Episode 4151： A WarRoom Special 2024： Combat History of Christmas Cont.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
132.78587
Summary
The Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of Long Island, and the Battle at the Heights Iguanas are just a few of the epic battles that took place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the early morning hours of December 25th, 1776.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell and I'm hosting America's Christmas, Combat History of Christmas.
00:00:19.680
And we're going to go back in time to our most important Christmas, the Christmas of 1776,
00:00:26.680
where all could have been lost, but all was won in a series of crucial victories,
00:00:33.580
10 crucial days that will change the course of history.
00:00:37.720
Let's go back first to the summer of 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of Long Island,
00:00:46.420
where a massive British force, most of the entire British Army and Navy,
00:00:53.900
congregate in New York, over 35,000, along with their German allies, to crush the nascent United
00:01:02.880
States, which is now only about a month, a little more than a month old after the signing of the
00:01:07.620
Declaration of Independence. This wasn't a situation of negotiation. It was a situation of we were going
00:01:14.640
to crush the Americans, as they had done in all the other empire's history. They had always won any
00:01:22.200
kind of rebellion or revolution. And they planned, the British Empire had planned to do it again.
00:01:27.440
And a massive and important hub was New York City, because of its strategic location and its ability
00:01:36.580
to make, to sally forth from different parts to the various parts of the colony. It was one of the
00:01:42.340
largest cities in the colonies at the time. And the British rolled up their entire fleet, or two-thirds
00:01:48.000
of their fleet, and much of their army, along with thousands of German or Hessian volunteers.
00:01:55.840
They land at Long Island, and it's the summer of 1776. It's August. And they make a sort of an epic attack.
00:02:11.780
The American lines, half the army is in New York, and half is in Brooklyn or Long Island.
00:02:18.820
And the army is arrayed where it's on a long spur called the Heights Iguanas. This is current-day
00:02:27.380
Greenwood Cemetery. It's one of the greatest cemeteries in the United States, where many,
00:02:31.700
many notables have their final resting place. But it's also the scene of an epic battle, the Battle of
00:02:39.140
Brooklyn. And it's here on the night of August 27th, 26th, 1776, that the battle begins in a
00:02:48.260
watermelon patch, where British skirmishers are out, and they encounter Edward Hans,
00:02:56.820
Pennsylvania's rifleman, in a watermelon patch. The British want the melons for obvious reasons,
00:03:05.620
and then a small battle occurs there in that patch. But it's really, it just touches off a much larger
00:03:14.580
operation. The British are conducting a massive flanking maneuver around the Heights Iguanas with
00:03:20.900
General Cornwallis in the lead, along with General Clinton and Lord Howe. And they flank the American
00:03:28.980
lines, while another force approaches from the, from the, towards the Heights Iguanas to pin down the
00:03:37.540
Americans. It's a classic hammer and anvil maneuver, where they're trying to smash the Americans.
00:03:45.460
And the force that's the flanking maneuver maneuver is unseen. They attack, you know,
00:03:53.300
they move out in the midnight hours of the 26th and 27th, and they move around. And it's that morning,
00:04:03.540
though, that General Grant with the British attack, the main line of resistance at the Heights Iguanas.
00:04:09.220
And it's here that the Washington's immortals earn immortal fame. I wrote this book, which is a
00:04:18.820
multiple bestseller. It's been through about 12 reprintings. It's here that they conduct a rear
00:04:26.580
guard that literally saves the United States. The British are attacking from the flank and the front,
00:04:34.900
and it's near a stone house that they lead a series of charges that allow the American army
00:04:43.940
to escape back to their entrenchments in Brooklyn Heights. And it's here that, you know, this,
00:04:51.540
this epic stand, which is, as one historian at the time would say, it was an hour more important in
00:04:58.820
our history than any other. They make the stand. It's a, it's in blood. And there's about 400 Marylanders.
00:05:06.260
Nearly the entire force is annihilated or captured. And what drew me to this book, like all the other
00:05:16.420
books I've written, is it found me. And I found a rusted old sign near that area that I mentioned,
00:05:22.820
that battleground near that house, which says, here lie 276 Marylanders, Maryland heroes.
00:05:32.580
And I wanted to know more. Where did they, you know, where are they buried? And the answer is,
00:05:39.300
we don't know. They're buried in a mass grave in and around that area. And it's one of the great mysteries
00:05:45.220
in American, in American history of where these men are located. Many of them were captured and put
00:05:50.820
on prison ships and their bodies were never seen again because these prison ships were like literally
00:05:57.060
floating concentration camps. And most of the men that went on the ships never survived. The, uh,
00:06:05.380
fast forward a little bit and it's Washington has to make decision. Does he stand and fight
00:06:12.180
or does he retreat? And he, he, he has a war council, you know, in the middle of a massive
00:06:18.340
lightning storm and they decide to retreat. And it's here that the story of the marble headers
00:06:28.500
relates directly to the, to Christmas 1776. It's here that their first epic, uh, evacuation occurs.
00:06:38.500
They, they, uh, they affect an American Dunkirk. They pull off the entire American army in, in
00:06:46.660
extraordinary circumstances. The massive British army of 25,000 men is in the entire front of the,
00:06:57.140
of Brooklyn defenses. They face this army. The British Navy is in the East, East river
00:07:04.180
and about to sail behind the American defenses and crush it. It's here at this time that the United
00:07:13.300
States, which is only 45 days old is in its greatest peril because Washington's army is
00:07:21.300
potentially going to be destroyed. Washington would be, is about to be captured and a miracle
00:07:27.380
needs to occur. And that's exactly what would God provides. Uh, they, the marble headers,
00:07:35.940
the most experienced seamen or mariners in the continental army are given the task of bringing
00:07:43.540
the army off 10,000 men along with his horses and cannon and somehow pull off the, uh, the impossible
00:07:52.100
in the middle of the prying British eyes and loyalists and everybody else in that, in the middle of the
00:07:59.220
night, the, um, Washington orders, the men that they are going to be attacking when in, in reality,
00:08:06.660
they're moving back towards the boats. Glover is only given a few hours. They round up all the boats
00:08:12.500
that they can, and they begin the task of bringing off the army somehow into, to New York City itself.
00:08:22.180
And it doesn't go well at first. The water in the river is so treacherous. There's so many currents
00:08:29.620
that they literally are not able to move the boats across and they have to abandon the operation.
00:08:34.580
They try to find Washington to call it off and he can't be found. And miraculously, he can't be found
00:08:41.540
because they, they, they move forward with the operation and it's, it's a race against time.
00:08:47.700
They only have about six or seven hours to move 10,000 men across the river. And it's not just one time.
00:08:53.780
They have to go back nearly a dozen times with these boats under the eyes of the entire,
00:09:01.220
a large portion of the British Navy somehow, which is parked not far on the, on the East River.
00:09:06.820
And they are doing that back and forth. The British army is about to pounce in front of them.
00:09:16.100
The Navy is about to potentially be unleashed, but miraculously, the winds don't favor the Navy
00:09:21.460
to, to move behind the fortifications. And they're able to, to move more men across,
00:09:28.500
but daylight is coming. And it's here that the hand of God, as the men say,
00:09:32.340
today shows itself in a fog, a miraculous fog sets in and screens the movement of the remaining boats.
00:09:40.660
And they're able to evacuate the, the, the rest of the force back to New York City.
00:09:47.460
And it's from there that the, the American army sustains one massive defeat after another.
00:09:56.340
And it's, it's a situation of, of retreat and defeat. The, the, the greatest being at Fort Washington,
00:10:08.340
where if you are familiar with the Fort Washington bridge, the, the base of that bridge was a portion
00:10:15.780
of it was a massive fortification that stretched over a mile that were, it was a massive American
00:10:22.100
fortification known as Fort Washington. And they had a number of redoubts and defensive areas. There
00:10:30.420
was a star fort and it's here that the Americans make an epic stand, but what they don't know is that
00:10:40.020
the adjutant, the second in command had deserted only a few days earlier and delivered the entire plans
00:10:48.980
of the fort, all of its weak points and where the forces were positioned. So the British knew exactly
00:10:55.060
where to attack. And, and that's exactly what they did in mid November. When they started to,
00:11:02.180
to roll up the fort and roll up many of the men inside it, the Washington's immortals and the
00:11:09.140
indispensables, which is the book about the marble headers is all based on original primary source
00:11:17.060
documents. One being pension applications. And one of the great stories of this book,
00:11:24.420
both books actually, is a pension application from an individual that was lucky enough to escape
00:11:31.940
Fort Washington. And he talks about how the fort is being surrounded. They find a rowboat and they row
00:11:39.300
across the Hudson River and they make their way to New Jersey where Washington is in a house overlooking
00:11:48.980
the entire battle through his spyglass. And he, he sees Washington, distraught Washington.
00:11:59.860
And he sees Washington with tears in his eyes as the fort has fallen. And many of his men
00:12:05.700
are, are run through literally a gauntlet where British and German soldiers form a gauntlet. And
00:12:15.940
they, the men are run through the gauntlet and they're kicked, beaten, in some cases, bayoneted
00:12:21.540
and robbed of their personal possessions. This is just one of the defeats that Washington's
00:12:29.060
army faces as they make their long retreat back through white plains where they make a stand as
00:12:38.980
well. And eventually they, they cross over and make their way through New Jersey. And it's the
00:12:44.820
British army that's never too far behind as they're felling trees and, and making their way towards
00:12:50.260
the safety of elites, the relative safety, they think of the Delaware river in the, the farms of
00:12:59.780
Pennsylvania. And it's here, um, that they're only just a little bit ahead of the British army that they
00:13:06.820
escape across the Delaware. And they, they are making, um, they're making preparations. This is a
00:13:16.580
situation where they escape one demise, but they now face another. And this is the most,
00:13:23.700
this is known as the crisis. Some of the most crucial days in American history, because everything
00:13:29.540
was collapsing. The enlistments for the men were about to expire. Washington was about to lose his
00:13:35.860
entire army. Hyperinflation racked the colonies. Prices for food skyrocketed. The cause
00:13:46.260
was about to be lost. Many Americans in New Jersey had in, in, in other areas had taken, um, a pardon from
00:13:55.140
the King and we're now turning sides and everything was being lost. Uh, the potential for the entire war
00:14:05.940
ending was very much in the, the month of December, 1776. And it's, it's here that Washington
00:14:15.700
plans, the great, one of the greatest comebacks in military history, the crossing of the Delaware
00:14:25.060
in the, that will change the course of the entire revolutionary war. It's a epic stand. It's an epic
00:14:35.380
battle. One of the greatest battles in American history, the battle for Trenton.
00:14:40.500
And it's appropriately, Washington's call sign or code words for that night were victory or death.
00:15:00.180
It's obvious. The unthinkable continues. Most Americans know something is very,
00:15:05.300
very wrong. The people in charge keep telling you that everything's fine and to stop noticing,
00:15:11.300
but you know better. That's why self-reliant folks are investing in emergency food storage.
00:15:17.700
And you should too. My Patriots by the nation's largest emergency preparedness company
00:15:22.740
are the ones you can trust. Go to mypatreonsupply.com and secure their best-selling three-month
00:15:28.260
emergency food kits. Each contains tasty breakfasts, lunches, and dinners averaging over 2,000 calories per
00:15:35.540
day. My Patriot Supply also sells solar generators, gravity-powered water filters, off-grid room heaters
00:15:42.660
for when the power goes out. They also sell heirloom seeds and survival gear. Order by 3 p.m. and your
00:15:49.860
items ship that same day and arrive quickly on your doorstep in unmarked boxes. Go to mypatreonsupply.com
00:15:56.740
today. Hope is not a plan. My Patriot Supply is a plan. Time is running out to prepare for what's
00:16:05.220
coming. MyPatriotSupply.com. Go there today. Action, action, action.
00:16:10.820
Good morning and Merry Christmas. I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell, combat historian and best-selling author,
00:16:28.820
hosting the Combat History of Christmas with the worm. Today, Steve is traveling, so I'm hosting it
00:16:36.660
alone, but we're talking about the combat history of Christmas and our most important history
00:16:44.580
of Christmas, which is the Christmas of 1776 in the counterattack at Trenton, which changes history
00:16:53.540
in the world. It's in and around in Pennsylvania that Washington near Trenton on the Pennsylvania
00:17:06.580
side decides to mount one of the greatest comebacks in military history, an attack on the garrison of
00:17:15.940
Hessian troops. These are German mercenaries that are based in Trenton. He's got one problem,
00:17:22.020
though. He somehow has to get across the Delaware River. This is a very difficult obstacle.
00:17:32.420
Washington decides to launch the attack or the counterattack on Christmas Day. What they don't
00:17:38.980
know is that there will be a raging nor'easter that day that will make it almost impassable.
00:17:44.980
But days before the planning, he asks the most experienced mariner in the Continental Army,
00:17:55.140
John Glover, who initially has the Marblehead Regiment with the Indispensables, he's now a brigade
00:18:03.540
commander, if it's even possible to cross the river.
00:18:08.740
You know, you have to make making an assault crossing on a river against an enemy force is one of the most
00:18:16.260
difficult things imaginable in a military maneuver. And it was compounded by the climate that day. But they don't
00:18:29.300
know at the time if it's even doable. So he asked Glover if it's possible. Glover says to General Washington,
00:18:35.780
Washington, don't worry, my boys can handle it. And that's exactly what they do. They pull off the
00:18:42.180
impossible. Washington, who's kind of known for complicated strategies, has three prongs of an
00:18:49.620
attack that are to attack the Trenton garrison under the command of Johan Rahl. And Rahl is an extremely
00:18:58.980
experienced commander that has been, you know, since his childhood, a soldier, and a very,
00:19:07.700
very good one. He had, at White Plains, he had led the attack, and he even took, he led the attack
00:19:16.260
at Fort Washington, which I mentioned earlier, and was, you know, incredibly important,
00:19:22.100
played an important role in seizing the American garrison there. This man's an incredible war
00:19:27.460
hero. He's also a very, very skilled commander and knows military strategy. But he's left with
00:19:36.740
a very difficult task. He somehow has to defend this isolated garrison. New Jersey has a number
00:19:43.700
of little, of smaller isolated garrisons that are tying down the British gains there. And he is,
00:19:51.620
his 900 or so men are garrisoning the Trenton area. They're on constant alert for American attacks and
00:20:01.460
raids. And he is given information by British intelligence. There's a spy in Washington's camp
00:20:09.220
that General Grant has that they will attack on Christmas. So he's warned. His men
00:20:16.660
are armed. They sleep in their arms and in their uniforms. This is not the Christmas story that,
00:20:23.780
you know, many children's books have of these men being drunk on Christmas and not ready to do battle.
00:20:32.980
It's just the opposite. They're very trained. They're ready to go. But they're also worn out
00:20:38.820
because the Americans had raided them multiple times. And that night he's warned. He's given,
00:20:48.500
it's really quite extraordinary story. He's given intelligence by a loyalist that the American
00:20:55.540
Army had crossed the Delaware River. And the enslaved individual tried to see him multiple times.
00:21:02.820
He was playing checkers at the time with another loyalist and later played cards. And eventually,
00:21:10.020
after being pestered multiple times, he sees the man and then takes the message which says that the
00:21:15.380
Americans are coming and puts it in his pocket and never reads it. And the Americans indeed are coming
00:21:20.900
that night on Christmas night. And it's mission impossible, though, because John Glover and his
00:21:28.900
men have to somehow cross a river, which is a raging torrent. There's pieces of ice. There is a nor'easter
00:21:36.980
occurring where snow and sleet is pelting the men. And only the most experienced mariners in the
00:21:46.180
in the Continental Army can do this task. They have to somehow transport over 2,500 men across the river
00:21:57.060
about 12 miles north of Trenton. And they have to battle the different currents that are inside the
00:22:07.620
river. If they if they fail, there's literally a there's a there's an eight foot waterfall on several
00:22:15.380
hundred yards down the river that will capsize the boats and drown many of the men will die of
00:22:21.380
hyperthermia if they're not successful. But they're able to somehow with their skills and in mariner skills,
00:22:29.060
which they developed in the Grand Banks, which is off Nova Scotia, where they were fishermen,
00:22:34.100
which are the most treacherous waters in the world, they're able to bring the men
00:22:40.500
and the army across against all odds. For perspective, Washington had two other attacks
00:22:48.500
that were trying to cross the river, two other forces that were trying to cross over. They failed
00:22:53.620
because the water was too treacherous. It was only through the skilled hands of the marble
00:22:59.140
hunters that they were able to cross the river, the Delaware that night. And they're using a variety
00:23:05.940
of craft. There's a flat bottom boats. There's also something called a Durham boat. There's 25 to 40 of
00:23:13.140
these boats which deliver iron to to a Durham, the iron foundry in your Durham, the Durham iron foundry.
00:23:23.140
And these boats are used to bring the men across in this raging snowstorm. And I think what's so
00:23:31.380
incredible is as the men get off the boats, there's snow on the ground and many of them don't have
00:23:38.100
shoes. And there's many, many accounts of how they literally leave a trail of blood as they march in
00:23:46.420
their wake because the men have no shoes. But somehow they have this Elan in the spirit that is
00:23:57.060
extraordinary. One of the accounts in The Indispensables that chronicles the Marbleheader story
00:24:04.180
talks about how they had a cheerfulness, despite the fact that they were facing
00:24:09.700
the, this weather that was, that was beating down on them. And as they probe forward, they had to go
00:24:16.660
through a ravine, which was very slippery. And many of the men were literally, some of the men were so
00:24:23.940
exhausted that they, they, they almost fell asleep in the snow. One man almost did. And that would have
00:24:30.100
been instant death. You would have died of hypothermia. And in this march, they, they move along
00:24:36.660
and they meet a doctor whose, whose dog is barking on the, near his house. And they, they approach him.
00:24:46.740
Anybody that, any, anybody that is, approaches the army is literally apprehended because they could,
00:24:52.660
they could give away the great secret of the Revolutionary War that the, the, the Washington
00:24:58.420
had landed his force and they were moving towards Trenton. They bring this doctor forward, who is a, a
00:25:04.820
patriot. And he tells them that he will very gladly come. And they move down the road and they encounter
00:25:12.820
a force under the command of a guy by the name of Wallace, who was authorized by Adam Steven to make a
00:25:20.580
revenge raid. And Washington is in a tower of rage because you, he says to him, you, sir,
00:25:28.740
have destroyed my entire plan. And it destroyed the element of surprise. And when in reality,
00:25:36.580
it's, it's, it's, it's an unintended consequence that may have occurred. The raid may have alerted
00:25:43.060
while, uh, Johan Rahl that the Americans had landed, but it was a small force and that this was indeed the
00:25:50.020
force that British intelligence had warned him of. And he then went back to sleep. Johan Rahl went back to
00:25:57.380
sleep and put the mess and never read the message that the Americans were coming. And the, the
00:26:04.580
Marylanders who I chronicle Washington's immortals, there's a small force of Marylanders. There's the, the
00:26:12.020
stalwart men that remained, including the Marblehead Mariners that marched towards Trenton, uh, as, as daylight
00:26:22.180
approaches. And John Glover is marching on the long, the river road. That is the road that corresponds
00:26:28.740
with the Delaware river. And without orders, he sees a bridge across the acid peak Creek and realizes
00:26:37.780
that this is an absolutely important target. And he orders men to seize the bridge and attack the
00:26:44.260
Hessian guards there and then move a number of cannon on the high ground at the bridge. And it's, uh, it's
00:26:52.180
here that Johan Rahl alerts his men. Uh, the, the garrison in, in Trenton is, is alarmed and they attack,
00:27:03.460
uh, Washington with a number of cannons. And, uh, he has three regiments of his disposal. Two of those
00:27:09.860
regiments make a desperate attack on Washington, uh, to somehow break the grip of, of the American
00:27:20.820
attack on Trenton. And it's, it fails. Johan Rahl is, is mortally wounded. The, the, the, the, the
00:27:28.980
Glover's force at acid peak Creek basically seals one of the last escape routes for Johan Rahl's force at
00:27:39.060
Trenton. And it becomes one of the greatest American victories in history. One of the great military
00:27:47.460
victories in world history that will change the entire course of the revolutionary war. And it was
00:27:53.940
part of 10 days of, of battles that would change the entire revolutionary war and world history.
00:28:09.060
I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell. Merry Christmas. I'm hosting the combat history of Christmas today. It's our
00:28:30.740
annual tradition with Stephen K. Bannon. And what we, we like to do is we go back in time and look at the,
00:28:38.820
the inflection points in history, which often revolve around Christmas. But there are also stories
00:28:46.580
about individuals and their agency that change the course of events in one way or another.
00:28:52.260
And that is certainly the case with the next story that I'm going to tell, which is a Christmas story
00:28:58.420
set in World War II. It's set in the, um, in the mountains, the Dolomite mountains of Northern Italy,
00:29:06.820
where a raging guerrilla war was taking place against the SS, against the Germans. It's a situation where
00:29:17.220
small groups of OSS men, otherwise the first special forces, small groups of teams that were arming the
00:29:25.700
resistance behind the lines would, would do some extraordinary things in or the complete with the
00:29:33.620
hallmarks of today's special operations forces. And that story begins and has some really key points
00:29:42.820
at Christmas. For me, it's a, it's a special story. It found me, um, many years ago, over 15 years ago,
00:29:52.500
where I was contemplating going back overseas with embedding with, uh, another combat unit in
00:30:00.260
Afghanistan. And it was my, uh, my great friend whose nickname was the brain, who was an operations
00:30:08.900
officer with the OSS that ran the special ops missions deep into Northern Italy said to me, Pat,
00:30:15.540
don't go. It's, it's too dangerous. Um, and I, I, I, I said that, okay. He's like, I want you to tell
00:30:24.340
the story. I want you to tell Howard's story, Howard Chapel story, the Tacoma mission. I said that,
00:30:32.260
that's great. But, uh, Howard never will never talk. Um, I spent years trying to get
00:30:39.540
arguably one of the greatest World War II veterans I ever interviewed to talk and he would never talk.
00:30:47.620
Uh, he would always, I would always call him up and he'd say, well, Pat, you know,
00:30:51.860
you need to come out here and, and, and, and maybe interview me. And it was always a throwaway line
00:30:57.220
because I did go out a couple of times and try to interview him and it never succeeded. But finally,
00:31:03.140
I got the brain to, to basically triangulate and pressure Howard to letting me talk to him.
00:31:10.580
And he said to me, I landed in San Francisco and I called him up and I expected sort of the usual
00:31:17.700
treatment and said, he said, Pat, meet me at the gas station at spyglass road at Pismo beach at noon
00:31:25.940
tomorrow. And I was there, I was there five, you know, 10 minutes ahead of time. And I'll never forget,
00:31:32.900
this big Lincoln kind of rolled up and he had sunglasses on and he looks over at me. He goes,
00:31:39.460
follow me. And I went back to his house and Howard Chappell was six foot two kind of built like
00:31:47.380
Schwarzenegger and, and still kind of had that frame and physique. And he immediately tried to
00:31:56.580
intimidate me to intimidate me. And I, I'll never forget. I tried to enter to bring him back in time.
00:32:02.820
And he said to me, um, you know, Pat, um, he starts to open up his mail
00:32:11.060
with his Fairburn Sykes fighting knife right in front of me to sort of intimidate me. And then he
00:32:17.140
started to like sharpen his fingernails. It's like, you know, you need to use the bathroom
00:32:21.700
or anything. I'm like, no, I'm fine, Howard. And then I said to him, well, let's go back in time
00:32:27.460
to when you, you killed the German officer with your bare hands with a ski pole.
00:32:34.020
And that was like the opening that I needed. And he went back in time and told me how
00:32:40.020
he killed, he was running for his life from what was known as an SS for Stalamento behind the lines
00:32:48.260
where his entire team was captured. Going back a little bit, that team was set behind the lines
00:32:56.980
on Christmas day, 1944. And they, they dropped at a place called Valmoral, which is nestled in the
00:33:05.540
Dolomite mountains on the side of a mountain. The place is something you can visit today. It's,
00:33:10.980
there's a grappa bar there on the drop zone. And I went back like I always do to the places that I
00:33:18.100
write about. And I visited Valmoral. I visited San Antonio, which is nearby. And I interviewed all of
00:33:26.260
the old partisans that were with the Tacoma team. And I'll never forget my, my, my first,
00:33:36.500
one of the first and most important people that I interviewed was an old man who was a mayor of,
00:33:41.860
of a town. And I was there with, with one of the partisans relatives that had died in combat on,
00:33:51.540
on, on, on Chappell's team. And we went from house to house to interview the old partisans.
00:33:57.620
And this mayor, former mayor was sitting there watching TV and his door was kind of open and I
00:34:03.220
knocked on the door and he looked up at me and he said, what do you want? And I said,
00:34:10.580
one thing I said, I just said, Howard Chappell. And this man's jaw literally dropped as I said that.
00:34:18.100
And he said to me, Rambo, and that's what Chappell, that's how tough, that's how much of a badass
00:34:26.660
and illegitimately Howard Chappell was. And I'll start to tell you that story of
00:34:32.580
the Brenner assignment. And these men drop in on Christmas day and it's almost immediately hot.
00:34:39.700
The, uh, the entire area is, is, uh, there's a very active SS presence there that, um,
00:34:51.460
they hunt partisans and they, and it's not a, uh, it's not a pleasant thing at all. If you're found
00:34:58.180
to be aiding the Americans or in a resistance group, you're hung from a meat hook. And many of the squares
00:35:05.540
of the small towns in and around this area, there were dozens of men that were hung from meat hooks
00:35:11.380
for helping the Americans or just being part of the partisan group or just being, you know,
00:35:16.500
in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's how brutal and ruthless the SS were. And it's
00:35:22.420
this environment, the chapel had to operate in his primary mission was to find another main
00:35:32.020
character in my book, a guy by the name of Stephen Hall and Stephen Hall in his story is epic and
00:35:39.540
extraordinary. He dropped in August, 1944, and he would be part of a single one man mission to somehow
00:35:48.500
destroy the sub passes that were part of the Brenner pass. And he wrote a letter to the OSS
00:35:55.060
command months earlier, um, as he was going back to Corvallis, Oregon on a troop train. He was an
00:36:03.540
engineer, combat engineer that knew how to blow things up, but he's also an expert skier. He was
00:36:10.420
a mountaineer. He was a rich kid that went to Harvard and Yale dropped out of both and then sort of traveled
00:36:18.420
the world. He went to Cortina, which is in the Dolmite mountains, a ski area. And he, he, he hiked
00:36:26.100
and skied all the mountains for six months. And he wrote in a letter in 1944 to the OSS, if they dropped
00:36:36.020
the man with explosives and, you know, the proper equipment, he could destroy the passes that led into
00:36:43.700
the Brenner pass. And why is the Brenner pass important at this time? It was the lifeline or the
00:36:49.220
artery where the German army was, was bringing their supplies and their men into Northern Italy
00:36:56.340
and Italy from Germany and Austria. And it was bombed relentlessly by the Allied Air Corps, but it
00:37:04.020
was so heavily fortified that every, the troop trains and everything else were getting through.
00:37:08.660
So they had to look at an alternative means, a special operation to arm the resistance in the area
00:37:15.780
and then potentially take out the sub passes. And this is Stephen Hall's mission. And he drops in
00:37:23.940
with a, uh, uh, another team initially guy by the name of Lloyd Smith. And I interviewed all of these
00:37:31.380
men that were alive at Smith nickname was Smitty was epic legendary. He was a rising star within the OSS at
00:37:38.180
the time because he had rescued, um, a bunch of nurses that had crashed in a C 47 behind the lines
00:37:44.340
in Albania. He went in with a three 57 Magnum alone and had to navigate all these partisan groups with a,
00:37:51.940
with a letter from president Roosevelt saying that don't harm me. He somehow gets out these men along
00:37:58.500
with Sterling Hayden, who's the famous movie star later. And then also Jack Taylor, who was a main
00:38:04.180
character in my book for seals, but Smitty then is given, uh, the task of bringing in, uh, Stephen Hall.
00:38:12.340
And, uh, you know, I connected immediately with him because I was a division one wrestler in college.
00:38:18.180
And so was he, and we had this immediate rapport and I'll never forget. He pulled out the three 57
00:38:23.700
Magnum that he had behind the lines in Albania. And then also in Northern Italy and showed it to me.
00:38:28.980
And he talked about how Hall was a, uh, a unique character that in many ways was trying to find
00:38:35.780
himself. This, this is an incredible movie. It's been optioned a few times of, of him trying to find
00:38:42.580
himself, but also to accomplish mission impossible. They, they jump in to an area, um, known as the
00:38:50.900
Fraioli, which is further away from the Dolomites. And he has to, to, he goes in with Smith and then he goes
00:38:57.860
alone to the Dolomites area where his mission will take place. And he has to march, climb and ski
00:39:07.700
for days, weeks alone in the mountains, in some of the most treacherous terrain in the world,
00:39:16.500
as he is being hunted by the SS. And he's blowing up bridges. He's working with the resistance to some
00:39:24.180
degree because, but he's a fish out of water because he is a, I mean, he's kind of this white
00:39:31.060
Anglo-Saxon, um, guy that went to Harvard and Yale and he's dealing with partisans in many cases who are
00:39:37.780
communists. He has nothing in common with them. And he is, he is able to thwart, um, you know, several
00:39:44.100
attempts on his life, but he makes his way towards the mission area. And it's here, you know, like
00:39:52.020
every great story. This is, I think, in my opinion, I've, I've interviewed thousands of World War II
00:39:58.740
veterans. I've written seven or eight books on World War II. This is one of the greatest World War II
00:40:03.780
stories of all time. It also has a love story with it. And it's here that he's making his way towards
00:40:11.140
Cortina that he encounters a woman that will change his life. A countess who is also a French agent,
00:40:20.500
but he's also working for the Germans. And she is a mayor of a small town in their interest. They're,
00:40:26.820
his entree to this woman, the countess de obligato and her, her mansion, her small home in a place called
00:40:34.820
Morrison still exists. All of these places still exist. And oh, by the way, the World War II museum
00:40:42.900
is planning on doing a epic tour of the Brenner assignment in this mission. And it's one for,
00:40:50.980
it's such a special place. It's a, it's a, it's a story that is not known of World War II.
00:40:57.220
And it's also, as I mentioned, a love story. And it's here that he encounters her in a, in a strange
00:41:03.700
way. He receives a book, the Scarlet Pimpernel, which is a sort of her call sign for him to meet her.
00:41:12.100
And she has a specific code. She leaves a pine branch at the windowsill of her home
00:41:21.700
out if the Germans are not in the house. And as it's a, it's a, it's a wintery night in, in November,
00:41:30.900
1944. And he, along with a partisan leader is making their way to Mars on and they see the pine branch
00:41:40.020
near the window. And he goes into the countess's house and encounters a woman, which will change his
00:41:48.500
life. And, uh, she's sort of seated on a, uh, a sofa rather seductively. And it's, it's there that,
00:42:05.460
I'm Patrick K O'Donnell and I'm hosting the Comet History of Christmas for the War Room,
00:42:27.140
our annual tradition. I'm taking you back behind the lines in the Brenner assignment. It's Christmas
00:42:34.580
day, 1944. And Stephen K Hall is in the house of the Countess, who's a double agent. She works for
00:42:43.460
France, but also Germany, but she is a, she's also a sympathizer with the resistance and a resistance
00:42:50.180
leader in and of herself. It's here that Stephen K Hall is given sort of, sort of the mission impossible
00:42:57.780
to destroy a small light railroad and a transformer that is, that is about 10 miles away.
00:43:05.460
Hall spends the night Christmas Eve with the Countess. And what's extraordinary is he records
00:43:12.580
his story on cigarette paper and buries his diary in wine bottles in and around various homes.
00:43:21.620
This book that I'm talking about, this story is in a book called the Brenner assignments,
00:43:28.980
bestselling book. It's made up of over thousands, tens of thousands of documents,
00:43:35.460
including Stephen K Hall's, uh, diary that was on cigarette paper, but also the mission reports
00:43:43.780
from Howard Chappell and the Tacoma team and Hall's mission reports. There's a, a radio messages.
00:43:50.740
It's a, it's thousands of, of documents, tens of thousands of documents to assemble a narrative,
00:43:56.740
which is extraordinary. It's here. He's given this, this impossible mission on Christmas day,
00:44:02.700
and he sets out on skis in the middle of a snowstorm to blow up the, the rail station and the,
00:44:10.080
the transformer because it's a mercury condenser. It's something that has to come from Germany.
00:44:15.360
It would, it would disable the line for months or weeks and sets off in the middle of this raging
00:44:21.360
snow storm, trying to destroy this, this rails, uh, light rail station, which is a artery towards
00:44:29.360
the Brenner pass and moving troops and supplies. And he's disoriented after several hours of skiing.
00:44:37.600
And, um, um, he basically collapses not far from this rail station, which is his mission.
00:44:44.480
And he's, he's captured by a forest forester who's, who's sympathetic to Germany. And he's brought to a
00:44:52.640
priest and it's, uh, it's here that he is, he's arrested and he's, he's very tragically tortured,
00:45:01.520
uh, tortured to death, uh, by the SS. And what this book is about is a, an epic story of the SS
00:45:13.040
against Howard Chappell in the, in the partisans and resistance behind the lines. This is the first
00:45:18.400
special operations team. These were known as operational groups. And he had the German operational
00:45:23.920
group. If you've ever seen the movie and glorious bastards at the beginning, this is the, his group.
00:45:29.680
It's, it's, he was a German, uh, speaking, uh, guy that was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger
00:45:36.000
that went behind the lines and, and then accomplishes Stephen Hall's mission. And
00:45:42.720
it's amazing. Uh, Hall's is captured and he's killed by the SS. And then Chappell has to somehow
00:45:52.000
get towards Hall. He doesn't know he's killed and he reforms Stephen, uh, Hall's partisans.
00:46:00.320
And they set up what is really one of the great ambushes of the war. They seal a portion of the
00:46:10.000
Brenner pass as the SS are escaping, including the 504 heavy tiger tank battalion, which has one
00:46:16.880
operational tiger tank as they're making their way to the Brenner pass. They, they blow up a bridge
00:46:23.600
before the pass. And then they, they, they capture the high ground above it and they fire upon the SS
00:46:30.240
and the SS thinks that they have chapel in a checkmate. They, they tell him under a white
00:46:36.640
flag that they will blow up the church, which contains all the civilians in the small town of
00:46:42.640
Caprilli and chapel, um, takes the, they basically calls their bluff goes down to the, the, the, uh,
00:46:52.720
the, the area of Caprilli on a motorcycle with his, with one of his men. He's only armed with a 45
00:46:59.920
and he confronts the SS and says, it is you that are surrounded. You are cut off. And we,
00:47:06.800
there's a parachute battalion that has landed nearby and you must surrender.
00:47:10.960
And he does, he provides, he does the impossible. The SS surrenders 3,500 men, including the payroll
00:47:20.320
for the German army to Howard chapel, single man, how a single person with agency changes the course
00:47:27.120
of an entire campaign in Northern Italy. And, you know, Steven K Bannon, who's my favorite host of
00:47:35.920
this show, always asked me, where do you find, where do you get these books, uh, Pat, or where do
00:47:42.160
you, where, where can the audience find them? You can go to my website, patrickkodonald.com.
00:47:48.080
You can go to at a combat historian, which is not get her or Twitter. And the book, uh, the unvanquished
00:47:56.160
is at the front of the store at Barnes and Noble nationwide. But what is it about? It's about
00:48:03.280
agency. It's about you are responsible. You, the individual can change the course of history.
00:50:09.320
That's why we created Sacred Human, really trying to fill this gap of quality supplements,
00:50:14.300
and of course the beef liver being our flagship products.
00:50:17.520
For those who don't know, beef liver is loaded with highly bioavailable ingredients such as
00:50:26.380
And because it is 100% grass-fed and natural, your body is able to absorb these nutrients
00:50:32.940
far better than taking any other synthetic multivitamin or any other synthetic vitamin
00:50:39.480
So we have some other amazing products, but if you'd like to check us out, you can go
00:50:43.140
to sacredhumanhealth.com and cheers to your health.
00:50:49.960
Yes, heart disease is the number one killer every year, year in and year out.
00:50:55.860
Hypertension, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, diabetes, all of it affects our heart.
00:51:01.080
A healthy heart is key to being energetic as we get older.
00:51:04.880
However, it is never too early to take care of your heart.
00:51:11.840
You can start in your 30s and when this happens, you're at serious risk by the time you turn
00:51:15.520
If you want to take care of your heart and those you care about, please go to warroomhealth.com.
00:51:27.240
Use the code warroom at checkout to save 67% of your first shipment.
00:51:36.460
Warroomhealth, all one word, warroomhealth.com.
00:51:41.360
You need, if you're going to be part of the posse, you need a strong heart.