00:01:12.820Patrick, thoughts on, we were going to do, as you and I discussed, we were going to do live coverage on Monday,
00:01:17.380but we were going to try to focus this on America 250 because of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July.
00:01:24.400And then you and I will be doing a lot of coverage of the British expeditionary force that was there to crush the independence of the nation in the crib in the first 30 to 60 days.
00:01:35.660And we want to give the run up to that and focus on and in your books and other things have been written about these tremendous patriots.
00:01:43.480Many lost a history that gave all in the beginning of the formation of this country.
00:01:50.220But I had to start because of the situation that's going on in Peleliu and Terawa.
00:01:54.400In other places, your thoughts. It is, you know, you the country owes its warriors, obviously, if you're wounded, a full recovery.
00:02:08.520But to the warriors and the parents and the wives and the children or the husbands, there's an implicit contract that their remains will be treated with dignity and that their remains will be brought back or buried with appropriate ceremony at one of our many magnificent cemeteries.
00:02:38.520throughout the world. I mean, no other nation on earth has, as Colin Powell said, that little
00:02:45.800patch of earth in these different countries fighting for the freedom of those people
00:02:50.600and giving all. Your thoughts about all that, sir?
00:02:56.160I'm just going to sort of bring in a connection. One thing that is striking to me
00:03:01.960is the statute for bringing back the remains of our fallen extends to World War I and beyond.
00:03:11.600Wars prior to that, it doesn't extend to.
00:03:15.320And I found this firsthand when I was dealing with Washington's immortals
00:03:20.460and the potential mass grave that's in Brooklyn of the Maryland 400 or Washington's immortals,
00:03:27.480It was the men that gave everything in a desperate charge that allowed the Continental Army to escape.
00:03:51.240One of the most important moments of combat in the history of this country took place essentially in downtown Brooklyn, right, in the very opening days of the Revolutionary War.
00:04:03.500And Patrick, you told me, it says, hey, the only thing to remember this is a little plaque on, I think, a tavern wall that says the battle essentially took place here.
00:04:15.360But we're not sure that's the right thing. They said, hey, there is a mass grave somewhere around here that has the remains of the individuals you wrote the book back, a book about the Washington's Immortals.
00:04:25.600Tell us that story, because people understand it's not just terror in the Pacific.
00:04:29.740It's here in the greatest city in the country in in hipster Brooklyn.
00:04:35.540Sir? It's men of family fortune and honor from Maryland's finest families that formed the 1st
00:04:46.800Maryland Regiment that had the American Thermopylae, arguably one of the most important
00:04:53.360small unit actions in history, in the American Revolution in particular, where they fought
00:05:00.080against Cornwallis, they made a series of charges, three or four bayonet charges. They were one of
00:05:08.560the only units that were armed in the Revolutionary Army at the time, the Continental Army, with
00:05:14.560bayonets. And they charged Cornwallis' position, which was bunkered in a stone house. This charge
00:05:22.160allowed the Continental Army, it created a gap in the lines to escape to the fortifications in
00:05:28.740Brooklyn Heights. As I'm told in my book, Washington's Immortals, as well as the
00:05:35.100indispensables in my newest book, Revolutionary Snipers, because the riflemen will play a key
00:05:39.960role in this battle as well. But kind of in a more contemporary sense, just today and yesterday,
00:05:48.340Steve, 44 teen soldiers, including a woman, we don't know her exact, she might have been a camp
00:05:56.080follower from lake george new york their remains were found in 2019 when they were excavating an
00:06:02.840apartment uh were reburied today with full military honors up in lake george um this is
00:06:10.720an example tell me tell me tell me tell me that story where were the these were the boys
00:06:16.760they were found in lake george new york uh there were 44 remains uh and this is they were part of
00:06:23.820The Expedition to Attack Canada in 1775 and 1776, which relates directly to the book that I just wrote, Revolutionary Snipers, where the riflemen are part of the main prong that goes after Quebec City.
00:06:40.080And it's very possible that within the 44 remains that some of these men were in the unit that I discussed because they found a button from the 1st Pennsylvania Battalion.
00:06:51.080Italian, not exactly, not directly the Pennsylvania unit that I write about, but very close.
00:06:58.140But it's these men that fall back from Canada after the aborted attack at Quebec, and they
00:11:16.760But in the midst of the siege of Quebec City, it was a it was an artillery duel for a short period of time.
00:11:26.040And she would lose her life in that. Remember, in the siege, Quebec City was it was a Moncombe in General Wolf and General Wolf.0.84
00:11:36.900This is back in the French and Indian Wars. For people that, just to get everybody up to date, you don't see more savage fighting by the United States or America, really in that period, before the French and Indian Wars and then when it started, all the way through the War of 1812.0.96
00:11:56.740because I my premise is that the revolution really didn't stop at Yorktown it really the
00:12:03.400military that the British and the British aristocracy's obsession with controlling the
00:12:10.560United States in this vast wilderness of which you know drove uh King George George III even
00:12:17.540more insane than he was understanding what he had lost it was only when Andrew Jackson
00:12:22.920And that in that group of, you know, it was a ragtag force of, you know, freed slaves and buccaneers and Cajuns and good old country boys from Alabama crushed the British Army at New Orleans on the first or the second or third of January of 1815.
00:12:45.220But if you want to see just brutal daily combat and real heroism, you go from the French and Indian War, because that's where Washington won his spurs as a junior, as a junior officer, all the way through the War of 1812.
00:13:00.700You look up in those northern, you know, you look up in Vermont and Maine, upstate New York, all the way to Michigan and Lake Michigan.
00:13:13.600Talk about the path of invasion because that's always been our – I think the path of invasion is actually up through New York State more.
00:13:23.640This area, not Maine per se, we're talking about up the Hudson River Valley through Albany and Ticonderoga.
00:13:32.820This is the path of invasion to Canada and also their path of invasion to the United States later on.
00:13:39.920It's just a brutal – as well as in 1777 when General Burgoyne launches a massive army out of Canada towards what would now be Saratoga, which is another aspect of the book that I really get into in great detail.
00:14:00.640This is the riflemen, the first snipers that will have a huge role in that.
00:14:04.980Who's the hero there? Wait for it. Oh, Benedict Arnold.
00:14:09.920Once again, Benedict Arnold shows up in all his glory on the battlefield, really turning the battle around and saving it for the Americans.
00:14:24.180The trilogy on the American Revolution.
00:14:25.940Patrick, I'm so glad you took, was it six years of your life and turned it on the American Revolution and just extraordinary, extraordinary works about people I think that had been lost in the midst of time.
00:14:37.780When you read these books, you are so proud that you're an American.
00:14:43.340You're so proud you came from a country that would produce giants like in these books.
00:17:43.540It was a book that my original editors didn't want me to write.
00:17:48.300They they wanted me to write only about World War Two. And it's like all the books that have found me in one way or another.
00:17:57.020And this is the case with Washington's Immortals. I was I was with Colonel Willie Buell in New York City and he wanted to know if I wanted to go to the Met.
00:18:05.640I said, no, hey, let's do a battlefield tour of the Battle of Brooklyn. So we started out at Greenwood Cemetery where the, you know, the most infamous and famous New Yorkers are buried.
00:18:17.680But it's also the site of the opening rounds of the Battle of Brooklyn. We started there, walked through Battlefield Hill where the Marylanders and other Americans kind of faced off against the British.
00:18:31.180um and it's we then walked down towards the michael raleigh uh american legion post and found
00:18:39.820a rusted old sign that said here lie 254 americans maryland heroes and it was there
00:18:48.360i wanted to know where this is a mass grave of who are these men and you know i found out that
00:18:56.540Mordecai Gist, who's one of the main characters in the book, survived along with others.
00:19:02.460And I wrote what was the first band of brothers.
00:19:05.940It was a breakthrough book of the American Revolution.
00:19:53.240And they will play a huge role, places like Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse and even Yorktown, where Mordecai Gist will face off against his old nemesis, Cornwallis, who he faced near the Stone House in Brooklyn.
00:20:09.660And he will see Cornwallis, you know, surrender at Yorktown.
00:20:17.260And that was my first book, which was a tremendous success.
00:20:21.300All the books that I've written on the American Revolution and also actually the last five, four or five books have been bestselling books.
00:20:30.020And the next book in line is The Indispensables, and this is about the Marblehead Regiment.
00:20:36.400These are the men that rode Washington across the Hudson River, or I mean the Delaware River, I should say.
00:20:46.440And then the East River in Brooklyn, it's where after the American thermopoly, Washington has to decide to stay or fight. And two days later, he decides to evacuate Brooklyn and the greatest evacuation in military history takes place.
00:21:03.600And it's on the backs of the Marblehead Mariners, which assemble small boats and row Washington's army, the remains of it, all of it across the East River.
00:21:15.280And, you know, it's here that the miraculous fog sets in that this is a condition that's not it doesn't happen all the time, ever hardly happens at exactly the right time in right place, which screens the movement of Glover's men and they bring the rest of the army back to Manhattan.
00:21:35.540And this book is also about the origins of the First Navy, which happens to be John Glover's fishing boat, which is repurposed into an armed schooner, and they asymmetrically attack the British.
00:21:50.600Um, you know, there's a little bit of, uh, shades of, uh, straight support moves here
00:21:57.300if you want, well, because it, it causes the insurance rates to skyrocket with the, um,
00:22:04.220the British, the British had been using civilian transports for their logistics to bring over
00:22:09.800supplies, ammunition, and men to, from London to North America.
00:22:14.820And these were these schooners were interdicting them and seizing boats, causing the insurance to go to skyrocket.
00:22:23.020It also is the origins of the United States Navy.
00:22:26.300Some of these captains within the Marblehead ranks are true giants.
00:22:31.660They they really they bring in crucial power gunpowder at exactly the right time when the the Continental Army has done and they save the war.
00:22:43.920And Glover's men, you know, just play a huge role throughout the 14th Continental of saving the army multiple times during the American Revolution.
00:22:53.440Hang on. I want to go to this and see how the third book ties in. But if you read the first two books, you realize people that are prepared to fight and give all for their country, although at the time the actual formation of the country was new.
00:23:07.460We had been a colony, they had been colonies, but we didn't have really have a national sense or a national purpose.
00:23:14.120It is how close things were so many times.
00:23:18.880There's so many situations like at the American Thermopylae in Brooklyn, that if Washington's immorals had not continued to charge the Stone House.
00:23:30.140The British very easily could have swept Washington's army from the field.
00:23:34.100and the revolution's over in 60 days done it by september you're finished it's over
00:23:40.780this is the this is the the thing that you sit there and you're in awe and you talk about divine
00:23:46.220providence and and uh and and we being a uh this nation being a city on the hill and in a chosen
00:23:55.600land you see it in these books and the books are from first person memoirs or accounts at the time
00:24:03.440It's not people after the fact putting together a pattern recognition narrative.
00:24:09.100You're seeing it through the eyes of the participants.
00:30:39.600Patrick K. O'Donnell, one of the reasons you've become a bestseller author is your books are first-hand accounts through archival research or interviews you started with the oral histories of the greatest generation.
00:30:51.780So you have done thousands of individual interviews, I mean thousands, and tens of thousands of hours, and done archival research for years to get the first person count through the eyes.
00:31:05.660And since your books don't deal with big strategy, I mean, you lay all that kind of out, but they're really, this is really all different from every different war, really focused on Americans in combat.
00:31:17.300And I might say, although there are no average Americans, the average American in combat, the ordinary person doing extraordinary things.
00:31:26.800What does Memorial Day, do you think, and you made the comment, hey, when we did the battlefield, you know, the recovery of the remains, we didn't go past World War I.
00:31:40.000What do you think, for the heroes and patriots that gave their lives for this country, what Memorial Day would mean to them if you had the opportunity to talk to them about it?
00:31:57.520I think it would be giving us our tomorrow and our today.
00:32:04.940They are responsible for securing our freedom through their sacrifice.
00:32:14.060And therefore, it's absolutely critical that we honor and remember them.
00:32:23.440I think that that's a time of shortcoming, that we do not remember our heroes as we should.
00:32:34.940uh memorial day today in the 250th given that you've just written the third book
00:32:41.560of your trilogy on the revolution and on the fighting men of the rubble fighting men and
00:32:46.500women i might add to the revolution um the 250th what is it what does it mean to you as we go
00:32:53.500through this and now the lead up to july 4th and folks that's not ending our coverage i would
00:32:59.680actually say from i would maybe not realize america's voice they're going to be part of
00:33:03.900all of it as we will. But particularly for the war room, we've always made a big emphasis that
00:33:09.1004th of July is obviously very important. It is the document, it's the declaration of not just
00:33:14.160independence, it's a declaration of war against an empire. Because I think that you had the
00:33:22.840American Revolution, then you had the War of Independence, then you had building the nation.
00:33:28.440They were kind of in three big blocks. The signing of the declaration brings to the end, I believe, the curtain comes down on the first part, which is the American Revolution.
00:33:37.440They actually get these loyal sons of England to essentially write a document that declared independence and therefore going to war against their mother country.
00:33:49.740then you had the the revolutionary war itself that went on for what seven or eight years like I said
00:33:55.980don't if you don't quit you're going to win now on the 250th our coverage I think we're actually
00:34:02.560getting more intense after July 4th because we're going to go through with Patrick the importance
00:34:07.860of that first six months because the British were quite smart they created a empire with a bunch of
00:34:16.920pirates, essentially, Francis Drake and company, you know, being pirates down in the Caribbean
00:34:23.300and being pirates, stealing the gold from the Spanish and defeating the Spanish empire.
00:34:27.800They built an empire with really nothing. And the Americans, which could have been the0.67
00:34:33.920foundational element, along with India, said, we're out. We're going to opt out of this. We0.98
00:34:37.140want our independence. We want our freedom. We want to be able to call our own shots.
00:34:41.280It's in that 250th. And the British realized immediately, we must put this down. And the
00:34:45.420only way to put it we've talked enough we're through talking there's no diplomacy there's no
00:34:49.860talk this has to be crushed in a vast military expedition and they sent the largest expeditionary
00:34:57.040force in the history of the world at the time 300 i think combat ship 300 warships in in new
00:35:02.880york harbor the british army expeditionary force in staten island and then and then landing on
00:35:08.640long island and as patrick so brilliantly uh discusses it time and again the battle of new
00:35:14.940York retreat retreat retreat just at the very last second like almost a movie that's written
00:35:19.360that you know they they save themselves they save the army till they they retreat all the way through0.97
00:35:24.320manhattan and then in new jersey they get their ass kicked all the way down till they cross the0.91
00:35:28.020delaware and they get back to pennsylvania and say hey man we got to regroup until that time0.91
00:35:33.120even a signer of the declaration from new jersey had asked for a pardon from the british because
00:35:38.520it was over. We had nothing but a string of defeats. Now, it was heroism and bravery,
00:35:44.680American thermopetally, the American Dunkirk, as Patrick says, you know, these ordinary people
00:35:50.220doing extraordinary things to save this country, this republic in the cradle. But the British
00:35:54.940understood we're going to crush it militarily in the cradle. So given that, as we, and people
00:36:01.200barely, the general population barely understands the Declaration of Independence.
00:36:08.520Your thoughts on this 250, Patrick, since you've for 16 years, you've lived with the spirit of 76, that Darby's Rangers greatest generation member ain't wrong.
00:36:23.520He says, hey, the greatest generation, Patrick, don't forget the boys of 75 and 76.
00:36:28.200What would they say about our 250th, sir?
00:36:30.360they would say that i think that we've lost much of what they fought for and i think there's a
00:36:40.400a need in some ways to retrench to look back at the ideals of freedom and liberty
00:36:48.580that they forged through their blood sweat and tears to to go back in many ways to
00:36:56.920to what you know those sacrifices were all about and that was about was about freedom i mean
00:37:04.000revolutionary snipers opens up in a in a forgotten in a forgotten battle and that battle is
00:37:13.600on october 10th 1774 months before the revolutionary war at a place called point
00:37:22.380pleasant in the ohio territory and these men i mean the opening scene of this is like something
00:37:29.280out of indiana jones where two men are sent out to several men are sent out to go hunting
00:37:34.100to find forage of a thousand for a thousand man army they're there to go out hunting and as they're
00:37:41.520it's in the you know the early twilight of the morning and they stumble upon an indian camp
00:37:47.560hundreds, if not over a thousand men, warriors that are about to pounce on them.
00:37:54.940And these men are then running for their lives as they're avoiding, you know, musket rounds from
00:38:01.940the Indians. And they make their way into the camp. One of them is killed. And they then
00:38:08.040blurt out that they're about to be attacked. And it's the, you know, an epic battle that nobody's
00:38:15.760even heard about hardly. For, you know, over 14 hours, these men are nearly overrun by a Native1.00
00:38:23.420army, a massive army of warriors. And it's the technology that they are wielding,0.97
00:38:30.900the Pennsylvania long rifle, that saves them in many cases. But what comes out of that, Steve,
00:38:37.860is an even more forgotten aspect of the American Revolution. It's really one of the first
00:38:43.500declarations of our independence at a place called Fort Gower, which is on the Ohio River,
00:38:49.200where these men assemble after this war takes place. And they assert their rights of liberty
00:38:56.400and freedom, and that they will defend those rights as Americans. And that's the opening of
00:39:03.580revolutionary snipers. It's amazing. It's amazing you chose the Ohio Valley. Correct me if I'm
00:39:09.620wrong sir your book starts in ohio valley in the if memory serves me in the treaty of paris
00:39:15.340the one thing the british demanded is that all um movement of the colonists would stop at the
00:39:23.400appalachian mountains and in fact the ohio river valley was specifically what they said they were
00:39:30.120not going to allow to be touched correct i mean this of of course being americans not only did
00:39:35.700we bitch and moan about being taxed for our country at the time, Britain, to fight the
00:39:42.400French and Indian War on our territory, which led to the revolution. But the prohibition against0.53
00:39:50.280going into Ohio Valley, the American colonists or American citizens then said, hey, how about
00:39:57.780this? Screw you. We're going to go where we want to go and flooded the zone. So it's quite0.99
00:40:02.300interesting that you started in the Ohio Valley because that was considered, I think, by many
00:40:08.220people to be the jewel of the crown, right? That expansion into that vast wilderness with all the
00:40:13.780natural resources and beauty and farmland, all of it. I mean, it was even beyond the Indians. It was
00:40:19.360obviously, although they were nomadic, their territory, but the Brits, you know, the French
00:40:24.940knew what they lost, but the Brits were not prepared to lose that. Correct, sir?
00:40:28.120that's that's part of it but what i what i really get into here is that that army was almost
00:40:36.060sacrificed that's a it's a long story to the native americans uh and what i wanted to focus on
00:40:45.840was what came after it and it's a declaration they they do a two-way thing they kind of declare
00:40:54.500their allegiance to the crown but they also leave a veiled threat that they are armed and ready to
00:41:01.260fight for their liberty um if need be as americans and it's a very much a forgotten chapter
00:41:09.320of the american revolution um but also just the the the full arc of of uh of the revolutionary
00:46:33.140They're about untold stories, in many cases, smaller stories that tell a larger story of a larger conflict.
00:46:41.600It's about individuals that are on the inflection points of history, be it Saratoga or on Battle Road or at Bunker Hill or at Terawa or at D-Day,
00:46:56.360where it's members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, two men, really one man that disables the big
00:47:04.820guns at going to Hawk. It's about individual agency, individuals that are able to bend and
00:47:12.360shape history. They're not supposed to do it. But against all odds, they somehow do it. And I think
00:47:21.260that that's the lesson, the great lesson of history. It's the great lesson of American history
00:48:11.420um your books and i want to close on this your books have done an amazing job
00:48:22.340of showing people that are normal americans going about their lives and then the call to action
00:48:28.220is about in defense of this republic in many different places throughout because you've
00:48:32.740covered every major war um and they're up until the time of their call they're ordinary people
00:48:39.160They're just going about their lives. And once they come into these conflicts, what they do, you sit there and you read and say, this is like a novel.
00:48:49.920I can't believe these folks against all these odds and all this hardship and all these deprivations.
00:48:55.820They pull together and they're able to achieve extraordinary things that put us on the path to the success that we've had to get here today.
00:49:06.440Give me a minute or two about that before we wrap up,
00:49:33.220Once, you know, there are times when we feel like,
00:49:35.500This could have never happened in the past, or things are so bad that we'll never be able to get through them.
00:49:42.760And then we look at what, you know, our great ancestors accomplished, and we realize it just provides an incredible perspective of what they accomplished and what they achieved.