Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 199- The Polar Bear Expedition Part 2: Let Her Rip!

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Part 2/4 The Detroit's own finally make it to Russia, which has been transformed into the disease realm by the Spanish Flu Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Lines Love by Donkeys podcast. As always, it's me, Joe, and with me is Francis, again, part two. Hello, Francis. I am so excited to talk about more ways one I love being out of the army and then I love talking about other armies because it makes me think about how good I really had it in the army you know nobody ever gave me a Mosin Nagant and was just like here's your service weapon because that would be fucking insane when you're deploying to Afghanistan

like we got you this old rusty AK with no sights because we know you'll find more ammo for it. I mean, to be fair, we found a lot of ammo for AK-47s and a lot of shitty AK-47s. But you know what? They were also full auto. And when I went to Afghanistan, all they gave me was a fucking pistol. So I would have taken anything here. Have a rock with a string attached to it the thing that was even worse too was just that i'd never at that point in my life i'd never

shot a pistol in my entire life i'd only ever shot rifles so i had no idea what i was doing it took me out onto the qualification range i'm like this is easy those targets are super close there's nothing fucking shooting a pistol bang but it took me four times to qualify on that fucking thing dude i was so bad at fucking shooting a pistol i was like well i hope hope it never comes down to that i guess if you get cornered by the taliban pull out your prison like surprise boys just shoot yourself in the face so francis i have one more thing for us before we get started on part two of the polar bear expedition and uh if you remember in part one i drank my magical tonus uh which to be perfectly honest i don't think i'm ever gonna top um but i went to the corner store to see if i could find

more delightful russian energy drinks and wouldn't you know it, there are several different variations and all of them sound disgusting. Variations on a tonus? Unfortunately, I don't think any of them are ever going to top tonus. I feel like I started out too high. This one is called, I will read this exactly how it says on the can.

Energy drink, boom free, calorie zero, diet, cool fitness. Boom free? Boom free. It's energy drink without the boom. This is not an IED, I promise you. It's free of booms here. It also says sugar free in English and armenian the armenian is actually correct where it says sugar free but it is misspelled as it is translated into english

and it is spelled sugar with an er it also is majority written in georgian which is completely foreign to me there's so many languages that are just like bouncing around over there and all your dumb ass speaks is english man how are you even making it i speak armenian yes is it you can't read armenian my reading my reading armenian is very very bad okay i'm almost illiterate because yeah nothing looks like armenian yeah well don don't worry. You're just as good as some of the troops that we're talking about here. Functionally illiterate. It has Georgian, Armenian, and Russian all on it. And you know how it's very good?

The official website is a Facebook page. Facebook.com backslash boom.fire.official. Dot com backslash boom dot fire dot official. This sounds like something that's made up by fucking Frank Reynolds on. It's always sunny in Philadelphia. Yeah, this is some milk. This is yeah, this is some, you know, fight like a crow right here. We're going to we're going to get boom free and fight like crows.

At least with Tonus, it told you what it was going to taste like. Is it a picture of like a bushel of grapes on it this no clue whatsoever what what does the bouquet give you what is the scent what are you smelling it smells a little like red bull okay that's a promising it's promising it honestly doesn't taste like anything that's probably for the best like it has a hint of red bull but it's like if you diluted it with water because it's barely even carbonated. Well, I will say that I opened up a new vape today and put it on and it says it's raspberry. But when I hit it, it has the feeling of like, you know, like when you go into a public restroom and there's like brand new urinal cakes in and but nobody's pissed on him yet it's just got that heady urinal cake smell that's kind of what i got going on here that sounds you you sound like you lost this exchange well it was buy two get one for a penny so i'm gonna assume this one

is the penny however also i am a little high so i i thought flavored vapes were illegal now well flavored tobacco vapes this is flavored weed vape. Fair enough. Life hack. Life hack. If you want flavored vape, get stoned. Yeah. So when we left you last time, the fine soldiers of the Detroit Zone were dumped into the middle of a Russian swamp with no clue of what they were doing there.

middle of a russian swamp with no clue of what they were doing there and before long these poor bastards were snatched up by british officers stuffed into train cars and sent to aid the very stupid attempt to take the nearby city oberskaya from the bolshevik forces so i just want to recap also so they had an original mission of find this weapons cache weapons cache gets raided yes yeah so find it and guard it uh weapons cache gets raided. Simply guard it. Yes. Yeah. So find it and guard it. Weapons cache gets raided. And they're like, well, fuck now. What do we do? And then the British are like, technically, you have to listen to us.

So let's go all die over here real quick. Pretty much. And the British knew they were going to do this the entire time. We have to recap General Poole, that being the commanding british general plan again for those who weren't keeping track now he was under the impression that his force that now amounted to be a total of about 4 600 americans about 2 000 british was all he needed to drive 300 miles south and capture the railhead of volgogda from there there, he would link up with the Czech Legion, who are supposedly traveling south via rail. Spoiler alert, they're not doing that.

Those would also require another 300 plus mile push down the Vina River towards Kotlice, and we'll talk more about that front later on. There's a whole lot of fronts that are very, very small and equally stupid that we'll have to get to before all this is over now i'm looking at this on the map so this is up by finland right yes it's in the it's in the arctic north yeah yes it's literally in the polar circle yeah i remember i remember googling the maps yet last week when we were talking about it and i just i looked for volgogda and but it got me volgograd which has the big you know lady with the sword statue in it so that's not correct that's way

south yeah that is incorrect yeah that would be a hell of an advance it's just we're just gonna bypass moscow completely and go i mean literally that's probably about 3 000 miles but we're not doing that we're in the arctic circle up here by finland honestly that's probably about 3,000 miles. But we're not doing that. We're in the Arctic Circle up here by Finland. Honestly, that's just a bigger version of the same dumb plan. This entire area is mostly wasteland with nothing in it. Very, very, very poor peasants. The Red Army generally doesn't give a shit about it. We'll talk more about that in a little bit.

Now, the important part here is as you can imagine they needed and wanted to do all this before winter set in because they were already damn near in the arctic circle and it was already fucking september so this all had to happen pretty quickly now back with the boys heading towards overcove skaia uh by the time the train carrying them in got there, the Bolsheviks had blown up the bridge, so they couldn't actually cross into town. So there goes that. Also, the town

had already been taking on September 4th and nobody had told them. I love that these dudes keep showing up and it's just like, oh, shit, our job's already done for us. If only I could live this way. I mean, I'm sure everything's going to go even worse for them. But like this one aspect,

this one aspect of showing up and your work's already done is very nice. Now get to the point where they all die of something stupid. Oh, we're getting, we're rapidly getting to that point. Now the Americans got to this area with the blown bridge. The train stopped. They have no other orders. So they just kind of mill about a bit,

like hanging out in the boxcars, smoking, huddling together for warmth mostly. And that's when a French officer had to walk over to them and remind them they were, in fact, in an active war zone

and they should probably go take cover or something. So they did. The battalion commander, Major Charles Young, ordered his soldiers off the train and into the nearby woods to take some cover in some nearby shell craters. That night, the Detroit's own suffered their very first battlefield casualty. However, late at night, a soldier on guard saw something moving, screamed out for them to stop and shot at them at the same time, shooting another American in the leg.

That's about right. You knew as soon as you said their first uh their first casualty and you paused and it's like yeah it had involved a century like someone's shooting someone else in the leg yes at night okay somebody somebody got up to take a piss and forgot to tell everybody in the in like a a 500 foot radius of them i'm gonna go pee please don't fucking shoot me not to mention the american forces are all jumpy and none of them have seen combat yet yeah what are they jumpy about like i mean they just seem to be hanging out on boxcars smoking cigarettes like were they actively getting shelled did they have somebody that

had to remind them like they could certainly hear shots in the distance like they know that they're in a combat zone i mean that sounds like i've had pancakes while listening to ak fire like it's not it's not that big of a deal yeah it is when they're launching like full barrages of artillery at you okay see that's a little different see but and but i would just think that you know if i heard explosions going on i would get to cover um but i mean, I'm an experienced soldier. I'm not some conscripted dude from Detroit. Yeah, these guys have had maybe two weeks of training. Yeah, fair enough.

The next day, Company K, under the command of Captain Mike Donahoe, were ordered to go east near the town of Tiogra, where some of his platoons had been sent off to guard rail stations and telegraph lines. Mike and his men were issued rations for six days and sent to march over what he called, quote, the worst roads in the world, which took them to Russian muskeg, swamp and marshlands. While they were patrolling for Bolsheviks, now nicknamed Bolos, all they did was get eaten by mosquitoes. And only after marching about three miles of swamp that came up to their waist, they decided they had they have seen enough. Yeah, I mean, and they didn't even electrify it.

Not yet. I like that they already came up with a slur, too. This is like we can't just call them Bolsheviks. We got to call them Bolos. I think it's because the vast majority of them had no idea what a Bolshevik was. I think it's because the vast majority of them had no idea what a Bolshevik was. And it sounded vaguely like Bolo Knife from the Philippine Wars, which are like most of their officers and senior NCOs may have seen combat in. So it just kind of stuck. I can understand that.

I mean, you know, never underestimate the ingenuity of a soldier to come up with a slur for the people that they're trying to shoot. So, you know. It's not a slur as much as it's a nickname. for the people that they're trying to shoot. So, you know. It's not a slur as much as it's a nickname. I feel like they probably have more colorful slurs that they did not print in the book. When does it become a slur?

Like, because Jerry for Germans. That's not a slur. I know, but like they were nicknames, but then they're all like, I'm not going to start repeating them, but you know, like for Japanese army or, because I always thought calling, you know,

a guy Haji was respectful and it turns out, no, that was not respectful at all. Dude, look, 2004 was a wild time. Not everybody knew what the fuck they were doing. So no,

people knew what they were doing. They're just racist. Because if you've actually gone on the Hodge, then you can, but that's how you meant it you meant it as the guy from johnny quest i was 20 and nobody fucking told me i was listening to sergeants which was my first fucking problem that's what makes it a slur is the racial component that that's why japanese soldiers got derogatory nicknames because of the racial component these farming kids from nebraska or kentucky or detroit probably had no fucking idea what the difference between them and a

russian was so i could hardly imagine they meant it as a racial slur especially since it has to do with a filipino knife that makes sense now now you know the um if are they not white? Then it's a slur. It's kind of like, because again, with Germans. Technically they're Slavs, but I don't think these guys even know. In the 1940s, were they considered white? Like how the Italians weren't considered white until like 50 years ago. All right. Anyway, so what's going on with everybody in, what city are we in now?

Tiago Gros? Moving on. Anyway, so what's going on with everybody? And what city are we in now? Tiokro? Moving on. Now, eventually, the next day, they're found by a messenger telling them to stop doing that and march down the river to link up with what was called Force D, a detachment of French machine gunners, Royal Marines, and some local... They called it the Slavic Legion or local like volunteers. It was like the Slavic British Legion. And what it amounted to be was local Russian volunteers, kind of sort of trained by British military, but mostly like just given a gun.

Right. mostly like just given a gun right literally the farmers with rifles and we'll give them some like here's how to use the rifle and here's how to get behind something if some people are shooting at you go have fun kind of it's like obviously the civil war is between the reds and the whites but like these guys aren't exactly whites yet like their political motivation mostly just boils down to the british are giving me food and money. Right. They're not exactly anti-communists. Right.

Hey, 1917 Russia. It was a 1917 that we're in 1918. That general area. Late 1918, 1919. OK. I mean, I imagine being a Russian in the Arctic Circle, anything that just like these people will give me warmth and food, then fuck it. Like this. I mean, 2022, I would imagine would be the same thing in arctic circle russia i mean they have like towns and cities now well now i know i know that they um but but they're not probably not as well developed but anyway i'm very i'm very comfortable and i don't like things below 40

degrees fahrenheit so i mean i'm mostly thinking about how irritated, Oh, I would have a very bad time. Good thing. I'm not from Detroit, I guess. Yeah. Famously comparable to the Arctic circle.

If you're the department of defense, but the time will come at a long enough timeline where these guys will be some like anti-communist type soldiers, especially the leadership of these weird breakaway warlord factions but these guys are both mostly just dudes with guns uh they don't really actually have politics quite yet however when this unit finally got to this force d that's when the bolos finally found them and they get their first taste of combat bolshevik soldiers rush their positions in the morning getting so close as to throw

hand grenades at them. And it was the first time that virtually any of the Americans had ever seen combat. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Bolos began flying planes overhead, which they then used to walk artillery in on their positions. Because remember, these guys mostly ex-Tsarist soldiers,

war veterans. They've been fighting for a very long time. They're better at this than the Americans are. Now, reportedly at this point, a lot of the rank and file American soldiers kind of wanted to say, fuck this noise and retreat. But when the things that kept them in place is looking over to the French counterparts, many of whom had survived fucking Verd uh and saw them not even flinching so they decided that like we should probably stay otherwise we'll look bad if we run in front of the verdun veterans we gotta we gotta man up for the french here that's uh we can't we can't we can't well this is also this is world war one so i mean this is like pretty much everybody in Europe is good at fighting at this point.

Like if it's not, you know, World War One, it's like literally any, you know, any of the other wars that Europe was doing at any other given time. So Americans kind of showing up like, yeah, this is fun. This is this is cool. What are we doing here? Oh, God, they're shooting at us. That's not right. That doesn't seem right. All of the bad French soldiers have been killed by now

while forest d was eventually ordered to withdraw anyway they did suffer their first combat death a private named glenn staley which it sounds like the lead singer of alice in chains like i read that it was like oh lane staley their first combat casualty death to a bullet full of fentanyl. God. Now, Private Staley was wounded and left behind, which obviously wasn't that uncommon for the day. But when he fell into Bolshevik captivity, he was bayoneted to death after being taken prisoner. This would kind of set the attitude between the two sides like, oh, we're killing each other's prisoners.

Okay. Oh, war, war, huh? We're not doing gentlemen's war. All the enlisted people shoot each other and the officers, you know, have a cup of tea. Right. American officers were very confused as to why the hell they were there, not exactly sure what their mission was,

and pointing out that they were just meant to guard some supplies, and in response, some British officers, in command of the entire thing, issued orders that reminded their soldiers that they, quote, were to fight an offensive war, not a defensive war, which must have been news to the Americans who weren't actually where they were fighting any war at all. American officers pointed to the President of the united states specifically ordering them not to take sides in the russian civil war to which point a british officer reportedly told that to simply go ask the president to give them new orders which you know soldiers could totally do the current version of that in 2022 is reading a

tweet from a president and then them being just like, all right, fine, add him back and see what he says, motherfucker. Until Biden gets back at you, though, why don't you go ahead and hop on over here and get your ass shot off? You better slide in his fucking DM, soldier. Now, this, of course, effectively trapped the brigade in a war

they were not supposed to be fighting, but were now solidly stuck in. Even the Bolsheviks weren't sure what the fuck this weird international detachment wandering around the swamp was meaning to do. So no real organized, unified attempt was made to deal with them.

They did want to keep them from going any further, though, and began to bring up rail guns and stuff to shell them if they got too close. If they pushed too far south where the bolsheviks are comfortable for them to go they launch some shells at them but other than that it was like just leave them up there to wander around we don't really want to deal with them at the moment we have other shit going on now americans weren't really sure what a rail gun

was yet um well they had become pretty common use especially in russia with like fast open territories because the war in the east in world war one was a much more mobile war than the like Well, they had become pretty common use, especially in Russia with fast open territories. Because the war in the East in World War I was a much more mobile war than the trenches of the Western Front. But Americans weren't sure what the big old cannon on a railroad track was. I assume because they were confused by a railroad track because we don't really have those. Yeah, I know. We did at the time with me alone. They're wondering why there's a big gun on

that trolley yeah um so out in the distance they saw this big old tube sticking out of the forest and thought it was a smoke pipe for a local sawmill and when the french said that was not the case the americans said to prove them wrong by going and marching over there and that's when the smokestacks started shooting at them. And then they came under fire from nearby Bolo trenches, which were obviously there to cordon in the international forces, which led the battalion

to simply attack it. And this actually worked. They managed to chase off most of the defenders that much of a fight with one of the prisoners that they took before they murdered him,

pointed out that they had been left there in those trenches without orders and none of their promises for reinforcements, which should have been like 300 more men, had shown up. So the men in the trench simply decided to surrender. The other Americans learning about how old Private Saley quickly got these guys as well, left them in the trench. So you can see how this back and forth is going to go over the course of

this campaign. This is going to be a lot of bayonet and people. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do eventually start taking prisoners. I think they end up capturing like five or six Americans at some point, like bring them back to Moscow. And the Americans start capturing Russians as well and handing them over to moscow um and the americans start capturing russians as well and handing

them over to like the russian volunteers which i'm sure treat their captives very well spoiler alert murder if there's anything that i've learned about russians it's that they're just soft-handed with everything they're really gentle making sure that everybody's taken care of has everything that they need hot and cold running lice in the gulag very hospitable uh towards their pows yes very they loved them uh especially themselves uh like credit credit work credits due to the russians they they they're angry against all pows it doesn't matter if they're other russians if it feels like at this time there's no real russian identity it's just fuck those guys over there.

We're these guys and fuck those guys over there. There's certainly Russian identity that is remaining from the Russian Empire. And you can see that because like the immediate rebirth of Russian chauvinism and the continuous attempt to reclaim the imperial Russian borders after the the recreation of the soviet union from the ashes of the fucking uh empire but yeah they just don't give a shit uh it's more of a fat it's more of a faction thing um so in another position near stella skoy a slow-moving plane overhead was thought to be american by a guy named Major Young. This is despite the fact the Americans brought no planes to Russia. And he ordered his men not to fire on it.

I feel somebody would have noticed that, you know, as if there was a bunch of airplanes that they had brought over with their Mosins. Did anybody notice we stuffed a whole bunch of planes in this ship? No? Oh, whatever. knows we stuffed a whole bunch of planes in this ship no oh whatever but also this is like airplane air flight had only been invented like 15 years beforehand so like really like like did anybody find an airplane no you're not going to find an f-35 tuck behind something but like some balsa wooden canvas could be turned into an airplane at this point as long as you know the physics of it well i mean the planes were pretty common for world war one at this point

already mostly for scouting uh bombing they weren't exactly very good at but major young order has been not to fire on this plane however someone else along the line opened fire with the machine gun probably knowing that they didn't bring any planes which brought it crashing to the ground major young ran towards the downed plane in an attempt to save the pilot yelling quote don't shoot we're americans only to immediately get shot at by the bolshevik crew inside the plane who was still alive now this sent young running for cover and then like the rest of the people in the line shot the pilots and afterward uh the men in the battalion mocked him by yelling out, don't shoot. We're Americans.

Whenever they came under attack. That's just fun. Let's have dudes being bros. You know, there's not a lot of time for humor in the trenches and shitting on one of your buddies. That's how you know you've been accepted. Not shitting on a buddy, shitting on a major. Yeah, that too. Now, this is probably one of my favorite parts of the entire

story and that is what was going on in the city of archangel while all this was happening by the end of september 65 members of the detroit zone would be dead virtually all of them from spanish flu which had been cutting through the ranks in the city as a whole like a wildfire hospitals overflowed as people described it like a scene out of Dante's Inferno. One soldier, delirious from fever, began to think of medical staff for hoarding oranges,

so he demanded that he be given some saying, quote, either give me those oranges or I'm gonna let her rip. Now you're probably wondering, what exactly is he gonna let rip? What is it? it well they didn't give him oranges because like they weren't stealing them from him uh he furiously began shitting and vomiting simultaneously all over the hospital and then dropped dead

hi i'm johnny knoxville and welcome to World War One. Like, have you ever been so bad at someone you shit and puked all over yourself and dropped it out of spite? Not yet. I'm holding out hope. Life goals, baby. Life goals. That's what it's going to be. I'm going to get COVID and it's going to be so bad.

They're going to say, oh, we'll put you on a ventilator and say nope just drag me to my closest enemy so i can scream at them vomit and shit myself to death i want that to be the last thing they see of me i came into this world covered in shit and vomit i'll go out of this world covered in shit vomit now uh a good reason for all of these problems was Archangel was a pretty small city with a peacetime population of maybe 50,000. It fluctuated back and forth. But since the Allied intervention, as well as the Russian Civil War, drove refugees into it, the population had tripled in a very, very short amount of time. And because of this wartime overpopulation, if the Allies didn't bring it with them, that being literally any kind of supply, the town simply didn't have it. Stores were barren outside of fish and fish-related products, which were known as being thin or

spoiled. This went for water as well, with the only water available in the city that came from a swamp outside of the barracks which soldiers noted was quote as yellow as tea delicious fellas this might have something to do with the fact why you're shitting and dying all over the place no i think it's fine this is all dysentery right they got this isn't like cholera or anything this is i mean it's cholera it's dysentery it's spanish flu it's you you fucking name it it's a grab bag it's a it's what it is a lot of a lot of ghosts and a lot of blood we we call it the grand slam

outside of horrible illness and disease there was a small problem with currency in the city that being there was like three or four different currencies floating around and that's just counting the shit being printed in russia at the time and none of it was worth anything so without going into it very far the russian empire printed currency which then obviously the russian empire collapsed the provisional government then printed currency, which then collapsed. The Bolsheviks printed currency, which then went out of favor. And then in the area that they were in, that being Archangel, decided to also call itself a government, calling itself the sovereign government of northern Russia. And they printed their own currencies, which was also worthless and this was not uncommon for russia at the time yeah i mean

regional banking was a thing like in america and it never worked out well because of literally what you're saying that shit like as soon as somebody's like i don't want to be a bank anymore bank collapses that fucks everybody now Now, imagine that happens. But also there's war and the regional currency you're using then got snuffed out because the team that you run lost. And there's nothing backing it. And that's on top of British, French, and American money that was floating around as well. Now, this sovereign government of northern Russia was ran by a guy named nicholas tchaikovsky um he's an interesting character who had spent several years of his life in independence kansas

in the united states attempting to start a cult which failed um whoa wait wait wait you can't just say a cult like what kind of cult are we talking about is this like is it a religious cult like specific is it like a russian orthodoxy cult is it a weird sex cult is it a jim jones cult what's he got going on here and technically all of those are religious cults fair fair enough i did i mean that is that is my my first mistake there they're always religious cults it's not really a a cult of dudes rocking that's just's just called a podcast. It was like a weird orthodoxy cult mixed with celestial communism, kind of. Where are you going?

I mean, it's Kansas. He failed for a reason. Kansas isn't exactly ripe for this pseudo celestial communist cult especially back then just before his time Jim Jim Jones he walked so Jim Jones could run Jim Jones do this in Kansas no he

he started in California before he went on the guy in yeah yeah you can California is easy you can anybody start a cult in California that's that's fucking easy mode they're starting one in Kansas, that's pretty hard. I gotta give him props. Yeah, he failed. Do I need to not hand it to him real quick?

Yeah. Now, his cult failed. He ended up moving back to the United States. He bounced around the United States for quite some time, joining other cults, including the Shakers up in New York State. And before moving back to Russia, specifically Northern Russia,

politically, he was still a communist, though he was super into the church, as his cult thing would tell you. So that put him at odds with the Bolsheviks, who really didn't like the Orthodox Church. So that landed him squarely an archangel working with the Allies, despite

him really not liking them. And then if that wasn't weird enough, Tchaikovsky and his entire cabinet were then kidnapped by a Russian naval officer named Georgi Chaplin, who also happened to be on General Poole's staff as the local loyalist who could smooth things over for him with the Russian population. Now, Chaplin didn't like

jaykovsky mostly because of the cult thing but this led to a general strike of the people of archangel who actually liked jaykovsky and the people believe that the allies were in on the kidnapping who actually weren't they had no idea what was happening um but squarely got the blame because they knew chaplin worked for them now this led to one of the weirdest things I think I've ever read about. The striking workers of Archangel also operate the transit system, streetcars, taxis, horses, things like that. left no decent means of travel within the city of Archangel. And this left the Allies not really sure what was going on. They had no idea what happened to the last government or what Chaplin was planning. So while they tried to figure out where Tchaikovsky

and his entire cabinet went, they had to figure out what to do with this transit problem. So the battalion commander of the u.s army simply asked who of his men who had been able to operate streetcars back home and soon all of the streetcars in archangel russia are being worked by some detroit kids who weren't even bothering to charge anybody fares because they had no idea how much money anything was so congratulations to america for bringing true communism to russia i guess international scabbing you know i i i gotta admit like it's a street car i guess it doesn't really take too much to uh

to to learn how to push a lever to make it go forward maybe i mean imagine it's probably more complicated than that and especially in a place like you know archangel russia where you probably had specific training how to use this thing without breaking it and if you weren't from detroit in this battalion you were probably some like from farm in kentucky or something so you had no idea what to do either but eventually the strike was brought to the end when the old government was located and brought back into the city and Chaplin was told not to fucking kidnap them again. Bad naval officer, no kidnapping the government. In the middle of all of this, the city was awash with grifters and thieves.

From the Red Cross to the YMCA to the military quartermasters, everybody was stealing everything that came in on the boats to support either humanitarian relief or the war effort all of it being sold on the local black market now this included thousands upon thousands of cases of whiskey even to the medical supplies soldiers noted that their supply clerks got suspiciously wealthy and one case as sergeant who was caught smuggling sugar made $89,000. Holy shit. In case you're wondering, that's $1.5 million in today's dollars. Fucking king shit, man.

That is impressive. Over sugar? Just smuggling sugar. Yeah, and he got caught because of the sheer amount of volume that that amount of money takes up like he couldn't hide it all he's gotta he's doing the uh breaking bad thing where he's gotta like rent someplace to just put cash that he doesn't know what to do with yeah but he's like also in the arctic circle like oh god where am i gonna put all this money just like stashing it in his

suitcases in the walls of some like yurt you just dig a hole man just put it in the snow sure it's fine just dig a hole and put it like fucking pirate that shit up man put it down a little now granted granted like when are you going to come back to be able to pick that up is the next question. I mean, if I had a choice and never, um, look, if you told me right now that you would not go back to Afghanistan because you stashed fucking, uh, $1.2 million. That's first off.

That's a, that's a Netflix movie right there. That's fucking triple frontier, but it's us. It's three Kings, you know, that's what this is. So like,

I, I would absolutely fucking book a ticket to go back to Afghanistan to dig up my 1.2 million. triple frontier but it's us it's three kings you know that's what this is so like i i would absolutely fucking book a ticket to go back to afghanistan to dig up my 1.2 i don't know how i'm getting at home but it's there so there lies the problem you don't let money lay man that's all i'm saying i'm not the president of afghanistan i can't just like squirrel it away in a private jet and fly to kyrgyzstan or something. Two big bags that have dollar signs on the outside of them. Not money. There's a little paint on them.

Not money. Please don't search. Now, I felt like I had to dip back into the city just to remind people that soldiers caught out away from it, you know, in the swamps or whatever. It really had nowhere good to go. And honestly, being trapped out in the middle of a swamp is probably better than actually being an archangel at the time. Which is where Company B of Detroit's own found itself in the middle of September, around 200 miles away from the city, near the town of Saltzo.

Left there by British commanders in the middle of a swamp without rations or supplies, wearing just the uniforms on their back as it pissed down rain, they occasionally got shelled by Bolshevik positions from inside the town. The Bolsheviks had also built a ton of rafts to float down the nearby Vina River and launch shells at them like a really slow riverine drive-by. They really didn't have any answers for, right? So it was decided that the men of Company B

should attack Seltzo, chase them out of their positions, and at least silence some of the guns. Or, you know, get shelled to pieces all by the guns around them anyway. So, they did that, running directly into a machine gun nest, sending them running into the nearby woods and stopping their attack.

So, so much for that, boys. We tried. Did you, though? We tried the only attack we know. We ran right at them. We hit their bullets with our chests, and somehow that didn't work. Now, this brings us to what has to be the dumbest idea that Poole had. And this is a man who had no shortage of very dumb ideas.

Truly a man at the pinnacle of his game, surrounded by the dumbest military commanders of all time. Pool sticks out. So remember how we expected Detroit Zone to make it 300 miles down a river? Enter the Plague Flotilla. Is this still our Grand Slam plague, or do we have a specific plague this time? This is mostly Spanish flu. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Now, the entire 1st Battalion, A through D companies, would leave Archangel floating slowly down the Divina River towards Kautlas. Their rafts would be lashed together by civilian workers or be like former livestock rafts requisitioned by the soldiers, and everybody ordered aboard them had never worked or navigated a river a single day in their lives you just you just take a pole and when you get too close to something you poke it and you either move yourself or you move the things just poke it with a stick you

poke it with a stick either you move yourself or you move the thing you're poking very simple look i grew up on a river it's fine detroit there's a river don't you guys have a river yeah we have one river yeah good somebody's got to know how to do something here uh hold on to that thought the rafts were originally used to transport coal and cattle in giant unventilated holds which meant everything was covered in coal dust and cow shit in case you thought they would i don't know wash these out or something and unventilated means it's not there's no fresh air in there you just clam bacon cow ass

that these holds were where the soldiers would be stashed as well because they originally not designed for people no light could get through trapping us several hundred men in pitch dark covered in shit and dust and no way out whatsoever for how long how long

were they in these things um for quite a while uh i mean they have to go 300 miles down a river very slowly oh no almost immediately men began dropping dead as the spanish flu started tearing through the holds because you know no ventilation so many men began falling ill and dying a soldier said the flotilla reminded him more of a funeral procession than an expedition of war each time a man died they had pulled the flotilla over to the side of the river and bury him and on the shore in some nearby village which i'm sure it confused the fuck other people living there a whole bunch of americans showed up dump their trash in my backyard, and they just kept going.

I'm glad that they did that and not just like chucked them out the side into the river, because all I can think of is just like, oh look, Benny made it here before us. I mean, he's a little bit more floaty than the rest of us, because he died, you know, fucking nine days ago, but... Frank is awfully blue.

The barges had no heating nor any way to start a fire without sinking them while they're underway, nor do they have any bedding in them whatsoever. The soldiers are expected to lay down and sleep on the cold shit covered floors. Medical services are left to the British leadership who decided to supply them with absolutely none of it. And everybody in the boats is left to the british leadership who decided to splite them with absolutely none of it and everybody in the boats is left to die british officers love to just fucking kill the shit out of people through neglect man like if there's anything that like you know like the british officers of this time like the early 1900s late you know 1800s man they just love to be like whoa go fuck yourself and just like fuck off and do whatever have a spot of tea while everybody dies it's incredible i don't know why

like i feel like the british do it more than anybody else like the soviets would at least you know like push you towards bullets they'd be they'd be actively doing something the british let you die through passivity which uh is beautiful in a way horrifying but beautiful well also importantly the british officers kept all the medical supplies for british soldiers they didn't care about the american ones it's like you're on your own homie fuck off now by september 12th they had reached the town of besnarek it's a base of the so-called riverfront for their advance. Almost everyone was sick, getting sicker or dead. 40 of the men

were so sick they had to be left behind at British Hospital in town, which is barely equipped to handle 15 men total. The British put the overflow men into a nearby outhouse where they all died. An outer house, not like a toilet, right? Did I stutter? I meant they put them in a literal shitter until they died well i mean if that's what you're doing is shitting you might as well

be on the shitter while you die i guess i don't know real easy to bury it too there's already a hole underneath you and credit where credit's due those americans were also abandoned with several british soldiers who also had the spanish flu so this is this is an equal opportunity uh death house of poop and misery yes much like the russians we also don't give a shit if our own people are dying right world war one soldier leadership was mostly how can i kill these people in the quickest possible manner right it's like look why why should i let the the damn germans have the glory of killing my boys when i can kill them myself the bolsheviks can't kill my soldiers i kill my soldiers exactly now after being packed back into the floating disease vector and being left to die, the riverfront of Vass went well,

with the bolos in the area simply not trying to put up much of a fight. Remember, that wasn't their goal at the time, whether that be because they lacked manpower or will or because Trotsky didn't quite carry it. But at one point, this did lead to a river navy gun battle between Russian riverboats and a British monitor, which is kind of fun what's a british monitor is that a ship yeah it's like an iron clad like a river iron clad yeah okay i got you it's like wooden russian boats versus a british boat in a river um but also it was kind of like overkill because the russian boats had no intention of like fighting they were just there to harass ground troops or the riverine flotilla. So when an actual warship showed up, like, ah, we're out of here.

It's not fun anymore when you're around. Just very reminiscent of Russia's current navy and how it also is falling apart in many ways. It's cheaper when it's made out of wood. Finally, at the town of Seltzo, Americans were left to charge across an open swamp into Russian machine gun fire, which, this might surprise

you, did not go well and led to retreating to the town of Yakovlevskaya, where they dug it. Once there, the Russians shelled them without any end, and once again they were left without food, water, or shelter as they began pouring rain and flooding their trenches.

This did not stop another push into Seltzo, however, at the urging of the British, which left several Mormon dead and nothing gained. The next day, with another attack, they did finally take the town, only to find it completely abandoned. The Russians had left their wounded behind, and several soldiers, hearing about what had happened before,

began killing them, because that's what we're doing now. Yeah, I mean, look, if you don't got food for your own people, definitely don't got food for the POWs. Look, I'm not saying you have to take care of them. The Geneva Convention says that, but you can at least not murder them. Apparently not. Apparently that's just what you got to it's asking too much in world war one

like and and honestly like what what is the other option like you're in the middle of nowhere you can't exactly i mean can you transport these guys out to a pow you can just leave them they would just join the other guys again that's fine it's more than murdering them it's fine i mean look morality uh would say yes. And I definitely agree that you shouldn't kill POWs. But, you know, at the time, I can definitely understand a like, look, it's you got it. You got to do something, I guess. I don't know, man.

You need to point out how uncommon it was to murder POWs during World War One. Was it? Okay. Yes. You know, everybody just seems very savage 100 years ago. So I didn't know if that was just one of those, you know, kind of like how talking about, you know, how Charles II came about. And you're just like, yeah, you know, me thinking is like, yeah, it's normal that, you know, back then kings would like marry their cousins or their sisters or whatever. And you're just like, no, it's not. Everybody thought it was.

Yeah, but that's like 200 years before World War I. Yeah, I know. But I mean, still, I have strange expectations. Well, I have different expectations of what these people are like. To me, it's just like, yeah, of course they're murdering POWs. But then you say, no, no, they didn't actually do that very much. They were a little bit more civilized with their war. Depending on what front you were, you had a pretty good chance of surviving if you fell into captivity.

That's, of course, a asterix your experience may vary now after being ordered into a swamp death pit for several days at a time a british major congratulated the men with a gallon of rum despite the fact they hadn't eaten in over a day which i'm sure felt very good in their stomachs that means you're cheap drunk, baby. It's not like they were aiming their busted-ass rifles anyway. Also, the town was barely secure with a river that cut through it being patrolled by Russian gunboats, leaving them to float by and attack the soldiers at will. At one point, rumors of a Russian counterattack

led the entire city to be abandoned in the middle of the night in panic, and they retreated all the way back towards Yakalev, only to realize there was no attack, and then having to walk back to Salto like a bunch of fucking idiots. These poor guys. Solid leadership all around, folks. You feel bad for the fucking,

the 20-year-old private, you know? Oh, the 20-year-old is the fucking sergeant at this point. Yeah, well, they didn't deserve is the fucking sergeant at this point. Yeah. Well, they didn't, they didn't deserve this. They didn't deserve this leadership. I remember all of them thought they were just going to go to France. Like everyone else.

I'm like, where the fuck even like some people don't even know where Russia is. Another advance into the next village called Puchaga was ordered with a soldier's low on every kind of supply. And it was noted that they're rolling up and smoking tea leaves because they're out of cigarettes. And in case you're wondering, everybody notes that that was disgusting and they shouldn't have done that. Don't smoke tea leaves. This reminds me of like there's a Chris Rock bit, I think in like 2000, maybe that and bigger and blacker when he pointed out that

like if you put a whole bunch of dudes bored in a room together they'll find a way to get fucked up like yeah if you put a bunch of lima beans into a pipe and smoke it you'll get fucked up and uh here's some soldiers smoking tea leaves in a trench out of boredom so hey look man during the next world war they're gonna be eating boot polish oh they were still eating boot polish no worries there chris rock noted historian uh no at this point they hadn't slept eaten or had really even any water to drink in it like two or three days uh and they were ordered to advance onto the village itself sinking into muddy trails and roads The mud was so deep and thick that some men had to join hands to walk along and pull each other out of the mud as they went. Solid way to advance on a military target.

Hand in hand. Thankfully, when they got there, that village was also abandoned. What's the goal here? Like, what is the British, what are they trying to accomplish here? Like killing Bolsheviks? What's the whole point? No, remember, they're simply going to advance 300 miles to take a railhead where they're going to meet with the Czech Legion. And then simply reopen the entire eastern front of World War I.

Simple as. Okay. With 8,000 soldiers. With 8,000 soldiers, soldiers they're gonna do this yeah is that is that 8 000 before they started getting on the plague ships like what are we at now currently okay they don't take horrible casualties but there's certainly less than uh than 8 000 men by now after this flotilla went down the vaga river a tributary of the vena and found themselves in the town of shen curse which fell without much of a fight, and the Allies were welcomed by the locals.

But before they could relax, they were replaced by British soldiers and kicked out further south towards a cluster of villages called the Unspandaga, where they marched for another 18 hours through marches and forests without seeing anything until they started randomly getting shot at. As you do. At this point, the Americans had been reinforced by some local volunteers and they realized that they were getting outranged and couldn't actually shoot back. Now, this had to have been a bit of a kick in the nuts to some of the American soldiers when they realized that the bolos that were shooting at them were armed with American rifles

that they had stolen from the stores that they had originally been sent there to defend. And the Americans stuck with their Mosins, but more importantly, stuck with sites. They did not know how to use, had no way to shoot back and had to wait for their accompanying gunboat to float up slowly and support them with cannon fire before they could advance.

That had, that had to be the ultimate fuck you that's such a kick in the dick somehow simultaneously that's a fuck you from the bolsheviks and the british because remember their entire mission was to defend those stores which no longer existed and now they're getting shot at by them with the support of that local boat they are able to drive them from a nearby cliff face and take the town of Rotovskaya. However, Captain Ojar, the

U.S. commander in the area, knew they were kind of out in the middle of nowhere and outnumbered, and should the bulldozers actually want to push them out, it would be pretty easy to do so. So he ordered his men to patrol around constantly around the clock in order to mask their true numbers.

Of course, this is a life hack that ends with you having just a whole bunch of tired soldiers. And they were eventually reinforced with some local volunteers again, and some Canadian artillerists, though the Canadian artillerists had no artillery. Whoops. I mean,

you went to Afghanistan without a tank once. So, I mean, yeah, but at least nowadays we're taught basics. artillery whoops i mean you went to afghanistan without a tank once so i mean yeah but at least nowadays we're taught basic infantry tactics artillery is being like lashed and slowly floated down the river so they would eventually get there but they showed up there without any um the next day the same group of soldiers was ordered to attack ninji puya which is a nearby village garrison with around 600 bolos at the first set of contact the volunteers that reinforced

them ran off to hide behind a church like an american sergeant ran over to like throw them back into combat and to see what the hell they were doing they found the men calmly sitting on the ground and drinking coffee despite the fact they were in the middle of a pretty sizable gun battle. As one person said, quote, they had a machine gun, but seemed very disinterested in using it. You don't fuck with Chai Time, man. I don't understand. Like, they had built a fire, gotten comfortable, and just decided to make coffee. That's an impressive amount of laziness.

I feel like you just don't give a shit anymore. It's like that video of the guy cooking steaks during a firefight. I mean, everybody else has got it handled. You can't really do nothing. Man's got to eat. You know, you got coffee here i can't shoot back at the moment so fuck it let's just have some coffee let's chill a whole bunch of guys taking cover like you know i could go for right now let's go for some coffee just like slinging

the rifle and calmly walking away from the machine gun fire holding up like a finger like no no one minute yeah no it didn't matter because eventually the villagers captured because the bullos again didn't exactly want to stick around doing house to house fighting and fucked off. Unfortunately for just about everyone, it was now October and on the 15th it began to snow. Temperatures are dropping quickly and the Americans had no winter clothing. This, it turned out, was exactly how far any allied unit would penetrate into Russia during the strange sideshow of a war over 100 miles away from Coatless, which, remember, was their actual objective. Their positions were pulled back to Unst Pendenga and lacked any way to do it other than marching. So now snowing and having tired, wounded, sick, whatever, they now had to pull back and they had to use local Russian horse carts. But the ground was so slippery, even the horses tripped and fell, which, you know, ends with them getting shot.

R.I.P. horses. Hey, but you know what? Takes care of the food problems. It's true. Horse life hack hey no but not all of the horses tripped and busted their ass i was gonna say you can't eat an mrap i'm just gonna point that out uh not with that attitude you gotta you gotta harvest that succulent truck meat uh now the horses that didn't slip and fall did move very, very slowly, you know, for self-preservation mostly.

And this created a 300 cart deep traffic jam. Eventually, however, they got there and the plan was to spend winter held up and, you know, relaunch their offensive at the break of spring. So now with two thirds of Detroit's own flung and scattered across the railway front, the Vena and the Vaga rivers and under British command, you might be asking yourself, mostly because I haven't actually said anything yet. Where the fuck was the American in charge of all this? Enter Colonel George Stewart. I was going to say, there's got to be an officer somewhere. You just don't have a bunch of enlisted guys show up, right? So where's

the colonel been this whole time so colonel stewart was a man who was awarded the medal of honor in the philippines and definitely not the way you'd expect him to instead of doing what i'm going to assume you thought was horrible things he actually rescued someone from drowning which back in the day was good enough for a medal of honor well Well, there's probably no doubt that Stewart was a good person. He was definitely not a good officer, which is the hardest kind of officer to hate, in my opinion. Most of the officers who were good men that I've met were not necessarily great officers.

The great men, though. Great people to hang out with. Now, while all of this was going on, Stewart himself was living in the Vinna Technical Institute, which was virtually the only modern-ish building in the entire area and included electric lighting and steam heat. As his soldiers lived destitute and in squalor, he lived in the closest thing to luxury the war had to offer. luxury the war had to offer. Now that's all on par for the chorus, but generally officers who live in such quarters at least head out to visit their soldiers every once in a while to play the common man game bullshit. Stuart didn't have time for that. He barely did even that, leaving the heated building only rarely. His soldiers knew about him and knew where he was staying and they

fucking hated him. Things only got worse when he was told that there was a funeral for dead soldiers nearby i think mostly killed from the flu and he dipped out early because it was too cold outside like i could just imagine like a colonel on funeral detail and as you're going through uh like the motions he holds up like the wrap it up box from the chapelle show it's too cold out for the shit man wrap it up on another trip to the front he lost his mitten one accused a nearby soldier of having stolen it and then went back into his building because he couldn't bear to be outside without a mitten and you know you 100 that what he did was he fucking chucked his mitten somewhere

where nobody was looking and then used that as an excuse to fuck off like well i can't find one of my mitten so obviously i can't be out here guys i'm sorry i'm sorry that's right private private malarkey over here wants to play games i have to go back inside into my electrically lit steam heated room while the rest of you can fuck off doing war stuff that's right it looks cold out there you guys have fun now it was rumored that stewart didn't even know where his soldiers had been deployed and never once questioned the british about it at one point while at the front he asked the soldier pointing to a flare gun that they had and asked, quote,

what kind of cannon do you call this? Phenomenal. Love him to death. We need to have a whole episode about him. This is about it. He's innocuous as far as like being a true bastard goes or like, you know, a donkey or whatever he,

cause he's never really in command of anything. Now, Stewart is an idiot, but his disconnection from his men and total subservience to the British officers was actually part of the plan on the part of the British. Wherever there was an American officer, the British made sure there was a senior British one. Not even individual companies were left out of this. This meant the British had totally and completely overtaken American units as if they were their own, because in effect, they were. This system was made easier by the British regulation that allowed temporary promotions without pay or allowance. So at any point, if there was like an American captain, suddenly every British man around him would spontaneously become a major and outrank him. suddenly every British man around him would spontaneously become a major and outrank him.

They're reverse revolutionary warring us at that point. It's just like, oh, no, technically you're ours now. And all your soldiers are ours now, too. We've got a six-star general. You've never heard of it before, but we've got one. Fuck you. We'll make a seven-star. Don't tempt us. This man was a lieutenant last week.

Fuck you. We'll make a seventh star. Don't tempt us. This man is a lieutenant last week. Now, this also meant much more junior officers were telling company commanders and American officers above them what to do without having to worry about fucking up and killing their own soldiers because they were Americans. This is how you get situations like the one where General Poole ordered a push from the city of Obriskaya to Plenskaya, which is about 40 miles away. This advance is going to occur at night through deep swamps without any local Russian guides. When the American captain voices concern to a British major, who was actually a lieutenant three weeks before, he was told to quote,

you Americans can do it somehow. I believe in you. This, of course, led to a group of soldiers getting lost in a swamp nearly deep enough to drown them. And by the time they thought they were at their attack point by first light, they discovered they actually had done a gigantic circle ending right back at the start point. The next day, when the American captain got his forces moving again, this time actually finding his way through the swamp and licking up with the units already fighting, his forces tipped the scale of the battle. So of course, the British commander, Colonel Sutherland, would then shell the Americans on accident, causing them to run back and give the area back to the Polos. When Sutherland was told he was killing friendly troops as a form of like, dear God, please stop shelling us. You're blowing

up Americans. He reportedly sat down in a chair and asked for a drink before ordering the artillery commander to cut it out. Yep. Again, it just doesn't give a shit if people die.

It's incredible. Now, Sutherland ordered the attack called off, mostly because, you know, he had defeated it himself with his fucked up artillery. But U.S. Major Brooks Nichols refused his order and ordered

his troops to attack the village anyway without any support, mostly out of spite. When he did this, he captured an important bridge, driving the Bolos back. And this wall of victory also fundamentally actually changed the course of this side war war it's

not really world war one it's it's a completely different war at this point but the war changed the war now if you remember back to part one leon trotsky and vladimir lenin had kind of sort of been fine with the allies landing in archangel like They weren't allies, for sure. They didn't sign an agreement and said, no, you guys can just stomp around and be assholes in our backyard. That's fine. But it was kind of like, we have a whole civil war to deal with. We don't really care.

Archangel isn't that tactically important when you guys aren't sending supplies into it anymore. So we don't care. Not to mention the threat of the german empire was very very real um even they agreed to end the war it you know don't trust the german empire i guess like it's right to say it's never get involved in the land war with asia uh never trust a sicilian when death is on the line and number three is you know fuck with Germans man or don't don't do that man

don't trust the Kaiser's weird mustache and baby arm I forgot the baby arm so Leon Trotsky is thinking how much damage could these allies really do with a couple thousand soldiers if they're like all of this land right but now

having successfully driven several hundred miles south and with no end in sight it became pretty clear to the the revolutionary russians that uh these allies might keep fucking around and it might be time for them to find out and that is where we'll pick up next time oh we love a cliffhanger we love a cliffhanger when we last left our intrepid forces theyhanger. When we last left our intrepid forces, they were fucking around. When we last left our intrepid forces, this is how pretty much every episode is going to start and end. When we last left the Americans, they were lost in a swamp.

Stay tuned next time where they're still lost in a swamp. But this time there's less of them for many reasons. Yes. Now, Francis, that is part two. Thank you for joining me again. And, uh, this is the plug zone,

plug your show that, uh, involves significantly less being lost in swamps. Uh, I mean, I got lost in a minefield once, but that's neither here nor there. As I said,

Afghanistan was a wild place in 2004. Uh, I run, uh, what a hell of a way to die podcast uh and also we have things to buy online for pin for yourself your pins if you like soviet pins if you like normal pins if you like patches and stuff all that stuff's online uh hell of a way to die.com joe i i really as i said i always appreciate coming on your show and listening to just how fucked up it could have been for me if I had been born.

Imagine being born 100 years earlier than currently. Couldn't be me. Like, just couldn't, hopefully wouldn't be me. I can say if I was born 100 years earlier, things would probably not pan out great for me. And that's my solemn promise to both Francis and our intrepid listeners. That is, every time you tune in, someone will die of some

horrible intestinal disease. Many preventable deaths will have happened. Of course. That is the lion's lead by donkey's promise that these people did not, in fact, have to die. And until next time, don't invade Russia using a riverine flotilla of plague ships.