The Team House - The Real Story of Darby's Rangers | Mir Bahmanyar | Ep. 334

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Mir Bahmanyar served in the Second Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He holds a B.A. in History from University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in War Studies from King's College London. His jobs have included that of a library clerk, janitor, retail merchant, military technical advisor, German language coach, producer and writer in Hollywood. He has written numerous books and articles from ancient history to modern war. His special interests are the Punic Wars, WWII Darby's Rangers and Future War. He grew up on three continents and four countries, speaks three languages, and currently lives with his wife in Toronto, Canada. He supports environmental and animal rights.find Mir here ⬇️https://www.mirbahmanyar.com/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:American Financing ⬇️https://AmericanFinancing.net/teamhouse or call 866-889-8010DisclaimerNMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.orgRidge Wallet ⬇️https://ridge.com/HOUSEfor up to 40% off!!The Perfect Jean ⬇️http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15for 15% off!!____________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey folks. Welcome to episode 334 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy tonight with our guest, the author of the Houdini Club, Mir Bamanja.

We're very happy to have him here on the show. I've known Mir for a few years now. We meet up maybe once a year for lunch. He's a 275 veteran and also has gone into work writing historical works about warfare, done some work in Hollywood, kind of all around doing interesting things. So I'm excited to talk about this book in particular that you have coming out now, which is about Darby Rangers,

the original modern Rangers that fought in North Africa and through Italy and up into Germany. Is this book available now? Is it out yet, Mir? It's coming out April 22nd. Okay, great. What's that? Five weeks, three weeks.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So a slight delay. It was delayed by about a week. But anyway, first of all, thanks for having me. And you guys have a great show. Thank you. Just so you know.

And I don't say that lightly, you know. So anyway. Mir, tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you grew up and ended up in Ranger Battalion yourself. Okay. Sure. It's going to take five hours, like I told you before. So I'll try to give you the Cliff Note version here.

My dad was Iranian. He served in the Shah's army until sometime in the 60s. And my mom is German. And I grew up in Germany until I was maybe 15, 16. And then we all moved to California. So I'm basically a West Coast boy. He grew up during really great times in California in the 70s and 80s. My dad made me promise not to join the military.

while he was alive. He said something about Americans are crazy. They're always going to go to war. So, you know, I dropped in and out of college when my dad was really sick. Eventually, I graduated, went to UC Berkeley, got a degree in history. And then I enlisted. I wanted to go special forces. But at that time, before you were born, Jack, they only took prior service.

So the recruiter, the genius that he was, knew that I had read all these lurk books, and you had some great guests on, on long-range patrollers. And he said, Rangers. And I'm like, oh, awesome, you know, four, six-man team behind enemy lines kind of a thing. Little did I know. It had transitioned into a line infantry unit or light infantry unit. So anyway, I went to, I enlisted 275, enlisted originally for four years.

did basic AIT Airborne RIP, Ranger Indoctrination Program, all at Benning. I did rip twice. I broke my ankle in the first RIP class, and they allowed me to stay at the headshed, where I in process the bunch of other guys coming in and graduated my second RIP class with little notice, so I was not really super fit.

I also got my teeth kicked in in hand-to-hand combat. I was a bit too motivated. From there, I went to 275, and I think it was first Sergeant Klein at the time, thought I was a tall, six-foot-two guy, very fit, and he said, machine gun, here, take it, go. So I joined weapons squad, Bravo Company, 275, which was really great, very formative, but it was during the time of budget cuts, right? I mean, this was in the mid to late 80s, and we were, what, a dozen plus years after Vietnam, so the military wasn't in super great standing at the time.

And you kind of felt that when you went off base. But you know what's interesting? It was a good time period. I was 26 with a four-year degree. I came in as a spec four. And I earned that, you know, two rip classes. I deserved the promotion. But anyway, so I went to 275,

had my first ranger school slot, but busted the ankle playing combat soccer, the one I had broken in the previous rip class, in the first group class. So then they sent me to PLDC during Block Leave. And then they offered a program to people that was called green to gold. And it was basically for enlisted swine to go

and, you know, end their contract, the active duty contract, sign up again for eight years and go to ROTC. And so I did that. I took that option. So I spent two years of battalion. I was a machine gunner. And then they made me training NCO

when they knew they were booting. me down to legland. And that was all good. I made good friends. You know, I still talked to some guys. One of them became a battalion commander at first bat. And the other one became JAG, worked with the regiment and special operations command as a lawyer. So I still stay in touch with these guys. Left, went to RTC in the Bay Area, San Francisco, was working on my master, ruptured my thigh playing soccer, got kicked out of the military, medical discharge.

But I didn't get any medical, anything, VA benefits. You know, I didn't really enlist for that either. So anyway, I got booted and did some civilian stuff and tried to re-enlist for the first Gulf War. and they wouldn't pass me, wouldn't clear me medically. So eventually I ended up going to Hollywood, having wonderful dreams of becoming a producer, making movies, hooked up with a bunch of ex-military guys,

which was an interesting experience, because at that time there weren't a lot of combat vats around. So there were also a bunch of people who had like no real experience whatsoever, but claimed to be this, that, and the other. And once you've been in a battalion, once you've been in any active duty military unit, you kind of get a feel for what, you know, whether or not someone is legit or not.

But Hollywood was interesting, you know, the military wasn't really very liked. But, you know, people were tech advisors. And I struggled through there, tried to be a producer, met some really great people. But Hollywood is a snake pit. you know, it's not a great place, really. And ultimately, the interesting thing about moving to Los Angeles was I was on one of those early

bulletin boards for Rangers and stuff. And one guy said, hey, look, there's this Ranger, an old-timer living in L.A. He's got all these photos. And prior to that, I'd done a little bit of research on Merrill's Marauders, things like that. I was interested in it after I left the battalion. So I'd already reached out back in the day when you did. letters and things like that. So I had reached out to some

Merald's Marauders who'd been very good about sending me back their information. So I was interested in that theater for a little while. I go to L.A. I hear about this old geyser called Phil Stern, famous photographer down in Hollywood, you know, jazz, best friends with Jimmy Dean and, you know, just John Wayne, all these Frank Sinanautras. It was a great old guy.

So I went, I introduced myself and I basically went and hung out with him maybe once every week, every two weeks for a number of years. And he had this amazing collection of photographs from Darby's Rangers that he had joined as a combat photographer, you know, a few months after activation. So that's sort of how I got into the Darby Ranger thing. And from there, you know, I'd been on the board of the 75th Ranger Regiment Association. So I'd go to some reunions. I'd go to the World War II Ranger Battalion Association reunions. I talked to Phil Stern a lot about Hollywood, military, whatever. So we became really good friends and he introduced me to a lot of the Darby guys. And luckily for me,

there were a ton of them in San California at the time. They're all dead now. But it's kind of sad, actually. But, you know, it happens to all of us. And so I developed this affinity toward Darby's Rangers. And this started, I'd say, maybe in the early 90s. And so I'd been collecting things here and there, and I told Phil we needed to preserve his history, the images he had, I think, 800 pictures on Derby. Darby's Rangers. Yeah, a lot of him.

And he had thousands on jazz, you know, like Sammy Davis Jr. and Jimmy Dean. I mean, like, yeah, this guy was a heavy hitter. He was Delta Force of combat photographers. So he allowed me to scan in like 100, 150 of his images. Back then, you know, I had a flatbed scanner. I was probably one of the first people that had one of those things. And so I kind of just developed that. I got to keep that.

And then he said, hey, you should talk to this guy. So I would call that guy up. And they'd mail me things. And then the computers sort of started to take off. And some of the old timers got better at that, of course, and started emailing me things or sending me floppy disk. When I started writing this book, I had to find an old floppy disk to hook it up to an old computer to get some of that data that I had not saved. So that's sort of how Darby came about.

And in Hollywood, I didn't really want to be a tech advisor, although I did tech advise. I started actually on a couple small shows. And I was one of the early guys on Blackhawk Down. There's a whole story on Blackhawk Down, which is a whole story on Blackhawk Down, which is, not a positive experience. Tell us the story. Let's hear it here. I was persona non grata with a PAO at 75th.

So what happened is I had a good friend of mine, 275 baby also, Tim Abel, great actor. I heard him, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So Tim was also in the Old Guard. Anyway, Tim was good friends with the tech advisor for Brookheimer. Jerry Brookheimer, big producer in Hollywood, does all the big movies.

He produced Black Hawk Down among many other things. And the director was Ridley Scott. And the tech advisor for pretty much most of Brookheimer's movies was Harry Humphreys, Navy Seal. High-speed guy, I have nothing bad to say about him. He's one of those guys where you need to go drink with him, though, to be considered of value or to be trusted. I don't drink much, so.

But anyway, so anyway, Tim introduced me to Harry. And they said Black Hawk Down is greenlit. It's not going to be done with Disney. It's going to be done with Sony. And they knew I was a Ranger. So I reached out to the Ranger community. Got lots of pictures from the guys who had been over there. I think it was Bravo 375.

I think that was a more good issue. And a lot of those guys were really awesome, really great guys. They sent me pictures, whatever I. compiled a database, send it to production, basically to Harry and all that stuff. By the way, I only got paid, I think, for about two weeks, and I did a lot of work on that fucking show. I read the first draft of Mark Bowden's adaptation of his own book, and I had met Mark prior to that. Really great guy, actually. I met him at the Chateau Marmont, where one of the Belushi's died, a drug overdose, I think it was. But Mark was a great guy, very approach

You could talk to him. He's knowledgeable. I think his book was 95% really accurate for a civilian, right? I mean, you've got to know a few things. But the regiment supported the book. So it was really an excellent book. I read his first draft. I thought it was okay, but what do I know it was okay? In Hollywood, nobody knows what a good script is, by the way. Don't let them fool you. The average person today is feeling the financial strain more than ever. Expenses are up. Wages aren't keeping pace. and many people are finding it nearly impossible to make ends meet. With little leftover for covering the basics, it's no surprise that many are resorting to credit cards just to get by, often carrying high balances and interest rates in the 20s and even 30s.

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Call American Financing Today and take control of your financial future. 866-889-8-8-6-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-10 Americanfinancing.comnet slash teamhouse. But then Brookheimer, in typical Hollywood fashion, hired somebody else, and I got to read that draft as well. I forgot now who wrote it. And I'm reading through it, and I'm going, hey, this name, I heard something. So I check on it. It turns out one of the leads is a guy who gets busted and goes to jail for,

I want to say, sexual assault, but probably rape of his daughter over a number of years. I forget his name, and it doesn't matter. He's featured in this script heavily. I remember this being controversial, yeah. So I call Harry Humphreys. I'm like, you know, you guys have to change this. You got to tell production, this guy is going to go to jail soon. It wasn't confirmed yet.

It was all hush-hush. So they changed the script completely. And all of a sudden, I'm starting to get a lot of heap from one or two rangers who are like, hey, you're using this to make yourself bigger and all that. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, I'm hardly getting paid and all your names and all your work is credited and it's going to production. I don't know what to say. But anyway, one of the people I heard about a lot was Eversman, that he was a pretty nice guy squared away, whatever, all that. So I made a very minor off-the-cuff remark to Harry.

I said, you know, maybe an Eversman might replace this kind of character. I have nothing to do with the script, you know. This is my opinions. I'm throwing the money. out. And since I provided fortunes in terms of images from the Rangers and had put a database together, I guess I sort of was reputable. And I had started liaising with the public affairs officer at the regiment at the time. And I said, hey, listen, off the record, I said, listen, this movie's going to get made. I'm sure they're going to reach out to you guys. So I'm just giving

you a heads up as a former bat boy, because I thought I'd be cool. Anyway, so they made a changes to the script, you know, whatever, for better or for worse, that they certainly removed that controversial ranger, which was a wise thing to do. And I was involved in it. They brought a 375 guy on board who had been in Mogadishu, great guy, and eventually production reaches out to the PAO, with whom I've been talking throughout the entire time. And all of a sudden, I get no return calls from that guy. Captain, I think it was a result. rank at the time, S5 shop maybe. Anyway, so I called half a dozen times.

Meanwhile, I'm also working on We Were Soldiers Once and Young, doing some prep work there for the prop guys. You know, prop guys are the guys who manufacture things that are handled by actors on set. So, and I'm getting pissed. I'm like, you know, I've done a lot of work here. I'm looking out for the regiment's interests. I put you in touch with production. Production is talking to you.

Great. at least on occasion to return my phone call. Because I still thought it was going to be part of the whole thing. So he ignores me and I get mad. I write a letter, fax it to the colonel of the regiment. And basically saying, hey, listen, you know, I'm not affiliated whatsoever. I've only done research. You know, I'm not speaking on behalf of Sony, Brokheimer, anybody.

Nobody just Ranger Balminaw, talking to a Ranger, whoever colonel at the time it was. And I said, you know, this is not how you should treat Falmese. Rangers. So anyway, I sent that fax in. A day later, I get a phone call. I'm driving in a truck with this Mexican dude. Great guy. He's taking me out to all these Mexican joints in L.A. like real food. And I get this call from the, from the PAO. And he's like, what the hell are you doing, bum and you? Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, hey, fuck you. You know, oops. I don't even know if I can swear on this thing. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, you know, get lost. I'm like, I called you half a dozen times, left you messages, whatever, and you're blowing me off. And he's like,

you know, I lost the job now because of you, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, you should treat Rangers better. I thought that's what we do, right? Brotherhood and all that. Boom. End of story. Eventually, I get let go on the production of Blackhawk Town. It had nothing to do with that, I think. It was more about someone close to Harry Humphreys thought I was going to use this opportunity working on the film to harass the director and producer with my own projects, which I had accumulated over the years, which, by the way, Harry had asked me about. So they said, well, you know, we can only have you work here for this and pay you for this. And then, you know, we're not taking you to a moroccur to film. And I'm like, fine. There's a lot of those, like, petty jealousies in

that world from what I hear. I'm like, everyone's trying to fuck everyone else off of the job. It's absolutely true. Tech advising is particularly brutal, but all of Hollywood is brutal. You got to remember, one percent of the people in Hollywood get 99% of the money. And then 99% of us slugging it out in a death pit to get that 1%. So it's challenging, you know. And I didn't want to be a tech advisor. So it wasn't that important to me.

It was just my buddy Tim Abel, Harry Humphreys is friends with him. Ranger book is going to be a tech advisor. It's a good book. I liked it. So I'm like, okay, I'll help, I'll work. You know, I wasn't getting anything out of that. The money was, you know, very mediocre, quite frankly, and only for a few weeks, and I put a couple months into that. So, but it is a challenging environment. There is no real teamwork there. But there are some great people. Don't, don't get me wrong. I still talk to one executive who's gone from being, you know, whatever, an executive at a lower independent thing to being a big wig over at Disney now. I still talk to him. I still actually, oddly enough, I have one

project in development with a writer. It's like crazy. And I haven't been in Hollywood in like decade, if not longer. So, but it's still lingering somewhere. But yeah, it's tough. So I was let go, which was okay. But then, oddly enough, I'm going to Fort Benning to do some research on Rangers. I'm going to back then the Donovan Technical Library, I think it was called. Maybe it's still called that. I don't remember. Is it even still called Benning?

Anyway. We're back to Benning. Benning is back. You can say that. Okay. All right. So I go to the library for research and I have a friend of mine who's going. I want to say through OCS at the time, ex-bat boy, Charlie 275.

So it kind of like kind of worked for me. So I went down to Benning and I see the PAO from the L.A. Army office, right? Because the U.S. Army has a presence, public affairs for Hollywood in L.A. And he's like, hey, me, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah. I can't talk to you. You've been blacklisted. So the PAO at 75th when he got replaced was pissed and made sure I had nothing to do with anything whatsoever.

And I'm like, whatever, petty, but you know, learn your lesson, you know. The lowest enlisted ranger in the civilian world also should be treated well, not just at the time, but also when you're out. You got to treat rangers right, I think, at least. So I was blacklisted there, but I worked on, we were soldiers for a little while, and I wasn't not picked up on that because I wasn't the union guy, which is also perfectly fine. Again, I don't want to tech advise, but I worked on that a little bit, and my great credit on that film would be that I made sure that Bernard Falls, hell in a small place was there, and the bugle, because those were things that were in Halmore's book that they did not have in the script. So at least I contributed on that was good. Anyway, fast forward, movie gets shot. I'm doing, trying to produce, I'm acquiring projects, left, right and sideways, spending money I don't have.

and, you know, cold calling, like anything else. If you don't pick up the phone, nobody's going to do anything for you. And people don't do anything for you. You really got to earn everything. And there's a premiere. Big splash. Sony has a huge premiere. I think it was in Culver City.

And I'm hearing this now from my buddy, who is the guy for the Marine Corps in the film office in L.A. Because, oddly enough, believe it or not, I had acquired the rights to a book that he had adapted on just by fluke. It was colder than hell, chosen reservoir, Marine Corps. I forgot the guy's name now. Owen, I think. Whatever.

I had acquired it by pure luck, much like I had acquired with the old breed and all sorts of military historical books I'd acquired because I wanted to be a producer. So I just bump into this Marine. I'm like, hey, I have this book. You know, I want to know if the Marine Corps was supported. He's like, yeah, I have a script for it. So anyway, I became good friends with this guy. And he's like, you know, I can get you into the premiere for Black Hawk Down if you want to.

And I'm like, you know, they're going to be pissed, right? And he goes, I don't care. We're the Marines. I'm like, hey, dude, great. He says, you have to go with one of my NCOs, though. I'm like, hey, I don't care. Perfect. So I got invited to go Black Hawk Down courtesy of the United States Marine Corps,

the men's department of the Navy, like they always like to say. went and watched the movie, bumped into some Delta dudes that I had interviewed for some other thing project in Vegas, bumped into, you know, some producers and whatever and watched the movie and I was asked opinions, and I gave them that were not well received. And that was me on Blackhawk Down, but I think overall it was probably a good movie and, you know, certainly technically was a great-looking film. And when the regiment supports something and the 160th support something, you know, you can't just buy that. So, and they only pay, in case people don't know, they only pay really about a dime per dollar.

So really the taxpayer funds this more or less. Not something people want to hear, but, you know, but it was a great experience. Some really great people are involved in production. And, you know, Hollywood is a tough thing. I think it's harder actually than selection or anything else. And I haven't been to selection. This is just it's so, so small. Success rate is so tiny.

And there are so many failures in Hollywood, you know. You really got to have money or contacts when you go there. The fact of putting in the time is very rare. It's really rare. So it was a hard thing, and I had some heart breaks, you know, getting somebody saying, hey, we're going to make you an offer on money. day, Tuesday they call and say, well, we've gone with this guy or me pitching with the old

breed to dream work several times when they were doing the Pacific. And I'm like, you've got to have this book. You've got to have this book. It's better than, you know, helmet for my pillow, which is a very good book. But I still think with the old breed was, it's probably one of the greatest memoirs, war memoirs I've ever read, along with Chris Cox, who you had on your show, by the way, Fire Force. That was probably in the top 10 for me as well. So I pitched dreams. DreamWorks a bunch of times and they're like, no, no, no, we don't want it. Eventually, I let the option expire because, you know, I'm not wealthy. And DreamWorks goes and picks it up and makes the Pacific based on it.

So that was like, I think that one of the last things where I was like, you know, I'm kind of done with this. Yeah. And some other people here and there. And then I met someone and she's Canadian, couldn't work in the U.S., so I decided to write books a little bit more. and we moved to Canada. And I know I'm ranting, but book writing came directly out of Black Hawk Down. So I never wanted to be a writer, oddly enough.

Always wanted to be a producer in Hollywood. So I get fired or not asked to go to Morocco. That's probably the better way to say it. It was all done very politely. And I have all these pictures. I have all this research. even talk to 10th Mountain Medics. You know, I'm like talking to everybody.

Even facts, the Pakistani embassy, whatever. I'm doing all this research for the movie. And I have all this stuff. So I just reached out to a British military publisher, and they said, oh, sure, why don't you write us an article on, you know, whatever, Black Hawk Down type thing for a magazine. I write it. It doesn't get published.

The magazine goes under. But then they're like, why didn't you write a smaller book or something like that? So I write a 20, 30,000 word book, which is like 64, 80 pages, something like that on Rangers. And it kind of started like that. But I never took it seriously because I was still trying to become a producer. So I'd only write on occasion. And I never really promoted myself. It was always about preserving the history of the guy on the ground.

That has always been what's interesting to me. And I guess it's because, you know, you're a maggot carrying a machine gun up and down these stupid fucking hills and Fort Lewis getting wet and a Nisquale and, you know, people yelling all day long. And so I've always been fascinated by the grunt. It's always been interesting to me. All the Lurk books, all the World War II books, never once read one about a pilot for the Navy.

It's always been like the Marine, the dog face, whatever. Seal, even Frogman, whatever. I've always been interested in that. And so those are sort of the books I wrote. and, you know, just because I sort of had been in the military, I had a little bit of reach, a little bit of contact, and being able to say, even though I was a tabless ranger, that still carries a lot of weight with a lot of people.

So I sort of wrote books, but never seriously. I've only been really a serious, call it a serious book author with Run to the Sound of the Guns. You had Nick Moore on your channel. Yeah, thanks to you. I think that's when I was like, yeah, that's sort of when I started to say, know, I'm going to do this. I've completely dropped out of Hollywood.

Darby, I've been accumulating Darby Ranger stuff forever. And I'm reading some of these things. I've talked to these old timers. And I've read, of course, whatever they have had, like Jim Altieri's The Spearheaders, which is his memoir about him enlisting, going through Darby and being one of the originals from the days of Carrick Fergus Northern Ireland to training at Akna, Kerr, Kerrero. Castle in Scotland to North Africa, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, Last Battle Cisterna. So I'm reading his books. I'm talking to him. I visit him. And, you know, I've just been accumulating things here, there, and the other. And then my agent, Alex Shane, he's always

annoying me because he's like, you can't be a fiction writer, Mier, because you're only a nonfiction writer. And I had handed him a novel. And he's like, this is every, this is every I hate. But he has it out right now, and I have high hopes for it. I love that you and I both get to have these arguments with Alex. Yeah. So, well, you've had a far more interesting career path, actually. But anyway, so my stuff was basically two years battalion after a four-year degree.

Hollywood, Canadian girlfriend, moved to Canada, still did Hollywood-related stuff, Ghost wrote, by the way, I made money Ghost writing for some Aistress in Hollywood feature and TV pilot. So that was okay, but I was running out of money because, you know, book authors don't make money unless you're maybe Jack Carr or your good buddy Mark Graney, you know?

Yeah, yeah. He's funny, actually, he and I have a lot in common. You know, he went to what Cologne, I grew up in Germany, you know, he played soccer. I love soccer. We were both cripples. So, yeah. Anyway, but he's a successful

writer. Yeah, I love Mark. Yeah, so he was great. I just watched that interview again with him. So, and I see him like I see you like once a year, here and there, you know, so sometimes twice a year. But he didn't write a blurb for my World War II Houdini Club book because my, my publisher was way too late to contact him. So, but anyway, so Alec, my agent, our agent said, you know, you suck. novels. I can't sell them, especially what you're writing. Why don't you focus on nonfiction? And I'm thinking, and I had been invited to this U.S. Ranger Museum and Carrick Fergus, Northern Ireland, several times through a friend of mine actually from Weapons Squad, a 275, who became a Jagger. He had gone there on a vacation, said, hey, Mir, you should go check this out. So I reached out to them,

and they're like, hey, we're having this remodel of our small U.S. Ranger Museum. in Northern Ireland. Do you have material? So I, of course, had a lot of stuff from Phil Stern images. I had the onion skins to Jim Altieri's spearheader's book because I inherited all that stuff when he died. So I sent him all that stuff. They invited me.

Really cool people. So I've been going like two or three times. Now I'm going again this year. That's Carrick Fergus. So I kind of then followed Darby's Rangers much more just because of that. And I think the first time I went to that museum was 2017. And those people, let me tell you,

are dedicated to preserving American World War II history there. That's awesome. You know, I mean, really incredible people. And they are not, you know, they're not wealthy. I mean, these are, you know, austerity in the UK and all that stuff. So, but they do a great job. They remodeled this small cottage with all sorts of World War II Darby Ranger stuff, some modern stuff.

It was really great. And so I kind of got more into it and I'm looking at all the stuff in my basement and I probably have, I don't even know what, thousands of thousands of pages, you know, of stuff I accumulated going to the library. Back in the day at Benning at the Donovan thing, the librarians were super cool that get me the microfeash of Darby's Rangers after action reports of fucking morning reports. And you know, and you're in microfeas, you try Xeroxing that stuff. I mean, and they're like, I'm like, I need at least 100, maybe 500 pages. They're like, oh, they're rolling their eyes in the back of the head, you know, because they're not going to charge me for it. And so I have all this stuff.

I have thousands of pages. I have a couple books that aren't published by Jamal Tiri. So I have all this stuff. I have all these conversations with these old timers. They've sent me stuff. And I always felt like, you know, bookwriting was never about making money, really. It was just sort of opportunistic. to a degree like Chris Osmond, Navy Seals like, hey, maybe we should write a book, so I write a book.

Then Tim puts me in touch with Nick Moore. So I've never really followed it per se. It's just now that I'm doing it. So fast forward anyway, Alec is like, you're a loser, can't sell your book, I'm sure, but I'll take it out, come up with something nonfiction. And I'm thinking about things. I'm like, you know, it only makes sense to do something on Darby because I like the guys. I hate some of them. But you know, it's like the military. There's a lot. love-hate relationship with a lot of things. But mostly they've been really great guys, and mostly there are no histories out on these,

on Darby strangers. Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about tonight's sponsor for the show, which is Ridge Wallets. I've been using this for about six months now. Really enjoy it. This wallet is made out of carbon fiber, titanium, and steel, and it really holds up and lasts.

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I have one of them. And our producer, Dimitri, has one. So please go and check out Ridge Wallets. You had Robert Black, who was a ranger himself and very supportive. I mean, the guy's like 2,000 years old. I called him two years ago, maybe it was. I forget no when. And he's like, you know, I'm losing my mind, but, you know, I can't remember things.

But yes, but you can use anything I have. You know, if you talk to the people over here, if you talk to Carlisle Barracks, you absolutely have my permission to use whatever you want, all that stuff. So there were really great people out there. And Bob, Bob Black, was a former ranger, served in Vietnam, I think, Korea. And he had written the only books, really, on Darby Rangers. I read his memoir, which was very good. Ranger-born.

And I believe he wrote a book about Rangers in Korea that I read also. He did, yeah, Rangers in Korea. Very good. particularly what I was interested in at the time was the second Airborne Ranger company, the All Blacks, All Black Company, really great stuff, actually. And I actually developed a show on that, never got it picked up, although I understand now somebody's doing it, or at least in development. So Bob has been instrumental.

Bob wrote his own stuff. Bob wrote on the history of Rangers. He wrote World War II Rangers, Rangers in World War II. Rangers in Korean War, and then he wrote in 2009 a book called Ranger Force, which is great. Got a few small mistakes in there, but I think there are typos mostly, like West instead of East, you know, stuff like that. And he certainly didn't put in some things that would probably shed a negative light on Rangers. So I think that's one of the problems of being a historian in that field. When you're a Ranger yourself, you're close to Rangers, you can't necessarily write,

about certain things that might bring some heat back to you. So Altieri did the same thing. I love Jim Altieri, great American patriot, you know, and I'm not this super patriotic guy, you know, I don't wave the flag or anything. But he was, and he never, ever, ever, ever wrote anything negative about any Rangers that he knew that he served with anything. It was always fairly positive, right?

And I'm not blaming him. I'm somebody saying in the literature of Derby's Rangers, you genuinely have one solid book that's a history book, and that's Bob Black's Ranger Force. And then you have a bunch of memoirs and other things, hard to get, really interesting stuff. And then I have a bunch of letters, phone conversations. And these weren't interviews,

because I've noticed over the years, when you sit with pen and paper or laptop or recorder, and you talk to the guys, it's a different thing than when you just shoot the shit. So a lot of it is memory more for me than it is about. On this date, he said this to me, right? Like one guy said about Phil Stern. He said, you know, Phil's a great guy.

We all loved him. But he was not a ranger. He didn't go through the training. He was just the camera guy. You know, yeah, fair enough. Still, he got wounded badly in North Africa, almost got killed. So while with the first ranger bethine.

So you have stuff like that and you know, you have people who murdered, literally just murdered civilians. You know, I put that in the book because I find that that is a more historically accurate and proper thing to do. And I'm not writing some kind of expose, journalistic, something, something. This is a history book. And there's a guy I'm particularly interested in, Charles Shunstrom, who was the youngest officer, one of the first 29 officers. selected by Darby personally. And he had been prior, previously had been enlisted swine in Hawaii, went to OCS. And that guy, he was a killer.

He was a murderer. I mean, he was an absolute, the guy who will win you wars. This is the guy. And, you know, he would be cutting throats late at night behind enemy lines. He'd lead bayonet charges with his, I think it was Charlie Company, one of the platoons, me first, second platoon in North Africa, and they would go in there with their 16-inch long bayonets and fucking just kill the Italians that they overran. I mean, it's just nasty stuff, you know.

And people, how often do we have that really? It's rare to have bayonet charges, right? It's rare to have sentry removal by knife. I mean, I knew a guy who was a Vietnam Lerb. You probably have heard of him, Tedina, Patrick Tedina. Yeah, yeah. 60 months in Vietnam, a good friend of mine. I actually have his film rights,

and I always have thought about writing a book, but I just have never gotten around to him. Much loved by everybody. He's the only guy I know until, of course, your era, modern war, I don't know, but who's actually done century removal using a 22 caliber, an NVA guy when they were in a hospital in the jungles. I hope you'll follow through with that at some point, Mirro, because I, when Mr.

Tadena passed away. I was actually going to work on like an article, like a biographical piece, you know, 5,000 words about. And it just kind of fell through for various reasons, like people weren't as communiative as I would have liked. But I think his story deserves to be told, and I hope you'll be the one that do it.

Yeah, I got to tell you, it's very funny. I was at a dentist recently. Yes, Rangers do get dental work done on occasion. We're not Superman, especially when you get your teeth kicked in when you're stupid. And I had a Filipino dental assistant. And we're just talking, whatever. And he asked me what I was doing. I was telling him, I'm writing a book.

And he said, you know, and I always ask people where they're from, usually cab drivers, because, you know, I'm half brown. At least my father was. I'm all northern European. But I always ask people, you know, kind of see what's going on, what the vibe is. And then he said, you know, he's Filipino. I said, you know, I know a great Hawaiian Filipino guy, and I mentioned Tadina. He goes, you know what? We have a statue dedicated to him in this one village somewhere wherever it was.

Small world, right? Yeah. So anyway, yeah, Tadena was outstanding. I mean, I think he personally killed 113 people hand to hand, you know, within small arms. And probably he's responsible for the death of thousands. I'm not even kidding you on that. And, I mean, you spend 60 months in the jungle consecutively, and you're dragged. out to go bury your brother who got killed in Vietnam, and he escapes being captured by

the MPs trying to prevent him from going from Hawaii back to Vietnam. He escapes and goes back to Vietnam. And every one of his guys that I talked with at reunions loved him, loved him. And he never got anybody wounded, never got anybody killed. He's the only one who ever got wounded. Wow. Anyway, so speaking of century, we know we're going to Vietnam, we're World War II, but Shundstrom and even Roy Murray, who was one of the first officers and became the fourth Derby Ranger Battalion commander,

the only one Fourth Battalion ever had. He too would go with knife, Fairbairn Sykes knife and pistol in hand on these nighttime raids and they'd be shooting and stabbing and cutting throats and I mean, this is some

brutal stuff these nighttime raids, you know? This is not ambushed like I'm accustomed to in peacetime, you know, L-shaped ambush, maybe some claymores, which are awesome, but, you know, it's nothing like that. This is, this was really hardcore stuff, and these are young guys, you know.

So it's been interesting. So Darby, I got reinvigorated by my visit to the museum. I helped the museum a lot. They have been fantastic about preserving our history there. They even have a huge black rock, which we call the Mecca, where every ranger should, at one, time go to see it. It's really awesome. And it's built at the former Sunnylands camp where the

rangers assembled and trained, where they're first trained before they went to Commando Training Depot. So anyway, so the point is Darby was a West Pointer, artillery guy, actually quite experienced musically, very inclined, by the way. There's some great stories during the war when they're in Italy and they've just captured whatever it is, German occupied town, they kicked all the Nazis and fascists out. And they're having a big party, the officers, right, at some villa or something, and they're all drunk. And one of the officers, Herman Dammer,

who was the executive officer to Darby, right-hand man, eventually commands third battalion. They're all getting drunk singing German songs because Herman Damer's German ancestry. And then Darby would go, ah, do leave? at the end of the song, right? And there are MPs out on the street. They're thinking Germans are still in this town.

So they're coming in, barging in with guns and everything like that. I mean, there's some great stories. I put that in the book just because it's so absurd when you think about it singing German songs. And in an Italian town, after you've killed the Germans and driven them out of there. But anyway, so we're in Ireland, 1942. You know, Marshall is tasked with reforming, modernizing the army. because everybody knows we're going to go to war.

I mean, we've probably known we're going to go to war since the mid to late 30s. We're mobilizing, we're federalizing National Guard units. And Darby is on staff in Northern Ireland with some 30,000 guys that we have over there. And he's bored. He literally is hating it. He wants to be in a command of a tactical unit. He wants to go out and go to war, you know, like we all did. We all prayed for war, at least we did in my time.

with you guys, it's probably a little bit different because you actually went and did some things. But so eventually he's torturing his boss, and there's talk of forming this ranger unit based along the commando lines. It's not called a ranger unit at the time. And Truscott back then was a colonel, becomes, of course, a general, very famous general. And he's tasked with creating this commandos type unit like the Britsav. And the British have been raiding, you know, European shores trying to restore morale back home because the Germans have been kicking ass up and down every front they've been winning, basically.

So the Americans decide they're going to do one too. And it's going to be a commander unit modeled after the Brits, so small, because they have to fit in these landing crafts. So it's like half size, if not smaller than a regular American infantry battalion. So it's really small. And Darby, because he's a pest, I think, and because he has some experience, gets the job. And it probably was the best decision they made. He goes in interviews a bunch of officers that are all in Northern Ireland, Belfast, Carrick, Fergus.

He interviews them all, handpicks 29 guys. And there's people like Herman Dammer, whom I've mentioned the German guy. He was supposedly really the tactical genius of the Ranger Betain at the time. Like he came up with some real innovative stuff. Then he brought on Roy Murray, who was also a pilot, you know, and the deacon and star athlete cross-country guy, really a womanizer, a golfer, you know. He brings all these officers on board, including Shunstrom,

some really great names. And I have them in my book. I don't want to say too much about them. People should read on these guys because you don't hear much about them, ultimately. And so he has 29 officers. They go break up into smaller boards where they interview volunteers. And so they have a process like, could you kill someone? Could you kill someone with a knife?

How do you feel you're Italian? Aren't you Italian? Aren't you Italian? Could you kill an Italian? You're German. Could you kill a German? You know, all these kinds of questions. And so they select a bunch of people like 500 somewhat guys.

They assemble them in Carrick Ferguson. And they interview some of these people at an old castle, the 10th century castle that's in Carrick Fergus. I mean, can you imagine you're some kid from Oklahoma, you're 18 maybe, maybe 17, maybe 19, and you'd go and get interviewed in this castle. You've probably never seen anything past maybe 18th century, you know, some wooden shack. So anyway, it's cool stuff. So they put a bunch of guys together. They have to be between 1735, I think.

They can't have any sort of health issues, you know, stuff like that. And they're really looking for unique guys. They're looking for hunters, but they're also looking for mechanics. They're looking for people who've worked on heavy equipment, radios, because they're building this elite commando unit that needs all this sort of diversity. So they have 500 guys. They all assemble at Sunnylands. They get their equipment.

They get, you know, get into some kind of shape, formation. They start running, you know, doing all the things that we start. to do to get them in shape. They lose a bunch of guys. They bring board more guys. So now they have roughly, it's under 500 guys. They go to Scotland to Achnakarri Castle where there's a British commander training thing. They go through really the things that we ended up doing at Ranger indoctrination program or subsequently Ranger School. They've really developed all of that as the first range of the time, those standards, how fast can you road march, basically,

bayonet assaults, you know, rope, cargo nets, all this stuff. I mean, this is our history of training literally came from these guys. They even did house-to-house training, you know, in an abandoned factory and somewhere in, I think, Scotland. And they did a lot of amphibious assaults because that was going to be their job, like D-Day, right?

We're going to go land, we'll be the first people in there. we're going to practice taking out these large batteries that are going to hammer the Allied fleet. So they spent like, I want to say it was a month in Carrick Fergus getting in shape, getting becoming Americans being a unit that wouldn't embarrass themselves. They go to this British Commando Training Depot in Scotland. In the north of Scotland, I've been there. They've got a great Commando memorial there. And, you know, they really mold a great unit, a great unit.

And some of those guys get deployed to Dieppe and only like 12 out of 50 land. I think three get killed as strangers basically with people they didn't even know. Only a few rangers trained with some of them. And there's some great stories about Dieppe. Actually, I cover that in some detail in there. So, and then they go back and they finish their training. And of course, what has happened like any elite unit, you have only 50, like 10% of your guys have gone to a combat mission, of which only about, you know, 20% actually landed.

The rest didn't land. They got their, you know, a craft, landing craft shot out underneath them and stuff, and thousands of Canadians got a butcher. But that's Dieppe in 1942. But they go back to the UK, they finish their training, they prepare some real hardcore training to land in North Africa. So now what do you have? You have a unit that has been bloodied a little bit.

And the original intent of the first Ranger Battalion was simply to be bloodied, learn how to be war fighters, really, in this sort of special kind of training. And then they were supposed to be split up and sent to their regular units like they do with Ranger school grads, right? They sent them back to the regular army to kind of elevate and teach some of them. But that didn't happen. So they go to North Africa. I don't know why it didn't happen. They go to North Africa.

They land in Algeria. They do a night raid, seizing batteries, landing in the harbor, some really great shit. They take their first casualties there. The other allied troops are having problems. So, you know, there's a request. I want to say by Terry Allen, maybe it was, who is a great, great combat commander of the first Infuriative Division eventually. Maybe it was him. Could have been somebody else.

But anyway, asking for, you know, a ranger company because they have a great reputation. They do a great job. And then the rest of the campaign is very short in Algeria. Like, I don't know, call it a week or two weeks, three weeks maybe with mopping up operations. They take a few casualties, but they do a great job. And then what do they become? They become a training, a dog and pony unit for hire to show how to do amphibious assaults. That didn't go over too well.

20% of the unit quits, more or gets fired out. They have also desertion. Lots of hookers, you know, lots of thievery, you know, things like that. Things kind of fall apart a little bit, which it's, you're not in peacetime, but you're in a war zone not doing anything. So they get replacements eventually. And so now you can look at it. You have 500 originals. Now you're down to under 400.

Replacements come in. So there's that tier system that's starting to form. So they train these 100 new guys. Then they go to Tunisia, Battle of the Casarine Pass. There are things they need to do. They do these incredible night raids. I mean, really phenomenal stuff behind enemy lines, 12 miles up and down this rugged mountain. You know, it's incredible stuff when you think about it.

Late at night, you're moving companies through enemy-held territories to hit something. And they do that twice, extremely successful. at Elgatar and Sinat Station, and that's where we have people like Shunstrom and others. I'm not just talking about Shonstrom, like Roy Murray, who is a company commander with his fucking commando knife and pistol, goes and drives, I think, his commando blade into an Italian,

Bersagliari, I think, one of the elite mountain troop Italians, and snaps off the tip of his knife. I mean, that's how hard he drove it into the guy. I mean, there's stuff like that. And there are enlisted guys who've gotten promoted, who are now officers who are also only leading with knives and pistols, right? And then you've got Schoenstrob, who's a young lieutenant. And his platoon within Charlie County was really known as a killer platoon.

They didn't take prisoners at all, not whatsoever, none. And they would lead these insane bayonet charges across a pass into machine gun fire and just, I mean, I can't even. imagine, you know, driving that long bayonet into some Italian in the middle of the night, screaming at the top of your lungs, you know. And the funny thing about one of those raids is forever, I'm reading this account, written by another journalist. I'm reading this account. I'm like, bugle call. They're blowing the bugle to charge. I'm like, this is like China in the Korean War, you know. And it turns out it was Darby. It turns out Darby, as the raid

commenced to the actual, not to the approach, but the actual raid, he blew a bugle from his position back behind the line. And it's just insane. And they do an amazing job, you know, black-faced and in one-day-only wore commando-knit caps. They didn't wear helmets because they didn't want to make noise, no heavy weapons, nothing, you know. So there are a very mobile unit led by some hard chargers, exceptional training, and the Derby Rangers have always said, most of the accounts I've read is about how great the British wear at teaching and doing bayonet assaults during the Second World War. They called it the meat. I think one of one ranger called it the meat. And when hate takes command, you know, they have that bayonet and just

go crazy. But some of the Rangers said that the British were the worst shots. they'd ever worked with, which is funny because in some of the reports from the training depot with the British commandos, the instructors were talking about how bad the Derby Rangers were at shooting. So they obviously had gotten incredibly good at it toward the earlier part of the war. So anyway, they do a great job in North Africa. You know, the campaign is basically over. The Germans have been crushed. It's like a Stalingrad for them, but people don't know that.

They've taken hundreds of thousands of casualties, same with the same. the Italians. And so the ranges have developed this amazing reputation for nighttime ops, close quarter battle, just insane night marches, two raids behind enemy lines. And higher decides they need more. So they create the third and fourth range of battalion in Namur's Algeria. And what they do is they split up the old timers. So they take two companies per battalion, integrate them, well, some stay with the first battalion and they train up new recruits and you get some combat veterans

but not that many but you get some and they train them. They have a lot of time to train so the training I think is quite good and now they're being led and trained by combat experience Darby Ranger veterans and I think Damer gets the third battalion. Murray

becomes fourth Ranger Battalion commander Darby is still first Ranger battalion commander but there's no regimental headquarters unlike what we got in the 80s when we got the regimental headquarters for first second and third range of a time. Darby didn't get that because it was still a provisional unit. It was always supposed to be broken up. But they didn't do that. So they trained first, third and fourth the time for the invasion of Sicily. And that was a brutal, brutal thing for Darby's Rangers. So they get

divided up. First and fourth go into Jaila and I've been to all these places in Sicily. It's humbling when you look at the terrain, you know, as a historian, when you look at the terrain and you're kind of like, ah, you're like a hundred meters away from towns, you know, you wouldn't want to land there with your landing craft exposed to all that fire. But so they go into Jaila, Sicily, the first and fourth, and the third goes off to the left a little bit, the western part of Sicily to invade over there. And the first and fourth get hammered on the beaches.

minefields, they take a lot of casualties for rangers. And it's a small group, you know. This is not large, these are not large battains. So they step on mines, people get killed, but they go two or three rangers, climb up a seawall and knock out 12 pillboxes in a row, you know, kicking the door, throwing a grenade, holds it down, whatever. However, they did it. They did it several ways.

And they would come and they seized the town, push to the edge of it. And, you know, now it's daylight. There are a lot of dead civilians, a lot of dead Italian defenders who put up actually, considering how poorly equipped they were, they put up a pretty stiff fight. And the Germans weren't involved in that. They actually had abandoned their Italians at that time. They really fucked them. But the Rangers did great work in Jaila, got there,

captured all the key points they needed to capture for follow-on forces, and then they get hit by counterattacks, Italian counterattacks, with little tankettes. you know, they're called R35, so it's a small machine, 37mm guns, I think, but they're still tanks. And, you know,

there's some nasty hand-to-hand in there throwing TNT blocks, bazookas, Darby and Shunstrom actually knock out a tank with a 37-millimeter anti-tank gun. Darby goes and climbs up on one and throws a thermite grenade aid on it. So there's really some nasty,

hand-to-hand stuff going on and it's real close and then the Germans are attacking to the east hitting the other allied forces that are landing there. So it's a close run thing for a while but the Rangers hold tough, seized all their objectives, everything despite their casualties. And Third Ranger battalion to their left did their job very well, landed at some amazing bizarre rock formation beaches with hilltops and you're thinking, you know, when you're up there on the hilltops looking down, you're like, if you guys didn't come here at night,

and if, you know, if somebody had discovered you, you'd be in a world of hurt there. But they landed, they took a few casualties here and there, knocked out pillboxes, of course, the real stuff they'd been training for. And they seized these port towns, really, for subsequent allied landing craft to come in and drop off more troops and things like that. So it was pretty, it was really, I think, North Africa was awesome for the first range of a time,

and Sicily was really demonstrated to everybody how truly excellent they were as a fighting unit. An interesting sideshow is that there were orders published that basically said, not necessarily addressed to the Rangers, but it was within Ranger files, that if you steal from them, you'll be court-martialed. If you rape, you'll be court-martialed, and there'll be death sentences issued.

You know, so there are a lot of things that had happened in North Africa. They tried to avoid in Sicily. In North Africa, for example, Shunstrom, they always thought the Arabs were playing both sides. So one instance, the Rangers were deploying to go somewhere on a patrol, and Shonson saw an Arab looking out a window. He pulled out his 45 and just killed the guy. Another time when they were coming back from the Kasserine Pass going to Nemours to basically, create the third and fourth range of batons. A lot of rangers in the train got into a fight with one another.

Schauntzroup's platoon was involved in it, and they threw hand grenades at each other in these wagons. Can you imagine hand grenades against your fellow rangers in these wagon trains? I mean, it's insane. And other rangers were shooting wild farm animals that Arab villagers had along these rail tracks. And the interesting thing is you read some memoirs and some letters and there are some farm boys who are really pissed about that, right? Because there were farmers. They knew how hard it is to raise these animals to deal with that.

That's how you make your livelihood and others didn't give a shit. So there's always this kind of stuff with the Rangers as well, right? Anyway, they're in Sicily and they've done a great job. And of course, there's a lot of looting. But they discovered that the Sicilians are just as poor as North Africans. so there wasn't that much to steal. I read that a bunch of times was quite amusing. And then, you know, the rest of the time in Sicily was really not a lot.

It was mostly handling the mass prisoners, and that was really ugly. And there was one account where one ranger captain came with his platoon, and they were being mobbed by starving Italians because they had no food, no water. The transportation system for the Allies wasn't in place yet. and they just opened up fire, emptying magazines into these Italian POWs. And I think that was Schoenstrom. But others, elements of the Third Ranger Battalion, accompanied Patton, going to the north and then to the east along the mountains to cover his flank

as he was driving toward Messina, which was on the northeast corner, the closest point to cross into mainland Italy. So the Rangers did a lot of mule-tier action like you guys eventually did in Afghanistan, also Merrill's Morators, of course, did in World War II. And every meal they had died, got killed in the mountains. That should tell you something about the mountain ranges there. And it was just really fascinating. They also seized mountain fortresses.

You know, I went to a couple, and you're just looking at Sicily. And it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. And you're looking at these old medieval towns. And you're looking at Germans were in there. And Schoenstrom led the attack. And this other lieutenant was doing the covering thing. And they had to climb these hills, these mountains, you know, in the middle of the night. I mean, it's some, I'm like, I don't think I could have done that.

We climbed some things in Fort Lewis and I was cussing up to the storm. I don't know what that would be like over there. But some really incredible stuff. I will say Darby Rangers did phenomenal work in Sicily and North Africa. Really great. They took casualties, of course, and one of the greatest killers didn't kill people, but was malaria that they got really in Sicily, that really killed the unit a lot. They really lost a lot of people. A lot of people suffered from malaria. And, of course, you have a tritian, you know, Rangers throughout from North Africa all the way to Sicily get relieved, A, because they fail to meet the standard, B, because they got injuries, they can't come back from. I mean, very typical modern-day ranger stuff, or people were exhausted.

You had battle shock, combat fatigue, things like that. Others went back to the States and trained some of the Rangers. I think it was in Florida, maybe, you know, the second and fifth range of the times. Some of them went there. So in any event, the plan is now to land on mainland Italy. We're still here, what, in 1943? And, you know, D-Day that we all know about the great glory of the second ranger, time, 1944, Normandy, that's still a long time away. So the Allied planners have decided

Sicily is like our aircraft carrier. From here we can bomb anybody we want with aircraft. And we need to land on mainland Italy. And so foolishly they did that. And so the range of Italians, instead of having two months, three months to recruit train, are only given something like three weeks. And meanwhile, of course, what a lot of people don't know, the U.S. military has a recruitment problem during the war. You can't just get as many people as you want at any given time, although it eventually alleviates, but there's a real shortage of guys.

So in any event, they train up, they have a headquarters in Sicily. They train up. They refit, get all the battines to some reasonable shape and numbers, and they go land, lead part of the Allied invasion into mainland Italy, which is north of Salerno. They did not land at Salerno. And they landed at the El Malfi Coast, which is today very beautiful,

bio-ceramics here, wonderful vineyards everywhere in farm country. And I went there and, you know, my wife did all the travel booking and we drove all over Sicily. By the way, if you drive in Sicily, get insurance, which we did, the roads and the drivers.

And we were on some meal tracks. Let me tell you, I'm surprised the car lasted. So we land in mainland Italy, my wife and I do. And we go to this hotel in Maori, which is part of the most, we'll call it southern part of the Amalfi Coast. And we go to this nice hotel. It's right next to the main strip. It's a very small town.

It's a coastal town. And we're checking in and we're coming back out. My wife goes, hey, man, look over there. And I'd walked by this World War II Memorial that had an Italian soldier. I think it was, you know, dying, very, very artsy, modern kind of thing. And behind it were a bunch of ranger plaques of this is the first town liberated, whatever. No, that wasn't Maori. That wasn't Jaila.

But in Maori, there were ranger plaques that said first, third, and fourth ranger battalions. Men came here and freed Italy or something like that. So my wife spotted that. And so we spent a considerable amount of time talking to Italians. My wife speaks Pigeon Italian. I went and checked out all the key and not so key battle actions, went up the coast because Fourth Ranger Battalion went up the coast, first and third did other things.

But ultimately, the main things to remember about mainland Italy is we, the Darby's Rangers landed at Maori, took over smaller villages north, hooked up with the British Commandos South, and then they had to take this vast mountain, You're literally 100 yards away from this incredible million foot high mountain range. And there's a pass that runs through it called the Chionzi Pass. And that's where a lot of people start to hate Shonstrom.

Lots of rangers start to hate Shonstrom. So the goal for the rangers is to see these coastal villages, get up on top of these mountain ranges, kick the Germans off because Italy had surrendered in. the meanwhile during Sicily. So the Italians, a few Italians were still fighting. Some didn't know there was peace, but others were fascists. But it's mostly German opposition. And we're talking veterans from Sicily that had escaped in North Africa.

We're not talking 18, 16 year old little Nazis, you know, or you're talking hardcore veterans. Some. So the job for the Rangers is to seize these mountain ranges, control them, all in fire from the Navy support. And the Rangers in the meanwhile had created something like mobile 75 millimeter artillery on half-track. So they had four of those. Two of them went north at the Amalfi Coast and two went up to the Chiontze Pass under Schoenstrom. And so what he would do is he'd be undercover and they'd look and, you know, whatever, use their binos to locate German positions.

They fire down and then start an artillery duel. And then, of course, the half-tracks would back up to get out of harm's way. the line dogs, the rangers who were all dug in in these mountain crevices, took all the heavy fire, right? But then, of course, what happens is the Germans exposed themselves, Darby and his headquarters guys call in, call in all this fire and destroy the Germans, like massively. It's amazing casualties that they cause on the Germans.

By Schundstrom doing exactly that, and people, Rangers are pissed because he's exposing them to all this artillery fire, and that's a man-killer. This is not small arms. This is like real man-killing stuff. So they do really a very, very good job there. They secure the peninsula. The Rangers do mostly.

They get some reinforcements because they really are getting ground down. It's mountain warfare. And they do a great job. And Salerno gets stuck, you know, for a while. And they have their own problems in there. But eventually the Rangers get pulled off the line and are allowed to go to, I think, it is Naples to recover, refit, get. people in, train up a little bit. And that's where the Ranger officers are singing Nazi songs,

German songs with Darby chiming in, Achdu Lieber, and the MPs. I think from a paratroop unit actually came in and they all got into it or something. But it was quite something, I think. And the usage there of the Rangers, you might say it wasn't their job because it was kind of like line infantry. But you know, they've been training to do mountain warfare. They obviously did a great job. They were small unit. So the rangers did their job. They seized these little ports, took the mountaintops, rained hell onto the Nazis, and the rest of the Allies did their job eventually after much suffering. And they're still stuck a little bit in the boot of Italy. And the rangers then get deployed to what's become known as the winter line. And they have to go up all these mountain

ranges on their drive up north. And they're like, I don't know, seven, eight, nine, successes. successive German defensive lines. And it's brutal. It's brutal. And you know, you have malaria kicking in. Never mind the killed, the wounded, the exhausted. You have a lot of battle fatigue. The Germans are hammering you with mortars, 80s, you know, direct field artillery pieces,

firing square point blanket you. And it's grinding. It's grinding everybody. It's not just the Rangers, right? But the Rangers here, I feel, are more deployed and stretched thin. don't have the reinforcements. They don't really, they don't have the necessary support that a regular, I think, infantry battalion would have,

who have their own trucks, who have this, who have that, have the other. And, you know, they get ground out a little bit. And eventually they're, of course, pulled off the line. The allied thinkers being, I don't think the greatest people on the planet or the smartest, decide that we're stuck here on these winter lines, we're getting ground up.

We're going to circumvent. We're going to pass around this by doing another amphibious landing. Now think about it. Rangers, not all, but most rangers, a lot of rangers have participated in. The landings at Dieppe France, first one.

To be fair, only a dozen landed. But 40 of them got shell shock. I'm seeing thousands getting killed. Then they landed, did an amphibious landing in North Africa. They did amphibious landings in Sicily. They've already done one in mainland Italy. Now they're doing another one in mainland Italy to bypass the German defenses.

And that's at Anzio. And the Rangers are tasked, as always in typical fashion, to go knock out batteries, seize the ports, seize the town, knock out the piers, secure certain vital key points, and allow follow-on forces to come in. And it was like a sweet charm, like nothing, whereas they had gotten hit in Sicily.

They had very, very minor, if any, opposition landing in mainland Italy until they hit the mountain ranges. And Anzio, they had nothing. They just walked literally in, and there was nobody there. They killed some people. They knocked out a few things here and there. But, you know, in the quagmire and the fog of war that you have, they did kill a few Italian civilians like they did in,

Sicily also, people get killed, sadly enough, for them in the crossfire. And there's some great moments, actually, that some of them preserve that's in the book, in the Odini Club, of seeing these Italian civilians and, you know, the destruction that has been brought upon them by not just Rangers, but the war in general. And, of course, there's also a lot of talk about prisoners and things like that, Italians, and how cruel Italian soldiers were when they're at the upper hand. It's all very fascinating stuff. But anyway, they land in Anzio.

They do a great job. And instead of pushing out quickly to seize Rome and to drive south, while simultaneously the Allied Army is pushing from the south-north to get through this winter line, these German defenses, they take too long. The Germans saw rushing reinforcements in literally within a day and bringing in some hardcore units. and they had bad luck for the Rangers.

They already had a couple veteran units that were recovering themselves from the winter line and from Sicily and other places there. But the Germans brought troops from all over Europe. Once the Allies landed in Anzio, the decision had been made to fight all the way up through the boot of Italy

by the German planners. They brought in everybody they could throw in. I read some German accounts because, you know, I grew up in Germany, so I speak German. I got bought some German books, talked to some German dudes who knew something about this, that, and the other read some German accounts. And ultimately, what is supposed to happen, the Allies are finally deciding to push out after about a week or 10 days of being bogged down,

being in these artillery duels that are just wiping everybody out. And Allied intelligence says, hey, the German mainline of resistance is beyond this town that the Rangers are going to take. It's beyond that. Not in front of it. It's beyond that. We also have more tanks. We have more airplanes. We have more artillery pieces.

So we're going to win this shooting war. But let's all push out at the same time, out of the speed jet, expand and drive the Germans back. And our intel tells us the Germans, they're going to flee. The second we start pushing, they're going to take off. They have a lot of Poles, Polish soldiers in their German Wehrmacht units, things like that. They have some fascists still fighting with them. But they're not hardened enough. They don't have it in them to fight.

They're like they're going to retreat once we start hitting them. So the Rangers are tasked with taking this key rail highway town called Sisterna. And I've been there twice, actually. I went there in 99. And I should also say I was very lucky. I had a good friend of mine in Air Force Pughke, retired, who was also part of the cemeteries that we maintain overseas. He was a superintendent of those.

And speaks fluent Italian, lives in Italy. He's American, though, you know, as apple pie. And he came with me. We went to Anzio, we went to Cisterna, talked to a bunch of Italians. This was really fantastic. Anyway, so Rangers' task with taking out Cisterna. That's their job. Meanwhile, on the left and right of the Rangers' allies are going to do the same thing.

They're going to push up, interdict these highways, stop German reinforcements, do all this stuff, all this wonderful stuff. you know, thinking they had. And so the Rangers take off and they're basically what they have. There's one road that leads north. I call it north, not quite, but let's just call it North for argument's sake. And that was going to be where the fourth Ranger Battalion was going to launch two hours after the assault battalion departed from the main line of departure. So first and third Ranger Battalion were tasked with advancing up this canal, the Mussolini Canal, it did, because the whole area is like a billiard table.

I mean, there's no cover. There's nothing. There's no real concealment. The only concealment you have are ditches. Some are from about knee high. Now there's a little bit higher. And the Mussolini Canal is higher. So the first battalion leads the way.

I forget not what time, probably 0,100, something like that when it's dark. And they lead the way. And their goal is to not engage with any opposition whatsoever. None. They're supposed to push through. capture Sisterna, third range of athianist following on their heels, they're going to tackle any German opposition that they're going to encounter,

they're going to fight any battle, because the key thing is First Bat needs to get into Sisterna, seize it, control it, and everybody else will be doing the same along the highway, and so the world will be wonderful. So First Bat takes off, third of that is behind him. And, you know, I have read accounts where people say, they, ah, the Rangers weren't all that well-trained.

They made it a lot of noise. Overwhelmingly, the accounts I've read is the Rangers were quiet. I mean, apart from sloshing, which you will have, as you know, any time you do any night ops, you'll have some noise, no matter how much we try to tape down our stuff, how much we jump up and down before we go on. There'll be some noise, but I don't think it's anything that would have led to discovery. So they take off. Darby is behind with fourth range of battalion.

They're just waiting. Oddly enough, something really weird happens. The radios that were supposed to accompany first and third bat, maybe it was just first bat, I don't remember now, didn't make it, didn't manage to hook up. So here's your lead element, your two lead battalions, with almost non-existent comms to headquarters. Since it never really happened,

they've had problems in the past, but they've always been able to sort of, because they were smaller or more defined, whatever. So that's a weird thing that happened, just one of those fortunes of war or misfortunes of war. Anyway, First Battine takes off. They hear Germans. They can hear them.

You know, they're marching by them. They're going down. Now they're having to cross a highway. This one major road that travels north, that Fourth Battine will eventually come up on. And the Germans have vehicles going up and down this thing patrolling the whole time. So the Rangers piecemeal are trying to cross without drawing attention to it, right? I mean, can you imagine?

Middle of the night, dark, and you see these fucking Germans coming up and down, and some of them are self-propelled tanks, you know, some of them these half-tracks, but there's heavy German traffic, contrary to what Intel had said, right? Anyway, there's a break in line in First Battine. Elements of First Battine make it across this road towards a stern, into this big field that's just south of Sisterna, which I eventually called the triangle of death, which is something like maybe a thousand yards on the three sides,

and Sisterna being at the apex. So elements of First Bat, make it in there. Then there's a break, of course, with the second half of First Battalion. Schaenstrom is sent back from First Battalion to go find him. He sends a runner. They locate First Battain, the rear elements of the companies.

those guys make it across the road. Now third battalion has a break. From First Battalion, they don't know where First Battalion is. They too deal with this. The now-Betian commander, Major Alva Miller, who I like very much, and I cover a lot of him in there because I think he's a great human being, actually. I was very sad when I wrote his stuff

because he wrote a great poem, which I put in there verbatim. But he's there with his comms team, trying to establish communication with First Baptist. They're just trying to establish sporadic communications here. And he's looking up to try to get better reception. He gets hit by some tank shell, and his head gets blown off,

splatters his party, other people get wounded. So here's your command element of Third Ranger Battalion, shattered, dead. Battalion commander gone. Other guys are gone. But this is the greatness, I think, of even today's Ranger Battine. people step up, natural leadership, guys who've been trained, step up. Eventually they managed to lead most of the third bat across.

Miller, of course, and a bunch of people are dead. Meanwhile, first battalion has killed a bunch of German sentries, you know, cutting their throats, maybe kidneys, but I think it was mostly the old-fashioned pulled the neck back and drive that knife and push it forward through the throat. but a couple centuries make noise, maybe one, but maybe a couple. But they had eliminated a few, and they run into this German company that's literally in front of them.

They are in ditches, intense, and the rangers just run through them in a mad, crazed dash, emptying their magazines, stabbing people, throwing hand grenades, running toward little farmhouses. It's like, it's just hell. But I think they killed pretty much everybody. The Germans are running. the rangers are running. More rangers are coming into this field.

And eventually what you have is Germans on your right, Germans to your front, and Germans to your left. And so the battains deploy. First ranger battalion has arrived. They hit the apex of Sisterna at the very top of this triangle. And then they line up along the road, which runs a little south. And then third battalion is sort of sporadically on the flanks. and the rear securing those areas.

And they established the headquarters at a place called Cal Cabrini House, which my buddy, Angelo, found, and he even found the son of a farmer who still has the farm where all these rangers basically bled to death at the end of the day and got captured. And we had great stories from that guy.

I mean, those Italian guys, man, they really have an appreciation for our American history over there from World War II. I'll tell you that. But anyway, so the rangers had deployed first battalion engaging Germans, machine guns, you know, tanks, tanks are going up and down these two highways that are intersecting Sisterna.

German troops are rushing down. Meanwhile, on the left and right side of this Ranger force, nobody has moved. They got pinned down literally the minute they got stepped up. Fourth Ranger Battalion trying to use this one road, which had launched two hours later, barely makes it maybe two, three, four hundred yards before they're pinned down. and the farm houses that are made of stone have been reinforced with machine gun nests and like well-cumouflaged ones

and range of a time pushed hard, actually fourth the time took more KIAs than first and third ultimately and everybody is stuck. And so the Rangers are there, the Zuka teams are firing, great heroic individual shit. I mean, people are climbing onto tanks,

throwing hand grenades and ripping things open and, you know, basically running into farmhouses that have Germans in them all of a sudden. I mean, it's some crazy shit, you know. I mean, close. And I was at that road at one of the roads, which was to the left of Sisterna, as you're looking at it, from the ranger's perspective. And there's maybe 30 meters distance, maybe 25, you know. And this is machine gun fire coming your way. So first bat is in a firefight, maybe less than a dozen, half a dozen guys make it into Cistern on, get slow.

You know, I mean, it's just like crazy, crazy stuff. So they consolidate. They're running low on ammo. Runners are sent to third bat to get ammunition. Half the ammo gets sent forward. Germans are sending in more troops. And the Germans, you know, they run out of ammo, their tanks. They just drive back a kilometer.

Reload, re-arm, refuel, come back and start shooting you. And the Rangers, meanwhile, are running out of bazookas, running out of grenades. You know, what do they have? Small arms. And you know, I mean, small arms isn't going to punch through any tank. So eventually they just get crushed, repeated attempts by fourth to get through our defeated. Darby is desperately trying to get artillery to come in, but they don't have proper communications. By the time they establish proper communications, they can't call for fire correctly because they can't identify where exactly the German. are without endangering all the Rangers.

So you don't get any support whatsoever. Tanks are supposed to come to support. They get bogged down. Tanks get shot down on this road. It's just like it's a gargantuan mess on the entire Allied front. And the Rangers pushed, I think, the furthest from all of them. So ultimately, some Rangers start to surrender. The Germans line them up and move them forward at gunpoint,

drive them toward the center of the Rangers around this California. Cabrini House, which is in the middle of this field, and the aid station is neared. And a couple of Rangers, of course, shoot at the Germans. And the Germans go stab, bayonet, these ranger prisoners that they have. And they have the loudspeaker. They're like, we're going to kill you, drop your guns. We're going to kill everybody here, blah, blah, blah. So more and more Rangers start to surrender, low on ammo, makes sense to me.

And Schoenstrom and this other lieutenant, Frederick, Sam, they're very. veteran. Like they've been with the Derby Rangers forever. They're like, we're going to ambush these guys. We're going to ambush these Germans driving these prisoners, you know, four across, you know, probably four, eight deep at some point. We're going to ambush them.

And unfortunately, a couple of Rangers fired too early. So the Germans start mowing down POWs and basically that's that. And a lot of Rangers start burying their weapons, destroy their gear, whatever radios they had, stuff

like that, nice surrender. Fourth battalion, of course, keeps fighting. And then we have a couple, whatever. We have some people escaping. A lot of people actually manage to escape, not just six or seven. That's a myth, more managed to escape. They just come in slowly but surely.

And there's some great stories, you know, but they're in the book if someone is really interested in. So the first and third bat, surrender. They all think they're going to get mowed down and killed. But instead, they are treated fairly well. The medics and doctors on both sides are patching people out, that kind of stuff. And, of course, you know, the lot of the prisoners not a good one. And the Rangers and other Allied prisoners get paraded in front of the Roman Coliseum,

where I went to. And there's some wonderful plaques there for the Rangers and the First Special Service Force, Canadian American Unit, right by the Coliseum. But they went there and they were paraded and given a wonderful propaganda tour. by the Germans. And anyway, so that's first and third. So they're captured, they're going to go to jail. Fourth batine has fought hard, taking massive casualties for their size, lots of casualties.

And eventually, everybody, the attack grounds down. And much later, they finally push through and everything. But they level everything. You know, the Allies just level everything subsequently. So first bat, third bat, the guys are POWs. A lot of them are in Italy right now. going to be in process, check out, and then shipped off to Germany. And so you have Italian, you have Canadian, you have Rangers who there's a great story with the Canadian guy,

but forget that. There are Rangers, of course, now some of whom are, you know, Depression-era kids who grew up poor, who grew up in New York, who are like, or grew up in farms. They're like hardened individuals and war has made them harder. and they're not the kind of people who just say, okay, I'm just going to serve out the rest of my time in prison if I don't have to. So we have great escape stories. We have escape stories of people escaping from the camps in Italy.

Like Schoenstrom is one of the first to escape. He has some great stories. He spends... That's what the Houdini Club is, the guys who escape. Yeah, there's a lot. It's the history of Derby's Rangers, and it's got probably eight, nine stories of these guys. in them. So, and we have Sean Strom, you know, he spent six months in Italy fighting with partisans,

murdering Germans left, right, and sideways until he makes it back to friendly lines. And we have other guys who escape from the box cars, you know, some great stories about them. There's really a funny story that there's a window and it's got barbed wire. And so the rangers pick up the smallest ranger they could find, the lightest, smallest ranger can find. They pick them up and use them as a battering ramper bunch through the barbed wire. It's amazing stuff. And so they climb out. They jump off the trains, you know, things like that.

And some of them go murder Italians, you know. They go knock on a door. A guy opens it and they barge in, steal everything they can, including a shotgun. And they walk into the hills and kill him with a knife because they don't want to attract noise by, you know, German roving patrols or fascist patrols. And so we have a lot of those. kinds of stories. We also have some guys who all end up all the way in Germany, repeated attempts,

had their teeth kicked in or just got destroyed physically, lost half their body weight and had to fight other allies for food. And then there are these escape committees. And but you know, and I tried to have a diverse number because, A, there isn't that much material. But there's probably enough material for the 20 or 30 guys. But the book, to be fair to the publisher, the contract was limited to a number of pages. And I went well above and beyond that. And to be very fair, it's the publishers, the owner of Diversion Books, Alex Waxman, Scott Waxman, I think, and Keith Wallman, they came to be midway through writing the Darby history book. They said, he, listen, I know you have a chapter on the Houdini Club.

Do you think you can make it bigger? Can we put it throughout the book? Of course, I'm not a person to say no. So I spent a considerable amount from researching more POW stories, and there's a former Ranger officer who wrote a great book in the 90s. His name is Maltazen, Clarence Maltazen, who got captured at Cisterna. And really, the majority of the work is from him. and from a lot of the interviews that have been conducted over the years

by people who then submitted Library of Congress. I got a few letters, of course. Also, I've talked to some people. But, you know, there are a couple key books that aren't available readily that were extremely helpful. And the guy even mapped out the maps. Like, this is where I think these people got out and stuff like that. So we have great stories from escapes from Italian POW camps,

escaping boxcars, trying to escape in Germany. some really brutal, brutal stuff, the treatment of Russian, the Soviet POWs in these camps who were being starved to death. There's a story in there. I give away the punchline here, but I don't know if it is one, where these Soviet troops had been starved so badly,

and one of our rangers is on this burial detail, so he sees these guys. And they managed to get a German shepherd that was one of the guard dogs to come close to him, and they grabbed them and tore him, part and ate him. I mean, that's in there. I put it in there. Not for that, but because the guy has an incredible escape story, but it shows to you the brutish nature of the Germans during that time. And of course, we're also talking about bad treatment of Jews and Arabs by the Germans, Italians,

and North Africa and Italy and all that stuff and in the concentration camps, the work camps. I mean, it's brutal. So we have Rangers going through some of the worst, worst things. And one of these guys, one of these rangers, most incredible story, whatever it is, he gets captured, he goes there, he's on this burial detail for Soviets. He buries 10, 20 prisoners every day on a push cart, and he's losing weight. He's not, there's no food, you know, they get us very little food. And he says, you know, I push some people over into these mass graves and they were still alive, you know, and then they get buried alive. And in any event, he eventually manages to escape. captured twice, I think. On his third time or four time, he managed to escape, but he's got all

his teeth shattered. He's completely broken, but he said it was my duty to escape. And he does escape. But oh my God, the voyage, he travels throughout Germany, goes into the east, goes into the Ukraine, into Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, finally gets on board after he gets fucked with by the Soviet guards right in front of this American ship that is basically the place to go. And he finally makes it and he weighed like one pound. I'm exaggerating. But he was like, I don't know how you survived. I really don't know how you survived.

That is a Houdini club. Tell us a little bit about Sunstrom's epilogue and his interesting post-service career. Yeah. There's a great dead oath to his family as well as another. I want to say Ranger Chetwin, who did great work, great work on Shunström, research on everything. I mean, they sent me his stuff and it was like 600 pages. I should also give a shout out to Stephen Meade's descendants who gave me 600 pages of stuff they had accumulated on. Stephen Mead was one of the original Ranger officers who had a bad hernia or appendectomy operation in North Africa

and then became staff officer for the invasion of Italy with some other unit and then becomes a CIA troubleshooter in the 40s, 50, 60s, 70s, and the Middle East. Great story. So there have been some great people who've helped me on this book. Schundstrom is arguing my favorite. I even put together a Ranger Hall of Fame nomination packet for him that was backed by two members of the association, including Bob Black, who I loved very much.

He may even have passed or will be soon. And it got rejected, by the way. That's a great shame on the committee. They should have really, that's a guy that should be. Schenstrom is a hero. Call him a psychopath. Call him the bravest of the brave. A lot of accounts have said he should have gotten a medal of honor.

No Ranger got a medal of honor. No Derby Ranger has ever received a medal of honor. Schundstrom, you know, returns from prison camp, all that stuff. He gets sent to the U.S. He has malaria. He's deaf in one year. He's been wounded.

You know, he's got mental health issues. And I've read his psychological assessments that were done in 1944 in Tennessee, whatever medical facility it was. And he's talking all about the challenges of killing people and the need to go kill people and how horrible was, how scared he was, but he couldn't let people know he was scared, and he tried to talk to Darby about it, but Darby didn't want to hear about it.

You know, so he had some issues, but to be fair, that guy, I think he's the man you want if you want to win battles and wars. That's a Shunstrom. You want that guy, and everybody should want someone like him. He might endanger your lives, but ultimately he gets the job done, and really that's our jobs, isn't it, or your job, as it were. But Shunstrom, I think, really a good-looking guy. I mean, movie star quality.

He gets to work on the story of G.I. Joe as a tech advisor. And on another one, I forget now what it was. So he gets to work a little bit. He gets a taste of Hollywood. Phil Stern, of course, is back in Hollywood after his combat camera experience. Jamal Tereus working in Hollywood. Roy Murray gets asked to come in tech advise. So Shunstrom is trying to become an ass.

actor. He's trying to join Hollywood unions, electrician union. They won't let him in. He's going broke. I'm sure he's drinking a lot. He beats his wife. He's now living sort of, you know, by himself in L.A. I think he's still married at the time. And, you know, he's hanging out with people that I would probably think aren't that great. Fast forward. He's having real problems, adapting to civilian life. I mean, serious problems. He's not getting really any high. hope. It's not like today, I think, where it's much, much better, better than it was even in my time. And I don't think he talks to a lot of people about his war experiences. But he's in L.A. trying to make a living in L.A. like me, except he had to accomplish things in World War II. And he just

can't get it done. So he goes on a robbery streak. So he robs something like half a dozen gas stations at gunpoint for like, I don't even know, a couple hundred bucks maybe at the most at the end of the day. Of course he gets captured. And of course he says his weapon was unloaded. I don't know if that's true or not. And when I lived in Los Angeles and I had heard that he had done that and that there was a court record, I went down to the Superior Court of L.A. and a super really nice, cool clerk told me it's sealed we're not allowed to hand this out and i said but look i wrote this small skinny 64 page book and here's his picture is there any way i can get it she goes well let me talk to my superior come back in a half an hour i came back as jett made me a copy of the court the summary

of the court judgment why was it still sealed after all those years because my dear jack rangers cannot talk smack about Rangers. So all the World War II Ranger officers who came to court to speak up on his behalf, one of them, maybe Al Thierry, maybe Murray didn't want really bad publicity to come out. I mean, it was covered in newspapers. It was there. But there was a lot of stuff, I think, in the judgment that sort of just said PTSD kind of stuff, right? Battle fatigue. So I think they just really wanted to keep it to whatever it had been with newspapers at that time. So anyway, it was sealed. They gave me a copy. In the meanwhile, I've sent it to three people. One is to Shunstrom. One is to another Ranger researcher and one is a Ranger historian. But I read all that. I researched it quite a bit.

Eventually what happens is the judge blames the government and says that the government did nothing to help veterans, the justice of the end life, that he was guilty by, not guilty, by reason of temporary insanity. So it was just a hiccup. He was otherwise perfectly fine and all that. And then the California criminal code. And I think this was the first time PTSD or whatever it was called, the equivalent battle fatigue, battle shock at that time. It was the first time was used in a defense in a criminal case in California. And it entered legislative. or some kind of records over there and all that. But eventually Chuck leaves and moves to Buffalo, New York,

and doesn't have a very fulfilling life, although I think he's trying to get into radio. He's a house painter, which he hates. He also paints boats. He drinks a lot. The VA charged him for dental care to the point where supposedly he got so mad. He took all his medals and threw them somewhere in the street of Buffalo.

I would pay to have those, but I have never found them. He went and bought some alcohol one day at a liquor store and died over heart attack at age 52. Wow. And I went to the liquor store. It's still there. So that's Shunstrom, and I find it exceptionally sad. And it's a guy who was really marked by war, but who is the epitome.

Maybe I'm wrong, but he is the... American fighting man. You know, he stuck that bayonet into someone because he was told that he needed to take this hill. It's interesting that, you know, that generation just kind of had to swallow it and live with it, eat it, you know, there wasn't treatment available. And, I mean, that's even emblematic in the sealing of the court record. Like, this stuff is buried. Like, we don't talk about it.

Yeah, it's true. And, you know, and I tried to get the actual transfer. because they have, you know, court reporters there that are stenographers. And I was able to find out who it was and the judge and all that stuff. But unfortunately, all their possessions had been sold or were thrown out when they all died. So I think that summary court judgment is the only thing I have unless there is somebody has something in their closet that these don't even know they have. So but Schundstrom, I got a lot of material from his friends and family.

and there's a great dedication by one of the fellow rangers, which I put in the book, which talks about how he died alone. His body wasn't even claimed for two days, and he was a great ranger and hard done by. He never complained about it, and he sought solace and alcohol, basically. You know, and it's a sad story,

and I love him. I'm not ashamed to say I actually love the guy, much like I love other guys, Rangers, that I admire greatly. I'm like, you are, you know, idols. I look at you and I go, you've done some great stuff, and you seem to be really great people despite this. And one of them, there's a great guy, Harrison Lehman,

who became a lawyer, also an escapee, a Houdini club guy, who done a lot of work with me here and there. He was in North Africa, and he was hitching a ride to his old unit, to catch up with some buddies while he was with the rangers. And they're driving, and he's in the back of this Jeep, and they're driving by this old Arab dude on a donkey. And the passenger in the Jeep kicks out and knocks the old Arab off his camel. And Lehman got so fucking mad.

And he pulled out his gun, shoved it in the driver's head, told him to stop. He got out, helped the Arab back up on his donkey or mule, I think donkey. and meanwhile, of course, these guys took off. But, you know, to have that sense of humanity still, when you have just been in war, you've just killed Frenchmen, colonial troops, shot at Germans, and then you're some innocent dude, you know, and you're still willing to help.

I thought that was great. So there are things like that that I think have been terrific in the research I've done over the decades and having met some of these guys. So, anyway, but Schundstrom. Yes. The book is the Houdini Club. It's going to be out next month in April for you guys.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we get going? Anywhere else, anything else you want to tell people about or other projects coming up? Yeah, I will tell you this. If you're a Ranger, Jack and Dave, you guys have to go to Carrick-Fergus. Any of any Darby Ranger enthusiast ought to go to Carrick-Fergis, Northern Ireland. They are very welcoming. You have to go look at the Ranger Rock that was built in 92, I think it was. You have to look at the tiny U.S. Ranger Museum they have.

They have other displays in their city hall. You have to go there. And the other thing is, if you are on vacation, if you go to Sicily, North Africa too, but I didn't go there, time, money, and all that. But if you go to Sicily or you go to Italy, you know, take a look at some of these things and then think about, hey, you know, D-Day. everybody's talking about Normandy, but I'll tell you what, there are five Normandy's before Normandy, you know, and there are some very savage, brutal ones, especially in Jaila,

you know, so no, I think that's the thing. I would tell people go to Carrick-Fergus, Northern Ireland, near Belfast, great vacation if you go, go to Sicily, Italy, if you can. Those are great things. If you can support some of the U.S. Army Heritage Museums, things like that at Carly. while barracks do so, you know, with cuts, I'm sure they're going to get hit, like a lot of government employees. They're a great facility. I love them very much. And in terms of books, I don't know, I'm tinkering maybe with another nonfiction book. But if Alec can sell my novel, I will embrace

novel writing. So other than that, I urge anybody to preserve history. And in our case, is Ranger history. Do that. Preserve Ranger history. Write it. In my opinion, there are truly today only two real Ranger history books. That's Bob Black's Ranger Force, which I love very much, and mine, humbly speaking, but it is a history as much as I can put in. It's probably 30% of my research. And I would just tell people, you know, World War II is more than Normandy. It's not saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. There's a lot of stuff going on here. So, But the publisher was great. They allowed me to go well beyond what they wanted.

So it was fantastic. And I really appreciate you as a former 375 guy putting up with 275 for this long, talking about it's the history of my battalion, too. That got really jacked up there in the mountains. Licata and the mountains. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, thank you for writing it. I mean, I think it's fascinating.

I was saying this to, we had an SF warrant on here the other day, Yatsik, who wrote, he published an OSS memoir that he found. Like, he found it in the archive unpublished. And it's just fascinating. If you would come to me and asked me about this, I'd tell you my opinion would be there's no more original primary source material to be found about the war. Like, we have what we have. There's not going to be anything new found. And you guys, authors like, you and him keep proving that wrong. Yeah. But you got to dig. You got to do your homework, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, of course, to get the good stuff, you always got to dig.

That's how it is. Yeah, always. Anyway, thank you again very much. Say hi to Dave. I will. Mir, we have one question for you from a viewer. Oh, sure, yeah. Eddie, from M. Corbyn.

I've been trying to piece together the story of a World War II veteran. I was lucky enough to have in my life with the N-A-R-A archive being gone. Would there be a lead in the French records, considering he was award of the Quo de Guerre with a... No, I don't think so. I mean, you should try, you should always try. But don't be disheartened by the fact that a lot of records were torched.

If you have the name and you have their number, their ID number, you know, fine. Talk to like the people at Carlyle Barracks. talk to one of the reference librarians. I have like four pages of acknowledgments in the back. If you get it, there'll be a QR code eventually. Look through those. There are some people there that are amazing.

I mean, I'm thanking a librarian who was online because I'm like, hey, man, all these maps are missing. And he's like, oh. And then, you know, hour later he mails me and goes, I found them all. Here they are. I put them up. But you never know.

Reference librarians are the greatest human. beings on the planet. They will find things that you didn't think you could find. So I wouldn't give up on it. If you have the name, you have a number, you have some ID on him, you have ideas of the campaigns he was in, you'd be surprised. It's just a lot of work and sometimes it's pure luck. Michigan State, I'm sorry, I'm answering this lengthy, but Michigan State, I reached out to find out about this officer, Major Alva Miller. And I just emailed this reference librarian. I'm like, hey, I'm looking for this 1935, whatever. whatever, whatever. And she comes back with 50 things. And I said, hey, what is this? And she comes

back with 10 more things. And it's those people, I swear to you, it's those people you normally don't think about that'll find you something and it'll get you going. So don't give up on it. You can do this. Okay. Well, that's it. Mir, that's a show. Thank you for coming on. And I hope people will check out the Houdini Club going to be out in April. Anywhere people can go to find you, Meir, if they want to connect with you? You know, I have a website. You can see my ugly face on there. There's a small ranger history on it.

But yeah, you can contact me that way through. You know, it has a contact form. If you have any questions, you know, send them my way. I'm usually same-day response. We'll put a link to your website in the description for the podcast, too, for viewers or listeners. You want to check that out. Awesome. And like I said, I'm proud of the book and a lot of people help me write the book. So that's

key to acknowledge those people. So that's awesome. Anyway, thank you again. Yeah, thank you. We'll have you back on again. I know you're working on other projects. We will speak again. And I'll see you this summer, right? Yes, you will see me in a few months. And our next project we will be discussing is Canadian snipers in Afghanistan with Barry Nisbet and Gordon Cullen. Talk about humans, human computers who know how to snipe. I'm looking forward to it. That's awesome. All right. All right. Thanks again. Have a nice evening.

All right. And we'll see all of you next time. Okay. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon.

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