Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 348 - The Battle of Cape Gloucester

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/c/lionsledbydonkeys check out our merch store! https://llbdmerch.com/ Marines storm ashore a rainforest-bound, diseased-filled, swampy death trap of an island to take an airfield with no strategic value. Sources: Bernard Nalty. The Green Inferno. Frank Hough. The Campaign on New Britain John Miller. History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II. Volume II: Isolation of Rabaul Al Hemingway. The Incessant Rains of the Green Inferno. WWII History Volume 9, No. 7 Sidney Phillips. The Fighting Conditions on Cape Gloucester. (video interview) https://marinesidphillips.com/sid-phillips-on-capegloucester.htm

Hey everybody, our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, and wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com. So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something, get your order in. Once again, that is LLBDMerch.com and the link will also Advise Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Nate. We're a US Marine stationed in the Pacific during World War II. Our officers have insisted us that this island that we're on, the name of which we've forgotten and our commanders have surely mispronounced, is strategically important despite the fact

we can clearly see across from it in every direction if we so much as stick our heads from out of our foxholes. At night, while shitting in our holes and pondering how much we miss our loved ones, we hear a rattle coming from the perimeter because we set a trap of empty white monster cans of disposable vapes on a wire so that it would make noise if anybody approached. Afterwards, a loud high-pitched scream emits from the jungle, and we know that only means one thing, a Banzai charge. We quickly return to our weapons, which have been decorated with stickers of our favorite neon Genesis Evangelion characters. From out of the jungle comes Japanese soldiers, and leading them, we can't believe our eyes, is Yukio Mishima.

He's butt-naked, a katana in one hand and the other hand furiously masturbating as he runs. We fire, round after round, at the frantic masturbation berserker. But no matter how many times we shoot him, he just keeps going. We cannot stop him. In one fateful leap, he clears our landmines, lands inside of our foxholes, and while making contact with all three of us, guts himself with his sword, busting harder than any man ever has in the history of life on this earth. Hey guys

Joe Hello new listeners. Do you realize? Today is the hundred year anniversary of you kiyomishima birth. No. Yeah. He was born on the 14th of January 1925 God that would have been perfect if I planned to add for this Yeah, it would have been the absolute perfect death at the end of the war He still would have been 20 years old so he would have been perfect if I planned to add for this. Yeah, it would have been the absolute perfect death at the end of the war. He still would have been 20 years old. So he would have been in prime busting years.

You know what I mean? I think it is interesting if someone doesn't know the show and doesn't realize. This is the first episode that they listen to. And we've lost them. And it's like we have actually all read a significant amount of Yukio Mishima's literature and we hold them to the standard that like problematic authors who suck do sometimes write good books. Oh, he's an amazing author. He's an incredible author.

But the most deeply fucked up author I've ever liked. We're just so into how weird he is that we're going to basically one up each other into becoming 20th century Japanese literature scholars. And that I feel like is the way of this podcast. So let's now move on to the actual topic, I presume, which is something about the Pacific campaign and the US Marines in World War II. So sun, sand, palm trees, and the beach, all things we enjoy unless we talk about them on the show. Because it means almost without fail, we end up talking about the Pacific campaign during World War II. Today's no different

because we're talking about the Battle of Cape Gloucester, a place that would become so miserable for the US Marine's force to fight in it, that would earn the nickname, the Green Inferno, part of the larger New Britain campaign because Old Britain isn't bad enough. So yeah, Cape Gloucester is, yeah, New Britain. This is all... I know a little bit about it just because I had to do some analysis stuff when I was in military training. And I was interested in the South Pacific and the New Guinea campaign in World War II and woo. Famously, one of the campaigns that involved a lot of soldiers rather than Marines and also somehow dumber than that, but we'll get there.

My high points that I always hit are just sort of like, you look at some of the casualty figures and there's basically nobody in these units who wasn't a casualty if it's either, you know direct action or disease Yeah, these are random injury which oh man. There's so many injuries in Cape Gloucester fucking adabron psychosis So yeah, like it goes on Now, of course we do have to get into why the small speck of island was important at all to the overall course of the war But more specifically in the context of the ongoing campaign in New Guinea. Now this is not an episode about the Greater New Guinea Campaign, Guadalcanal, or any of those because one day those will get a series dedicated to them.

They need it. But rather I'll talk about why this led to Operation Dexterity, or the invasion of New Britain specifically. By 1943 the Allies in the Pacific Theater were well and truly on their way of undoing the various Japanese successes in the years prior. The Battle of the Coral Sea had happened, the Japanese had been turned back at Guadalcanal, Buenaventura, and the Kokoda Track and fighting so horrible, and it might be some of the worst ever to happen in the Pacific until Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And after all of that,

the Allies advanced through New Guinea had been slow, bloody, but steady in a way that you could describe it as a good way. It had been steady. I specifically focused on Bunagona and the Papuan campaign. And I think the point of it is, is that like the Japanese got with inside of Port Moresby, the Australian colonial capital of New Guinea, the now capital within sight of Port Moresby, the Australian colonial capital of New Guinea, the now capital of New Guinea, the independent country, and had bombed Darwin already. And so basically this became an emergency because so much of the Allied staging for World War II in the Pacific started in Australia. And Australia did not have very many people

to defend it because they were all basically seconded to the British to go get fucking killed at Dunkirk. And as a result, it was like, okay, we have to do something because if they take Australia, we are turbo fucked. There is nowhere. I've looked into the idea that the Japanese are planning an invasion of Australia and the plans that Australia and by a larger extension, the British Empire had of dealing with an invasion of Australia by the Japanese was exactly the same as if like the American plan after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands, which was just ignore them. It's too remote. They'll just die You mean the Brisbane line the whole thing that MacArthur wasn't supposed to blow up the spot, but he did

Yeah, we're just writing off everything north of Brisbane. Yeah, get fucked. Yes I know that the Japanese will simply die if they try to advance over land. So just ignore them It's like the Japanese will simply die if they try to advance over land. So just ignore them. Yeah, just ignore them. Well, I mean, there were a lot of, I mean, like Australian settlers and missionaries and people, German missionaries too, who lived in New Guinea, who got full on Kyukyu-omishiba samurai sword decapitated. I mean, like dead on, like, this is a true story. Oh yeah.

So yeah, it was bad, but basically the Japanese were massively overextended and then got pushed back. But it was horrible because the Japanese loved nothing more than perfect and filleting fire at interlocking fields of fire where you can either walk on a road and get shot or walk through a swamp and get eaten by a crocodile. Sometimes many crocodiles shout out to our brave heroes, the crocodiles who've come up on this show more than once. Crocodile revolutionary action. The Antifa super soldiers are the crocodiles. This advanced march up the Huron peninsula, the Eastern New Guinea capturing Wau Lei,

Finn Shawfin and Sator. And I know those names go wildly from one spectrum to another, but just deal with them. The Germans were there quite a bit too. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's just like name you expect to see in New Guinea, name you expect to see in New Guinea, Finn Shofan. What the fuck? And also, Sator kind of sounds like something in Lord of the Rings. Yeah. Well, yeah. Sator, Bunagona, Wao, Rabal. Yeah. A lot of it starts to sound like. And then they just hit you with a Finn Shofan out of nowhere.

Yeah, exactly. However, this led to one problem. The small island of New Britain off the East Coast of New Guinea was still in the hands of the Japanese, meaning the seaward flank of the Allied advance of New Guinea was effectively wide open. I mean, it's a small island in South Pacific terms. It's hundreds of miles long. Yes. But it's small relative to New Guinea, the landmass, and certainly small relative to Australia, the landmass, and certainly small relative to Australia, the continent. I will say it's rather large when you think about some of the size of the islands that

the Pacific campaign involved. But also the invasion of New Britain did not include all of New Britain, only about a quarter of it. We'll talk about why. And one of the points that make is that basically the Japanese had naval bases in places like Rabaul on the tip of New Britain. And so any kind of maritime traffic there to get to resupply Australia or to and from Australia or to support any of the efforts on the other island, so they were doing the island hopping campaign to go across, you were going to be threatened by naval and aircraft from the Japanese military that was based out of there. So like it sort of was like a You had to go through and very thoroughly get rid of it. And it this is just like I suggest you an idea

What if we didn't? Like like imagine the nine-hour version of Terrence Malick's the thin red line But just like mashed up with like fucking quake footage. And that's basically, I really hate getting no scoped for the Japanese soldier at New Britain. New Britain was across the small video straight. And since the Japanese had built an air base and times called an aerodrome and old fashioned terms at Cape Gloucester at the Western end of the island, it meant hypothetically,

the Japanese could launch air attacks on the allies as they continued their offensive of New Guinea. This operation was definitely not the first time the US specifically General Douglas MacArthur eyed New Britain because if anybody knows anything about MacArthur, it's that he's desperately wanted to retake the Philippines, the American territory he personally lost to the Japanese at the start of the war. On top of the Philippines being strategically located, MacArthur saw it as a personal slight that he would not allow rest until he felt his honor had been restored through killing thousands of his own men. Now at one point to secure a path to this target, he planned for a sea landing at Rabaul,

at the opposite tip of New Britain from Papua New Guinea like Nate had already pointed out. However, nobody else thought such a landing was a good idea and instead MacArthur had to settle for bombing the piss out of it. Eventually, over time, the invasion target changed from a ball to Cape Clouster because it's immediate proximity to the Allied advance and obviously the air base. Do you know that, I mean, just so you can find this funny, but that New Britain is separated from New Ireland, the other island by Duke of York Island, which is Prince Andrew. Yep. Is it going to keep them the tactical nonce that separates the British Isles, either Pacific

or Atlantic? The nonce peace wall? That is to suggest that basically the modern incarnation, Prince Andrew has to be exiled to the Isle of Man and he can only be there. So Isle of Man implies adults over the age of consent. So, you know, it's all right. This isn't, this isn't actionable. This isn't liable. No, I mean, it was proven in court. Yeah. I mean, and you live in Switzerland now. You're good.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm immune from everything. I'm untouchable! I haven't said anything if you're listening, MI5. Nate's slowly going super sane as he realizes he can spit fat libel left, right and centre like he lived in the US all over again. In the land of paedophiles, the non-nancing man is king. Yeah, well listen, what I wanted to say here is just basically, yeah, like MacArthur, I actually have a bunch of books I have to get rid of because they've just fallen apart.

They're really old paperbacks and it's very- You have a whole bunch of books you have to get rid of because they're about Douglas MacArthur. No, but it was just funny because like, you know, hilariously, like a lot of the military histories in like basically in the seventies and eighties were published by like small publishers to include Playboy books. There was a book called Bloody Boona that I use as part of my research and I got so torn up over the years because it's this old paperback. But I just happened to see the other day while recycling shit, the cover that said, MacArthur's order is take Boona or don't bother coming back alive. It's like, yeah, MacArthur was

like, y'all can all get killed. That's also seems like the general mindset of going out clubbing in Brazil. Well, no, it's got to add a D in there. So it's get, get Boonda or don't bother coming back alive. Both will happen. Boonda means ass cheeks in Brazilian Portuguese. Just in case. We know, Nate.

You might, but the listener might not. The listener might not know the lore. I didn't know that, but I assumed I connected the dots. Joe has just like completely wiped the 15 minutes of Brazil chart from a previous episode a month ago. We don't need to revisit that. I need to go so I can have more content to annoy Joe with. Now with that, the allied planners began to plot the path forward for the upcoming invasion. At first, the idea they had was, in short, bat shit

nuts. It was of course going to involve landing marines on the beach, this is the Pacific Theater after all, they kinda come along with the territory. However, it was also going to involve a full airboard drop of the US Army's 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. I know what you're thinking, a parachute operation specific is not something people ever think about. This actually would have been the second after the 503rd had jumped into Nodzab in September 1943, also during the New Guinea campaign, but very different places. Technically New Britain is New Guinea, but it's not exactly friendly to paratroopers. It's mountainous. It's rough. It's a volcanic island completely covered with rainforest So thick it's virtually impenetrable in spots. It's hot. It's humid. It's

Has constant unrelenting clouds and rain. It's basically 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit So in the high 20s to the low 30 Celsius year-round So in the high 20s to the low 30s Celsius, year round, insane humidity, malaria is rampant, the terrain is awful. There was a story, just for this brief anecdote, that one of the divisions in the US Army, because it was not all like Joe said, not just Marines in this part of the Pacific campaign, where one of their battalions actually got sent

to find a walking track to get over the Owen Stanley Mountains. And then they found out later, someone did air reconnaissance and realized there was a green stretch of land field, et cetera, where they could actually do land-wheeled fixed-wing aircraft. So two battalions from this regiment were like, oh, damn, that flight a little bumpy, got a little bit of air sickness. One battalion was like, 75% of us have broken ankles and malaria now.

They had to go all the way like the terrain is it's impossible to describe how rugged it is very, very fucking bad. That will become a main character of this military operation. But if you look at the dates here, they're also playing this in the middle of fucking monsoon season. Virtually the only flat clear ground on the entire side of that island was where the Japanese had built the airbase at Cape Gloucester. The paratroopers and the marines took one look at this idea and decided they want nothing to do with this. Even the paratroopers commanding officer, a kind of guy not exactly known for being

normal, thought the plan jump was fucking nuts. When Colonel Edwin Pollock, a division level operations officer, was asked by MacArthur what he thought of his plan, Pollock told him flat out, this is fucking stupid. It makes no strategic sense, which apparently shocked MacArthur because he didn't believe a subordinate could possibly object to one of his brilliant plans directly to his face. Also, the guy he was talking to was the division's operations guy for the 1st Marine Division. They're veterans of the Battle of Guadalcanal, which was only a few months ago. And when that guy looks you dead in the eyes, like this is fucking stupid. And they're the closest thing the US military has to like hard-bitten experts in jungle warfare

And they're telling MacArthur like you shouldn't do this and eventually it was enough to make MacArthur back down From his plan of killing an entire airborne regiment instead He decided a two-pronged plan based on sea landings, one up towards Aroa consisting of troops from the US Army, which would be a diversionary thrust to draw attention away from the main attack spearheaded by Marines toward Cape Clouster. Facing the Marine invasion would not exactly be a group of cracked Japanese defenders and certainly not the Yukio Mishima from our intro. General Hitoshi Imamura was the commander of what was called the Eighth Area Army.

Now, the way the Japanese defended Pacific islands were with this concept of an area army, which is a group of different armies, in this case the 17th and the 18th, that were tasked with the defense of a large group of islands covering a specific area. Now, Imamura was in charge of New Guinea, but also Bougainville, all sorts of other different places, also including New Britain,

and his army and forces were supposed to cover all of that. So he was flexing forces anywhere they were needed, specifically into the main battle at New Guinea, leaving very little for New Britain. Some of his troops were hardened men who survived the Philippines campaign, while others were not. Even one of his generals, Uwao Matsuda, had no business commanding infantry, which is the job that the Japanese Imperial Army gave him because his job was logistics. He was a transport guy. He was in charge of organizing supply transportation.

Fuck it, you're in charge of the infantry now. Knowing a little bit about the Papwin campaign and the New Guinea campaign, I take my chances with being commanded by a dude whose primary job is dinner. I mean, look, if I'm going to pick guys who don't have combat experience or combat command experience, I would also rather be commanded by the guy who could get me food. Well, yeah. And also it's like, the guy's like, Hey, I have tons of combat experience doing like, I don't know if I can 1920s charges. If you're on the Japanese side, it's like killing Korean people on the American side, killing miners in Montana. It's like, you know, that doesn't

really apply the jungle. Yeah. Well, I mean, remember it's midway through world war II in the Pacific campaign. The Japanese have known a fair amount of success at this point and not all of the guys who experienced that success are dead yet. That's coming for sure. You got to really take the second best options like, cause you're not going to get like captain tires on showing you around the jungle. Hey, you don't know that Tarzan is a free agent. Tarzan has the loyalty. The problem is, is that like you can build the world's greatest defense, but then it's

like on a long enough timeline, the Americans choke your supplies. And so then they drum up an infraction for you to get court-martialed so you can be sentenced to being eaten. And that is very much the Japanese experience in New Guinea. Yeah. Yeah. And famously other islands that almost ate a future American president, which we've talked about before. Now there's another problem with this is Matsuda, a non-combat officer, was commanding non-combat soldiers. Namely, I mean, it's an air base. He's commanding engineers, plane mechanics, auxiliary troops. And the Japanese military at the time gave these guys very little combat training at all. And this was not offset by

a wealth of experience. But probably the most important problem, the biggest problem that Ima Morin Matsuda had were, well, morale. Morale for the Japanese military in New Britain was shittier than imaginable due to the small fact of having to live on New Britain. Like Nate has talked about,

the island was just about the worst place to be garrisoned in the Pacific Theater, assuming someone wasn't actively trying to kill you. The entire island was a sticky, muddy swamp that saw little to no sunshine due to constant rain and rainforest cover. For those who don't know, or maybe haven't been in a rainforest, a rainforest smells like shit decay and rot It's not great and it's home to dozens of animals Reptiles fucking an endless list of things that can and will kill you There's a never-ending buzz of insects like mosquitoes that promised every single man station there would get malaria at some point

Yeah, they're not getting like malaria, they're getting like mega malaria. They're getting malaria, they're getting dengue, they're getting yellow fever, they're getting like river blindness. Yeah, this is the Mr. Burns door of diseases, but it's an island. Yeah, it's basically you've been assigned to hold the garrison after we've opened the zipper and let all the bugs out of Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas. What if Nergal from Warhammer 40k was a place? What I'm trying to say here also is that bear in mind, because I learned this from a friend

of mine who did the off-grid living in Hawaii on the big island in the rainforest part, is that basically the militaries in the 1940s would not be equipped with the kind of thing that you would have in any way required to keep anything free of rust or mold. Yes. Every single piece of food, clothes, everything is moldy. Everything is rotted. Their uniforms are rotting off of their backs due to the humidity and the constant moisture. This isn't even getting into its monsoon season yet. That will come up. We probably have one of the most picturesque fights that could be made into a movie coming up that I've ever read about probably.

Also, it's important to remember that everybody has diarrhea. Everybody has malaria. Everybody has open weeping sores at all times. And the Marines aren't even there yet. This is just how they lived. Damn, bitch. You live like this. They wouldn't have had the material required to even keep wood dry to burn enough wood to boil water to sterilize it.

No. They're all just sick. It's absolutely... Rainforests are beautiful to view from a boat or to go when you are prepared with the right kit. But yeah, this is going to suck. It's one of the things that makes you understand that while, of course, I'm being unserious, but ideology, the brainwashing and the training that goes into the common Imperial Japanese soldier at the time, why they would be so willing to throw themselves into certain death in a battle, but also at the same time, it's like getting shot by some idiot farmer from Nebraska was better than surviving,

depending on where they were garrisoned. Like, oh thank God, Billy Bob from George is gonna ventilate my skull so I don't have to be stationed at Rabaul anymore. All you hear before you get shot in the head is the squelching sound of boots. Most of the time they didn't even wear boots anymore. Like, cause they're like, what's the point?

They'll just get sucked straight off my feet. Damn, she's, she's, she's sucked the boots straight off my feet. Mother nature got that sloppy. Mother nature at the sloppy dome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, say what you will about New Guinea, but you know what? It's got that no slip gorilla grip. God damn it. But that didn't mean diseased, hungry, and tired Japanese soldiers didn't do a hell of a good job digging in as much as they could.

They built trenches, which flooded. They cut down thousands of trees that built timber reinforced bunkers, which flooded and constructed layers of defenses around places that the US gave names to like Target Hill, Hill 660, as well as Mount Holloway, which flooded, all of which should overlook the air base at the Cape, which also flooded. Everybody is so moist. All the fucking imperialists, incredibly condescending bullshit, notwithstanding, you kind of understand why indigenous people in New Guinea dress the way they do because like for one it's hot and for another, like everything's going to rot and mold. And like, why would you build an elaborate chateau when it's going to wash away? It's like this, the house made out of thatch and reeds and stuff. That's going to, that works better. And you know what? It'll probably

dry out faster too. Yeah. We're all living in Nurgle's paradise. We're going to need you to turn that shit down. Hey, no incorrect because Nurgle's paradise. We need you to turn that shit down. Hey, hey, hey, no, incorrect because Nurgle's paradise in the warp smells sweet. I mean, once enough gangrene gets built up, it'll smell almondy. Can you imagine being like an indigenous New Guinean person watching this stuff happen? And you're sort of like, we're doing our initiation ritual where we built a 10 story tower of reason or making 13 year old boys bungee jump off of it with bungee cords made out Of fucking reads and I'm not Fucking whips ass and they're like all these dudes are just like slowly decaying into shit like a really really late Goya poem

Excuse me not poem. I watched a Japanese soldier melted to a puddle the other day Saturn devouring his son definitely is the Japanese experience Island of New Guinea just eating a Japanese soldier. Oh yeah, God. Look, I love when Mother Nature gets wins against fascism. Yeah, it's like, meanwhile, you're like a New Guinean elder. Like, I have a brand new penis score to shit whips ass. My life is amazing. Now, in the months leading up to the invasion, Allied air forces bombed the living piss out

of everything they could find, but it was hard to target actual Japanese defenses because they're almost all entirely obscured by unbroken jungle. Marines and soldiers did as many practice landings as they could while stationed in Australia and the task force of US soldiers made for their landings on December 15, 1943 in southern New Britain. The Army's landing did not exactly go to plan. Some parts of the landing went just as they should. They used LVTs, which we've talked about before, they're the landing craft that if you close

your eyes and picture what a Pacific theater landing looks like, it's those. However, due to the stresses of the Pacific campaign's ever-winding scope, there weren't enough LVTs to go around for what amounted to a distraction operation. Two groups of soldiers would be deployed towards the beaches on rubber dinghies. Zero protection from incoming Japanese gunfire, of which there was plenty. Imagine like you're a soldier that has the bad luck of being stationed in the Pacific during World War II and not Europe. And like you could do an amphibious landing. You've heard a lot about those, but we're going to do it with the, the futureama version of the Scooty Puff Jr. You guys have ever seen that?

Yeah. And it's also sort of like bad shit happens all the time in the European theater. You know, they deploy you to North Africa to fucking Morocco to go fight against the Rommel with like tanks that have like three times the height profile of a normal tank. And you just get fully obliterated nonstop. As a former tanker, I'd rather take my chances at a shitty tank than in a rubber dinghy facing down a Japanese machine gun. Well, no, what I'm trying to say though is that like you go to Sicily and like the Air Force decides to shoot you down because their wife, you know, sent them a fucking dear John letter. You go to Anzio and they're like, here's a thousand pounds to wear on your back anyway,

you're going to swim. So bad things happen. But in New Guinea, the circumstances are fully designed by a Bond villain. It's like rubber dingy, interlocking fields of fire from machine guns with anti-rubber bullets, a trillion sharks. Like literal such incredible density of sharks in the water. It's not really water anymore. It's just like- You just walk across the sharks. Yeah. Good news boys. We're walking across the sharks. We don't need the diggies. It's so unbelievably shitty. But sharks are probably on the side of the Japanese. Like if crocodiles are on the ally side, I feel like sharks would be on the Japanese

side. No, they're not because the Japanese are eating the sharks. The sharks respect the Japanese game of eating anything they can get their hands on. So, you know, they're like, we're not so different you and I. It's like the axis in general. We disagree with each other at ideological level, but we can make this work. What if sharks, Nazis, the Japanese Empire, all shaking hands and fins? You're kind of implying that the shark from Jaws is actually like hates people, tourists and beach swimmers out of ideological reasons. He's like shark side could have. Could. The looming terror is just the fin. Yeah, exactly. The looming fin.

That shark saw a couple dancing at a school dance in 1945. The shark from jaws is eating you because you're dressed indecently. The shark from Jaws is eating you because you're dressed indecently. Now imagine you're floating up to the beach at World War II in a fucking rubber dinghy. Like Yukio Mishima if he was manning a machine gun at the beach wouldn't even be turned on by this because it'd be too easy. Yeah exactly. Yukio Mishima is on the bows. It's like any chance you could use like a bow and arrow or something.

I need to make this harder. I need to make this harder. I need to make this harder as you can be shamed in a gunner's position, shooting a dinghy and also the quote of every man he ever went home with. So there was over a dozen of these dinghies deployed towards this beach. Only three of them actually made it. And the beach was so small that the destroyer that was tasked with supporting the landing couldn't fire on the Japanese defenders, worried that, of course, they would splash their own soldiers. So the American soldiers, when they realized how fucked they were, had to turn around and swim back into the ocean to put enough space between the Japanese and them so a destroyer could blast the shore with their cannons.

Then those men had to be rescued out of the water by other boats. But outside of that, the landings did succeed. The Japanese were not prepared to defend the beach from a large scale invasion, and they were largely, the beaches were just left open. So even with the fuckups of using rubber dinghies and whatever, it did go fine. Which ended up being a good thing because the army had kind of accidentally stacked the deck against themselves. So of that group that were given the LVTs, they were of multiple different builds and models and let's say repair statuses, specifically when it came to their engines. So some could go much faster than others,

which is a problem because all of these amphibious landings, they operate on strict timetables. Yeah. Like a wave is supposed to hit the beach every two to five minutes with no failing, which requires these boats to be able to get through the chop of the sea and all that stuff. And instead, the LVT's engines were struggling so badly in the ocean. Some arrived 25 minutes late. This is also important because of stuff like air cover and like naval guns and things like that. The way they're going to kind of like echelon fires to support you. It's like,

that's just, yeah, it requires a lot of coordination. The problem is they forgot the Pacific ocean is big. Yeah. I mean, who knew that half of the LVTs were operating on like Armenian time. They should have just like got more surfers the hell was like, chat dude, chat's great today. Now none of this ended up being too much of a problem because the Japanese were just not defending the beach where the LVTs landed. By afternoon the same day the soldiers had secured the Arwe Peninsula, cutting the supply route and route of communication from Japanese high command back in Rabaul back towards Cape Claustre. And so on Christmas Day, the Marines of the first loaded up on their ships and made for their target on the Cape. I said before that the Allied Air Forces

bombed Cape Claustre between December 15th and Christmas, but I didn't really explain how much they bombed it. They dropped 4,000 tons of bombs on Cape Gloucester specifically. Jesus Christ. They dropped so many bombs on the Cape that like a little cute saying was born amongst bomber pilots in the Pacific. Whenever they're giving a heavy bombing mission, they would joke that they're going to gloucesterize the place. Also Cape Gloucester like that is a very small geographic area relative to a large island. It's so small. 4,000 tons. I mean, like, I'm just going to be real with you. Like the entire sort of promontory that sticks out here is looking at the map around Cape Gloucester is like, it's not

large. We're talking like a couple of kilometers. So yeah, that's a, that's a lot of munitions. That's a lot of, that's a lot of fireworks. And this is where I would say, yeah, there was nothing left breathing, but the bombing missions largely did nothing. Because New Britain is mostly jungle, rainforest. They can't even see what they're bombing in so far as much as a 1943 bomber could aim. They still couldn't do that.

They kind of needed someone to make a Tunguska incident happen. Unfortunately, they didn't have anyone who could summon a meteor. Just mysteriously blow down all the trees. That's one thing too. It's a lot of munitions. It's a huge amount of firepower, but like you were saying, there's the density there of the jungle. The Japanese also were really, really big on building solid defenses. They would typically do things like they would cut down coconut trees. They would typically do things like they would cut down

coconut trees. They would basically log cabin coconut trees, but they would also take any kind of empty vessels, empty oil drums, any kind of thing, a vessel that could hold anything at all, fill it with sand, and basically build like Hesco bastions out of those as well. People would be shocked how much damage a bunker built out of timber and dirt could withstand even in the confines of modern war in the 40s, which actually we're about to talk about that. I don't want to give the Japanese all of the credit like, oh, wow, they're so smart about these things. So some of it did seem to be an accident, but they were experts at building defenses out of what the fuck do I have lying around? I mean, I'll just leave you with this. One of the things that really turned the tide in the Battle of the Buna was that American detachment being able to capture a road junction that was dry, like a road, a four-way junction, that basically kind of let them hinge because at that point they could not get an access

of advance in Japanese defenses because it was all swamps. And every single access of advance that was above, basically above the water line was like, if you purified and filleting fire down to serum, like the big 50 gallon bag of Coca Cola syrup that the gas station is buying. It's like that before emphalating fire. We're talking months of failed attacks. People just dying nonstop. Not to give them credit as the Japanese clean beer mock or some shit, they were horrible. But they looked at the terrain and they did stuff with it to their advantage. And that's why it's a horrible militaries, you know,

ethically, morally, which is most militaries are also competent most of the time. And on the morning of December 26th, the first Marines would hit the beach, which had been nicknamed Yellow One, Yellow Two to the east near Silamante Point, five miles away from the Japanese air base and Green Beach, six miles away from the Japanese airbase and Green Beach, six miles away from the Yellow Beaches, supported by naval bombardments, air cover, all that stuff. And there was no opposition really, kind of, because you see the hills in the distance had been bombed with just an amount of white phosphorous that would have killed God, amount of white phosphorous that would have killed God and it even set the rainforest on fire.

Wow. Jesus, your feet are melting in your boots now like literally you are just melting. I don't even know how hot you have to get the rainforest to make it burn. I assume some Brazilian farmers could probably tell us. But the US military managed to pull it off. The military induced forest fires created an accidental smoke screen that covered the beach, causing one boat to land in the wrong place, those men to get shot by Japanese soldiers who did happen to be there.

But overall, the beach itself was pretty much undefended. There's a very good reason for that. Because standing in front of the Marines is not a heavily defended beach that you would think of, but rather a dense, nearly impenetrable wall of rainforest, the likes of which nobody was prepared for. The beach itself was a narrow strip in a lot of places, and in some places the jungle grew right up to the waterline. Meaning when a bridgehead was set up, and when I say bridgehead I mean like logistical point of landing on a beach to support an inward advance, there was nowhere to unload anything. Men's supplies and tanks and all that stuff kind of just gathered in a comical traffic jam as Marines tried to march into the jungle. And you can see why the Japanese didn't bother to

defend it. And the Marines who thought they were jungle experts, veterans of Guadacanal, found themselves in what they kind of described as a different planet. Swamps and mud so thick that men just fell into them and died. Also as well, like it's really important to point out for those who don't know much about rainforests, like rainforests operate on like, it's like a series of levels. So like even at like what you would consider ground level is like there is so much vegetation that's coming above ground, but also underground that you are never sure how stable the ground is. Or it's like that city in China that has like 20 stories where you feel like

you're at the ground level, but it's like, Oh no, there's like another eight stories below you. The Chongqing rainforest. And that that's actually a huge part of what's going to cause a ton of injuries is the rainforest itself. Like I just said, men were literally dying from the mud, falling into pits of what they called quicksand. It wasn't quicksand. It was just man sized mud holes. Yep.

They slipped and fell in layers of jungle decay on the ground, breaking their ankles and their legs. Some even impaled themselves on fallen trees. And here's another problem. Remember the jungle, like you said, is in a constant state of death and rebirth. It's how the rainforest perpetuates itself. It also had been bombed to shit. So normally in a rainforest, you know, there's dead trees that are being held up in place in the canopy by other alive trees due to the dense overgrowth, right? So soon you have Marines armed with machetes hacking through this green wall, trying to advance further into the rainforest. And before long, dead trees begin raining down on groups of Marines that are trying to advance towards Cape Gloucester. 20 Marines are killed by falling trees during the separation.

Yeah. Cause as well, like it's been bombed and with by phosphorus. So like the structural integrity of everything around is just like, Oh, this is just all fuck now. Yeah. It's all falling apart. It's all, I mean, even the best of times, this probably would have happened, but now you've filled it full of Willie P and bombs. It's all, I mean, even the best of times this probably would have happened, but now you filled it full of Willie P and bombs. It's not going great. It got so hot, it escaped the confines of the normal cycle of the universe. And as such, all of the trees that were intended for Greg Abbott fell on those Marines. I absolutely hate being deployed to the Battle of Cape Gloucester with the Buster Keaton division. I absolutely hate it when like you try to cut a little bit of jungle in front of you to keep

walking and unfortunately it unleashes what if the gravity of the sun applied on Earth and just trees just start crushing you comically fast. This is just what happens if the US Marines were to war against Ents. The mud, the rot, the swamp, swallowed tanks and trucks whole, which was surprising to everyone because military intelligence told them that the area was damp, but flat and easily navigable. This happened constantly. I would also throw this out there really quickly too.

One thing to bear in mind is that with the way that the forest gets denuded with stuff like all of the bombing and the white phosphorus is that then when the progressive amounts of rain were talking, the flooding that would happen in the best of times, that is going to cause huge amounts of mud runoff, mudslides, et cetera, and that's going to fuck other things up. It happens constantly. Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem. Pretty much everything written about this battle is about how much New Britain sucks. And then the footnote is also the Japanese were there.

Unfortunately, the one director who could make a movie about this died last year. William Freak and RIP. You were the only one who could have made a movie about this. I'm going to have to write like a military fantasy novel about a modern military fighting tree people. This kind of military intelligence failure happened constantly and probably the worst of it at least after the infantry because I mean When your infantry your life is just suck

But this happened to the artillery and they're dragging their artillery up from the beaches with the help of tractors through the mud Towards a patch of grass that was open and flat as seen by aerial recon It was perfect for a battery of artillery. But when they got there, the open flat plane was actually just a thin layer of grass growing over a swamp. And they just wheeled it. Oh, there goes a tractor dragging in the artillery after it. New Britain itself swallowed it. I mean, this starts to take on almost a Soviet mine construction vibe in a way. It's just like, we'll create a firing platform by just drowning all of these tractors and howitzers until

there's enough metal ensconced in the earth that we can then build something on top of it. I would say yes, but in the Soviet mindset of like, how many of our satellite republic minorities do we have to drown to create solid ground? Well, it's funny because think about this with the Soviet experience with a lot of stuff in places like Siberia, as you were talking about the ground being so unstable. And what that reminds me of is in the Arctic in the summertime when it melts and thaws, you have what's called muskeg, which is kind of like perma swamp slash kind of solid ground,

but it's incredibly uneven. And having been in an Arctic unit and trained in that environment, it is like world's biggest generator of VA ankle orthopedic injury complaints and fucking disability payments. Muskeg and then unit level basketball games. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which all evolve into prisoner holes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then fun runs immediately below that one. Yeah, like a side note, once I'm in Korea, we did a fun run and they just started to

randomly fire off cannons for motivation. And let's just say in 2013 with a lot of people who had been deployed to combat, myself included, that was not really a thing we fucking wanted They're trying to train you like like a horse for a cavalry unit. Just keep setting up cannons next to his head Yeah The thing about the horses is that like you're supposed to give them carrots if they kick you and stomp your shoulder Unfortunately the military like there's fucking UCMJ about that The whole like tractors getting so like sucked into the mud and everything is not just like a thing that happened in the Soviet Union. It feels like the setup

for like a Russian joke that has no punchline. It's like, oh you know when you go into battle your tractor gets sucked into mud. Oh, piece of dits. Yeah. Piece of dits, I've lost my tractor. The tractor got swallowed by the gun again, but it didn't even burp or say it was a good meal. You know, I come home for my dinner, my wife has not made borscht, my tractor sucked into mud. So basically, yeah, it sounds like aerial reconnaissance has improved about 5% since 1943.

As the Marines continue to push inland, they're greeted by New Britain's seething weather systems which dumped rain on their heads and only made the mud worse. It also ruined their flamethrowers because it rained so much that it seeped into the seals and everything and made them useless. In case anyone's wondering why they didn't just use the Pacific Theater's ubiquitous flamethrowers to burn their way through the jungle, it's because the jungle already won that battle. Also as well, like a huge, huge logistical problem is when you heat up that much vegetation, dead or alive, it creates an insane amount of steam. Yep. Yeah. This is going to create a flamethrower

powered marine steam bath out of rotten rainforest. You're just turning yourself into human gyoza. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This is the ninth US Marine Corps dim sum division. It's like we got put in big wicker baskets and steam. Like if these weren't Marines we were talking about, I would say that would be delicious, but Marines would be the worst quality of long pig you want to get. Exactly. They're all just fueled by nicotine and white bonds. Yeah. All that's the, you actually get poisoning from all the fucked up tattooing. What I was going

to say too is that, I mean, just laughing at some of this stuff, obviously like sort of animism and sorcery is a huge part of the belief systems of indigenous people in New Guinea. And it's one of these things where it's like, it would be very hard to argue with their belief, even in like a rational sort of like objective materialist way that the people doing this weren't cursed by sorcerers. Yeah. Ents. I told you, Ents were involved. Like genuinely, it's sort of like, how could you argue to someone who has lived and thrived

in this environment watching everyone just basically get comically dissolved into the earth that they had been the target of a sorcerer's curse? Yeah. The Japanese have deployed the forest wizard. Yeah. The Japanese and the Marines did not bring counter wizards to fight the jungle spirit. I mean, this is an anecdote from the Battle of Buna that basically, because they were, they, they, they didn't really, I mean, they were really fucked up things that the Japanese constantly were trying to cannibalize New Guinea natives.

And also that doesn't sound like something the Japanese Imperial army would do at all. The Japanese and the Americans and the Australians would press gang kids as young as 13 or 14 into being porters and force them to basically take them as cargo carriers in the highland tracks and stuff like that. And they're genuinely... But there's an anecdote that basically trying to figure out Japanese positions asking some of the New Guinea scouts or some of the porters if they knew anything about the terrain and one of them being like, there's sorcerers in the other village who can fly, you should just ask them. And it's like, there's a part of me that's just them being like, you know, there's there's sorcerers in the other village who can fly. You should just ask them. And it's

like, there's a part of me that's just sort of like, you know what, you can't disprove their belief system when like everything of the modern, you know, mind and development and creation that you bring into this environment basically gets turned into like a figurative art sculpture about rust. Did you know a human being could rust? Well ask that Marine. Yeah exactly. Unfortunately for the American development of the anti-Japanese forest wizard Alan Dulles had not reached the height of his power yet. But as the Marines continued to march towards the airfield they ran into the first Japanese defenders hidden in their flooded bunkers. And because this is the rainforest we're

talking about, it's just like a wall of greenery, it means they keep running into them at point-blank range. The Marines backpedaled, trying to get more distance so they could use their bazookas to blow up the bunkers, only to discover the Japanese had, maybe purposefully, possibly on accident, prepared for American rocket launchers. The Japanese had built their bunkers out of logs of reinforced wood. But on top of that, they dug out the same swamp ass fucking mud that the Marines were now struggling through to cover the logs. And that mud was so soft that it absorbed the bazooka blasts and completely protected them. Mud wizard. The Japanese had weaponized mud magic.

It's a little known historical fact that it wasn't until the last survivors of the New Guinea campaign on both sides had died that Chia pets became popular because they were just too traumatic and reminded people of what they turned into when you watch the moss just grow out of this thing until it becomes a gigantic just lichen creature. Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia, sad face. Then the Marines called over an LVT, the same kind of landing craft, they have tracks on them that can be used as a lightly armored vehicle, and they have machine guns and stuff on them, so it's like a decent weapons platform if there's no tanks around, and there wasn't.

They wanted the LVT to advance and hit the bunker with their machine guns at point blank range, but as they got close, it also got stuck in the mud. The Japanese soldiers then stormed out of their bunkers, climbed up on top of the LVT and began hacking the machine gunners to death with swords. While that was happening, the driver of the LVT who was inside, not being stabbed to death, gunned it, freeing the LVT from the mud, ran over the bunker and crushed it, before having to lean out of his hatch with a pistol to shoot the sword wielding soldiers that were killing his friends.

That one driver was the single early American mud mage. I'm developing something called the drive-by shooting. Watch this. This is like the closest you can come to experiencing what it's like to be a termite and accidentally wandering into an ant colony. But then darkness falls, Marines dig in and they wait for their push to begin anew the next day. And then a fucking monsoon hits.

Hurricane force winds blast the Marines and it rains so hard that all their foxholes, every positions that the Marines, that mean by extension the Japanese, built fills with water forcing them to leave behind their defensive positions and simply lay out in the open. Thunder and lightning crash so loud that people think that they're incoming artillery rounds and in one case three men were killed when they were struck artillery rounds. And in one case, three men were killed when they were struck by lightning. I mean, like honestly, nowadays we have meteorology, but at the time they wouldn't have been able

to predict this as well. Or if they did, the information wouldn't have filtered down. It's like, once again, nothing- They just ignored it. Nothing about this would convince the 13 year old inductee into the manhood ceremony who's just jumped off a wicker bungee jumping tower that this isn't the work of a sorcerer who hates both the Japanese and the Americans. Then as if being attacked by the fucking weather wasn't bad enough, the Japanese launched a bonsai charge in the middle of the storm at 3am.

All across the Marine beachhead they came under attack, mud and rained ruined weapons. The pitch darkness was only occasionally lit up by flashes of lightning. Fucking hell. Everything devolved into total and complete mud chaos as Japanese units and Marines got separated in the blinding downpour in darkness. Sometimes I even realized they were actually surrounded by the enemy until a bolt of lightning lit everything up and they just frantically began stabbing in every direction. It's just like Battle of Agencourt reenactment in the dirtiest S&M club in Berlin.

One Marine put it, quote, we were in the very jaws of death and hell everywhere the Marine lines were breaking. But a lot of that had to do with the fact that nobody knew where the line actually was. Marines and Japanese soldiers stabbed, beat, and shot one another to death as Marine Mortarmen dropped rounds so close to their friends more than one Marine was killed by friendly fire. But the mortars were the only thing keeping the small isolated groups of Marines alive and the bulk of the Japanese force at bay. That and the monsoons sweeping through the island meant that there was no command and control of the Japanese forces. They did break through the Marines in multiple places. At one point, stumbling upon the Marine Field

Hospital where a sword versus bayonet fight happened between a doctor and a Japanese soldier. But every time they broke through, there was no organization to try to exploit any breaks in the Marine line because nobody knew where each other were. And then they would just get hit wildly by mortars So the weather is horrific and the only way you can know if someone is friend or foes if they stab you or not and if the lightning hits at just the right time because all of this is being lit by like action movie-esque Flashes of lightning and sword and bayonet and fist fights and shit this goes on for hours

So basically after the end of this battle, every single one of these people has just gotten like the Star Trek probe embedded memories, entire life experience of growing up in Detroit. This goes on for fucking hours until finally the Japanese are driven back. Just as this battle near the beachhead was wrapping up, the forward marines began their push against the airbase. This time they came prepared, knowing their portable weapons like the bazookas and the flamethrowers would be useless, and they brought multiple tanks with them instead. And this began a battle at a place called Hell's Point. And this time it was much easier, because the Japanese did not actually expect the marines

to manage to get tanks through all of this bullshit. And they did so by chopping down trees and building roads for the tanks to get over, which isn't that hard. The Sherman is not a big tank in comparison. Just because I want to ask, because you were a tanker and I wasn't, the only thing I ever did with the tank was get warm from the fucking exhaust in the back of the engine. Hell yeah. We share the same kind of cancer. Yeah, exactly. I mean, beyond obviously the huge amount of armor, protection, et cetera, and firepower, but what are your thoughts like how a tank would handle in terrain like this

and in weather like this? Like a modern tank? I mean, we're talking about Sherman. We're talking about the tanks. Sherman would be better. I mean, a Sherman is not a very heavy tank. Sherman would be better. I mean a Sherman is not a very heavy tank. So if you put, I mean this was common for a lot of places with very bad terrain, like the Hurricane or maybe as light as a Stuart would do very well. Very well in comparison to how you would imagine they would, but it's still gonna be super slow going. If you're using your tanks to be the crux of your infantry advance, it's gonna be a very slow advance. Which is exactly what happened here when they got to Hell's Point. But the Marines' cannons in their tanks absolutely obliterated the Japanese bunkers.

They were not ready for that smoke. And in some cases, the Japanese soldiers would see the tank coming and abandon their bunkers, which would just leave them in the open to get machine gun, because tanks also have machine guns. And there's infantry right behind them. Because there were also, I remember seeing a lot of photos of this that you'll see like really, really dense jungle rainforest, photos of tanks or tank destroyers. The famous observation is that basically American sends its military forces into full on meat grinder, but they tend to take notes in the meat grinder and make some improvements to include like, what if we use this thing in a non-doctrinal way?

And that- Yeah, especially in like the, through the guys of the Pacific theater where you don't expect there to be a ton of tanks But they're always there somehow They always find a way to get them there, which I would hate to have been in a tank now. Fuck that I mean, yeah, I mean, can you imagine the amount of cross you're gonna get being in a tent? Yeah, I mean like modern tanks aren't exactly very well cooled or heated for that matter I was always in a turret crew. The driver's compartment in the Abrams that I was in was always very warm and the air conditioning always worked okay.

The turret crew was a land of suffering and that was not being in a soup of an island. But meanwhile, the Japanese were still trying to desperately regain their link north to Rabaul. I mean, that is their path of advance, the path of withdrawal, any path of supplies. So they launch an all out Banzai charge in the middle of the night against Marines under the command of Lieutenant James Masters, who calls his unit, Masters Bastards. That is a sick name. I'll give them that. That's kind of cool.

So platoon commander, we're marine lieutenant or is this yeah naval Right. I can't remember if they you were using naval ranks in the Marine Corps back then I don't think they were but I can't remember he seems to have had about two platoons under him. He was not a company Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, it seems to be a more of a detachment got lost in the jungle situation Yeah, big big detachment detachment could be anything from like seven guys to like a hundred guys Yeah, you'll find your detachment is quite fluid, depending on how fucked you are. And at this point, Masters and his men had not seen any Japanese soldiers. They had just been eating shit going through the rainforest. And so they camp out between the villages

of Tulai and Sumeru and just chill out. And then suddenly in the middle of the night, hundreds of screaming soldiers launch themselves out of the greenery at them. And the masters in his men nearly break because this comes out of nowhere. Enter a gunnery sergeant named Giuseppe Giano. Hey! Seeing his men wavering all around him, he grabs a crew-served machine gun, an M1919 Browning, a belt-fed machine gun meant to be used by three men, and decides to become Italian Rambo, which I suppose going off the fact that Sylvester Stallone is Italian, I guess he just became Rambo. Hey, you like me? You eat a lot of your mother's ragu? You get strong enough you can shoot a gun made for three men. He's harvesting Japanese ragu in the rainforest. He's running around manning the gun alone, plugging gaps wherever they come up in the in the marine line, spraying machine gun bullets

in every direction while the gun becomes so red hot it melts the skin on his forearms until it binds him to the barrel. Oh, so he basically becomes like Wolfenstein villain. Become one with the machine. Giuseppe Giuseppe, the machine god. This is just a plot of Tetsuo, the Iron Man. Once again, it comes back to Warhammer 40K. He became a machine addict. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm just thinking that, like, you know,

he should have used a little better fire control because the way the East Coast guido's could draw out the syllables in Italian words, if you even start to see every time that he fired the gun, that like, that would be a three to five second burst and then he wouldn't have opened the doors. Yeah. That's how you time it. They taught us how to say die motherfucker die, which is how to like time the burst in your head. He just says any word in Italian. I feel bad saying this, but this is true that we were taught by an insane redneck who had taught us Dolly Parton has huge tits. And it's like, none of us gave a fuck about Dolly

Parton in 2007, but that's what the guy- I wouldn't even have known who it was, but I'm like, I'll take your word for it, bro. Hey, hey, listen, you were a closeted man in the US Army. You cared about Dolly Parton. I cared about Dolly Parton solely because Soul Wax used nine to five in one of their mixes. And I'm telling you fucking straight from the heart. That is the most Nate Bothe sense. God damn right it is brother. I only cared about Dolly Parton when I was in Afghanistan because of a Soul Wax mix.

I only cared about Dolly Parton because a fucking Belgian rock band turned insanely good DJ team that are two brothers from fucking Ghantt, I think decided to take the soundtrack song from early eighties Dolly Parton movie and mix it in with like, I don't know, fucking whatever, you know, 2008 asked blog core music they were playing. So yes, hi. Sure. Yeah. And that totally that is relevant to shooting a machine gun on a range in Fort Benning. This guy is running around and he effectively single-handedly saves the master's bastards from becoming masters slaughtered and eaten by the Japanese army. This becomes known as the Battle of Coffin Corner and somehow this guy is

not given every award known to man but I mean this is effectively the same thing famously that John Basileone is given a Medal of Honor for during the Battle of Guadalcanal. Giuseppe does not get it. I assume he's given a fine plate of spaghetti later. Who only can give a Medal of Honor to one Italian and Basilone already got it. Genuinely that's the kind of thing that would have factored into their decision-making. It's fucked up, but that is... Yeah, Basilone's first name was at least John, bro. Yours is Giuseppe. You're too Italian for us. Remember, we're still technically at war with them. Yeah.

Now, compared to all of this, the fight for the airbase was pretty routine. By definition, the airbase is open and flat, meaning the Marines and their armor support could do a textbook advance against the nearly 50 Japanese bunkers and trench lines that have been dug into the area. Marines also advanced up a nearby ridge line

nicknamed the Razorback Ridge, which allowed them to pour machine gun fire on Japanese troops if they attempted to maneuver, displace, or support one another outside the bunkers on the airfield. So that one goes according to plan. The jungle and sorcerers do not come out on the side of the Japanese this time. And so the air base is captured, but it was completely ruined. It's been bombed and strafed by planes and artillery. The Japanese piled up all of their trash planes in the middle of the runway to make it a pain in the ass repurpose. Yeah, it would have been really easy to clear if we had all those tractors, but whoops. I'll endate my tractor.

But the capture of the airbase did not mean the Battle of Cape Clouster was over. There was still a Japanese garrison dug in at Borgen Bay, and the 1st Assistant Division Commander General Lemuel Cornic Shepherd Jr. What a name. Oh, he gets worse. He was given orders to clear them out. Now, looking up Shepherd, I fell into, let's call it, a Confederate hole. If you spell Confederate with a K, that's still a K hole. Now, Shepherd was a World War I veteran and he was a graduate of VMI.

And during his time at VMI, he was part of a frat known somewhat ominously as the Order. Now, the Order, trust me, it's actually, it's way worse than you think it is. For non-Americans and people who aren't familiar, VMI is one of the more hardcore. We've already talked about VMI in the show before. The very military institute. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's intense. We've already talked about how they were formed. It's really bad. The order was founded by a string of Confederate veterans and they awarded Robert E. Lee the title of spiritual founder in 1923, a man that they have titled to this day, the last genteel knight. And prior to his death, Lee worked with the frat to expand the frat through other southern universities, pushing a lost cause version of events of the Civil War. It's been their whole modus operandi. The mission statement of the frat was and still remains because they are still active. Quote, Kappa Alpha order seeks to

create a lifetime experience with centers on the reverence of God, duty, honor, character, and gentlemanly conduct as inspired by Robert E. Lee, our spiritual founder and leader. This is nothing to do with the episode. Why? I just fell into it. At any point you're a member of an organization or a country that has a spiritual founder or leader, you're in a bad place. Especially if that guy is Robert E. Lee. Why say all those words when you can say it with three simple words, war damn Eagles. Anyway, had nothing to do with anything. That's Lemuel, the Japanese stationed at Borgen Bay were under the command of a guy named Colonel Kinshiro Katayama and he decided he was not going to wait for an attack to come to him.

His military intelligence on the island was even worse than the Marines because he thought the number of Marines couldn't be more than say 2,500. He was 90% off? Oh. say 2500. He was 90% off? Oh, so he believed if I attack, you know, at this position, I have a good chance of really fucking the total Marine force up when in reality it was a fraction. So as Shepard ordered his men to cross the wonderfully nicknamed Suicide Creek, so named because every time a Marine tried to cross it, they died, Katayama ordered his men to attack up Target Hill.

In the middle of the pitch darkness, in a part of the island that was so densely covered in jungle, one Marine described it as quote, you'd step from your line, take say 10 paces and turn around to guide on your buddy and then there would just be nobody there. It was a very small war. It was a lonely business. That's where he's going to attack up. But Katayama ordered his men directly up a hill that was now heavily defended, and his men were cut to ribbons by Marine machine gunners, leaving hundreds of dead in the jungle

before they broke their attack off in the morning on January 3rd. But they did leave behind something very important. The dead body of an officer with detailed defensive plans for a complex in Aogiri Ridge, a defense network the US had previously no idea about, had managed to escape all previous scouting and everything, so it became the next target. But at Suicide Creek, which they would have to cross to attack Aogiri Ridge, they found the crossing far too dangerous for the tanks. It wasn't wide enough.

It would need to be wideed using a bulldozer But each time they put a guy in the bulldozer to drive it across and widen the crossing the guy got killed So one man decided I have an idea He comes up next to the bulldozer and begins operating the levers by hitting the levers with a fucking shovel levers by hitting the levers with a fucking shovel. So he's just beating the bulldozer with a shovel. Once again, this is another Soviet joke that has no punchline. When you have to operate bulldozer but you keep getting shot, you hit bulldozer with shovel, pizdits. Lemuel Shepard having his defense work this well and then get like basically like campaign

changing intelligence. The way he felt in that moment when it all worked It's the first time someone felt something equivalent to like peeking on acid and hearing free bird for the first time Been there Imagine the Marine that you you know the Marine that what he looked like when he's like I got an idea I'm gonna beat the bulldozer with a shovel and everybody's like, I got an idea. I'm going to beat the bulldozer with a shovel. And everybody's like, I feel like he will make this one. There's always one guy in every military unit who probably doesn't shower that much. He's always mysteriously filthy. And when he comes up with the dumbest idea on earth, you don't want to be anywhere

near him, but you simultaneously know it'll work. Yeah, he might spell the word K. word KAT, but his plan will work. Yes. And this I'm immediately picturing a guy in my head. I'm picturing one of my soldiers who was like this and has actually gone onto great things in life afterwards, but literally was so dirty that like his hat, his patrol cap looked like it had been soaked in oil and he got like fucking like medieval peasant boils when we were out in the field,

like they had to be lanced like dead serious. He's got soldier wasting disease. Like he's fighting in a campaign in the 1700s bad scar in his face. And I guess he'd been a hardcore kid where he was from in like the Southwest. And he explained to our platoon sergeant that he got it because someone hit him in the face of the skateboard weaponized crust. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want that guy on your side. You just don't want to sleep next to him. And this guy's idea worked. They bust through with the bulldozer and they begin their advance towards our Gary Ridge. Now the our Gary Ridge immediately turns into a fucking meat grinder.

The fifth Marines, third battalion went through two commanders until Chesty polar famed Marine officer names, man. I swear to God. Yeah, I Chesty polar has the nickname because he had giant heaving tits. Everybody knows exactly. Yeah. Dolly partners got the idea from him. He was commander of the third battalion, seventh Marines and so many other of the fifth Marines were commanders were dying. They simply gave him command of both. Chesty polar sounds like somebody who like is constantly masturbating, but also has a

hacking cough. Everybody knows you get the nickname Chesty because you have a masturbation addiction and also the consumption. I'm sure that guy existed in World War II. I mean, I'm sure you exist now. Our Geary was steep and so heavily overgrown that virtually all of the fighting was done at point-blank range. And when night fell, making advances pretty much impossible, raids still happen. With Marines staying just out of the darkness somehow, they'd be standing guard and then just hear

screaming from a foxhole nearby them. They know is manned by their people they know, their friends, whatever. Because a Japanese patrol armed only with knives and swords just butchered a guy in the darkness and that they would just scamper off into the night rather than pressing any attack. Horrifying shit. Just sitting there in the pitch darkness you just start hearing screaming from,

you know it's the foxhole right next to yours. Well no, I mean, Kenneth Koch wrote a poem about this, about being in the Pacific campaign and basically the experience of being hit in the rain and then just randomly waking up the next day to discover that guys next to you on either side had their throats cut. Yeah. Yeah, that happened constantly in New Britain. Then on January 10th, the remaining Japanese garrison still surviving and fighting on Aragiri

Ridge launched a bonsai charge in the middle of another blinding downpour. Not a lot of details available on this one, seeing how it's hard to have a recollection of a battle you couldn't actually see. But when the smoke cleared and the sun rose the next day, there was not a single living Japanese soldier left on Aogiri Ridge. The last Japanese stronghold in Cape Gloucester fell six days later with very little fighting and General Matsuda withdrew his force further east towards Rabaul

with barely a thousand men left alive under his command, giving up the western half of New Britain to the Allies. And weirdly things would just remain that way. The Japanese base at Rabaul was rendered tactically useless and largely unable to do anything. So any future ground assaults against Rabaul would require crossing into the other half of New Britain. And all these were cancelled due to the projective massive amount of losses the Allies would sustain in trying to take it from a Japanese garrison that on top of all the realities of New Britain that we've already talked about how awful it is in a place to fight. The Japanese garrison at Rabaul was larger than Okinawa's. This would have been the worst fight in the Pacific. So the allies just decided, let's not do it. Well, I mean, the thing about it is that by controlling that part of the island, you effectively

can now move boats through from Australia and from Port Moresby and from the Papuan Peninsula around towards the Philippines. And knowing the goal of Mr. Douglas MacArthur makes sense. They could just go around Rabaul. Instead, they bombed Rabaul constantly to the point it became so commonplace that bombing Rabaul became a live fire exercise for new pilots to build confidence. The Japanese troops stationed there were trapped. They were unable to leave by sea, by ground, by air. Unable to leave, unable to support the wider war effort, they became POWs in territory. they still technically

held and the garrison there would stay there and eventually surrender with the rest of Japan at the end of the war. And in case you're wondering, Cape Gloucester, the airfield, the whole thing that MacArthur wanted to use it for, not important. It was never used as an important airbase, which shouldn't surprise anybody at this point but what is weird is that this isn't even the first time we've had it in an episode by saying those exact words. The plans to move the 13th Air Force Command to the island were cancelled a few months after the battle was over, meaning this was pointless.

In the end, over 2,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the fighting. Only 310 marines were killed, but over 1,000 were wounded, injured or sickened and kind of sort of conquering the green inferno, but not really. I mean, compared to Bunagona, that's actually a really, really low casualty rate. That's the crazy thing. When you think about it, there was no large battles in New Britain. All these battles were very small. A couple platoons against a couple platoons or a company at most. The largest offensive was against the airfield and that was over rather quickly. The fighting and the casualties at the Marines Senior aren't as high as some Pacific campaigns

were of course, but the savagery and the close quarters combat, the accidents, I think this is the most Marines we've ever seen killed in a island hopping battle from just accidents or terrain. The island was a bigger threat to them than the Japanese garrison because remember the Japanese garrison was A, not very large, that was in Cape Gloucester, and B, not really one prime to fight. This is basically apocalypto combined with hacksaw ridge and Mel Gibson's gonna make a movie about it and make it really homophobic for some reason. It's gonna be homophobic against an entire island. It's falling trees. The trees were

gay. Yeah, the trees. No, the mud was gay. But the trees in the mud didn't respect American masculinity. That's why they had to crush those Marines in a homosexual way. Yeah. The end. That that is the battle of Cape Gloucester. But fellas, we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support the show on Patreon and you can ask us through our Patreon messages and also through our discord where we have a channel dedicated to those. And today's question is tell me something you hate about something you love.

Uh, I hate crowd killing discourse about hardcore crowd killing. So crowd killing is essentially like you have the pit being in the pit, but it's also like hitting people at the edge of the pit. Um, it's like, it's a pitch should stay in the pit. Yeah. But like sometimes people at the edge of the pit will get hit or whatever. Like crowd killing is like specifically, like most of the time it's people's like, Oh, my friend is at the edge of the pit. I'm going to like run across and just like slam into him or whatever. Like she happens. Crowd killing is like specifically like most of the time it's people's like, Oh, my friend is at the edge of the pit.

I'm going to like run across and just like slam into him or whatever. I'm just like, it's 2024. I don't care. Like 2025. Oh shit. It's 2025. It's 2025. We have moved past the need to like argue about this. Like every, I don't know, like three or four weeks. I'm just, it's strange 95. I'm just like, the thing that I love discourse in a theoretical sense. Thing that I hate discourse in a practical sense. I, uh, I've never been a hardcore guy, but I've been in plenty of pets have been in places that have pets and the unwritten rule that

I always thought it was like, if they're not in a pit, they're not in the pit. Don't hit them. Like it's simple. Don't blindside people. I don't know. I don't know. What do I know? The thing I hate about a thing I love, I love cycle commuting. It's like probably my favorite kind of exercise that I do all the time. Bicycle pill. I am. Yeah. But what I hate about is it like they're, it's very difficult to have a conversation because like there are obviously some givens about like, you know, cars typically behave worse and are far more dangerous than bikes. But like, I think there's also an extent to which you both feel as though you kind of have to like

say all of like the, the kind of like catechism of all of the different sort of givens and things you acknowledge before you can talk about it. And also like, I think humans are all capable of behaving badly, whether they're on a bike or walking or in a car. And I think the thing about it is, is that like, a lot of times there's a degree to which you kind of can't talk about it without getting a lot of really intense people really, really angry about one thing or another. And I kind of don't talk about it because I both don't think that every single person who owns a car should be taken out and shot. And I also don't think that all cyclists are fucking dickheads who all behave badly. I

just think that it's a thing where there's a lot... You have to live in the world with other people and there's a lot of things that we should improve. But the current state of affairs is such that it's going to be a challenge to get there in any country, even countries with the best cycle infrastructure. And it feels as though it's so difficult to have a conversation without having it hit a tripwire of... Cyclists can do no wrong versus cyclists can only do wrong. Yeah. Cyclists can do lots of fucking wrong. I see it. I mean, there are people. It's not like you're some elevated class of person. Cause you're at a bicycle as a mode of transportation.

I rode a bike to the studio today and I got cut off by like a fucking 80 year old woman. I got cut off by a lady like driving, we were riding her bike with her groceries and then riding like three kilometers an hour, like on her bike, you know, the other day. And I would say this too, is that I just remember this happening once I'm talking about it in London and like, it was weird to kind of like intense, profound hatred that this seemed

to gin up by saying that like there is such a thing as cyclists behaving badly from other cyclists and like, it like brought out a lot of what I would describe as sort of like intensely angry yelling guy online who's really misogynist and doesn't even understand why he's being misogynist to me. I mean, to me, you know, he's being misogynist to me. He's like, oh, you want to be like, oh, I'm not like those other girls that have a butt. I'm like, that's a fucked up thing to say. But also I'm talking about bikes. What are you doing? I've noticed that transportation discourse in general, it could be bicycles, it could be cars, it could be public transportation brings out like people's eyes roll into the back of the head,

like a snake about to swallow something. And they just unleash some of the most psychotic shinnies. Because it's something they're passionate about in really bad ways. It's kind of like this total... It can be this totalizing discourse. I won't go into detail about it because I don't want to take too long. But there's a thought... Sometimes when you talk about things about Americans and Canadians, we'll talk about like, oh, but in Europe, they act and it's like, well, what country man like where, what are you talking about? I don't understand that either. That's a different gripe I have on. It's not about something

I love at all. So it's not on top. Oh, what about Europe? I'm like, that's a large land mass. People getting in my case, well, I'll be like, Oh, you have your fucking socialized medicine Europe. Like actually, no, I don't. I live in a country that famously does not have it at all. So you know what I mean? Like, yeah, and I still have to pay for insurance every month. It's just the state insurance. I still have to pay for it. Yeah, like the fucking yeah, the cycling discourse in fucking Zagreb is different

than the cycling discourse in fucking London. Yeah, and we don't even have cycling discourse where I live other than we like people have a fucking hate on for fat bikes, which I actually empathize with at this point after enough run ins with the people who ride them. You just don't hate them for fucking racist Dutch reasons though. No, I hate them because it's like, you know, the same reason of when you're driving a car and someone in front of you cuts you off and you see it's someone driving an Audi or a BMW and the back here like, of course they're driving that.

I mean, having cycled in London for six years, I knew I was going to get, if I was going to die on my bike, it would be because of a BMW driver. What does BMW stand for? Big massive wanker. So, I mean, it's, it's exactly the same with like a fat bike. It's like, I, of course, because they're on a bicycle, I could see who's riding it, whether most of the time they're quite young, but like, whenever someone does something incredibly unsafe around me on a bicycle, like, of course they're quite young. But like whenever someone does something incredibly unsafe

around me on a bicycle, like of course they're riding a fucking fat bike. Like it's just like something about like once you sit on top of them, I assume the same thing happens when you put the keys in your new Audi, your brain just shuts off. Like I'm going to make everybody suffer. Yeah. It's like the chopped and screwed scary version of the free birds solo, you know, just like inflicting. Do you want to know what that phenomenon is called? It's like, anyone who cuts me off is riding a fat bike. It's called the Mine Hop Effect. We talked about it.

Yes, it's true. This actually has something to do with books. Of course, I love reading, I love writing. I'm an author. I always have at least a fucking Kindle in my pocket when I'm going somewhere because I always read. I hate the idea that it's an exercise, a hobby that somehow makes you smart. You don't have to be smart to read. I mean, we are all from countries where the literacy rate is pretty much 100%. So your mileage may vary.

It's not some in-depth intellectual exercise to read as a hobby. It doesn't make you better than anyone else. And it's really annoying when people get like this, love the smell of their own farts about that kind of shit, or flips out of that as someone who absolutely never reads, but thinks and makes them seem smarter. So they'll own a ton of books, or like have books on a nightstand, but you've never seen them read.

And it's like, why are you doing this? Name one other hobby that people do this with. It is weird. I'll just say this, because I remember, you know, before I applied to an MFA and then doing an MFA is that like there is this whole culture around sort of like fetishizing the craft of writing itself and being a writer, like writer things around you. Like the joke term you'd hear is being called writering. And like it always just seems so weird to me because it's like-

I'm just trying to imagine another hobby that people do this with, you know? Yeah. Because reading is a hobby. Like, yeah, being an author and a writer is something completely different with I have my own gripes with and I honestly can't even say I love it. So it doesn't really fall into the category of this question. But like, I'm trying to imagine another like film. I mean, everybody watches movies and TV. So like, I guess you could try to show our Joe, we are not wading into the film, bro. No, I know. I'm not a film, bro. I don't give a shit about theater. Like whatever. But like when it comes to like other hobbies that you do to pass the time, like video games.

Oh, I got one for you, brother. Audio files and vinyl. And I say this as a guy with a lot of records, but yeah. Okay. But like you would actually listen to those, right? See like, are people buying vinyls and not listening to them? Yeah Oh, yeah more into playing the same sort of reference records on like they're more Insanely expensive stupid kit then actually kind of enjoying the thing that makes them like music in the first place see that but at least that gives You something more to it like you have this insane kit that you found you bought maybe rebuilt, but like reading is just books

Yeah, you're right. I mean locate right. It's not like you're like, oh, well, I got The Sun Also Rises, but I got an original print. So it's somehow better. It's cool to hold the old object that doesn't change the book itself as opposed to it's like, yeah, I spent $10,000 on this speaker that's magically made of wood somehow. And now I'm going to listen to Steely Dan's Asia for the thousandth time on it. But it's going to sound better as well. Hey, hey, don't out me like that. I know. I guess my gripe is just weird intellectual elitism and a hobby that I enjoy.

It comes across as a very insecure behavior. Try hard. It's fucking try hard. I want to ask you this really quickly before we end, because Tom, me, Joe, we're all from a similar background of getting to where we are, but the path that Destiny might have picked for you. And so a lot of stuff is because you were interested in it and you just pursued an interest. I have found this as a latecomer to the world of doing writing, books, literature, et cetera,

is that one of the things that really shocked me was all this notion of before you enter into this space of things, you're supposed to haul these great books you're supposed to have read. And I did read a lot of them. And then you realize how many people haven't. They had all the sterling educations and money and time too. And they just didn't read at all. They didn't read the books. They didn't, they gleaned it. They faked their way through lectures, but they didn't actually read it. And I'm not saying I'm a better person for it, but it was a weird thing because I came into it being like, no, this is the baseline standard. You have to have done this or no one will take you seriously. And you're like, nah, actually

nobody fucking, they don't read shit. Like I've read Ulysses, I've read Infinite Jest, I've read Gravity's Rainbow. Like not because I'm like, oh, I'm so smart. I thought I need I liked them and also I thought I needed to. I mean, here's the thing. That brings up a completely different one of my opinions when it comes to to writing and being an author, which is not on topic. But I'll take a very quick stab on it. Some people probably won't like.

But I don't give a fuck about what on it. Some people probably won't like. But I don't give a fuck about what you read. It doesn't make you a better author. I think that being a good author, being a good writer, has more to do with your thought process and less to do with what you're consuming. Because if your writing is heavily influenced by what you're consuming, you're not writing, you're just recreating. I think you should, if you're writing about a specific genre, you should read books within that genre to kind of get your mind in the right place or whatever.

But I don't think reading fucking Infinite Jess is going to make anybody a better author. No, I don't even think it's... It's an interesting, it's like a grand scope, but it's not actually like in a lot of ways, it's not particularly well edited. So like it's way bigger than it needs to be. I will say this though. I think reading for pleasure and reading to see how authors are doing things are two very different things. But you don't have to be doing the latter all the time. And also for all the things that people will say about X is good and Y is bad and X genre is good and Y genre is bad and high brow, low brow, etc.

No such thing. I will say this, that Shirley Hazard only published three novels in her lifetime and was considered this phenomenal author that everyone loved and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was a good writer, don't get me wrong. But in The Transit of Venus, she kills off the main character with a surprise plane crash on the last page. So don't fucking tell me shit about like there's important highbrow authors don't do. Come on, come on. Yeah. And anybody who says that there's certain genres are better than other genres, it's a navel gazing pile of... They like the smell of their own farts and they want to sound...

There's no such thing as a good genre, a bad genre. It's a genre you enjoy and a genre you don't. That's it. That's all there is. I wanted to get Tom's response about this idea of the sort of like when you aren't born into the class of people who are supposed to be doing something, that sometimes you approach it differently and you realize that you may have done more work than the people who are there to be doing something that sometimes you approach it differently. And you realize that you may have done more work than the people who are there by default. My last thing I'll lead you with is that at the time that... Right around the time Philip K. Dick died, he was still not taken seriously as all as anything besides a pulp author and

was completely derided in America and authors in Europe in the sort of class of people who were being considered for these big national literary prizes were like, we want to recommend this guy for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Because they were just reading his books and like, wow, these are fucking great. Whereas in America, it's like, oh, it's sci-fi. It's for little kids and nerds. This isn't real literature. Robert Leonard It's effectively still the same way that science fiction is looked at today, despite the fact modern science fiction authors have taken a lot of the classics and have done so many better things. Like Adrienne Tchaikovsky has written some of the best science fiction ever written better than any classic.

And you'll never hear them be uttered in the same sentence as any of the what like the foundational aspects of science fiction, even though there's a hundred times better, but and they'll never be taken seriously as like literature because it's genre. And people still have this idea that like even fantasy gets a better treatment than science fiction when it comes to how they're pictured like every giant new IP that comes out that just crushes the world it gets you know TV series whatever it might be movies it's normally fantasy it's very rarely science fiction because people still look down on it and it's because that you know the history of the pulpiness, the over the top campness,

whatever, whatever. Like, is that any fucking different than like Terry Goodkind? I've read a lot of Norman Mailer and like the man's just horny and constantly cheating on his wife and then stabbing her. Sure. It's just patent elitism. Or some people think like, well, my book that I read is about Mopi tennis coaches or people being very introspective about, I don't know, fucking consciousness or whatever.

But you get all of that shit in science fiction and fantasy too. You just get other stuff with it. It just fucking infuriates me. If you're infinite, just curious, the thing I would say is that it's not really, you're not going to necessarily, it's not always worth it unless you really enjoy it. A lot of it doesn't need to be there. It is a great book about addiction. It's like the final little Matryoshka doll in the very center of all the other shit. But Tom, I wanted to get your response on.

I do read fiction, but a lot of stuff I read is nonfiction. And I think for me, I think that is leveled at me from my friends is, Oh, you have all these like weird books and stuff like it can be construed as pretentious. Like literally the, like a couple of weeks ago, I bought a book, a book of firsthand accounts of lesbianism in nuns in convents in the mid 20th century. And like it arrived and I was talking to a friend about it and they're like, why did you buy that? And I was like, because it's interesting. Like I live my life with a kind of, I don't know, curiosity about the world. Like I find that stuff's interesting. Like I live my life with a kind of, I don't know, curiosity

about the world. Like I find that stuff like interesting. You can read what you find interesting. Interesting and fulfilling. And it's like, I, I dunno, I just like- For some people it's that for other people it's like weird young adult books. Who gives a shit? Who cares? My thing is that like less so to kind of the enjoyment of it. It's more so like, I think people should read what they find fulfilling. And like it's different than like, like literary or art criticism. Like I very much operate on the kind of along the lines of like John Berger, the art critic

of that, like art exists because it tells you something about your life and about the world and just because you don't have the specific language to discuss it, that will be used in a kind of a higher art circles doesn't mean you don't get to enjoy it. And like, I think people would benefit in general just operating with a bit more curiosity about their lives and about the world and the stuff they consume. So that's really it. What's the name of the mid century non lesbian book? Um, I'll tell you now. We're the people demand.

I'll say my literary nerd book is that I mean, at a time, probably my favorite author was Roberto Bolaño. And like, I read a lot of pretty much all of his stuff. Some of it, maybe some of the newer stuff I haven't read that they found because he died in 2003. But he mentioned being really deeply influenced by a book of book of prose poetry in the French language in the 70s by a woman named Sophie Podolsky who died very young called... The title is translates basically like the land of anything goes. Very rare book. I actually have a copy, but fragmented prose poetry in

French in the 1970s is very hard to read even if you're a French speaker. So I'm hoping that someday my French will be good enough to really understand it, but I do actually have it. And so that's the level of nerdness I'm willing to go on and fuck it. Why not? I mean, what else? Life is finite. What are we going to say, Tom? The book is called Breaking Silence Lesbian Nuns on Convince Sexuality by Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan. That's like the book that fucking Joaquin Phoenix is pretending to read an eight millimeter

in the porn shop. Then Nicholas Cage makes him take the fake cover of the book off and actually it's uh it's it's other voices other rooms by Truman Capote all right fellas I don't even know what we're talking about anymore so that's a podcast but you host other podcasts plug those other what a hell awaited dad kill James Bond I have beneath the skin and glue factory this is the only podcast I host if you made it this long consider supporting us on patreon you get like seven almost seven years of bonus content, Discord access, access to every episode a week early. You get ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merch and I don't know other things. I've literally lost track of this point. Side series. We have

side series and stuff too. There's a lot of content, give us $5 and you get it all. Until next time, sink into the mud. Feed it tractors or it'll drop a tree on you.