, because many of them had been cops in their civilian lives. And in Detroit, this is being spun as an assault against the cops. Weird! The only thing missing was like a ye olde blue lives flag or something

oh wait no that was in germany at the time my bad uh now um the mps were absolutely hated by the townspeople of bamber bridge uh they had a completely separate base on the other side because remember they couldn't be housed the black people as soon as the mps got there uh they had seemingly adopted a personal mission to make everybody hate them. When they walked into a local pub and insisted that they segregate their establishment, the owner replied that he would. However,

when the cop showed up the next day, they were met with a blacks only sign at the three village pubs, sending a clear message that their shit was not welcome there. Ooh, that's nice. Yeah, I think it's, I mean,

obviously I can't speak for their individual motivations. The MPs are a very small unit. There's only a company of them. So alienating them wouldn't hurt business too bad. Also, fuck them. I don't know. Yeah, fuck them. And sometimes people make moral calls.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I would like to think that's the case. Yeah. Fuck those guys yeah yeah now when white soldiers finally realized that this is just how things were going to be in one of the bars anyway because they're going to drink and fuck as well they were furious to find out they had to wait in line and be served equally on a first come first serve

basis uh when they complained they should get their beer before black people they were told to wait their turn or leave so police actions in the town could hardly be considered honest and they were just being dicks on a regular and consistent basis leading up to this virtually every flare up of problems in the village were on the basis of race

and by that I mean white military cops trying to force black people into being second class citizens thousands of miles away from home and this included like cops would lose their shit and beat up soldiers and try to arrest them when they saw like a black guy walking with a local British girl

and again this is where I have to say something I really don't like saying one American officer commented quote one thing I noticed here and which I don't like is the fact that the British don't draw any color line. The English must be pretty ignorant as they as they can't see how a white girl could associate with a Negro. This is the commanding officer.

Oh, good. Oh, guy. You know, and I love, too, that he's like the issue is that like I love the way that he's framing it. The British just like can't imagine that the white girl would be interested as opposed to being like supportive of interracial relationships like this guy can't even conceive of that not that i'm saying the right word but like this guy clearly like can't even make that leap in his head and that is like one of the things that the local townspeople from all of their firsthand accounts of which you can still find some of of what happens next nobody ever pointed out that the that the trucks regiment was a problem in any way uh nobody ever talks about they're complaining about american sealing their women which is super common throughout world war ii they didn't even

mention that they're like because obviously british people aren't super welcoming to black to like interracial marriages and stuff um especially in the fucking 40s so like it's telling that none maybe none of those survived on purpose, but that was never brought up. It was only ever brought up by the MPs. Excellent. So on the night of June 24th, two MPs, Corporal Roy

Windsor and PFC Ralph Ridgeway, entered Ye Olde Hobbin and attempted to arrest Private Eugene Nunn of the Trek Regiment. He was being cited for being improperly dressed, and he did not have a weekend pass. The improperly dressed part was that he was wearing a field jacket rather than his mandated dress uniform whenever you leave the base.

And he didn't change because he just got enough work, and he did not have a pass whatsoever. Who cares? Of course, the soldiers and MPs began to argue about this, and the soldiers were joined in by the pub goers, who began to tell the MPs to fuck off. Finally, one of the soldiers, who was very drunk, threatened one of the MPs with a bottle,

leading to a cop drawing his gun. Sergeant William Bird, a black NCO at the truck regiment, managed to talk the MPs into leaving, and as they did so, the same drunk soldier ran out after them and hooked a beer bottle at their jeep and then missed. I mean, who's amongst us, am I right? The MPs got into their jeep and drove

back to their base for reinforcements, because there's only two of them and 30 or odd soldiers or whatever. After this, the soldiers remained at the bar until closing time, finishing their beer and walking back to their base. As they did, the MPs returned. A fight broke out, and the soldiers decided to run back towards the bar. When an MP

drew out his gun and shot Private Adams, the same soldier had thrown the beer bottle in the throat. Another soldier, William Crossland, was shot in the back and killed. Jesus. Yeah. At this point, black soldiers of the truck regiment had enough of this bullshit. They just shot two

unarmed people, one of them in the fucking back, and killed them. And they went back to their base, and at this point, word had already began to spread throughout the truck regiment that the MPs had shot a black soldier. If that wasn't enough, the MPs, now three jeeps deep and armed with machine guns, appeared at the black soldier's base around

midnight. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if this was 2021, they would just have an MRAP. Yep. With this fresh knowledge, they'd already shot one black man. The MPs were now yelling racial slurs and threats.

The soldiers figured these assholes must mean to shoot them all just like they had done in Detroit. And they also realize we have guns, too. Why don't we use them? That's what I wanted to see the lone black officer in

the entire base lieutenant edwin jones attempted to calm the situation down telling his soldiers that the mps would be brought to justice everybody just need to go back to their barracks but absolutely nobody was buying this shit anymore arms rooms were opened rifles machine guns and hand grenades were handed out to now very pissed off and slightly drunk soldiers of the truck regiment, which eventually numbered in the hundreds as the entire barracks emptied out. The soldiers marched back into town, going door to door, warning people to stay inside while they handled some shit. And they did. People were like, no, thank you for telling us not to go outside. were like no thank you uh for telling us not to go outside they broke into the mp's base firing through the windows and doors demanding the mps come out and face them but they wouldn't because

they're fucking gutless cowards they remained locked inside too terrified to come out thinking that they could delay the finding out part of fucking around indefinitely eventually the soldiers realized that the cops were not going to come out, and they had to walk back to their base, when, according to village police, who, weirdly enough, did not intervene. But, I mean, they're British, they're probably unarmed. I would not have intervened either. If you have machine guns

and rifles, and your guys have a couple of sticks, yeah, that's not really your fight, to be fair. It's just a British cop, like, you have a license for that machine gun. All right, have a good day. Well, yeah. Now, when the soldiers are walking back, according to a local policeman, they ran into an MP roadblock, which began firing on them with a belt fed machine gun mounted to the back of a jeep.

Jesus Christ. Yeah. Local police purposely used the term ambush uh for a reason like they they sent jeeps around the back of the base to circle around and surround these guys and that's when the black soldiers started firing back and the small english town got turned into a war zone for hours as mps and soldiers fought a running gun battle up and down the village streets british civilians watched as their quiet town erupted in violence and gunfire, forcing many to hide inside and away from the chaos.

Cool. By the time the shooting had stopped around 4 a.m., three black soldiers and one MP had been shot, with two more MPs being beaten unconscious with the buttstock of a rifle and left unarmed in a ditch. Jesus. Yeah, I'm sure a number of these brits were just like hit by the realization of like oh the americans almost wound up on the other side

like this was a razor like they they were they were an inch away from not being not not wanting to fight the germans okay good to know, unfortunately, every good bit of justice ends with a court martial. And there were a lot of them, but not as many as you would think. It does. I mean, I'm sure the court marshals weren't where they needed to be. But this does seem like a thing where a lot of people needed to get court. Hey, my boys didn't do nothing wrong. Now, 35 black soldiers were brought up on charges of mutiny and other various crimes.

Yeah. Okay. Now, this is a time of war, and all of these charges could have ended with them getting the death penalty, which they handed out quite frequently during World War II. Not as frequently as people think, but mostly for the death penalty. Mostly people got it for rape and murder. Very few other death penalties. They only sentenced one soldier

for I think it was refusal to go into battle or something like that. It was Joseph Slovic. But yeah, 35 got charged, even though hundreds took part. Now, eventually, 32 soldiers were convicted and sentenced to terms spanning from a few months to 15 years in military prison.

But this is where I actually have to stop and point out that actual justice happened. And it was because of one guy, General Ira Aker, who was the commander of the U.s army air force uh the the eighth u.s army air force in the area now this is because the president of the court-martial uh made an immediate plea for clemency and during a court-martial if that occurs it goes up to a general for um review and normally the general isn't a lawyer he hands it over to a lawyer that he has on hands um and that actually didn't happen this time because most of the lawyers are pretty fucking terrible. For instance, it was the lawyer specifically that was arguing that Slovik should be the one guy executed for cowardice at all of World War II in the US military. But General Aker looked it over himself and saw that there was an appalling lack of discipline at the camp and poor leadership with officers failing

to perform pretty much any of their duties properly. So he investigated personally and he gave them all clemency. He commuted sentences and reduced others in... For instance, the most anybody spent time in prison was a year.

And that was not for mutiny, not for firing at cops. It was solely because they didn't return the weapon that they had taken from the arms room. Well, okay. Yeah. Like,

yeah, fair enough. A whole bunch of grenades went missing. So that is a little bit of a, that is a potential issue. Yeah. Yeah. That actually happened to my unit during my,

when I was coming home uh someone you have to go through customs it's normally like coast guard customs for some reason uh and they found someone had hidden a hand grenade in their backpack and they're about to get a commercial flight uh that what was the what was the game plan there i i would like to think that he was just stupid i would really like to think that he was just stupid i would really like to think that he wasn't going to blow up the airplane but he was not punished for uh for anything he didn't even get demoted yeah you really don't want that news story getting out anywhere no no um now all of the violence was blamed by general acre on the mps for being

savagely racist violent and you know being just a group of incompetent, shitty racists who couldn't do their jobs and led by people who had the same beliefs. He blamed everything on the MPs. He also went one further. He purged the trucking regiment of all of its officers above the rank of major and sent them back to the US to actually pretty much tank their career, which is impressive. He also forced racial integration on the MPs

so black MPs could then police the black soldiers rather than the other way around. There was still segregation to an extent, but at least the white racists wouldn't be destroying their lives as they try to go have a beer. Now, this did help this particular unit,

but it did not help the situation in the US military and the UK. Racial violence was shockingly common throughout the war, with American soldiers in England specifically on several occasions other than this one, where cops and soldiers would shoot each other openly in the streets in case

they killed a British civilian. Now, the most famous of these is probably the park street riot which happened the very next year after this one and and ended with a soldier being shot to death and an mp being stabbed um jesus but yeah thankfully we we we solved racism uh when we it does seem like we've got a good handle on that. Yeah, especially when we integrated during the Korean War. The end, racial harmony exists. Yeah, no, that was the end of problems for the United States.

And now, I don't know about you, Joe, but I'm going to watch our president, a beam of pure light, announce that the space program has... I don't know. I don't know. I can't even joke about positive things because it's 2021 i mean every time we say it could get worse it couldn't possibly get worse a monkey paw curls inward so yeah yeah monkey paw curls inward and there's the delta variant or joe mansion crawls out from a storm drain yeah it's i mean that's where he was born he congealed there yeah right next to kristin cinema robert we do a thing on the show and i think someone would be very happy if you took part

in it called questions from the legion where someone donates to the show uh in our patreon they can ask us a a fleeting question that means largely nothing uh and we answer on there um and this one is of all of the uh the celebrities that have come out to do awful things in their past or maybe they're dead already and we found out about them or they're in prison. Which one actually impacted you? Like, which one actually shocked you? Shocked me. God, did any of them shock me? Because, like, I'm bummed about, you know, some of the stuff we've learned about bowie and prince and yeah jackson but i

norm mcdonald i'm really bummed about norm mcdonald i never i've enjoyed his comedy over these i never expected him to be a pleasant person i guess because of like the nature of his comedy you know true um obviously it's a bummer i'm disappointed but like i'm not like oh my god norm mcdonald was creepy like i'm like oh yeah that's i mean yeah that does kind of that does kind of follow yeah that one didn't shock me i'll give you that much it didn't super surprise me shit i know there's there's been some creepy woody allen he just seemed like such a such a adopting that young girl i mean what a what a nice man i never would have thought uh that was a joke obviously woody allen's um and i was well i mean what a what a nice man i never would have thought uh that was a joke obviously

woody ellen's um and i was of course the person that i'm thinking of immediately is a fucking terrible monster um so i i'm showing my age a little bit here but i used to i still watch professional wrestling i used to as well um but i one of my favorite wrestlers ever was Chris Benoit. Oh, yeah. I know that story. I mean, I don't know how much I can blame the person he was originally for that, though. It does seem like that's a lot on the head injuries. Yes. Yeah.

He was not in a great place. But I remember I bought, I think, two ever wrestlers merch in my life. One was the Hardy Boys when my mom bought it for me for my birthday when I was 13 or whatever. And one was a Chris Ben washer. I actively still had that Chris Ben washer when we found out that

he had murdered his family. That would be kind of rad to wear now, though. Fuck. I don't have it anymore. Honestly, I'm fine with that. But that's the one i was like oh fuck there's no way that's the only one that shocked me shit let me i mean i know there have been some i just don't they're not super present well you know a musician i fucking worked with like like hired him for song for to do some songs for shows.

And I fucking loved his, I mean, I still love his music, but turned out to be a fucking rapist, uh, astronautalist, which was, uh,

horrifying. Um, and a gigantic, Oh, holy shit. What? Really? Yeah.

Yeah. It came out in 2020 actually during like the high day. Yeah. And he copped to it, um, to the extent that that matters. But yeah, like it's, it's fucked up. And, um, to the extent that that matters. But yeah, like it's,

it's fucked up. And, that was a, that was a huge bummer. Um, fucking blows. I really liked them. Yeah.

I, I, I, I loved his music and obviously I was like, look, really looking forward to, I mean, not to like center like my disappointment in this,

but yeah, like you asked the question, like who was I most like shocked by like because i'd met him too like i'd hung out and gone drinking with andy um and really that bummed me the fuck out um when when it all came out because like it it came it didn't seem like it was necessarily going to be as bad at first and then you know as all often happens stuff kept coming out you know right yeah it could be worse you could be a lost profits fan i'm not familiar with with what happened there oh god i'm gonna i'm not even

gonna mention on air it's okay some of the most disgusting things on earth um he didn't he was just like a serial child abuser um oh jesus christ yeah yeah well yeah and he ended up like i think facilitating it through like online, like through fans and stuff like that. It was awful. Sweet. Now on a, on a bright side,

this is, this is where you can plug your show in case one or two people listening has not heard of behind the bastards or honestly, I've lost track of everything else you're doing right now. So just to plug everything. Yeah. I absolutely have lost track too. Um,

I have a podcast. All right. All podcast. All right. All right. All right. We're good to go. Robert, thank you so much. I'm glad we could finally make this work. Yeah.

And, you know, until next time, I don't know. Don't do race riots. Yeah. Avoid race riots. Some riots I'm broadly supportive of, but not with the race. Not the race kind. Don't do a race riot, you know? Avoid that.