The Team House - Special Ops Historian Patrick O'Donnell, Ep. 38

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Patrick K. O'Donnell is a historian and bestselling author. He is a premier expert on the history of special operations. With eleven critically acclaimed books he has conducted thousands of hours of interviews with members of elite units such as the OSS, Merrill's Marauders and many modern day units. Support our sponsor Ned by visiting www.helloned.com/TEAMHOUSE to get 15% off your first order and free shipping! We are also excited to announce our second sponsor, HighSpeedDaddy.com. Use the discount code "JACK" at checkout to claim 10% off your purchase. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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So, hey, everyone, welcome to the team house with Dave Park. I'm Jack Murphy. We're here with our guest tonight, Patrick O'Donnell. Patrick is a special operations historian. He is the author of 11 books. Yeah, I've got 11 published books. I've actually finished the 12th, and I'm working on the 13th now. All right, so another one in the hopper coming at you, and then he's got another one in the shoot. after that. So very prolific author, someone who has interviewed living members of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, many World War II veterans. He's written even about contemporary special operations. He has been an embedded historian with the Marine Corps during Operation Iraqi Freedom in Fallujah.

So Pat really has a depth of experience. We're really excited to have him on the show today and to discuss some of these historical units, you know, we kind of tend to operate on a more contemporary basis interviewing, you know, people from, you know, our generation, global war on terror guys and gals. But it's really cool to talk about the historical aspects of this and where it all grew out of where it all came from. Because I think when people hear about these things like the Benghladen raid, the Baghdaddy raid, or even the killing of Soleimani, some of these different incidents. They think like that just happened. But actually that grew out of a progression of historical events and capabilities that were built up by the military and by the intelligence community over decades and decades.

And, you know, Pat is uniquely qualified to illuminate that for all of us. You want to get to that real quick. I just want to talk for a moment about our sponsors. One of the sponsors of our show is Ned. Ned is a wellness company. They develop a number of different hemp-based products. This one is hemp oil that I've been using for almost a month now. And it's really worked for me.

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That's okay. I mean, my sleep-aid so far has been... Okay, okay. So the hemp oil is much more healthy for you than using liquor to sleep. That's a perfect case and point, Dave, right there. I mean, Ned. Yeah, yeah, you need Ned in your life.

Yes. And for our viewers, there is a special discount. You can get 15% off your first purchase and you get free shipping. If you go to their website, it's hello, ned.com, H-E-L-L-O-N-E-D dot com slash team house. And that will give you the discount.

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The code is actually my name. It's J-A-C-K. So you throw that in there and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. So with no further ado, Pat, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. It's an honor and a pleasure. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, thank you. You know, I'll kick it over to Dave since you guys, you know, have a preexisting relationship. And maybe you actually want to tell the story first about how you two met.

Patrick, please. Sure. I was working on a book called Operative Spies and Saboteurs, and this is the first operational and oral history of the OSS. I'm a board member of the OSS Society. I'm also their official historian, and I started work on the book in about 2000, and I was interviewing anybody that was alive that was operational with the OSS. And the OSS, for those of you that may not know, it was really one of the most dynamic organizations ever created. And it was created quickly and overnight. And with Whole Cloth, they had to create a national intelligence organization, the first, as well as special operations.

And this is an aspect of OSS that's really important. There is the Jedbergs that most people know about, but there's also the operational groups. And these are the kind of precursor to the Green Beret A teams. There's also the precursor to the Navy Seals, which is the OSS Maritime Unit, as well as U.S. Army combat diving, Psiops, there is counterintelligence, and there's an intelligence aspect as well as research and analysis, which was really important. The OSS was the first to take modern analytical methods to take raw data and turn it into actionable intelligence. They harnessed the power of university experts around the United States that were experts in specific areas

and put them to work on the problems of taking down the Third Reich and as well as the Japanese in the Pacific. And there was a research arm that developed special weapons and other, there's a photographic arm. What makes the OSS unique compared to British similar operations is everything was placed under one roof. So there were no silos. And that a lot of great deal of cross-fertilization. But the greatest aspect of the OSS were its people. They were all unique and dynamic. And they were given a lot of latitude to basically think out of the box and come up with the things that we know today.

The greatest legacy of the OSS is many of the things that the tactics and technology and techniques that we know today. And my books are all, I drilled deeply down into the weeds. And the reason why I met Dave was because I was researching the hand-to-hand combat aspect of the OSS. Fairbairdard fighting techniques and Rex Applegate, who used, you know, different aspects with firearms. And I was researching this at the National Archives, and I ran into another mutual friend that talked about, how there was a dojo in New Jersey that was run by Carl Sestery that was actually using the fairbaird fighting techniques and gutter fighting and I went up and went there many many times learned everything out how to use a grot to night fighting to you know pure hand-to-hand combat and you know

it gave me that ability to write about what I had actually done as well and that Dave and I had had known as says as friends ever since yeah yeah we met that I mean, an interesting side note is Carl. And you guys have had Clint Sorman on it too. Yeah, we had Clint Foreman who was who was like Carl's Astorris premier student. Yes. Confident and friend and everything. And one of the things that people don't like people to know is that like Carl used to

go to the national archives all the time. And the way he came about discovering all this was through the national archives going through all the OS like uncovering all this stuff. And actually going out, he met with Applegate before he passed away. And, you know, yeah. So it was very, very authentic, you know, in terms of, and it was very basic stuff. It was very, very simple. Gross motor movements.

It was all about gross motor movements. And Carl, you know, was really quite remarkable. He had the axon that was literally calcified because he would take his hand and pounded on an iron or steel pipe. Yeah. And smack it so hard that it was like a bone. Yeah, it was brutal, brutal. But anyway, so yeah, so that's how Pat and I met many, many moons ago. I mean, that was 2002 maybe.

Yeah. Yeah, it was, yeah, many moons ago. So, and he had a very small but very like, I don't want to say loyal following, but very dedicated following guys who, I mean, and they'd go out there and just beat the crap out of each other, like, every weekend, you know. Yeah. So. I'll be effective. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, please continue. So anyways, we met, but the, I guess the point of that, of that discussion is that I use primary

sources and I go into the weeds. I also, I visit the places that I write about. And, you know, one book I actually was, I participated in Fallujah in a Marine rifle platoon. But so the stuff that I write is, is very intimate and personal. It's basically untold stories in most cases that are built around characters, main characters, that in many cases could be a movie or a TV series. That's kind of a lot of this stuff that I, they've been optioned and such.

And it's kind of one of the secondary objectives or indirect reasons why I write some of the stuff. But it's also to really honor our history and uncover our history. And that's been my main focus since I was, I began, my interest in this stuff began when I was about four years old. Yeah, please. The story, as we like to say, because comic book geeks.

I was obsessed with military stuff, and I was dragging my parents to Civil War battlefields and Red War battlefields. It wasn't the other way around. My father would say, you know, you've been to one battlefield, you've seen them all. I'm like, no, Dad, we've got to go to another one. So did you have ready access to these battlefields? No, we traveled. And we would go on every weekend, we would go places.

And it would be either in Ohio or outside of Ohio or the East Coast, and we would go to places. And we, you know, it was always a deep dive into history. And it wasn't something that was forced upon me. I was obsessed when I was a kid. And, you know, I went to school, obsessed. And, you know, people saw that. Some, you know, would poke fun of me. but I was really obsessed with history.

And as soon as I got out of college, I started interviewing World War II veterans. Now, did you major in history? I assumed that I was a history major. But I was also my ex-wife, my ex-father-in-law, was like, you know, she wants the best. And so I became a finance major as well. Right.

So I could earn a living either way. And got out of school. and the first thing I started doing is a hobby every weekend is I was interviewing World War II vets. And it began with the 82nd Airborne Division. I was interviewing Pathfinders from the 82nd. This is in 1992 or 93 before like Tom Brokhov or anybody that had any kind of interest. And I was amassing these oral histories. And it would all be everybody that I would interview would have a reference.

reference to somebody else. So I wasn't getting people that were professional veterans, so to speak, that wanted to tell me their story. It was somebody that was referred to me. And I developed a deep friendship with many of the men that I've written about. I've interviewed probably over 4,000 veterans from World War I all the way through Afghanistan and Iraq in the Korean War. Most of them have been with a focus on elite or special operations in units in one way or another or their precursors. And, you know, the airborne was, the 82nd led to the 101st. And then I was interviewing the obscure airborne units, the 517, the 509, the 551.

These are the guys that were attached to the 82nd or 1001st. And they had an absolutely fascinating story that I was, I got obsessed with. And I was interviewing these guys. And then it went to the Rangers. I interviewed every single Ranger Battalion. And, you know, one through six. And then Merrill's Marauders, Task Force, Mars. And I would go to their reunions.

I'd go to, you know, 15 or 20 reunions a year and just interview everybody. Or interview them on the phone. You know, I got to know these men as a friend. And I also sort of got into. to a different type of interview with most of them. They had never talked about the war, in many cases, including to their family members. And I was, I kind of probed into that hidden war.

And this is the hidden war of World War II where many of these men had suffered from PTSD and were recovering from it or still never had dealt with it. And this was, you know, really shocking stuff that was coming out. It wasn't just an after-action report on the drop zone. It would be, yeah, we shot a prisoner and the impact that had on my life. Right.

It was powerful stuff. In a way, I mean, right now we think of shooting a prisoner as a war crime. But at that point in time, you're talking about capturing somebody behind enemy lines. And you can't, it's two or three people. They can't release them because they can't let their presence be known, right? I mean, they really have no option. In many cases, it was a situation of no option, and there were orders to do it. Yeah.

You know, the sergeant would say, look, go take care of the prisoners, bring them down to the POW cage. And that was a co-op-or. You know. Okay. In some cases, that didn't happen. I mean, it all depends. But in many cases, too, in some of those cases, men were haunted by those memories. Yeah.

I thought we're talking more like the OSS. You're talking about. There were not many instances of actually the OSS. that with the OSS. It was more, there were other, there were other units that, you know,

I mean, when you're an airborne op, it's an airborne op, you're deep behind the lines too. Yeah. And it's a fluid situation. Not like you said up. I mean,

I don't want to sit here and generalize something. That's not the case either. It didn't happen all the time, but it was something that happened here. Excuse me, every now and then.

And it was something that these men were haunted by. It was a ghost for many of them. So when you were interviewing, so you started out with the 80 second, and then went on to the 101st. Like, did it just kind of start? I mean, were you just doing it sort of out of curiosity

and a hobby at that time? Did you have like books in mind? Did you want to? No, I didn't have any books in mind at all. And the sort of natural progression for me was the internet was just coming into its existence at this time. And this is 1992, 93, 94. And I created a virtual museum called the drop zone.

It's still out there. And instead of artifacts, I made the, men's oral histories part of the artifact and part of the story. And what made it very unique for the time was I made it a virtual community. So I was literally using email to, you know, listserv to solicit and gain what I called E histories. That was another aspect of this project. And I was, you know, using that as a tool to also gather some of their stories.

we put them online and it was a tremendous success. I had just a lot of media attention from the project because it was the first time that anybody had ever done that with World War II. It was the first oral history project. I coined the term e-history and everything else. And the guys were like saying, you know, what's next? Are you going to write a book? And I didn't even think of that. I just, I wasn't sure. And the next thing I know, I sort of went down that path and it was not it was not a it was a serendipitous path for me that i had amassed an enormous amount of oral histories and contents online and the project was very successful and um i i went to um a friend of mine who was a um a publicist at penguin putman and i said hey how can i what do i

need to do to get published and i figured that she might be my kind of end or editor and instead she said to You need to go buy a book called literary agents. I'm like, gee, thanks. Oh, yeah, that's right. So I went to Borders, which was still in existence at that time, and I bought this one up to the shelf, pulled out the thing, and it was like this giant, like, Bible-looking thing. Writers Digest, right?

And it had 4,500 names in it and addresses, and they tell you right up front, you're supposed to write a query letter, and there's a very elaborate process. You can't just contact these people. I didn't do that. just opened the book. I went to like the last page and I saw the one guy had like a little snippet that says special operations. Boom. I called them up. And I said, what do you think about this idea of an oral history of

special operations or Rangers in Airborne? Like that's amazing. Nobody's ever done that. And just hung up and I'm like walked away and I didn't bother with it. it and he called me back. He's like, where's your book proposal? And I said, well, look, give me a month. I'll get it to you. I had no idea how to write a book proposal. Went back to Borders, looked at how to write a book proposal, wrote a book proposal, sent it in about a week later, the guy's like, this is amazing. Send it into, we had, we sent it into Simon Schuster, Random House, and Henry Holt and probably 50 other major houses. Didn't hear anything for a few weeks, a month or two.

And the next thing I know, I had three major offers. That's incredible. I was 29 years old. And they said to me, you know, it was signed in Schuster like, you're going to be the youngest, his published historian in the country. And I wrote this book, which was the National Best bestseller called Beyond Valor. We still, I think... Hey, Pat, hold it up in front of your face. It's out on the camera. Yeah, Beyond Valor. It went

through, I don't know, I think about 25 reprints. And it's an oral and operational history of the Airborne, which is, it's a very personal book to me in the stories of the men that are in it. And it's their story from the DEP raid where there were 50, American Rangers that participated with the commandos and the airborne and the Rangers, and it's their stories. And it's chronological, but it's kind of like a castle wall where the oral histories are the stones in the wall, but they all fit together to tell a narrative story of what these units did, which is really extraordinary during the war. Especially because I think, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it, I think, especially

as a military historian, where you're saying about them all being intertwined and they're all stepping blocks that fit together like Legos or something, that these are all people who existed within a military chain of command working towards a common objective in these different military operations. And it's chrono—it is history. Like, there are events happening that you can really put your finger on. And I imagine as a historian, that must be really fascinating to see how all that comes together. It's not like maybe other areas of history where you really get into this sort of Roshaman construct of like, what happened? Did it happen? Did it not? It's like, no, no. We know these guys jumped into Normandy and then you put all the details together. Yeah, I put in the

details, but I put it in a level that nobody had ever seen before. It's not the dry after-action report or the meta the meta story of history it's the personal account of what's yeah it's it's the enlisted men or in some case in the off officers that really did stuff level and it's it's powerful really powerful yeah and that um was my first book which if you go to c span um see span uh history tv what i did with all my books is i'd have a reunion And we had, and my first book signing was a reunion of all these men. And there were 300 at this borders. And it was just an awesome event.

And we had the legends of D-Day present in the Battle of the Bulge, like Lewis Mendez of the 508. You know, he was the colonel of the battalion and then later the regiment. And he was there. And one of his pathfinders, we found out, had never received his bronze star from this Normandy jump. And at that reunion, he pinned it on this private from the war. Did he know that he had won it? He did. Okay.

But it was a special thing. He didn't know that his battalion commander or Reginald commander would be there. And what I did is also I had these guys tell their stories live. that day and it was incredible i mean it was it was a situation where i had the chaplain from the 504 in the wall river crossing um tell the story about the boats and his you know i was you know saying um hail or our father is they're crossing and there's m g42 machine gun bullets ripping apart the these canvas boats and the water it's just it's an amazing stuff That's incredible.

Do you notice any big differences between, you know, what we've come to know as the greatest generation and today's generation of soldiers and, you know, war fighters, so to speak? Well, what I can talk about, I can't necessarily talk so much about what the most current generation, even though I can, I think, to some degree. But I definitely can talk about the generation that was in Fallujah, I was with and that was what I would call the next greatest generation. Those men that I was with

in the Marine Corps and the Army at the beginning prior to the battle were really exceptional and especially the Marine Corps. I was with Lima Company 3-1 during the assault force during the battle and that was just those guys. There were still all my close friends and we go to reunions and everything and it's just like those they're to salt of the earth and they're incredible. And you know, we got we had guys that literally like hid their wounds to go back for their brothers. It's an is it really, uh, it really broke. And you wrote about that in your book, We Were One. Yes. But in that, which is, which is a phenomenal book. It's my fourth book. It's called We Were One. Hold it up. It's in hard cover. This is on the, um, the Commandants.

It was on the Commandants required reading list for me. enlisted men. And that's really quite high honor. It's about eight best friends that were in Lima Company 3-1 in First Platoon. And of the eight, only three survived this battle. Main character of this book, Michael Hanks. We were ambushed by Chechens in one of the house-to-house fighting scenarios. It was a complex ambush. They drew us into the house. And, you know, that's corporal Hanks was very heroic, went in. And there was an RPK on the other side. And he was hit right in front of me. And an RPK, for those who don't know, is an automatic, it's a machine gun. Yeah. And we dragged him out of the firefight. And, you know, there was just one incident of

many in that situation. Pat, you were, you were deep. I was right there. Yeah. How did that come together, Pat? Because I was looking at your photographs and I was like, oh shit, this guy was in the Marines too. And I was reading a little bit deeper.

And I was like, whoa, no, wait a second. This guy was a civilian historian. I was a civilian historian. Yeah. I completely volunteered to go to Iraq. I paid my own way. I had all the proper clearances. I had the public affairs at the Pentagon.

I had the battalion commander sign off. I had everybody sign off. I went over with the Army. I went over with the 509 parachute infantry battalion, which is the Opark, down at Fort Polk, Louisiana. And they train our guys. They're, you know, I mean, during the Cold War, they were acting as Russians and Cubans.

And the War on Terror, they're acting as Al-Qaeda and other, you know, J. Ash Muhammad, you know, everything else that's out there. And so I went down there to, to just basically be, you know, the guy that records the interviews. And Lieutenant Colonel Griffith,

who was, his nickname was Mad Max. And his whole deal was, he's like, what's your code name and what's your alias? And I'm like, okay, I'm an Al Jazeera reporter. running with the moosh. So they gave me a whole man dress and an fake ID. And I went into the whole port poke compound with the miles gear and everything.

And they're like, oh, this will be a great experience for you before you go to Iraq. And they were expecting me to die within like minutes, right? And I survived the entire exercise unscathed. And they're like, you can do whatever the fuck you want my unit. You've got the qualities of great soldiers. This was, quote, you know how to survive. And that was true. When I went to Iraq, you know, I just, I went through a lot of different scenarios.

When we first went over with 509, they were outside of the biop. And it was Colonel Millie with the 10th Mountain third, I was pretty sure it was third brigade. And he was in charge of that section. I'll never forget the first time I went there. It was like he had dinner with me. He's like, what are you here for? and I'm like to record the story of what's going on on the ground because nobody else is doing it as a historian. Right.

And he was, he was a, he's a very, uh, shrewd and a very, he's a brilliant guy. And I'm really glad that we have him as a chairman of joint chiefs. Um, and he, uh, he's also a historian. And we had an excellent conversation. And I'll never forget his, his trailing comments where Fallujah will be the Gettysburg of this war. And anyways, I was all excited. I thought the 509 was going to be my story. And it turned out about two weeks before Fallujah or three, they were sent to the green zone and the guard towers. And the entire story kind of, that story kind of collapsed in terms of Fallujah.

But make a long story short, I had to talk my way into helicopter. And I begged and pleaded and I got my way into Fallujah. And I was with the, I was initially with recon and all the shape. shaping operations in Fallujah, and then I was with the assault course of 3-1. And for our viewers who have not read, we were won. And Pat, I noticed this when we talked about it after the events, it was something deeply personal to you. Like, it had a very fascinating effect on you. It did. This book, this book is a relic of the battle. And what I mean by that is every one of these oral histories were done either at night, only went firm after clearing houses all day, or it was a month later in where we were doing group interviews, where everybody remembered every single element of every one of these ambushes. This is this book.

the highest compliment that I could ever get is from all the guys because everything is in here is completely true. There's no embellishment. It's all oral history, but it's woven into a narrative of these eight best friends in their story from the beginning of Iraq through Fallujah. But Pat, I think what people need to know is that you weren't sitting at the FOB when to come. No, I was in the form.

I didn't want to get killed because they thought I was some sort of civilian and I was armed and clearing houses and everything else. You were elbow deep. Yeah. Then I was doing that just to survive, but it was like a situation where we were all trying to survive. Because we went from a platoon of somewhere around 60 men to around 19 that were still walking. Everybody else was wounded or killed. And you knew them all? I knew most of them. And then because there was some that I didn't, that were shot or killed right before I, you know, it met them.

But I knew most of them. And then became a family with them. And I mean, I've been with them for, you know, we go to all our reunions. And it's powerful. And it's also a situation where in some cases it's very sad. We've lost more men now from suicide than we lost in Fallujah in the unit. Yeah. And I think that for, you know,

Being that you were a historian, and when you say we, for the, for the viewers who haven't watched it yet, if they read the book, they'll know why you say we, because you were 100% and quite literally one of them to the point of pulling them out. Well, I never want to take any credit that I don't deserve, but it's been that those Marines have bestowed that on me and welcome Dian to that. And you know. And, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, this, and not to get, not to get, you know, into the sad talk or the Macaw or anything else. But so, so the history, the history of all of it.

So, so let's go into that. So you started interviewing World War II vets, the 82nd, and then the 101st, and then the various, the 509th and various airborne units. And then when did your interest in special operations or elite units come along? Well, it always was there. It was there with the airborne, and then it just sort of branched out to the Rangers. And then it went to the first special service force, which is a joint Canadian and American unit. interviewed many, many of those men. And it just went from there.

And then 9-11 hit. And I'll never forget, I thought, man, that's the end of my career. I can't, you know, I thought, man, this destroyed the economy. It's over. And then there was this interest in special operations with Afghanistan as well as intelligence. And it came to mind, you know, nobody has ever done anything on the OSS. Yeah. At that time, it had not been, it's been, it was untouched.

And I started to do a deep dive into the OSS. And, you know, I, the airborne and the Rangers were tough nuts to crack. The OSS was the ultimate secret society. It was a group of individuals, men and women, that really largely maintained their vows of silence. many of them had you know worked in the agency afterwards or in you know other elements of you know the security apparatus and they really maintain their vows of silence they didn't talk about the war at all and this was an organization that really had not been thoroughly interviewed or explored and it's a very very complex organization the inside the national archives i've spent over 20 years looking at the

OSS files. It's, they say it's about two cubic miles of records. And in many cases, the organization is, is less to be desired than to be desired in many ways. It's, it's kind of like drilling for oil in some cases. You never know what you're going to find. And I've just spent years going through this stuff and in just finding and unearthing incredible, incredible stories. When you say the organization, you don't mean the organization of the OSS, but you mean the organization of the of the material and then how it was organized how it was organized it was just kind of like this massive dump and then they had the archivist had to somehow sort through it being a parent can be really challenging child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant

parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey everyone deserve someone they can turn to for help with parenting visit child and family resource network dot org today a dramatic Pause says something without saying anything at all. Feet deserve a go-to like that. Like Hey Dude Shoes, light, comfy, good to go-to. And the finding aids were very, very scant. Nothing is, at the time when I started doing it,

nothing was computerized or anything like that. It was all hard copy, paper, files. And it was really hard to find things. in ways. What was it like trying to track down some of the actual members who served in the OSS and like trying to approach them and to get them to open up to you? It was not easy. Everything was done by a referral basis. Initially I was looked at as this outsider and I just sort of worked my way very carefully, you know, one individual at a time and it had one reference at a time from each individual and just kind of worked my way outward. Initially, I wasn't well received by some of the,

you know, the folks that were in kind of the, the, in the society, so to speak, but then they recognize what I was really up to and that I was really trying to capture their story and tell it the way it was and do it very, very thoroughly, you know, with all primary sources and do the interviews too that nobody really had ever done. And it just kind of went from there. My first real contact was his nickname was the brain. And this is a gentleman by the name of Albert Montarazzi. And he ran all the Italian operations for something called the operational groups, the OGs in northern Italy. And this was a very fascinating area of operation that really had never been covered because you had sort of like Iraq. It was multiple insurgents groups. You had

communists. You had nationalists. You had anarchists. All of these weird groups that were kind of a soup that were up there operating and they were insurgents. It was a very complex insurgency. And the OSS was feeding each one of these groups with small teams. And I got into that with the brain. And I'd go over his house over in Bethesda. And we, and we, and we, and we just, you know, go down to the basement and it was this file room that was just stuffed with tens of thousands of documents that he had gotten from the National Archives. And we'd have pasta down there and talk. And it was just like the coolest thing in the world because he was not only this ops officer, but he was a historian himself and really into the history and talked about how really had

never been told properly or it was mistold. And I really got into the weeds from there and then it branched out into other interviews and other individuals. Patrick, I'm going to read a couple of questions or a couple donations real quick. And then I want to roll it back to the genesis of the OSS for people who are completely unaware of that. First off, Andrew, thank you very much. And Andrew said, rip borders, RIP borders. And it really is sad.

You know, I mean, Amazon's great and it's great having Kindle. But it really, I miss having bookstores where you could just go and peruse books and sit down with a book and read a chapter or two of it to know if it was something that. Absolutely. That's why I love Barnes & Noble so much. Yeah. That is your kind of library that's getting all the most contemporary books that you can just sit down and pull it off the shelf, peruse it, browse it, or go to the table and know within like five minutes what the most current topics are. things going on. I love Barnes and Olmos so much. I have to credit Barnes and Nobles and Borders and Borders.

Then I'll also plug all those independents out there. They're pretty amazing too. Absolutely. They're still doing what they're doing. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And then thank you very much.

Alex. And Alex says, what was the craziest gadget you found in your research? Which is a great question because the OSS had a lot of interesting stuff. And also, what was your favorite meal you had in your travels? like if there was a preferred meal? Sure. For gadget. Well, I think the gadget would probably be,

it would be this, the OSS had this ballpoint pen that was actually a 22 caliber pistol. It shot a single round if you pulled the back of it. And it would fire. And I actually interviewed, one of the individuals that used it. You used it operation.

Actually used it operationally. You used it operationally. It was probably my most interesting interview with anybody from the OSS. And let me just pull up. This book is probably my, this book is my favorite story of all World War. Brunner Assignment.

The Brinner assignment has a main character. Can you tilt that with a light sitting it? There you are. Sorry about it. Perfect. Yeah. The Brenner assignment is really one of the most extraordinary stories of World War II. I think it's the most interesting story of World War II.

I've had a lot of interest from Hollywood on this for a movie. It is the perfect movie in many ways. There are two main characters. The first character is Stephen Hall. And Stephen Hall is an Ivy League dropout from Princeton and Yale that was a, guy that was always trying to find himself. He was a wildcat driller for oil. He went on a, he was a circus shill first. He would go in it with the fat man in the ring and literally

go a couple rounds before getting knocked out. But Stephen Hall was also this really incredibly wealthy guy that in 1938 went to the Cortina area of northern Italy and skied and mountain climbed. And spent six months there. and really got to know the land. In World War II, when World War II broke out, he joined an combat engineer unit with the Army. It was really never happy with it.

But he penned a letter to the OSS on a long train ride home from the East Coast back to Washington State where he was training that said, if you send a single man in to destroy the subpasses that lean into the Brenner Pass, we can interrupt the flow of supplies, the Germans flow of supplies from the Third Reich into Italy. And he proposed this in a three-page letter to William Donovan. And the letter went in, and within weeks there was a phone call, and Stephen Hall was out of the combat engineers in training for a mission

that would ultimately lead to his death. Wow. that perilous. And but so they, they trained him up. But he was given full responsibility on organizing his, his mission team and all of his supplies where he was going to drop everything. He,

it's, it's 1944. And the war is, you know, starting to turn against, it's already turned against the Germans. But the, it's the tough old gut in Italy where the German army is fighting Mao. mountain to mountaintop by mountain top and bleeding the allies to death.

And they have this flow of supplies coming in from the Brenner pass. Allied bombers aren't able to touch it because it's heavily defended. And Stephen Hall has given his wish of mounting this team. And he parachutes into an area called the Frioli, which is a little closer to the Yugoslav border. And it's occupied by this weird mix of individuals. There's Cossacks that, the Germans have placed here to occupy the area and control it.

There's also partisan groups that are Marxist. And Stephen Hall is this rich kid that's kind of a wasp that suddenly finds himself trying to swim in this sea of partisans that are Marxists. And everything that possibly could go wrong goes wrong. The main thing being that Stephen Hall does not have a radio. and that's a major problem. The radio with any OSS mission or any mission for that matter is your lifeline to be able to bring in supplies or even report actionable intelligence.

So he's using other radios from other teams there, but they need to send him a radio operator. And that's where my most interesting OSS individual that I ever interviewed comes into play. His name is Howard Chappell, and he's the second main character of this book. Now, I just want to point out. You say character. These are actual human beings that were... These are real people.

I shouldn't say... What I mean by that is this is somebody that's even larger than life than you can imagine. Howard Chapel was 6'3, 230 pounds, just pure muscle, pure killer. Yeah. I mean, it was just unbelievable. You know, his nickname was Flash Gordon. He would go down to the... you know, if you guys are familiar with those jump towers down at Fort Benning,

Howard ran those towers in the 504 before he went into the OSS. And he literally would take the parachute harnesses and wind them around his wrists without a harness. And he'd go, he'd go all the way to the top and parachute down with no harness at all, just being wrapped around. This guy was just fearless. And the Donovan personally recruited him after, meeting him at the jump towers to create one of the operational groups. It was called a German operational group. Everybody in there could speak German. And it was this was kind of, this was a

dirty dozen. You had an eclectic group of people. There was a butcher in there. There were a lot of refugees from Germany. And this leads into another book I wrote, which is a true story behind Inglorious Faster it's called They Dared Return. Yeah. And these were members of Howard's group in that. And it is the actual factual

basis of the Inglorious Fathers. It is. Yeah. And this is Howard's group and they train up but literally everything that could go wrong goes wrong. They get dropped at the wrong port in North Africa

and literally have to work their way across the Sahara of the desert to get to Italy. It's really, wild. But to make a long story short, the OSS tags Howard to bring a radio to Stephen Hall. And he parachutes in with a small team of several individuals around Christmas time, 1944, to bring in this radio. And the SS are very active in the area. They have something called Restolamentos, where they literally take a battalion of SS soldiers off the line,

and they put dogs out and everything else. And they just do mass. screens to find any partisans. And they were out for several weeks, and their safe house was overrun by Restolimento. And the SS surrounded the house, and Howard literally shot his way out with a BAR. And another individual had a M1 carbine. And it's an incredible story. They were, they were, they found a small ravine. And several of these OSS operatives literally covered their faces.

with mud as the SS were walking by. One guy literally put a bayonet into the hole, and they grabbed the bayonet, and the guy was like trying to pull it out, and he just let go. And it's at that point, he jumped on the guy and just murdered him. Yeah.

And Howard was fleeing for his life in this situation, and he was captured because one of the members of the team lied about is the fact that he had asthma. And he was running for his life. life and he was winded and Howard didn't want this guy to be captured by the SS so he surrendered with him but here's where this where I get back to what the viewer's question he pulled out this 22 caliber ballpoint pen holy on a German soldier that had a 98k Gavere aimed right at him and the guy's like what and he just Howard fired it and tossed it

and the round as he was running, he was running like a racehorse, hit the back of the flesh on his calf from the Germans rifle. And I'll never forget when I interviewed him, I asked him, he pulled up his leg and this is a 91-year-old man. And that scar was still there where the bullet grazed him. But he hid that night in a barn and was captured again the next day. and was being marched back and literally did kind of like a judo move threw the guy over his shoulder and then cracked his neck. And what's cool about it is it wasn't, I didn't take Howard's word for it,

even though I believed him. There was another British officer with the SOE that was behind the lines with the OSS. And in the course of that mission, the two of them had met up at a wine cellar. And he had told the story of this incident. to the British officer. So it was in the British files, the exact story that I'm telling you now.

Pat, can you just tilt your camera down a little bit because you're kind of disappearing on us? Sure, no problem. There you go. Okay. And actually, this is a good time for a station plug because we're going to talk about a Patreon real quick,

but the reason I want to bring up Patreon right now is because Patrick is actually going to tell more, like tell about your interview with Howard Chapel. like this. And who is the inspiration for the gangster squad movie? Yeah. On our patron. So if you join our patron, even a dollar a month will get you all the access you want to

our special, our interviews with people, all of our previous guests, you know, we'll give a kind of a private interview about something, something very interesting. So please, if you haven't subscribed to our channel, please subscribe to our channel. Thank you for joining us. Hit the notification button. You get all the notifications. The links to our Patreon is in the description. And like I said, I know times are tough right now, but if you can give us a buck a month, it helps us.

It helps us a lot. It helps pay our rent on, well, we have a studio, even though I'm the only one using it now because the ronies. But I exiled Jack. and yeah so Patrick on our patron will be telling more of an in-depth story

about his interview with Howard Chapel and more about literally the man the myth to legend yeah literally the man the myth of legend

yeah right before he met that British officer Howard was was unarmed basically but somehow he found a ski pole and literally beat a German officer

to death with the ski pole and then walked into the ostra this wine cellar and talked to this British agent. And here I had hatchet in me. I'll never forget when I asked him about it. He's like, I go, do you recall this specific? He's like, well, I don't remember if I beat that guy to death with a ski pole or I use the fire log. I'm like, or a silencer. It was just like, he was just stone cold.

Yeah. And he was, but he was incredibly effective. And what he did at the end of that mission is even more amazing. What do you think, you know, Pat, it says about the OSS that in some ways there's a lot of affinity. Like our previous guest on the show, Sam Thaddis, I think has a real affinity for the OSS and the way it was structured and the way it functioned, that blending of intelligence-driven paramilitary. operations. But at the same time, those guys back then, they were citizen soldiers. It was all put together in a very ad hoc manner, as you said. But they were also very effective. And do you think, why do you think that is? Do you think it's because it was so decentralized and they just

they took these guys and said, hey, it's your operation. You plan it the way you want to run it and go out there and make it happen? There's a number of factors. I think that the OSS model is one that did thrive in chaos. And that was this sort of out of the box, allowing a lot of people, a lot of freedom that created some extraordinary stuff. Another book I wrote on the OSS is first seals. And this is about the OSS Maritime Unit.

And this is a story about individuals that literally had to develop the seals and the scuba gear and a rebreather overnight with $10,000. bucks. That's the kind of people these were that they that they had and they used a dentist from Hollywood, California, a guy that was a screenwriter for Paramount that was also a British Commando and, you know, a Sterling Hayden. I mean, I think the thing that makes the OSS unique is not only this out-of-the-box thing, but it's people that had, it's not siloed. It's not people that are kind of...

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Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. I don't want to say stereotypical but known. These were people from walks of life that were already sort of established.

Right. They pulled out of established life. Right. that had these amazing contexts that already had sort of an amazing like to begin with and then we're told to go kind of run with it well and at that time there were a lot of first and second generation people of it you know one you know there was more of a you know we had more uh german immigrants we had more you know italian talents um and i mean and and society was different at the time too. Like right now, like, if you got in a bar fight, it would wind, you know, it would be a moron on your record. But I think, Bill Donovan, I think sort of the problem sometimes now today is the zero defect

mentality. Exactly. You know where it's like you have to have this unblemished record. So nobody takes any risk. And, and, and, and Donovan's kind of mentality was I want an Ivy League grad who could win a bar fight. That was the, that was their fame. It was sort of a, that's a way of encapsulate. exactly the situation.

It was also a situation where if you fall, fall forward. In other words, you're allowed to fail. But failure sometimes leads to great success. Now, let me just point out that not everything about the OSS was great. I mean,

there were things that were problematic. In fact, that there was coordination issues. There was a situation where the OSS literally like burgled an embassy in Spain to get cipher codes. It was a Japanese embassy. And that nearly destroyed our efforts with the purple code that we had cracked earlier. So, I mean, sometimes there was coordination or issues.

So let's roll back real quick and just talk about what is the OSS? How did it come to be? It starts out in 1941 where there's a presidential order by Roosevelt to create, to solve the problem that we still have somewhat today, which there's different silos of intelligence. And when you say silo, you just mean a... What I mean by that is, for instance, the Navy was gathering intelligence. The State Department was gathering intelligence,

but nobody was coordinating it together. They created another little euphemism. It was called the coordinator of information. This was the predecessor to the OSS. And this was designed to coordinate intelligence, but it had a broad, you know, of orders. It was to do not only intelligence, but it was also to develop commando teams or special operations and sciops too. But Donovan was an

amazing, I mean, one way of putting it is OSS was Donovan and Donovan was OSS. This guy was a great leader and a great mind. And where did he- There's a lawyer before the war. Okay. No military experience or? Lot, what's that? No military experience was a great- incredibly. He was one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I in the AEF. Okay. The Stinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor against the Hindenburg line where his

men in the fighting 69th are nearly slaughtered against some of the, you know, Germany's toughest defenses in October, 1918, September and October, 1918. And, you know, he survives the war. The war has a really profound impact on him, too. He realizes that frontal assaults are ineffective. Right. It's not a been that comes up with many of what we now know is kind of the combined arms of shadow warfare, where he's combining special ops and sciops and intelligence together to attack the enemy, which was very unique in pioneering at the time.

And he has to come up with all the stuff that we now take for granted. There were no, there were no commandos during the start of World War II. There was, the sciops was, was non-existent. All this stuff had to be created. And it was created in the OSS in many cases. And the OSS was not only civilian, but it was joint. It's a lot like J-Soc, where they were pulling from, you know, various branches within the military, the Marine Corps, the Army, the Navy. Even the Coast Guard, too, has a profound impact on first seals, for instance.

And it's important to point out, too, that at the time, there was no such thing as special operations. there's no such thing as the CIA. I mean, you tell me, but I mean, after World War I was like a really broad stand down, like, hey, the Great War is over. It's never going to happen again, right? It's a classic American situation where we want to save money and we just shave everything to the bone. And not only that you had within the Army and the Navy a profound dislike for anything that was a regular warfare or special operation.

It was considered a waste of time and it was a, we're bleeding. off precious resources from the line units that were out there that were going into combat. Right. I mean, our best guys. They're going to take our best guys. None of it was, it was all frowned upon. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's also like in, in trench warfare, like, trench warfare is very like formal in a way. If you think about it, it's like two lines of riflemen like taking a knee in front of each other and firing off rounds, right? Like there's a sense of honor, even though it's completely suicidal. And special operations is, it's, they're brigands and hooligans. And, and, you know, like, it's like there's very dishonorable to sneak up behind an enemy and to stab them in the back. Yeah. The principal individual behind they dared return, the real and glorious bastards, is Frederick Mayer, a German refugee from Germany.

His family flees in the early 30s or mid-30s to the United States. And at the beginning of the war, Frederick Mayer is an enemy alien within the United States. He goes down to the draft board multiple times to volunteer his services for the U.S. Army. He's denied because he's an enemy alien. Finally gets in, and he's with the U.S. infantry, and they're doing ground maneuvers in Arizona, or out west, I should say. And they have a red and blue team, you know, training exercise. And Fred, you know, totally believes in that maximum of not following any kind of rules or honor.

And he captures the opposing general in the exercise. And, you know, is the hero of the day. And then they say, you know, we've got just the place for you. It's called the OSS. And he shipped off to Washington, D.C. And it's sort of comical in many ways. The Washington, D.C. and Virginia, that is a training ground for the OSS. And many cases the cab drivers in D.C. know about these secret facilities.

And, you know, Fred just says, yeah, I've got to go to congressional. We're like, yep, we know exactly where you're going. And we dropped off another guy earlier. And that was a training ground for the OGs. the congressional country club, and he's dropped off there by cap and, you know, walks up to the main building, which is, it was a barracks at the time. But the entire fairgrounds were, where the OGs trained. They did hand-to-hand combat with Fairburn. They blew up the greens. They did demolitions. They did map reading exercises, et cetera. And that's where the real and glorious bastards are born. But the entire, I mean, All of D.C., there's so many areas in here. The first seals, for instance, I was the first person to really get into this. But the hotel downtown, the Shoreham Hotel has a ballroom that's in the basement of the hotel.

And that was the, it's called the Empire Room now, but that was the pool. In 1942, 43, it was, 42 was the largest indoor pool in Washington, DC, and that's where they tested the rebreather. It's now boarded over. There's now a plaque down there. The OSS Society dedicated a plaque to the first seals, and Sterling Hayden's son came when we dedicated. It was really an incredible thing,

but the first rebreather was tested in that pool. So did Donovan get, so when Roosevelt kind of had this mandate, did Donovan volunteer, did he get recruited? How did he wind up running it? It was interesting. He was kind of, Donovan was political at the time. He was kind of a, he was kind of a Carl Rove of his day in a sense.

He was a Republican, but he was also well respected by the president because of his, his Wall Street, he was a Wall Street lawyer, it was a very successful lawyer. And he, he, you know, was able to get everything sort of together. and it was an ambassador prior to the war and then FDR actually sent him over to England to study the defenses on the British to see whether they could survive and he gained a lot of trust

and it was the OSE FDR gave him the ability to stand up the OSS did FDR come up with this idea by himself did somebody recommend it to him how was it? It's an interesting story the first FDR sends him over as an ambassador to see if the if the British will hold and he goes around to various areas to see you know to see if the if what's going to really happen he sees some of the the the British intelligence etc and he's he's sort of given the mandate of coming back and reporting whether or not they can survive.

And comes back, writes a report, and the British actually say to us, you really need to have an intelligence apparatus or an organization. And they come back over with several individuals, interestingly enough, including Ian Fleming, who recommends that, you know, they create something. And it's, they recommend Donovan.

And FDR appoints Donovan to, to stand up everything. And they, wasn't there a competing entity that called the pond? That's, that's another, um, that's another sort of, um, aspect of it, but it's, it's a set of, uh, it is another, uh, entity out there, but from, it didn't really have as much teeth as the OSS. I mean, OSS had 15,000 individuals that were, um, you know, in uniform or working at desks in Washington, D.C., analyzing information.

Did, so did Donovan have a grand view of what this was going to look like, or did it evolve over time? Like, were there a lot of... He had the grand view. This is a guy that, I mean, one of my favorite quotes about Donovan is that he could recognize that an acorn would become a tree. And sort of how a small grain could become, this blossom into this. blossom into this organization. He was instrumental in much of how it was built and how it was laid

out. And then he really had a hand in many of, in a micro level of many of these organizations that are stood up, such as the, the Maritime Unit or the OGs or the Jeds, especially the OGs, and then something called special operations, which is a precursor to the operational groups. He had a, in sciops too, he had a hand in all this stuff. Fascinating. But he also would, he had this incredible ability to pick the right person for the right job.

Just pull out his roll of decks and come up with, you know, put the right person in charge and let him go. So he wasn't much of a micromanager that. Not really. But what's fascinating about Donovan is he had a lust for action. He hated to be chairborne. He took part in many of the amphibious operations of World War II. He was on D-Day.

He was at Anzio. He was at Burma. This guy was there. In many cases, it was not far behind the first wave. So then with the operational groups, what were they? What did they do? How many people were in? I'm like, what was their mission?

Typical operational group, there were multiple operational groups, but they were all focused on specific regions of the world. Most of them were at the beginning were European. For instance, there was a Norwegian group that specialized in folks that spoke. You know, there were Norwegian. There was a Greek group. there were there was an Italian group there was a German group that I mentioned and they were 15 to 30 well they were initially there were more than that but the teams within each group were

15 to 30 men and then they went behind the lines in some cases in northern Italy they were trimmed down to about four or five men because they felt that the larger group was a hindrance but this included a security detail where they had guys that were kind of, you know, with a BAR. They had a medic. They had a radio guy. They had explosive experts. And, you know, they went in. And their job was to train partisans to destroy, you know, assets such as bridges or in some cases to capture them, like a dam that might have, that might fall into the German hands. They wanted it, they wanted that asset captured. Gather intelligence.

A lot of it, though, was working directly with the partisans to raise them, to arm them, equipment, train them, and to go after German targets. And I was wondering if you could explain the difference between the OGs of the OSS and the Jedberg teams and the Sussex teams, which all are really fascinating in their own right. there are multiple levels to this. The umbrella group initially was called special operations or SO, and then that branched out into the OGs, the Jeds, there were even special operations groups. There were Sussex groups, but let me just sort of take one at a time.

Jedbergs were tri-national. In other words, there was typically a Frenchman or a Dutchman. there was an American and a Brit and they were placed together they had a language specialty they were they were trained in demolitions and there was a radio operator within each team etc and there were about a hundred Jedberg teams that dropped into France and Holland and all of three-man teams they were all three-man teams and they did a lot they they were very effective they were all dropped after D-Day or slightly after that and most of them operated in the Brittany area where they were very heavily concentrated, where they were working

directly with partisans to arm and equip them, also provide demolition expertise to slow German reinforcements from reaching the battlefield or direct action with these units or gathering intelligence. And they were very effective. The operational groups are sort of the unsung group within the the OSS, I think, but they were highly effective, especially in places like Greece and Italy. In Greece, there were over 15 teams that were dropped in. These are, you know, anywhere between 15 and 30 men that were heavily armed. Some of these guys had bazookas and other weapons, and they went after German trains and supply routes and really did a lot of damage. When they would go in, would they have like one primary target or would they go in with the sort of order of like develop intel and

create mayhem that's exactly what it was there was no there was generally no one primary target it was work and interface with the resistance train them up i mean another primary objective is to tie down as many german forces as possible and that was a you know i mean it goes back to you know Civil War, a small group of men that can tie up a thousand men, you're winning the battle. Because you're taking those thousand bad guys off the battlefield who would be fighting our troops in Sicily and Anzio and so on. Exactly. It also, there's also an interesting dynamic that's not often reported. The, the partisans were brutal to the Germans. I mean, they would, I mean, because they were, the Germans were brutal to them. Right. They would execute partisan.

with, you know, immediately. But what, what's interesting is, if they found out that there was an American with those partisans, they'd be willing to surrender. And you have situations with the OSS where thousands of Germans surrender to a single OSS individual. That's a case with Howard Chapel, where literally 4,500 Germans, including a heavy Tiger Tank Battalion, surrendered to a single guy. Is that because they, one,

That's because they knew that the American would probably treat them fairly to some degree. Where the partisans, so for any of our viewers who don't understand, like, I mean, this kind of lingo that we use, a partisan or a gorilla is somebody who is native. So to a country that is invaded generally. So if we're talking about France, when the Germans invaded France, any of the French resistance fighters were considered partisans. and the teams would hook up with them and enable them in whatever ways, communications with arms with supply, things like that. And within those partisans you had, as Pat was saying, communists, Democrats, socialists, anarchists, all sorts of different characters in there.

It was a Star Wars bar of Calf and Dog behind the lines. You know, I had the honor of representing the OSSSC, for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. But our first stop was Southern France. And we went to the region of Southern France, which is near the, not far from the Spanish border. And it was there that the OSS had a very successful team. Ironically, it was called Team Pat, Operational Group Team Pat.

And they operated in this area where they utilized safe houses. And they went after German rail, ambush German patrols. They lost several guys, but their greatest coup was as the southern France invasion was taking place, they blew several the bridges for the reinforcements that were heading toward the Operation Dragoon to reinforce the German beachhead. I mean, they were trying to stem the tide from the Allied beachhead in southern France. And a single group, Operation Group team Pat had over 8,000 German prisoners because they blew the

rail lines and they surrendered to these Americans. Amazing Steyes. That is incredible. Let me get some questions real quick. We did the critical. Patrick, when it comes to the question of histography for your OSS histories, which route did you take and how did you decide to take that route? Why don't you? Well, my route was real simple. It was interview the participants and then look at all the primary sources. How did you find them when it was? such a classified organization. Like how, you said you started with the brain. How did that contact first happen?

It first happened when I found his contact in a, another book that had been written by an Italian author. And his name was listed. And I contacted him through, the book was in Italian, actually. And I contacted him through that. And I knew that he was in the, it wasn't far from me. He was in Bethesda. and I contacted him and called him up and he said well why don't we go to dinner and we went to

we went to an Italian place that's no longer there it was near a lotamat I think was called it was near the cheesecake factory on Wisconsin Avenue and we had this incredible discussion and then he recommended one person to me after another and it was interestingly enough the hardest person ever interview was Howard Chapman he would never talk to anybody and And that's, I'll tell that story at the end. Yeah. And did you, do you feel that they're more apt to talk to you because you approach them as a historian rather than a journalist?

Absolutely. They, they, they had seen the books that I'd written prior to operative spies and saboteurs. And, but it was all, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, one individual at a time. And it was a trust and friendship thing. I think that's probably that out of all the things I'm most proud of is it is being bestowed with that trust of with individual stories and how precious those are. Yeah. Now did you did you tape or record video? I did I recorded them on video and or on a on a small tape recorder, digital tape recorder. Yes, some of them. I've watched some of them and they're very emotional. Like some of the, like you say, some of the guys are still.

Post-traumatic stress, like some of them are still like very much in those moments when. Yeah, and I was able to sort of, I knew the history so well in each case that each interview was not only a conversation, but it was intimate as well. And it was a detailed dive into their story. Because you already had an awareness about what was going on so you could direct the interview in a way that, Yes. And thanks, Jim, for that. Ian, thank you very much. Which group that you've studied do you feel,

and maybe this isn't just the OSS, because you already mentioned the OG, but any group that you have studied, which group that you've studied do you feel is the most underappreciated and why? Underappreciated. I would say that it would probably be... I keep pulling these books out.

No, I'm glad you did. This is... This is the... story of World War I. The unknowns. And it's the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but it's a combat history of America and World War I through the most decorated enlisted men. I would say that this is the most underappreciated group because the World War I generation was a great generation too. It was a generation that changed the world, even more so in some cases than World War II. because, I mean, look at the things that modern medicine has developed.

Women's the right to vote. The Middle East is created. Communist Russia. Communism is a rise to power. The world is remade in World War I. Before World War I, it was an era of kings and queens. I mean, yeah, everything changed after that. Empires are changed.

Democracies are created. It's the rise of, the American, the American, that America that we know is a power, is a superpower. It begins, the modern army begins in World War I. Right. And before. So many things. The Marine, the modern Marine Corps begins after Bella Wood. There are, there are just, you know, endless examples. And it's underappreciated. It was a situation where I, this book is a best selling book. I literally had to teach folks about World War I. And it's, it's, it's, an underappreciated situation in this generation sacrifices is exceptional.

There's an amazing amount of heroes in this war. Well, I mean, wasn't the casualty rate in World War I, almost double what it was in World War II? Well, I mean, we only had, I mean, there was about 100 and over 120,000 American casualties. And many of them were from the pandemic of 1918 and 191919, the so-called Spanish flu. which I write about in this book because one of the characters in the unknowns is with the U.S. Navy. And it's a diverse set of stories. This is about a boiler man in an American troop transport ship that's bringing troops over to Europe and back. And this ship is also a plague ship.

It's filled with soldiers that have influenza. And the ship is literally people are being infected every minute. Sure. The ship has got this influenza pandemic that's going on with, it's a plague ship, as well as what happens is a torpedo slams into the main room where this guy's a boiler tender. And he's able to save several men in the boiler room as he's being scalded alive. His back is burned to death by hot boiler, by the soot from the boiler as well as is the steam.

And he's able to close a watertight door that saves the ship. Wow. But that's some of the stories in the unknowns. But it also has the story of individual like Samuel Woodfield who receives the Medal of Honor for taking out five machine gunness. It's incredible stuff. And the unknowns is basically about the... people assigned to bring an unknown soldier the remains back and the establishment of the tomb on the unknown soldier, correct?

Correct, which was largely a, believe it or not, an unknown story. Much of the book, there's a lot of details that I unearthed in there that, I mean, the tomb guard, that is one of the most amazing organizations in America. that they guard our tomb 24 hours a day, you know, every day of the year, in matter what the conditions of weather are. There was information that I unearthed that they weren't aware of, and they have to know the history inside now. And I was very honored that they made me an honorary member of the tomb guard.

Really? That's cool. Yeah. That is a very, very rigorous. I mean, it is not a duty for the week. indeed you know it's uh i wrote right up i wrote a story maybe a couple months ago about the first african-american tomb guard and it was really interesting you know as far as the the war behind it is that uh cruma from uh from ghana came and visited and told s jfk how come there aren't any black tomb guards and so it i watched this interview with the first african-american tomb guard

and he had some great stories. No doubt about it. I mean, they're just remarkable individuals. I interviewed when I was there, we had a reunion with the tomb guards, and I interviewed Ron Crozier, who was a Medal of Honor recipient that was the bodybearer for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

for the Korean War. Wow. This guy was unbelievable, and his stories are, I interviewed him there on the spot. I was blown away. that he was he you know his position was nearly overrun by Chinese a Chinese wave attack and he was able to survive and you know in Korea incredible stuff in Korea yeah hey Pat what what is an unknown

soldier why do we have a tune for that what what is it well what it is is it's an individual that they don't know the name or or or any aspect of who they are I mean there's never going to be an unknown soldier now because there's everybody has their DNA out there and everything out. But during World War I, you know, this is, this is high intensity combat. You have, you know, lots of heavy artillery where shells literally pulverize individuals and they're non-existent. We don't know what happened to them. Or there's remains that are just so, that are, they're very, that are indistinguishable. And you're not able to identify who that individual is. And during World War I, there were about 3,300 or more Americans that were, quote,

unknown. And the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier concept comes from France. They decided to honor in 1990, a unknown soldier that represented all of the soldiers that fought for France during the Great War. And this idea initially did not catch on in the United States. States. There's a number of factors that took place. Congressman by the name of Hamilton Fish who fought with the Harlem Hell fighters. These are African Americans that fought in World War I. There were Americans that in some cases fought with the French Army and then also with the American Army. But Fish was an American, was a white officer in this black unit. And he really sort of championed the cause along with another woman by the name of Marie Maloney, who was

an editor for a very popular woman's magazine at the time, and she started a letter campaign. And this caught fire. It became viral at the time. And they said, like, you know, hey, look, France has an unknown soldier, so does England. Why don't we do it? And initially, the brass of the Pentagon pushed back and said, look, we'll be able to identify all 3,300 of those guys. don't worry about that.

And, you know, men like fish and others came forward and pushed the idea. And this became, you know, an America, this was a very important part of closure for World War I to some degree. It was a way, a mechanism in 1921 to honor all of those who fought in the Great War for America. And it took place on November 11th, 1921. and it was at Arlington and it was a chance to honor the unknown. And what happened is they went to the cemeteries in France and identified several individuals from each battle. They carefully exhumed the bodies and they look through the, to make sure there was no dog tags, letters, or any identifying characteristics that would identify that individual.

They then burned the burial cards for each cemetery for those for those grave plots and they brought each person into a city hall in France. And there were several caskets in the city hall. And initially they were going to use a general officer to select the unknown soldier out of those five individuals. And that night, it's quite interesting. the French said we used an enlisted man to select our unknown soldier and Edward Younger who had been with a ninth infantry regiment during World War I, which was part of the second division. The second division was one of the most heavily engaged in elite units within the AEF. It was also the fourth brigade was part of the Marine Corps. There were two regiments, the fifth and the sixth that were at Bella Wood and other famous battles.

But the second division was an incredible unit. And Edward Younger from the ninth was selected that day and that night to pick the unknown soldier. And that morning, he was handed a bouquet of flowers and asked to select the unknown soldier. I mean, this is an awesome responsibility. And he literally prayed, walked into the room with his caskets. and just worked his way around the room and said, I found his original notes from the experience. He said his hand was literally drawn to the one casket

where he felt that it was the man that it was somebody that was in his unit. And that specific casket, those bones are the ones that are interned. That are in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There's a soldier from World War I, World War II, Korea. there initially was a soldier from the Vietnam War, but the remains were removed when it was determined

that the individual was identified. Oh, that's great, that they were identified. Right. Family, anyway. Yeah. I have an interest in the guerrilla operations in the Philippines. What in your option is the best history of those operations? Can you comment on?

So was the OSS active in the Philippines? I want to like dive into the CBI theater. I don't know if we'll have time to get to that on this episode, but maybe you can answer that one, maybe in brief. Interesting story there. MacArthur and Donovan were rivals during World War I. And that rivalry extended to World War II.

And MacArthur largely blocked the OSS from participating in, the Pacific theory, even though they did. For instance, there was a UDTT, UDT 10 was a team that was composed largely of OSS Maritime Unit, as well as individuals from the U.S. Navy. And UDT as underwater demolition team, but please refer to the SEALs. Yes. But by and large, many OS, there were very few, there were fewer OSS operations in the Pacific, even though it did happen. The OSS are very active in Burma. There was a group called Detachment 101 was quite legendary.

And they tied down and killed a lot of Japanese soldiers in Burma. And they also, they were the guides for Merrill's marauders, for instance, to take Missionai airfield, which was a very critical airfield in northern Burma. But there's several, there's several stories out there on the, on, on, on, uh, resistance in the Philippines, including individuals that were American soldiers that became, um, guerrilla fighters. There's some great stories out there. So I would recommend those, those individuals.

There, it's, it's an area that still needs to be explored, quite frankly. So there you go. There's book 14 for you. Maybe. Or book 15 because you probably already have 14, I plotted out, but I know you have 13. Can you comment on the OSS intelligence operations in China and Macau specifically? What about counterintelligence in that area? And how about white emigrees in the area?

I understand many work for Japan. Yeah, that's a fascinating area. There's a naval intelligence unit that's working in China as well as the OSS, and there's a lot of friction that's created within China. We're working with Chiang Kai Shack primarily, but the OSS also sends in something called the Dixie Mission to Mao. And there are Americans that interface directly with Mao, Satan. We're playing both sides, basically.

We're playing both sides, which is, you know, interesting. There's a number of operational groups that are, stood up sort of at the end of the war where there are Chinese that are that are operational groups that are trained. In fact, Howard Chapel is training one of those groups along with, there was actually some Japanese soldiers or Japanese Americans that are being trained to to participate. But it's a complex brew and there's a lot of politics that are that are swirling around. But the OSS is also involved in with Ho Chi Men. And there's a mission in there called the Deer Mission that's sent in, too, and they have very good relationship,

very good ties in a relationship with Ocemen. Fascinating. Fascinating. What about the white emigrees and working for Japan? Do you have, do you know anything about it? I don't really, I'm not able to comment on that. Okay. Can Patrick talk about the extent of Soviet penetration of the OssS?

I understand that Lynn Ferris is believed to be in a Soviet double agent. Yeah, this is a, this is one of a, this is one of the, the problems with the OSS. The OSS, Donovan will basically states that he'll hire anybody to take on the Japanese and the Germans. Unfortunately, this includes individuals that are left-leaning. Many of those individuals are patriotic Americans, but there are some that are working for the Soviets. And the OSS, this is one of its flaws. Some of it is infiltrated in some cases. And in some cases at a fairly senior level, too, by the NKVD.

There's an exchange program that takes place where we sent some of our guys over to Moscow, but they send some of their guys. But it's also, it's unfortunate, but there's some penetration that we're not able to detect and they're able to feed stuff to the Russians. And that's because during World War II, Russia was there not, was that allies? That's absolutely correct. Yeah. But they were planning ahead in a sense of.

Very much so. And they were very much our adversary and enemy too. Yeah. And then thank you, David Maynard. And thanks, DJ. We appreciate that. Just practically, just practically, when 8,000 people, surrender to a handful of people.

How does that work? Like when there was an American on a Jedbert team or an operational group team, like an 8,000 Nazis or 8,000 Germans surrender, how does that, I mean, are they just basically like, we're done with this and like waving a white handkerchief in the air? Well, in each one of those situations, the American also had partisans backing him up. So he had some friendly guns backing him up. And there is also situations where these individuals are tired of the war. They want to get out and they see an opportunity to do that.

And it's their officers that surrender to these Americans. And it's their officers that also enforce sort of that ceasefire. And they're able to stack the arms and take these prisoners into custody through the partisans. And how were the partisans, or how were the Americans able to control the actions of the partisans who had seen their homelans destroyed by the Germans? In some cases, it didn't go well. For instance, with Howard Chapel, the, you know, it's quite interesting. A senior SS individual who hunted Howard in his team came up to Howard at the end and said to him, him, we have over 200 Italian civilians in the chapel and we're ready to blow it.

And Howard just looked at him and said, go ahead. We have a parachute, he bluffed. We have a parachute regiment that just landed over the hill. I have all these partisans. We're going to execute all of you. And the guy said, look, I'm going to take you prisoner. He's like, no, you're not. And the guy backed down and then said, okay.

you seem like you're of German descent. I hope that you will be as honorable as I was to your men. And Howard has said, I will treat you exactly as you treated my men. And that prisoner was shot trying to escape. Holy shit. He was on maneuver element. Hey, Clint is on.

Clint said, great to me so far, glad to see Patrick on the show. Dave, I've seen him since our training. sessions in 2001. And then it also said, you should ask Pat to talk about John Booth, OSS Maritime Unit. Oh, John.

John is a legend. John is the individual that's actually on the cover of first seals. This is him in a rebreather on a training exercise. Patrick, what is a rebreather for those? The re-breather allows you to recycle the oxygen and not release any bubbles that are a sort of a helltale sign if you're underwater, you're trying to conduct a covert operation. Right. When you're going into a harbor or a, you know, a harbor area and there's people on watch, they'll walk for bubbles coming up, which would signify signals like scuba activity.

Exactly. Scuba, interestingly enough, was developed, the term scuba was developed by Christian Lambertson who developed this rebreater at the Shoreham Pool, where it was tested as operationally for the first time. The rebreather was developed quite interestingly enough. It was the first rebreather. He started playing around with it when he was a teenager out of an old gas mask and bicycle, a bicycle pump. So weird.

So scuba self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. And he coined that term. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, Booth was one of the main operatives in the Maritime Unit. And Booth was a very special family member to me. John would, John was an incredible operative. during the with the maritime unity.

He conducted some of the first red team exercises in Cuba. Where there, let me, this is before, you know, C-L-Team 6 and Marcinko, right? They said to these guys in 43, okay, you've got to infiltrate all the harbor defenses, and we're not telling anybody. And plant fake charges on all the ships and then escape. And Booth did that at Guantanamo Bay in 44,

43 or 44 got out and then he was doing ops in Burma and in some of the operations out there but he was later CIA in Korea he trained everybody and he was a very close friend of mine and John would come every year two or three times a year on his way to Florida John was 89 or 88 years old and would camp out some and would go down to Key West and he would go hunt for lobsters and that was his food and pull the lobsters out and cook him on the beach

but he would come every day every like year two or three times a year and stay at the house that was Uncle John and my young daughter and just an incredible guy and his stories are filled and he invented scuba and the rebreather

no no John Booth was was an operative within the OSS Maritime Unit Christian Lambertson, who's the father of underwater combat diving and also developed the Dr. Lambertson developed a lot, the dive tables that we know today and so much more of the science behind diving, including the rebreather. And he sort of stood up many of the combat swimmers within the OSS. Fascinating.

So for those of you don't know, a rebreather, like a scuba releases bubbles because you're taking and compressed air, breathing it out and goes up to the surface. a rebreather is a purely tactical thing that recycles the area, it scrubs the air so that you have, I mean, it only lasts for a certain period of time, but it scrubs the air and no bubbles go up. So it's a tactical breathing apparatus for covert infiltration or for covert operations underwater.

So it gives no signal. Fascinating. And he invented that when he or he thought of that when he was 16. He was a medical student in the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. And the war is going on. And quite an interesting event occurs. In the winter of 1942, an underwater arms race is set off by Italian frogmen. It's like early 1941, actually.

They go into Alexandria Harbor covertly on submersibles and then plant charges on the hulls of several British battleships and disable them. They sank them into the harbor. And several of these men, some of them escape, most of them are captured. But that sets off this underwater arms race. And the OSS is tasked with developing that technology in 1942, which we don't have. And we don't have the tech either. We have nothing.

And OS and Donovan, they go to Donovan and say develop it. and Donovan goes to a very interesting individual. His name is HGA Woolie, who is the liaison officer for the British Navy in Washington, D.C. And he reacts with Donovan, and Donovan pulls him over from the British side, but he's also an American, too, and he's a screenwriter for Paramount in California.

But in World War I, he was highly decorated, and he had some commanding. experience in 1940 with the British Navy. Commandos, I should say. And he's tasked with standing up this group, and they bring in Christian Lambertson to develop the tech. And they also bring in another guy, another individual who's developing diving apparatus since he was a teenager too.

And they sort of have two competing devices together. and it's actually Christian Lambertson's device that is tested and approved at the at the Shoreham Hotel on November 18th, 1942. And it's it's there that begins the story of the OSS Maritime Unit and the story of the precursor to the Navy Seals where they develop the idea of a team concept. they develop they bring in it's quite fascinating and in first seals

they bring in HGA Woolie brings in his close friend who is a guy by the name of Jack Taylor who's a dentist from Hollywood California Dr. Jack Taylor is not your average dentist

at all. He sailed halfway around the world by himself dug his way out of a gold mine this guy's an incredible adventure prior to the war. And Willie brings him in. And it's Jack Taylor that actually tests the rebreather that day on the 18th of November 1942 in the pool. And it moves around. And he becomes their first real operative behind the lines too. It's incredible story. Jack Taylor is the first OSS operative to be sent over to the Near East. He operates out of Egypt. He's, he operates out of Egypt.

You guys are familiar with the movie The Guns of Navarone. This is that time period. Those islands are being occupied by the Germans. There's an incredible parachute operation that takes place in 43 where the Nazis occupy, one of the islands. And all this stuff has taken place. And Taylor is running guns and agents by something called the Keiki, which is a small Greek shipping vessel in and out of these islands. then moves into Bari, Italy, where they conduct ops into Yugoslavia and Italy. And Jack Taylor is a total adrenaline junkie.

He wants to have the toughest mission he can find and ask for the deepest mission into the Third Reich. And they develop a special team to go into Austria. And it's a suicide mission. He's given four or four individuals that are known as deser volunteers. They're short of people that have German language specializations and specializations in the area. They pull POWs out of the POW camp and train them up for his team. And they jump into Austria. German soldiers who had deserted from the German army.

Yes. And had no actual no loyalty in the United States. They just deserted from the United States. the German army. They deserted, and then they, they would do a number of tests on these guys to test their loyalty. And, you know, for the most part, they were pretty. So it really is like the dirty dozen where, like, the first scene starts off with Louis Marvin and the prison recruiting the guys.

They're going in there, and they're trying to find out. And most of these guys are interesting. They pull guys out that are hardcore socialists that have a natural affinity against the Nazis. I mean, well, or they're communist. I should say they're communists. Yeah. And they don't like the Nazis for whatever reason. And they then form up with this OSS team and he drops in.

But it's a disaster. Just like Stephen Hall, the radio is long. Well, they didn't have a radio because it dropped into a lake. You told your screen down real quick a little bit. Yeah, sure. Taylor goes in there with the team without the radio's gone. So they're running around. Did they lose it on the op?

They lost it on the op. It parachuted in. It was in a bundle and it went in, they think it went into the lake that was nearby and they could never retrieve it. They spent days trying to retrieve that radio. And they then spent two months evading the SS. And he was gathering actionable intelligence on, you know, all the positions in and around the area. But it was one of the deser volunteers that blew it. It's kind of comical in many ways.

He had a girlfriend there. He was trying to have some sort of relationship with a German girl in the village. And it blew their cover. And the SS swarmed in on him. And Taylor, and all of these deserterterteriors rounded up. And Taylor was sent to Malthausen concentration camp as an American. And that's part of that story. And it's incredible.

He builds the crematorium in Malthousin. Holy shit. He's on the death list every day for weeks. Why did they send him to a concentration camp and not a POW camp? Because he was a spy? He was considered a spy. And they tortured him. I mean, he was initially in the hands of Gestapo.

And then he was eventually, then he was in their hands for a number of weeks and then sent him to Malthousin. This actually reminds me also something else I wanted to bring up with you was that the OSS was interesting in the sense that they also recruited quite a few women, including field operatives. Absolutely. There are a number of women. I mean, I get into this in my book operatives, Spies and Savateurs, where I interviewed all the operational women that were out there. And it's everything from line crossers that were women that were just, they would just infiltrate by, you know, walking in to German lines, to by parachute or by, by,

boat in some cases. It's a variety of women operatives that were really quite exceptional. I mean, then you had, you had some very famous OSS women, like Julia Child, for instance, who was an OSS. It was in the OSS. French, Frenchie Admondson, was Virginia. Virginia Hall is one of the most decorated women who receives the Distinguished Service Cross. She's known as the limping lady because she has a wooden leg. Right, right. And she drops in and literally is an operative behind the lines and is hunted by the Nazis has a price on her head.

So what was Donovan, like, obviously he was very egalitarian, very well, like he, he saw people as a resource, like, you know, in terms of what they could bring to the table. And it wasn't based on gender or anything. I mean, no, they had, there were African American, I mean, there were. For instance, there were many professors that were Ralph Bunch, for instance, was in the OSS. There were others. Very much so. I mean, they're very much ahead of their time, you know, looked at the ends justified the means.

They weren't looking at, you know, any kind of race type thing or stereotypes. They were looking at what, who could be the most effective? Right. What can they bring to the table, basically? Right. Fascinating. How did Bill Donovan, like, how did he work with the government? Like, was he, did he have kind of free reign?

Was he shut down a lot? Was he at odds with them? Well, yes. It's, as Donovan always said, some of his greatest enemies were not only the Nazis, but also within Washington, D.C. And one of its greatest, his greatest enemies was Jeddker Hoover and the FBI, and who looked at him as a rival and was constantly trying to sabotage him. That's interesting, because who,

Hoover was focused internally, domestically, you know, his little war against communism and everything. Why did he see Donovan as a rival since he was operating, you know, almost exclusively externally? What was going on was that they saw the future. They saw that the war was coming to an end and that there was going to be a need for some sort of an intelligence apparatus to deal with the Russians. And it was Hoover that was sniping at him. But even the president himself sort of stuck the dagger in Donovan's back and leaked stories of a so-called American Gestapo that would arise at the end of the war. Which president are we talking about at this point? President FDR.

The same person who reclaimed Donovan. Yeah, they leaked different stories out. And it would be President Truman that would actually disband the OSS in October 1945. And why were they disbanded and then what happened after that? Like how long before they stood up to CIA? It would be a couple years afterwards. But what's interesting is some elements of the OSS still were intact, including, for instance, the State Department's intelligence and research arm

that would stick around. And there were some other elements that would remain, but then they would stand it up again, a couple years later with the CIA in 1948. I mean, there was a legitimate concern there. I mean, there was infiltration by the Russians of the organization. But at the same time, there was a lot of institutional knowledge and great individuals that were lost, too, within that time period.

Now, when the CIA stood up, a lot of the people or a percentage, a good percentage of people from the OSS were brought in, but were then excised during the Carter administration, correct? Hard to say. There were a lot that did come over, and then some that didn't. And then during the Reagan administration, for instance, when Bill Casey came back, Bill Casey was the great, he was in charge of European operations, specifically something called Secret Intelligence in Europe, was brought back.

brought back a lot of the old guard that he knew. Really? Okay. I know that Carter kind of deboned the CIA with his idea that it was all going to be tech. He really supported the NSA. He thought that human. There's also the Church Commission and other disease that take place that, you know, that, that look at the, there were a number of abuses, too. Sure. That were, that, you know, that took place and that are examined.

Sure. certain elements of the CIA is certainly run rampant. Now, were those generally members of or former OSS people, or were they like more kind of the, a new intelligence paradigm that had? No, no, I think that's hard to answer that. I don't think I can, you know, I don't think there's a way of pinpointing that exactly. Yeah, fascinating. Fascinating. Let's talk about Washington's Immortals a little bit. Yeah, fascinating. this is a very special book to me. This is, every book I've written,

I've written 12 books now, has found me in one way or another. And what I mean by that is the story has found me. And that's certainly the case with Washington's Immortals. It's 2010 and battalion commander from We Were One. He was up in New York with me at the same time. and said, hey, Pat, do you want to go to the men and just sort of hang out? I said, no, let's do a battlefield tour of Brooklyn.

And for those of you that are in New York City, there are so much, there's so much history that's in plain sight that's worth exploring and seeing. And my favorite place is the Battle of Brooklyn in many ways, because we see. started out at Greenwood Cemetery, and this is a special place. It's not only a cemetery, but it's also a battlefield. It's the battlefield of one of the largest battles of the Revolutionary War, but also one of its most crucial battles. The battle is, the cemetery is filled with who's who of New York. It's boss Tweedsbury there. There's Civil War Generals, but it's also battlefield and we walked up to Battle Hill, which was the focal point of the Battle of Brooklyn on August 27, 1776. This is only a month after the declaration of, basically a month after the

Declaration of Independence is signed. And the British launch, one of the largest operations of the war. And our forces are out on Guana, on the Heights of Guantas, which is Greenwood Cemetery, and they're being flanked by a flanking force led by Cornwallis and Henry Clinton and others, Lord Howe, through the Jamaica Pass and they're coming around and they're going behind Greenwood Cemetery. And the men in my book, Washington's Immortals or the Maryland Line literally had to fight for their lives back towards their main Bivouac area, which is a stone house. and as they're fighting their way through that, the entire, a large portion of the American Army is being surrounded on the Heights of Guantas. And these men mount a desperate and suicidal charge, rearguard action, an American thermopyly, which one historians described as an hour more important in our history than any other.

They open up a gap in the lines that allowed the American Army, a bulk of it, to escape. and it's it's it's it's it's it's near this stone house that the the action takes place and they charge multiple times into the lines um they're hit with canister and grape and this is think of a shotgun you know these are balls of of of iron that are the size of a golf ball that are they're piercing um the flower of the south in in maryland these are the men some of the wealthiest families of the south these are men of their motto is men of honor family and fortune and they they charge multiple times into the house and also to their death and allow much of the army to escape and as we went down to the stone house we went to an area the Michael Raleigh American Legion Post which is about

about two blocks away. And at the time, this is 2010, there was a rusted old sign that said, here lie 256 continental soldiers, Maryland heroes. And it's,

their mass grave is somewhere in and around that area. And I became obsessed with the story behind the sign. Who were these guys? You know, what is the story? And, you know,

it's a story like, like so many American units, including the Marine Corps. It's a story that began in a weary day in a tavern where men of family fortune and honor come together to swear allegiance to one another that they will fight the British and 48 hours notice. They will arm themselves with the best equipment that money can buy and they train. This is in 1774 for whatever is out there. and they became one of the greatest fighting regiments of the American Revolution. They also become the special ops link here is the light infantry.

And this story is told really for the first time in Washington's Immortals, where these men are the backbone of the light infantry, and they fight everywhere, they fight for seven years of war. In the north and the south, they're at Calpens, for instance, where they change the tide of the war. they're at Camden, they're at Guelford Courthouse. It's really quite an incredible story. I love also the story about the battle for Brooklyn, where, you know, Washington, of course,

is famous for retreating and where they retreat across the East River, they have to evacuate and give up Brooklyn. And that whole deception campaign that they had, letting campfires to deceive the British, while they got basically the entire army across the East River overnight. Well, that's an area of great expertise in mind. Let's put it that way. But what happens there is quite interesting. It's August 27th that this battle unfolds.

These men are able to escape into entrenchments at Brooklyn Heights, and the British Army is swarming at them. But what happens is the Marylanders chew up priceless daylight, and they're not able to necessarily, assault those fortifications because it's more in the afternoon. There's also the looming battle at Bunker Hill where Lord Howe loses his literally hundreds of men. And he's not really necessarily willing to make that sacrifice. But if he had, the war could have been over. They would have probably taken 10,000 American troops and captured Washington. But they pause. And what happens is the next day,

a Nor'easter sets in. A massive rainstorm. The British army then begins the series of entrenchments around Brooklyn Heights and they start to move closer and closer. And Washington has a decision to make. Do I stand and hold or do I retreat? And every available boat is gathered from Manhattan. And it's quite a remarkable story. The Marblehead men, John Glover's Marblehead men bring the army across. But what happens is, A number of atmospheric miracles take place. The British ships were not able to get up the East River because they're not able to get up the East River because the wind doesn't blow favorably on the British sales. Have they been able to get behind the American defenses, it would have been game over.

The wind doesn't blow properly. But also suddenly that night, a miraculous fog sits in. and squeeze the movement of the American Army and Glover's men as they transport 10,000 Americans. The American Dunkirk takes place. It's an incredible story right under the noses of the British Army. But here, there's so many things that take place that are miraculous. A British, I mean, there are loyalists that are within Harlem Heights that see what's going on. they literally send a slave to tell the British what's going on.

But the slave speaks broken Dutch and it's not able to communicate what's going on. There's all these other things that take place. One thing after another. And, you know, the miracle of the evacuation takes place. And we're able to move 10,000 men off of Harlem Heights, or I mean of Brooklyn Heights into Manhattan. It's an incredible story. It's amazing when you think about, like, the history of the United States. Oh, yeah, the Revolution of War happened.

The Americans fought the British. But it wasn't all the Americans. It wasn't even a majority of the Americans or the people in America. And then all these things happen like you're talking about. I mean, because New York, was this still new orange at that point in time? It was still a Dutch. These are Americans that are doing all the fighting. I mean, you've got, as the war goes on, it's quite interesting.

I mean, we are so. lucky in so many ways that we were able to to win our independence. And it was not only because of, you know, the efforts of many Americans, but it was also we were fighting other Americans. Yeah. Had the British Empire exploited that properly, that division, we would have lost. Yeah. Some of our toughest fights were again, were loyal. A lot of colonists or Americans who wanted to remain apart. We were dealing with an American civil war, which I really cover in, this is our first civil war. I really capture that in Washington's Immortals because within the families of the regiment, there are divided loyalties. The fathers of

some of these men are hardcore loyalists. I mean, one of my main characters says, I'd rather die in a Patriots grave than, you know, we're the crown of England. That's how, you know, and his father is an ardent loyalist who disowns him. This happens over and over. If you think about all those guys who died on the prison ships off the coast of Manhattan, they could have thrown in the towel and gone over to the other side. Many of the men in the so-called Maryland 400 or Washington's Immortals were likely captured and were placed on those warships, those British ships,

where upwards of 10,000 or more were killed on those ships. It's an incredible story that's largely unknown. There's a British monument in Green Park for those men in the thousands. Because the bones, what would happen is they would die of disease. Their bones were just thrown overboard, and they would wash ashore in thousands upon thousands of bones were just gathered, and they were placed in this monument. That's amazing. Patrick, I just, I was looking down. I wanted to pull apart text messages from that period of time because I distinctly remember it.

And this is August 28, 2012. Dave, I'm up in New York City. This is my next project in your hood. You linked to New York Times article. I said, very cool. How am I going to be here? Day or two heading to library, this has been an obsession for two years doing the first band of brothers on revolution. That's exactly what this book is.

It's the first time that it's really ever been done. It's a breakthrough book. it's it's gone through about 25 reprintings it's best-selling book and this is washington's immortals we're talking about yeah and it's a band of brothers on these men and and it's the enlisted men as well as the officers and it's told through their eyes and i also tell the story of the british too and how is this told through their eyes that's a very good question uh dave this is told through something called pension applications, diaries, and letters. The pension applications, there are, I use thousands of sources for this book. There's literally, I think, 3,000 end notes in this book. It's all

primary sources. But a lot of it was something to do with a call the pension application. And if you were lucky enough to survive the Revolutionary War, you could go down to the local courthouse and swear under oath what you saw and did to prove that you were there. And in some cases, it would be detailed. Like it would be in a detailed description of the experience. Other times it'd be like, yeah,

I was at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse or Cow Pins or Long Island. But within those little nuggets, I was able to mind those nuggets. I was really one of the first people to do that. This is one of the great oral history projects of the American Revolution. That's unknown.

And they're out there. So I stripped all this stuff out. In the next book I wrote, I literally rebuilt the regiment using the pension files and the muster rolls. And built it up from the ground up and was able to determine who the characters of the book were. And it was largely in their own words. It's incredible stuff. But Washington's Immortals captures that level of detail. It's a granular level of detail.

But it's also narrative history. So this thing is, it feels like it's cinematic. It's very fast read. And it's dynamic. Well, Jets. Go ahead, Dave. I was just going to say, you weren't trained as a writer. You're trained as historian and finance.

How does your writing evolved over the years? I completely developed my own style. and my own technique and my own approach. I'd say that it's the one thing that I'm a natural at. And it's not necessarily so much the writing is it's the history in the way that I tell it. The storytelling aspect. Yeah.

And it's something that I developed over time. And I'm very much, my technique is I'm an isolationist. I'm an island of one. I don't go hang out with other. writers. I don't see their other styles. I develop my own. I do my own thing. I go, I go explore my own places. I come with my own ideas. And, and that's, it's all about ideas and in coming up with an idea that, I mean, ultimately, we'll sell books, but also that ultimately also tells an important story. What I typically do, my books are typically a smaller story that's untold that tells a larger

important story on who we are as Americans in one way or another. And it's fascinating because I know you've told me before, like, I think sometimes we go, well, how do I become a ride or how do I do this or how do I do that? And you've told me, I haven't worked in over 20 years. That's true. When I first started this thing, I mean, I spend a lot of time. doing what I do. Right. I mean, I spend like 80 hours and stuff. You know, I'm always doing this stuff.

Yeah. But it's not work to me. I love what I do. And I always said to myself, if this becomes work, I'm done. I don't carry a briefcase. I don't do all that stuff. I don't like to wear a suit. I just, you know, I, this is fun.

And I, and it's not only fun, but I like to learn. And when I'm, I challenge myself. I go outside of my Yeah, that's what keeps it interesting. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not just going to do, I've written seven books on World War II. I'm willing, I told the editor that I want to do a book on the Revolution. I'm like, no, we got to do another role.

I'm like, no, fine, went to another publisher. I'm willing to take a risk and a chance on everything I write. Is it the mystery? Is it the, I know, it's the journey. I love the journey. I love to. to explore this stuff. I love to, you know, feel the history.

I like to get into the weeds. Like, I'm giving any sense of life. He's coming back with his ear, I'm so into the week. You know, this is, this is an 1860 cult army. You know, it's like, I'm all over this stuff. It's not just any cult army, though. It's identified to Nathan Fogg.

Second Mass Calvary. You know, I know the whole history of this, this, this weapon, this piece, which he carried right around my house. You know, I get into this. I get into the weeds and the minutia. I love, I love this stuff. And it's, it's not just the object. It's, it's something that's a piece of history that was carried by somebody that was

there. I mean, I walk the ground. I get, you know, I get into the weeds. And Pat, I know you don't want to say too much too much. soon, but your next, do you want to say a little bit about your next book that you have coming out? The next book is, I'm going back to the Revolutionary War, and it's an extraordinary story on the revolution, and it's a story that, that a group of men that literally saved our country multiple times, and created so many things that we know now. It's special,

and I can't get too far into it. We understand. You don't. You don't. You don't. You don't. You You don't want to try you scoop it while you're waiting for publishing. It's done, though. Yeah. And it's a situation where I literally, I took a group of men, and it begins in 1769 before the revolution. And it's their story. They're the main springs behind the idea.

I mean, that's a big part of what I write about. It's about ideas. I mean, ideas that can change the world. and you know these are these are men that had an idea that changed the world so uh i think you know we're two hours two hours and 15 minutes in we should probably start wrapping it up i just want to hit you with a couple quick questions before we uh before we move on uh Andrew says i have washington's and mortals can you talk about the foreign intelligence operations that Leslie Groves ran as a part of the Manhattan project.

Groves had an aspect of that project called the Alsos. And that's one of my favorite aspects of the OSS interaction with Groves. And I wish I had it because I wear it every day and I just don't have it on me now. but I have an 85-year-old scapula that I wear everywhere, every day. It happens to be upstairs right now because I took a shower for one on. And it was given to me by Frank Montalioni. And Frank Montalioni was the radio operator from Moberg. If you ever saw that movie, Catcher was a spy.

This is the story of Moberg. And Moberg was Groves guy to go after Nazi tech, specifically Nazi nuclear tech. and one of their missions involved killing Warner Heisenberg and they sent in Berg. They sent in Berg, I mean, I've got some with Montalioni in Italy to gather tech on the nuclear program outside of Rome, really an amazing story. But then the greatest op was probably in Switzerland where they sent in Berg to assassinate Heisenberg. they gave him a pistol and they said you have the ability to determine whether or not you think Heisenberg is a threat or not. So Berg went and sat in as a student in all of Heisenberg's little lectures. It's kind of amazing that the Nazis allowed Heisenberg out of Nazi Germany in 1944, 1945 to conduct these lessons.

but they let him in there. And Berg was skilled. You spoke eight different languages. He was a brilliant guy. And he went into the lectures and stalked Heisenberg for several days. And then walked one night behind Heisenberg with the pistol and made the decision not to kill Heisselberg, which was the right decision. I mean, the Germans weren't that far ahead, you know, of us. that they were a threat.

And Andrew asked, did you consult on the Medal of Honor games, video games, I guess? I did. Oh, really? Yeah, I was a consultant for those games. I was also consultant for Band of Brothers when that came out. I was a historical consultant for those guys. I did like all the research in the archives and the stuff on weapons and stuff. But yeah, I did, I helped do storyboards for one of the Medal of Honors.

and it turned out to be a series that they never did. It was going to be a Cold War OSS. Oh, shit. Really? Yeah, at the time they never did it. They went to the Afghanistan series, I think, after that. And I don't think Medal of Honors around anymore. It's been taken over by Call of Duty.

But, yeah. That would have been really cool. But I guess there is some sort of a Cold War thing out there with Call of Duty, right? Is there? Yeah, I believe so. I don't know. And then could you take Rick Adkinson in a fight? Andrew asked.

Well, I don't know if I'd want to, but let me just say I was a college wrestler Division 1. All right, all right. Carlos Astari. I don't think I'd ever go there. One final question before we wrap up, and I think this is a good way to end it. Johnny asks, do you have any plans to take on? J-Soc or Socom history.

I'd love to. If I was given the proper access, I think I could tell that story properly. Patrick, you know, earlier it was asked, or I think Jack asked you, if you saw a difference in the modern generation and the OSS guys. I mean, you spent times, even though they weren't technically a special operations, you did go in with Marine Recon. But in Fallujah, it was a line infantry unit. But, you know, I think a lot of people take digs at millennials, right? The millennials this, millennials, that. But millennials have also been the ones primarily fighting our wars for last 20 years.

When you spent time with the Marines in Fallujah, and then you compare that to like the men you interviewed from the OSS and Merrillous and Marauders, did you see much of a difference in the mentality and the capability in combat, raidingness and anything and those disparate groups of people not with the not with the Marines no I was I was just blown away by by those so it's not so much a generational thing as just a a warrior thing or I don't want to put words in your mouth but no I I think that those were just incredible warriors I I in the sacrifices that they made are in some cases greater than that other generation because they had to go to back to Afghanistan or Iraq nine or ten times and did it, you know, nobody knew.

I had guys, like one of my close friends, Sean Stokes, literally lied to his parents that he wasn't going to Iraq. He was going to, you know, overseas somewhere in a marine float and had to beg his way, into the Marine Corps for another six month extension, just to stay on, even though they were gonna kick him out. And it cost him his life. I see that multiple times. It's a silent generation that nobody knows about, of sacrifice.

Now, they don't tell their stories to anybody, in most cases, unless you were there. I mean, the ones that were really there, you know what I mean? Yeah. They won't talk about it. Sometimes they're afraid somebody's going to say they have PTSD or something or label them incorrectly because a lot of times people just don't get it. Right.

And I'm sorry, there's another. And there's still a large, you know, that whole sort of post-Vietnam mythos of somebody with post-traumatic stress going. you know, just going postal and Charlie's in the wire, man. Like that's still a very prevalent thought amongst civilians. And so post-traumatic stress is still very taboo. It's still very, you know, even even like saying you're a veteran or combat veteran, I think, is something that works against you a lot of times in the civilian world at this point.

I think that's true. And it's a very unfortunate thing. It's a misunderstanding. Yeah. And the fact is that these people owe their freedoms to those sacrifices, which are unsung in many cases. And they have the luxury of not actually happen to know that. Right.

So anyway, enough with the maudlin. Yeah, guys. You know, thanks everyone for joining us live tonight. I hope everyone is, you know, using it to take their mind off of the coronis and everything else going on in the world and all that drama. Thank you so much, Patrick, for joining us tonight. You can find all of Pat's books on Amazon. They're all there. You can get them on Kindle so you'd have them delivered, you know, right to your computer digitally while you're, you know, socially distancing yourself.

So it's a good time. Do you have audiobooks for all of them? Yeah. Yeah, all these books are audio. You can, you know, and it's a great thing is you can just download it on your iPhone and listen to it in the car when you're going to places or wherever. Nobody's going anywhere now. Not right now, but in the future, yeah.

You can listen to it at home. On your way to the grocery store? Well, if you're not in New York. Yeah. So, yeah, and I would love to have you on again, Pat, some time to talk about the China's an Indian theater. I really didn't, I found it very confused. telling you guys are you did a great job thank you no thank you and yeah we didn't we didn't

really have a chance to talk about you know uh the china burma india theater and i hope we do that again some other time the other thing we could talk about is dog company second ranger battalion that's my other book on point to hawk and hill 400 in the hurricane forest i mean that's first i mean that's i mean that's really amazing stuff that i think your viewers would like to to know about to. I'd be what somebody's echoing. Yeah, I don't know.

Hot mic, hot mic. Now, let me plug these in and see if that works. I don't know if it's me. So anyways, yeah, again, thank you, Patrick, for coming on.

We'll do it again sometime. Everyone who joined us on the show, thank you. In the meantime, if you take a look down in the description, you'll find links to, you know,

all of our stuff. There's a subreddit. There's a Patreon page if you're interested in supporting the, stream and keeping us going. You know, like and share the video. Give us the little thumbs up and share it with your friends.

And all that helps this thing build some traction. So I really appreciate it. And definitely check out Pat's stuff. Pat, you also have quite a bit of stuff on the history channel on YouTube. Oh, yeah. There's dozens of documentaries. For instance, we were won is shootout D-Dade Fallujah, for instance, which the Marine Corps uses a training film,

Were they the actual Marines that I was with, we reenacted those ambushes that I talked about. You know, they did that reenactment. So everything is hyper-realistic. Yeah. We did the one on the Korean War called Against the Odds, which is Bloody George, it's called. It's really an incredible story of George Company in the Korean War. And then you're the ordinary and glorious bastards. Yeah, it's called the real and glorious bastards.

And they interviewed Fred Mayer, and I narrate a lot. large portion of that. And yeah, it's, they really, it's a dramatic documentary. So it's a lot of it's film. So you feel like you're there. It's quite, it's won multiple awards. And thank you, DJ. And thank you, London.

We really appreciate it, guys. We really do appreciate your donations. It helps us keep going. Patrick, man, thank you so much. It was a whirlwind. That was a great, I really enjoyed it. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

That was a great conversation with friends. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do it again. Yeah, and if you haven't joined our Patreon, please join our Patreon. A buck a month will give you access to great exclusive content. Pat's going to give us a talk about his interview with a true man, myth, and legend who most people never heard about. I mean, these are the video and movies should be made about.

Amen. You know, and subscribe to our channel. If you haven't already, hit the notification bell to make sure you get our notification. and you two will randomly decide if it lets you know when we come online. And last thing, very last thing, I promise this time. Next episode, next Friday, my friend Erin, she is a woman who served as a CIA ops officer over in, let's just say, some hostile fire zones during the War on Terror. And I don't think she's ever been interviewed like this before.

It's, I'm really excited for it. So we'll have that for you guys next Friday. Yeah, thanks, everybody. We really appreciate it. And we will touch you soon.