Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 343 - The Battle of Trenton

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/lionsledbydonkeys CHECK OUT THE MERCH STORE! https://llbdmerch.com/ George Washington crosses the Delaware! and then everyone's feet start bleeding. Sources: Henry Wood. The Battles of the American Revolution William Stryker. The Battles of Trenton and Princeton John Ferling. Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence Vince Hawkins. The Battle of Trenton. Military Heritage. Vol. 5, No. 5

Hey everybody, our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, at wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store. LLBDmerch.com So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something, get your order in. Once again, that is LLBDMerch.com

and the link will also Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Tom. We're revolutionary patriots of the 13 colonies. We've risen up against the British for fear of tyranny and taxation without representation. In the case of Tom, he didn't mind the taxes as much as he just hated the British. Recruiters for the Continental Army, I mean suspiciously. I quickly ease their hateful gazes by putting on my thickest Midwestern accent possible. Tom happened to find that sweet spot in early American history where Irish people were accepted,

even if he did kinda have to pretend to be a huge fan of the color orange. The recruiters quickly sign us up and issue us uniforms that are mostly just shitty rags. They do not give us shoes. We are put to the march without any training as snow begins to fall around us. Plotting through the snow barefoot, men begin to drop left and right from frostbite. But not me, blessed with the disgusting mountain hobbit feet of my ancestors My stride of pride takes me to the front of the infantry column where I see him George Washington For a moment. I hope he's impressed by me, but to the left I hear something in the bushes a voice cries out

Tell you you can't and my brains are scattered across the snow by a volley of musket fire. How you doing, buddy? Oh, man, I had the White Boy Breakfast of Champions this morning, a white chocolate Snickers protein bar and a can of White Monster. You know, we've made enough jokes about White Monster on this show that it has just become like our second unofficial drink after Old Crow. And I actually third cause now we, we've added buck fast to the lore. We do not speak of the buck fast.

It was one of those mornings where it's like, Oh, I'm going to get the train and got on the train and it was like, Oh, because this train was delayed, it won't be stopping at seven stops. So I have to get off, change train, then unfortunately get stuck in the fucking post 9am Hackney traffic. Whereas like outside the studio is just like a perfect traffic jam where I was standing waiting to get off the bus for about 10 minutes and was able to see the door of the studio. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that experience going to the TF studios and usually like the bus driver will be like, okay, I'm just going to like slightly pull

in and just let people off on the curb. But because there was like a hand rail right in front of the door, I just had to stand there. It's like, I fucking hate my life, but it's fine. You know what? It's not that cold. It's a nice day. I have a breakfast of champions in me. I accidentally broke my toilet last night My favorite memory of going to the trash future studios is I think of my first or second time Where I got off the bus of the first thing I saw was a woman shitting on the wall of the sidewalk I the first thing I saw was a woman shitting on the wall on the sidewalk. I haven't had that coming to my studio yet. It would be interesting if I did.

I'm around a lot of embassies and I feel like if someone tried to shit on the sidewalk here, the Marshesay might just murder them. I mean like, the embassies in London are really funny because like there's all of the like big fancy ones like the US and Ireland and France out where I live. You just have the North Korean embassy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I talked about how the Cambodian one is like near my house and then just like the North Korean one is maybe two tube stops away. And it's like, yeah, this makes sense that the North Korean embassies in Easton. Armenia has some funny locations for embassies.

I mean, specifically the country itself, but also in the country. My personal favorite is when getting my Dutch paperwork, there wasn't a Dutch embassy that gave visas in Armenia because the Dutch consulate was just a room in the Hilton. Um, I, I went to type in Armenian embassy in London. The first result that came up was Armenian embassy in Lebanon and it has a three and a half star review rating on Google. To be fair, that's higher than I had expected. So I had to go to Georgia in Tbilisi and the Dutch embassy was in a shopping mall. And then, I mean, the caucuses are kind of great for weird embassy locations.

And I believe it's the Thai embassy in Armenia. I might be misremembering if it's Thailand or not. Shares an office space with like a tech startup. I'm like, oh man, space with like a tech startup. I'm like, Oh man, you know that embassy sucks shit. Anyway, so we're talking about the American revolution today. Another one of those subjects. You'd think a show hosted by someone that sounds like me would probably talk

more about than we do. Yeah. It's also Christmas. Happy Christmas. This is our Christmas episode. This whole month of December, I have done my hardest to talk about things that actually happened in and around Christmas for the first, and I hope only time in the show's history.

If you are listening to this either on the early feed or on the free feed, I will have been off work. I'm off work. I am in Ireland. I am probably wrong. Please do not message me on blue sky or on discord or send a carrier pigeon because I will not answer it. Out of office is on. I will be at work. I had my one vacation for the year now back to the mines. Yeah. And in the history of the American revolution, there's a few things that stick out to us Americans. Those

story beats that no school education no matter how shitty, which is most of them ever misses. The Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Valley Forge, and of course that time on Christmas when George Washington led a bunch of cold, diseased, and starving soldiers across the Delaware river to launch a surprise attack on German mercenaries. Because today we're talking about the battle of Trenton, otherwise known as that one good thing that has ever happened in New Jersey. I mean, New Jersey gave us my chemical romance. Like I said,

the one good thing that has ever happened in New Jersey. His guys set in New Jersey, Rhode Island. Okay. I don't know the difference. Yeah. All those small Eastern seaboard states are all just a blob to me. I can't imagine the ford is could tell them apart either. We certainly can't. Yeah. It's just like looking out the window, going Peter, the horse is here. here but firstly I have to talk a bit about the background because by the winter of 1776 the American Revolution was going let's say not that great because that famous story beat of Valley Forge and the Groundbreaking new trading that the famous gay Prussian who didn't go anywhere. I thought his loyal pet dog, of course Was still over a year away. Like the Baron von Stoibin part of the American Revolution story hasn't happened yet.

Yeah. When we're getting into like, it's kind of the back arc of like an anime where they just start introducing insane characters because it's like, well, the power scaling has kind of gone off the charts. So like, how do you follow up like perfect cell? You introduce Baron von Stuyben. Yeah. It kind of like, uh, Stuyben is a DBZ character. So we're not at the point yet where we have to, too, we have to do the Dragon Ball GT thing and turn George Washington back into a child. No, we're doing Hunter Hunter stuff. like they've learned the NEN system.

That's unfair because the American Revolution was completed. Yeah, oh god. That's unfortunate. Yeah, shit sucks. I hope they get better. But American revolutionaries in the early stages of the war had achieved massive political and military success. And a lot of that was due to British fuck ups,

specifically the underestimation of these patriots and the fact that the British did not have enough men in the colonies at the time to put down such a general and decently well-organized rebellion. Yeah. Once again, just to bring back our favorite meme of small domino, big domino, small domino, this situation, big domino, the guys from knowledge fight get Alex Jones desk. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, it works. I like that. Thank you, George Washington. Leave a comment down below if you think we should buy the info wars MRAP. You know, I have a qualm with this story because it's not an MRAP. It's more of just an armored car. Okay. I don't think it's mind protected.

I might be stupid, but I'm not stupid enough to have joined the army, so this is a thing that I do not know. This is what I'm here for. Neither of us are dumb enough to work for Infowars. As time went on and the gears of the British Empire began to really turn, their strength was being mostly sent to deal with the issue, while the newly christened Americans began to deal with their own issues. Namely, they were not a country built or ready for war, or really a country at all.

Are a country like a group of people capable to do anything together? Yeah, it was a group of bickering colities who fucking hated one another they had no army They had no logistical network. No organizational structure to speak of or industrial capacity for a long drawn-out years-long war which the revolution would turn into Yeah, they don't have the most key ingredient of any war effort, which is Procurement they would eventually get it Shout out to the French for making America possible. Something the world has not gone on to deeply regret. Once again it all comes back to the French.

Most of its soldiers in the newly created Continental Army had no real formal training whatsoever. Some of them had militia training, some of their officers had British training, but as a unified body, nah. Soon everything from clothes to shoes to gunpowder began to run low, to the point that the early version of the US Navy staged an invasion of the British held Bahamas simply to steal gunpowder and keep the war going and as ridiculous as that sentence sounds it actually fucking worked. What? Yeah that's

the thing that happened. That's an episode for another time? Exactly yeah just know that that someone looked at that and said this might work and it did. Two groups of people who are just like completely not acclimatized to being in the Bahamas. There are so many diseases that they died from. I wasn't even thinking disease, just think how incredibly sunburned they all were all the time. Some guy named Jebediah discovering what humidity is for the first time. Oh God, ye old swamp baths. humidity is for the first time. Oh god, ye old swamp bass. Like you're just wearing like hemp trousers that are soggy.

The smells. Meanwhile the British were slapping together the largest invasion force that they had ever put together up until that point in their history. 24,000 men under the command of Major General William Howe invaded Long Island and in the face of such a force the Americans crumbled and the British forces advanced all the way to New Jersey before being stopped by winter and I assume disgust that being in Jersey. Jersey you're catching a lot of strays today. They're facing up against proto Tony Soprano. An occupation force dealing with like crowds of people from like Jersey Shore. Like our fake tanning machines we've run out of electricity

hey oh. Tony Soprano's just in his appointment with Dr Malfi he's like these these fucking soldiers are coming across into Jersey and they want to fucking they're trying to break up my operation I I just can, I have anxiety. And British occupation officers knowing that the key to any counterinsurgency operation in New Jersey is hearts, mines, gym, tan, and laundry. They just like show up and the Italian, all the Italians are just like,

hey, where's the fucking gobbagool? Strict gobbagool rations is what kept them loyal to the revolution. There's no Gobble Ghoul for my heart attack. It was during this campaign that Washington showed himself to be a great general, but not for any of the reasons that most people think makes a great general. He was able to preserve his force through continuous, well organized retreat rather than being crushed in battle or losing his men to a disorganized, demoralized, panic-filled route.

The joke is often put that Washington was really good at running away, which is kind of true, but it's a skill that most people don't value for some reason. Yeah, tactical cowardice is incredibly important in war. It's not cowardice. It's being smart enough to not get annihilated and keep the war going. Like if Washington committed to these battles, the revolution's dead. He would have lost. I mean, look, you know, as a lot of people will say, the original sin of man is hubris and Washington was smart enough not to fall for it. Yeah. And I mean, Washington as a person is shit, but as a military leader, he's good

in this specific. He was able to preserve his force, which is something that a lot of other generals absolutely would not have been able to do. Yeah. Great general, unfortunately had grills brackets evil. Yeah. Yeah. He had the world's most evil grill. I never thought of that. He's evil Paul Wall. God damn it. You know, there's a reason why American kids are always taught that his teeth are made out of wood. Yeah. They don't want to know the dark truth of George Paul while Washington. But just because he was good at organized withdrawal did not mean his army was on good footing. He had preserved his military to die from other reasons. Each battle and each withdrawal still cost

him men. That was combined with sickness, desertion, but probably most importantly, expiring enlistment contracts, which were all too common. Enlistment contracts at the time were normally, they were not uniform, but normally one year at the longest because Congress feared that despite the fact they're fighting an existential war effectively, because if they lost, all these dudes are going to swing from a tree, right? Yeah. They feared that the army would become permanent and far too large, eventually forming into a tool for tyranny that the government could then turn against its own people or force so strong that the government could not control it. Yeah, and that just became the police.

Yeah, but it's not the army. The Founding Fathers would be proud. Yeah, and that just became the police. Yeah, but it's not the army. The founding fathers would be proud. Yeah. Yeah, because again, we've talked about this multiple, multiple times. This is the era where the US government was intensely afraid of their own possible power and a large standing army was like the antithesis of anything they believed in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Navy, not so much because it's kind of like we've said,

it's very hard to oppress your own population with the Navy. Yeah. Most people don't live in the sea. You're like, you're, oh, I'm oppressing. Atlantis. I see you were going to oppress me, but I've defeated you by living in Oklahoma. So yeah, I heard they blew up the chicken man in Atlantic city last night. Um, but yeah, it's just like, it's really interesting at this period that there's so many kinds of like ideological counterpoints pulling against each other. It's like, Oh,

we need to fight this war, but we can't hold people for more than a year because ideologically we are opposed to like having a formal standing army where like, we're just grabbing people. Yeah. Formal standing anything really, they don't even have tax policy. Every colony is in it on its own. They're all bickering. Nobody is pooling the resources effectively because the continental Congress is rapidly realizing that forming a nation of individualist libertarians

brings some problems. Like we've talked about how like, you know, this eventually comes into a head later on in American history before, but yeah, America's going through some growing pains, mostly due to the fact that nobody wants to listen to a central government. I find it really fascinating that this kind of like, don't tread on me mentality has like almost one-to-one still survived

in so many people in the US. 100%, we're intense individualists to the point of shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, it's like all of these like kind of government apparatuses and institutions like essentially making your society function that you benefit from directly. And it's like, nah, big government, I ain't gonna pay no taxes. Just talking like fucking Dale Gribble. Although to be fair, I had a

lot of points. I was like, I'm probably more ideologically aligned with Dale Gribble than a lot of people. But I think one of the biggest problems and a lot of this has more to do with political posturing and propaganda as it exists in the modern America. But like any time the government tries to make anybody do anything, people's eyes roll to the back of their head. Flutes start playing and they start envisioning that they're in 1776 again, because any little thing is considered an infringement on their individual rights, such as, I don't know, wearing a mask or building trains.

I don't know. It's a fucking brain disease. Yeah, politically I'm Dale Gribble, but after five pints, I'm boomer. The army had so many problems that it would be easier to list the problems they didn't have. Like we already talked about the lack of structure to support the army before it was created. And we're talking specifically the Continental Army,

not the various militias. But now that it was formed, those structures sucked. For example, to fund and supply the army, each state was supposed to chip in. However, there was no enforceable law saying this is how much you must and what you must chip in. Because every state is growing different crops, maybe they have a little bit of manufacturing. So it's like, you supply uniforms, you supply food. There's no enforceable law telling them to do that. Yeah. This is the nightmare of going for dinner with like a large group of people. And someone's like, well, I didn't have a beer or I didn't have the chips. So like, I'm going to pay this man. It was like, no, you split the bill evenly.

Or you just do it the Dutch way. And everybody sends you a Tiki afterwards and I don't pay it. I am more into the in Armenia. Everybody argues over who's going to pay the totality of the bill. Yeah. Because then you, you stand up and you're like, no, no, no, I'll get it. And then when like six other people, no, no, I'll get it. You just sit back down. It's playing the real smart move. If you're the first one to stand up to say, I'm going to pay it, then you get to be the first one to sit down. Yeah, exactly. I've done my part. It's not my fault. You don't want me to pay it. Yeah. Actually, speaking of which,

there's a Georgian restaurant really near work that I really want to go to because they have the like soup dumplings and they have the Ajika. I really want to get a jar of it. Like it's kind of get a shit slaps. I know I really want to get it and I can't figure out where to buy it. I'm pretty sure this area is the place to get it, but I really want to go because there's a tick tock account that like it's just Georgian food and they'll just get all these plates like big soup dumplings, like kebab, all sorts of stuff. And I'm just like, I really want to go and have a large meat and carb heavy meal. Yeah. Yeah. You eat and then you want to die. But Georgian food is very, very good. I encourage anybody to go out and try it. I'm mostly not sure what a lot of it is called because I don't know any Georgian words really, but the food is very, very good.

So there's a lack of enforceable law and regulation meant that a lot of these states simply told the central government to go and fuck itself. We're going to keep that for our own militias. This led to soldiers living miserable, miserable existences. Described by the book To Starve the Army at Pleasure as, quote, the army offered low pay, often rotten food, hard work, cold, heat, poor clothing and shelter, harsh discipline, and a high chance of becoming a casualty. In short, most soldiers did not re-enlist if they survived their contract.

Which yeah, no shit. Yeah, doesn't really sound that appealing, not gonna lie. Yeah, like after a couple months to a year of that, fuck that. Like even if you still believe in the revolution, it's like I did my fucking part. I lost a couple of toes. I can't shit solid anymore. You know, eating so much of my boot, they're now sandals. Things were going so bad after the army was driven out of Jersey

that the British believe that the war was effectively over. General Howe issued a proclamation that he would offer a pardon out of Jersey that the British believed that the war was effectively over. General Howe issued a proclamation that he would offer a pardon to anyone who declared their allegiance to the British crown within 60 days, and a lot of people, seeing the rebellion now as a lost cause, took him up on the offer. Then to make matters worse for the rebels, Congress, which was seated in Philadelphia at the time, abandoned Philly and ran for Baltimore, fearing that their capital would fall. Also, Washington's second

command, Major General Charles Lee, got captured by the British. It was just one blow after another for Washington as winter rolled around, and those blows only stopped because Howe called off their active operations until the season was over, which was common for the day. Back in the day, campaigning in winter was considered a really fucking bad idea. Nigh on impossible. I mean, still to this day, it's a bad idea to go on it as Russia is experiencing in Ukraine. is experiencing in Ukraine. It makes everything harder. As I can attest I've never been on the quote unquote military campaign in the sense of

the term, but I have been on plenty of field training exercises, which the army seems hell-bent on always scheduling for the worst fucking months on wherever it is that you're stationed. A lot of times in the winter, anybody who's been stationed in Korea is probably nodding their head right now. It sucks ass. You will be very steadily engaging in the time honoured soldier tradition of trying to do as little work as possible. Yeah. Your overall goal just comes into try staying warm and try getting this machine that is supposed to work in the cold, but absolutely doesn't

to keep functioning. Things find unique ways of breaking. People get sick. Soldiers actually have to eat more when it's cold out because your body requires more calories, which is of course a bigger problem back then when every soldier was pretty much on the border of starvation all the time anyway. Campaigning in winter is just not a good idea. So soldiers would generally move into winter quarters until spring broke. Somehow the worst season to be caught in the woods with thousands of your friends was kind of a respite for the American army. Campaigning stopped. It allowed Washington's troops to rest and General Sullivan, who had taken over

for Lee after he was captured to limp his army over to Washington on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware river to reinforce him with 2000 men. You're doing like Guinness book of world records level homie huddle. Like you're just there like all in like a big rugby rock, just like how it's shivering trying to keep warm. Yeah, yeah, I have done that. I have shared a sleeping bag with another man to stay warm. Being in the field in winter sucks ass, and that is when I had like this scientifically designed arctic sleeping bag that was warm, but not warm enough. Now imagine just have some like shitty wool blankets with holes in them and hopefully a fire.

You know, there should be a role in the army. Like you don't fight in combat, you know, you're not really in much danger. You just get to be a fat guy and your job is to get in the sleeping bag and keep other people warm. Yeah, you're just good at hugging. This is how we solve the incel problem of the where's my hug guys. Oh no, I don't want to share a sleeping bag with that guy. Mandatory drafting and you have to just like spend 12 months in the field hugging the homies, staying warm.

Hmm, I'll take it. I hate being cold in the field. I'm good at being cold because I grew up in Michigan, hate being cold in the field. I'm good at being cold because I grew up in Michigan, but being cold in the field in the military is just awful. Yeah. It's bad enough. You're already in the army. Yeah. Your life already sucks. Now it's, now it sucks and it's cold. Yeah. And what's better than being in a freezing forest in the 17 seventies with thousands of your homies huddled together.

Yeah. Everybody's coughing up horrible diseases on one another. You're all just like oozing onto each other from all your like boils and shit you've got going on. But would the ooze be warm? Because you know if you piss yourself if you're cold, your piss eventually gets cold. And then you smell like piss. They already smell worse than piss, it's fine. Yeah, true.

At this point one of them gets you a brick in their pants and nobody's gonna notice. Just shit in their pantaloons which probably already have a hole in them so the turd can just drop out. And it just like, it's like those videos of like people in Siberia throwing like pans of water, it's like frozen before it hits the ground. Yeah, if someone pissed on themselves they would just die from the resulting frostbite. So I feel like the ooze is a better option. Have you kept yourself warm with the ooze? Write into the show and let us know. Have you used the ooze of another man to stay warm? Actually no, don't send us in that, that's gonna invite too many weird questions. Kept my lower back very warm, I don't know.

Is that where you had that lower back tattoo of Texas? I mean, it only keeps my lower back or my stomach warm. The rest of you is really cold. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Have you been stuck in the field cold with thousands of your homies? Consider busting. Have you considered the ooze of your homies? Yeah, oozing with the homies. I mean, that's just literally any portable toilet in any theatre of war today.

That's true. I assume they had a slit trench, some kind of ye olde barrier around it, which acts as the jackshack. I'm not sure. Revolutionary war veterans send me an email. But you know, there was like one really annoying guy because in any large enough group of guys, there is this one. And he's just like, he's cut off the lower part of his trousers and he's essentially in shorts. And he's like, no, I'm not that cold. It's actually fine. Shorts and a hoodie, the Midwest winter uniform.

I'm from, I'm from the Boston regiment. Some guy had a fucking red socks hoodie. It's just a dude who looks exactly like shocks. He's like, I don't know what you're complaining about. It's not that cold. Yep. Yep. Or if one guy had managed to filter up from Texas somehow, it's like God army tradition. There's gotta be one guy from fucking Texas. But anyway, Washington now had around 6,000 men, but they were cold, they were hungry, they're sick, they're miserable, they're dropping left and right from disease. Washington also knew that by the turn of the year, January, at least half of the men's enlistment contracts would expire and they'd immediately just go home. It was around this point that Thomas Paine penned the famous pamphlet titled The American Crisis where he wrote quote

these are the times that trim in souls the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service to his country but he that stands it now deserves a love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. And I have to admit that slaps. We gotta give it to Thomas Paine. He could write some bars. Yeah, Thomas Paine is just like like saying don't be a pussy yeah yeah translated for 2024 cut it out the words of Thomas pain are used by a lot of fucked up people these days but you gotta admit the man spit some

bars also he would fucking hate the dudes who paired up nowadays for sure mmm Washington thought that this pamphlet was so god damn motivational, he ordered enough copies for his entire army to read. Even though a lot of the people in his army couldn't actually read, he made sure that they all had it, and it was read in groups. He's doing a corporal sending his enlisted men like motivational Instagram reels. He's like sending you David Goggins reels. Oh God. Uh, that, that reminds me. I saw some YouTube video of some, uh,

some guy who tried to recreate David Goggins, uh, morning routine. Yeah. And all he did is vomit a lot and nearly give himself rhabdomyelitis. Yeah. Do you know how you do the David Goggins routine? Blast gear. Well, lie and do gear. Yeah, yeah. Lie in more than one way. Yeah. Washington knew he had to go on the attack. Despite the fact it was winter, he had to act while he still had all these soldiers

in uniform. It also had the benefit of, because it was winter, that British wouldn't be expecting it. His army and baby little government had gotten their teeth kicked in for the last few months. He also knew they needed a victory. He hoped such a victory would breathe some life into the revolution, and most importantly, probably, give his dying army something to rally around, give some good news, and possibly convince some people to re-enlist and failing that, others to enlist at all. Hey kid, you on an iPod?

Yeah, at least my re-enlistment motivation was like a huge cash bonus. Hey, you're 21, have a massive down payment on a car and are already divorced, what else you gonna do? When I enlisted, my first contract was for three years, which meant I would only be 20 when my first contract ran out. This also happened to be around the time the entire world economy collapsed into recession. And that was like, you know what? And I had no plans, dude.

I hadn't even applied for a college. I was like, maybe I should read list. I don't feel like 2000 2008 9 is that good time to just float out into society, you know without any real goals or plans Yeah, I was 12 My back hurts But right from the get-go Washington's plan ran into some problems He knew he wanted to attack the Brits in Jersey but he lacked any intelligence in the area due to the fact New Jerseyans, I'm not sure if that's what you guys call yourself, go with

New Jerseyans. New New Joye-sians. Yeah nailed it. Quickly flipped into being die-hard loyalists as soon as the Revolutionary Army retreated. Hey they promised me the fucking gubaboo and the mozzarella, you know, I need my mozzarella as the Revolutionary Army retreated. He was also worried that these same loyalists would spoil any plans he might cook up, but Washington was on a time crunch, so he had to think of a way around this. Where his camp was, was chosen for its ease of defense. He could rely on the river to act as a natural barrier and had made things much harder for the Brits by seizing every boat he could and dragging

them over to his side of the river. But as winter progressed, the river would freeze and if the Brits really wanted to, they could simply walk right over it. So he would have to act before this happened. Enter a rebel double agent named John Honeyman. Sick name. Very sticky. Oh, this is like fucking John Grisham levels of intelligence. It's like a Kojima ass name. No, no. If it was Kojima, it'd be John Trayderman. John Patriot Traydor.

Yeah, yeah. Honeyman was born in, wait for it, Armagh, Ireland. Of course, of course. He had previously served with the British army fighting at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, actually, which we've done an episode about. Oh, an Irishman from Armagh fighting for the Brits, I can tell where he came from. Yeah, but he was now a loyal revolutionary. He turned into one hell of a priceless spy as the British trusted him completely due to his previous military service. Washington sent honey men to Trenton to pretend to be a loyalist, and Washington held them as an asset so closely he didn't tell a single

other person about him. Which will bring some unique problems to Honeyman's life later down the line, but we'll get there. Instead he would pass orders to Honeyman and then just send him out into the wild. When Honeyman was to report in, he was simply to wander close to the revolutionary camp so the scouts would then arrest him and bring him to Washington, because the scouts didn't know he was a spy. Washington was always kinda worried that his men might just shoot him. He didn't tell Honeyman about that, he just kinda held that one close to the chest. How either Ridley Scott or Michael Bay hasn't made this into a movie. I don't know not enough explosions for Michael Bay

Yeah, or a way to shoehorn and Megan Fox. Yeah make John Honeyman a transformer This winter the hottest movie an ulster transformer Ulster transformer from the mind behind gladiator. It's honey, man Transformer from the mind behind gladiator. It's honey man. Prepare to get sugar. I said she he was honey trapping. Like he was honey potting the loyalists. What would a transformer look like storming down the shank Hill road? The people of the Shanko road have been made aware of this transformer called honey man. We have only recently gotten rid of Bumblebee, and now we must face down the Honeyman. I know the loyalists on the Shankill Road would hate the movie version of Bumblebee

for a very specific reason I won't go into. The people of the Shankill Road are looking at Mr. Honeyman, and they see while he may be orange, he bleeds green. We have sent out our finest agent, Johnny Mad Dogadare. Oh, God. God, I'm just reminding of when we were at Belfast and everybody was like mad dogging this shit out of me when we're on the loyalist side of town because I had accidentally worn a green sweater. Yeah. We were outside the Rex bar and an old man in his fucking 70s slowed down and rolled down his window to look at you.

Yeah, despite the fact I'm standing next to two people with thick Irish accents, they zoom in on me. The loudest most American sounding person on earth. They probably assumed I was like, I don't know, an Irish American. Either way I was wearing a green jumper. I was about to get kneecapped by grandpa. So anyway, the scouts arrest Honeyman, they drag him back to Washington headquarters for

questioning and Washington tells everybody, look, get out, this guy's a loyalist spy, I'm going to personally interrogate him. So everybody leaves the room. Honeymen while working in Trenton had worked his way into the good graces of the Hessians who were the local hired German mercenary garrison. Now, I do need to point out the Hessians were not technically mercenaries. They were considered auxiliaries. They were soldiers of German states. But they had been hired out by their state to the British crown for a paycheck. They're accurately, kind of unaccurately discreet. They're a weird gray area mercenary type deal. They were normally from poor German states that would then rent their soldiers out to a third party to fight in their wars,

as long as it didn't involve their interests. The state would get paid, the soldiers would get paid. So instead of being rented out by a CEO like Erik Prinz, they would be rented out by Prince Erik. Yes, you know, a lot of people, they are saying that our group are like the Wagner group, but no, we are directly working for the German state because we believe in strong social protection, our paycheck is guaranteed for the German state because we believe in strong social protection our paycheck is guaranteed by the German state. We are just being paid by the British government.

Yeah, it's totally different. Functionally it's the same thing. American rebels in the Congress openly called them mercenaries and in their list of complaints to the Crown in the Declaration of Independence called the mercenaries there too. People fucking hated them. While working as the Hessians' personal butcher, Honeyman had gotten an exact layout of the camp and the men's strength there. He also told Washington the Hessians were planning a fucking massive party on Christmas.

Once Washington got the intel, he couldn't just let the spy go because then he wouldn't be able to go and do his job. So he staged a full breakout with another one of Washington's agents who weren't, wasn't aware of Honeyman's status, but just knew that he needed him to do this thing. So Washington had the other agent set a fire on the other side of the camp where everyone would run over to try to put it out so that Honeyman could break out of his unlocked jail cell and scamper back to the Hessians.

Ugh. Once he got back to Trenton, he requested an audience to the Hessian commander, a guy named Colonel Johann Rall. Rall was a battle-hardened veteran of multiple European wars and had served in the military of Hess Castle since he was a teenager.

He was considered a good officer in the Germanic sense of the word, that being he was a brutal disciplinarian asshole who treated his soldiers like shit, leading to all of them hating his guts, in the normal German way. He was also a loudmouth drunk who barely understood English, so he always needed a translator with him. Once granted an audience, Honeyman told Rall about how he had just been captured, got an up-close look at the rebel camp, and they were diseased, they're starving, they're weak, and there's no way they could launch an attack on him. Which to be fair was actually kind of a true assessment in many ways of Washington soldiers

at the time. This only reinforced Raul's belief that the rebels were inferior soldiers who stood no chance against his Germans. For that reason, he didn't even order his men to build any defensive networks, no palisades, no bunk, nothing. They were just standing in the open or in buildings, despite standing orders from British General Howe to do so in all winter quarters for his army. Raul wasn't the only person who didn't think much of the rebels.

During the winter, Washington scouts constantly harassed the Hessian picket forces in a kind of simmering guerrilla winter war. And Raul eventually got sick of this. His casualties were piling up. He had to put more and more men on guard duty. So he requested reinforcements from the British. Those reinforcements was denied because the British thought, well, the rebels can't be doing that much damage. So they just left the Germans on their own. I assume the scouting party is doing like kind of running gun tactics, like on attacking patrols or kind of not necessarily

directing directly attacking bases, but more so like picking off people when they can. Yeah. I guess skirmishing would be an accurate term or the Jersey tradition of the drive by shooting. Except it's on a horseback, you know, on December 24th Washington ordered all of his officers to gather into a war council, where he shocked them all with a detailed, perfect layout of Trenton. Exact Hessian troop placements, where their guard posts were, everything. Weirdly, no one seemed to question where he got this from, because Honeyman had been such

a good spy for Washington and various other points, that this just kept happening. They're like, oh, Washington just knows all of these things. They just kind of went with it. Yeah. And then Washington pitched his plan, which involved packing 2400 men into small boats, crossing the Delaware River in the middle of the freezing night and attacking at three different points. One, a distraction attack to the north. The other was

to go around and capture a bridge, cutting off the Hessian route of retreat, and the main thrust directly at Trenton itself, which would be commanded by George Washington personally. Washington ordered complete and total secrecy on the operation. Nobody outside that room, his high command, was ever supposed to know all the details, so it didn't leak out. But that didn't mean it worked. For an army in the thousands, a certain amount of supplies would be needed, meaning eventually loyalists in the area would notice something like, hey, they're gathering a ton of food for some reason which normally only means one thing. There's also plenty of deserters running from American lines on a daily basis. These deserters were often

rounded up by Hessian scouts, and then they would tell the Hessians anything and everything they knew to avoid being put up against the wall and shot. So many deserters went to Rall that eventually he had pretty much pieced together the entire attack plan Washington was cooking up. Yeah. Including one officer who ran and brought with him literally a detailed point by point plan with the exact date and time of the attack. Raul ignored all of this.

Oh, yeah. Great move ignoring tactical information that's given to you by deserters who probably will be quite reliable. He thought they might be spies, which is funny because he never once suspected honey men. You ask the man who makes these sublime cuts of beef, he cannot be a spy. He must be trustworthy. He makes such good smoked sausage. Meanwhile Washington was gathering so many boats to make the crossing that he was forced

to pull in just about anyone from the immediate area to navigate the river. From local fishermen to boat builders to locals to even dudes in his army. Like, hey, we know you're like a private infantryman with no shoes, but now you're a boat pilot. He ordered every man to take three days worth of food and ammo and that everyone in his army be armed with a musket, which probably sounds weird, but normally officers and musicians went unarmed or officers would carry a sword or a pistol. But now across the board, everybody's carrying a musket, though nobody was told why. Orders required a strict timetable, kinda like notorious timetabled war of WWI.

Namely everyone needed to be loaded up on boats at a very specific time, 6pm, so they could use the darkness to conceal their crossing, but not be caught so late that they'd be freezing their asses off in the river and on the other shore. Washington had given command of the crossing over to a guy named Henry Knox while he himself was one of the first people on the boats. Now organizing this crossing was a fucking nightmare. I could have fucking imagined so. You're after like press ganging fishermen in.

It's the middle of the night. Everyone is freezing their ass off everyone's like diseased cold hypothermia remember a lot of them don't even have shoes. Yeah you've eaten your shoes you're just wearing your your leather flip-flops now. Knox ran around forced to like whisper orders to these thousands of men trying to urge them, shoving them onto boats. Everybody's freezing and terrified of the water because most of them couldn't swim, and even if they could, falling into this river in December meant certain death from either the current or the immediate

hypothermia and shock you would suffer. Then he had to manage to push the fucking horses onto the boats, multiple pieces of artillery, all under an order of silence because things tend to carry in night. And remember it's 1700s. There's no ambient noise. Yeah. It's like, okay, you're just doing military charades at this point. Holding up flip cards like an early 2000s YouTube video. You're showing up horse flashcards for it to not winny and you know the horses They're all double agents for the fucking British. Yeah, and trust them. Mm-hmm. Then when the crossings began

Everything got worse because it began to rain which sucks if there's anything worse than being cold It's being cold and wet. Yeah, Jesus your homy huddle on the boat is now getting so. Yeah, not the moist mass. Oh, moist mass of smelly war of independence troops. Yeah, that's pungent. Everyone is shitting out the poo flap. They're putting it. It's falling. It's freezing midair and punching holes in the boat.

The poopsicles are deadly. I mean, it'd be more like a shotgun with ice because like no one's taking a solid shit. Yeah, it's like if someone puts rock salt in a shotgun Most of these soldiers weren't dressed for the December weather simply because the army had no clothes to give them Which made everything suck worse, but they they certainly had no clothing for wet weather. They had, you know, sopping wet rags, hindered their feet instead of boots. Everybody's getting soaked through to the bone. And then as if that wasn't bad enough, the rain turned into a storm of hail and sleet.

Oh, no. Our anal grenadiers are going to not going to be efficiently be able to shoot out shit buckshot out of their ass at the enemy. Noon band name, anal grenadiers are not going to be officially be able to shoot out shit buckshot out of their ass at the enemy. Noon band name, anal grenadier. Probably already exists. True. One soldier compared the gale force winds to that of a hurricane. Then there was the river itself.

Its current was already strong, but that was made worse by the shitty weather and rain, which was also made worse by blocks of ice that had broken off from the part that had already started freezing and were not flying down the river towards the boats, pushed quickly enough by the current that if they hit one of the boats, it would probably fucking sink them. God, yeah. Being a soldier is never good, but like being on a boat, you're like oozing goo. You don't have your shoes on, you're freezing cold, soaking wet. And now like a ice sheet is just flying at you like a ballistic tur- like a massive, um, torpedo. I'm just like, fuck me. I should have just stayed on the fucking apple farm.

Oh no, my goo. What if we made Contra, ice, and also real life? Yeah, Jesus. So soldiers were forced to stay at the edges of the boat with their paddles, and as they paddled they'd have to swat away river-bored icebergs, lest they die. The entire crossing was only supposed to take a few hours, but instead took nearly 12, with the last of the forces making it to the other side at 3 a.m Then it took another hour to get everyone off the boats in formation and ready to march Yeah, but that was only Washington's central attack. Remember there are two other crossings General Ewing was supposed to cross to the south of Trenton But the entire thing had to be called off because there's so much ice in the river.

And he was afraid that all of his men would die, probably a correct call. The third crossing was also bought when the artillery support nearly ended up sinking and had to go back to shore, leaving the infantry alone on the other side. So the men who crossed were forced to cross again when their advance was called off and it was abandoned. So now Washington's force was completely on its own. Oh, this is going swimmingly so far. Well, swimmingly is part of the problem. Washington was now across the river on the morning of December 26th, and would have to modify his plan

without the other two landings. He split his force in half, one under his command and the other under the command of General Nathaniel Green. From there, they took two different roads to Trenton, ensuring they could hit the town from two directions. And as they got closer, they ran into zero resistance. The reason for that is because on Christmas night, the Hessians had thrown a fucking rager.

Aw hell yeah! Soldiers and officers alike had gotten blind drunk, trashed, and confident that the Americans would and could never attack them. Rall and his fellow commanders had spent the night in the home of the Trenton postmaster guy named Abraham Hunt, who was, you guessed it, also a rebel asset. Hunt made sure to take the entire night feeding them drink after drink until they were good and fucked up, blacking out on his living room floor. God, that, like I've woken up with a lot of hangovers on the 26th of December, but never the like having this level of fear. Waking up to musket fire like God, do I drink so much and go back in time?

Just getting so drunk you time travel. I mean, I think that's what happened at the Belfast live show. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what part of time I transported into but You transport it out of time We're now up or podcasting in the fourth dimension. Whatever timeline it's on needs to be exterminated Another funny thing happened to the rebel army on the march. They were spontaneously joined by reinforcements Civilians in the surrounding area saw them walking by, grabbed their guns they had at

home and just joined them. Another 50 militiamen appeared, and both sides were surprised to see the other, because the militiamen had no idea about the attack and had just been returning from ambushing a different Hessian outpost. So they said fuck it and threw their lot in with Washington. Other civilians ran out to offer food and clothing to the soldiers after seeing the state that they were in. They were ragged to the point that many of the soldiers were bleeding from their feet so heavily that Washington's army left a noticeable snail trail of blood in

their wake. Oh God. I do also have to say is that like, yes, I know because I can feel the person, someone to type in comments. Yes, I know there is historical conjecture about whether the Hessians got really drunk on Christmas day or not. I, this isn't my area of history. There is competing sides of the story. Some insist that they weren't drunk. They were merely, I don't know, hoisted by their own hubris, but hard in a way. And Washington's masterful attack and surprise is what won the day. The other part is it's a combination of those things where Washington's attack was always

going to be a surprise. And it was simply helped by the fact the Hessians were a bit hungover. Yeah, I agree with the idea that most of the Hessians were probably not blind drunk, but they did stay up late, they did drink, many of them were probably dealing with a hangover, while the story about Raul himself getting fucked up is almost certainly true, as well as Washington did surprise them, as well as the Hessians thought so little of the revolutionaries. They did believe they could get blind drunk to the middle of a fucking war zone and nothing bad would happen to them. Yeah. Like, and also I think regardless of the kind of evidential conjecture, like the

idea of like, no, Washington was such a good general. The attack was such a surprise, such a good tactics. I think that is a bit of American and exceptionalism in the hagiography of this battle. But for sure. I think that's a little bit of a spice on top. And it's, it's eliminating the realities of soldiers in winter quarters. Yeah. Soldiers in winter quarters were never really on the lookout for an enemy offensive. The concept that they would be soldiers and get fucking annihilated on a Christmas day is very, very accurate. Washington soldiers probably would have done that if they were not on the march. Yeah. Very, very common. I mean, drinking in the military is as old as the military itself. Soldiers are going to be soldiers and it was common on the holidays to get

fucked up, especially when it happens that you're off. You're a commanding officer. Is it alcoholic? Yeah. You're, you know, you're drinking, you're in the jerk and off trench, you know, you're whacking it. You're a, you're, you're celebrating to things that are warm somehow. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, you're trying to like trying to like how you lie a fire with a piece of wood. You're just trying to do that with your own wood. Yeah, for sure. Traditions are important. Yeah. Military tradition is sacrosanct. Now during Washington's March, two men did just drop dead from the cold.

This could have been cold combined with whatever fucking diseases they were already carrying. Yeah. Two, two dudes hit the cold. This could have been cold combined with whatever fucking diseases they were already carrying. Yeah, two dudes hit the dirt. Washington was forced to ride up and down the length of his army encouraging them to keep walking. When an officer warned Washington that the weather had gotten his men's gunpowder wet and therefore making their muskets possibly useless, Washington simply shrugged and told them, we'll use your bayonets then. The Hessians had a few outposts scattered throughout this area who were not blind drug, they were on duty, they were not allowed to drink, and they did their job. They ran back towards

Trenton. They didn't put up a fight. I mean, they're a picket. Their job is to, oh God, there's the enemy, run. How annoyed would you be being a soldier posted to guard duty on Christmas day and everyone else is drinking? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot like when you get invited to a party and you, for whatever reason, you show up way too late and you can tell from the wreckage in said party, like, man, I fucking missed a good one. Yep. So they ran back to Trenton.

They warn everyone like, holy shit, the rebels are coming. People start stumbling out. But again, due to a combination of surprise, fast marching, and a little bit hazy drunkenness slash being hung over, the Hessians were slow to react. Raul's second in command, who was undoubtedly sober, ordered them into Rally and effectively took command away from Raul because Raul was out of it, whether he was hungover or still drunk or simply didn't believe it was happening. But by the time Hessian lines began to be formed, the rebels were already in Trenton itself.

Then, depending on which side of the story you read on, this is when someone tries to wake up Raul. Up until now, they had seemingly left him alone because, more importantly than him being drunk, his men hated him because he was a violent asshole. Like they knew that he was, you know, very, very heavy on like, why the fuck are you coming in here? And then like hitting people. Once again, military tradition is sacrosanct. And he was in the postmaster's house on account of we have the written testimony of Hunt himself.

So we do know that Raul was fucked up. Raul was a hot couch guy. He was hot couching. So whether he was slow to react or maybe his own soldiers were afraid to go wake him up, one or the other, Rall stumbles out of the postmaster's house just in time for American artillery to begin slamming into his men and rapidly turning their insides into outsides. He ordered some of his forces to charge and try to seize the American artillery only to discover then that the rebels had already taken up position inside the town,

inside the town's building, kind of turning Trenton into block houses. They also formed a protected firing line down the length of the street on either side in the building and then on the top, effectively creating a peninsula of doom. Oh I hate to be on the peninsula of doom. Yeah we just call that Michigan normally. So Raul ordered his men to withdraw from Trenton and reform in an open field outside so they'd have more of a position to plan a counter attack.

However Washington immediately ordered a bayonet charge, as Raul's forces were withdrawing to reform. And this is when Raul's regiments ran into the same problem that Washington's had. Their gunpowder had been followed by the weather. As the Hessians pulled back, the rebels and civilians alike ran forward to steal their shit, turning their own abandoned artillery on them. In the face of all this, Raul ordered his men to advance and try to retake the town before he was just caught out in the open in the freezing cold. He had the band whip up some sick beats to rally their spirits, and that didn't seem to work.

You're just like Washington's men, marching up and all you hear is just like schlager music getting further and further away from you. Just accordions. See, that's probably one of the reasons why all of the civilians in town and the surrounding area joined Washington's efforts to murder the Hessians. We're fucking sick of their goddamn Oompa music. It's gotta go. OOMPA OOMPA OOMPA OOMPA I just hear accordions like in the distance. I don't know what dying sounds like while holding an accordion, just a musket ball slamming through someone's chest that the only thing you hear is shrieks of pain translated through

an accordion. WAAA WAAA WAAA WAAA an accordion player has to play one last tune before they die, or they don't go into the accordion version of heaven? Like the accordion version of the Shahada? I was gonna say it sounded a bit like a primordial version of like the band played Walsing Matilda, but... Dying German soldiers accidentally inventing ska. As Rall's men advanced, fewer and fewer of their weapons worked due to the wet weather. Others were blown to pieces by artillery, or shot to hell by the still functioning Rebel Muskets.

Raul himself was cut down in the attack, catching a musket ball in the hip, which is pretty much a death sentence. At any point a musket ball hits you, you have like a 99% chance of dying, because the medical care meant to save your life will also kill you. As he lay dying in the snow, he happened to have a letter in his pocket, that same one the deserter had given him, telling him every single detail of Washington's attack. Bro, you'd be so pissed off.

Other dead Germans at the afterlife were going to be roasting the shit out of him. With their commander dying, the rest of the Hessians broke and ran for it. Seeing them hoofing it through the snow, Washington led a counterattack personally, taking the field and finding Rall on Death's door just enough time to accept his surrender personally. And then Rall died. Washington just starts tea bagging him like it's Halo 3. Now men we must give them the most honorable death. Release your ballsack.

He draws his sword and he's like doop doop doop doop. Not a lot of people know that's the origin of tea bagging. The rest of the Hessian forest tried to run for a nearby orchard, only to find themselves surrounded. They were offered terms of surrender, which they quickly accepted. This legendary battle that everyone in the US learns about wasn't exactly a bloody one. Only 20 Hessians were killed, and no Americans were killed in direct combat. Those two guys dropped dead from the cold beforehand, and you know, maybe 20 or so were wounded, including future President James Monroe, who was nearly killed.

Though the eventual American death toll from the battle, simply from exposure and illness, would be higher than the German one in the coming days and weeks, so we did it! I mean, occupational hazard, really? Yeah, for sure. I mean, back then, all the way up until the modern day, significantly more soldiers would die from exposure or illness than combat. And this is just another example of that. Also a good example of why most armies did not campaign in winter. This is a very short campaign. They just went to Trenton from where they were and they still dropped dozens of dudes

from exposure and sickness. The rebels were able to capture on a thousand Hessian prisoners, but more importantly, their entire supply cache, which was badly needed in their camp. Washington hoped to carry out the attack into Princeton, but the rest of the crossings failed, so he's forced to pack up his shit and return to his original camp in Pennsylvania. There's another thing that happened after this battle though, and that brings us back to the fate of John Honeyman and his family, because they nearly got fucking lynched. Due to Washington keeping his identity a complete and total secret, even from his

own close advisors, word eventually got out about the notorious loyalist spy John Honeyman, a story which Washington purposefully propagated to make him even more popular to the British, to make him seem like a super spy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After the victory at Trenton, he was a wanted man and the rebels went searching for him but found his family home. This turned into more of an angry mob situation as they surrounded the Honeyman family house and prepared to burn it down with his wife and children inside.

Jesus. John was not there. That is when John's wife ran out to confront the mom armed with a letter. The letter had been written personally by George Washington, addressed to the good people of New Jersey and to others whom it may concern. The letter said that no harm was to come to Honeyman's family, not because Honeyman worked for him, but rather they had nothing to do with, quote, John Honeyman's treasonous activities to the British crowns. Washington was still protecting his identity because Honeyman was still at work and fun fact Washington would always protect that identity. It wasn't

until years later that Washington personally visited Honeyman and his family years after the end the war while he's president of the United States And because Honeyman never told anyone even his own wife who thought her husband Was a fucking traitor for all of these years. He never said shit to anyone his life was threatened multiple times His family's life was threatened multiple times, his family's life was threatened multiple times. They were pretty much penniless due to nobody wanting to do business with them or hire him for work. And only then when Washington showed up, President George Washington showed up to his front door and told everyone, Honeyman was actually a patriot. He was an agent in my intelligence network,

the best agent in all of the colonies, and holy shit did Honeyman probably call it a lot of fucking favors that day. God, it's the first time you relax in like years. Imagine that guy that everybody was like thinking was a loyalist on the block is actually a close personal friend of the president of the United States. Yeah, just Barack Obama showing up to your house like, my fellow Americans. Now let me be, let me make this clear.

Now let me make this clear. John Honeyman is a proud patriot. Which is why I will not be giving him a pension, but rather, I will give his son a pension when he opens a business in a underutilized neighborhood. The end. That is the story of the Battle of Trenton. The battle that all of you probably mostly just know from that one painting. Yes, the crossing of the Delaware. Great painting. Now, Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

You can ask us a question on Patreon or on our Discord, which you'll also have access to as a supporter and we have a channel on there for that. Or you can give the letter to John Honeyman who will rise from the grave and deliver it to us and never tell his family about it he's very discreet. We're haunted by the ghost of John Honeyman. The only ulster transformer. There are honey men everywhere for those for eyes to see. So today's question is what is something you plan to do for this podcast or another podcast that you work on that just simply didn't work out? Oh, you go first. I have to think of this. I have a good one. So years ago, before Tom was working with us, we did an episode on the Pepsi Navy where the Soviets traded a bunch of junked out warships for Pepsi to scrap in exchange

for a bottling factory and the recipe for Pepsi. At the end of that show I wrote a little drama piece about like what would happen if other soda brands had military capabilities and kind of a soda-pepsi war type situation. We're getting Dr. Piper Boko Haram., pretty much. Shit like that. Or like, you know, Fago controlled Detroit and stuff like that. Robocop just has Fago stickers on them. Yeah. And so then I got an idea to create an entire audio drama of like me playing a news anchor. And then I would have small pieces that other podcast hosts I would beg and and and bother Because shows are very big back then and I didn't know any of these people to make their own like dispatches from the soda war front

like Francis gave me a sweet sweet Francis gave me the time of the day and wrote a dispatch as like the Sweet Sweet Francis gave me the time of the day and wrote a dispatch as like the Juggalo cavalry fighting in the streets of Detroit for the glories of Fago. What about the Mogue militia? Where what's Mogue root beer sponsoring? I mean, I feel like this is a warlord situation. They're all fighting on, uh, you know, and also a lot of them breathe the road by like Coke or Pepsi. So we'd have to, you know, come up with a civil war type situation. I

had a few other guys sign up to do something, but then it never just came to be. It was only me, Nick and Nate working on the show. And I don't think Nate really signed up to piece together and produce a full fucking audio drama based on a bullshit soda war. It's literally what I do. Yeah. And I didn't know enough people to really make it a reality at the time. So I had a couple of recordings and then it just fell apart. Uh, that was probably five or six years ago. It's time to revive it. I want to hear why the CEO of Arizona IST is following the teachings

of Deng Xiaoping. Well, it's cause the price is on the can. Yeah, exactly. He's keeping the price low. We want people to have a quality product. What's more Dengist than that? And I mean, I would love to revisit it at some point. It's a delightfully stupid fucking idea.

I feel like enough people will actually answer my emails now. No, honestly, what you can do, if you are a fellow podcaster who listens to this show, message like probably me on blue sky, just got it at guy knees on blue sky, I will coordinate it. Yeah. I would still love to take a swing at that because it was probably my favorite dumb idea that we came up with and fell away because we've come up with a lot of worse ideas since then that we actually recorded, like all the times we've read porn. Yeah, those are great ideas.

Oh, they're horrible. I mean, I'm not saying they were funny, but like terrible, terrible ideas. That's probably the only one I can think of. I know Nick and I kind of spitballed the possibility of a live show years and years and years ago, but we were alone in the Pacific Northwest. We don't know the first thing about live shows, venues, equipment. I mean, to be fair, I still don't, but now I have you guys for that. Mr. Eyebottom MacBook Pro with no fucking USB ports.

Leave me alone, all right? I just write the scripts and I talk into a microphone, which I had to be told which exact microphone cables and bike arm to buy from one of you. I don't remember. Dear listener, I get at least one text a month from Joe of some sort of technical question that I have to look at for about 15 seconds before I answer it because like I can't believe I'm being asked this. Hey, we all have our place here in the show. But yeah, that's the dumbest idea I could think of. Obviously the live show in the Pacific

Northwest didn't work out also because like nobody listened to us back then. Yeah. But that's an idea. I definitely like to revisit. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I think a lot of the ideas that I've had for this show, I've actually ended to revisit. Yeah, like I don't know. I think a lot of the ideas that I've had for this show, I've actually ended up executing. Like obviously the first thing was the series on the troubles and then like live shows, merch, that sort of stuff. We definitely have the ability to make dumb ideas a reality now. Yeah. Because you've hired the dumbest person possible. AKA me. I had no choice. I had to find someone that would take the dumb shit I say and turn them into something else. Nate is more of the dad. He's the one that talks us down from our dumb

ideas. We all have our place, you know? Yeah. Like honestly, I generally, when I have like stupid ideas for work, I kind of follow through with them because it's like live shows, merch. I'm going to Peru in a couple of months for beneath the skin to make a documentary over there. Um, but other than that, like honestly, I, I leave a lot of stuff on the counter room floor in terms of like ideas I have, not because they're too stupid to execute, but it's more so like the feasibility of them. Like we have been toying with the idea of doing the final episode of lines up by Robot about G Gundam live. But the problem

is with that is like stuff like copyright and trying to figure that out. And we wouldn't be able to show the whole episode. Maybe. I mean we fully could because we showed the entirety of robot jocks before the Belfast show. Well it's because canonically we own that now. Yes, we own robot jocks. Yeah, like honestly I can't really think of anything that like I just like wasn't feasibly able to do. It was more so just like maybe it's

not a right now type thing. I'm not, I don't want to show my hand because like I have a little book of ideas that I keep on my desk and when I have them, I just write them down and a lot of them I kind of revisit. Um, like the doing the show on Belfast and the Tato shirts, which are now available on our webshop, LLBD merch dot com. I'm wearing one right now. Yeah. It's stained with buck fats. Yeah. It's just like stuff that I'll keep in my back pocket and kind of revisit. I am doing the series on Shining Path in the new year at some stage. So that might go disastrously wrong. I might end up being put, chopped up

and in a barrel melting. But I don't know. I think that like some of the ideas I used to think were impossible, I don't really have that barrier anymore. And I probably have like you two to think for that because you effectively forced me into into doing our first live shows in London. Yeah. Because I was like, oh, I mean, part of it is just nervousness. Yeah. I've sat in front of some crowds before, mostly for like panels about either my previous work or writing and my books, but never nearly 200 people.

Yeah. Two nights in a row. And I didn't think that like that was a possibility that like who would want to come and see us live and it turns out hundreds of people do. Yeah. The fact that like people fly from the US to Europe to come see us is like shocking. And that's definitely helped make me realize that like, no, this, the show is popular to the point that we can do a lot of stuff as a show that we couldn't do before.

And for me personally, my abilities of writing and researching have gotten much better. And how to turn some things into more of a narrative structure, which is very difficult in some series has gotten better to the point. I'm planning a series that I never actually thought I was going to be able to do in a narrative way. I would like to do in 2025, we always do one of our bleak, bleak, horrible series. In 2024, certainly Rwanda 2025, I would like to do the Armenian genocide, which I never actually thought I'd be able to do. Obviously I've studied it a lot, but you know, it's a big series. There's a lot of moving parts. It's grim as fuck. But like

we always said, we never really shy away from those things because people need to learn about them. But it's just one of those things. It's kind of like, you know, we did Stalingrad before it's like one of these big battles. I never thought I would cover it because it's just so much to it. And then I remember like our first big series was fucking seven hours on the Soviets in Afghanistan. So here we are. I am no longer restricted by the boundaries of stupidity based on the fact that we read pornography twice on the podcast. Twice. But yeah, like honestly, I suppose it's Christmas. I want to thank like all of you for listening

and like supporting the show in whatever way you can, whether that's subscribing to the Patreon or sharing with your friends or like showing up to live shows or merch or whatever. Cause it all, it essentially contributes to us believing that we can do this stuff. And also like the coupons dispatches and warriors of Armenia and like crazy shit. I never thought we have put journalists in a war zone, a very well qualified, good writers, good videographers, you put out fucking amazing work if you would have told me that we were doing this shit two years ago I thought you'd be insane if you if you told me that we were doing this when we started I would think that you're on the most powerful drugs that man has ever conceived but

the reason why we can do this is because you guys support the show so much we're able to employ people pay them much more fairly than their industry normally does. Yep. Um, as any journalists can attest and make those things possible. It's, it's crazy to think about. I mean, and 2025 will be seven years of the show. It is crazy. And like also I think as well for me as a producer, like in 2025 would really like to, you know, some people that we, we really enjoy their work. People like Patrick Wyman. If someone has an email for Mike Duncan, please send it to me. I would love to have him on the show. I know Joe would as well. I'd have to dig up honeyman and send him on his way.

But yeah, like, you know, it either contact me or Joe or Nate, like if you are someone who enjoys the show and you're making cool stuff and like you want to work with us in like some capacity, like the other day, someone sent me a fantastic design for merchandise, which we, we pay for, we pay all of our artists. We, you know, everyone we work with, like we want to make sure that they're re-numerated, you know, fairly and for their work and we promote it as well. But yeah, it's like want to, you know, spread the love a little bit and work with people who like are doing cool stuff. And the same with like, I know both me and Joe will pretty much guest on any show that we're asked to go on. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Like I talked about

a Spanish video game for three hours on the worst of all possible worlds. And Joe was talking about Final Fantasy seven in January for like seven hours. Yeah. We just had the worst of all possible world boys over on our show and it was fantastic. I love working with people who are doing good work. It's something that I never thought I'd be able to do. And it's something that's only possible because everyone listening, I know it sounds like cheesy and corny to say, I say it all the time, but you do really make everything we do possible. Yeah. And like, I know it's a, this time of year and like a lot of people are spending

time with their families. Some people aren't because of, you know, sometimes people have fractious relationships with their families. So, you know, depending on when you're listening to this, I hope you have a happy Christmas and a good new year. And I know this is kind of the segment where we promote stuff. I don't really want to promote anything because it's Christmas, but also I want to highlight that if you can spare any money, I know it is a top time financially for everyone just in general, but also the time of the year, but you know, there is an ongoing genocide in Gaza. If you can spare some cash to send to help out people suffering in Gaza, please do it. There are various different charities or people directly who are sorting out stuff

like e-sims or money directly for people to get food or whatever supplies they need. So consider donating that way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a podcast. Thank you everyone for listening again. You make everything we do possible. And until next time. Ah, find your honey men and don't sell them out. Be warmed by the ooze. Huddle with your homies in the forest.