Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 323 -Doug Hegdahl, The Incredibly Stupid One

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again. The Lines Led by Dunkies podcast is coming live to Belfast at the OYE Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Do it. Hey everyone and welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Nate. We're deep in the bowels of a POW camp. Each of us has decided in order to survive, we would have to pretend to be one man. I sew together a uniform large enough for all of us to fit inside and we Voltron together to create POW man. Tom being the thickest is at the bottom, me being the longest is in the middle, and because we want to be treated better than everybody else we have to pretend to be an officer, so Nate's on top.

Starting point is 00:01:28 The door to our cell opens, it's our first time trying to pass as the Try Man in front of our captors. As we step out, we hear a faint whiff of the Mighty Mighty Boss tones playing over the camp's loudspeaker. Nate and Tom immediately break down into an argument over the values of ska and how cow punk is a much better representation of 80s era Kentucky vibes. No matter how many times I try to tell them to shut the fuck up, they won't stop. Tom is now talking about something called post beardcore. I tear myself by the giant uniform, tackle a guard, steal their sidearm, and shoot myself in the face.

Starting point is 00:02:07 I'm disappointed because I thought you were going to say that I was going to be in the middle, like crying the fucking brain. I am the crane of the podcast. I will defend cow punk. The dead milkman was a great band. Is it actually a thing? Yeah, I didn't know that's what you would call it, but I do know the dead milkman. Yeah. Fucking punk rock girl. Anyway, we have a guest. Somehow we've, we've created the like tall officer with the world's longest torso. Jareth, man. Who for some reason just starts absentmindedly from its midsection singing, bitch in Camaro,

Starting point is 00:02:33 bitch in Camaro. See, this is just podcasting Murphy's Law, because I know you set that up as a joke, and then it just turned out to be true. Like yeah, beard. Beardcore. Absolutely. Why not? Why not? I mean, I'm the only one here without a beard currently. Oh, and we have a guest. We have Quinn here, host of Failure to Launch and a member of the Lions up by Dunkies production team. All of us are

Starting point is 00:02:56 in the Lions studios here for the first time ever, because the studio is not only up and running, but I have managed to shanghai everybody into the Netherlands for our coming live show. And we're all here together in a sea of cardboard and way too many chords and Mike arms. Yeah, we've like, I have escaped the trash future studios content cube and come to like what is like an alabaster Lord Merovingian type room. It's another content cube. Yeah, we're instead of recording in the podcast basement, we're recording in the podcast horse carriage garage in a courtyard in the Netherlands and the interior can only be described as Beaux Arts male living space. Yeah, just where I used to keep my stable boys.

Starting point is 00:03:40 And now we're in Belgium. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, you slipped too far into it. There are guys with Dutch accents in Belgium, but culturally speaking, I'm sure it's don't want to think about it. Don't want to think about Belgium at all. And you want to think about Catholic Dutch guys. Oh God. I was in the gym this morning and I texted Joe was like, there's a dude doing seated rows and he was doing them Dorian Yates style, which you know, like I really appreciate, but he was in between sets reading the Bible. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:07 I've never used the word of God as a pre-workout or I guess it would be an intro workout. I'm not sure. You just read texts from your ex. The forbidden pre-workout. Sadness. I will say that it's funny because it's like when it's the Inshallah Jimbrows in White Chapel, then it's charming when it's Dutch evangelical Christians and a little bit less... I think it's just too close to the weird Christian evangelical army guy in the gym, which is

Starting point is 00:04:33 the type that Joe and I have encountered before. Whereas like when it's a guy being like Inchelaw I'll get some gains bro. That to me is just completely charming. But like that dude is white as well. I don't know what gym in White chepel you're working out. I'm working out in the one by the studio in hacking that like has 50% of the people are like, Oh, I work a fake email job in marketing and like go on my lunch break. Then there's like me and Milo.

Starting point is 00:04:59 Then there is like the world's biggest Romanian guy like lifting more weights than actually physically can be in the space. is like the world's biggest Romanian guy, like lifting more weights than actually physically can be in the space. He's invented, you know, non-Euclidean weightlifting. And then there's just like the three Jamaican uncles in the sauna. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. And then machines that haven't been dusted since before Tony Blair became prime minister. That's how you know it's a good gym. Yeah. The shittier the equipment, the better.

Starting point is 00:05:22 Fellas, I have gathered you all here in the Netherlands for one important task. We're going to talk about a POW. One particular POW during the Vietnam War. Have any of you guys ever heard of Doug Hegdahl? No. No, but I'm unfurling my POW MIA flag as we speak. They're still there. Tom McCain is like, his spirit is inheriting like just some artifact is like a chubilet for American silhouette could be racist until I saw the MIA flag. Oh, my mom gave me one of those flags when I enlisted in the army. I don't know that

Starting point is 00:05:56 she knew what I'm like. Are you hoping to get captured or something? Come back with this flag or on it. Well, I mean, if I, I get the flag, I'm not coming back, am I? Just turning the BOWMIA flag into a hammock and I've got a style. One of those things where it's like, you know, I don't want to be we have this tendency to point at like goofy things that other cultures do with like fictive representations and myths. But America basically took 80s Vietnam action movies and turned them into a civic religion and now people believe there are still camps run by the Soviet army because that's how

Starting point is 00:06:28 it is in Rambo where Vietnam veterans are being held hostage and it's like no no if there's any Vietnam veterans that are left in Vietnam and North Vietnam right now it's because they moved over there to get better health care. Yeah yeah better health care. Yeah well and that too. In fairness the pervert ones probably went to Thailand a long time ago. Yeah, they had to leave though due to, you know, conditions. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun We're gonna talk about the story of Doug Hegdahl, a man captured in one of the weirdest ways possible who gets thrown in the infamous Hanoi Hilton of North Vietnam. Faced with almost certain torture, he deploys the most creative defence I have ever heard

Starting point is 00:07:12 of to get his captors to leave him alone, pretending to be the dumbest man they've ever met. The Vietnamese would eventually know him and nickname him as the Incredibly Stupid One. And I need to point out here from the very beginning, this worked. How stupid could he be? Because John McCain was also there. Hang on a second. So you're saying that the weird plot device

Starting point is 00:07:33 in Tropic Thunder where Ben Stiller has to reenact Simple Jack for their captors, this was a real thing? Yeah, Simple Jack is apparently based on real life. What? What? Everyone goes on about like Robert Downey Jr's character or simple Jack and Tropic Thunder, but in reality, the funniest like story in that is Jack Black getting addicted to heroin.

Starting point is 00:07:53 I forgot about that. Yeah. We watched Tropic Thunder for a bonus episode. I haven't seen that movie in a really long time, but I didn't know about Jack Black and heroin. Tell me more about this. Like Jack. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Jack Black gets like addicted to like heroin and he's like, he has these like pack of skittles and he's like, Oh, I'm going to have skills. But it's like heroin in it. And at one stage he's like tied to a tree and screaming out like Robert Downey Jr. is like, I'll suck you off. Right, right, right, right, right. Right. I forgot about that. Yeah. I watched that movie like not long after it came out and I am in denial of how old I actually am. And that was like 16 years ago. So maybe even longer maybe even longer so you know I'll just leave it at that. So Tropic Thunder was a documentary. Yeah so Simple Jack is real but.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Simple Jack is real and also is apparently birthed of more method acting. was born on September 3rd 1946 in Clark, South Dakota a place I'm 99% sure at one point during this podcast was a bit refused acknowledge that South Dakota or North Dakota existed but with that name Brunt is a middle name Brent Brent okay he sounds like he must be extremely some kind of parents were immigrants from like Scandinavia maybe several generations yeah that is kind of the Dakotas thing isn't it? Clark was and still is a very, very small town with a population of just over 1,000 and a graduating class of 65 when Hegdall graduated high school.

Starting point is 00:09:16 This dude being born there with that name at that time gives me the impression he was the first ever child to be born with dungarees already on. I mean, but at the same time, Clark Hegdahl is probably the least name alert in his high school yearbook. When you think about the time. Yeah. Douglas Brent Hegdahl the third is like a name that could either be a farm kid from South Dakota or a weird motherfucker in the house of Lords. Yeah. And like one of them speaks without using any veils at all. And the other just speaks only in vowels. Okay. I don't even know what that means. So basically one person

Starting point is 00:09:50 just makes, makes white noise. The other person goes, I feel like a lot of people in the Hanoi Hilton are just making like yet constant vowel screaming. It's not exactly a continent rich place is it? Yeah. It's like John McCain and hell. He's just going, ah, ah, no, it's because like we're like all the Scandinavians that listen to the show will know what I'm talking about. Hedda was one of those guys you hear about in like middle America, giant corn fed farmer type guy. However, that didn't mean he wanted to stay on the farm forever. And one day in 1965, he walked into a naval recruitment

Starting point is 00:10:26 office to join up, and he was given the normal sales pitch of what can we do to get you to sign up. Hegdahl thought for a minute and decided, I'd like to go to Australia. And the navy recruiter of course smiled, whipped up a contract, and was like, for sure bro, sign here. Hegdahl would not be going to Australia. Instead, his contract would state he'd be stationed in the USS Canberra, a ship named after Canberra, Australia, not the city of Canberra itself.

Starting point is 00:10:53 Bloody Struth mate, you wanna bond me? Because the Canberra was based out of San Diego. That's the ultimate recruiting like catch 22 fuck you 180. It's World War 2 and I'm like sweet. I'm gonna be stationed close to home They're putting on the USS Indianapolis There's like absolute country bumpkin who looks like Lenny out of of mice and man. Okay. He is quite large and looks kind of goofy But I'm not saying that in any kind of insulting way when I enlisted in the army

Starting point is 00:11:20 I was also quite large and looked quite goofy. I empathize with Doug Hegdahl on this one. I have a photo from on my Facebook of me from when I was going before the like cadet of the semester board in 2005 when I was 19 and you can see what I looked like when I joined the army and I basically look like I look like a 13 year old with a really high hairline. It's very unsettling. Simultaneously looking 13 and 40. That tension only increased over time. You've seen that photo of me from Korea where I look even younger when I'm 28 and have an even higher hairline. But also a ranger tab.

Starting point is 00:11:53 That's just life. That's how it works sometimes. Now the Can Bear is an interesting beast to end up stationed in the mid 60s. It was constructed as a Baltimore class heavy cruiser in 1941 and saw combat all throughout the Pacific theatre of World War II, including Damnier being destroyed by a lucky torpedo hit the Battle of Leyte. But in 1947 the Canberra was decommissioned and sent out to pasture in the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.

Starting point is 00:12:16 But it was eventually tabbed to become a Boston class guided missile cruiser as technology continued to evolve and the Navy was like, well we don't need to build new boats, we have all these other boats sitting in the backyard. Let's just slap all this new technology inside. And this would eventually make the Canberra the second ever missile cruiser in the US Navy, though the entire idea was eventually scrapped due to the missiles that they were using, which were called Terrier missiles. Terrier cruise missiles, which I assume were very, very small, but very loud. And they were out of date by the time the Navy finished the upgrade process. Like fuck it. And they

Starting point is 00:12:49 left the ship half finished. They had two forward batteries of 8 inch guns and then it had some missile carriers in the back. But you know because the US was fighting in Vietnam at the time, they were like this will probably work. Yeah they're trying to do Kuznetsov stuff. Like, their big mistake was that the ship wasn't running on Mazoot. It needs to be run off Mazoot and Sailor's Misery. Though, from my understanding, again, none of us are ever in the Navy. But from talking to people who were in the Navy, every ship is ran by Sailor's Misery. So just to kind of re-camp what we've got so far, this is a guy who signed up because

Starting point is 00:13:21 he wants to go to Australia. He gets assigned to a boat that is named after Australia in a kind of hoodwink situation and then that boat is has like a torpedo hole in it that they have patched up it has been decommissioned, recommissioned, the missiles don't work and okay okay cool. I need to point out most that is unimportant I just thought it was funny that he ended up on a ship that was like recommissioned for the purpose of being a revolutionary new missile carrier and then the Navy was like, ah fuck it who cares. He was sent to basic training in San Diego where by his own admission he slept through pretty much

Starting point is 00:13:55 everything that had nothing to do with his specific duties as a gunner's mate, whereas the low man in the ship's station his whole job was loading ammunition into effectively like an elevator to be brought up to the main cannons, the five inch guns located at the aft of the ship. He would load ammo into an elevator. That was his job. Eventually he graduated. He was stationed on the Canberra and his ship was sent to the Tonkin Gulf where famously nothing bad ever happened. And we only associate it with geography textbooks and nothing else. I only associated with Jim Morrison. I don't know the Jim Morrison connection to Jim Morrison's dad was responsible for Tom

Starting point is 00:14:32 for the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Wow. Oh really? I knew I didn't like the Morrison family for a reason. So that's, that's when he says baby light my fire. This was talking about is igniting a conflict in Southeast Asia and the Vietnamese. Yeah. It's the reason why like people have that thing that like, oh the doors was like a fucking deep state op.

Starting point is 00:14:50 Everything is a deep state op if you take enough drugs. Well, I mean, but actually I will say that I think that you could make some argument there in favor of it in the sense that I can't imagine a better torture method than forcing Vietnamese prisoners to listen to Writers on the Storm over and over again. You can make them read one of Morrison's poetry books. And hearing Ray Manzarek playing the worst fucking keyboards you've ever heard in your life. Look, I will defend the doors are much better on live recordings and in the studio, but like I'm not going to win this battle.

Starting point is 00:15:18 Riders on the Storm. Beep beep. Speaking of battles that won't be won, Vietnam. On the morning of April 6th, 1967, what happened has never been fully explained. It's how Hegdahl ends up being captured. Because the way Hegdahl tells it makes no sense whatsoever. Which tells me it's probably what happened. On that morning Hegdahl was sitting on the deck of the Canberra as it shelled targets on the Vietnamese shoreline.

Starting point is 00:15:44 It's not clear why he was out there during firing, because normally that's not how the deck of a ship works. If the cannons are firing, you can't be sitting next to them. It's not good for a human body. Just pulling out a deck chair and sitting on the deck, just like missiles flying off. It's like that scene from Generation Kill where the tank is driving by, and like have you ever laid on your stomach and put your dick to the ground as a tank drives near you? It's like it's a whole bunch of sailors dick down on the deck as they can inspire having the most morally conflicting orgasm of their life.

Starting point is 00:16:16 I'm taken aback by the idea that like we've invented naval gunfire that also kills the crew. Like normally that would be like an 18th century thing maybe 19th century Well, it's not gonna kill you, but you don't want to be standing on the deck a five or eight inch gun is going off Yeah, it doesn't kill you immediately, but it's like fucking Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star saying like oh my 20 years later right before the VA settles your claim your head just explodes Your spine breaks itself. The US Army playing the long con to not have to pay VA disability bills. Fist of the North starring everybody.

Starting point is 00:16:52 That's called depleted uranium poisoning baby. Yeah, but see the alternative like soldiers being killed by ship based artillery fire, that's just being in the Russian military. Yeah. Yeah fair. I was gonna compare it to the weird Soviet artillery train, except what if it was on a boat? We're not entirely sure what Hegdall was doing on the deck, according to Hegdall he

Starting point is 00:17:12 was having a smoke break. And then one of the cannons goes off, one of the deck guns goes off, and the force of it knocks his hat off which then falls into the ocean. Oh no my hat! I dropped my hat! I must jump into the water to get my hat I feel like you guys are going Lenny slash country bumpkin cleetus the slack you're from the code like my head my head oh buddy oh my hat like if Quinn were to do like almost fucking like letter Kenny like like Canadian Prairie

Starting point is 00:17:42 provinces accent that's probably closer to how this guy's true That's 100% true and not wanting to get and anybody who's in the military or has been the military and listening knows exactly what he's thinking I really don't want to get in trouble for losing my hat. Yeah, it's a problem. They get mad at you for it Yeah, they get very mad So he fetches a big pole and then he tries to fish it out of the water from the deck of the boat which is obviously very high. How big is this fucking pole? It must have been fucking huge. And this requires him to of course lean over the railing.

Starting point is 00:18:14 As he was apparently close to getting his hat, another one of the ship's cannons went off and knocked him overboard. I cannot confirm or deny if he managed to get his hat on the way down. You feel like the Navy Instead of convincing soldiers that they're gonna be keel or sailors They'll be keel hauled if they lose their hat which is like keep extra hats on board Yeah, I realize okay. It's the same thing with the army like like they have to punish you and scare the shit out of you But also it's like yeah, but this is the thing where this isn't like training around San Diego

Starting point is 00:18:42 This is like you're notionally next to a hostile power Maybe like not maybe sometimes the good order and discipline hazing scaring shit is counterproductive Detrimental yeah, it's always counterproductive And now you have a guy attempting to fish a hat out of an active war zone while you know The ship's cannons are blasting all around him and this leaves him stranded in the water without a life That also implies he didn't have a second hat like in his in his quarters. Yeah, maybe he Mean it's just like our patrol caps were yeah, I had a soldier I mean we all had a dirty soldiers in our day

Starting point is 00:19:16 But I had a guy whose hat was like it literally looked like it was coated in engine grease just from his head And like he took it off one time because he like had developed this Disgusting boil on his head and I wonder if the gross hats related to that I wonder if putting this Petri dish over my fucking scalp every day is a problem It's a really nice guy but he also had a huge scar on his face because he grew up at like a hardcore kid and fucking like Carson City, Nevada and has this gigantic scarf and getting hit in the face with a skateboard and it's just sort of like man I love I love my soldiers so much

Starting point is 00:19:42 So this guy falls into the water without a life vest, but going back to his naval training, he knows to just simply turn onto his back and begin to float, which is something I've never learned how to do, but I've been told it's very easy and maybe I'm just dumb. The weight distribution on your body does not. I'm too dense. You know, like good for fucking being in firemen pinup magazines, bad for floating in terms of your body composition. It's fair.

Starting point is 00:20:02 It's just the Armenian life raft, you just just clench really hard and all the hair just goes out like a raft. Like venom. Like the super villain Venom, it's just my body hair. Then the Georgians are carnage. Well that also kind of implies that much like you said that Armenians always crash in helicopters and planes because they're not supposed to leave land, it would imply that Armenians have dense bodies that make them sink because god punishes

Starting point is 00:20:26 Them for entering the sea it's also factual. There's a reason why we don't have an ocean Okay, we just have one lake in its small I like the idea that in the relatively short period of time of human settlement that like living in a landlocked area Changes human physiognomy so much that like you're basically addicted You're like allergic to water like like water basically water kills you the way that like if you put I don't know You put like some of those plants that literally have to exist in deserts and you do a normal watering. They just immediately died That's Armenians. Yeah, this is just making me wonder so we've established Armenians can't go into the air

Starting point is 00:20:56 They can't go under sea and we're also venom from yeah, Spider-Man Eddie Brockian was his real name, but they Eddie Brockian was his real name, but they had to change it at El Silo. Eto Brockian? I'm now eager to find out like in orbit, zero-g, like what will happen to an Armenian like that? Have you seen what happens when a cat coughs really hard? Yeah, you spit out hairballs. We just condense into one large amorphous blob of hair and cigarette smoke. Just like one giant ingrown hair One giant ingrown hair in an Armenian turns you into the big red glowing light from contra when like

Starting point is 00:21:32 Fighting a fucking boss But I was gonna say too Can you imagine an Armenian cosmonaut in the sense you get launched into space and typically when you're recovered you land in the ocean? Everything about this is wrong every step of the way all the Armenian instincts are like no no no no no fuck this fuck the Soviet Union I hate it an Armenian cosmonaut is a spit in the eye of God We're a monument to man's hubris like Dubai if it was a person basically like in in the sort of conception of the world That you know you would have gotten from fucking. I don't know like the Lord of the Rings you guys are basically dwarves Yeah, yeah, we need to stay in the mountains, but you're a tall door. That's why I was cast out

Starting point is 00:22:08 That's why I grew up in Detroit. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that the incredible ps3 game prototype was actually based on Armenians Creating a giant scythe on your hand God disgusting so at this point Hagueall is floating in the ocean right now You're probably thinking well someone on the boat is going to notice that he's gone. They're gonna say like man overboard They're gonna start all these emergency drills because they train for these things right right? This is all we assume but because I'm talking about it right now. You know that's not what happens No, how long do you think he was in the water before anybody noticed? Four hours longer. Oh no.

Starting point is 00:22:45 Two days? One day? You got it. First attempt. So what happened is he falls into the water and he's floating in the Gulf of Tonkin for 12 hours. But nobody on the camber notices he's missing for two days. But wasn't there a recent thing with some sailor who was mad about some shit and he

Starting point is 00:23:01 just hid in a broom closet and everyone thought he had fallen overboard and they were already doing like casualty notification back in the US? It does seem as though this is a perennial thing with the US Navy and so He's picked up by a Vietnamese fishing boat who brings him to shore now these guys obviously knew that he's some kind of American military Personnel, but not the kind that they hated Specifically pilot for obvious reasons we don't need to go into Vietnamese people were not huge fans of fucking pilots. I wonder why. I'm also laughing that the Navy didn't learn from this. There wasn't a centre for simple Jack lessons learned where they could apply this to like don't let

Starting point is 00:23:33 guys go overboard and then forget about them for two days. They knew he wasn't a pilot because he was fucking huge and all the other pilots were like oh well no he's too big to be one of those. Yeah it's like if you have a large oath in your in the army It's like don't put him in the air and don't put him on water have him solidly on the ground Yeah, that is our law. I speak as a large oath. It's where we belong. Yeah, but also like it's in a way It's funny because you said Vietnamese rightfully hated military American military pilots But you think then once they learn John McCain's identity

Starting point is 00:24:02 They would have made him their friend because like he did more damage to American pilots than anyone else. But like Hegnoll also like immediately ingratiated himself into the village that he was brought into because he was unhurt. He was just floating in the water and he they speak no English. He speaks no Vietnamese, of course, but he sees that they're like cutting wood and like carrying these things around and stuff. He's like'll help them so he just becomes the large local American oaf helping them in the village but then of course local members of the Viet Cong show up to take him away because he is an American military and personnel member. Did he get his hat back? No. Damn. I will say that like in you know Vietnamese

Starting point is 00:24:41 agriculture obviously you're at a great advantage if you have a water buffalo but you're in a better advantage if a guy from North Dakota just shows up and starts cutting wood for you. Just hook me up to that weird one thing. It's like fishing boats moving alongside American ships with long hooks just trying to like yank a guy. Just like getting them to give him opium just like hey bud you want to go up for a rip? That guy's smoking in the middle of a bombardment. Get him. It's like the dudes in like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan who are like salvaging fucking rocketship parts, but they're like at sea salvaging oaths who have fallen overboard. The oath crop is strong. It's like the people off the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras on

Starting point is 00:25:20 the far, far east side where like they're just fishing bales of cocaine out of the water, but it's just guys from North Dakota. Dude, doing piracy on a narco sub would be so much fun. What it is is in these cases, it's that like thing when they think they're going to get caught by a not fake out, we're doing a fake arrest thing from complicit military and government. When they actually think they're going to get caught, they jettison the cargo. And so- We call that trickle down economics. There are situations in which, yeah, in that part, it's not really,

Starting point is 00:25:48 not the North Coast of Honduras, but the really far East Coast and then also the East Coast of Nicaragua. People just find, they call it, there's a term for it, they call it white shrimp or something like that. I can't remember the exact term, but they find bales of coke and it's either kilos and it's either you take it and you do it and you're like, now I'm really good at fishing or you sell it and make a lot of money. Smuggling cocaine out of Honduras in a submarine and then jettisoning it, jettisoning it like squid ink and calling a trickle down economics is a pushy T song. But also like it's really good in from an ecological perspective and from like a disease and fish love cocaine from a, from a, from a, from a pest control becoming spiritually

Starting point is 00:26:24 British. My point here is that from an ecological and pest control perspective It's also really it's good that they never built that road through the Darien Gap because obviously that would cause huge huge There's issues of fully connecting South and North America But also if they did and you can instead of air dropping it in Honduras You could just drive cocaine all the way from the places. It's produced into North America. Like there would just be Trillions of post-left podcasts. All based in the Darien Gath. Well, I was gonna say all based once it gets across the border to America You know what I mean? It wouldn't just be Brooklyn. It wouldn't just be like the weird parts of LA Every American city would have a post-left podcast. So he is picked up by the Viet Cong who then of course eventually turned him over to

Starting point is 00:27:02 members of the North Vietnamese army. Some of them speak English and they start to question him. And his story sounds so fucking stupid for what they're used to because remember at this point and we'll talk about this a little more, virtually everyone they've ever captured is a downed pilot. And they're like, so you're in the Navy, so you must be a Navy pilot. He's like, no, I work on a boat. They've never captured anybody who works on a boat.

Starting point is 00:27:23 So they assume he must be a commando. So they begin beating the shit out of him and haul him into the infamous POW camp, the Hanoi Hilton, or Howlow Prison, commonly known as the Hanoi Hilton because it was a sarcastic nickname given to it by American military personnel who were locked up there. In short, it is not a great place to be. Miserable conditions, torture, outright murder were commonplace in the very beginning of people being held at the Hanoi Hilton. Prisoners also had to deal with tainted food supplies, a lack of medical care, these two things lead to mass outbreaks of diseases that are a bad time.

Starting point is 00:28:00 And once in the Hilton, Hegdall was once again tortured and interrogated by low level cadres and each time he stuck to his story because that's all he knew. It was the truth. Yeah. He did fall off a boat. I lost my hat. I don't know what else to tell you. I was helping people cut firewood.

Starting point is 00:28:18 Being so stupid you will not lie to your Vietcong captors. He's not, I need to put it, Doug Hegdahl is not actually stupid. He's actually incredibly intelligent in that way that like you get, you're very smart when you, but don't have an education. But also it wouldn't necessarily be to his advantage to go along with a story they want like yes, I'm a fucking Navy SEAL in the actual state admission of the Navy SEALs doing underwater demolition and blowing up your fucking docks and refueling points. Or I'm a pilot. Yeah, they're like, oh cool. Carpet bombing your villages. Thanks for making the interrogation easier. Navy SEALs doing underwater demolition and blowing up your fucking docks and refueling points.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Or I'm a pilot. Oh cool. Carpet bombing your villages. Thanks for making the interrogation easier. Now we're going to kill you. Yeah. Eventually high ranking members of the interrogation cadre took over and immediately came to the conclusion that their subordinate stories made no sense.

Starting point is 00:29:00 This man is too big to be a pilot and no commando raid in history has ever been done by one large man from Dakota They've captured Midwest Kenshiro It was Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star it would be true Yeah So they had no choice like he must be telling the truth and during his questioning Hegdall also realized that they were lightening up on him. He wasn't getting smacked around anymore You know, they switch effectively from bad cop to good cop his His food quality and quantity both increased, and he decided to make himself seem as non-threatening

Starting point is 00:29:29 as possible in order to hope that this treatment continued. Yeah, it was PLW Shogun. During his time in the Navy, he knew that other Americans saw kids from a farm in a certain kind of way. Completely stupid, uneducated rednecks. So he acted that part out for his captors. He put on a fake accent to make himself sound dumber. He looked his interrogators in the eye only with blank, like, vacant stares, and he made sure to leave his mouth open,

Starting point is 00:29:58 hanging at all times, and made sure to only breathe through his mouth. Did his captors not realize that he seemed to be getting stupider with time? Doesn't seem like it. We're watching flanderization of a POW in real time. I always thought this guy was dumb but does he seem to be losing IQ by the day? I love you Mr. Whim. Did we put something in his rice? I don't know what's going on.

Starting point is 00:30:22 Can I have some of that good rice again? And the Vietnamese thought they had captured the perfect POW. He was calm. He never resisted them in any meaningful way. He didn't even do the normal sticking to only telling them name, rank, service number, date of birth thing. You know, is the big four the only things you're supposed to tell your interrogator? He's literally never gone through seer training because they didn't even know he was in the Navy. They're like, oh, he's on the boat. And then they took him for a while to realize that the guy they didn't account for is now missing.

Starting point is 00:30:50 Yeah. He was openly talking about his life, what he did in the Navy, how he ended up in Vietnam. He wasn't hiding anything. He wasn't doing the normal POW guarding games that the interrogators are so used to. Eventually, of course, all POWs become an open book, but only after an assload of torture over the course of months, weeks, years, whatever. For example, in the Hilton, Pilots had something of a code between them that we know you're going to break, you're going to talk to them, and we won't judge you for it, but you have to earn it. You have to hold on through torture as long as possible. Anyone who immediately

Starting point is 00:31:26 broke was thought of as a coward, so the guards would have to put in some real hard and tear gating work to break these pilots open. Meanwhile, Hegdahl was just like, nah, I'll tell you about the Navy. Which like, I don't blame him for it. We've talked about a million times on this show that if you just so much as tell me you're going to torture me, I'll tell you where my fucking mother lives. I like my teeth. I like my fingers my fingernails Yeah, I mean really use my toenails very much, but I still like them and I like having I don't like stubbing my toe I definitely don't like getting my toes broken also like what kind of state secrets is can this man divulge? He's like I will tell you the he can't tell them anything report room closet on the USS Canberra

Starting point is 00:32:03 I will tell I will tell you every dark corner you can fall asleep and and get out of work how to jerk off without Your bunk mates catching on to it doing Freudian interrogation. Tell me about your relationship with your mother then hit him with a stick Well, it's just like my mom So they thought like again, they had the perfect POW, so they asked him, hey friend, comrade, would you mind writing us a letter in English saying how evil American imperialism and how bad this war is? And Hedgdahl immediately was like, hell yeah, but I don't know how to read or write. I knew it, I knew it. And of course he's not illiterate.

Starting point is 00:32:38 And the Vietnamese are just like, okay, so what do we do? We need this guy. We need him to be a mouthpiece. But he doesn't know how to read or write in English We'll get him a tutor They go to they go through Hanoi and find an English language teacher to teach Doug Hegdahl How to read and write in English the best part is is how much do you think he committed to the bit of being? the oh

Starting point is 00:33:01 100% this man for months went to English lessons for hours a day and never learned anything. He's just really enthusiastic about academia. He never broke character, and just imagine being this Vietnamese woman attempting to teach an American man how to speak, or how to write and read English and every day he's just staring at you with like an open gaping dumb face and refusing to catch on. Spelling cat K-A-T for the 130th time. I'd be worried for her safety at that point. She's gonna go insane. And like just the acting quality of like being able to fool a tutor into not learning anything like you'd have interrogators cadre members for again hours

Starting point is 00:33:51 He never once is like okay, I gotta tell you the truth lady Yeah, like a cadre member just walking past the cell and he's like secretly reading Proust or But he's faking it out. He's reading it in Vietnamese Oh, yeah, that would be that would be the ultimate fuck But he's faking it out. He's reading it in Vietnamese. Oh yeah. That would be the ultimate fuck up. Just like sending a picture back to the US of this letter written in like colored wooden blocks spelt out on the floor of his cell. White boy shocks prison guard by reading Tolstoy in perfect Vietnamese.

Starting point is 00:34:19 The Vietnamese after months were just like, this guy's fucked, we can't do anything with this guy. They nicknamed him the incredibly stupid one and they sent the tutor back home and they're like he's too stupid he's too he's harmless and useless we can't even use them as a propaganda source he can't read or write and he's so dumb we don't really need to treat him like other prisoners they treated him more like a prison mascot or like stray dog you kind of take in who would make them laugh. Once again, Ben Stiller's character having to reenact simple jack for his captors.

Starting point is 00:34:51 Yeah, that's exactly like he would do like dumb little dances for them and like sing stupid fucking songs that made no sense. They'd clap and laugh and give him extra food, which heggdahl would then give to other prisoners. And his whole job was just like sweeping and keeping the prison clean. So he would just meander throughout the prison. Nobody watching him, having free reign anywhere, just sweeping, meandering all throughout for hours at a time. And because the Vietnamese thought he was so fucking dumb, he didn't even really clean

Starting point is 00:35:23 or sweep. And they're like, ah, it's the best Doug can do. Basically another film reference here is he's basically Colin Farrell's character in Tigerland except acting like a moron to help the other POWs. I'm going to get you out alive by being a court jester, but a court jester who's not clever, a court jester with brain damage. I'm the mascot. I'm the inappropriate word mascot. Guys, I just have to tell you something. If I shit and or piss myself, just know I have to. He would be given extra food, extra blankets, more clothing, and he would in turn give it

Starting point is 00:35:55 to the POWs. And unbeknownst to his Vietnamese guards, Doug Hegdahl was about to become the most damaging spy that would ever infiltrate a North Vietnamese POW camp during the entire Vietnam War. Now his first mission was cause as much damage as possible. First while sweeping instead of tossing dust out into trash cans or whatever he would put it in his pockets. And the North Vietnamese guards saw him doing this like, man that guy's dumb as hell. He doesn't even know how to throw dirt away. Pocket sounds.

Starting point is 00:36:28 Yeah, so he's just got cargo pockets full of dirt and garbage. But then because he wasn't watched all the time, he would meander over to where the Vietnamese guards parked their vehicles and then put all of that dirt and trash into their gas tanks, ruining the engines next time they started them up. And then he pretended that his eyesight was getting terrible. You could hardly see. Now in order to underline how bad his eyesight was, because it's not like he could tell his captors, hey, I suddenly can't read anymore. He began to wander around the camp pretending to get lost and running into things.

Starting point is 00:37:01 And most prisoners, the Vietnamese guards, they wouldn't have cared. But they liked their large farm boy mascot slash janitor slash jester, and instead of ignoring him, they put him in a car and drove him to see a local eye doctor to get glasses made. Now the real point of this was, is he got to see the entire exterior of the camp, but more importantly, where it was in Hanoi. The small downs, and he memorized it because he learned this while in the POW camp I'm really good at memorizing things because he's never had

Starting point is 00:37:33 to do it before. Now the small drawback to this whole thing is now he had a pair of glasses he didn't actually need but he had to wear every day. He's just wearing the bubbles glasses from trailer park boys like did the eye doctor I'd think that that would be a huge risk. He had to wear every day. He's just wearing the bubbles glasses from trailer park boys? Like did the eye doctor, I think that that would be a huge risk. He had to lie the whole time throughout like. And another thing because he is illiterate, they're showing him the letters on the wall and he's like, I don't know, it's blurry. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:38:01 So now he has to wear glasses tuned to a a prescription which he does not have which destroy his actual eyesight And make him have to wear the glasses for real stupid like a fox. That's a great move Like we've been comparing this to movies, but I have to imagine there's like one Vietnamese guard who does not buy it You know one villain of this story who is continuously trying to prove that Doug is actually smart. Yeah, it's like a cat-and-mouse game Yeah, like how? Nobody thought it was like he's faking this I think after a certain amount of time he just became like wallpaper to the guards like oh there goes Doug again Yeah, like now they don't even notice him anymore and other pows picked up on this as well

Starting point is 00:38:40 They don't even glance at him anymore And according to Richard Stratton, who would eventually become Hegdahl's cellmate because, this is true, the Vietnamese felt sorry for him because he was probably getting lonely in a cell by himself. We need to give our large moron a friend. You have to put them in a room but have like a divider, we have to socialize him, you know how he can get. But the glasses thing is like, it just shows that like, don't some things don't change. It's like the lengths Americans will go to to get healthcare.

Starting point is 00:39:10 I can't believe how to get captured in the Vietnam War just to get a pair of glasses. And Hegdall's cellmate Stretten is a fun side character as well. Like he was, all POWs are working to undermine the camp. Like that goes without saying. And they had passed letters. Now Hegdall became the go-between for most of these letters because he would never get searched. Nobody would ever watch him.

Starting point is 00:39:33 So he could bring letters anywhere in the prison, slip them under doors, give them to anybody. And Stratton wrote letters to other POWs in a pseudonym. And he'd change the pseudonym up randomly so if the Vietnamese got their hands on they thought it'd be like ten guys doing it and not one and every single one of his Pseudonyms was a slang term for his dick. I Mean at the end of the day still an enlisted sailor every military group chat Yeah, I would love to see like the the Vietnamese intelligence board of all of the different agents, like, Cock is sending another letter to Penis, Penis has been confirmed to talk to Wang. We really haven't gotten a hand on this Johnson character.

Starting point is 00:40:13 The Hanoi Hilton WhatsApp group chat with Cheeks, Gibbo, Rye Seed. Yeah, it's called like, Dong Chode. Yeah. Etc. Also, there's another small side story in the middle of all of this. Say what you will about the horrible immorality of the American war in Vietnam was. We don't need to underline how much, obviously, it was disgusting and we disagree that whatever, if this is your first time listening to the show. And how right anti-war protesters were. Some of those protesters did some, let's say, weird like you're telling me like for instance

Starting point is 00:40:45 visiting North Vietnamese POW camps oh Barbarella yeah Jane Fonda obviously the most infamous but she wasn't the only one another one before that was a man named Tom Hayden Tom Hayden also would actually go on to marry Fonda later but he's a political activist within the SDS, a group that I have nothing but respect for, who would eventually visit Vietnam and Cambodia around the same time. Really committing to the bit to get a bit of pussy is like, oh I'm going to a North Vietnamese prison camp just to get some ass. He whitewashed both the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and would go on pretty much for

Starting point is 00:41:23 the rest of his life defending the Khmer Rouge and being a Cambodian genocide denier. But listen, Doug is so lucky that he ended up in Vietnam and not Cambodia because he wouldn't have gotten glasses there. That is true. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, being a antiwar protester good, being that kind, bad. Hayden visits the Hanoi Hilton and runs runs into HEC doll who's meandering about sweeping Which is something of a problem for HEC doll

Starting point is 00:41:49 This man will immediately see through his bullshit because he's American and he's not a POW and more importantly He is not on his side. Yeah, it's like it's one thing where it's sort of like hey you want to Maybe like you can't let this guy in because he's gonna like I love I love the North Vietnamese army I can't wait to fucking earn my stripes as a fucking volunteer like like the Brian mass Republican dude from Florida who's like Yeah, yeah, you really don't want this guy to see through your ruse Yeah and if anybody's gonna see through it it's going to be a college educated person who has no reason to defend you and

Starting point is 00:42:21 As the Vietnamese introduce the two of them like, look how we're treating the POWs. They use Hegdahl as an example that they could bring home, be like, look how nice we're treating the captured Americans. Look at our adopted large boy. Hegdahl puts on the performance of a fucking lifetime. Oscar worthy. He stood there, mouth hanging open, and dumbly shook his hand like he had never heard of the concept of shaking hands before. And then just because he couldn't help himself and the guards turned away, he

Starting point is 00:42:50 looked Hayden directly in the face, smiled and gave him the finger. I was thinking before like there has to be a they'll never believe you moment with this. Try me bitch. It's basically the first instance of the the stories of Bill Murray coming up to people in public and taking a bite out of their sandwich and just be like no one's gonna believe you. Yeah. But then like Hayden was like what the fuck to the guards and the guards all turn around and Hedgel starts giggling like an idiot and like dances away. He's just like yeah he's always like that. Why the fuck are you being mean to our pet?

Starting point is 00:43:25 Don't you be mean to Dougie? Don't be mean to our large son. They legitimately and justifiably care more about Doug, their pet, their best friend, than this dude. Hayden's like, he just flipped me off. And the guards ask Hegdall, do you know what that means? And he's like, yeah the other POWs told me it meant hello. Just like the world's weirdest handshake meme of the North Vietnamese and Matt Gaetz of

Starting point is 00:43:52 adopting a fully grown manager. So he's never punished for it. Hayden does not buy his shit. But like the guards don't believe this is the movie. It should be pointed out here though, most importantly, Hegdall did virtually all of this without ever consulting with or plotting with other POWs. Other POWs held in the Hilton were not allowed to speak. They're held under strict silence under fear of pretty horrific punishment if the guards ever heard them talking. They were kept in what amounted to be solitary confinement unbroken for years. And then you just got Dougie Fresh walking around free rein in the camp. Like this is just so, like people have committed to the bit before too and inordinate amount

Starting point is 00:44:40 of like difficulty. This is just in the mental fortitude you need to commit this hard to the bit. Yeah and he never broke character to the Vietnamese. Stratton knew, his cellmate was 100% in the fold. The Hilton boils down to the Vietnamese version of a supermax prison. And Hanoi Hilton would get not as bad in a little bit and we'll tell you why. But in these early years it was fucking horrible. The one POW, an Air Force pilot named Joe Krecha, seemed to catch on

Starting point is 00:45:10 about what Hegdall was doing because some POWs were not aware that Hegdall was baking it. And he caught on and he's watching him through his cell door and he slipped a letter to Hegdall. Hegdall took it back to his cell and found that Krecha wanted Stratton, his cellmate, to help Hegdall compile it back to his cell and found that Kreacher wanted to stratton his cellmate to help Hegdall compile a list of all the POWs held in the Hilton. Because one of the problems that came with accounting for American POWs during the Vietnam War was the North Vietnamese government never publicized who they had captured. This is a conscious decision made by the Vietnamese. They knew how bad the prisons were and they knew what they were doing to the men inside them. If it was

Starting point is 00:45:49 never confirmed who was captured, they would never have to face the bad PR of, say, killing a POW either on purpose or on accident. They were a signatory to the Geneva Convention since 1957, which not only outlies the proper treatment of a POW, but also says POWs need to be ID'd and those ID's to be known. But the real kicker was the PR. For example, let's be honest here, correctly framing the US as war criminals, imperialists, and monsters in the context of this war, you really don't want to be caught being the guy who's killing POWs.

Starting point is 00:46:22 It's bad for the business, right? They also never captured many people when you think killing POWs. It's bad for the business, right? They also never captured many people when you think of POWs being captured normally during the course of a war. That's because the realities of the war itself. Generally speaking, the only time someone would be so stranded behind enemy lines or be in the position to be taken prisoner were pilots shot down behind enemy lines, and most of those men were officers. Very very very few non-pilots and enlisted men became POWs during the Vietnam War. For example, Hegdahl was the only enlisted man from the entire US Navy to become a pilot throughout the whole course of the Vietnam War.

Starting point is 00:46:56 Generally speaking, if someone went missing, normally during a combat flight or whatever, they were considered a POW unless evidence was found that proved they were dead. Which was not normally the case, but there was never any concrete list of who was actually being held in captivity. Krecha and the others wanted to make one with the goal of getting it back into the hands of the US, somehow, just so they could tell people who was still alive. And since Hegdall was the only man with the freedom to move around to camp, it obviously had to be him. And with that, he began a campaign of trying to get the names of every man held in the Hanoi Hilton, which is on 250 people. And obviously he couldn't just

Starting point is 00:47:36 keep a Rolodex of hundreds of names in his cell, he would have to memorize them all. In order to do so, he came with a mnemonic device that he thought would work for him. Remember each name in the form of a list to the tune of Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Oh my god. So you know an oink oink here, whatever, like every single one of those noises was a POW's name. Full name and place of birth. Jesus Christ. 250 of them. I mean listen, you haven't got a

Starting point is 00:48:08 whole lot to do during the day so you gotta fill your time. This worked somehow. Does this not spark any more suspicion from the guards that he is now going around presumably practicing this? He said he had to practice it in his head. Okay. This is like Jay-Z writing rhymes and not writing anything down. This man had nothing but free time to do things like you said, so he sang the song on a loop in his head every day, all day, for years, adding a new name to the list as he went as they were brought into the camp. And like I said before, the Vietnamese were very much in step with the idea of propaganda

Starting point is 00:48:43 to make sure their war effort seemed as right as it actually was. The struggle against the Americans, see, were the good guys in the situation, which again I need to underline here, they were, but PR is still important. So they decided to select three POWs to release as a humanitarian show of good faith. However, they had to be careful who they released and who they didn't you know in case they released them They did a whole bunch of bad shit, too So they selected three men who they thought were the most sympathetic to the cause Well two of them and Hedgdall

Starting point is 00:49:14 Aha because they knew he was a mouth-breathing idiot that was clueless about everything and wouldn't say shit against anybody having to tragically Give up your adopted pet if you love something let it go yeah they can take heggdall to a farm up north okay buddy yeah just picturing him frolicking back home just wheeeee wheeeee but can you imagine if you're the WWI unit that has Sergeant Stubby as your mascot and then immediately Stubby denounces your crimes and you discover he can speak English this whole time

Starting point is 00:49:43 just the betrayal, let alone the national security and secrets and whatnot, like the personal betrayal that your pet suddenly reveals that it can speak and hates you. There's just a fireman lao that's just full of large American morons. Free range morons. I mean, you're not too far off except they're all Australians on Gap year. The men all universally refuse,eddle included due to a pack That the POWs formed that either everybody was going to be released or nobody accepted any deal to go home early However, the POWs communicated with each other through notes that no these men had had to go just so we can get Doug out

Starting point is 00:50:20 Of here. He has the list in his head again They aren't sure if he actually has it memorized. They just take his word for it. Cause it's again, he can't sing it out loud. They got to get his version of Old MacDonald had a farm out of the prison and into the ears of the president of the United States. Just the president sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office as he takes him three hours faster way to do this. He's like going here a pig pig there there a chick. Oh fuck they executed that one everywhere a moomoo dog is just standing there hands

Starting point is 00:50:52 by his side like a like a child in front of the classroom singing old McDowell had a farm at the position of attention to the commander. Was he remembering the code using animal stuff for each person or did he just remember the details like to the tune of to the tune Of some of his organs give me like with the Thomas here. Oh, my honey here born on the fourth September 95 here Like yeah. Yeah, exactly son. Can you write this down and in the years of like acting he has actually forgotten how to read and write so on August 5th 1969 so after years of captivity fully

Starting point is 00:51:27 1969, so after years of captivity, fully, fully bought into this bit. He and two others, a man named Robert Frischman and another man named Wesley Rumble, fucking awesome name, were released. And as soon as Hegdell got home, he sang his song for military intelligence, allowing them to compile a list of 256 POWs for the first time since the war had started. Then he and Frischman held a press conference where they openly talked about the conditions inside the prison and how POWs were treated. He also was sent to the 1970 Paris Peace Talk, which were occurring in secret. And during, like, he met one of the heads of the North Vietnamese government face to

Starting point is 00:52:01 face when he was, because the guy was like, we're treating POWs in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. And Hegdahl rolled up his sleeves and showed all the scars on his arms and stuff he's like then where do these fucking come from and he's just like and the guy kind of like leaned back in his chair he's like all right well let's make a deal and then Nixon was like no I have to win re-election keep fighting the war and killing people specifically the deal was regarding POW right you're gonna bring me to moron Bring me the incredibly stupid one. I just made Richard Nixon fucking Hulk Hogan The problem is if we we have we have actual intelligent guys, and they're pretending to be stupid

Starting point is 00:52:37 We need to send actual stupid guys to Vietnam, but what's this project hundred thousand? They keep telling me about Haldeman tell me about the project hundred thousand you're gonna get the Marines to learn They keep telling me about Haldeman tell me about the project hundred thousand you're gonna get the Marines to learn I don't know if I like it. There's something about it in the next video. This is the first podcast with fucking subtitles. We're just doing the Nixon voice. According to POWs held at the Hilton at the time their conditions and treatment changed virtually overnight Once Hegdahl had his press conference, then Hegdahl scored one last win on his former captors

Starting point is 00:53:02 He accused them of executing his cellmate, Stratton, despite the fact there is no evidence of this whatsoever, because they knew they would have to prove him wrong. They immediately release Stratton to prove that they hadn't executed him. Heggdahl just fucking dancing more and more dubs over this like- He's doing the Fortnite L dance on stage. Basically when you bring the whole crew with you you know it's like Eminem and D12 he got out he's like I gotta I gotta bring I gotta bring the rest bizarre prove look you can try as much as you want nobody's bringing

Starting point is 00:53:35 bizarre up I love bizarre but that shits never becoming popular but no bizarre should should not be popular he said a lot of bad a lot of really bad things I will say though that it is very funny to imagine then like the, you know, Doug Hegdahl's and the fucking Hanoi Hilton guys doing their version of purple pills. It's all just about bruises. Yeah, but I can't wait until they do make a movie out of this and then it's going to be a musical starring Lin-Manuel Miranda as Doug. Eventually the pressure created by Hegdahl, this enlisted sailor who only got captured because his stupid goddamn hat had flown overboard, who then fooled the Vietnamese for years into

Starting point is 00:54:11 thinking he was a dumbass, led directly to the first large-scale exchange of prisoners of war in 1973 prior to what became known as Operation Homecoming and the release of all American POWs after the US pulled out. So all of this is thanks to a Dakotan farm boy who pretend to be a fucking idiot for years. Oh, McDonald had a farm. E I E I O. I'm just thinking like, I swear that this has got to be a movie. Like I keep thinking John Wick, but that's wrong. But the idea of like a guy with a relatively mundane. If Doug Hagedale was John Wick, the story would be significantly different

Starting point is 00:54:46 But you know what I mean like I would like to see on it comes first to but it's like the guy has a relatively mundane and completely benign Intention or a really small thing like you killed my dog kind of thing and like now I'm gonna get revenge But in this case, it's like I just want to get my shit back. I just want to get my hat No, that's that's the Vietnamese soldier who's like my dog betrayed me. Well what I'm trying to say here There's like Americans. It's killing people to find dog. It's like it's like the entire plot of the movie clerks Is I'm not supposed to fucking be here. It's my day off. It's like he's not even supposed to be here He just wanted his hat back and for want of a hat

Starting point is 00:55:18 He basically changes the course of the way POWs are treated and then that hat is now being sold on deep up by some guy Who talks like he lives in Hackney. Also the biggest punishment we could give to Doug Hegdahl is make Kevin Smith play him in a movie. Oh god. Her ass and tane still pones. I was going to say, yeah, pones my dick. Yeah, but saying that with a North Dakota accent.

Starting point is 00:55:40 I was thinking too, this is funny, because I actually lost one of my hats. I had multiples so I didn't have to worry about it. But I lost one of my patrol caps in Afghanistan and I think it fell out of the I left it on the hatch of a humvee And it fell out and then about three weeks later someone found it in the middle of the road Perfectly folded but they'd cut the tag out of the inside the like wash care whatever tag I'm like, but why the name tape was still there but they'd cut that's like did they need the tag to make counterfeit uniform? Like what? No idea.

Starting point is 00:56:06 Yeah. What the, what the, maybe they needed, they wanted the tag to like patch up their favorite pair of baggy trousers, but like whatever it was. Most importantly, did they give him a new hat? Unconfirmed. I assume he got one because he, when he got back, he was promoted to petty officer second class. Gets back immediately punished for losing his hair.

Starting point is 00:56:24 Several years delayed. officer second class gets back immediately punished for several years delayed president Nixon gives him like the military clothing sales golden ticket he's allowed to get a free hat but only a free hat every time that he goes it's like the end of a new hope they just like present him with a new hot and Chewbacca is there as well probably the funniest thing disco medallion too for some reason strangest thing about all of this is after he gets promoted to petty officer second class and then he gets put into like Sears school the school that teaches people how to survive being a POW as an instructor as an instructor. Oh

Starting point is 00:56:55 yeah exactly. And they're like imagine sitting through his class he's like look guys I don't know if it's gonna work for you but try pissing yourself every day for two years. He's just like doing like you know look how do me go like very severe French clown smoking cigarettes so you have to let your Joe go slack we are going to practice it now when practice lower lower lower your Joe it's too tight unlike what Robert Downey Jr. says you do actually sometimes you You, Frere Jacques, now! That's the Québécois guy who got caught in Vietnam. Now, afterwards he just returns to normal life, I couldn't really find any details,

Starting point is 00:57:33 he's still alive today, but I did find an article that in 1998 he went to a POW reunion and he could still sing the entire old McDonald's song without a single error as of 2024 He's still alive living a normal life I assume but the world's weirdest version of a children's song stuck in his head forever until the day he dies This is just like Nate being able to say Riz's verse of four chamber like off the top of his head. It's not fourth chamber It's it's triumph. Yeah, you fucking pleb It is four chamber camouflage Yeah, yeah, no need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No need to run They already got your wife and children hit was sent. I forgot it. Yeah from the president

Starting point is 00:58:14 President to raid your residence because they had evidence of how you raped the consonants the documents was a list of prominent islamic black Hebrews Prominent dominant asianic black Hebrews prominent dominant asian black Hebrews yeah I can't remember 30 seconds impressive no I can do other other Wu Tang related things I just was a nerd Wu Tang was the perfect thing when you were a dweeby 13 year old in the Midwest in 1997 because they were also huge nerds I wonder if Doug Hedall likes the Wu Tang clan I mean Doug Hedall if you're listening get back to my like he might like the Wu Tang because his song also has no chorus and goes on forever so Douggdahl if you're listening get back Doug might like he might like the Wu Tang because

Starting point is 00:58:47 His song also has no chorus and goes on forever Hegdahl if you can learn and memorize earned higher patron list and then sing it to the tune of old McDonald had a farm I'll give you nothing for that but a stiff round of applause. Yeah, just the world's most expensive cameo on the new hat I don't know if this is like a hundred percent true, but I know that at least at some point during the trial going on when Bird doll was still both bird doll, the American soldier from my old unit who walked off an outpost in Afghanistan and got held hostage by the Hikani network in Pakistan for five years while he was still on trial and his trial went on forever. He also was basically like augment augmented cadre to the Sears school

Starting point is 00:59:24 because like he was the only living modern POW with experience. And like, here's my, here's my tip guys. Don't walk off basic capture. I mean like at the end of the day, it's more like number one. That's the thing about it is right. There's SE and Seer the survival and escape. But then there's also, there was no survival and evasion, but then there's resistance and escape part. And he definitely tried to escape a couple of times times and had to do a lot of resistance and so and was treated extremely Badly and so it's like he was useful to the military so that that that does kind of rhyme But obviously like honestly the funny thing is is that the Navy also might have punished him in the same way like not quite As much as Bergdahl, but you imagine that like had it gone slightly differently

Starting point is 01:00:00 They've been like we're still gonna we're still gonna get you on dereliction of duty for not having a hat What I'm learning from this episode is if you if you if your name ends in doll don't be in the military Yeah, if you have if you have a vaguely Norwegian name in America don't so we have a question from the Legion guys And if you'd like to ask this question Legion you can donate to the show you can Send it to us through a patreon send it through our discord You can memorize it in the form of old McDonald had a farm and sing it to us through Patreon, send it through our Discord, you can memorize it in the form of old McDonald had a farm and sing it to us at a live show and we will answer it on air. Today's is what is a piece of media you've consumed recently that you enjoy? Okay, I thought this was going to be a tough one. Listening back to the NHL soundtrack,

Starting point is 01:00:41 probably like NHL 05 soundtrack out of pure nostalgia. Because that's how my entire musical taste was developed. All right. Yeah. I recently had an opportunity to work with the musician Dan Beckner, who I really respect a lot. He's just also a good dude. We used to produce his podcast and he did his first solo show ever in London. So I ran front of house for him, which was an amazing experience for me. But I knew Dan's work in Wolf Parade and a little bit in Operators, another one of his

Starting point is 01:01:06 bands, but I hadn't really listened to Handsome Furs, which is another one of his bands. And he mostly played songs from that catalog as well as he has a solo album that came out in March. Hearing it live, but also getting to work through the arrangement was really amazing. But now I've kind of like, having seen the live versions and really genuinely being kind of blown away by it, I've gone back and now I'm listening to to all of those albums because I was a huge pitchfork dweeb, but also that era when they were coming out coincided with me being in the army and not having internet access because I was deployed. So I did kind of miss out on some things that were popular.

Starting point is 01:01:35 So yeah, I would definitely say yeah, Dan's first solo album is just called Beckner and it's on streaming, but also all three of the the Handsome Furz albums, which are Sound Capital, Face Control and Plague Park was the first one, I think. And so, yeah, I would check those out. They're great. He's a good dude. So. I watched Paris, Texas for the first time, like a couple of weeks ago. Oh, just like so many. I watched it with a friend of mine who it's this kind of fucked up story, but had kind of fractured family life growing up. And that movie was like like emotional neutron bomb for him. But yeah, and neither one of us expected. I just heard like I'd

Starting point is 01:02:07 seen other of him vendors movies and I was just like, all right, let's watch Paris, Texas. I heard it's good. Harry Dean's stand is supposed to be pretty good. And it's like, oh, I will night knows this. I'm currently reading, um, John Berger's book on photography, um, which is fucking every cent, like every sentence is just like a masterpiece. The chapter where he's responding to Susan Sondag's book on photography is just like every paragraph like holy fuck. And then music was yeah fucking I've been revisiting. So artists from Ireland, CMAT, C-M-A-T, her album from last year is just fucking incredible

Starting point is 01:02:43 and highly recommend it. To add in for other things, I haven't watched any movies recently because I just haven't had the brain power, but I'm reading Tom and I talked about this earlier, Vladislav Zubok's book Collapse about the fall of the Soviet Union. I read it as well. And I'm reading two books that people that I just, whose opinions I respect from Twitter had recommended works of fiction. One is Chevng by Andre Platanov, whose work I've really enjoyed. I just never read that novel and it's bizarre and surreal.

Starting point is 01:03:07 So I'm really enjoying it. And another book called The Door by Magda Szabo, who was a Hungarian author. And I did not know what to expect. I just heard the person I know who recommended it. I respect their opinion a lot and not any idea of what I'm getting into. Really enjoying it, too. So, yeah, I'm not trying to be Mr. impossibly fucking literary fiction.

Starting point is 01:03:24 It's just people that I know periodically I'll see a tweet and someone be like someone who I respect whose opinion I respect will be like this is the best shit I've read in a long time. I'm like, you know what? I'll give it a try Yeah, this does because this podcast is like two morons and a guy with an MFA. Yeah, but I mean, you know I also have a master's degree You've a master's in history. Yeah, actually it's in a Holocaust and genocide study I kind of wish I had- if I get another graduate degree, it's just gonna be so I can achieve my life goal of doing a podcast about weird guys of the Belle Epoque. So I have to go get like a Masters of His- Masters of like basically modern history- modern French history or modern European history.

Starting point is 01:03:58 The only thing that I've been doing recently is I am continuing to hold to my agreement that I would work on no Pieces of science fiction or fantasy this year So I've had a lot of more time to to actually read and I have burned through all of Joe Ipukami's books Which I absolutely loved I finished the powder mage trilogy recently is very very good the first one And now I'm working on the red rising trilogy is very very good as well highly recommend it it definitely gets better as it goes on. The first book is it's fine it's like if The Hunger Games wasn't written for children in some ways but still was very obviously trying to cash in back when that was very very popular then it becomes by

Starting point is 01:04:41 book two it's definitely becoming its own thing it's very very good. I've also been listening to We Came as Romans a whole lot more than I have in recent memory. Which is a really good band. Literally walked into the studio. We Came as Romans is a band from, that I know, I've met them all. Unfortunately, one of their singers passed away from a drug overdose a couple years ago. A lot of their latest music has a lot to do with dealing with the grief and the loss of losing someone very close to you from a drug overdose, which of course I know a lot about recently unfortunately.

Starting point is 01:05:14 And the music is just hitting me different these days and I really, really enjoy it. But yeah, no literary fiction for me to go into. That's it. That's all Joe's got. Every now and again though, we'll recommend you a book and you always do read it. And you know, you seem to get, sometimes you like it, sometimes you don't, but like, you know, I don't- Yeah, sure. I don't hate on Joe, because Joe, you know, our tastes are different, but like, it's not like you ever been like,

Starting point is 01:05:34 No, Nate, I refuse to read a book you recommend. Yeah, people just say that about the books I write. That is a podcast, fellas. If anybody is still listening listening plug your other podcasts. Well the guest you're invited to, yours first go ahead. I am a host of the Failure to Launch podcast where we talk about dumb space history and explosions and horrible Soviet rockets and stuff like that so if that sounds interesting to anyone give it a listen.

Starting point is 01:06:02 Yeah I do beneath skin but I don't care about promoting it. Um, the London street food, street kitchen food network is looking for volunteers if you're hearing this whenever it comes out. So check it out at street kitchen dot co dot UK. Um, and maybe help out some people. I am the cohost of what a hell of way to die podcast about why you shouldn't join the military. And I think people know about trash future. Don't really need to plug that one too hard. I will say though, kill James Bond Bond other show that I produce that I like a lot are doing three nights in a row in London August 9th 10th and 11th at Conway Hall, so it'll be a great show

Starting point is 01:06:34 They're going to be reviewing the Johnny English movies with Rowan Atkinson However, if you can't make it to London for the first time ever and this is going to be me trying to wear two hats It wants we are doing live streams of each night as well. So if you go to their website, which is killjamesbond.com and go slash live, you will see the ads for the all three, basically all six of these events, because three nights of live, so three nights of live streams. And it's 20 pounds for a live ticket, 10 pounds for a live stream. And I, cause I set up the tech specs on the live stream You can have up to 500

Starting point is 01:07:07 Thousand people watching that live stream. So I invite 500 000 people to buy tickets, please So I can afford one month of child care in switzerland But uh other than that, uh, no, that's it. Thank you so much and joe back to you I forgot we have something to plug. We are live in belfast You can check out where our tickets are available in the show notes. Buy one. Come to Belfast. Come to Belfast. We will not be subjecting my two co-hosts to sectarian violence. It'll be a night of fun. I've had to advise Joe to not wear his William of Orange costume.

Starting point is 01:07:41 I just like the colour orange. Yeah. You know, orange means a lot of things to a lot of people. Someone told me that I'm not allowed to wear a shirt with a flavored vape on it. It says the suspect device that's left 2000 dead. You have to dye your hair as well. But yeah, tickets are in description. It's our biggest show we've done to date. And if you're in Ireland, it's a bank holiday that weekend so you can make a nice trip out of it. If you're traveling and have never been to Belfast board, there's a lot of really good

Starting point is 01:08:09 tours that I'm going to put a list together and in an upcoming episode, drop it in the description. So yeah, if you're a history fan, if you like this show, we have a good holiday, come see us live and also buy our merch. Yeah, we got lots of merch to sell and we will be looking at doing some flash sales coming up pretty soon, too Look for that in announcements everywhere both, you know, Twitter on the side are on the show and then also on our discord Which you should join so you can join our community but other than that if you want to see pictures of my biceps join the Discord if you want to not see pictures of me because I'm too busy getting yelled at by a baby to post selfies anymore

Starting point is 01:08:44 I'm trying to not see pictures of me because I'm too busy getting yelled at by a baby to post selfies anymore You can do that. You can hear about me as if I didn't exist or if I've disappeared And I'm like I'm like your dad who went out to get cigarettes, and I'm never coming back. Let's see you're my dad Well, I'm not racist Nate so Everybody that is a podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and until next time memorize every name You know through a child's theme song and save people from torture sounds good to me. Bye

Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 323 -Doug Hegdahl, The Incredibly Stupid One

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