Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 201 - The Polar Bear Expedition Part 4: Welcome to the Red Parade

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

The conclusion to the story of the polar bear expedition 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 yet another episode of Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and still with me in the conclusion of this series is Francis. Hello, Francis. Very excited. series is Francis. Hello, Francis. Very excited.

You know, we've been with them for so long from like the shit covered barges of the upper Arctic rivers and through the Bolo fights and through just a lot of mutinies, just a lot of fucking mutinies.

Where do they end up? Like, I want to know where they are 30 years later later i want the vh1 special i hope that there's an epilogue it's gonna end at a cliffhanger like was the sopranos with the the detroit's owners gonna be sitting in the vfw in detroit and just a russian going to walk in and it's going to fade the black. So where are we at with these guys currently? Where did we last leave our intrepid heroes? Now, when we left off last time, the Americans and various other allies, mostly British, French, the occasional Russian, still not talking about the Japanese, of the dumbest front of kind of sort of World War I, but also after World War I.

I want to say, you mentioned the Japanese, and I know you're not going to talk too much about the Japanese, but like, just where, like, are they also fighting in Russia? Are they also fighting Bolsheviks for their own reasons? Their own reasons, yeah. They're not in this particular front. Okay. This front here, which is the American Expeditionary, the Allied Expeditionary Force of Northern Russia. There's also the Allied Expeditionary Force Southern Russia, which is Vladivostok.

And then there's the Japanese who have by far the most amount of soldiers in Russia. It kind of in between them. Because kind of connected to the Russo-Japanese War. This had nothing to do with like the Eastern Front of World War I. Japan is like, no, we want to take over Siberia.

No, no, this is our imperialism time too. This also eventually connects to stuff they would do in World War II. I like the early stages of World War II as well. Like they fight the Empire of Russia. They kind of sort of fight stuff they would do in World War II. I like the early stages of World War II as well. They fight the Empire of Russia. They kind of sort of fight the Soviet Union

before World War II. Then they fight them again, and then they actually go to war against them. But this is probably... I don't know. Expedition to Russia is very, very weird. Which is saying something something we're talking about

this one but yeah don't don't go off on any tangents but when you do get to that one bring me back on i want to know what was going on on their on the the the russian eastern front because it's i mean they just had a revolution and this country is so fucking big like i can't even imagine like how like as as checked out as i want to be from like current politics being like just a Russian peasant. Just like I don't fucking care, man. Just just don't shoot me in the head. Is that is that possible? Can we just have that?

I mean, all of this is in the middle of the Civil War to the Civil War. I think kills eight million people in the greater Russian Empire. Dude, Russians must breed like fucking rabbits they definitely do not they are there have been a population decline for years yeah because of like various wars that they keep doing just throwing their people into meat grinders but also nobody wants to fuck everybody's sad russian culture just being sad and drunk that's not true i'm sorry russians i don't apologize as i'm recording this in yerevan i can shit talk russians as much as they want they've fucking colonized this country uh like for instance we can we don't even control our own borders armenians are not allowed to control the border with turkey or with

iran armenians are allowed to control the border with Turkey or with Iran. Armenians are allowed to control the border with Georgia and other peacekeepers, quote unquote, a fun term for Russian troops between us and Azerbaijan. That's what Trump said today. Yeah, there's even Russian custom officers at the international airport. Yeah, no, Trump said that Putin's going to send sending people into the separatist areas to be a peacekeeper. Thankfully, we never talked about that in any of our series before. Nothing's more peaceful than a shitload of tanks. Man, you know what really sucks is like I wrote our series on the Russo-Georgian War during the summer of last year.

I had no fucking idea what was going to happen within a couple of months oh man but before we get started here uh i i did go and rustle us up another good energy drink you might like this name uh i bought this at parma which is my like my corner grocery store here uh and it's called max power yeah it better be you don't want min power bro you want max power the so the only english on this can is the top ring that says maximum energy to drink then it says max power in a font i could only describe as looking like a trapper keeper like a lisa frank kind of trapper keeper one with like the sparkly dolphins and shit no like the super colorful ones with the it looks like the words are going really fast.

Oh yeah, okay, I gotcha. And like the other ones, the official energy drink website is a Facebook page, so you know it's quality. Alright, let's see what we got here. I'm going to bet it tastes the exact same as the other ones, which is kind of like off-brand Red Bull. It's all like

the Simpsons gag of Duff, D light and duff ice all just from the same thing yep it tastes like off-brand red bull uh of the four weeks uh drinking bad armenian and russian energy drinks for this uh for the series tonus was the only one with a actual flavor, which was grape adjacent. So you heard it here first, kids. Drink your magical tonus. Do you feel energized now? When you come back to America, you better bring some tonus.

Bring back cases and cases of tonus. I'm going to be the number one tonus dealer. Yeah, we're going to start moving into the black market. Black market Russian energy drinks. There's a job for us. Fuck selling Russian pins, man. one tonus dealer yeah we're gonna start moving in the black market black market russian energy drinks there's a job for us fuck fuck selling russian pins man i'm gonna sell tonus in the store hell yeah hell yeah six pack of tonus is how much how much was goat juice being sold for is like 12 12 cans for like 50 bucks i think i i mean it's russian so i think we can uh uh drop that

down a little bit well just for comparison i I think because you buy everything singles here, even beer. That's really weird. Like you can't get like a six pack of beer. You buy like six individual beers. I mean, sometimes you just want one beer. But this can of Max Power, I'm not sure about. I don't remember the price of Tonus was like 280 dram, which less than a dollar that's significant let's it's it's only slightly more than metro fare here so it's very cheap i think that i think the metal is worth

more oh and another update if you remember francis last week uh during the episode i thought i had covid i did in fact, have COVID. Yes. And I've since recovered. That shit sucks. I've made it this entire time during the pandemic without getting COVID. I finally got it. Shout out to the old man in the Yerevan Metro

for sneezing directly into my face. Because that's probably where I got it. You went to Armenia, man. You're getting everything. You're getting COVID. You're going to get a war soon, probably. And you got a case of tonus. That's probably where I got it. You went to Armenia, man. You're getting everything. You're getting COVID. You're going to get a war soon, probably. And you got a case of tonus. That's right.

It's the holy Armenian triumvirate right there. That's what you were baptized into the Armenian church. Not holy water, but holy tonus. That's right. So, Francis, when we left off last week, all these guys are shuffling through waist high snow getting shot dropping toes from frostbite and occasionally getting hacked to death with axes all around not a fun time or dying of the many like diseases that one contracts during world war one which is all of them spanish flu uh specifically uh that one guy who who shit himself and died

king shit honestly i wish that there was a way that i could like turn that into a patch or a design of some kind like that man needs a flag he needs his own country. Oh, man. Now, if you remember a few episodes ago, the Americans are not the only part of this cobbled together allied force to have to put up with this shit. You know, metaphorical shit, since there's also literal shit. Right. We remember the shit tree shit tower. Never forget. And the poor enlisted guy who had to go cut down shit tower. Private stuffy. Go ahead and chop down the shit tree.

God damn it. I like to imagine it's like the trash. You know, whoever took a shit and like it didn't actually fully leave your butt because it's too frozen. You're the one who has to go down there and cut it down. Someone has to go up and measure it like, oh, that one's above the ring. That one's on you. Right. Joke's on you. I have have diarrhea nothing's stacking up here i have horrible dysentery y'all motherfuckers gotta stop eating borscht uh now actually borscht is delicious that's a lie

uh the french troops all but mutinied during all of this refusing to work to fight and even to patrol their own garrisons they told their officers the only time that they would take up their weapons is if somebody attacked them in their beds, which is an attitude I can support. Yeah, that's how I always felt at war, too. Oh, God, this max power is a fucking awful aftertaste. You don't have to drink it throughout the entire thing. You know, you are recovering from COVID. Like, don't push yourself too hard. You need medium power not max power at this point give

it a month before full max power i'm turning my heart to 11. by this point of the war they had all but ceased to function as a military unit. They instead simply sat around, repeatedly demanding to go home, which, again, I support all of this. So did they just, like, find a spot to chill in there? Like, the city that they were, you know, kind of half taking over, and they're just like, yeah, we're just going to stay here until we can go home? I mean, you talk about their garrison,

but they're not, like, wandering around, being like, I want to go home, but also I want to, you know, march for 10 miles. No, so, like like generally how the positions work is like they'd have a garrison a garrison area whether it be a certain village or archangel itself and they would rotate out to the front line just like they did in world war one this is post world war one now but like if you go out to um their forward positions for a week rotate back and like okay it's the french's turn to rotate up to the front line he's like no like oh all right no none yeah um and like to be fair this does sound funny where they just sat around saying no i want to go home

but like this is all for a very good reason it It was finally the Americans' turn to start wondering just what in the fuck were they doing in Russia? For starters, their morale had held up for the most part, but now it had all but imploded, leading to various different company commanders who themselves were furious at the situation to start writing letters to anybody who would listen. One, Robert Boyd, who we've talked about before, wrote a letter which was handed off to the American ambassador and archangel. He was careful not to make it sound like what he was doing was an actual mutiny, but he also told them how it was. Men were pissed.

Everybody wanted to know why the fuck they were still there after the end of World War I and what exactly their mission was. Boyd wanted to make sure to point out that he was totally still there to do his job you know he'd go and you know do whatever but uh he also wanted to figure out what the fuck was going on uh so he could tell his soldiers because you know they were they were not thinking i'm going to continue doing my job remember this is solidly the point of american history where well it's uncommon shooting a motherfucker for mutiny is not outside the lines. Right. This is World War I.

This is the middle of nowhere, Russia. But I imagine also your people are dying enough. You really don't want to also just start shooting them. Like, oh, you're going to shoot me? You're going to end my suffering? Oh, no. Oh i gonna do fucker like you really lose lose the fear of death like during all this the only thing that saved anybody from getting the wall was quite honestly like we do not have enough people to start shooting people for beauty the pissed off people outnumber the uh the non-pissed off people. Yeah. Another unit, a platoon under Sergeant, this is his full name, Silver Parrish.

They still name people like they used to, even the US. You get people in here named like Grotz McGoyne. All right. I got seven different Brantleys in my class. But Sergeant Silver Parrish circulated a petition for signatures that went a whole lot further. The petition said that after March 15th,

the unit would simply refuse to operate in any capacity other than self-defense. They wouldn't stay in sentry and they wouldn't go out on patrols. Fuck you, we're done here. Every man in the platoon signed the petition, and when it was taken to perish himself he tossed it into a fire worried what would happen if the officers caught wind of

that whole thing you know that's uh that's solid ncos taking care of their soldiers like like i'm trying to save you from getting fucking executed guys this is like guys i agree with you and i understand what you're saying you cannot cannot do this, though. Yeah. And I understand there have been more than one time. So it's like, I get it, guys, but you can't. Though you can't circulate a letter around a platoon size element of soldiers without them talking about it. And a British officer, Colonel Graham, did hear about the letter and he threatened to perish with execution should his men follow through with their threats. Because remember, they fell out of the British.

And while the American military has never really been huge for executing its own men, even during World War I, even during the Civil War, we hardly executed people for things that weren't grievous crimes like murder or rape. And that goes for World War II as well. We executed one guy for desertion. We did a bonus episode about him. You should donate to the show and go listen to it. That's my plug.

But the British, on the other hand, they were much more comfortable with that, as were the French. So having the British in charge of the Americans made the Americans a little bit more on edge because it's not like the British would, I don't know, send a wire to DCS if they should execute this guy. They're just going to do it. Right. It's not exactly the Russian decimation,

but it's also, you know, there is a guy that if you catch him on a bad day saying something a little seditious, you will probably die. Yeah. Hey, it could be worse. You could, you know, be in the Italian military in the same era. Now Parrish himself, who destroyed the letter only out of self-preservation, was in total agreement with his men. And he wrote in his diary, quote, we need the reason why we are fighting bolos and why we have no big guns and why the English run us. Why don't they have enough to eat? And why can't our men get medical attention? Didn't we fight a revolution for this it did another entry he wrote the majority of the people here are in sympathy with the bolo and i don't blame them i mean yeah the at least the bolsheviks have like a purpose out there everyone's just like why are you why are you shooting at us man we don't give a shit that go home there's no reason for you to die here and all the americans are like yeah there really isn't trust me trust me bro we would uh yeah not to mention not to mention like

the russians that they work with uh that the americans work with are like hilariously cartoonishly corrupt and remember the regional leader is a failed cult leader from like kansas so they don't exactly have a high opinion of of their allied russians so they're like well maybe the bolos have it together right yeah they don't know the fucking first thing about communism but they're like it's got to be better than these guys does communism mean i get to go home then i'm communist now communism is when you want to go home and the more you want to go home the more communist it is exactly what was stalin doing but saying i'm going to build these gulag homes and send you all to them

hey it's true when home is a gulag you're never far away from home now it was finally spring of 1919 and while the u.s had finally be taking its first steps um kind of in ending their war effort it didn't mean shit for the men who are still stuck there the ideas of mutiny and refusal were not limited to just one or two units that's why if you look this up it's like called the Mutiny of 1919 and it makes it sound like thousands of American soldiers kind of like refuse to listen to their officers. That sounds a lot more heroic

than it actually was, to be completely honest. But it was widespread. Just a few weeks after the Parrish incident, another unit began holding meetings without consulting their officers which if any soldiers are listening probably makes officers very nervous this is how this is what you vote like so do we kill the lieutenant or not which one's first is what we're trying to figure

out here yeah this this is what if you're like a company commander, you really hope you're not like cool for an officer. You know what I mean? At the railroad front, the corporals of Company E, like the group of junior NCOs, signed a letter saying they were done with this shit too. They also made other plans of refusing orders. They talked about a mass revolt and simply leaving the battle lines if they were ordered to go to them. Only one corporal, a guy named Earl Metcalf, refused to do this. And he refused to sign the letter. But now this wasn't because he was like, rah, rah, rah, go war. He just figured if he signed it, they would shoot him and he had better chances at the front fighting the Bolo. So he's like, no, man, I'm

going to go, which is a level of self-preservation I can respect. Would you sign it or would you not? Fuck no. Are you kidding me? So he's like, no, man, I'm going to go, which is a level of self-preservation I can respect. Would you sign it or would you not? Fuck no. Are you kidding me? I don't know. See, it's easy to say that I'm comfortable right now. But like if I'm in like, you know, I probably down a toe or three and, you know, haven't had a haven't had a hot meal and like real sleep and months.

And I don't know, maybe like maybe fuck it execute me then do it bitch like i i'm just thinking from my own version of self preservation like i've like i've seen combat absolutely nothing like these guys have um and they're like marching through waist deep snow getting dysentery and spanish flu and even some of these guys like i like my chances here more than the firings i am going to lean on their side of self-preservation which is also as cowardly as my own so i've i have never lied to anybody at the show made myself sound good like i think me and liam during an episode is like look all you have to do is threaten me with torture and i'll tell you everything you want to fucking know man yeah you and i both discussed that it's like just show me the tools that you that you will use on me and i will like you can't threaten me with waterboards

it's like that's water but like if you just showed me like an electric drill i'm done i'll tell you whatever you want me and my friends waterboarded each other in the barracks because of course we did of course and it sucks like yeah if you give me a couple doses of that man uh i'm i'm game like you can you can know everything bro see for waterboarding you actually actually have to go through the process of strapping me down and doing the thing like if you just show me an electrical drill and say i'm going to put this in your p-hole i will tell you whatever you want yeah yeah that would work for me too like so we're done here right like we're good okay like uh you want to know all of my radio frequencies you want to know my commander's address sure like the roamcast you don't want polo cutting your thumbs off before just to just like just tell us man we'll kill you real quick otherwise we'reo cutting your thumbs off before. Just tell us, man, and we'll kill you real quick.

Otherwise, we're going to cut your thumbs off and then kill you. This isn't like a situation where at the end of it, I get to leave either way. I might as well take the easy ticket. Now, to be clear here, it wasn't that the American officers were like rumpfing down the bridge of their noses at their men. were like all rumphing down the bridge of their noses at their men. Generally speaking, the American officers all agreed, and they had been taking part in these meetings to some extent. They've been holding their own meetings.

Like British officers noted that they heard captains and lieutenants openly telling their men that this war is fucking stupid. I want to go home. I had a captain say that once to me. Oh yeah, I've definitely had a company commander who's like, yo, this shit's stupid. This is so fucking dumb. Why are we here? I don't know, sir. But you're in charge, so you tell me what to do. You want to send me home? That's fine. But the main difference, just to give you a vibe check between the Americans and the French, the officers in the United States military here

felt very comfortable going up to their men, sitting down with them and talking about why everything was very fucking stupid. The French had the other hand. The French soldiers refused to carry out the rotation to the railroad front in one situation while others refused to go on patrol.

Others even refused to stay in guard. Barely any French troops would follow any orders at all outside of like, go chop wood for fires. Like, yeah, I'll do that because I'm cold. French officers then ducked into their American officer tents where they would sleep because they were telling the Americans that they were pretty afraid that they were going to be murdered by their own men. They thought if they shared billets with the Americans,

that the French, who liked the American officers, wouldn't kill them there. At no point was anybody threatening the Americans, threatening their officers at gunpoint or anything. The French were very obviously openly talking about murdering their own officers to the point that the officers were afraid of their own men, which is a military I'm a pretty big fan of quite honestly officers should be afraid of their enlisted folks you know just like the rich should be scared of the poor the officers should be scared of the enlist there's more of us sir just saying and especially in the united states military

the the nco corps has been trained to the point that officers are kind of an anachronism. I mean, we got a captain one time in my PAO unit, and he was an ex-drill sergeant, and he was an artillery officer, and he had had combat rotations. And he came to us in PAO, and he had no idea what to do with us because, you know, PAO, at least our unit was very small. There was only like eight of us in there and uh you know we're just we didn't do formations or pt and stuff like that because fuck that we didn't have to uh but we also like at one point he finally pulled me aside he's like horton what the fuck am i supposed to do here with you guys i was like sir you just what i need you to do is let us do our jobs let that serge sergeant run things over there. Let that sergeant run things over there. And let the rest of us do what we do, and you'll be fine.

You don't have to do shit. I need you to sign paperwork, and that's it. And we went to Honduras, and we proved that to him. It's like, we don't need you to do anything, sir. We need you to grease palms. When there's a pissed-off colonel, that's when I need you. And that did happen, and he did block a pissed-off colonel from me. So kudos to that captain.

Solid. And then did happen. And he did block a pissed off colonel from me. So kudos to that captain. Solid. Yeah. And then riots happened. How many soldiers are out here? Like all together? It's like over 6,000. It's not as many as you think for being a technically a front of World War One. I know.

But still, that's like that's still a lot, though. Like because I keep thinking of this like on like a squad level kind of I. I know, but still, that's like, that's still a lot, though, like, because I keep thinking of this, like, on, like, a squad level kind of thing, you know, like, officers and the enlisted, you know, they're all bullshitting and saying, yeah, this fucking war sucks, but, like, 6,000 people, I mean, that's, like, regiments of soldiers and

full command structures and everything, like, so, it's wild that, like, at this point, they've gotten to a point where they are so fucked. Most of 6,000 people don't want to be here anymore. At some point, I'll talk about the French mutinies of World War I and the Western Front because those are on a much wider scale. It was nuts. And the French military fixed that by shooting a whole lot of people.

fix that by shooting a whole lot of people. Now, on March 1st, French soldiers rioted in the town of Oberskaia, looting the places they went. At one point, they hauled down a sign in the theater that read, This box is reserved for officers, and replaced with one of their own that said,

quote, The officers will be under the ground. See, that's when it escalates to death threats man we were simply implying we'd murder you before now we're hanging up signs saying we'll murder you right you know like you put something kind of funny or cheeky up like oh this this spot is for enlisted or officers can go suck a fuck or whatever it's like no we're gonna murder is for enlisted or officers can go suck a fuck or whatever. And it's like, no, we're going to murder you all, actually, as it turns out. More than anybody else, Russian volunteers were showing up to work

and then when they show up, they would mutiny or just simply sit down and refuse to work, which again, a work ethic I can 100% support. But in another incident, the Russian volunteers who, remember, were technically fighting against the communist revolution, but also they weren't, depending on who you window, which is not like as funny as that is, is not a great idea when you're surrounded by people who are explicitly anti-communist. I'm not going to come and talk to you, really. Look, everybody's been a sophomore in college. All right.

That's all it is. It's just a phase. You read a bunch of marks, you get the chase shirt and everything, and then you kind of move on. You go, you get some normal philosophies. Wait, are you saying that these guys are just like emo? Yeah, emo communists. It's not a phase, mom. It's not a phase.

I really do believe in the proletariat, mom. Welcome to the Red Parade. Oh, no. Oh, God. welcome to the red parade oh no i oh god i just made the worst version of my chemical romance i've ever thought of oh god my communist romance just i need that to happen now when i was a young worker. Now, this mutiny of Russian volunteers was put down harshly by, you guessed it, other Russian volunteers. Because the politic of the volunteers at this point is very, very fluid. There's some of them who are socialists. There's some who are nominally leftists, like the

guy who's running Archangels, technically a communist. They just really don't like Bolsheviks. Who's running Archangels technically a communist? They just really don't like Bolsheviks. But there's other parts of this volunteer army, which is turning into a part of the greater white army who are very, very anti-communist. And, you know, several different shades of fascist. You know, go look at our series on Baron Ungerd von Sternberg if you want to see how wild the white army can be. So, like, the idea that these volunteers are throwing red flags with the barracks like oh time for a murder party this soviet was busted up um and all the mutineers were forced out of the barracks and then they were forced to murder their

own ringleaders surprisingly this uh this ended the uh the volunteers little mutiny problem nobody wanted to lead a mutiny if it meant getting beaten to death with sticks by everybody if it failed. Which, to be fair, same. I wouldn't want to do that either. I mean, what if you mutinied but just didn't become annoyingly Soviet? What if it was just like, I'm mutinying. I'm not a communist. I just don't want to be here.

mutiny i'm not a communist i just don't want to be here i think that's the only way you could make it work while being a volunteer in like the british supported russian volunteer unit being a communist in that environment is probably going to get you the old white terror uh very very quickly in other cases bolshevik agents would hang out in isolated volunteer posts mostly russian volunteers telling them they were surrounded. And if they didn't throw off their British uniforms or more than likely keep the uniforms on, it's kind of cold. And, you know, metaphorically throw off their uniforms

and enjoy the revolution, then all of the surrounding units would come in and they would murder them. The volunteers, not wanting to get put up against the wall when they inevitably failed and surrendered, immediately murdered their own officers and joined the communists now that's communist right there fucking that's practice that is you will not find better practice other than murdering the people in charge of you to go join communists like the fear here is quite real without going too heavy into the russian revolution

because it's like a never-ending side bit if they were captured they were definitely going to be murdered so like the the fear that if we don't join them we will absolutely die right those officers did not stand a chance virtually every side of the Allies experienced mutiny at some point. The King's Liverpool Infantry, which obviously, as you can tell from the name, is British, refused to go on rotation to the front until they were promised it would be their last one. And remember, these guys are all combat veterans. The Americans are new here. The French are like made up of Verdun veterans. These guys are all Western front veterans. And they're just like like you know what now i've seen enough i'm done i'm fucking done here love world war one hate russia it's a blast so we fucking go

look i'll go kill prussians all day long i don't give a shit just get me out of this uh this cold hell transport all of us communists included to like i know, Tahiti. Let's shoot at each other there. It's quite cold here. Isn't there an island that we're trying to colonize somewhere? Isn't there some, like, things that I can do closer to the equatorial, like Africa or something that we're trying to like, I can, is there a better

subjugation that I can do? Is there some warmer subjugation that we can do here? Because I haven't said a ton of positive things about the British military in this series, because there isn't any, are there? No,

the Kings were told to go burn down a village and they were just like, no, uh, you do it. And he like came with the torches to their officers and walked off and the officers didn't know how to do it. So they, the village had burned out.

However, the allied soldiers, especially the Detroit ownowned, and specifically the Detroit-owned, were not the only people starting to ask why the fuck the Americans were in Russia. So did just about every single part of American civil and government life. who only barely agreed to send soldiers in the first place was starting to get a whole lot of questions why they were still there and oh yeah why are so many of them dying because wasn't that supposed to just be a guard mission uh like oh what happened to that whole show up and and and i don't know how tuned in like your average american is to the war efforts in 1919 like there's probably not a lot, you know,

there's not like, you know, world war one Twitter while we're, you know, just bitching about like all these different fronts and everything going on. Although that would be pretty cool. Detroit's Detroit's home at its own, like Snapchat or Tik TOK going on out there.

Get it. Gonna face to my buddy as he dies. The Spanish flu teaching the, teaching the bolsheviks how to do the floss uh you know across the lines i mean there was um especially like the detroit free free press was uh it was as up to date as you could imagine a newspaper being on a day-to-day basis for things going on in russia in 1919 so like people were pretty fucking riveted by this entire story. Oh, really? Okay. I mean, that makes sense that Detroit would be into it. It's Detroit's own. That's our boys out there. And you're just like, that's our boys getting murdered for no reason.

Cool. Wait, come on now. Especially because remember, World War I is over they're watching like all these coming home parades from like the Western front. They're like, oh, where's our unit? Like, oh, yeah, about that. In the months since the armistice, Wilson had begun to come under increasing political pressure to pull the soldiers out. Politicians, the soldiers, relatives and even various civic institutions were openly questioning why the 339th was still in Russia. Or, more importantly, why the fuck did they go there in the first place? Nobody's answered that either.

Now, Hiram Johnson, a senator from California, gave a speech just one day before the news of the retreat at Shenker's, get the Washington Times. Correction, Washington Post, Washington Times, is it around quite yet? treat at shen curse get the washington times um correction washington post washington times times is the weird mooney fucking outlet um now in this speech uh johnson called wilson's government quote weak facilitating stupid and ignorant now if you remember this this is technically illegal at the time. Like, he could probably get arrested for that. No, more specifically, attacking the government. There was, you know, we talked about this under Eugene Debs' episode,

but even if you insulted the government and the war effort, like, you could be arrested for, like, defeatism. Love that First Amendment, right? Yeah, this is more of an asterisk on that old boy. Every amendment has an asterisk. Even the 13th Amendment would ban slavery-ish. Ish. It banned it ish. It banned it mostly.

That amendment is bending under the asterisk on top of it. Yeah. It's much like the second amendment where there's like the yeah the right to bear arms uh shall not be infringed like what's the first part guys you never you never want to do the first part don't worry about that little guy worry about the first half of that then johnson added quote we have engaged in a miserable misadventure uh he also introduced a resolution calling for the soldiers' withdrawal, but it ended in a tie, which was then broken by the vice president, Thomas Marshall, casting a vote against, of course. Then Michigan State Senator Herbert Baker introduced another almost identical resolution, the same identical outcome.

People's attitudes mostly came down to concern. News was little and far between. Everybody knew only a few thousand men were there, but things were going badly. Every bit of news that came back to the US was increasingly worse. The Detroit's own welfare association was formed by friends and family, as well as random people from Michigan to support the unit. The very first FRG, baby. people from michigan to support the unit the very first frg baby it's a quote this the thousands will volunteer if you need a relieving force for god's sake say something or do something like it wasn't that people were against a war effort it was just like what is happening uh why

are so few people there why are they dying why is nobody coming home why is nobody telling us anything like look like old granddad will fucking grab his old shitty musket or whatever and go volunteer if you bring these guys home like they don't even have winter clothing half the time they don't and like you mentioned they don't even have big guns like i mean they probably have you know they have their machine guns that they got to boil every night. Um, but that's probably about it. They don't,

they don't have the heavy artillery. Do they? They can't really bring that shit. Gather around. Kids are having browning stoop again. Uh, no, like the Canadians have some medium sized artillery,

but that's, that's it. They weren't given any kind of supporting weapons or nothing. That's fucking wild. Yeah. Cause remember it's a guard mission. Eventually, on February 18th, 1919, Wilson notified his Secretary of War, Newton Baker, that he wanted American troops out of northern Russia. Baker, who thought the entire thing had been dumb as hell since the very beginning, immediately went to work trying to make that happen. However, when the news was announced,

it was said as, quote, the troops will be withdrawn at the earliest possible moment. So when news got to Russia, it made them even angrier to know they were going home, but they still had no fucking idea when. So in essence, it hasn't changed. Right, the earliest convenience. That's now. That's now is when that is. This has been convenient. How long have we been here?

Six months? It's been convenient for six months. Eventually, with the Americans saying they were done, the British followed suit on March 4th with really the only supporter still demanding the british fight the communists being you guessed it winston churchill because he's gonna have the worst opinion on any and any fucking point of history he comes up on fucking winston churchill loves to just fuck everything up man he loves to be drunk smoking cigars and just fucking it up

he was really the the guy banging the anti-communist drum during all of this like the french were there to kind of restart the eastern front of world war one and the americans were there kind of sort of to do that but not really winston churchill from the very beginning like no this is about killing communism in its womb and like for instance during this meeting when the when the british were talking about withdrawing winston churchill countered like i see you want to withdraw how what if uh we plan to deploy one million men into russia that was his plan remember this is less than a year removed from the end of world war one i mean if i'm one of the detroit zone like i don't give a shit send whoever you

want just bring me home this is something of a trend with Churchill. Not only does he hate communists, he really fucking hates Russia. At the end of World War Two, he came up with. Have you heard of Operation Unthinkable? No, no. But please tell me about that. It was a plan at the end of World War Two to rearm the Wehrmacht and then invade the Soviet Union. Oh, sure.

The problem with the Nazis, the real problem with the Nazis was they were just too, they spent too much time trying to kill the French. They should have gone and killed Russians. That Churchill would have been all about Hitler if there wasn't that pact. Well, to be clear, they killed a lot of Russians, too. Yeah. But if that's all they did, it was like, why don't you guys just go west instead of east? That was Churchill's main problem with them,

is that not for the politics, because as anybody who's listened to this show before, and we talked about the British Legion and the Wehrmacht and the SS and things like that, it wasn't that the Nazis were unpopular in the United Kingdom. It was that they started a war. I will also say that there's a lot of just like, oh, how can all these politicians today be so pro-Russia and everything?

It's like, man, there were a lot of very pro-fascist fucking Americans during World War II. So many that they almost did a coup. Woo boy. Thankfully, we don't have any pro-fascist politicians anymore. Right. Who could think that somebody would be joining the opposite side? I'm just surprised that they're joining Russia, but Putin does like to take off his shirt and flex his muscles and uh conservatives like that shit oh yeah and he likes to pretend that he's close to the church like if you've ever been close to any of the eastern orthodox churches they're all pretty much political there's nothing to do with religious belief like there's a reason why i think there's this called a patriarch in russia like has uh like a watch that's worth more than my car um and the all catholicos here in armenia is like kind of notoriously corrupt as well like

all of the orthodox churches are just political like what if the evangelical movement was actually the state religion in the united states i know that is a nightmare scenario literally how things are done now it was only then with withdrawal decided on that the u.s finally fired colonel stewart in case you forgot about him and replaced him with a guy and this is true named general wilds richardson wilds like plural yes as in he is more than one of them like that's on his birth certificates yeah i i assume so yeah i hope so please call me general richardson wilds is my father and now this was in march and by the time richardson had gotten to Russia in April

he arrived to the news that one company commander of his regiment has mutinied so things aren't going great. Company I had been ordered to return to the railway front and refused to pack their sleds. This required the sergeant to go get an officer who ordered the men to

go to work and then they did. That was it. In the end one guy was arrested and then the men to go to work and then they did that was it in the end one guy was arrested and then the men again sat down and refused to do anything until the guy that was arrested was released and he was that was the mutiny that's some good solidarity there yeah you're losing points for like well dad mom said that we uh didn't have to but dad said we do so you know right unfortunately what really blew this out of proportion was the newspapers of the day journalists blew wildly out of proportion leading to general pershing that guy again to say the entire unit had been infected with bolshevik propaganda which is

absolutely not true richardson ordered an investigation and found all of that shit to be made up well i mean bolshevik propaganda in, why are you guys here shooting at us? This makes no fucking sense. Kill your officers. And most of them going, yeah, you're kind of right. But like the real communism, though, probably not. No, definitely not. Like I said, these guys probably wouldn't be able to tell you what communism was.

And because it hit the newspapers that way to this day, the story is sometimes told as the time a US Army company had a communist revolution in its ranks, which instead of like, remember, this was a slight disagreement between enlisted men and a sergeant that lasted for 20 minutes. Yeah, we've had bigger mutinies in PAO than that. Yeah, I think I've had a bigger blow up against my own first sergeant than that before. For every sergeant that swung on a lieutenant is a bigger mutiny than whatever's going on here. And there's a lot of those. Just true American fucking heroes, every single one of them. Now, getting out of Russia also turned out to be a pretty big pain in the ass.

The British command had thrown small outposts of men all over the place during the winter if you remember and many of them were only getting to the point you could only get there if you crossed frozen rivers um or uh frozen lakes or whatever small problem it's march and they're thawing because for some reason the british commanders only planned 50% of this operation. They did not think of how the fuck do we get them out of there if you can't cross the frozen river. So that meant a lot of them were completely at risk of being stranded alone. One commanded by Captain Ralph Ramsey was stuck out in Kitsa on the Vaga front on the river, repeatedly asking the British commander in the area,

a guy named Colonel Poyant, if he could pull his men back as the river thawed so he didn't get stuck on the other side. The colonel not only refused, but ordered the Canadian artillery to shoot them if they did without orders. Like, they lowered their guns and pointed them at the Americans.

The Americans were like, yo, what the fuck, bro? What is wrong with everybody? Like, I feel like all of this is lead poisoning in the brain somehow. Like fear of loathing in the Arctic North. Right. And look, I understand,

you know, uh, the atrocities that humankind can do against one another. Like it's not that far of a leap to between like suburban dad and death squad obviously uh as we as we see it happening in the news on a regular basis but like to just to just hate like your own side so much to be to not be like shit yeah guys you're right like that would suck if you're stuck out there you would not be effective combat effective to yourselves or anybody else pull back and instead just instead, just be like, no.

And also, these guys are going to just murder the shit out of you if you do. And like for other people on your own side to be like, I guess we're just going to shoot Americans now for some reason. Like there's got to be some lobotomizing, maybe more or less needs to be going on in this general thing. Yeah. The only saving grace this entire incident was the Canadians were like, we're not going to do that on in this general thing. Yeah. The only saving grace, this entire incident was the Canadians were like,

we're not going to do that. Okay. Thank God. Yeah. We're not going to shoot artillery at, at Americans. And, uh,

that actually got like the Colonel to get really pissy, but then he had no enforcement techniques at all. Cause even the Canadians, like the fucking British have lost their minds. Uh, so then, uh, Ramsey ordered his, uh ordered his unit to withdraw as the colonel was watching and yelling at him. There was also side stories of Americans withdrawing from their outposts, but not wanting to let the Russians know that they were doing so. So they rigged up various wily coyote ass devices in order to trick the Russians into thinking that they were still there.

coyote ass devices in order to trick the russians into thinking that they were still there they fucking doing a home alone in their own base like a cut out of michael jordan on a train going around on the thing this included things like rigging up machine guns to fire on their own using buckets of water that would leak out until they pulled the trigger timed explosions off in the woods and the occasional fake raft that they would kick down the river that were staffed with logs wearing uniforms imagine like the bolshevik unit advancing into the town and be like someone tripping it like slipping and falling because there's uh like a race car on the ground or whatever like matchbox cars. Like, oh, you Americans! Bolshevik turns a corner and a paint can hits him in the face.

The Americans are scattering marbles all over the place. Now, as the Americans withdrew, Russian volunteers took their place. Now, I use the term volunteers here because they're still not like the white army quite yet, though they would eventually become that side when the allied support was pulled out. And then they were like, oh, God, we have to make allies with somebody or we're all going to fucking die. The Bolsheviks know who we used to work for.

We need to go find a new daddy. For the first time since september most american units had gotten back to archangel which of course had the expected consequences one guy an officer named lieutenant baker got shit-faced began firing his guns into the air in the middle of town as one does that kind of shit happened all over the place was that the guy chucking grenades around or was that a different guy? It was a different guy. Yeah. Okay.

That guy was a captain. But like there was fistfights in town. Suddenly this town, which again is already swollen in capacity, has all these people getting back and like blowing steam off for the first time, which as you can imagine is just violence for the most part. Fucking and fighting. More units were withdrawing. Americans and allied leadership began to worry about a spring offensive as the countryside began to thaw. However, it never came. The Bolshevik forces seemed fine just taking some pot shots at them. Mostly the Americans as they were withdrawing.

Because after all, it's become public knowledge to everyone that everybody was fucking off out of Northern Russia. So the Bolsheviks, they're not going to dedicate time and resources to fight people who aren't going to be there. Remember, this was never a major front for them. In comparison to the overall Russian Civil War, Northern Russia in this capacity is nothing. Like I said, the Japanese and even the southern Russia Expeditionary Force is a much bigger deal for them. The northern Expeditionary Force was more of a threat to themselves than anybody else.

Yeah, it's cold as shit up there. I guess we have to do something because technically it's Russia and we have to fight you guys off, but I feel like you could have done this in a warmer place. And I'm sure that everybody else on the American, British and French side would agree. We all just go down and shoot each other down on the southern front where it's probably, you know, about 30 centigrade warmer or so.

Why don't we go and have a nice war in the resort town of Sochi? Instead of building a base, we can all stay at the Wyndham timeshares. It'll be great. Yeah. And remember in the beginning that Trotsky and Leonard were like, actually, it's fine that they're sitting up there because the Germans can't fuck with us now. And then things disintegrated from there for the most part. But on top of everybody knowing that the Allies are leaving, the Russians had probably lost thousands of soldiers over the winter, both from the elements, from deprivation, but also the winter offensive. Like the Russians had lost significantly more people than the allied forces in this situation.

And they didn't feel like wasting more men in a war that was all but over, at least in this part of it. Also, a much more serious part of the Russian Civil War was going on the south and east. So like, this was a sideshow at best. Yeah, no reason to be up here. Morale was low within the Bolshevik Army, and more specifically, in the north of the Bolshevik Army. And at one point, at a POW camp, a group of Bolo soldiers got together and held a vote

to murder their commander for their conduct in the previous battle. The confused American soldiers watched the Bolos beat the man to death in front of them. What are you guys doing? Stop. Stop it. Are you done? Did you get it out of your systems? You guys good now?

I mean, there was stories. I didn't talk about them, but there was stories of Americans being shocked because remember, they didn't fight in the Western Front. They weren't used to the realities of World War I at all. So they were shocked to see Bolshevik, whether it be political officers or officers, forcing their men to run into the open and get gunned down with machine gun fire. Like, what the fuck are they doing?

Why are you doing this to people? Yeah. like what the fuck are they doing um why are you doing this to people yeah so like the watching the beta guided death with sticks is like all right whatever i like that that you described that as the realities and one would think like man war was just hell and you know it was just really bad because of the gas and the trenches and all this stuff but like the realities of your officers are all fucking dumb as shit and will tell you to charge directly into gunfire and if you don't they will shoot you like the reality is everybody in charge is it's just brain damaged well little known fact every enemy force in world war one worked as the kill bots did in futur. You have to feed the machine gun nest

with thousands of bodies until you just shut down. Exactly. They run out of bullets eventually. As the Americans gathered in the city to be evacuated, new British volunteers came in. The British soldiers showed up

and began shouting insults at the Americans forth drawing and telling them that they did nothing in World War I. Which like, of course, this broke out in constant fistfights and more than one stabbing. Because remember, these guys are from Detroit. Like,

uh, the, there was several junior officers. I had to tell their men to stop carrying knives with them on the street. Cause they kept stabbing people in fistfights. And I never once have I ever been like, I am so proud. They're not used to the realities of world war one but the french are not used the realities of fucking main street

detroit the first members of detroit's own wouldn't make a home until july 3rd as companies a through l pulled into the michigan central train station the detroit free Press ran the headline the polar bears the Arctic heroes loudly hailed which sure like and Joe you and I both fought in completely useless wars ourselves so that's right baby I feel for these guys a little bit like

to come home and have these banners of just like oh there are heroes are home it's like I did nothing and all of my friends died and it was for absolutely no reason. I'm going to go drink until I die. I did nothing and I'm afraid of fireworks. I don't know what you want from me, people. Well, I didn't have any parade or anything like that. My tours were way too late for that optimism to still exist.

My mom did threaten to, she's like, oh, I was going to call tours were way too late for that optimism to still exist. My mom did threaten to, uh, she's like, Oh, I was going to call the news stations to, to be there when you got off the plane. Uh, because I came home from Afghanistan on Christmas Eve,

2004. So she's like, Oh, it'd have been so great. We can have the news. I would've gotten right back on the fucking airplane and gone back to Afghanistan. Do not fucking do that to me.

And that was 2000. Yeah, 2004. So, uh, there's still some optimism. Iraq was still fresh and going and, everybody loved a soldier back then.

When I enlisted and my mom put my picture on the Walmart hall of heroes, that's something that looking back now is on accident. And legitimately when the funniest things, my mom's ever done, you know, That was on accident, legitimately one of the funniest things my mom's ever done. You know, sometimes we look back at the things that happened that, you know, how wars were fought. You know, you and I did the series where all the Japanese, like the little shitty islands that everybody was fighting over. was fighting over you know uh we did that series and you know you talked about how you know bringing home your war dad was is kind of a new ish thing uh when you're dying by like hundreds and thousands you just kind of dug a hole and shoved him in there and that's like you know into the hole

right it's kind of like that's that's just like wild to me as a soldier because i was like look my body will always you know come home and be buried wherever. But like, I just wonder in like 50 years when they're looking at the way that we did things is like, they really want to like fucking Walmart, like the cheap ass place, the warehouse. And it was like, look at my son who died on the other side of the world for a reason that we were still trying to ascertain. And they're just so proud of that i imagine like a 1919 walmart hall of heroes it's like all the people from the tree like died dysentery died uh shit tree fell on top of them while on shit lug detail screamed and barfed and

shit until he died let her rip where's that guy's grave i need to find a grave on him he definitely got hooked into a ditch instead of archangel probably put like just get the janitor to like get the push broom and just like just get him out of here he's just push him into whatever hole you find and throw some dirt on it. Now, in the end of all of this, 235 men of the Detroit zone died while serving in Northern Russia. The last of their bodies would not be found until 1934. Oh, most of them died from disease. Almost all of them actually,

but none of them died knowing what the fuck they were doing. The entire badly thought out mission would sour Russian-American relations and the U.S. wouldn't even recognize the Soviet government until 1933. And what else happened in 1933? Oh, nothing of note. Though, to be fair, the U.S. and the previous

Russian Empire were also not exactly friends either. If anybody remembers back to the Russo-Japanese War series, we helped Japan. So, like, there's historical animosity there yeah we really don't like russians i don't get it like we just fucking hate russians well back in the day uh the the excuse of course was uh which i'm sure doesn't matter anymore is we're worried about expansion uh into our what we considered our sphere of influence um which was the Pacific at that point.

We didn't really consider Japan an empire because of racist reasons. Sure. And we thought that helping the Japanese beat the Russians would, of course, help us, which, you know, oh boy, that did not pan out well, did it? Because if we would have helped Russia smash smash japan world war ii probably wouldn't have happened in the pacific hindsight's 2020 joe we can only learn that may you know what they would have benefited from some uh critical race theory back then you're like no japanese the japanese can also uh murder for fun and do um imperialism and you should watch out for that

if it makes you feel even better the Japanese were also intensely racist back then so it was like look we both hate each other on like a foundational level but we both hate the Russians and like shit like it

was Tsar Nicholas so they're easy to hate I just trying to imagine like America just being like i mean we hate the russians but they look way more like us than japanese do like just doing that like the the racism math in your head just be like how where where where does my racism best lie here and then just fucking going for it and trying to fucking defeat the russians because you just got that animosity. A whole Congress of very confused racist white people.

Like, wait, we hate Slavs. We hate Asians. Fuck, what do we do here? Like, why don't we help them both? Hey, man, it wasn't until like, you know, the last century that Irish people got to be considered white. So America has real weird calipers going on at all times. I mean, like specifically after like it was post-World War I,

where like a court case in California established the quote, cultural whiteness of Armenians. Congrats, Joe. Congrats on the privilege. And even then the story behind it's incredibly weird with the judge saying he disagreed, but I like their precedent had been set. So I imagine Russians weren't very far behind us on that one. The entire experience of the Detroit's own seems to have just been forgotten. And this isn't something that I say, meaning it isn't taught in schools, but instead almost completely unknown.

Two different presidents, Nixon and Reagan, you know, noted good presidents, Nixon and Reagan. A lot of great ideas came out of those two, man. I'm willing to ignore the Reagan part of this since his brain was gravy for about 50% of his administration, would repeatedly point out that Russian and American soldiers had never fought one another, only to be reminded by Soviet leaders that, yeah, yeah, they actually fucking did. Khrushchev said in 1959, quote, remember the grim days where American soldiers

went to our solid-headed generals. Never have any soldiers been on American soil, but your soldiers were on Russian soil. Those are the facts. And it's true. By then, there were still some that were buried there. Whoops. Yeah, we know that they were there. We're still digging them up, bro.

Every time we tried to build a new apartment complex down by the river, we find some more dead Americans. Just dead in a big flu pit down there. None of them shot. Probably all flu, cholera, or some combination of the both. Crushing accident from poop log. I hope that somebody snapped that off and used it as a javelin.

I know nobody did, but I'm going to go ahead and imagine that somebody did. You got to build a gigantic Wile E. Coyote wrist rocket and fire the poop spears at people. Virtually the only remembrance of one of America's many badly thought out and mismanaged wars

is the source I used for this book, The Polar Bear Expedition, which is new. It was like written in the last 20 years. As well as the Polar Bear Memorial troy michigan and white chapel memorial cemetery were only 56 of uh the detroit's own were laid to rest many of whom are still buried in russia now the entire war is probably best summed up by an american soldier who wrote quote when the last battalion set sail from archangel not a a soldier knew, no, not even vaguely, why he had fought or why he was going now and why his comrades had been left behind. So many of them beneath the

wooden crosses, the little churchyards and the little white churches and the whiter snow. Life will always be a crazy thing to a soldier of Northern Russia. The color and taste of living had gone from the soldier of North Russia and the glory of youth is forever God from him as well. Just so I can leave everybody depressed. Yeah. After something like that, I am surprised that there's not more just like and then like half the half the people also just killed themselves in the first year of being home of of all this insanity. But I mean, you just become an alcoholic like, like the rest of us did on the bright side. A lot of them probably just got chewed up and,

and, and swallowed by the great depression within a couple of years. So that's fun. Don't worry, God. Hey friend, I know everything's a bit scary, but don't worry.

It's going to get a lot worse. And, or like got ran over by tanks during the bonus army March. Like there's they have options available to them all of them hopeless yep there's always booze though joe that's right um if it wasn't 6 30 a.m i would be celebrating with one of those right now so francis how do you feel now your first series aligned up by donkeys you've been you've been listening this for four

weeks now i like to be a part of it um one thing that uh always irritates me listening to a podcast like yours is i can't ask questions in the middle of it so here i get to do that so that's i really it's just you know you know as you're talking about like wait how many you know i'm just not getting the scale of things and uh and stuff so i really enjoyed that you know other people don't ask as many questions probably because i'm much smarter uh i'm kidding i'm kidding liam i love you you're gonna start a fucking schism this will be a three-way civil war between you liam and nick and i don't know what side nick's gonna fall on i think he's just up for a fight yeah the various tribes of the Bethaneiverse are gonna start uh warring amongst themselves I'm glad also that you brought me on to one that is like sad but funny and not like what I know you're about to do to Liam which

is just sad so uh you know I appreciate I appreciate that you um you know understand that my psyche has probably a bit more damaged already, and I don't need more of that. I think we talked about probably two years ago talking about something like this, and I tried to write this in a single episode, and then I used the book. My research techniques for the show have gotten much better, which also means there are no single episodes anymore. Well, that's good. I want the Detroit's own to like have their story told. And here it is finally on this podcast. They're truly honored now. Well, because look, you read history books, man.

And like you hear all the glories and the things, the battles and everything. You don't hear about the poops to lag might, you know, you don't, you don't hear about that shit in the history books unless it's the ones that you're reading. So it's nice to, it's nice to really get the enlisted side of you. Like more enlisted people need to write stuff about war because we're the ones that actually have to deal with the bullshit. And that's the interesting stuff to me. So I like it.

So give us the poop log now uh before i forget because i almost forgot um we do a thing on the show called questions from the legion if you'd like to ask us a question from the legion donate to the show slide into the discord the patreon dms are they called dms and patreon i don't know donate to the show you get bonus stuff and you get to hear us attempt to answer your largely unimportant question on air. Well, we will eventually do a Q&A again, I swear. But it probably won't be episode 200 because I won't be back in the United States yet. But this question is, what is your favorite stupid piece of trivia or meme? That one's honestly hard.

It's two seasoned shit posters. meme that that one's honestly all right it's two it's two seasoned shit posters such as oh look my favorite piece of useless trivia is that there are four world's largest balls of twine and they're all legitimately yes one is one is weight one is uh size one is density and one is twine but it's a different kind of twine so technically there are four world's largest balls of twine are we just talking about missouri culture now this is hey excuse me we have we only have one of them thank you and the second large no the world's largest roll of toilet paper two second largest rocking chair world's largest ketchup bottle i'm trying to think of all our world's largest those are the only ones i can think of on top of my head armenia will soon have the world's largest jesus statue uh for reasons that are not entirely clear to me yeah yeah it's

gonna be like 33 meters tall what yeah i don't know eccentric, very corrupt billionaire is paying for it. He's like this perfectly round man. We love our round boys, don't we? He's an absolute unit of an idiot named Dodie Gago, which is a nickname. That name just sounds corrupt.

He's been charged like multiple times for corruption that was like yeah who cares um and that will almost certainly collapse into a pile of money laundering uh and also if it's built it'll also collapse into a literal pile um because he's gonna skirt around it uh that's a load-bearing jesus uh i't, I don't know what my, my favorite piece of useless trivia. Oh, very recently I found one.

The Detroit lions have drafted the same amount of Superbowl winning quarterbacks as the Detroit tigers for people who are unaware of the Detroit lions or the football team, the Detroit tigers, the baseball team, and neither of them have won a super bowl for detroit so that's depressing yeah well only if you're a sports fan yeah and there's only if you're a detroit sports fan i figured it was something that was uh that was on subject for the series keeping it detroit and and also uh at this point that this comes out, I should have Detroit's own insignias in the store, stickers on hellofawaytodie.com.

Because it's the 339th Infantry Regiment, and their thing, it's a field of blue with a goofy-looking polar bear, and there's crows on it for some reason. It was perfectly made for this yeah and then in russian it says uh we end it with the bayonet so that sounds pretty fucking dope um which also i don't really know if they did a lot of bayoneting i don't think anybody does so but everybody likes the bayonet yeah everybody's a fan of it yeah i mean everybody likes the spear gun like it makes no sense because I'd rather shoot somebody, but it's cool. It looks cool. Yeah.

World war one was probably the last time bayonets were widely used. But even the term widely is probably an overestimation. Anyway, plug your show. If you haven't listened to the last three and you're all coming into the Detroit zone in the back quarter of it, uh, listening to the last three and you're all coming into the detroit zone in the back quarter of it uh listening to the whole thing in reverse i run the what a hell of a way to die podcast with nate who uh edits all of the all the good podcasts on the internet the only

good podcasts are edited by nate and and i have the hell of a way to die.com hopefully we'll have the stickers in there by then we should I'll probably get on that soon send that shit out thank you for listening to this series I hope you enjoyed it if you do enjoy it maybe donate to the show you make everything we do possible

yeah give them money we have a lot of bonus content up if you enjoy Francis and I we're doing effectively an entire bonus series on the HBO show Rome, where we watch the show Rome and then don't talk about it for an hour. We're joined by our favorite Boston Cryptid.

Yeah, and Joe always comes on to my show to talk about all kinds. I got some good stuff for us for tomorrow to talk about. Yeah, it's good stuff. Again, everybody, thank you for joining us francis it's always a i don't want to say a joy a lot of people died during the series so people get mad at me whatever i laugh at that to be fair there's no like it's it's safer when it's dead nazis but like everybody here didn't really deserve to die yeah that's the you you know, uh,

the, the, the divine comedy, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, everybody, uh,

thank you for listening and until next time, um, uh, don't shit out of a second story window, uh, during winter.