Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The West Point Eggnog Riot

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

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Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Davis had one hell of a track record for booze-related incidents at the school. He would sneak out constantly, get plastered, and try to sneak back into the academy routinely getting caught. Or in one case, he nearly fucking died after falling at a 60 foot ravine. At one point, Davis was arrested at the tavern court-martialed and then pardoned. Think of all the moments in history that could have changed already. That's not even to account what's going to happen next. Well, yeah, it's one of those things where it's the same sort of situation. It's like with Greg Abbott, it's one of those things where it's the same sort of situation.

It's like with Greg Abbott, if that tree had just been six inches to the left, we would have been spared so many things. Fuck me. Another fun fact here. One thing that Thayer did to crack down on gambling, which he banned, but cadets kept gambling, was banning cadets from having any cash. So that meant they couldn't go into taverns and simply pay for drinks like a normal person? They had a bartering system of clothing and goods in exchange for booze at the bars. I've seen the Revenant. They were turning

tricks. I get it. You know what? Create a whole class of West Point hustlers. The only thing that was off-limits for bartering was the school uniform because they obviously couldn't get away with that one. Though more than one person was thrown out of West Point because they were an alcoholic, they needed a drink, and they traded the literal jacket off their back for a glass of whiskey or whatever. There's a town, I can't remember what the town is because I've been to one of the towns is up the Hudson River right across from West Point where there's an actual normal town there. And was that just entirely populated by people who really love dressing up multiple layers

of West Point uniform? It's sort of like they're basically hard at work inventing theater kids in that one town because they just have a constant supply of costumes. Imagine the damage at this crowd of man locusts due to a town when they're unleashed upon them and allowed to drink. Oh, I've seen Fayetteville and Columbus, Georgia. Don't worry. That's a fair assessment. Yeah. Anyway, after the 4th of July ban, cadets were determined to tell Thayer to go and fuck himself over Christmas and have their annual all out Christmas rager, which traditionally meant they would get absolutely black out

on eggnog. We've made our opinions on eggnog very clear, but it dawns on me that some of our listeners might not be fully aware of what eggnog is. It's a mixture of eggs, milk, cream, sugar, spices, and more often than not, an absolute fuckload of alcohol. We say brandy typically, but the old ways, yeah. It depends. In the old ways, yeah. It depends. In the old days, it was generally considered a rich person's drink because it had milk, cream, and sugar in it. However, thanks to the good old triangle slave trade, all those things are now readily available

and cheap. Yeah, I can't remember for normal people. Actually, if it's brandy or whiskey, I mean, whiskey would make more sense being America though, but yeah. It depends. In the slave trade situation, rum became incredibly cheap. Ah, yeah, fair enough. the slave trade situation rum became incredibly So normal people used rum in case you're wondering

George Washington who loved him some nog had a recipe that included no less than four different kinds of alcohol All at once rum sherry brandy and whiskey all mixed together It's normally I think it's it's cinnamon for sure, but there's some other spice things that you put in there. Yeah. Yeah. Like nutmeg. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to put the nut in your nog. I remember when I was in college and there's this club we used to go to all the time and they had like five euro cocktails and the trick was get it in a pint glass so you don't have to go back up to the bar. So many of my friends would drink pints of white Russian, and to this day I can still see in my mind's eye just frothy vomit from drinking seven pints of white Russian. Yeah, that's my experience with eggnog as well.

I had a night with a duet with white Russians and black Russians and that's the only time I've ever pissed myself as an adult. I woke up completely having pissed myself, so I don't really go that way anymore. They call that the yellow Russia. Yeah. But all I can say is this has to be cut is you'd be like, oh yeah, you need to make nut nog. It's like slowly but surely starting to sound like slurs they used in gangs of New York. Of course, because booze is now banned on campus, Davis and his co-conspirators were going to have to find a tavern willing to trade something for their alcohol. And then they were going to

have to organize its transportation back to the academy. But most importantly, they would have to source all of this from different areas so that the West Point instructors and their commander, the cadet commandant Major William Wirth, who ran something of a spy ring of narcs, wouldn't catch on. You know, like, oh yeah, some dickhead from your school came in here and ordered like eight gallons of liquor. You know, so they spread it out. Randall from recess in the corner with his little no pot. Pretty much. I will say that like, this is actually kind of weirdly a useful skill in terms of sort

of like procurement and finding a way to get stuff that you need. Exactly. Like outside of normal supply lines lines or outside of normal structures. Even today when the supply line problems that we have are nothing in comparison to what they had back then. So it's like, strangely, it's a useful exercise even if it's for the purpose of being a dickhead. Yeah. If they weren't all shattering every West Point rule, I bet Thayer would be super excited. They were able to, for instance, acquire manpower,

requisition, multiple boats, come up with all these different supply points, routes of transportation back to the academy, all this stuff. He'd probably be impressed. Like, wow, they're actually paying attention. Yeah. Soldier arrested with like five pounds of K2 in envelopes. It's like, look, I'm just trying to get better at military logistics and supply. Exactly. This is a professional development goal of mine. And they would have to do all of this at night time, which remember there's guards at West Point.

I don't know if there still is, but there were then. There are, yeah. I think they beefed it up after 9-11, but yeah, there's guards. They're doing what is effectively a nighttime infiltration operation to multiple different taverns throughout the town of West Point. Because you couldn't just go and buy eggnog. You had to buy the ingredients to make eggnog. So they're getting egg, sugar, spices, four different kinds of booze to make what's almost certainly the world's nastiest nog, as well as a bunch of mutton to do a barbecue afterwards when they eventually got drunk and hungry because Taco Bell didn't exist

yet. They're doing all of this without getting caught. It involves dozens of men. It's honestly impressive. It's the coolest thing that Jefferson Davis has ever done. That's wild. I mean, like the boat part, the riverine logistics, like all of this stuff. Yeah. Wow. But then when they're making the return trip to offload their illegal cargo of several gallons of booze and meat, they ran into a soldier, not a cadet standing guard. And that is when a group of future officers realize something very, very important. Soldiers do not give a single shit about anything.

The guy didn't fucking care about catching these people doing anything. The guy didn't fucking care about catching these people doing anything. And then he was offered a princely bribe of 35 cents and a cup of wine. He took it and looked the other way. Joe's going to be Joe. I'm just saying. Not Joe Kasabian, but ephemeral. Also, yes. Yes.

Well, yes. But you know what I mean? Joe is the amorphous concept of the enlisted soldier. The eternal enlisted man. That dude probably had 30 minutes left on guard He's not putting up with this shit. They haven't invented Xbox yet. Yeah, I mean they have even invented the jerk-off shack yet Oh, I'm sure they did I'm sure they back that it was a jerk-off lean to it was different that was Baron von Steuben's first fucking finger print on the design

Okay, and not to mention being a guard here, like the army is very, very small. Like it's microscopically small. That soldier knows that one of these dudes that he catches is probably going to be in command of him rather shortly thereafter. So he's like, you're good. Go ahead. And the cadets carried their barrels of booze into their quarters in the North barracks and stashed them with their personal property.

Meanwhile, Thayer wasn't an idiot, but he had underestimated his own cadets. He knew they would try and sneak in booze, and it had happened multiple times before, especially with that little troublemaker Ulysses S. Grant, who was already balls deep in alcoholism, and Jefferson Davis, who had been caught doing it multiple times before. But he was completely unaware that cadets had staged what amounted to a full military operation to get fucked up. So he ordered some of the same patrols to watch over the cadets as he always did. Two officers, Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant William Thornton to roam the

halls and make sure the little bastards didn't burn the place down over Christmas. We've all done this duty. If you've been in the military, depending on which branch you're in, we called it CQ, charge of quarters. You walk around and you make sure nobody passes out and dies in the fucking hallways. Yeah, don't do anything so stupid that it's so obvious and I'm gonna catch you. Right, because I don't want to do anything. Yes. Yes, like when I had to, I remember yelling at some soldiers to be like, look guys, fucking, I know it's cold outside, but you're smoking cigarettes in your room without the window open and I can smell it. I'm not going to write you up, but don't be stupid. Come on.

Now imagine that, but with 1820s alcohol that makes you either see through time or go blind or get night vision like in Metal Gear Solid 3. The men did their jobs boring as it was until midnight and decided everything was calm enough and then they went to bed. They assumed if the cadets were going to do anything stupid they would have done it by now or if they were doing it they're being quiet about it which is all you can hope for when you have that many military minded dumbasses packed into one place. But the cadets had been drinking the entire time. However their level of drunkenness had not yet reached what I call the critical mass of drunkenness.