Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 289 - Eugene Bullard. The Coolest Man to Ever Live

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

Circus performer, champion boxer, first ever African American combat pilot, club owner, Jazz artist, and spy. Eugene Bullard was one of the coolest men to ever live. *SUPPORT THE SHOW* https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys *LIVE SHOW TICKETS* Night one: bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led…s-live-podcast/ Night two: bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led…odcast-27jan24/ Sources: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/eugene-j-bullard https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20231112-eugene-ballard-pioneering-african-american-aviator-who-flew-for-france-in-wwi https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/bullard-eugene-jacques-1894-1961/ https://www.historynet.com/eugene-bullard-americas-first-black-fighter-pilot/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the

show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today in this World War I era canvas fighter plane, that will make more sense in a little bit, is Tom. What's up, buddy? I mean, like, I'm good. I mean, like, much like a World War I canvas fighter plane, I have crashed into this seat, and I don't think I can get back up. Honestly, I'm feeling kind of the same today yeah like mental health

chat is done fitness chat is back I was just in the gym hit a very intense leg workout in the space of 45 minutes so I don't think I can walk right now but when i was walking home i texted you this is a very specific situation i don't think there is any single type of person more arrogant on the planet than a older italian guy in the gym who is still in good shape i think i countered with you could have just said an italian guy and i would have said yes

because like i was just in the changing rooms was like getting in the shower and there was like a group of guys like talking or whatever and like one of them is like started got back on to the gym and all this sort of stuff so like other people are giving them advice there's a younger guy and there's the italian guy and then when i came back from my shower and was getting changed the uh the younger guy had left and the Italian guy was just talking the most shit about him he was like yeah you know like he's young but you know his body

is good but he is young you know look at me I am older look at my body look at my body I look good for my age and I'm just like you are such a fucking dickhead yeah alright fucking like Mr. TRT money like calm down i counter with um no one is more confident in the gym than a guy who um only does upper body and is wearing a gym

shark t-shirt he's taking the meaning of looking like a triangle way too literally he'll give you the most fucked up bro science explanation of what you need to do in the gym while clearly skipping a full 70% of fitness the man

has never squatted he does not do deadlifts he's very concerned about the size of his calvesatted he does not do deadlifts um he's very concerned about the size of his calves and he takes up the entire cable machine so he can do flies even though there's a dumbbell rack right next to him that's completely open look i will defend bro science the basic principle of pick heavy thing up put it down with good form just works for the vast majority of people that's not that's not bro science bro like that is that is that's just like the vast majority of people. Yeah, but that's not bro science, bro. That's just like the basics

of kind of sort of getting in shape. Like bro science is shit that is... You gotta confuse the muscle. Yeah, exactly. They read it on bodybuilding.com and they're still having the how many days in a week debate like eight years later.

And they insist if you consume like i don't know like 600 euros worth of supplements every month it's totally what you need your muscles are like the uh the american incursion into against the north vietnamese army you got to keep confused you know i i like to breathe my muscle attrition yes i believe in waging a clandest or asymmetrical gorilla warfare against my body that's why whenever i do leg day i dig myself a punji pit and just walk directly into it yeah and then you have to do like box squats to get out of it see you're thinking now now you're you're taking bro science to the next level Which is why I'm selling the first pre-workout that our podcast ever created. Napalm!

It doesn't get you hyped, it just makes you shit a lot. Like any good pre-workout. It makes your skin purred and you shit out your insides. You too can get the deployed in Afghanistan experience in 2023. Okay. I have one funny story to share before we move on about this. So I'm a long-term gym nerd. I would never accuse myself of being a gym bro.

I feel like those are two very different things, right? But I have been a known gym rat for a very long time it was like people always knew when i was back in the army after work you know assuming we get off at a human hour joe's gonna be at the gym right and there's this one guy that i could not fucking stand who would always make fun of me for it i have no idea why i i assume has something to do with like a confidence thing or. I don't know. Yeah, the second J in JJ Kasabian is Joe Jim Kasabian. That's right. And he used to tell me, I can't wait until we deploy. I'm going to take so many supplements and get in shape. That's almost a direct quote.

It was over a decade ago. I don't remember the exact. But I remember him saying, I'm going to take all these supplements and I'm going to get in shape. Yeah, it's just that easy, man. You just take all of this animal pack shit you buy at gnc and then suddenly you're strong what about the whole what about the whole middle ground where you're a fucking idiot uh taking the taking the petrol station rhino pills and then going working out while your heart

explodes getting juice to the fucking gills and gas station dick pills and like doing one deadlift and your back explodes i mean it would be very funny to like just absolutely blast trend for six months and only build your calves just monstrous calves and nothing else makes it super awkward to buy jeans that reminds me there was this account on twitter I don't know if they still exist but they said that lifting anything other than legs was bourgeoisie oh yeah credit where credit's due the dude had completely

jacked legs but he looked like a preteen from the waist up it was incredible but that is the donkey gym corner um um oh before we uh go into the episode uh live show tickets uh should be available it is in big belly comedy in voxhall on the 26th of january 2024 Tickets are £15, subject to booking fees as well. If you

are travelling, I've been informed by some of our international friends to maybe check out Visa stuff because it can be a bit tricky with the UK. If there is any updates in terms of ticket availability, I will insert it here. Hello, future Tom. be a bit tricky with the uk um if there is any updates in terms of ticket availability i will

insert it here hello future tom and um yeah so it's gonna be a good night there's gonna be exclusive live show merch and uh yeah you might even get to ask us a question from the legion in person and uh i can promise everyone our our dumbest ideas will come to fruition we have been plotting this for quite some time yes every single time i've had an idea and said it to joe his reaction was just immediate enthusiasm and i've just keep trying to plumb the depths of what is the stupidest thing we could do is this because nate's on paternity leave and he doesn't check our group chat right now? So we are coming up with the worst ideas ever and he's not

along to moderate us. Yeah, the lunatics are officially running the asylum. It's good stuff. I'm super excited. I hope to see everybody come out. I'm super nervous. I've never done a live show before. And I hope that it is at

least entertaining. And maybe, perhaps there's some laughs. There might be some gasps. There will be absolutely no yucks. I already have what we're going to do planned out. So I hope if you can make it to the UK and this goes well, we'll do more shows in continental Europe because that is where I now live. So it is closer. I'm not trying to convince people to come to Yorvon for a live show because we all understood how difficult that was going to be.

But yeah, hopefully this is successful and we can do more of them. I really look forward to it. And I'm rambling because of how nervous I am about the whole thing. So hope you enjoy it. If not, it's Tom's fault.

I will take all responsibility if this completely fails. Contractually, the fine print is if anything goes wrong, I can legally blame Tom. So Tom, we are coming off a two part series about the Beslan school siege which

was not the most light hearted of topics to talk about so I figured that we would cushion the impact by talking about something we haven't talked about in a really long time and that is just like a dude who is cool as hell.

Not 9-11. How many kids die in this episode? Zero. Possibly. Unconfirmed. I've seen enough deaths today. It is one of the few times in this show that one of us can actually say that.

So we haven't talked about a guy who is legitimately just awesome in a very long time. Not one of those guys that is awesome or funny or cool, and you have to pick through how many awful things that they also did to get to that point. This is a solid dude rock moment. This guy is 100% dude rock across the board. Yeah. Okay. We're putting numbers on the board.

We're Kobe Bryant right now. With no helicopters during this episode. So I thought it would be a good time to talk about a guy who might be in contention for the title of coolest motherfucker we have ever talked about. And his name is Eugene Bullard, one of

the world's first black combat pilots, America's first ever black combat pilot, and good god damn was he so much more than that. Fuck yeah. I'm excited. Now, born Eugene I can't even fucking start right.

Alright. Born Eugene James Bullard on October 9th Now, born Eugene... I can't fucking start right. All right. Born Eugene James Bollard on October 9th, 1895 in the hyper-racist post-Civil War Columbus, Georgia. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, Eugene was not destined for an easy life. He was the seventh of 10 kids. His father, William Bullard, was born as a slave

and had been freed at the end of the American Civil War. So despite having a massive family and two very hardworking parents, they were unlike most people we talk about on the show, actually good parents, raising their family

as the best they could in the situation right like normally these like individuals we talk about have a fucked up family life whether they end up being a complete monster or a cool person they generally come from a pretty fucked up family um but as normal as a family life as one could have back then for sure and according to the book All Blood Runs Red by Phil Keith, Bullard was insulated the best that he could from, well, America, like the baseline racism that would exist in the late 18 and early 1900s. You know, the KKK is a thing. Segregation is a way of life. His father was born a slave.

He's surrounded by people who literally remember where people like him could be owned as property like oh yeah and his yeah his family did the best they could to insulate him and give him a normal life but his parents could only do so much and his father very rightfully taught eugene that in the face of all of this racism coming from white people and, you know, every institution ever at the time in the country, black people had to defend themselves and maintain their dignity and respect no matter what. So one day while at work, William, his father, got into an argument with his white boss over a paycheck issue, namely that he was literally fucking him over only paying about half of what he was worth. And what he was promised. They had an argument. William went home.

And quickly, an all-white lynch mob followed him back to where he lived. Jesus. Now, they all survived. But the episode scared the ever-living shit out of everyone, as you would imagine. And that's when Eugene decided at 11 years old that this is not where he wanted to live he ran away uh he decided he was going to run away from his family and try to find a place that wasn't so insane right and he'd actually tried to run away a few times before not because he hated his family or anything but he was always one of those guys that even as a child he's like i want to see

the world i feel like i'm destined for greater things yeah did you ever run away as a kid joe actually never i was not destined for greater things unfortunately if you if you still run away you're still in detroit yeah that's fair i mean i suppose joining the army at 17 is that an official government form of running away but i actually i have a very funny story so um i grew up in the middle of nowhere um and i don't know if i should tell the story but um my brother uh was always running away like just like he's like oh and he would like go because there used to be like um a big i'm not gonna actually i'm not gonna say exactly where because uh that will dox uh my

family but there was like a big kind of uh statue nearby like uh on a nearby road so he would like go up there and like sit up there for like 20 minutes or whatever and then come home my brother did that as well yeah yeah but uh one day he decided he was gonna run away so he packed up like a little suitcase that looked like a briefcase and decided he's gonna leave he got as far as the frog gate with my whole family like looking out the window and as he got to the gate he turned around and looked at him. And then the briefcase opened and all his toys fell out. That's accepting from a Simpsons episode.

My brother was a serial runaway for 20 minute kind of kid. Yeah. I hate you, mom. I'm never coming back. And she'd be like, see you in a half hour mark and then see you when you get hungry that's exactly what it was or when the sun goes down

and yeah it's pretty much it was like a monthly occurrence uh but eugene bullard would never come home from the age of 11 his family would never see him again um now, as an 11-year-old wandering the streets in the early 1900s in rural Georgia, he ran into exactly the kind of strangers that you would imagine. People who were intensely racist, treated him like shit, tried to steal from him, literally attempted to enslave him as a child, beat him up. But he kept getting away. He fought people off um and finally on the at the outskirts of atlanta he ran into a family of english roma people called the stanleys who kind of just adopted him love that for him this relationship certainly started as a child labor situation uh because they put him to work, uh, in the stables, like literally shoving,

shoveling horse shit. But the, a real, a relationship very, very close to a family developed over time. And he had never worked around horses before. And he got to see like a horse race. And he noticed that like,

wow, small people race horses or like the jockeys or whatever. And he asked the Stanley's like, can I race your horse in the upcoming uh county horse racing championship and they're like yeah yeah sure uh because you know he's tiny at the time he's a preteen uh and you know he's you know hasn't quite got turned into the size that he eventually would and he won uh so at the age of i believe it was 13 or 12 or 13 he became the county uh horse racing champion um now it was during this time living and working with the

stanleys that um he learned a lot about europe because why else would he his dad would occasionally tell him about france uh but that was about it. And this, the Stanley's told Eugene that American racism confused them deeply because that kind of thing simply didn't happen where they're from. Now imagine if you will, this image, a Roma family from England is telling someone in the United States like, holy shit,

America's fucked up. Yeah. is telling someone in the United States, like, holy shit, America's fucked up. Yeah, like, it's a real understatement at this time. And they told him, you should go to England. You'll be happier there. Yeah, like, you get to England at this stage, everyone's dying of tuberculosis, lauding them on the streets, you it's a good time yeah and i mean like we've talked about this endlessly on the show here

never once are we gonna say that europe was not or is not racist but oh god american american racism in the early 1900s just hits different yeah it's kind of switched now whereas like you go to like certain parts of europe the racism is just it's so much different than that like yeah the u.s has now been uh consumed by weird polite evangelical racism and also down like right uh outright like out supremacy whereas like you go to italy as a black person ask any black person who's gone to italy it hits different also it's like you can transplant any kind of ideas of racism in the u.s to just roma people in the in europe ask any regular european person oh what you think of roma you're going to hear really, really weird things. Yeah, I will say that whenever

a European person tells me that, like, America's racist, I was like, glass houses, motherfucker. Yeah. I'm not defending institutional racism, of course I'm not, but, like, I gotta clip that. But, like, it's fucking rich, guys. And, like, don't get me wrong,

I have fond feelings for my home country. I have fond feelings for my home country i have fond feelings for europe but we're both pretty fucked up uh yeah you're you're getting too kebab pilled now you've you've eaten too much capsulon you're being too uh kind towards europe there's no such thing as too much capsulon okay um now uh so yeah like he's hanging out this roma family and they're like you should go to england uh that they will treat you better there and so like you eugene asked them like well obviously you're from england you'll be going back um take me with you and they told them that they weren't planning going back for several months because like again it's it's a boat trip

it takes a long time they're not going to go go to the US for a couple of weeks and whatnot. They're making good money. And five to six months, something like that, they'll head back. But they gave him a good little tip because a ticket for passage is very expensive. You could just stow away like we did. So he's like, well, there's a ship leaving for hamburg germany that's gonna make a stop in scotland so you could stow away get off in scotland and hitchhike your way into london uh which is where they wanted to go and so he was like fuck yeah let's go and that's

exactly what he did uh so this teenage boy stowed away in a ship uh and uh and made his way to scotland and then hitchhiked and walked his way down to london damn that that is a journey in and of itself and it's funny that's a footnote in this story yeah uh if i was the same age, I'm pretty sure I was playing Pokemon Blue. I would have just died. Whole world's gone soft. Kids these days don't want to walk the entire length of the UK. Kids these days don't know how to stow themselves away in a freighter. What the fuck? Yeah, these are the things we have lost over time.

Don't know how to be a stowaway. Also, it's really interesting at this time like particularly in the south that like he didn't end up with some sort of traveling carnival group like that like people make a joke about they're like running away to the circus circus but like from my other show and doing research for it that was so common this is where I get to say, Tom, hold the thought. Oh, fuck off. Now, once... We're doing the DBZ fusion dance, except it's for the dumbest shit possible. We're at 1900's Carnival where everybody is dysentery.

And we're changing our collective name to Toe. Oh, God. Now, once in London, he had a life that could very easily be described as unique. Once there, I mean, he's a teenager. He has no real skills to speak of other than he knows how to do manual labor because he shoveled horse shit for a while. But he is a guy that would never turn down anything. He's also very quick learner.

So he fell into a troop of street performers um now i'm not gonna say the name of the street performers because it is 100 a racial slur in modern times oh god i think i know what it is um it's very easy to look up if you want to go do it i'm the words are not leaving my mouth um just some fucking fagin ass character with his troop of rambunctious kids it was a child circus effectively ran by someone named bell davis who was very well known now within that troop he worked as a slapstick performer and a tumbler which i have to say he probably learned on the job uh like all right eugene i'm gonna hit you really fucking hard and you're gonna fall down and everybody's gonna laugh this is your job now he also acted as a target for throwing games to be like dropped into the big bucket of water um and i really hope it

was a lot like uh because like i've been to carnivals and shit and uh i don't know how it was back in the day but in the carnivals i went to the guy that was inside the dunk tank would like shit talk you uh as you hey you're a fucking piece of shit you got one eye or something yeah and like you'd throw the ball and you'd miss he'd make fun of you for throwing you know stuff like that so i i would like to assume he was just trash talking british people the whole time and it's it's in mich so there's definitely, he just looks like Iggy Pop and is like drinking a beer. Yeah, almost everybody going into these carnivals

that I went to looked like Kid Rock. Um, yeah. Bow with the bow, but dang, dang, come on, hit me. God, I fucking hate that guy so much. There's a reason why the place that he's from is nicknamed The Wasteland. Yeah, but also, Kid Rock stole in working class valor because he grew up as a millionaire's kid.

Yep, yep, sure did. Most of them do, to be fair. Yeah. Now, eventually he ran into a guy named Aaron Lister Brown, better known as the Dixie Kid, a fellow African American in London. Now, Brown was from Missouri, unfortunately, a fellow African-American in London. Now, Brown was from Missouri, unfortunately,

and he had previously been the welterweight boxing champion of the United States. But had he achieved that title in such a weird, fucked-up way, we do have to talk about it. So in 1904, Brown took on the champion Barbados Joe Wilcott, so nicknamed because he was from Barbados, and it was 1904, and creative nicknames had not yet been invented. They weren't listening to Rihanna yet.

The only thing I could think of with his nickname was Barbados Slim from Futurama. That's all I got. So Brown and Wolcott were in the 11th round and Brown was clearly fading because he had slacked off in the cardio department, which we all can empathize with, when suddenly the match's ref, a guy named Duck Sullivan, because the 1900s were an awesome time

for names, disqualified Walcott for seemingly no reason, then awarded Brown the championship, which immediately had to be overturned because it found out that the the ref had bet on brown to win yeah like like i am very fascinated with this era of boxing and it's just like yeah disqualification is insane in and of itself because the only way

to end the match usually is like one person literally cannot fight anymore yeah and it's very funny to be like boxing was so corrupt back then like you should see it now um but yeah yeah he uh he could the ref through the match for him he just takes off his flat cap and he has like don king hair i may have maybe duck walcott also murdered two people wait what yeah what? Yeah, you didn't know that? Yeah. Don King's a fucking murderer. What? He went to prison and everything.

I think one of them was found to be self-defense. Okay, we're diverting. Don King, if I can spell it right, King, murder. Let's see. 1954, he shot a man in the back after spotting him trying to rob one of his gambling houses and what the fuck like but like this is like some shit like that fucking you could get away with in the 50s is like oh yeah i just shot a dude in the back it's like you know um in the 1950s or in a oh yeah, just shot a dude in the back. It's like, you know... In the 1950s or in a standard

ground state, either or. Yeah, it's either Florida or the 1950s, which, you know, Florida slowly careening back towards the 1950s. Yeah, they're doing their best. Just as a point of interest, Don King's controversy section on Wikipedia

is longer than literally anything else. That's all good. Now, Brown never won another title, but continuously told everybody that he was a former champion, which I suppose is technically true. And that is when Eugene ran into him when he was working as a boxing promoter and trainer in London. And he would pick up like strong looking kids off the street and be like hey kid you want to get punched in the face for money which in london is the best case scenario when someone's talking to children on the street yeah yeah either you become like an oliver twist situation or you get the uh the other one which is not great and uh at this point eugene

had grown up pretty fucking big uh he looked a lot like his dad who was a brick shithouse uh so he looked like a great candidate to get you know to train to become a boxer and he fought around the london area going completely undefeated ending pretty much all of his fights and knockouts uh so brown began organizing fights overseas but in particularly paris yeah the early 20th century english diet is probably very conducive to this because it's like 90 carbs hell yeah i'm jealous that he could get away with it yeah uh so once in paris not only did e Eugene win literally all of his fights, but he also fell in love with France and decided, fuck England, I'm not going back. Eugene ran into not only French people, but also fellow Americans who had moved to France. He found them all much friendlier, much more welcoming, and specifically not racist to him as he saw racism.

Now, obviously, like we said, Europe is racist. Europe back then was racist, but the type of racism that Eugene was used to simply didn't exist. Even running into other Americans that would suddenly treat him, white Americans

that would treat him as their equal on the streets of Paris was mind-blowing to him this is this is like why like people like james baldwin and like so many african-american soldiers after world war ii were like i'm just staying in france fuck this like why would i why would i go back to a country that doesn't even see me as human where i can at least get a modicum of respect in paris and it's also like paris at this time was essentially just the hub for people who couldn't really live where they were born like people like oscar wilde eventually you have like

samuel beckett like lots of poets and stuff and it's just like yeah like if you had the choice between being in fucking bumfuck nowhere in america or being in paris this is again where i get to say hold that thought because eugene would eventually meet pretty much all of those people yeah we're smoking opium we're doing like early you know like weird drugs that have strange names yeah yeah exactly and eugene wrote quote it seems to me that french democracy influenced the minds of both black and white americans and helped us all to act like brothers and he did great in france he fucking thrived he learned french became a local boxing champion, though you know, he

met people, made friends, white, black, didn't matter. It was absolutely a revelatory moment for him. But if you've been paying attention to the date, you know what's coming next. Oh, before that happens, I just want to point out,

this dude was definitely fucking, like, you are exotic because you're American. He's fucking jacked. He's a great boxer. He's a champion. He has money. Yeah. He's, like, rocking around like Don King

and, like, fucking mink furs. Almost certainly. Minus the murder murder charge because we should point out don king murdered a guy he's there fucking smoking opium and taking laudanum with oscar wilde you know he's hanging around with like poets and you know dancers from the crazy horse you know fuck yeah i love this for him yeah this and like this will definitely paint his experience later on but like he for the first time in his life he's allowed to take part in culture uh like culture that is not his own yeah specifically uh because that is as you can imagine completely foreign to him but if you've been paying attention to the date you know what comes next it's 1914 baby baby! It's time

for the world to explode in World War I. Some dude gets got while he's taking an open car ride around the city, you know. One night in Sarajevo is a very different meaning. I was about to say thankfully that would never happen to another world leader.

Now,ugene was completely devoted to france to his adopted country and immediately ran down to the french foreign legion recruitment center in paris and enlisted because well he wasn't a citizen so like this was his only option and he was assigned to what was called the marching regiment of the foreign legion which was kind of a composite unit made up of other units in the foreign legion like we've talked about on this show before the french military treated black and white soldiers assuming there's a big asterisk here if you can see my fingers you can't because this is an audio medium but tom can assuming it was a unit from the metropole. Colonial units were much different. Now, he was

working side by side with white people, black people, people from North America, anybody in the French Foreign Legion, it did not matter. He gets reassigned a new name. He's called Francois Escargot. Actually, they did not assign him a new name. He took one.

Now, he decided he would show his dedication to France by only changing his middle name. Now, he changed his middle name from James to Jacques and would only go by... He did treat that like it was his first name. He would introduce himself to people as Jacques.

But he didn't go all the way. Though I guess Eugene still kind of works, right? I don't know. his first name he would introduce people he would introduce himself to people as jacques but he he didn't go all the way though i guess eugene still kind of works right i don't know um but yeah he would go by jacques after that um pretty much as soon as he was done with training and given a machine gun because he'd work as a machine gunner eugene took to took a grand tour of some of the worst places in human history to ever be a soldier. Oh, God. Because he was immediately shoved out into the Somme. Oh, yeah. But he did great. He's probably the only person that did great in the Somme.

Pretty much, yeah. He seemed to have a fine time. He was there punching dudes. He was wearing, like, the power fists from Fallout. He'd just drop. You just drop, you just hear a parachute coming down and just dudes flying in the air as this large African

American champion boxer just punching people to death. I would like to think he's going to go for the top wearing foam Hulk hands. We need to weaponize Hulk hands. Put like put barbed wire on them and run an electrical current through so you're stabbing and punching and shocking uh as mo from the simpson says they call that the stinger you can't use that anymore uh say some wise guys this in your french legion

unit you give him one of these now as he was running through No Man's Land, ethering motherfuckers with Hulk hands, he did occasionally work as a message runner, as was common during the war. And again, as was common during the war, pretty much every battle he took part in, half of his unit was completely obliterated. He managed to do okay.

He didn't get wounded for the first time into the Second Battle of Champagne in 1915. And we can call it the Second Battle of Champagne because it was in the Champagne region of France. Eventually, he was transferred over to the regular French army joining the 170th Infantry Regiment who are nicknamed the Swallows of Death

and earning Eugene his nickname, the Black Swallow of Death. Which is pretty fucking sick. Once again, this was a great time for nicknames. You know, Black Swallow of Death goes so hard. Chris Kyle could fucking never rest in piss, bitch.

Then, while fighting Verdun, because again he has to go to the worst places on Earth, he was running a message from one position to another when an artillery shell exploded right next to him. He was plastered from head to toe with shrapnel, and it nearly killed him because it severed his femoral artery. But he was actually so dehydrated and got first aid quick enough that he did not bleed to death. But this wound was bad enough to take him off the front line permanently

and the French military gave him a war cross for his service. Now, as he was recovering in the hospital because, again, he was a hair away from dying, that did not mean that Eugene was done. There's fucking Haman Hercule Poirot beside him. Hey, I see you

are injured. I can tell you have a dark past. We regret to inform you, we could not salvage your Hulk hands. No! But one more thing, we have got you full of power fists. The French medic ran up to him,

saw his femoral artery severed by artillery, and just shoved a whole cigarette into it. I mean, look, it's World War I. The medicine wasn't much better than that. Don't worry, it's good news. That's all bad blood. We got to get the bad blood out of here. Yeah, we're bringing back humors.

Humors are fun again. Yeah. Now, just because the French army and the Foreign Legion decided that he had been wounded too badly to return to duty did not mean Eugene was done killing Germans in the name of the French Republic because that turned out to be his favorite pastime. It's also just Emmanuel

Macron's fucking wet dream. While recovering from his wounds in the hospital, he bet his friend $2,000 or $60,000 in today bucks that he could go enlist in the French Air Force. Mind you, this man did not graduate from school.

He had about a fifth grade education. He dropped out of elementary school and was roughly literate, most of which he taught himself. Now, this man with only a loose grasp and being able to read and write, it's like, I could fly a fucking plane. And his friend was reasonably suspicious at this because remember planes were about 10 years old give or take they're new and someone slapped a gun on them for the first time like three weeks ago it's like putting a fucking putting a fucking glock on a paper airplane yeah pretty much um so his friend took the deal um now eugene

on its surface probably was not going to be able to get in the french air force however he was good at he was good at schmoozing right which will become important later on as well he made friends with an officer that happened to be in the french air force in the hospital who was also recovering from being injured and After playing cards, drinking together and whatnot, the officer promised to introduce him to someone he knew in recruitment. By October of 1916,

it worked and he began his training. Did he get his 60K? No, of course not. Nobody has that fucking money. Folks say. Especially not another wounded French private hospital and in 1917 he was awarded his pilot's wings while partying in paris with his friends eugene said quote by midnight every american in paris and knew that an american negro by the name

of eugene bollard born in georgia had obtained the first military pilot's license given to someone like him. Fuck yeah. This dude rocks so much. Like, I don't think we've had as much of a dude's rock moment since Adrian DeWeert, and he was a fucking freak. This guy is like...

He was a psycho. This guy is unequivocally dude's rock. It gets better. Honestly, this dude only keeps rock until he dies. Fuck yes. He was enlisted to the ranks of the Lafayette Flying Corps, a unit made up of American volunteers flying with the French Air Force

because the U.S. had not yet entered the war. It was, of course, named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution, and a Frenchman. Now, this shouldn't be confused with another group of American volunteers flying for France called the Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution, and a Frenchman. Now, this shouldn't be confused with another group of American volunteers flying for France called the Lafayette Escadrille, which Eugene originally tried to join, but found that recruitment was closed, not because of any racist reasons, but because so many fucking Americans are

trying to join the famed Lafayette Escadrille. But he joined the French Air Force nonetheless. And this made Eugeneica's first ever black combat pilot uh he was not the first ever period but he was one of the first five in the world this dude is so fucking cool like some people put it at one of the first three the first ever is generally considered a black man who flew for the Ottoman Empire, and I have a hard time standing that. I get it. It's fine.

The Ottomans are probably like, he's not even black, he's just Turkish. Now, he flew a SPAD-7, which is a biplane made out of wooden canvas, but was renowned for its reliability as a stable gun platform which is about as much as you could hope for for a canvas and wood fighter

plane in 1917. I'm probably wearing jeans right now that weigh more than this plane. Now remember, they're flying these planes and shooting each other out of the air with less technology that I'm using to vape right now. He painted his personal insignia on the side of the plane,

which is a heart with a dagger stabbed through it, and the slogan, All Blood Runs Red, underneath of it. Oh, man. Like, this dude is so fucking cool. Like, imagine how late he got after the war. Like, he is... Oh, you have no idea.

We're not there yet. Oh, God, yes. Like, and it's not all about sex, but it's like, this dude is just... Like, he walks into any room, any single room after the war. He is the coolest person. He has the best stories,

and they're all true like if you met this guy in a bar and he told you about the past 10 years of his life you would think this guy is full of shit and just look at a picture of him like he's fucking hot as hell like that

there is a this dude could have been a model and he was dudes rock dudes rock oh by the way he flew all of his missions accompanied Like, there is a... This dude could have been a model, and he was. Dudes rock. Dudes rock. Oh, by the way, he flew all of his missions accompanied by a pet monkey named Jimmy. That part's important. Yeah, he had a pet monkey named Jimmy that flew Wingman for him.

Like, was the monkey... Distrapped. Was the monkey... Distrapped into the passenger seat. Was the monkey doing air nav or something? I assume so. I mean, just imagine how terrified the fucking monkey was, just shrieking at the top of his little monkey lungs.

What if the monkey just had dual-wielding pistols? Because, like, you're flying in shit made out of, like, plywood and canvas. Like, you can easily shoot down a plane with a single 9mm bullet. The monkey's gonna throw shit at a passing plane and take it down. Now, within a few months, he claimed two aerial victories over German pilots, though history tends to be a little grey about this. For a

pilot to be documented as shooting down an enemy plane, it needs to be witnessed by someone else in order to be confirmed. Kind of like, you know, the concept of a quote confirmed kill. Only one of his victories was witnessed by someone else and the other uh is eugene is the main source for it but you know what fuck it i'm gonna give it to him anyway if you want to if you want to be a dick about it

give one to eugene and the other one to jimmy split it straight down the middle equal credit yeah his most well-known and most reported on victory in November of that same year near Metz. His unit was fighting around 10 German aircraft in a massive dogfight that led to one of the Germans chasing after him, riddling his plane with over 100 bullets, and then him spinning around and returning the favor. They both effectively shot each other down. Now, Eugene crashed just inside friendly lines, and nobody where the, the enemy crashed into or if he survived. Eugene was astonished at just how good the other pilot was. And of course, impressed with himself that he was able to take such a guy down. And that is when his commander told him that he was lucky to be alive.

Like how, how can you be flying in the equivalent of Mr. Burns, spruce moose, take a hundred bullets, in a plane that probably has the turning circle of a football field? Oh, I should point out both him and Jimmy were unwounded. What? Like, they simply do not make men like this anymore, people. Not at all.

So his commander, when he made it back to the base, told him he was lucky to be alive. That pilot was what was called part of the German Flying Circus, a nickname given to the most elite unit of the Luftwaffe, commanded personally by Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Jesus Christ like did Jimmy get a medal for this?

We can only hope. We assume so. Maybe he had tiny monkey version medals for his tiny monkey dress uniform. Yeah I want to see Jimmy in his dress uniform as well. There is a picture of Eugene standing outside of his plane holding Jimmy on his arm. I'm looking this up right now.

Oh my God. This is... I wasn't lying about Jimmy. People, he's not lying about Jimmy. Jimmy is real. Now, after this, the US finally joined World War I. So Eugene rushed over to join the ranks of the US Air Service because despite everything that

happened, he still saw himself as an American. He was also a trained pilot, damn near an ace, and was like, I'm here to fucking serve. He was rejected because black people couldn't be pilots. Now, that's actually more fucked up than that. His exploits were well known in France. Not only was he a champion boxer and something of a minor celebrity before this, he was a celebrity in France for what he had done so far. He was a fucking war hero. And according to the NAACP in the United States,

the U S purposefully censored any stories coming from France about Eugene specifically worried about how it could harm quote unquote race relations in the US if people learned that a black man could fly a plane. I'm so tired, Joe. And even wider than that, the US censored all stories about black soldiers fighting

it for France because how it would make race relations in the US about black people might start thinking they're equal to white people. And we've talked about, we've talked more about that on other episodes multiple times.

But yeah, deeply fucked up. Now after being rejected by the US Air Service, he brushed it off and returned to his position with the French Air Force. The way he looked at it is none of it mattered because he's still going to be flying and he's still going to be killing Germans, which again, were his two favorite hobbies at this point. Then he was fired from the French Air Force and sent to a non-combat role with the French Army. Now, why that happened, nobody's ever been able to fully nail down, including Eugene.

The best Eugene could come up with is that he had an argument with a racist officer within the French Air Force, or possibly the French Army, depending on who's telling the story. And the American liaison to the French Air Force used that as a way to muscle the French into firing him. However, Eugene's comrades paint a much different picture. he did have an argument with a french officer but ended with eugene punching him in the goddamn face hence why he was fired now the french officer was of course racist but eugene was not an officer back then you could be a pilot and be an enlisted man so he punched the most likely what the french saw was simply an enlisted man

punching an officer in the face which which is generally frowned upon. Yeah, I'd like to instead of A-Cob, it's A-Cob. All commissioned officers are bastards. Don't disagree. There was still another version of events that exists between Eugene and his friends. They were in Paris waiting for

a train when an officer previously unknown to Eugene, who was wearing the uniform of France's colonial corps, therefore being an officer previously unknown to Eugene, who was wearing the uniform of France's colonial corps, therefore being an officer within their colonial military, called Eugene over to him and launched into a racist tirade the likes of which Eugene had not experienced since he lived in the United States. Knowing this kind of thing is just not something that happened within the French military, at least to his experience, Eugene began yelling back. But in this version, he doesn't punch him. Eventually, a French major in the French army

who knew Eugene intervened, telling the other officer to fuck off and insisting Eugene he would have his back if anything official came from this argument. And he clearly didn't or didn't have enough pull and Eugene was fired. Whatever the case, we truly have no idea. Eugene remained behind a desk until the end of World War I, though he had no intention on returning to the United States. Since he was wounded while serving in the French Foreign Legion, he was given citizenship under a rule called French by spilled blood, which is actually the exact same way my grandfather obtained French citizenship.

It comes back to joe's granddad if you're looking for information for this wanted wanted criminal please uh submit it to llbdmerch at gmail.com you're probably better off contacting interpol now so with his new shiny french citizenship in hand, he stayed in France, in Paris, and opened a fucking nightclub and a bar. He married a French woman and had two kids, though she eventually abandoned him and their kids, but whatever. He was never really happy doing normal things. So he started a jazz band, went on a world tour. And while he was on tour with his jazz band, he decided, fuck it, I'm going to box again.

Went undefeated again while touring with his jazz band. And then, you know, returned to France where he was, again, a celebrity, as was his club. Now, this had a lot to do with the fact that because of who he was, he was able to secure a license from the paris municipality allowing his club to stay open later than any other club in the city oh this guy rules like he's fucking he's like put undefeated in boxing he's jamming with fucking django reinhardt you know he owns the best club club in town like no one like i put it simply this way this guy is in competition to being probably one of the coolest people who've ever lived 100 i have no debates there and while his so his club became famous for being open all night and uh it made it incredibly popular and soon it became favorites for people like langston hughes f Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, and Ernest Hemingway.

Oh, you got all of which he was friends with. This dude is so cool. Ernest Hemingway liked him so much. If you've ever read his first novel ever, The Sun Also Rises, he has an entire character based on Eugene in that novel. Fuck yeah. He also starred in Athletic Club, training and promoting boxers, all of whom became champions. He's a businessman, people. He's an entrepreneur.

He became fabulously wealthy, incredibly famous, and the people of Paris fucking loved him. Now, by the late 1930s, not a great time period, I know, things were once again getting spicy in Europe as the Nazis rose to power in Germany

and began threatening everybody around them. That is when the French government made contact with Eugene. Not only was he something of a well-known national hero, Eugene had picked up the German language along the way. So, the French intelligence service recruited Eugene to be a fucking spy.

What? You know, like... I fucking love this guy so much. Ian Fleming couldn't have written this. Like, this guy... This is why we need a black Bond. Because...

It's just Eugene Bullitt. Yeah, like, someone make a movie about this guy then make a movie of this guy give the role to idris elba sit back and watch money come out yeah like man like i know there is like some adaptations of his life like the movie red tales or whatever about the tuskegee airmen but like just make a movie about this guy i do have to point out that red tails is about world war ii yeah but like i know i know i know but there is like some inspiration taken from his life but like literally make a movie like there's so like get scorsese to make a fucking four hour movie about this guy exactly or give me an hbo miniseries just like dump money into it like it's a game of thrones

spinoff um now eugene's mission was to buddy up to the german guests of his club of which there was a lot and try to figure out what they were up to now he ended up being perfect for this as the germans who would be plotting this kind of shit were Nazi sympathizers and believers. They couldn't believe a lowly black man who could be smart enough or capable enough to be a spy. Furthermore, so like, he had two ways

he would play this. He would butter them up with drinks and then talk to them, and they would let things slip about their mission in France, or he would, you know, betting on their ignorance and racism towards him and their assumption that he could not possibly be smart enough to speak german he would simply hang around and listen in their conversations and then report them to the french intelligence agency and because of his actions the french were able to arrest at least a dozen fucking spies based on Eugene's actions.

This guy fucking rocks so much. Yeah. Unfortunately as we all know, the Nazis would eventually invade France on May 10th, 1940 and Eugene now in his 40s, pretty badly mangled from all of his wounds and plane crashes,

immediately ran back down to the French Army recruiting office and was like immediately ran back down to the french army recruiting office like put me back in coach i'm ready to fucking go and the french are just like sure man fuck it and he was off to join the 51st infantry division as a machine gunner all over again what a king now fighting alongside his french comrades eugene was wounded a further two more times and the country fell while he was recovering in a hospital. Several of his friends warned him that he needed to get the fuck out of France now that the Nazis were going to take over. And they generally knew what Nazis were all about when it came to racial ideology.

Though Eugene was determined to stay in France and join the fucking French resistance. But everyone, to include the Red Cross, was like, you need to get the fuck out, dude. You're not only black, you're an American citizen. You need to leave. Also, he's like, he is like one of the most famous fucking war heroes. And like, is like, very popular in like, you know, the parasocial scene like and and a spy spy like you know like dude you can't stay they will execute you so fast you will be the first one they're looking for and sir we we can't find your hulk hands things are hopeless you know the only

reason why france fell is because e Eugene couldn't find his Hulk hands. Yeah, exactly. Now, facing pressure from his friends, family, and the Red Cross, he finally agreed, and workers from the Red Cross smuggled him out of the country through Spain and into Portugal.

Should have sent him after Franco. Right? Hulk punch him so hard in the face, his stupid head just explodes into confetti. Yeah, look, you know, usually on this show, we're not fans of punching down, but in that case, we are. Well, to be fair, when

Eugene's involved, he has to punch down everybody because he's cooler than anybody who's ever existed. Now, once in Portugal, he boarded a ship and went back to the US for the first time since he'd run away and landed in Manhattan. Now, once back in the US, he immediately became depressed as one does. He had to leave everything behind in France,

including all of his money. And because of his status in the US, that being an unemployed black man, there was no opportunities for him and he was a complete and total unknown. When the US entered World War II, he once again tried to volunteer for service, but refused to be relegated to the role of manual labor, which is the role that most black soldiers would play during the war. And he flatly refused to fight in

a segregated unit. He refused to do manual labor. He's like, I'm a goddamn war hero, and I've killed more Germans than any of you. Like, put me at the front. And it didn't work. So he had to work odd jobs to make ends meet, like a security guard and a longshoreman. And, you know, looking around,

seeing how fucked up the US was, he took up the banner of the Civil Rights Movement and an anti-racist street fighter. Fuck yeah. This guy, this guy, like, can't keep a good man down. One day in 1949, he was attending a concert held by Paul Robeson.

He was a pretty well-known civil rights activist in New York. And when a racist mob confronted the concert goers, mainly members of the American Legion and the local chapter, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who saw the entire civil rights movement as communist agents looking to overthrow the United States.

Now, specifically in the case of Robeson, they gathered at his concert, well, because he's a civil rights activist, but also because he had just attended the World Peace Conference in Paris, which was sponsored by the Soviet Union. Now, when he was there, he gave a very innocent speech in the grand scheme of things saying, quote, we in America do not forget that it was the backs of the white workers from Europe and the backs of millions of blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone.

Our will to fight for peace is strong, and we shall support peace and friendship amongst all nations with Soviet Russia and the People's Republics. However, what was reported in the Associated Press was completely different and a completely made up version of that same speech, saying the following, quote, we colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the United States and are determined to share its wealth. We denounce the policy of the United States government, which is similar to Hitler and Goebbels. It is unthinkable that the American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet union, which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.

He didn't say any of that shit. So when the, so when the hordes of shitty drunk uncle racists showed up to beat the shit out of the concert goers, Eugene was one of the first people to rush to the attendees' defense. Then the cops showed up, joined in the side of the racists, and ended up beating the living shit out of Eugene. Cops showing up and siding with the racists? I wouldn't believe that. They would never. Yeah, seems so unlike them.

The assault on Eugene Was caught on camera Ended up being part of the 1970s Sidney Poitier narrated documentary The tallest tree in our forest Even when the man is getting his ass kicked He ends up in a movie I did not expect Narrated by Sidney Poitier

I did not think Sidney Poitier was gonna show up In this fucking episode Surprise motherfucker I never know what's gonna happen in these. Eugene recovered from the beating but he saw himself as a foreigner in the United States

the country of his birth. Only underlined by the constant stream of racism that he had to deal with and at one point he nearly beat the shit out of a bus driver who demanded that he sit in the back of a bus. That ended up being the final straw, and he returned to Paris. His club had been destroyed during World War II by the Nazis because they knew a spy owned it.

However, the French government immediately gave him restitution to rebuild. Fuck yeah. And they paid all of the back years in military pension, disability, everything. They showered him with like a dozen awards. He was invited by President Charles de Gaulle to relight the eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Though his children eventually moved to the US for school and whatnot. So he did return to the United States later in life to be with his kids, and he lived in New York. And in October 12th, 1961, Eugene Jacques Bollard died of stomach cancer.

He was buried with full military honors at the French War Veterans Section at the Flushing Cemetery in New York City, in the borough of Queens, where his grave still is today. Despite having been given some of the highest awards of the French Republic, Eugene had been given nothing by the United States, and he would have to wait until 1992, 30 years after his death and 77 years after originally being rejected by the U.S. Air Service, for the U.S. Air Force to honor him in a single way posthumously commissioning him as an officer and a pilot like you know this dude is like he's so cool he's such uh like a hero and like the the sad thing is that like this story story just ends in indignity and just humiliation.

Eventually he got honored for what he did, but my fucking God. What a different life he would have led until his end if he had just stayed in France. Yeah. This dude fucking rules. I mean, it's kind of similar to the other soldier of this era that we talked about, Henry Johnson, nicknamed the Black Death. He was a black American soldier who was seconded to the French Army during World War I. Fucking hero.

And he died so unknown that people aren't even sure of what happened to him exactly. And Eugene Bullard is just just he's such a character uh that it almost seems fake but it's not um he's absolutely the type of guy that you'd want to lionize um yeah but he was simply born with the wrong skin color in the united states if if he was born a white man he would be championed the same way like the fucking red baron is yeah in some aspects like it like an over-the-top colorful character obviously the red baron was was was known for you know being one of the best pilots in world war one but like he is such a unique guy an over-the-top flamboyant

club owner boxing boxing champion, all this other shit, that there would be a jet named Efren already. At minimum. I think it's, not to blow smoke up our own asses, but I think stuff like this is important because it acts as a bulwark against

the indignity of history. This guy deserves to be remembered and deserve to be remembered for the fullness of his life and like everything he did not just the fact you know he was a war hero or that sort of thing but like his whole story is so important yeah he's uh like going back to what his dad told him like no matter what, you need to defend your dignity, your own honor, and your own respect. He spent his entire fucking life doing exactly that.

Dudes rock. Dudes rock. Dudes fucking rock. Now, Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. And if you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show, ask us on Patreon. You can ask us on our community Discord.

You can load it into a canvas and wood biplane and fly it into the greater London area. I don't recommend doing that. I think that's a really bad idea. Like, for anyone who doesn't know, the venue that we have chosen for the live show is right beside mi6 headquarters so please so please don't do that we are we are not escaping the mi6 allegations uh and we will answer

your question in fact write your letter write your question from the legion in cipher text mail it to mi6 they will decode it and they will give it to us and we will answer it on the show uh today's question from the Legion comes to us from our discord if a disease or a medical condition is ever named after you what symptoms would you like it to have I don't know like hypergonadism just Like if someone was like, God damn, he's got a mean case, the Toms. Monstrously large calves. Just abnormally large calves. I want something visible.

Like I don't want flu-like symptoms. I don't want vomiting or diarrhea. I want like boils. Boils filled of something disgusting. I was going to say say you just suddenly become excessively hairy fuck you you're just like body hair

just increases by like 50% look I'm a man of compromise Tom boils filled with body hair Gillette actually no we're boycotting Gillette if you are a independent razor

company and want to sponsor the show you know the email like Manscaped is just going to send me an email again for a to do an ad that happened before they sent me an email it was right after we started the history of Armenia sub series which you can get access to if you

donate on the Patreon And they immediately sent me an email asking If we would like their sponsorship So the joke was like ah I started An entire Armenia centric series And suddenly I need a shill body Groover Also one of my friends

Nearly cut his nutsack Open using their trimmers so I'm very suspicious this show is not sponsored by Manscaped Tom that's a podcast thank you so much for joining me here today

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