Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 425 - Peter Ortiz, The Marine Murder Cryptid

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

TICKETS TO OUR LIVE SHOW IN CORK, IRELAND ARE NOW AVAILABLE! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-cork-26th-september-tickets-1993823733459 CAN'T MAKE IT? NO PROBLEM! WE'RE STREAMING IT (WITH VOD) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-cork-26th-september-2026-tickets-1993900928351 GET JOE'S BOOK! Ebook, Audiobook, and Paperbacks now available! https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ Or you can buy the ebook and audiobook directly from us: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/ Peter Ortiz, a rich kid from New York City, serves in the French Foreign Legion before joining the Marine Corps, becoming a spy during WWII, and fighting the Nazis alongside the French Resistance, all while dual-wielding pistols, in full dress uniform, and wearing a cape. SOURCES: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/peter-ortiz-oss-operative-undercover-hero/ https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/11/05/us-marine-who-forced-nazi-officers-toast-fdr-gunpoint-and-became-most-decorated-oss-operative.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-american-spy-who-surrendered-to-the-nazis-to-save-civilians-180982003/ https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-incredible-saga-of-col-peter-j-ortiz/ https://chroniclesmagazine.org/columns/sins-of-omission/the-marine-corps-answer-to-james-bond/ https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/32798/Ortiz-Pierre-Peter-Julien.htm

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How are we doing today? I am so excited for the culmination of the World Cup after last weekend where I should point out by the time this comes out, the World Cup will be way done it over with. Pick something else No, I was going to tell the story about the Walking in on the England fans doing coke in the bathroom Okay, that one's good

Okay, yeah, I am really excited for the culmination of the World Cup France are playing tonight, which is going to be a good match And then England, Argentina tomorrow I don't know if I'm going to repeat what I experienced on Saturday night watching England versus Norway where during the first half hydration break there was like an accessible toilet like where I was sitting

so I was like I'm just gonna shoot in there and open the door and just seen two guys with the fattest lines of Coke on the fold down baby changing tray and one of them just turned his head looked at me and smiled and then I closed the door I bear in mind

the Brazilian Coke dealer who drinks in that pub picked me up when they scored the equalizer well done I didn't experience anything like this, but I did see a lot of people joking about Switzerland versus Argentina as, you know, pre-war Nazi gold versus post-war Nazi gold. I feel like the Nazi gold jokes actually kind of don't land because there's so many way, way bigger things you could make fun of them for. And I think one I did see quite well was a, you know, shan, meme between a mysterious CV

gap for years 1939 through 1945. That's a much better joke, in my opinion. That's good. I got nothing. Because this is going to come out after the World Cup is over. I would say something, but any team I root for is given the kiss of death. So I'm going to keep my mouth shut for the sake of literally any fans of any of the teams listening. I'm not going to endorse any of you. I'm enjoying the people who are supporting Argentina because that's the woke option.

And I'm like, I'm begging you read anything about Argentinian history. England is bad, but so is Argentina. There's not a single side left that is the good one because also it's FIFA. There wasn't an official free watching zone for us to watch the match in public if we wanted to here in Geneva because France decided to fucking host the G7

in Evian and thus is Geneva had to spend its entire annual security budget doing security for the G7. And then Switzerland surprisingly, very surprisingly, does pretty well in the World Cup. and they're like, sorry, sorry, fuck y'all. And so it's like, it's very, very somber celebration because like, yeah, they literally don't have any money to spend on.

Yeah, regardless of the outcome of any of the matches, it's just going to be, you know, the Patrick Star, another $50 billion for Israel and said it's another $50 billion to Gianni Infantino. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I live in the Netherlands, so nobody's been celebrating here for a while. And to them, I said like, oh, you didn't do well in the World Cup. You know, in Armenia, we call that every year since the World Cup has been invented because we've never been there. You know, three more expansions of the World Cup with like every team in Europe is allowed to go.

We'll finally get it to go out in the round of 900 or whatever. But I will also say this is very funny with Americans getting into American men's national team and be like, wow, we're actually doing pretty well at this. But then you get to a certain point where it's like, no, actually we're not quite at that level yet. And then people just kind of inventing their own fantasy reality, why it's not our fault as Americans. Like, why it's not the team's fault. There's just a million different, like, hallucinations. And I'm like, we had association football.

Now we have dissociation football because you guys are fucking hallucinating. There's a lot that could be said about that Belgium game. But weirdly, speaking of Americans who know French, not Nate, we're talking about a guy today called Peter Ortiz. Sometimes notice Pierre Ortiz. because guys, I've gathered you here to do a solidly dudes rock episode. Hell yeah. Good.

And like all the dudes who have rocked and will continue to rock on this show, the guy we're going to talk about today also kind of sucks. He's a scamp, a near-du-well, you know, a fucking asshole. A rogue, if you will. He definitely would stab you in the back with two knives at the same time if he was a world of Warcraft character. Like I said, we're talking about a game. named Peter Ortiz, or as I have dubbed him, the American James Bond.

Young Peter, or Pierre, as he would come to be known, was born on July 5th, 1913 in New York City to a Spanish-born French art-dealing father and a Swiss mother. Hops, Swiss. I'm all about it. American James Bond doesn't have Q. He has H that develops all his weapons, but they all resemble a burger. One of the things that you're going to find that's very interesting about it. Well, you know, I don't want to steal Joe's Thunder, but the Switzerland mother thing is less interesting to me than every time it's like art dealer father, I'm like, there's some money laundering

going on here. There's some fat. Yeah, that kind of goes without saying. There's some flim flams. Because he's fantastically wealthy. Unlike virtually every other rocking dude we've talked about. For example, Audie Murphy who grew up dirt poor hunting rats for food and sleeping at a train car. Peter grew up wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations.

Even after his parents divorced and he went to live with his mother, she was the upper social crust of the New York City scene with a just about as many connections as you could think of. And like all good rich families, his mom and dad decided, well, we aren't going to raise this fucking kid and they sent him to way to boarding school in France. So he already spoke French fluently, so this wasn't quite as abusive as one would imagine.

But good on that. life he could have been Julian Casablancus. I don't know who that is. Julian Casablancus is the lead singer of the Strokes and he went to boarding school here in Geneva because his dad founded elite models. Every time you guys reference someone, I feel like a fucking code breaker. It's okay. It's okay.

They had a hit album in 2004, Joe. I'm not that old. And I don't know the lead singer of every band who's had a hit album when I was 13. You don't remember the strokes? Just because you can name every B-side from Puddle of Mubb. you know. That's also not me. I only know Puddle of Mud

because the lead singer is honestly just a depressing disaster these days. You know what? It's okay. It's okay. We won't make any any rock and roll jokes, Joe, unless they're centered around Bob Seeger

swinging a samurai sword. I know that always lands quite well with you. I only know Bob Seeger because my Bob loved him. I know. That's why I'm referencing it. That's why I'm referencing it because you were so happy. When I started singing, I'm a samurai from Colorado.

I still remember you laughing so hard. I thought you were going to choke. It's actually one of my best memories of doing this show because this is a positive dude's rock episode. It'll get positive eventually. Tell us about the weird boarding school that I'm sure wasn't freakish. It was. And it may have been more of a prep school connected to the University of Grenoble.

Because he doesn't graduate. He's quite young. It's kind of unclear. We can assume it was as freakish as humanly possible. Either way, he mostly focuses on studying languages. he eventually becomes fluent in at least five of them. Though some accounts put the number of languages that Peter would speak, at least comfortably, up to 10,

but we don't know how true that is. It's funny because Knob is not that far from where I am right now. So, like, now I'm sort of like, wait, is this guy going to suck so much that I can't be like, oh, I wonder, am I kind of like, am I sort of parallel tracking with this guy? You know what I mean? And if you say that and you're like, he invents, you know, the sort of like new slave.

trade on a Zeppelin or some shit like that, then I'm going to feel really bad. I'm much like Peter Ortiz. Nate also does work for the CIA. That is true. Actually, hold that thought, Tom. He does work for the CIA. It's true. Nate's been an asset for years.

Periodically, people love to make this joke. And I'm like, yeah, well, I do have an MFA and creative writing also funded by the CIA. But what I wanted to say was that if, hypothetically speaking, in, in reality, not only do not only do not work for the U.S. government in any way, but my friends who do work for the government have to report me as a known foreign contact on their security clearance. That sounds like something a CIA asset would say, Nate. Yeah. Also, the CIA doesn't recruit

from schools like Indiana University of Bloomington. Sorry. Yeah. Only the Mormons do. Who then go to work for the CIA. Also, Peter never seems to graduate university, at least that we're aware of. He just like me for real. Yeah.

He seemingly spends most of his time hiking, climbing mountains, riding horses, and challenging people to boxing matches at random. if he thought they might be stronger than him. Now, this is where I need to point out to you guys that Peter Ortiz is an absolute brick shit house. Fuck, yeah.

He's about 6'3, about my size, but makes me look. I don't know how to make this sound like it makes sense. He makes me look like I'm small. He has a jaw that looked like if you punched him in it, your hand would break. And I'm going to send a picture to you guys now so you can see him in comparison to other mere mortals. For people who are listening, this will be the episode cover.

He looks like a cryptid. Holy shit. Wow. But this is like when you, like, as a kid, you see a picture of a dinosaur and there's a human standing next to it for scale? Yes. That's why I picked that picture. It's probably like, it's temporally inappropriate because they were in different

lifet timelines, et cetera. But when you describe this person as like horseback riding mountain climbing, strong, fit, loves boxing, built like a brick shit house. All I could think of is like Marlon Brando breaking the heart of all of the women that he's married to because he has to run off and have this dude wreck his whole nonstop. Because like, hey, it's 100% that. We don't know a lot about Ortiz's personal life. I'll just say that.

It was Ortiz and James Baldwin cracking that nonstop. We do know a decent about a bit about Marlon Brando and I stand by my argument. If Ortiz Street could talk. Are we shipping Marlon Brando and Peter Ortiz right now? You're too old to do this, Nate. I'm not shipping a goddamn. I don't know what that means. I don't read A.03. All right, fine. I did it. Whatever. Moving on.

If there was one thing he learned in school, other than more languages than your average white YouTuber in China who likes to shock people by ordering food, it's that he really fucking hated academia. Ed, you know what? Game recognized game on that one. Yeah, good on you, man. This is the reason why I went to a flat roof college behind a Tesco and managed to graduate fun.

Yeah, but also this is back of the day with like as long as you had the right potentials, you could just get a, with like a master's, you could get like tenure, you know, a job for life. And basically you just have to write something about like, we must rediscover capital B beauty or something like that. I'm sorry. But I still respect it, that he hated it. And to be fair, because of who he was, his family connection and unending wealth, he could have done that anywhere if you wanted to. Yeah, there's an extent to which we, as people who did not grow up with money and don't have money like this could not per conceive of the idea of, you can literally do anything you want because, like, anything is open to you.

Like, anything, if you don't want to work or you want to do something, whatever it is, like it's just a sort of, it's like you're born with the God mode and doom. Yeah. You don't know any different. He was also born looking like he had God mode and doom, which only helps. Yeah, exactly. They anglicized his name at Ellis Island because his real name was BJ Blaskowitz. So in 1932, he decided University of Life was not for him.

He leaves, he gets on a boat, and he ends up in city bell Abbas, Algeria, which was, of course, then part of France. Respect. But it's probably best known for being the spiritual home of the French Foreign Legion. Ah. I bet the meals that man was eating went so hard. It's not even funny. I mean, not really, but not really because he's hanging out with the French foreign Legion.

They're eating at best something that could be described as gruel and blood. The blood is also your own. I'm sure he had fucking like, like interdimensional spiritual travel tier levels of fucking cuss-coos, man. I'm sorry. That's not what the dudes in the Legion are eating, Nate. That's what a tourist in Algeria is eating. He didn't join the fucking Legion.

He wasn't in the barracks in the chow hall. He had money. He could do it. He could literally be like, I want God tier platonic ideal of Murghese sausage. And they'd find somebody who understood all those words and made it for him. Knowing about Ortiz, I don't think he ever did anything platonically.

He's just in the barracks eating le goop. Yeah, exactly. And back then, this was one of the places that prospective recruits of the Legion would go in order to join. And that's exactly what Peter wanted to do. Why? Well, the same reason anyone who isn't running from a bucket of criminal charges like my grandfather did when he joined the French Foreign Legion. He was bored with life and wanted to find adventure. Or as he put it, quote, I wanted to live a man's life.

He quickly learned that a man's life of the French Foreign Legion was mostly just being horrifically abused by his officers and NCOs. Legion trading has a historical reputation for being some of the most sadistic any military has to offer, and it's a reputation it has earned. Nowadays, the French Foreign Legion is pretty much the same as any other branch of the French military. But in the 1930s, that was not the case. Deaths from disease, exposure to the desert, training accidents, and more than one occasional murder meant that dying in the ranks of the Legion, even before someone began shooting at you, was very, very common. The death rate was made much worse by the fact that the vast majority of a Legionnaire's time was not spent doing high-speed military training like people want you to believe, but rather manual labor for French construction projects in the colonies, more than anything else.

under the burning desert sun being bitten by malaria-carrying insects. In an air where most militaries were actually just starting to care a little bit about the health of their soldiers in training and moving away from just brutalizing them, the Legion only stepped on the gas. The Legion cared so little about the deaths in training

and just a result of how they lived. They didn't even keep statistics on them at the time. Every minor infraction was dealt with via violence. there's a joke that, to be fair, carries over to today, that learning French was beaten into people. Now, this is not something that Peter had to worry about because he spoke French fluently. However, that meant he was forced to help others learn French,

and if they failed, he was also beaten for it. I hate my Chad teacher being beaten because I'm too much of a moron to learn my verbs. Imagine trying to be more afraid of the Legion cadre than you are of your partner, this giant freak. from New York. Like this cycle of suffering that like you know

they're doing manual labor under the burning son they're being beaten because they don't know the gendered terms for a table. Like you really understand why Albert Camus

wrote Sisyphus as a French Algerian. Peter however loved this shit. In the realm of the psychopath he was thriving. But eventually Peter's father,

Philippe, heard about his son enlisting in the Legion and was horrified. He traveled to Algeria to try to get him out of there, and he met with the Legion commander Paul Roulet, a man who, having served for 30 years in the Legion, had gotten the nickname the Father of the French Foreign Legion,

mostly thanks to his general reorganization of the Legion at large and the efforts he put into chronicling their history and Alderan Mythos, like a real-world version of Croker from Glenn Cook's The Black Company. Imagine how much of an absolute, Dude, hard cunt this fella is. He's been in the Legion for 30 years, and it's the mid-1930s. Yeah.

And before that, he was in the regular French Army 4-10. Ah, yes. This man is likely hardest nails, incredibly experienced. You really don't want to ask him his opinion about the Dreyfus affair, so on and so forth. And during the meeting between the two, Rolet asked Philippe for a chance to just show him around. and if he wasn't convinced that life in the Legion was good for his son, he would let him take him home. Now obviously, this is not something that anybody gets in the Legion for the most part, but Philippe was rich. He had connections.

And Roulet was pretty convinced he could, you know, show him that the French Foreign Legion is a force for good for a lack of better time. I have come to collect my large adult son. Yeah. So Philippe watched Legion training. He observed Legion airs as they did backbring. breaking labor on road projects, and walked away from it thinking, man, the French four legion fucking rocks. Monsieur, we have invented something called Le Wauquism.

So in fact we are making the colonies more woke. They are building roads to import more genders. I fucking hate you. In the end, it's a magnificent. The walkism. You see, because of lewokism, we are building a world where your love are that you take outside of your marriage can be any gender at all. In fact,

we are saying it is possible to be a gender just so long as you commit to adultery. Commit to adultery and French Algeria. That's what the A and a gender stands for in France. Algeria. And that was the other thing they had to convince him of is like

the Algerian French project and therefore the Foreign Legion. Because at the time, the two were seen as inseparable was worth doing. I mean, that's the reason why The Legion would eventually rebel and try to kill Charles de Gaul. And a long enough timeline ends with me being born in Detroit. Because, like, Algeria was seen as inseparable as, like, the soul of the Legion.

And that is more what he sold him on than, you know, actually, you should let us just beat the dog shit out of your kid. But also, the thing is, is Algeria was to France basically what, I mean, like a stronger affinity and connection and, like, sort of notion of integrity of integrity as, like, American allowed. Alaska's relationship. Like, imagine if America had made Alaska estate in 1848 and had a much larger population of both indigenous people and also a much larger population of people who had moved there. Like, Algeria was a department of France. It was, it was not overseas territory or overseas possessions. It was fully like, it was a part of France in the way that, that Provence is part of France,

that Marseille is part of France, that, I mean, you can extend a little bit further, the Corsica as well, but like genuinely. as I was worth pointing out, that this is not just a right-wing mode of thought at the time. There's a kind of like secular, atheist, nationalist French notion of this, but also that Algeria's France, but is at the time and certainly becomes a much more intensely right-wing thing. Like, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply right-wing. There is a joke, but it's also true that since so many Pierre Noirs, ethnic French people who were born in Algeria, and left either in the run-up to or after independence, settled in the southeast coast of France in

Provence Cout desir in that area. They're like, oh yeah, that's why it's like the most fascist part of France. Like, just for context. And so Philippe leaves Peter behind and goes back to France. Not only did Philippe think the Legion was good for France and his son, he loved

the Legion altogether, and he went on to form a veteran support organization called Friends of the Foreign Legion, which still exists today. God, he's a blue star dad. He is. On Papa, detual blue. And by all accounts, Peter was trudging through miles of desert, sucking shit and filth and disease, and, of course, engaging in a horrible colonial war next door during the Rift War when France went to AIDS Spain.

And this war is probably best known for birthing the Spanish Afrikanista movement of generals, which includes one Francisco Franco. Now, obviously, nothing's written about Peter, who is now going by his least, agent named Pierre really goes into the almost certain war crimes that he would engage in, or at minimum, knew about, and watched. But the riff war was a conflict framed by ruthless scorched earth tactics employed by both the French and the Spanish, as well as the deployment of chemical weapons like fosgene and mustard gas. See, I was going to say I thought the riff war was on me and Nate tried to make a joke at the same time during a recording.

It's almost as bad. Yeah. But whatever Peter was doing, just know he was very, very good at it. He was promoted to be the youngest sergeant in Legion history, at least in modern history. The earlier histories are not quite kept very accurately. It's kind of hard to tell. But, you know, it is what it is. He also became a paratrooper.

And in 1937, he finished his contract with the French Foreign Legion. For people who don't know, the standard Legion contract is five years. After three years of good behavior and good service, good behavior in the Legion is quite a fungible term, but a Legionaire can apply for French citizenship, but it's never guaranteed, nor is it given to you after finishing your contract. You can apply. You can also, like my grandfather did, apply for citizenship at any time during your contract if you get wounded through a policy knows French by spilt blood. And I know how evil all of the sounds, but that term, it slaps. Yeah, it's just, it really speaks to like the French language tendency for poetics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is also something Peter qualified for because he had gotten wounded twice during the Rift War and collected just as many war crosses for valor in the process. But he never applied for French citizenship. He seemingly did not give a single shit about it. He was such a standout psycho that he was. offered citizenship outright by the government without applying. Getting injured during the Rift Wars when it goes too far and you hurt his feelings.

He was also offered a ticket to Officers Academy to continue service in the Legion as a commissioned officer. And the modern era of the Legion is a little different, but back then, virtually every officer within Legion ranks were French-born officers in the regular army seconded to the Legion, A very small, very small number were foreign-born men who rose through the ranks, got their citizenship, and then entered Officers Academy, though this would change during World War II through sheer practicality.

But Peter was offered citizenship by the French and offered Officers Academy. He said no, it immediately fucked off back to the U.S. and then moved to California to live with his mom. From there, he had no real idea of where to take his life. I mean, remember, he didn't finish university, He speaks so many languages you'd assume, like if he was alive today, he'd be shilling some useless AI powered language app or something like that.

But he gets a sweet gig as a technical advisor on the set of Hollywood War films. Because it's before World War II. I mean, he's a subject matter expert. There's not a lot of Americans that have his experience. I feel like it's going to be into Hollywood. He's going to meet a strange guy in a bar and he's going to end up working with a an organization that begins with O and ends an S.

Part of that is correct, but not yet. Okay. He keeps this job for a few years, and then in 1939, World War II kicks off. The second the shooting starts, Peters on the first ship back to North Africa

to rejoin the Legion. But this journey gets a little bit harder because the ship he is on is torpedoed, it sinks, and he's pulled from the water as one of its only survivors by a French destroyer. He's so fucking big,

he could be shot as a torpedo. load him into the ballast and fire that fucker. Oh, nine, they're firing Pierre's at us. After talking it up with the crew, he's able to hitch her ride the rest of the way and links back up with a Legion unit that's fighting alongside the British 8th Army. At that point, he's given an immediate battlefield commission to lieutenant, which was hardly surprising because at that point, due to all the losses and the chaos of the general war at large, he was already working as a lieutenant anyway.

One day in 1940, his unit was ordered to retreat. But upon seeing a German fuel depot that had yet to be destroyed, he decided he couldn't follow those orders unless he took it out. He stole a motorcycle and rode off on his own to handle that shit. As everyone else is running away, he sets fire to the what was possibly hundreds of gallons of gasoline. Then he climbs back on his motorcycle and rides away, only to catch a bullet.

This dude rocks so much. The bullet enters his back, bounces off his hip bone, glances upward, hits his spine, and then flies out of his stomach. Jesus. But Peter doesn't die. Instead, he's still at his motorcycle and just tries to gun it back to French lines until he blacks out from blood loss of the Nazis capture him. The Nazis capturing a guy who looks like this is like his footage from like a bunch of rednecks acting like they capture. Bigfoot. But this is fucking B.J. Blascovitz.

Like this is like Wulfenstein remade. French Wolfenstein. He was able to be transferred to a POW camp where he was operated on and his life was only saved thanks to the abilities of a P.O. camp surgeon, probably what the few times that sentence has ever been uttered. From there, he spends the next year and a half being kicked around to different officers specific P.O.C.C.s because for people are unaware, POW camps are most of the time segregated by rank throughout Nazi occupied Europe.

He was moved constantly, which normally doesn't happen, especially to officer POWs from allied nations that the Nazis see as actual human beings, i.e. not slavs. Yeah. But the problem was Peter never stopped trying to escape from the second he was only kind of semi-recovered from being shot in the spine by a rifle. How do you stop a guy who's built like Frankenstein from escaping your POW camp. There's a part of me when you keep talking about Wolfenstein that like they actually were trying to research Mecca Hitler. And so they're like, this guy could be the genesis of it.

Maybe if we can put like, we can put Hitler's brain on his body or something like that. Mecca Hitler, patient zero. He attempted to escape no fewer than five times until he finally got away while being held in Germany in October of 1941. From there, he smuggled himself into France where he could blend in a bit at least to anybody. His size can blend in anywhere and laid Lotus Dad's house for a little while. He debated joining the French resistance or smuggling himself further away to join the free French forces. But the problem was he had been living in POW camps for a year and a half,

constantly trying to get away and as a result, getting his ass kicked. That meant he never fully recovered from his wounds and resulting surgery. So following his father's suggestion, he decided to get back to the United States. So using the French underground, in a series of safe houses. He was able to get over the border into Spain, which despite being fascists, were technically neutral in the war. Then he crossed into Portugal,

got in a boat, and made it all the way back to California, just in time for the attacks in Pearl Harbor, December of 1941. So one of the first stops he had to make when he went back to the U.S. was to like an American government office to be debriefed owing to his foreign service

with the French and then his time as a POD and at that point, he submitted paperwork to immediately be commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army, which, yeah, commissioned this guy, right? But the government just kind of ghosted him. They didn't want the bourgeois Terminator, you know, on the front lines. They literally never spoke to him again. And Peter waited until June of 1942, waiting to hear back from the army. Some people say he was trying to fully recover still, trying to get himself back into what he

considered his best possible shape, which I assume is just freakish. So he gives up on the army, he gives up on his contacts in the government, and he just walks down to a recruitment office for the United States Marine Corps and enlists as a private. Like, why would you not want the guy on your side who has just permanent Hulk hands? Yeah, I mean, those are just his hands. Yeah. He is Hulk, but he doesn't need to be mad to do what he does, which is, you know, calm Hulk is terrifying. Like, there's nothing scarier than the Hulk reading a book of philosophy. Yeah, the recruiter is just like, no, we don't want mixed race Goku in this army. Jesus Christ. So he was sent to Paris Island for training, which is admittedly a bit ironic,

given the whole French connection. And the Marines did know who he was. Like, he brought all of his service records from the Legion with him. And he found training for the United States Marine Corps, you know, famously touted as the hardest thing the U.S. has the offer at the time. Incredibly easy. He barely breaks a sweat. And while he tells the people at the recruitment office who he is and gives him all their paperwork, it's pretty clear that the drill instructors at Paris Island were not told about his background because they are repeatedly impressed with this new, if a bit older, recruit.

He torched everyone around him without really seeming to try. And then upon graduation, where for people who have never seen this or whatever, that's when you put on your dress uniform for the first time and go marching around like a dipshit, he puts on his Marine Corps dress uniform and his French military awards, which he is allowed to do, which, remember, includes three war crosses for valor and two wound badges. Hell yeah. Just absolutely stunting on every Marine there. Nobody has ever been war-mogged as much as.

everyone around this dude. He's also, you know, a giant freak. Now, the drill instructors are suddenly like, wow, this suddenly makes a lot of sense to us. So after 40 days of training, 40 days after enlisting, Peter submits his paperwork to be considered for a commission to be an officer.

The commander of Paris Island personally sends his paperwork to the commandant of the Marine Corps with his personal recommendation that this guy should immediately be promoted because he would be wasted in the ranks as a private. So they did. They immediately commissioned him a lieutenant. And he was kept in the training depot for two months as an assistant trainer before being

sent to Camp Lejeune to go through paratrooper school for a second time. 40 days to become a lieutenant, he's hitting Israeli levels of promotion right now. At this point, the Marines, the U.S. government and all the little psychos in between finally realize that, you know what, Peter might be better used for something else and throwing him into the Pacific to die in a coral reef the size of a standard suburban backyard. So like, we got his medicare's his military records from France

and they seem to have given him some sort of like officer title we're not aware of called the Duke Nukem. His fiefdom of nukem. Exactly. That makes him sound kind of like Belgian or something like that. Don't insult this war criminal that way. I mean like they could

deploy him as a tactical weapon as a pirate trooper literally just like drop him straight into the ground, like a parallel, like a fucking rod from God, or like the drop pods in Halo 2? Yeah, you know, like, that scene from saving Private Ryan where the sniper's like, you know, you put me within two kilometers of Adolf Hitler

with a good sight line wars over. That's actually true with Peter. Like, just drop him somewhere in Berlin and he'll emerge a week later covered in blood and like, Nazis are done. He was given to the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. the baby CIA.

Officially, he was the assistant naval attache, but in reality, his job was, thanks to being fluent in Arabic and French and German, to be parachuted by German lines in Tunisia and organized local militias to fight the Nazis. At the time, all this was under the guidance of the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE. And all of this was in preparation for Operation Torch,

the invasion of northern Africa. So he's on the ground ahead of everyone. else. And everything is going pretty great all the way up until the invasion starts. Because as American forces push into North Africa, just like in general, they have no idea who this guy is or what he's doing. Your average American soldier can't even point out where he is on a map. He probably doesn't even know what country he's in, let alone who's an ally. And they're not told about any of this shit. So one day his militia comes across an American unit and they start shooting at them. Peter is very nearly killed and he's able to convince his militia to surrender

rather than shoot back. Then he goes over to talk to the Americans, at which point he's taken as a POW again. You know when fucking this guy's file crossed Alan Dulles' desk, his eyes popped out, his tongue rolled out of his mouth and he started hitting himself on the head with a hammer going Ouga! Ouga! At first the Americans think he must be some kind of Nazi spy because why the fuck would a Marine lieutenant be running through the desert at the head of a bunch of Tunisian militiamen? But after speaking to the officer in charge, for a little while, he and his men are released to go about their business. He and his members of the local militia, other OSS operatives, they all continue working with the SOE. And thanks to the wonderfully named

Kermit Roosevelt, yes, he is FDR's son, as well as the historian of the OSS during the war. That is actually where Kermit the Frog, where the name comes from his Kermit Roosevelt. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. This is Irish person encounters American figure of history for the first time. But yeah, 100%. Like that his name was Kermit. And we also know that thanks to him that Peter and the rest of the OSS did not exactly do what the SOE had in mind for them. The SOE in general focus on reconnaissance and sabotage to support larger objectives, which makes sense, right? The OSS either because it was staffed with dead-eyed serial killers like Peter who had learned to murder people in colonial wars

or because they straight up didn't want to listen to the SOE decided not to do that. Instead, Peter, his militia and his growing band of OSS operatives turned into more of a hit squad. Stalking and killing German soldiers became their focus more than anything else. And hey, if you can blow something up while you're out there killing people, great. Though there is some argument about this.

It does not surprise me that the historian of the OSS, again, Kermit, wants to make their guys sound like dashing rogues, ambushers, and the like. Because the story SOE tells is a little different. They thought so little of their OSS counterparts that they believed, at least for a while, that the only thing they would be good at was murdering dudes because they lacked the field craft to do their kind of work without getting captured by the Nazis, and then being pulled apart like slow roasted pork during interrogation and ruining their operation.

So he got turned into doing what he did best, killing people because the British thought that he couldn't do anything else. And admittedly, as we're going to go on, they may have been right about Peter. I was going to guess this dude is really good at killing people. Oh, he is so good at it. He is Picasso and he's yet to paint his masterpiece. I mean, Spanish guy in France. Yeah, tracks. but really Peter's time as an OSS operative

is about to change with the realities of the war on the ground for example the Battle of Kazarin Pass so we'll eventually go into this a depth at some point in the future we're not going to go into it here but to make a long story short the Battle of Kazerine Pass erupts in February of 1943 and begins with a legendary ass kicking on the US Army they get their ass kicked for 50 miles and really this only stops when the British

come and save them and together they're able to stop from being completely rolled over by the Nazis and their Italian allies. General Omar Bradley calls it easily the worst performance in U.S. Army history. Asterix. Up to that point. But Peter's running around in the middle of all of this, just kind of picking up side quests as he goes. He fights with the British. He fights with the Americans. He runs into elements of the free French forces, of which there are a lot of Legion units, one of which happens to be committed by an old friend of his, so he just joins them too. And somehow, he manages to survive all of them. without any more speed holes being punched in him.

But that luck is about to run out in March. Because while operating around the Matleg Pass region, in support of the British, he went under reconnaissance patrol by himself to find some German tanks, as one does. It's nighttime. It's been raining for three days straight, so this forces him to slog through knee-deep mud. And this is enough for him to say,

you know what, this might not be such a good idea to do on my own, so he turns around to head back towards camp. And then he gets walked up by a machine gun. gun position. Ah. One bullet shatters his hand and the other hits him

in the leg. He falls into the mud and it's only then that he sees that the German position that just lit him up is only 30 meters away. Down to one working

hand and leg. He crawls through the slop and begins spamming grenades at them like some kind of shithead and call of duty who is definitely hacking because

he killed me one too many times. He's doing one man army MW2 tactics. He's swapping out his load out to really. the Germans watching him

switch through eight weapons all at once what in the fuck where is he keeping all of these like up until this point this man is doing the equivalent of like running through a battlefield saying like Dracula flow quotes in fringe and now he's gonna I'm going to single-handedly grenade this position with

one arm and one leg and he does he destroys the position he kills a few of them in and sends the rest running then he turns around and crawls all the way back to his base to the rest of the team that he had left behind, who then carry him to a surgeon. Once again, he's sent back to the United States to recover.

He's awarded a Purple Heart for his wounds, which I assume he just kind of chucked into a desk drawer somewhere off with all of the other awards he's gotten for being shot at this point. And he's promoted to captain. Once there, he begins writing his report about what happened, because if there's one thing, everyone wants to do while recovering from multiple bullet wounds, it's doing government paperwork. You'd be really annoyed if they shot the hand you right with as well.

his, but this guy's so cool, he probably like, yeah, I'm ambidextrous as well. You could shoot me in both my hands. I'll write verse with my mouth, bitch. He's writing his reports with his feet, like he's Christy Brown in my left phone. His report is eventually sent to William Donovan, the commander of the OSS, who wrote in response simply, quote, very interesting. Please re-employ as soon as possible. And they did. All right. After recovering, Peter was ordered to report to the Congress.

Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C. And if that sounds funny, it should. Because this place is exactly what it sounds like. This is probably of its time, but I did not realize there was such a thing as the Congressional Country Club. Uh, yeah, it doesn't quite exist as it used to, but yeah, it was around for a long time. Uh, it was a golf course and country club that was kind of going under, but then had been taken over by the OSS during the war.

Right. Okay. Why, you ask? For training. and if you're picturing a bunch of psycho killers and saboteurs tearing ass through a golf course and blowing shit up, that's exactly what happened. By the end of the war, so much damage had been done to the country club, but the government had to pay them enough money in reimbursement that allowed the club to be completely rebuilt from the ground up. Fucking Peter Ortiz is just on like the tea for the turd fucking hull hitting grenades with a driver. I just love the idea. I mean, there's a part of me the things like that would be so cool if you weren't working for a bunch of right-wing psychos.

I realize they were trying to defeat the Nazis so it was good in this case. But like, you know, then thus paperclip, et cetera, after the fact, you are still working for a bunch of right-wing psychos, just slightly. They're less threatening to international capital, I suppose. To be fair, Peter doesn't have anything to do with that at least. Oh, no, I understand that. When you described that, like, they sent you to a golf course in Washington, does you see until you go fucking nuts?

That sounds really cool because I hate golf courses and I'd love to blow them up, but also, like, you're doing it in service of a cause that's good at the time. Yeah, the idea of getting like free rain to blow up a. country club sounds pretty great. It's like if Delta Force was the thing that you trained for so you could go after like all the people who were the biggest pieces of shit tax sheets in America and you actually were like kicking there instead of like, you know, going and mass cream people in the third world. I'd be like, hell yeah.

I'm going to do the IRS compliance, but it's a tier one unit. That would be so fucking cool. The tier one unit blowing up the local vape shop. There Peter joins what was known as Operation Jedberg, sometimes simply known as the Jedbergs. These were joint British-American special operations teams meant to be airdropped into occupied Europe for the purpose of organized and working with local resistance movements. Generally speaking, Jedbergs worked in three-man teams, one British, one American, and one from whichever country they're looking to operate in. These teams were given code names, normally

meaningless first names like Hugh, Reginald, or Steve, but also sometimes random medicine in order to confuse any German spies, because we all know the only medicine any German doctor is aware of is either ibuprofen tea or fresh air. That in fucking nuclear grade amphetamines back at those days. Well, that wasn't medicine. That was just morning coffee. Roger. Once recruited into the teams at the country club, Peter was sent to the Scottish Highlands to meet with the rest of his team he'd be working with and do some training. The Brit of the team was Colonel, and this is the biggest name alert of the episode here. Henry Hopkins Augustus Thackweight. fucking hell. Every time I hear a last name like that, it always makes me think of like,

there's got to be some sort of equivalent raw doll character about someone who's really like particular and annoying. But like there are some of these names who are like, oh, you've never heard of Henry Hopkins and Augustus Gloop. I just keep thinking about these things. It's just like, yeah, the degree of name alert, it's like these are people who like, yeah, it sounds like the guy who was headmaster at his boarding school that was fired because he wasn't sadistic enough. Like, it's just the strangest, those names, man, they get you. Henry Legweth the Third, encountering America's woka super soldier. Incredible.

To be honest with you, I would say also another name that even sounds even more like that was Sopwith Tabloid. But I mean... Yeah, yeah, the Sopwith Tabloid is my favorite play name we've ever stumbled to court. That's lived in my brain for weeks after that recording, quite frankly. Donate to the Patreon. Go listen to our bonus episode and learn all about the... Sopwith tabloid crashing into Mondeh.

You can learn about Maurice Wilson, learn about my version of God only knows that I composed on the fly about how you wish you had died in World War I. There's a lot of things. The other member of the team was the free French radio operator, Andre Foucault.

Another great name there. Yes. He had this idea that he should fly around the other pilots who could be watching them at all times. I'm about to do fucking biopolitics as this bullet enters your skull. Together they become Operation Union One.

Due to land in France and organize the resistance five months before Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day. The men are packed into a plane and dropped via parachute into the hot Savoy region of France and the French Alps. And there's a reason why they picked that area.

What, Ote-Savois? Like right across the fucking border for where I live right now, yes. And it's a hotbed of the French resistance. It is, yeah. It's estimated that there's like almost 10,000, and active members there at the time. And I know what you're thinking, right?

This is an undercover mission. These guys are spies, saboteurs, whatever. They all know if they get captured. They're going to be murdered in a really bad way after having the most unspeakable things you can imagine done to them in a shack somewhere. And that is true, kind of. They jumped out of the plane in civilian clothes,

but Thakweight and Peter changed into their military uniforms, medals and all upon landing. They did this not to be shot immediately by Germans, but to impress the French resistance, because you should remember that they're the first ally soldiers in France since 1940. Not to mention Peter's decked out in mostly French military awards in order to impress them. I thought you're going to say he changed to his uniform midair. Yeah, he's just got like the warm up buttons like an NBA player, just rips it off.

And then there's just like some French farmer like five miles away, just a pair of underpants gradually floating down out of the air. According to Thakweight, Peter went way further than him when it came to wearing his military uniform because Peter never took his off and would just walk through nearby towns wearing his. But he did add something to his uniform that was not standard Marine Corps issue. A cape. No. Shut the fuck up. Yes.

I am not making this up. I know it sounds insane. This isn't some Marine Corps historian or Peter himself. fluffing this shit up to make it sound cooler. Members of the French Resistance told multiple stories about this guy and took pictures of him dressed like this at the time while in their village hideouts. And the Jedbergs made contact with the resistance and found surprise

they needed just about everything to make their operations easier. So the Jedbergs became a logistical relay point, which is the best way to support any resistance movement. They used the radio to send requests back to London, and then having the needed supplies air dropped into the region. It was everything from literally tons of guns and explosives to medical supplies and cash money.

And then there's just a guy who's like six foot three and dressed like Vlad Dracula. Yes. That's so fucking cool. Oh my God. I never thought I would say this when it comes to this is so cool. But Nate, hold that thought.

This is about to get incredibly wild. Using those supplies they got from the British, they were able to set up training camps, hospitals, depots and even assist them to pay pensions to the families of resistance fighters who were killed or captured by the Germans. They set up a series of safe houses as well as search and rescue teams to track allied airmen who had been shot down and then smuggle them through their lines back into friendly hands. And soon, they were leading resistance cells into combat, all while

yes, Peter continued to wear his fully decked out uniform, Cape included. This dude rocks fucking so much. He's basically. basically like the closest thing to a ronan that has ever existed in Western military culture. And if you're wondering what was he armed with, a rifle perhaps, a submachine gun maybe. No.

Pistols akimbo. Fuck. Yes. He's just vampire hunter D, man. Jesus Christ. He looks like it. I know. I know. That's the first thing that came to mind. I mean, I was thinking to myself as you were describing, this guy's obviously going to have an American accent when he speaks

English and he's probably going to have a deep voice. He's a big ass fucking guy. And I'm like, him narrating is going to sound like the dubbed over English dialogue from Ninja Assassin that they used on the Jizz album Liquid Swords. Like him telling his life story, very well, it's yours too. Like very much like, that's it. This guy

is Vampire Hunter D. He's the ninja assassin. It's, this is crazy. I can't believe this is real. The sight of Peter, Cape flapping behind him, leading resistance members on ambushes and assaults, became so well known that German soldiers began complaining about the quote,

Tall Marine. He is B.J. Blascovitz. Like, this is B.J. Blascovitz shit. I feel like this is sort of like Youngian analysis about archetypes and storytelling that all of the heroes of games like Doom and Wolfenstein Duke, Newcomb, etc. all flow down from like the sort of cultural osmosis

of some places in the world having been exposed to this guy in real life. You can be this guy if you assimilate your own shadow. You can become Peter Ortiz. During one operation, he and his cell rescued four downed pilots, but since the cell become so active, security had been stepped up in the region, meaning it had closed off their normal route of escape. So Peter came up with an idea that

only Peter could. And he's about to prove that he is a lot more than just a murder machine. Yeah. He dressed up like a Gestapo agent, ID card included, simply walked into the nearby Gestapo base, and proceeded to steal a car. But wait, but wait, before he's, done and before the base figures out that they are being robbed by the largest man they've ever seen, he steals nine more cars from them.

Nico, it's your cousin, Roman. Like this dude rocks more than anyone we have ever talked about. Audie Murphy does not come close. I mean, this is like, yeah, we're talking about Youngian analysis. This is the mask too badass

to fit the face. Like full on, dude. I can't have a little. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, it's like, you know, he's just got to look confident. Confidence matters. This guy could be doing way better instruction for young men than any of these fucking freaks out there doing right wing bullshit. He'd be like, yo, if you're confident and you look at the part,

you walk in and steal nine cars from the goddamn Gestapo. While looking like him and they all know about him. They're just going to look at you and be like, damn, I wish that guy would tell me what his workout routine is. I want to look like him. Peter, what's your stack? Yeah, exactly. There's a single security guard in the like Gestapo.

like Depo, who does like the metal gear solid exclamation point and like turns right and sees them and then just turns back. Yeah, but you got to mix metaphors on video games here. All he does is just be like, hey, man, drink water, lift heavy and stretch a lot. And they go like from zero to 100 love points in the Sims. Like they fully just like just huge hearts appear above their heads. Like his physical stat is a 10, but so is the speech in charisma. He can't get physical checked. He can't get charisma speech checked. He's, yeah, this guy would be banned as a character in tabletop gaming for being too fucking annoying. because you'd lose to him all the time.

He's like odd job in 007 Golden Eye, where he was banned by my siblings because you could just like go under everybody and cry, chop them to death. Yeah, whereas if you make somebody play as Baron Sam Diyah, that's what it's like being the Germans fighting this guy, that you take damage in your head from hitting the really tall hat. This guy is living in existence of when you're like playing an RPG

and you're on like new game plus five and you just have maxed out stats and you're steamrolling every boss. The stats just keep carrying over. Yeah. That implies that all of his time in the French military was just XP grinding in preparation for this. Yeah. I mean, World War II is kind of new game plus for someone who's in the military before World War II. And then he disguises both himself, his other operatives, the downed pilots, they all pile into the stolen cars and they get him over the border to Spain. And for probably the coolest version of Grand Theft Auto we've ever talked about on the show, he's awarded the Order of the British Empire.

But easily the most action movie shit that Peter was going to do had yet to happen. Now, he was out eavesdropping in a bar, which he often did. When he did this, he would change out of his uniform into civilian clothes to just kind of hang around and try to overhear people because he spoke German fluently. And one day while doing that, he heard a group of German officers, shit talking to French resistance, himself personally, FDR and the Marine Corps. This infuriated him and maybe anxious because he hasn't shot anybody in a few hours.

He went back to his safe house, put his uniform and cape back on, and went back to the bar. Dudes pull it up two pistol to die vedder spoons to shoot fucking Nazis that are talking shit about him. So first, you know, covered by his cape, which is non-military issues so he could like conceal his military uniform. He orders the German officer's drinks.

They thank him and are about to drink when he throws his cape back and draws out his akimbo pistols that he was carrying, I assume in a very dramatic cross-draw and demands they drink in honor of the president of the United States

FDR. This dude rocks so much. He's pulling up like blade, like Neo, like Vampire Hunter D, and he's like, say it again, bitch. So they do drink

to honor FDR. Then he orders another round of drinks. still with guns on them and orders them to toast the Marine Corps. And they do. This is all true, but what happens next is a little less certain. According to Peter, he doesn't shoot anyone. He simply holsters his guns and walks away.

I assume with the flourish of his cape, like the most murderous version of Tuxedo Mask that has ever existed. His reasoning for this is that he meant to scare the shit out of them because the Germans were already terrified of him. and he's sewing propaganda in an irregular war and the story would spread if all these men survived. However, other accounts have him shooting all these men down on the spot.

Personally, I feel like if a guy like Peter had shot all of these guys, it was definitely a story he would have told. This is not a man who is shy about telling stories that end with him being up to his ankles in human viscera. Yeah, sliding on the ops in divetterspoons in Nazi German. now it feels like all of those scenes of comparable intrigue and glorious bastards are like the fucking like diet cola version of what actually happened with this dude yeah exactly because

if you made this into a movie it would be fucking ridiculous and to be fair they do make it into two different movies we'll talk about that later yeah it's gonna come across like like a chivalric epic or something like that like the night with the sword that can cut a hundred men in twain and one blow or whatever yeah if you made this into a movie kermode a male or be like, oh, the plot was very believable. I didn't, we couldn't believe that this character did all these things. And in real life, Peter Ortiz is way

harder than Sir Christopher of Benoit ever was when it comes to being a night. But this wouldn't take hold with unusual suspects in America because they would hear Peter Ortiz and just go extremely racist in the very, very American way. 100%. Stephen Miller wouldn't let this movie get made, etc. Because Peter Ortiz is Hispanic

and his mind, even though technically speaking, that's not true. And also because he has hair. He's simply much better looking than him. It's like that scene from Braveheart was like, well, that can't be true. I'm much better looking than this man. After this bat shit episode, Union 1 was extracted and a different team was sent in to replace him. But Peter's time being a murderous French cryptid was not over, because another mission, Union 2, was launched in August of 1944, two weeks before the Allied invasion of southern France

in Operation Anvil. They would carry with them a million francs and a ton of weapons to do what Peter had been doing the first time. all over again. This time, the mission was all Marines plus one member of the Free French Forces. And when they jumped in, one Marines parachute failed and he died. But somehow, when we talk about all of we've talked about regarding Peter, it's kind of astounding that this is the first member of his team to die. Another guy would die a short time later due to illness, but really it should have been a lot worse at this point, all things considered. Peter himself should have died years ago. After that, things started to go to

plan. With the invasion coming, there's a lot less spy shit and a lot more direct action, because Peter, his team, and the general resistance was trying to take strategically important positions and hold them so the Nazis didn't blow them up before the Allies arrived. However, Union 2 would only last 15 days. When they moved into the village of Centron, the Marines and the resistance ran into a large group of German soldiers and soon everything broke down into slow house-to-house fighting. And this happens to be the last thing a small cell of guerrilla fighters really want to get bogged down in because there's only five people with him. Peter originally wanted to fight on. And that's when one of the villagers approached Peter and said, look, we respect what you're doing

and what you're planning to do in arguably our name. But the Germans just wiped out an entire village not too far away in reprisal for other resistance actions in the area. If Peter and his men fought on, the Germans were sure to kill every man, woman, and child in town, and the guy begged Peter, like, please do this somewhere else. But Peter was trapped. He knew they couldn't get out, and deciding he finally found a pile of corpses he didn't want his name attached to, decided that they should surrender in order to save the village. When Peter surrendered, though, he ended up having to do some action movie shit to even do that.

Yelling out that he wanted to surrender in English, French, and German, the Germans just kept shooting at him. So he ran through German lines, started kicking in doors until he found their commander and offered his terms of surrender personally and what might be the most threatening surrender of all time. Because Peter kind of let it be known like, look, you're either going to accept our surrender, don't harm the villagers, or I'm going to fucking kill you. Yeah, exactly. You basically have a guy who looks like Andre the giant, but like marathon runner's shape kicks in your door like, Listen, bitch, we're practicing radical transparency right now. Yeah, like, you're still going to kill me.

You're going to kill all of us, but you're going to die too. What side of that equation do you want to be on? So, the German accepted it. The Nazis probably assumed that they were fighting a lot more than just five guys and were pretty upset when only a few of them appeared. Funnier still, the men in the resistance, including the free French man, had fake marine credentials. But the guy from the free French did not speak English, but not the guy from the free French

did not speak English, but neither did the Nazis. So they couldn't actually prove him wrong that he wasn't really a Marine. This means that they were, because if they're going to be captured as American combatants, that's different than being captured as French resistance members in the sense of being put in a POW camp versus summarily executed. Yeah, being horribly murdered. And to be fair, that's still a very good chance anyway, because they were operating out of military uniform, they fell under the commando order.

they almost certainly would have been executed, but just for some reason, they weren't. But two of the Marines, Sergeant Bruner and Gunnery Sergeant LaSalle, weren't actually near Peter when he surrendered, and figuring the Nazis would just kill them all, took off running. They managed to get away with Bruner sneaking his way back to the invading troops and linking up with them, and LaSalle finding a different French resistance group and getting smuggled through Spain, through Portugal, and back into England. But Peter was taken P.O.W. For arguably, the third time.

He just loves it. He loved being a legionaire and being in captivity is the closest thing to being back in the Legion. Yeah, he longed for LaGoop. Yeah, when you keep someone at a POW camp that long, they just don't know what to do outside of it anymore. Along the way, he constantly tried to escape, he got his ass kicked, and then was chocked into Marlad Biglog Nored. This was one of the more comfortable POW camps for higher-ranking officers from the Navy. So it was like not the worst. Obviously, no POW cape is great, but this is easily the best place you want to end up.

And the highest-ranking American officer in that camp had forbade anyone from trying to escape fear of making their conditions worse. Of course, that did not stop Peter from immediately organizing prisoners and planning his escape, none of which worked, but again, never stopped him from trying again. Then things got weird for the prisoners in April of 1945. The Germans ordered them all out of the camp to begin marching towards a nearby port, and by nearby, I mean, eight days of walking away. They were going to be evacuated due to the incoming invasion forces. But along the way, they got bombed by British planes.

Seeing an opening, Peter sprinted off into the woods to try to get away, but then realized that, I have no map, I have no food, I have no water or weapons. This sucks. He ends up hiding in the woods for 10 days in the elements with no real way of getting to anywhere he needs to go. So he finally says, fuck it, walks back to the POW camp to turn himself in.

But when he stumbles back through the gates, he finds the Germans had abandoned the POW camp and the prisoners were just running it. And then a few days later, the camp was liberated and he was free once again. Peter was sent to Brussels where he demanded another combat mission, but to his great regret, he discovered the war in Europe was over. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel

and added a Navy cross and allegiant of merit to his giant bucket of awards, and despite his requests, they never sent him to the Pacific to kill a whole new group of people. And to be fair, he would probably learn Japanese in like five minutes to make killing people easier. After the war, he stayed in the Marine Reserves, but returned to Hollywood as an advisor, and quickly transitioned to being an actor as well,

thanks to being close personal friends with multi-time Academy Award winning director John Ford who also happened to be a former OSS man. Through his connection with Ford, he'd end up in several John Wayne films. He also got married and had his son, Pierre, as well. But what is funny here is that it seems like Ford only employed him as an actor as a favor for his old OSS buddy

so he'd get a paycheck because absolutely nobody thought Peter was a good actor. His own son, Pierre, said his dad was an absolutely terrible actor, but had fun on the set. Peter never took acting lessons. He never took a single class. He never really seemed to try. He would just show up on set and be himself. And to be fair, he had a look.

You know, there's plenty of good-looking people who get jobs into Hollywood despite being completely devoid of talent. But that's enough about Sidney-Sweeney. Unlike, say, Audie Murphy, when it came to make not one, but two movies about Peter's life, They did not even ask him to play himself. Because say which will about Adi Murphy, he was at least an okay actor who tried to get better.

But there's a weird connection between Murphy and Peter. One of the actors who played Peter was James Cagney, the same actor who would save Audie Murphy's life and then get him a ton of acting jobs. Like, Cagney was the guy who would, Audie Murphy was definitely about to kill himself, let him hot couch and like sat next to him. him to make sure he didn't drink or shoot himself to death.

In 1955, Peter finally retired from the Marine Reserves, but probably not for any of the reasons you're thinking. That's because he demanded to be sent to French Indochina as an advisor so he could work with the Legion again, and the Marine said, no. It's been 10 years. Let me kill a man. So he said, well, if you're not going to let me do my job, then I retire. And he was promoted to colonel on his way out the door and given a full pension.

And that pension ended up being a real lifesaver because acting rules dry up. He also ages out of being an extra before too long. But unlike Murphy, Peter's life does not get deeply weird or depressing. He doesn't crawl

into a bottle or, from what I understand, abuse the people around him and said he, the worst thing he does is move to Arizona, which is an unforgivable sin, but we're willing to give him a pass. He's running around. He's making his own medals all out of turquoise and silver.

Just once again, having spent some time in Arizona, food also slaps out there. Maybe this man is food motivated. Maybe that's really what it is deep down. Yeah, that's why he loves allegiance so much. He loves food that is mushy and tasteless. He should have moved to, like, I don't know, England. He lived there until 1988,

until cancer finally did what nobody else could do and killed him. His funeral was overseen by the world's most confusing honor guard of Americans, British, French, and Germans. and he was buried in his marine uniform, probably stacked so high with awards, they had a stomp down on the top of it to get the clothes like I do whenever I can insist, I can totally make Easy Jets overhead bag requirements.

I mean, I like the idea of the Germans were included in this, he'd be bygones. He did whip the shit out of us. Credit words, too. Game, respect game. Yeah, we respect your body count. Peter Ortiz had so many awards that's kind of pointless to list them all,

but probably the coolest that he got was the French town of Centron honored him by renaming a street after him as a thank you for surrendering and saving their lives or as they put it quote, saving the town's entire people. The end. These dude fucking rocks. Yeah, there's something kind of like somewhere between anime hero and like, you know, creation of like the film industry in America doing like the sort of paladin of the

Wild West kind of thing that can only exist in fiction. and yet this is documented fact. Yeah, it's, I wouldn't have believed all the cape shit if the resistance hadn't taken multiple pictures of him wearing it while in action. Like, the man had a flare for the dramatic, which to be expected from a guy who spent a lot of time studying drama and whatnot. But like, he also understood the importance of propaganda

while murdering more people than we can possibly comprehend. If it really wasn't for the whole riff war thing, I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable. with them as a person. But that's where those people come from, you know? He went in search of adventure. He was good at being a soldier. He was good at killing people.

The things that he was directed towards when he was in the Legion are unambiguously immoral. That's also how this came about. Like, it sucks because, yeah, the cool side is like, wow, this dude. It's like both putting on the show and also being on a walk to walk. Like, that's kind of, that's really amazing. But, yeah, as you said, you know, how did he kind of. It's a non-zero chance that he crossed paths with my grandfather.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, shit. That's incredible. We could see how those two roads differ in the future. But he's definitely on our Mount Rushmore of dudes rocking. Like, I feel comfortable saying that. Our Mount Rushmore has way more heads than the normal one, which is fine because we didn't have to steal a mountain to do it.

It's in our head. You could just rotate it in your mind because that's the only place it exists. We just actually just made a sculpture instead of stealing a Native American holy site. Yeah, at least until we get enough money to steal a mountain from someone. I feel like we could steal a mountain from the Swiss and everybody would be fine with it. They have enough to go around. Got a lot of mountains here.

I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I could buy one in Armenia. We have a lot of mountains and I'm Armenia. It doesn't technically count as colonialism. Yeah, well, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, you can make it in Switzerland, but the mountain has to be closed on Sunday for some reason.

But fellas, that's a podcast. We do a thing on this podcast. Go question from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, support the show on Patreon. This is a completely independent show. We have no sponsors, no investors, nothing like that. You make the show possible.

$5 a month gets you almost a decade of bonus content. Gets you every regular episode early. It gets you access to our Discord, which is a lovely little community. It gets you ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merch. And speaking of live shows, we have a live show coming up on September 26th in Cork, Ireland. Tickets are available now, both in... person and live stream. Make sure you get the right ones. Kind of click the right link. All the links will be in the show notes. We'll have new merch.

We'll have some old merch there. I'll have some books. Come on down. It's going to be a good show. Our first show in Ireland. So let's let's have a good time. But today's question from the Legion is your favorite family pet growing up and why. I have a very easy one here. Okay. For anybody who's listening to the show for any length of time, probably knows. I did not have the greatest childhood on earth. But my mom, I say my mom and not my mom and dad, because he didn't really have anything to do with the house. But my mom had a golden retriever named Kelly that whenever anything went crazy in the house, Kelly would like just sit on top of me, kind of like a untrained therapy dog. And when I was really small, I couldn't walk quite yet. And I would like

grab onto her like fur and she would walk away probably, you know, because there's a small child grabbing onto her. And she'd pull me upright to my feet. And I would like chase after her. So in essence, I was raised by a golden retriever. And that does kind of make sense in retrospect. Wonderful dog. Absolutely wonderful. Save me from being significantly more damage than I already am. Shouts out, Kelly. Do I have to include? Because I mean, I had dogs and I have funny dog stories, but I actually have one that I can say is a neighbor dog that I am. I'll count neighbor dog. Yeah.

So, I mean, one for me and then as a little kid, basically, I just, my parents, friends are neighbors in Kent in Washington where I was born, had an Alaskan Malamute named Pumpkin. And Pumpkin was very, very, very, very patient with me as a toddler and was still alive when I was four when I visited again. And so basically they were like, okay, Pumpkin, I know you normally have your routine and your privacy, but this child basically wants to just hang off you nonstop and she was completely fine with it. But I would also say in a similar vein, when I lived in New Mexico, we had a, my friends' family were LDS. They were the Mormons and they had a number of kids. And their youngest kid was probably about 18 months old when we first moved there when I was about

almost nine. And there was a little boy, his name was Gregory. And so like when I was probably about 10 or 11, Gregory would have been under three still. And one time I was out riding my bike and I saw Gregory out and he wandered off because, you know, New Mexico, very rural, middle of nowhere area, but there were roads and cars and stuff, and it would have been dangerous. And Nana, their dog, who was kind of like a big, like chow, mutt mix, had followed him and basically had basically kept getting in front of him to stop him from getting across the street. And I saw him and I was like, Gregory, you need to go

home. And I was like, hold Dana's collar. And I watched and I was trying to walk him back because I had my bike. I was going to see a friend. And I watched and I realized it's okay. Nana is going to walk this toddler back to the house and keep him safe instead of letting him cross the road. And it's just sort of like, I know dogs can't actually communicate fully the way that we communicate. But seeing that even at like 10 or 11,

I was like, that's a really good dog. So that's my story. Yeah, I'm going to talk about a bad dog. I had this big fat chocolate lab called Phil when I was growing up. And a really, really nice dog.

And I love him. I haven't had a dog since, but we had to put him on a special diet because he got so fat. So I was like giving him the special food and everything and like bring him for what. And they hate the special food, man. They fucking hate it. Oh, but the problem was he wasn't losing any way.

And we're like, what the fuck is going on? And simultaneously, my man, we used to get milk delivered to the house, like, just left on the wall at the front garden because I grew up in the middle of nowhere. And it was like, we didn't get milk for a while. And then my ma spotted the milkman in the pub and was like, oh, what's the crack? Like, you dropped in a receipt. but we haven't been getting milk. And he was like, no, I've been dropping milk off you.

And she's like, well, and it's like, no, we haven't gotten it in like a month. And then my mom was at home one day. And Tony dropped off the milk and put it on the wall. And then she sees Phil go up,

grab the carton of milk off the wall, bring it down to the bottom of the garden, burst it, drink all the milk, and then bury the carton. Oh, my God. My dog's stealing my milk. like literally

and then she he went up to get the other carton my man went out and the dot she swears to God that he looked directly at her

as if oh shit I've been caught yeah yeah for sure like oh god they're onto my milk scheme shit

and like he had gotten with chocolate labs there's a point where they get so fat they start to look like a bear

yes yeah and yeah he was in like that stage stealing cartons of milk drinking them

and then hiding the evidence I love this dog. Fellas, that's a podcast. Everyone, thank you for listening. Like I said, consider supporting us on Patreon. Leave us a review on wherever you listen to a podcast.

It helps immensely. Speaking of reviews. My book, The Highlands Burn, is out and available. You can catch the links and the show notes. Leave it a review on wherever it is. You look up books. That helps a ton. But you host other podcasts.

What are those podcasts? Listen to Trash Future for a podcast. about the tech industry being bad and British politics being even worse. Also listen to Kill James Bond, a feminist film podcast. Also listen to Second Home is my band. Our debut album, Find a Way to Hate It is available everywhere. You can find music. But if you like it, you can actually buy it on bandcamp and we'll actually get money unlike streaming.

Thank you. Beneath skin show about the history of everything told you the history of tattoos, blood work, a show about the economy of violence. And also in September date to be confirmed, I am having a exhibition of my photography. I will save the details once. the location and date is confirmed. Thank you everyone. And until next time,

cover yourself in a cape and threaten Nazis at gunpoint.