Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 307 - Task Force Smith

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys In the opening stages of the Korean War the US sent a badly underarmed, undermanned Task Force to blunt the advance of the entire North Korean military. It did not go great. Sources: https://www.historynet.com/rush-disaster-task-force-smith/ https://www.thenmusa.org/task-force-smith-and-the-problem-with-readiness/ chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkajhttps://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA381834.pdf chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkajhttps://www.moore.army.mil/infantry/magazine/issues/2022/Spring/PDF/LessonsFromThePast.pdf https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/task-force-smith-americas-entry.html https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/Korea/ExecutiveLeaderFailures

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lines led by donkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over 5 years of bonus content. By supporting the show you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always

been ad free. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everyone, Tom from the future here just to jump in really quickly. We have updated our merch shop. That's LLBDmerch.com. We have all of the cool stuff that we had at the live shows in January. Now on the merch shop, including the exclusive toe bundle where you get two t-shirts, a tote bag, three posters and a pack of stickers for 60 pounds.

That's excluding shipping and taxes if you're in the US. And yet the link for that is in the description down below this episode. And quantities are super limited. So if you want it, buy it now. Anyway, back to the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the lines of my donkey's podcast. I am Joe currently freezing my ass off in my own apartment.

And with me is Tired Dad Nate. That's right, Tired Dad Nate. The parents among the listeners will probably recognize where this story is going before the story gets told. And that is my daughter was scheduled to start daycare in the American parlance or nursery. She's just turned six months old today. Now, before she can start for a full day, they want to make sure like she's not going to be uncomfortable, you know, so we have, we spend on Thursday, she and her mom and I went to the nursery to spend like two hours there

with her playing with the other, she got to play with the babies, other babies, and we were there. And then on Friday, she spent a little bit longer. And so Monday, she was gonna start. What do you think happened after having spent a grand total of four hours with a room full of other babies for the first time? I would assume everybody's sick. Yes. I mean, kids are just like little plague ships. They just carry viruses from one kid to another.

Struggling a little bit with asthma because it's just a changing weather in spring and then also has gotten sick. I'm not sick, but I might as well be. But yes, our daughter got a cold really, but like it was her first time ever having a cold, so she got a fever and she's really uncomfortable and she needs to be like held and soothed a lot. And she's fired off some of the most powerful snot rockets I have ever seen in my life. Which is in a way I'm glad like I knew that she was sick

then it was a cold as opposed to like, sometimes they can get slightly elevated temperatures and like tenderness and like flushed face from teething which is happening for her right now. But this is the symptoms were way stronger than that. And I was like thated face from teething, which is happening for her right now. But this is, the symptoms were way stronger than that. And I was like that, if this is teething related, it's like a fucking abscess, you know what I mean? It's like an infection.

And so thankfully it's no, it's just a cold. She was, she literally, she's breathed the same air as another baby for the first, I mean, she's done stuff with their babies, but she'd not been in a room of babies inside a nursery, I guess. I don't know, she'd done like baby sensory classes with her mom and I've taken her like to swim classes with of babies inside a nursery, I guess, I don't know. She'd done like baby sensory classes with her mom

and I've taken her like to swim classes with the babies. But one reason or another, literally it was like, it was like the, let the circle be unbroken. Nothing else got her sick. And then the instant it's like, oh, you're gonna drop her off at nursery. It's like, like, yeah. She's entered the nursery miasma.

Yeah, it's like the, what is it? Is it Leonardo da Vinci? The, was's like the, what is it? Is it Leonardo da Vinci? Was it like the, I can't remember what the name of the painting is, like the creation of man or whatever, where it's basically God and man touching fingers? It's her touching another baby and immediately getting sick. Yeah, exactly. That is 100%. It's like the divine spark. Baby goes into a nursery and touches another baby, and then it's just like everyone is sick now. and immediately getting sick. Yeah, exactly. That is 100%. It's like the divine spark.

Baby goes into a nursery and touches another baby, and then it's just like everyone is sick now. We finally found the coughing baby from that meme. See, I was going to start this podcast by complaining that the Netherlands has banned flavored vapes. No. Yeah. Really? Yeah, they banned, I guess they banned it a long time ago, but just coming into effect

all of the all of the the juices the oils Disposables from now on you can only have no flavor or tobacco flavor. So I'm quitting vaping. Oh No, fuck. Yeah, that's the one thing I will say is that like I appreciate that in the United Kingdom They because they did that in America that in the United Kingdom, because they did that in America too in a lot of states. Certainly in New York, they did. They have in Michigan. I only know that because I was back over the holidays.

But yeah, they're gone here. I went to my vape store and they're like, yeah, you should probably stock up now because we can't carry any of this shit anymore. And it was the unspoken, the words of, of, and also absolutely going out of business. Oh no. Yeah. I was thinking about it in New York. It's like you go into a bodega and ask a guy and he tells you to go open a random box on the floor of the stationary section of the bodega and in there are a bunch of disposable vapes probably brought by friends in a suitcase from, I don't know, California

or Canada. Made for you a Ziploc baggie full of backroom vape juice. It's roasted turkey flavor. It's so weird, man. I don't know. Like, I realized that like 10 minutes of dad chat is not the vibe of our show, but I just the degree to which they're like, oh no, the only reason why anyone would smoke a flavored vape is because it's kids getting hooked on like cotton candy vape So if to ban them all it's like no, that's that's really not true

Yeah, like there's some arguments to be had about like the proliferate proliferation of like jewels when they first came out because like I'm much like tobacco they are marketed towards children, but I'm 35 tobacco, they are marketed towards children. But I'm 35, much like alcohol and legalized drugs, I feel like it should be my discretion if I use something or not. But I understand I live in the European Union now, not the United States, so I don't get that choice anymore. And emphatically, the Dutch state enforces laws,

whereas in Britain, it's just kind of the chaos zone. And so I don't know if they're ever going to ban flavored vapes or not, but I'm sure if labor wins the next election that they'll try because they love scolding and moralizing. That's their thing is being worse than the Democrats. But what I will say is I did watch that Jewel documentary and it was interesting because yeah, they basically, they really set themselves up for failure because they hired marketing people to do sexy youth marketing.

Right, right. And I'm old enough to remember when tobacco was doing that. They'd come to bars that I was in and just give out whole cartons of cigarettes for free. Or the girls who would come in and give you packets of snooze or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I remember that too. What is old is new again, baby.

Yeah, and in the case of Juul, it's just like they were just the victims of their own success because they were the most identifiable ones. Smoked that USB stick. They were just kind of the victims of their own success because they were the most identifiable ones. But- I smoked a USB stick. I was never using vapes back then, I was just smoking. Yeah, same.

And I quit smoking and moved to vaping when I was living in Armenia, which is admittedly hard to do since cigarettes in Armenia are significantly cheaper than vapes are. And that's how I quit smoking and now I'll have to quit vaping. It's not like it's healthy. I'm not arguing that my currently green apple flavored vape is a health food, but it does

help a lot of people quit smoking. So I hope they don't ban them entirely, but we'll see. I am the worst example that anyone could ever cite in the argument because I quit smoking in 2015 and had been off cigarettes completely. And then for a brief period of time, my co-host Milo dated a woman who was like a jewel brand rep for Eastern Europe. That's a tough job, being a jewel brand rep for Eastern Europe. Well, that's a tough job, being a jewel brand rep for Eastern Europe where everybody is more cigarette than man.

Specifically, she worked in Russia and he got like some sample packs from her and brought them to the studio. And I tried it and I was like, this is good and legitimately good. And Hussein's 17 year old cousin Naim was there at the time. And he just in the extremely 17 year old way

was like, yeah, look, he by by next year Nate's gonna be a hardcore vapor He got that ass. He cursed me. Yeah. Well, you know 17 year olds can own you like you have no fucking idea and Yeah, I actually quit smoking and then tried vaping and realized you're ruled and you're reminding me of the things I liked about smoking and none of the bad stuff and so yeah now I unfortunately now I'm V vapor so, you know It's one of those things man. It tastes good But also you get the nicotine buzz and it's just sort of like Imagine going back to your 18 year old self and being like you could do this and not have to fucking you know

smoke Unfiltered lucky strikes to get this buzz. Like, it's crazy. So, yeah. And you don't have to smell like shit all the time. Yeah, yeah. And also my wife has asthma, and it's like I can't smoke cigarettes around her, and I don't wanna smoke,

I don't wanna smoke around her or the baby, you know? Like, so vaping, yeah. And so I've got, I think I'm hitting on a Alpha pod that's raspberry flavored, or no, it's watermelon flavored. And I normally get, also get the banana flavor I like those a lot and Milo describes it as my chicken Korma vape That may put the say it the savory vape

Joke from trash future has made me cackle more than more than one sensible olive tapenade vape Yeah, well listen Joe I know that we actually going to talk about military history and I said to myself, you know, Nate, don't be do that thing you always do where you get on the microphone and then you do dad chat for at least 10 minutes. And I'm looking at my the timeline and the recording software and it's exactly 10 minutes, 9 minutes and 40 seconds. So hoisted by my own petard much like when the 17 year old kid saw me fucking hit the vape and says that I

Recognize a kindred spirit in your bitch ass. You're gonna become a vape addict and he was right in my in in Nate's defense I brought it up this time Now Nate, we do have something we've talked about once before a topic once before and The reason why this is a topic that has some kind of gone down in lore amongst like the true heads of the lines of Bydonkey's show and that is a conflict that you will know as we almost did a series on but then my laptop died taking four months of research with it and driving me insane to the point I sw where I would never cover it in its totality the Korean War Ah

But we won't be talking about the the beats of the war that most people are probably familiar with Incheon, Busan things that you know have gone on to be turning points things that we almost certainly learn about in school And things that have left that war in the state that it is currently in to this day things that have left that war in the state that it is currently in to this day. Instead, we were going to talk about the beginning when things were a lot more dire. The North was clearly winning and the US sent its first troops into battle. Underarmed, undermanned, and with hardly any orders whatsoever, what would become known as Task Force Smith has gone down as probably one of the least

known American military fuck-ups of the modern age. Have you ever heard of Task Force Smith? Vaguely, because I read David Halberstam's book, The Coldest Winter, which is about, it starts in June 1950, the start of the war, and then MacArthur's landing at Inchon and the drive towards the Yalu and then basically the Army group-sized counterattack that all happens at once. Army group-sized ambush that happened and the consequences for American troops and UN troops at that time. Yeah, and I will say we will cover like Chosun and stuff in the future.

I've already accepted that we would do that, but I am not covering the entire Korean War. I'm not doing it again. What I also would say too I found interesting was that Hal Verstam talked a little bit about the state of readiness for American troops at the time and how all of basically the people, the initial group that was sent, which I believe was Task Force Smith, were on occupation duty in Japan. And not only were they not training, they were kind of under supplied because the US government had sort of been like, okay, the war is over, time to start fucking cutting this insane military expenditure. I remember one of the anecdotes that Halberstam quoted was that soldiers were basically told to only use one supply of toilet paper per instance of taking

a shit. Before you go into the bathroom, you have to talk to the supply sergeant. He gives you the one square of government issued toilet paper. Yeah. Make it work. Like things of that nature that they were both under supplied because of budget and also just like their job was not combat anymore. It was basically being the police in the post-war occupation of Japan. And pretty much not, which was not an insurgency so much as just

sort of like whole countries destroyed lots of opportunities to fuck around. That's what was happening. And we're going to go into depth about Task Force Smith. But before we get there, I do have to clarify that this episode is not going to be a lot of things. And one of them is a in-depth exploration of the Korean War as a whole. But it does require some brief overview because there is, I feel comfortable saying this, a lot of misconceptions about what the early stages of the Korean War looked like. At the end of World War II, Korea was occupied by the United States in the south, and the USSR in the north, as was agreed upon in the Moscow Conference.

This is the last five years with independence coming at the end of that road for the entire peninsula as one nation. For Koreans who just sat through the horrific Japanese occupation, further occupation by either power, both of whom are seen as assholes, was not exactly popular one on either side of the border, which was then slapped down and was artificially enforced by both powers. Now, when it became clear that neither side of the North-South split, the North being led by the Soviet-backed Kim Il-sung and the South being led by the US-backed Syngman Rhee, was going to submit itself to an election process and an eventual reunification, a process I should point out here, suggested that the communists would probably win any election.

It was just abandoned. South Korea, or formally the Republic of Korea, was established in August of 1948, and North Korea, formerly the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was established in August of 1948, and North Korea, formerly the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was established soon thereafter. And you know they're both free and fair countries because it says so right in the name. Yeah. When the US and the Soviets pulled their forces out of the peninsula, well, mostly, leaving

their twin reject babies to figure shit out, and pretty much immediately, the two Koreas were locked in an undeclared border war while a communist insurgency spread through the south. The Ri government responded to this insurgency with what could be, let's make a long story short, widespread crimes against humanity. Oh yeah, look was about to, Sigmund Ri, Yi Seung-man is, fuck me, man. Like he's just an old man who sucks. Is the best way to describe it, which to stand out

in Korean politics as that being like to an extreme degree. I mean, he makes the Kims look good in comparison, which is impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and frankly, one point that I wanted to add without derailing too much is that bear in mind that, as Joe said, the occupation, the military occupation had notionally ended, but Korea, the entirety of the Korean peninsula had been formally annexed and occupied by the Japanese Empire since 1910.

Famously only good things happened during that time. Yeah, the degree to which they abused... I mean, look, it's just one of those things where it would take the entire episode to list the degree to which they committed crimes against humanity in that country, and it would be incredibly distressing. And it's to this day the subject of a lot of contention because the Japanese obviously do not ever plan to reckon with this.

But long story short, the two big important facts to remember is that the Korean War had not yet happened, but the peninsula was completely devastated because of the effects of occupation and also the fact that the Japanese the Soviets invaded Manchuria and Were going to do a full invasion of Korea militarily and then the Japanese Surrendered and so as was negotiated in the surrender basically half the peninsula was covered by the Soviets and half was covered by the by the allies

peninsula was covered by the Soviets and half was covered by the allies. So there hadn't been fighting on the peninsula in the same way that there had been in, for example, in Manchuria and certainly elsewhere in Asia. But people had been starved and basically crucified for fucking stealing bags of rice. It was horrible. It was real bad. We covered many of these story beats with a rape of Nankin series where that, like, as I point out multiple times during the series, that was not an outlier for Japanese occupation. It was real bad.

So, like, to give you one of the examples that always comes to mind is that Korea has a similar concept to Feng Shui, like sort of the idea of placement of things mattering in terms of like the overall health of a building, of a house, of a place of residence, et cetera. And the Japanese loved to just, for example, when they found out that people revered a certain thing, like go in and fill it with concrete or just like Jam fucking rebar into it just to be like, oh, yeah. Well, guess what fuck your vibes like no No reason to do it other than to just be like hey I heard this will make you feel as though this place no longer has you know has the spiritual health that you believe in

So anyway, we're gonna fuck it up the Imperial vibe police Vibe Police. And that's a mild, like that's not what they did to people. But that to me gives you an idea of the attitude. Like it was colonial, but it was vindictive. It was just arbitrarily cruel in a way that doesn't make any fucking sense. And so that's yeah. I'd also be like, OK, you know what? Let me be real with you. I don't have any sympathy for the Japanese side regardless,

but I also lived in Korea, have a lot of Korean friends, was in a relationship with a Korean for two years. So a little more sympathetic to the Korean side regardless, even though there, let's be real, there is also a lot of kind of mythologizing on both sides. The Japanese are unambiguously the fucking, the malefactor in this story. So that's my take in the beginning.

Joe's gotta actually talk about the history. Well, I mean, to be fair, they had the mal-factor in literally any part of World War II. Well, yeah, I mean, and also let's be fucking real here. Korea is Japan's favorite place to invade China throughout all of history. So the Koreans have kind of gotten the short end of things a lot.

I'm not saying Korea is actually China there, but what I'm saying is that like the Japanese attempts at conquest of the Chinese mainland basically seem to always start in fucking Korea. And quite frankly, Korea also was at one point part of the Mongol kingdom. Like they for, for such hostile terrain, they are constantly being invaded. That sounds familiar. Eh, no. I guess to get a handshake between Armenia and Korea.

I don't want to brush over the era of the border war period here, because it was not a small thing. Normally, when you call something a border war, it means like skirmishes of like squads and platoons and stuff like that. These were full divisions, thousands of soldiers at a time from the North and the South were involved. And the North was pretty much beating the shit out of the South in most battles.

And this is for very easy and obvious reasons. Northern military was significantly better thanks to heavy support from China and the Soviet Union. And that's because when we think of South Korea and the United States relationship today, we assume it has always been this close, military and otherwise. But in 1948 and 1949, that was absolutely not the case. When the US obviously supported the creation of South Korea as a counter to the dreaded spread of communism, they fucking hated Sigmund Rea. And to be clear, Rea earned that through good old-fashioned hard work.

He was intensely corrupt and pissed off the US at every turn. And in the very beginning, he demanded more and more weapons and war material from the United States and this It's not like he framed it as like I need this to defend myself He framed it for the sole purpose of invading the north and unifying the two Koreas by force So the US is like if we arm this person with heavy arms and equipment He's gonna start a war that we are going to get dragged into and then the USSR is gonna to get dragged into and then the world ends. And he said he would do it all the time. I mean, the thing that always made me laugh was that like in terms of the closeness of

the American or the allied relationship with South Korea, one of the reasons why Kim Il-sung made the decision to invade in 1950 was that they basically published like, if I remember correctly, there was some statement made about red lines that they were going to invade in 1950 was that they basically published, like if I remember correctly, there was some statement made about red lines that they were going to defend in terms of like containing communism, and they forgot to mention Korea. Yeah, Korea was not that important to the United States at the time.

It wasn't on the list, and he was like, well, I guess it's not a fucking red line, then guess what? And yeah. And it was like official red line, and there was like the practical red line because in the beginning, the US was only supplying the Republic of Korea, South Korea's security forces, the police and the military with small arms.

So like for the way anybody was looking at the situation, nobody really thought the U S cared that much is the way that the armament went was with the knowledge of, you know, if we give Rhee and, and air force, we give him tanks, we give him artillery, he's just gonna invade the North. If we give him small arms, rifles, machine guns, mortars, things of that nature, it's to deal with the ongoing insurgency.

And the US also had advisors there to help them deal with insurgency through mass murder and war crimes. But with the idea that if we give him anything more, he will invade the North. So it was kind of like a tactic, we don't care that much kind of flag. Like if we cared about defending you, we would give you all of this stuff. But it was because Rhee was a psycho. Yeah. And I would also point this out too, that if you had to hazard a guess, Joe, when

the economy of the Republic of Korea, that is South Korea, eclipsed the economy of North Korea, just if you were to guess, I don't even say the year, just guess the decade. What decade do you think it happened in? It was the 80s. The 90s. Was it the 90s? 1993. They went for the Soviet Union collapse. When the The 90s. Was it the 90s? 1993. They went for the Soviet Union collapse.

When the Soviet Union collapsed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. North Korea, basically, because North Korea was the industrial center of Japanese occupied Korea. It was where the majority of the industrial base was located. Yeah, and the South was the agricultural base. Exactly. And quite frankly, it was better organized in a lot of ways than the

mega corruption fest under sigmin rui this changes later on when you get a mega insane dictator who's not corrupt pak chong-hee but that's later that's after all this and it has a lot to do with how the north has rebuilt by their allies compared to how the South has rebuilt. Massive subsidies, effectively giving grain away for free in exchange for an endless supply of cheap manufactured goods and coal, which the North also has a ton of coal. I believe it's still their number one export into China. And when effectively what became a communist welfare state collapsed with the Soviet Union and

the South was... I mean, the South also has obviously an endless amount of problems, but one thing that they do have is an international economy that is not based upon the handouts of one country. It's the same thing as having an oil-based economy with nothing else. If oil prices take a dip, you fucking die. Yeah. North Korea is basically... Was effectively the cold Gulf state in the sense of... I mean, I say cold, it's hotter than shit on the Korean Peninsula in the summertime. But yeah, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that they lost a significant amount of things. And then they also experienced a famine because

they had really bad flooding in the 90s and basically no flood barriers or defenses against it. And it created a really horrible situation that led to, yeah. The arduous march. Yeah, a lot of a lot of privation, a lot of people have stunted growth, stuff like that. It's bad, but long story short also, what caused that divergence takes place later and I'm not gonna be like, oh, Pak Chung-hee was good

because Pak Chung-hee was a horrible fucking person, but the difference between him and Sigmund Rie was that he was, he was not as corrupt and his corruption shit that would have gone towards personal enrichment went towards things that would strengthen Korea. It's just that he created... It was a dictatorial state. It was it was a totalitarian state It's similar to the the divergence between Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il like one was very clearly Better at being a dictator than the other. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and Kim Kim Il-sung wouldn't have fried his brain on fucking ecstasy and like Hennessy Yeah, they say that's unfair. What I what I would say is Kim Il-sung would not spend his time chugging Hennessy and pumping What I would say is Kim Il-sung would not spend his time chugging Hennessy and pumping tons of money into North Korean cinema when you need to do something more important.

Yeah, being like, all right, we have exactly four planes in our diplomatic corps and three of them are going to be tasked with getting me cocaine from Bolivia. And kidnapping directors from, I believe, a movie festival in Thailand, if I've researched it correctly. Yes. I feel as though, yeah, the weirdness of Kim Jong-il is just, yeah, it's hard to overstate. Always be suspicious of someone who's not from Chicago, but is that big of a Michael Jordan fan, is what I would say.

Yeah, they're either Kim Jong-il or Serbian. Oh, what if a North Korean was also Serbian? Well, that's the thing is fucking Tony Kukoc, man. That man, he was like ground zero for the Balkans going ape about fucking the Chicago Bulls. I'm just, I was not a Bulls fan. I was a Pacers fan. They whooped our asses. I have to admit it was not a Bulls fan, I was a Pacers fan, they whooped our asses, I have to admit it,

but Tony Kuh coach, man, like he's just looking- Poor one out for Reggie Miller, poor bastard. Now hold that thought because that comes back to our question from the Legion we'll have at the end of this. So why don't we go back to Task Force Smith because you're wrapped in a shawl right now because you're cold in your apartment

because fucking Vladimir Putin turned off your gas. My baby is basically blowing snot rockets and pooping a lot. I'm glad that me and your baby have something in common we can bond over. Exactly. We all start in the same place. She'll be a podcaster. No, please don't do that.

The forces of the South are rapidly smashed and pushed out of the way within a few days as Rhee was busy fleeing Seoul. Meanwhile, the United States was caught completely and totally by surprise. Nobody had seen this coming, and the US military effort was of course fully geared towards Europe at the time against the Soviets storming across the Folda Gap and whatnot. They didn't really give two fucks about what was happening on the edges of either's empire in Asia. Obviously, the US wanted to get involved immediately for several reasons.

Namely, because they saw it as a Soviet flex to test them, and they thought if all of Korea fell under the might of Kim Il-sung and his allies, it'd be a great staging point for a possible invasion of Japan in the event of a full-scale war of the West versus communism. Yeah, and the Japanese Communist Party were standing ready to fucking, as they always are, to do battle, basically like, they're like, we will find an excuse to put on helmets and fight cops with sticks nonstop. They were ready. They were training in the

dojo of the street. So in the event of this happening, Japan would become a communist country. Well, one of my favorite bits about the Japanese communist and student left-wing movements morphing into weird things is all the college students from the cities going into the countryside because they want to do Maoist people's war and all the farmers were like fuck off my favorite thing about the Japanese Communist Party is that if you get fly into the Kathmandu Airport and you Go through the process of immigration there which involves like getting your in 2014 It involved having to bring US dollars in cash and there was no ATM and they used like a home use Epson

print little photo printer to print out a photo of you from a digital camera to put in your visa. When the immigration agent was handling the stuff, there would be, there was a poster like sort of, or rather like printed out photocopies on in their cubicles or whatever that were like, if you see these people, fucking detain them. And it's all in Nepali. So, I mean, it's very obvious- So members of the Japanese Red Army faction.

Every single person on that list is Japanese. All the photos, they're all Japanese people. Like it has the name basically listed and spelled out in Nepali and English and in Japanese. And it's like every single one is Japanese. There is still, if I remember correctly, the survivor of the Japanese Red Army faction attack on Ben Gurion International Airport. I believe he still lives in Lebanon because if he goes anywhere else, he'll be arrested. I think he may have died, but the last thing I heard is that he is still very much alive and very old. I was going to say, if you do manage to find him and hang out with him, you know that food's

going to be fire. Oh, fuck yeah, man. Hell yeah. Can you imagine getting Japanese guys who's lived in Lebanon since like the seventies or the eighties? Like that shawarma is gonna kill you. That dude is gonna make the best dolma on earth and I can't wait. I'm going, I'm going at a pilgrimage to Beirut, but just to eat the Japanese-Lebanese fusion restaurant.

Yeah, we're going to Beirut to record a live podcast. We have no idea what form of currency to bring that will have any value. We're thinking about those gigantic stones that are shaped like a wheel with a circle, a hole in the circle, and just rolling them down the street. We really don't know what else is going to work. And you know, what would be, what the Koreans would consider the invasion of Japan to be the old switcheroo. However, what everybody was really worried about is the US specifically is, okay, if we defend South Korea,

what is the Soviet response? Like if this is gonna lead to a full on, the Red Army is storming across the Yalu River, shaking hands with the Chinese People's Volunteer Army or whatever, like obviously we're not gonna do it. But the Soviets made it abundantly clear, we're not going to get fully involved. Now, of course, they did get involved to some extent, specifically with the Air Force, but it's not going to be World War III.

So the US pressured the UN into a vote for the Security Council to support the South. Now there's a funny tidbit of history here because the Soviets, of course, had a permanency in the Security Council, which for some reason turned into a seat for the Russian Federation despite the fact they were not the last country that made up the Soviet Union, but something for a different time. So as a permanent seat in the Security Council, the Soviet Union could therefore veto any vote that came to the Security Council, but they didn't. And that's not because they wanted the UN to get involved or Council, but they didn't. And that's not because they wanted the UN

to get involved or anything, but they had been boycotting the Security Council due to the UN's recognition of Taiwan rather than China. So they simply did not go to the vote. So they could have all but ended the Korean War right then and there, because the South was not going to last very long at all, weeks at most, without

immediate assistance. And the Soviets believed that if they simply boycotted the Security Council vote, they could not vote unanimously to support South Korea. They were wrong. So basically a procedural misunderstanding led to Taiwan being responsible for K-pop. Yes. Yes. We wouldn't have, I wouldn't have had to attend the concert on military orders to go to make sure that the concert didn't seem under attended. Thereby every person in fucking uniform had to be at the free crayon pop concert.

Hell yeah. At Camp Casey in 2013. Nate's K-pop arc. Performed the song Jumping, which was their big hit at the time. That wouldn't have happened. None of this would have happened if it weren't for Taiwan. I'm becoming a, we're becoming a fucking hardcore

CCP podcast. We're, we are a campus podcast now. We're going to engage in... We're going to eliminate the revisionism of Deng Xiaoping. We are going to actually achieve the purity of focus that can only be understood as no sparrow is allowed to exist. To this day, just to be safe, if I see a bird flying past my apartment, I shoot at it with an air gun.

They finally finished construction with a sewer repair in our house and I'm building a blast furnace in the backyard. We are now a Maoist podcast. We're going to be pumping out the worst pig iron on earth and this is all because of the KMT. Yeah, exactly. I'm actually going to engage in taking the first step towards the world I want to see and I'm going to eliminate any microprocessor or semiconductor from my home if it was made in Taiwan.

I don't actually recognize that name. It's Formosa. Oh no, you also became an Imperial Japanese supporter by calling it Formosa. I don't even know what I'm supposed to call it. I can't even remember anymore. You know what? It's so confusing. What I do know is that I'm gonna be podcasting by Quill and fucking Parchment. I can't use any electronics made in Taiwan, slash Formosa, slash name I don't know. So, you know what, fucked.

God, it's so hard. It's so hard living by your principles. That's why as one of us goes further, the other one has to go even further, which means Tom is now embracing year zero and he's calling the podcast the Democratic podcast of Campuchea. Oh, okay. So Tom's going to become a, he's now a member of the Khmer Rouge. He's going to, he's going to be full pot shit.

Which means he has to kill all three of us for wearing glasses. Yeah, but Tom wears glasses too, so he has to kill himself first also because he has to- But the pub spoke French and killed French teachers. It's like Hitler saying blonde hair and blue-eyed people would rule the world and he was brown-haired and brown-eyed as me. Once you're the guy on top, you get away with all the hypocrisy, baby. Yeah. top you go with all the hypocrisy baby. Yeah all right well uh the Irish Cameroosh sounds like

like either a terrible band from the 70s or like an actual group that did exist and blew up exactly one Gregg's the Baker in fucking like dairy in the early 1980s. The Republican Cameroosh. So uh you know what I feel as though we can just put a fork in that for now because I feel as though that thought process and the current state of our, let's call it energy levels and brain processing power, could lead us to some dark places that'll probably all have to be cut because we don't want this show to basically be canceled. However, with the US with their Security Council vote in hand and getting ready to rapidly deploy soldiers to South Korea, left the US with one very important question. Who the fuck are we going to send? The closest US forces were obviously in Japan, but they were hardly ready for war. Remember, it's not been that long since World War II. However, at the end of World War II, the US did a massive downsizing

of their military across the board because using mass conscription and all of the things they need to fight in several different theaters of World War II, you don't need in the aftermath. You don't need to spend one third of your GDP on the military anymore. Exactly. You can if you want to, but you probably shouldn't. It's ill-advised. And a lot of the guys who had fought in World War II were gone. Virtually the only ones left were senior non-commissioned officers and officers. But even the officers were, you know, normally majors and above with a few captains sprinkled in. But those guys are going to love digging fighting positions.

Oh, fuck yeah. Furthermore, since it wasn't in Europe, not a lot of attention was paid to what people were armed with or even the logistical systems in place to support them. Training as like soldier tasks and skilled training was not common and instead US forces in Japan were geared towards just being an occupation force as the occupation of Japan would continue for a further two years after this point. At best a few mid-level senior officers had combat experience from World War II and the vast majority of soldiers under their command had just eight weeks of basic training after

which point they were sent to the cushyeg of acting as glorified cops in Japan. By June 30th, President Truman ordered General Douglas MacArthur, known totally normal and not psychotic nuke demon, to move ground forces into Korea, and MacArthur authorized move of a regimental combat team into the theater. Then MacArthur ordered the 24th Infantry Division, the division sitting in Japan, to prepare for deployment. And this is where it seemed the US military was going to discover just how not ready its forces in Japan were.

Now for starters, Japan and the 24th Infantry Division had no regimental combat teams. Even if it did, the US Air Force stationed in Japan did not have enough cargo planes to rapidly transfer both it and its equipment. The 24th's commander, General William Dean, thought that they could improvise and slap together a force as large as MacArthur wanted, but then realized it would take so much time it would defeat the purpose of a rapid deployment into South Korea, which was badly needed as South Korea was not expected to survive for very long. Then there's also the small detail that even if he did have a regimental combat team

on standby, he'd have no way to get them there quickly. And that regimental combat team would now have to be transported via boat from Japan, a process that would take days, if not a week. So he decided he would settle on a much smaller force, a battalion of 400 men, to act as a delaying force to hold the ground until the rest of the 24th could get on a boat and get to Korea. The battalion chosen under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Smith was the top-ranked unit in all of Japan and just received the highest possible score on the 24th Battalion-level tactical test just two months before. Now, all of those test things and stuff, we'll get to. Smith was a

competent commander who had served throughout the length of World War II. He was actually stationed in Honolulu during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He had also seen enough combat know that Task Force Smith was an untested force largely made up of raw soldiers who happened to do well on a field test and that did not mean that they were at all ready for what was about to happen. Most of his men had not even fired their rifles since basic training because battalion maneuvers do not always include going to a rifle range. And they didn't have ammunition. Their ammunition allocation for a year was so paltry. If I remember correctly from what I'd read about it, it was on paper barely enough for

everyone to qualify if every single person in the unit fired one table, and then that was enough to qualify them. They genuinely didn't have the resources to train. They would qualify with the rifles once per year, and of course with all their other small arms as well. But once per year, which means that was the only time that entire year that they would fire, and that was separate from maneuver training. They did not do both at the same time and out of everyone in this battalion only a few had any real combat experience, Smith included. Smith himself said the training that the soldiers had gone in Japan, specifically his own unit, was quote, non-existent. As Smith remembers it, he got a call in the

middle of the night on June 30th 1950 to quote get your clothes on report to the command post where he was suddenly ordered to take his battalion minus two companies because 400 people is an understrength battalion to the airbase. They would not be reinforced in any way. No tanks, no forward controllers to make contact with the US Air Force, no combat engineers, no medical support outside of a couple field medics that were already within the ranks, and not even any reconnaissance units. He was also only given half of the normal communication section that a battalion would

get. Which in those days was pretty paltry to begin with, and pretty spotty, so jeez. Thankfully, back then, having two guys with wires and stuff talk to one another wasn't as complicated as it is to these days but you still need them. According to the Museum of the US Army, what became Task Force Smith was given this. A 75mm recoilless rifle platoon, however only two of the four requisite weapons, two 4.5-inch mortars, six 2.36-inch bazookas, and four 60mm mortars. However, the same rules apply to these men as it did with the infantry. They were undertrained, and many of them had never fired these weapons outside of basic training.

Also, I'm sure that those mortar tubes were in great shape, super well maintained, etc. Were they ever? At this point, the northern invasion of the South had reduced the southern military command to little more than a tattered chaos. The South Korean army was retreating so rapidly, American commanders could hardly keep up. Just simply tracking where the front line is, but most importantly, where the fuck the North Korean army was? The South was retreating so quickly, they couldn't even keep up with tracking the North Korean army. So when Smith was met with General Dean in Japan, he was given the most vague orders possible.

He was simply told to go as far north as he could, as far from Busan as he could, and block the quote, main road. Dean knew this order was bullshit because he immediately apologized for it saying quote, sorry, I can't give you more information. That's all I've got. And just for the understanding of people, you don't need to know a ton about the history of the region or the war. Look up Busan, Google Maps, BUSAN. It was spelled differently in those days because they used a different Romanization for the Korean alphabet. Look at where Busan is located on the Korean Peninsula. Look at where Seoul is located on the Korean Peninsula. Look at where Pyongyang is located on the Korean Peninsula. And then

understand that within a couple of days, not even a week from the initial invasion, they were in a position where it was not looking good that they would be able to even get out of Busan before hitting enemy lines. And to be fair, they barely did. And I think we'll eventually do a series on the Busan perimeter and stuff like that in the future. Korea is not a big country. The peninsula is the size of the state of Indiana.

Not that I would care about that comparison or anything. How many burgers is it? I would expect that you would probably, if you drove on the the Korean highway System from Seoul to Busan you could probably expect 30 to 35 Different exits would have seen a sign that said exit here for Burger King. Okay. Thank you I'm glad we can measure this for me. We all understand it exactly. I think now I have to measure things in stroopwafel Fuck yeah, exactly now you have to you you I have to measure things in stroopwafel fuck

Yeah, exactly now you have to you you've got to measure things in wet meals Yeah, like how many places could you have gotten a wet meal if you'd gotten off the highway how many bitter ballin is these? What it may not be the world's most scientific system, but it is at least understandable Now at this point General Dean and his parting like orders to Colonel Smith was like look I don't know anything but when you get to when you get to Korea talk to General John Church he'll probably know more. So basically if you're scared motherfucker go to church. Much like Hozier said, he'll be taken to church. Then he got the formal orders which reads as follows, quote, advance at once upon landing with delaying force in accordance with the situation to the north by

all possible means. Contact the enemy now advancing south from Seoul towards Suwon and delay his advance. That was it. But okay, I know the area well enough to say, I can't imagine that they were like, okay, Suwon is to the south and in those days was a significant journey from what was the sort of city limits of Seoul. Now, it's all one big urban area. But Suwon is a couple hours by car south of Seoul. Now it's all one big urban area. But Suwon is a couple hours by car south of Seoul. It's like two hours on the subway from, or hour and a half on the subway from like, I don't know, like Seoul Station. But I cannot imagine that that would have been

relevant by this point. Like it moved so quickly in the initial days, like go to where they are, block them from on their approach from Seoul to Suwon like I think that would probably have been out of out of date. Oh yeah I mean that's that's like the most important thing is anytime an American force at this point got any information by the time it reached their hands it was already old. Yeah it's like oh yeah stop them like like like you know basically create like I don't know a fucking marshaling area in Taegu it's like it's already in North Korea hands like yeah you don't know, a fucking marshalling area in Tegu. It's like, it's already in North Korean hands. Like, yeah, you might get a couple of minor outlying islands off the

southern coast of the peninsula at this point. An important fact left out of any orders being given to Smith was what element of the North Korean army he'd be facing and how strong it was. That's because they didn't want to tell him. It wasn't because the US military did not know. It was because they were pretty sure if they told an under-strength battalion that they were just given the task to face down the entire forward advance of the whole North Korean military, it might bring down morale a little bit. Smith and his men landed in Korea and were sent to Taejong where Smith met with General Church who continued to lie to Smith's face about how bad the situation really was. He pointed to the northerly area near Osan and said,

quote, we have a little action up here, followed by all we need is some men up there who won't run away when they see the sight of tanks. We're going to move you up to support the rocks, that, that being the Republic of Korea's military, and give them moral support." In reality, Church knew where he was sending Smith and against what. His intelligence told him that two full regiments of the North Korean Army's 4th Division, 5,000 men and 40 tanks, were storming towards that direction. He just decided Smith didn't need to know. that direction. He just decided Smith didn't need to know. Church, Dean, and other American military commanders thought that the North Koreans could be convinced to stop their advance if they came up against American forces, which is just about the dumbest thing on earth to believe when those American forces happen to be 400 riflemen with no support whatsoever.

In some mercy at least, Smith was given a reinforced artillery battalion of six guns at the last minute under the command of Captain Miller Perry. In case you're wondering why Smith had been reinforced with artillery, which is good, but not armor, which would be better, that's because the US Army knew that the North Koreans were bringing Uncle Joe's steel fist into combat in the form of the T-34 and T-35, but they didn't really have any anti-tank defenses, none. At the time, US Army doctrine was that anti-tank defenses was the job of tanks, and they had some.

They actually had tanks in Korea, but they just held them at Busan for some reason, didn't give them to Smith. They were probably what, Shermans, right? Some were. Some were upgraded, yeah. But even the Firefly version would have been enough. But they weren't given any.

I just remember, because there's a lot of old armor on display in different training areas in Korea. And from the Korean War vintage, they tended to be, what is it, Shermans. And then I think, yeah, M60s as well, but I can't remember. Old, small, and yeah. That doesn't surprise me. I mean, there was like the M41 Walker Bulldog got into service towards the mid and end of

the Korean War, but it would have been Shermans, upgraded Shermans, things of that nature. Also, I got to be honest with you, Korea has the worst terrain on earth for armor engagements. It is all up and down nonstop, particularly the southern part of the peninsula. Like long story short, it is basically when you're doing training for armor shit, it's just defiles the whole way. Everything has to be cleared high by infantry. Otherwise, all you will achieve by putting tank columns through is at least one in the front and one in the back will be destroyed and then you can't drive on the road. Yeah. And I will say the North was able to use their tanks to very good effect against the South in the opening stages, but a lot of that has to do with the fact they just didn't have anti-tank

weapons and either does Smith. The only thing they're given is some World War II vintage bazookas, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and this artillery battalion, which is also under strength. Smith had a feeling that something was off when he jumped into a Jeep and headed to the area that he was supposed to defend to scout out locations for their exact defensive positions for his men and saw tens of thousands of civilians and South Korean soldiers running south as fast as they possibly could. Eventually Smith saw a ridge of hills around three miles north of Osan

that had a commanding view of the area for miles to the north and it would be perfect for not only his infantry but also his six cannons. And that's where he decided he would dig in. And July 5th has been loaded into trucks and made for the positions that Smith laid out. They're armed a little more than their personal weapons, 100 rounds of ammunition and just two days of rations. They weren't even issued bayonets. It's like the, hey, we only wrote four hours into the operations order for the Allied invasion of Japan because the subordinate units that are going to be

executing these orders won't last longer than that. Pretty much. Sounds good. Sounds great. Sounds, that's the order you want to get. That's that when you're a fucking staff sergeant, staff sergeant squad leader, you were like, oh, they're breaking down the fucking platoon op order. And you were like, yeah, hey guys, we only have four hours timeline. We have a hundred rounds.

We'll do a support by fire once. And I do have to kind of like hand it to Smith here because he's given like the worst. I don't, I don't often hand it to officers. So I'm sorry for a moment of weakness. But Smith is given absolutely the worst mission he could absolutely give. And it would be really easy to let that, like let his soldiers kind of feel how hopeless Smith was feeling. It's one of those things where you just like, I've never experienced anything comparable to this, but I've been in a situation where it's like, you have to sell a mission that fucking sucks

to your soldiers in real life, not training, in real life. And it's just one of those things where it's like, look, the only way we get out of this is fucking by doing it in a way that you have to hope that by actually doing the stuff right and taking advantage of what advantages you do have, that the other side is just gonna fuck up because they don't think they have to.

That's your only hope you have. It's like, hey, by doing things that doctrinally, et cetera, or that make sense in the terrain, maybe they'll just get sloppy because they're getting, it's been so fucking easy for them. And you might get lucky. And that does happen. We'll definitely get to that point.

I think one of the best things that he did was like, his morale is a more powerful weapon than people can possibly imagine until they experience it. And if your soldiers know that like your battalion commander is like a depressed, hopeless sap, like very obviously kind of exuding the fact that we're all fucked, that's directly going to impact the way anybody's going to fight. And everyone picks up on it. Everyone will pick up on it immediately. As a lower enlisted person, I could pick up on it every fucking time. Yeah. And as a junior officer, it's very obvious when you can see that the guys have lost confidence

of the senior officers, or rather they don't have confidence in them anymore, or they don't think they know what they're talking about. They think that it's bad. So yeah, you got to sell the fiction. Exactly. Now, they are in a good position. They have a massive view and field of fire. And there's one road that comes near them, which is like, okay, that's obviously where the North Koreans are going to bring their tanks. It would make sense to put anti-tank mines on it, but the US had not sent any to Korea yet. Whoops. Then Smith, possibly understanding how bad the situation was, decided not to keep his transport trucks anywhere near his forward positions. And he parked it and camouflaged them south of the defensive points in case they had to get the fuck out of there. On July 6th, he told his men what he had been told, which wasn't much.

He then told them not to worry because their orders were only to hold in place for 24 hours and then reinforcements would be sent. That was a lie. Smith lied to his men's face. Nobody in American command back in Busan had told Smith that there was any reinforcements coming, nor were there any. As soon as the North Korean army drove down that road, they'd be isolated and helpless. Their entire mission was to simply delay them as long as possible, but most importantly,

delay the inevitable. That meant that they had sent Smith and his battalion on a suicide mission and then lied to his face about it before waving goodbye. Smith in turn lied to his own men so they did not know how fucked they were going to be. Well, as a not proud but admitted former member of Second Brigade, or rather First Brigade Combat Team Second Infantry Division, formerly Operation Speed Bump, I can commiserate with actual Operation Speed B bump in real life. I completely understand.

As a soldier in retrospect, I'm sure that they probably, the survivors weren't very happy to hear that Smith knew the entire time that they would be fucked. But I also understand why Smith did not tell them. Because I was a lying soldier. If someone tells me like, hey, we're here to lose this battle, but to just hold as long as possible, I probably wouldn't feel great about that. If you have the hope of like, if I just hold on for five minutes longer, 10 minutes longer, an hour longer, they're coming.

They're coming. Just hold on. They're coming. That's a lot much more of a rallying cry like unsheathing your saber like, boys, we are fucked. Yeah. We don't exactly have a... We don't have a culture in the American military or in American

culture in general of what you might call like glorious self annihilation. The Brits definitely do. Every single fucking officer seems to want to die in combat. Can't say the same about the illicit men, but even amongst officers in the US military, we don't have general Custer syndrome to any large degree. That's not really a thing. Yeah. It's more of a like, just hold on there. Like we're going to get help. Yeah. The US Army at its core, and this is specifically the army here, is sort of like, hold it out with fucking like nylon parachute cord and duct tape, make it work. If you have to literally drag the truck up the hill with all your guys, do it,

but like get to where you're supposed to be and then like you'll be reinforced and we'll take care of each other. Yeah. Cause it's like the under the underlying ethos of the U S army specifically. I'm not going to speak for any other branch. It's not the air force at all. Also the air force ethos is if you weren't school trained and certified, don't fucking touch it. Cause if you do the plane falls out of the sky and everyone dies. Did you PMC that chair? Yeah, exactly. So, so that's why they basically like learn how to PMCS wash cloths in basic training for the Air Force like fucking completely different vibe. You know it's like you're never alone someone's always coming for you so like it makes a lot of

sense to feed into that. 100% yeah. Smith and his men wouldn't get 24 hours they'd barely get three. At 7 30 a.m the first North Korean tank appeared on the horizon. T-34s, World War II surplus Soviet tanks, but still decent enough in 1950, especially against a unit with no armor. But that was okay. Perry, the artillery commander, had the road dead to rights with his howitzers and immediately opened fire at 4,000 yards. It was then that Perry discovered, and everybody else discovered, that his guns were fucking

useless against the tanks, and the shells just bounced right off See Perry knew that these were not anti tank shells. Yeah anti-armor shells They're the the real name for them is high explosive anti tank rounds or HEAT Now he believed that a standard artillery round would do some damage at at least to the tracks, wheel, road wheels, something. However, they leave a fucking dent in the T-34 and specifically Perry was, and his six guns were supplied with exactly six heat rounds. So he knew he couldn't fire them all off immediately.

And the thing is the standard shells should have done something to the tanks. However, Perry was learning in real time about the pure shit the army had given him. The artillery shells were faulty due to the fact they had been stacked in improper storage since World War II. They didn't explode. Your best hope in those situations is would literally be like if you can't get,

what is it, the HE, was HE dual purpose rounds, but basically,, or specifically your standard variety, the impact fuse ones, would be literally to shoot the ground and hope that fucking the tanks fall in it. I can speak from experience that tank tracks are a fickle bitch, and I imagine they were even more so in 1950. So, you know, the Howitzer explosion going off next to them would be enough to tear track. To break track, yeah, exactly. They still have to explode. Yeah, they do. Yeah, you can't just eat like metal on metal.

It might do a little bit. It's not what you need. Now, if you're the artillery Jesus that can like fucking headshot a T-34 directly with a shit with like an unexploding shell and hit it in like the turret ring or something, you're gonna fuck that tank up. But that's not what gun crews are trained to do. No. And you can't imagine like that, how the maintenance required to keep those things in the position so that even if you have Artillery Jesus that he actually can direct fire Chris Kyle, that shit. They're not going to be in good enough shape.

They weren't maintained. You can take it. Take it from me. Take it from the former head. Also remember these artillery crews weren't that well-trained. Exactly. They also were stationed in Japan. Take it from former headquarters company, EXOO if the rounds are stored that badly chances are good That's the same degree of maintenance. It's been done on these artillery. Oh 100% Yeah, yeah, they're shit like They're they're they're Kentucky windage at best What?

Captain Perry, what's our what's our goal? Ah, fuck it man. Just aim for the horizon. That's all I could ask for you guys Now so the North Korean tanks stormed ahead, opening fire on the American positions with their main gun, which was an 85 millimeter smoothbore cannon and mounted machine guns. Smith ordered his recoilless rifle platoon into action, only discovered that their guns and munitions also could cause no damage to the North Korean tanks

despite scoring multiple direct hits. That left nothing but the handheld infamous World War II vintage bazooka, which we've all used in like the original Call of Duty and shit, carried by a few soldiers as their last line of anti-tank defense. But even at point-blank range, they could do nothing. One officer, Lieutenant Olly Connor, fired 22 rockets from his bazooka, scoring at least 10 direct hits, but they did nothing. That's because the US Army in Japan was outfitted with, like I said, World War II vintage bazookas. Badly out of date. For instance, the US Army in Europe had been upgraded with a new version of the bazooka,

which could destroy Soviet armor. The US Army in Japan had not. So they were effectively given, they were shooting spitballs. Yeah. I was like, all right, here's some pennies and gum, destroy a Soviet tank. See, if MacArthur... And meanwhile, MacArthur was directing his energies on writing the world's most bombastic constitution to fur Japan because he's like, I'm Mr. Statecraft now. It's like, oh, I'm just thinking about the experiences I had where you're kind of counting on the most casually producing weapon to do something. The idea that none of them do anything and then it's like, well, good thing we're not

flapping in the breeze exposed as hell here right now. It's like, oh wait, we're a battalion minus up against like the zerg rush. Imagine you're the bazooka guy as you watch like the North Korean tank shrug off an artillery round and you're just like, you know, for some reason I feel like this bit of plumber's pipe I have welded across my shoulders is not gonna be the lance of longiness of the situation. I was gonna say like my name is basically my numbed gear is Joe Bazooka

because I'm so fucking good at blowing up tanks with the bazooka but the bazooka isn't doing anything because it somehow got dry rot I feel as though I am experiencing epistemic collapse. Yeah the psychological undoing of Joe Bazooka. The North Koreans themselves did not stop once they hit the task force positions. That's their tank's job. Smash through a forward position, open up a gap, and keep going. Their tanks crashed into defenses and just kept driving ahead, firing on the Americans as they went.

As far as Smith knew, they probably assumed this battalion was a forward position of a larger defensive network rather than, you know, the entire thing. Though the tanks storming through their positions did have the effect of tearing up all the communication wires as the tracks churned over foxholes, trenches, and dugouts, leaving every single position pretty much isolated from the other. Finally Perry's lead gun, the Howitzer overlooking the road, was given authorization to fire HEAT rounds, the high-explosive anti-tank rounds, and had

just enough time to scramble out their dugouts without being murdered and load them into their cannons. And they did have an immediate impact. They immediately destroyed two North Korean tanks. When an artillery-fired HEAT round impacts a tank, it turns everybody inside into a pile of shit and spalling within seconds. Yeah. Because it's direct fire. Firing an artillery piece in direct fire like that, especially when you're in that close of range, it's meant to be able to propel it much further. So hitting it and getting a direct hit with that, who boy. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not going to feel a whole lot, which as a tanker is the best way you can go. You don't feel the burning, you know, the skin melting off your bones. It's just a bright flash and you cease to exist. Yeah. So we're also going to say, so you achieved tanker nirvana, not in a tank anymore. Though at this point, somehow no Americans had died, but that was about to change. One of the North Korean tanks was hit indirectly by a heat round in the power plant in the back, so the tank caught fire.

The crew then bailed out. Now for some reason, an American soldier rushed forward to confront the bailing out North Korean tank crew and attempted to take them prisoner by like yelling at them and pointing their gun. When the North Koreans got out They did what any other soldier would do the situation and sprayed that motherfucker with a submachine gun and killed him You're gonna take them prisoner. Wait, where are you gonna take them prisoner? Like what like dude you have a fucking 18th-century British prison hulk off the coast of Korea. You're gonna put them on like

I'm sorry I'm not saying fucking black but it's not a war crime if they're fighting you. Kill them, shoot them, shoot them all. That's your job. Even if you're running away from a burning tank, a retreating force of the military is still a active fighting force. You're outnumbered.

Yeah. Get rid of as many of them as possible. Oh, this is what. The only time that they're no longer fighting you is if they're wounded or they're literally putting their hands up. If someone is running away from your position because their tank exploded, that does not suddenly make them a sacrosanct protected force. Yeah, because they're running away back to their friendly lines, like, give me another tank so I can get in it and kill these fuckers.

Like, that's what they're gonna do. Christ. Perry, the artillery commander, was also wounded when a North Korean tank also exploded near them. A man on fire emerged from the burning tank and shot him in the leg. Perry is still alive. This is about as good as things we're going to get for the task force. It only took a few more minutes for the forward gun crew to fire all six of their heat rounds

at the North Korean tanks. And then the tanks also got a beat on them because it's a piece of artillery. It can't shoot and scoot as the saying goes, you know? And then the gun was immediately destroyed. Three Korean tanks had been knocked out, which sounds good until you know that there's like 20 more coming down the road. Wasn't there 40 in the regiment that they were fighting? 40-ish, yeah. I mean, they only had six heat rounds. A 50% accuracy rate is still pretty good. Yeah.

I mean, look, you have it treated them by 7.5%. However, there is the remaining 92.5% of tank. It's the same as I don't know how many people are going to take the whoop my ass, but I know how many they're going to use. Yeah. Look, I'll be real with you. This sucks. It's not good. No, it sucks. I'm just like part of me is just now.

Remember, also, you were an officer. Now, imagine you're commanding this entire operation, but you can't talk to anybody anymore because all of the communication wire that you laid had been torn up by all of the tanks doing like sick laid had been torn up by all of the tanks doing like sick burnouts over your dugouts and shit yeah you're just you're just in you're just in like little problem solving mode because that's all you can do and there's just a trillion problems now yeah the entire line had been breached by charging tanks at this point a fact that smith learned firsthand when a t-34 simply cruised by his command post, which was miles away near Pyeongtaek.

Down to Pyeongtaek already, Jesus Christ. It was about 10 miles away from where they were, yeah. Oh, this is just looking bad. He's like, leaves his tent for a cigarette and like a T-34 just goes ballin' out by, he's like, well that's probably not good, fuck! I can't imagine that bodes well. Smith at this point only had a small amount of communication with his forward positions owing to, like we said, all the wires getting torn up. He didn't even know his artillery commander Perry had been wounded or that he had lost his forward gun.

Though not all of the fuckups on this day were on the Americans. After the North Korean tanks blew by the task force, around 5,000 infantry appeared on the horizon. The forward elements of the North Korean forces had not informed the infantry behind them that there was anybody standing in their way, or at the very least that there's anybody still standing. So they were loaded up in pickup trucks and cargo trucks, calmly driving down the road in a convoy toward the American positions as if they weren't there at all. Gunner Traverse, COAX. I'm not good at calling commands

because I've only ever done it in a simulator once. I never actually did Bradley firing tables, but I remember enough from those of like, ooh, Traverse soft skin, basically COAX soft skin vehicles. COAX dismounts. What is known as a target rich environment. Yeah, what I mean by that is that you have the coaxial mounted machine gun on tanks and

if you've got or on armored fighting vehicles. And so I realized these guys didn't have any, but in my mind, thinking of Korean peninsula brain, it's just sort of like, oh, okay. Remember, they do have the high ground. They do have mortars. They do still have artillery and they do have machine guns. Make soup, make some fucking soup, that's what I'm saying. Now, Smith seemed to notice the same thing, and ordered his men to hold their fire until

the convoy got closer. When they did, the combined force of machine guns, or coiled rifles and mortars tore the convoy apart. North Koreans quickly recovered, however, piling out of their trucks and sending a forward force of around 1,000 men to haphazardly attack the task force positions. Soup, bucking soup, downhill soup, make it. We honestly have no idea how many people the task force killed for reasons we'll get to, but the impact was pretty severe. Now, even with that, the task force is still horribly outnumbered. The task force continued to fight for three fucking hours, holding its ground as North Korean soldiers got so close in multiple places that things devolved in a hand-to-hand combat,

something made much harder because remember, like I said, the soldiers of the task force hadn't even been issued with bayonets. This reminds me now, now I understand what the inspiration behind the artwork on those slam Marshall books like Pork Chop Hill where it's just like the oil painting of like, RAAAGH guys, just like explosions and fighting and swinging bayonets, like swinging rifle butts at each other. Like, yeah, it's just this. Sometimes it happens, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, slam Marshall was on to something like that. Sometimes the violence gets real medieval. However, soldiers did have

knives with them. So like there were stabbings, there were beatings with their rifles, shovels, and the occasional good old fashioned Hollywood sound braying with a helmet. And the Americans still managed to hold. Though as this continued, Smith was realizing North Koreans simply had too many men. No matter how many waves his men held off, no matter how strongly they held their positions, they'd eventually just get surrounded by sheer force of numbers. Combine that with the fact that remember, the vast bit like his soldiers only had a hundred rounds apiece for the rifles and you know a couple thousand for machine guns. They were running out of ammo. Many of them already had, meaning that at this point he had to make a choice.

running out of ammo, many of them already had, meaning that at this point he had to make a choice. Were they fighting to the death or were they going to attempt to retreat while they still could? So he ordered a retreat, telling each platoon to cover the one next to them so they can make an orderly and successful withdrawal. However, small problem. Remember, his communications are completely fucked. He did not have communication with all of his platoons or even company commanders at this point. So when one platoon who didn't have communications with headquarters looked over and saw another platoon running,

they were like, oh fuck, we gotta get the fuck outta here. Like everybody's collapsing. So Smith's planned an orderly withdrawal quickly turned into an outright route. Soldiers dropped everything and ran in any direction because through the smoke, the haze, the chaos of war and combat, they didn't know which way the rear was anymore. The artillerymen abandoned their guns, jumped into their trucks that they used to haul their guns into place, and just bawled out, but they did grab stragglers and shove them through

them in the back of the trucks as they went. Some people ran so fast that the wounded were left behind. All of this happened as thousands of North Korean soldiers were attacking them, artillery was crashing down all around them, and tanks busted sweet donuts over their comms wires. Smith and a few hundred of his men were able to get in their hidden trucks, which the North Korean tanks had just like bombed out past and they were camouflaged, just didn't even notice them. By nightfall, only 250 men of the battalion were accounted for. Now, dozens were just lost, unsure of where to go.

And they began to appear across South Korean and American lines over the next few days with the North Korean army right on their heels like one group popped up in Chonan a Week later with the North Korean army only 30 minutes behind them Not good The wounded that were left to be high as were things unfortunately get quite dark the wounded that were left behind were all executed and of the 82 men who surrendered 32 had their hands tied behind their backs, the same comms wire that the advancing tanks had just tore up at their

tracks, and were shot in the back of the head and buried in shallow graves. In the end, 40% of Task Force Smith had been destroyed. So this is a delaying action, right, Nate? Like, what did this delaying action win exactly? What do you think? What do you think they accomplished? Because it's probably more than you think. I get the impression that because this was probably better organized resistance

than what they had faced up until that point, the material losses they inflicted, which sounded significant, were probably less important than the fact that they probably freaked them out and made them think that a much better equipped force was behind this, that this was like the advanced guard or OP's screening position for a much bigger and much better equipped force. Smith and his badly armed, hardly trained men with barely any orders and sent out to

die without knowing it had slowed down the entire North Korean advance for seven hours, which is one hell of an achievement for an under-strength single battalion. I mean, we used to make the joke that once we had trained with the ROK Army and assuming that the North Korean Army must be the exact same, at least, or significantly similar, that perhaps having a 3,500 person brigade would be the decisive thing that would stop. It would tip the balance Because I'm being kind of a dickhead, but obviously the ROK army not great even to this day mostly conscripts who hate themselves and the way that they train is such that like they they You don't want to have to be the person to tell the Korean army

They're actually guys having to support by fire positions facing each other having your troops Assault through it while being shot by their own machine guns from two sides not a good idea But they're just deploying blocking forces. Yeah, exactly exactly. NKVD is at it again yeah, those are the one is the commissars support by fire because commissars are all the The guys from kpop bands having to do their two-year stint do their military service Yeah, exactly. So what I would say is that yeah, I mean being a dickhead But yeah, I mean that I guess that doesn't surprise me just from the in the militarily speaking. It makes sense that like these guys Were obviously

Fighting for real they weren't putting up a notional defense and then running. They were trying to inflict as much damage as possible. They were hamstrung by bad kit, but where the kit functioned, they were able to knock out tanks and they were, like you said, hand-to-hand combat with knives, shovels, helmets, whatever. This is the kind of thing where if you had not faced this up until this point, these kinds of reports are going to get kicked back to hire. It's going to be... Anyone who is making tactical decisions is going to be like, okay, let's see how this develops. But we might be in for an actual fight, a force on force thing with people who can actually hold their own if this is what a 400-man task force, Battalion Minus is putting up. And specifically, the South Korean, the ROK forces, the Republic of Korea forces,

specifically like the South Korean, the ROK forces, the Republic of Korea forces, like we talked about a little bit before, remember they were a quote, counter-insurgency force, which is not a group at the time, I mean, and that's not exactly a group either equipped or trained or led to fight a peer. Like the South Koreans entire security apparatus from their military to their police at the time was effectively around to, of course, fight the communist insurgency, but that mostly boiled down to just massacres of largely unarmed people.

East Seungman's demonstration shooting force? Yeah, exactly. Like they were not ready in any form. Like, and again, just like today, the South Korean military was staffed with conscripts, but even worse than they are today because the body that Sigmund Re built, any corrupt dictator builds, any corrupt nation state builds is feckless yes-men because independent or dynamic leadership is strongly discouraged and punished. They only exist to crush their own people and then occasionally get into border disputes

with the North, which remember they lost those because they couldn't fight the North. So now you have the North who's used to just steamrolling the rock military and probably assumed they'd be in Pusan by the end of the week at that rate, ran into a battalion of soldiers who could fight them for the first time. And I mean, let's be perfectly honest, feckless despotic sycophancy is also a great way to describe Douglas MacArthur. But this wasn't Douglas MacArthur. This was guys that they sent out and basically said, you're it holding the line. So, I mean, it fucking sucks, but it also makes you realize that like, okay, this is

a situation where the conditions were poor for the rock military and for the US military because of terrible leadership. But in the situation as regards this task force, they had a guy who, despite knowing that this was fucked from the start, was gonna do what you're supposed to do tactically in that situation and fight it like it's for real.

Not fight it like it's notional or we're gonna retreat or not fight like, oh, well, we're all dead anyway, who cares? Fight it like it's for real. One of the few times, I will say this on the show, it, well, we're all dead anyway. Who cares? Like, fight it like it's for real. Was one of the few times I will say this on the show. It's good, officer. Yeah. Well, look, they exist.

Fuck. They exist. Yeah. And Smith was, and somewhat shockingly, this is something of a postscript, but this would normally be where, like, I would say, and then the US military hung Smith out to dry and blamed him for everything.

But they actually didn't like this was like a huge introspective moment for the US military in the concept of, quote, readiness. I'm like, normally and virtually any other episode we ever talked about. This is where the military shut the fuck up, blame Smith for everything, ruined his career and moved on and threw a whole bunch of people into the meat grinder. And while that second part is true, what they did do is like, oh, we can't send people into combat like that anymore. Like these guys had a hundred rounds to see rations and no bayonets. We can't do that. And like also like they started revising training and like how they

grade training, what training actually is, things like that. It's a big moment to learn from. And unlike anything that's ever happened to show before, they actually did learn from it. And I don't mean to hand it to the US military, but they actually learned from a failure. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I can say for one, I was like, well, it's very funny that even in our basic training load was several multiples of what these guys were carrying into combat. But one thing I would say about the US military and the US army in particular is that like the pattern

you see when you read about these historical things and as stuff takes place over campaigns, over theaters of war, entire wars, et cetera, is it typically go in, get fucked up, everything's a mess, everything's a nightmare. And then people adapt, organizations adapt, tactics adapt, stuff gets passed around, kit gets

better as word gets back about what people actually need. Obviously US defense manufacturing capacity is still there even though it's different and much more sort of for profit in a more stupid way than it was back then, which is saying something. But like this is torched. I mean, this is a, what is it? This is the US Army in North Africa. This is the US Army in Italy.

This is the US Army in- The beginning stages of like the Pacific campaign. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you can even make the case that while like it wasn't successful in terms of the mission, by any means, in terms of survivability and general approach, like look at how the US approached the war in Iraq in the beginning versus how it was by 06-07. The tactics, the kit changed because people... There was direct feedback from like, this

will get you killed, et cetera. It's one of those important parts of any organization to learn from their own failures rather than say cover them up and protect themselves. Because Because and again, this isn't like a compliment to the U.S. military, but any organization you can see how, you know, for instance, other nations at war continue to make the same mistakes they did in their last wars and the wars before that, and because they never learned from them. And most of the time, that's because it's a military or sometimes

let's call it a defense force, that works for a fundamentally corrupt government, which is the antithesis of learning from lessons. Yes. Now, Nate, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show on Patreon. You can send us a DM on Patreon. On Discord, you can pack it into a bazooka and bounce it off the side of a North Korean tank And we will answer it on the show today's question is what is your hot sports take?

I think you probably watch more sports than me or did I did watch a decent amount as a kid in Indiana my hot sports take is Just as for Reggie Miller. I think it's more to do with the fact that I think that for all of the success, all of the ways in which the laudation is going to get piled on the man, one thing that documentaries like The Last Dance forget or elide is that Phil Jackson was the biggest fucking crybaby on the planet and Every single time his players got outplayed by another team. He'd cry about reffing and say it was Munich in 1972

It's like no, dude. They're just fucking better. Shut up. God. He was such a as a Pacers fan If you were watching the Pacers play the Bulls in 1998, you know exactly what I mean. Phil Jackson, everything is reffing. Oh my God, the refs are so unfair. It's like, nah dude, we're also a good team. So you mean like Phil Jackson is every sports fan now when their team loses? Like, oh, the fucking refs are all paid off. This is bullshit.

Yeah, but having it come from the coach of the Bulls is just so funny. Especially when you have Michael Jordan on your fucking team. Grow up. Yes, and like, here's the thing, right? Like, I can't remember what game it was, and I should, I remember watching it,

but like when Reggie Miller scored, there was a three point that took, he got it in basically with like a second and a half in one of the playoff games, one of the, like one of the, I wanna say it was game four, but I can't remember, and basically brought the Pacers up by one. And then with six point six, seven seconds remaining, Michael Jordan

just fucking overhand lobs the ball from like like the bulls foul line. And it goes in the goddamn basket. It bounces out. But obviously that would have the Bulls would have won had he gotten he came that close to getting the fact he could even get it there in the first place is insane. And it's like, look,

Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever. Like no one is arguing he's not, but like the Pacers gave them, they were, the Pacers were supposed to get steamrolled so the Bulls could rest before the actual championship. And instead we worked their asses like, fuck no one's business because it was also a good team. It's one of those things where it's like,

I don't even think like you, I'm not saying Phil Jackson was a bad coach. I'm not saying that secretly, he was just a dickhead. But I think the thing that to me, my hot sports take of the thing that I know is I guess the other hot sports take is just one that, that I feel like it's not particularly hot or unusual and that's just Peyton Manning is not as good of a quarterback as Eli Manning because Eli Manning doesn't get in his own head as much

Well, I mean Have you seen the size of Peyton Manning's head? He has to climb all the way inside the man choked all the time and you throw throw in the unknowable The man choked all the time and you throw in the unknowable, incomprehensible variable of snow and it's even worse. And it's like, here is this guy with just like fucking laser targeted guidance precision. And then suddenly he's just throwing interceptions left and right, the first time he's ever been the quarterback. It's so maddening. Like Peyton Manning. And then the worst thing in the world is if, oh no, the fucking defense, the defensive line didn't hold,

Peyton Manning has to run exactly five yards. Because that's the thing is that people forget like all the lionizing stuff. It's like, I think if you were a fan of the bigger, I guess hot take, if you were a fan of these teams and these players at the time watching them play, like they're, they have flaws and their flaws are very obvious.

Yeah. And like, I think Michael Jordan's big flaw, if I think back on it was that he just like- The gambling. The gambling, but also as a player was that everything was the Jordan show, everything hinged on him. And it's like, that gives you zero depth if you can't play. And also like, it puts you in situations where like

teams can figure out what you're gonna do. Cause like, it's gonna go to Jordan. You know what I mean? Like, and obviously like he had Dennis Robb and he has Scottie Pitten, but like it's still like that, that centrality of him, like that was, I think his thing, his flaw. And yeah, my, I guess, but I don't think any of that is new. My hot sports take is in my mind, Phil Jackson, I will never forget. He is a fucking crybaby. I have two And I die hard hockey fans of both minor hockey related One is not enough respect is given to Wayne Gretzky as the most dominant athlete of not just hockey but in sports period

Friends a good example is he has some records that are literally impossibly broken if he never score a goal He would still be the points leader overall any NHL player that's ever played. Never scored a goal. He'd still have the most points, by thousands. It's fucking insane. Second, I'm not even gonna beat on about that because the people that will disagree with that probably don't watch hockey, don't care.

Second is, another hockey one, is fighting is fucking stupid. Yeah, it is. Like there has been, we all know so much more about brain injuries these days. And there used to be people who's, I mean, they still exist in the NHL, mostly the NHL, these kind of people really don't exist in other leagues, because North American hockey

is much more physical, much more aggressive. And also the fighting isn't allowed in other leagues. But these guys, their whole job was, they were never gonna score a goal, they were never gonna score an assist. Their whole job was to hit people with their fists not like checkers But like they're they're an enforcer their job was to effectively commit legal assault on the ice Though and we now know all these things about brain injuries a lot of those enforcers have died very young ages because of repeatedly getting hit in the head and even today with all of

the fucking safety issues in place of a sport where people have razor blades strapped to their fucking feet and are firing rubber pucks at each other at 90 miles an hour, if not more, like this is still allowed. And it's pointless. It's completely fucking pointless. I fucking love watching hockey and hockey is the most fun sport to watch. It's the most fun sport to watch on TV. It's absolutely the most fun sport to watch in person compared. And I've seen, I've been to, yeah, football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, real life games, like professional league, as well as like AHL. Because Anchorage had an AHL team and then also a division one NCAA team. So I'd go watch them all the time.

And I love hockey, but like the physicality and the violence of it is, it's interesting. Even just with checking, you don't need the fights. No, and like they've done a lot of good work getting rid of like, you know, I grew up during the heyday era of the Detroit Red Wings winning constant Stanley cups. And back when you could just straight up murder a motherfucker on the ice and it was probably legal.

And you know, they've definitely tapered down on the incredibly hard questionable hits that do not need to happen. I'm totally fine with physicality in hockey. However, there's a difference between a clean hit on the boards and just punching someone in the fucking face. Name me another sport where that's okay. I guess maybe like Australian rules football, which just looks like chaos prison massacre to me.

But like- Yeah, I don't really know, man. I mean, I got to be honest with you. The only thing I can possibly think of is like that there's, you do get penalized for this, but that dug out brawls in baseball. When the whole bench runs off because like they think that the pitcher, you know,

beamed the batter fucking intentionally. And so you have these like brawls that happen in baseball. But like, I think that's less of a thing now because like for one, more of that stuff like gets reported on and it's undeniable. There's more footage. Or like the malice in the Palace when- Oh, you mean Ron Artest, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a meta world piece, put some respect on that name. Fucking Ron Artest. Dude's a psycho. He was, look, he was not in the wrong that those guys- He just punched the wrong guy. Yeah, people throw in drinks at you when you're playing, they deserve to get hit. What's very funny about the Malice in the Palace

is that I had stopped, I was in college and didn't have time. So I wasn't watching regular season games, but I happened to be at my buddy's dorm room, my sophomore year of college, because he's lived in the dorms for two years and then got his own place and was hanging out with him. And we as high school kids had like, when we were freshmen was when the Pacers actually got to the NBA championships and then lost to the Lakers in 2000. So we were like, fuck it, watch the Pacers. And we were watching it.

And we watched the Mallis and the Pals live on TV. And I was just like- I did as well, because that was the era the Pistons really good. Yeah, yeah, fuck you. Fuck the fucking Pistons. I'm sorry. The fucking Pistons, the Knicks, you know what?

I got a lot of unresolved trauma about that shit and Houston basketball fans for the same era Yes, and yes to be fair most of the NHL for the same era for the Detroit Red Wings It was it was our one good sports era in the city and now Somehow the Lions are the best team and they still don't even know why it's way possible It is what it is. All I can say is that at least the Pacers, unlike the Golden State Warriors, never blew a 3-0 lead in the playoffs. So you know what? Like, we still lost all the time.

We lost to the Pacers or lost to the Lakers. And then hilariously, the Lakers won and then rioted and burned. Their fans burned their city. And it's like, but you guys just why are you guys lighting cars on fire in L.A.? Like you you won the championship, it wasn't us. They were just prepared to riot. They're like, well, we are to get all the writing stuff out. We might as well write.

That's our secretly fucking stealth conservative Indiana bullshit going on right there. Cause like, where would you find a parked car to set on fire in Indianapolis after hours? No one's fucking there. And that is the lions of my donkey's sports corner. Nate, thanks a lot for joining me on this episode that when I was writing this like this is a Nate episode You guys are gonna talk about the dumb minutia of the US military US Army shit officer shit Korea shit a sports question that lets me talk about the two things

I know about the Pacers and the Colts Of a certain era. Yeah, it's all good. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being a Lions Love by Donkeys listener. And obviously, if you want to hear more of me, then Hell of a Way to Die, Trashfuture, and then I produced Kill James Bond as well. And then obviously, as Joe has mentioned previously, sign up for the Patreon. You get to join the Discord, ask us questions, all our bonus content going all the way back to when Joe started this show in 2018. And lots more other things, benefits, et cetera, early releases of episodes. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, do it.

You make everything we do here possible. Starting in May, we will have our own studio for the first time ever. In the Netherlands. So for about 20 years before it gets absorbed by the sea, it's rightful home. It's actually just going gonna be a giant windmill and I'm gonna be in one of the, whatever you wanna call them, blades constantly spinning around.

Yeah, exactly. All the podcasters are gonna live in a windmill, which is better than the current situation in trash future where we all live in a house shaped like a shoe and sleep in one big bed. So the lore will evolve. Thank you everybody for listening and until next time. PMCS the goddamn anti-tank rounds.

Preventative maintenance checks and services. Check that stuff. Make sure that they haven't expired like moldy milk or whatever in the goddamn fridge. Make sure your bazooka rounds and so on and so forth have not expired they do go off much like your spice cabinet missiles mortars artillery rounds do go off and that is why I always make sure to check my expiration date on my artillery rounds before firing the incoming tanks we'll talk to you next time next to the bay leaves in my pantry there's a 155 round don't ask