What We Get Wrong About WW2

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0:51Al Murray: Well, Jim, actung, actung, as we used to say. We don't say it all the time anymore, do we? But now what do we say? Far in the hall! Far in the hall! On this occasion, we've got American guests on. Exactly. So, welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk, here at We Have Ways Fest 6, Mark 6, the tiger. Yeah, sext. And we're sat here on the Thursdays, the festival sort of assembles. So if you hear music in the background... If you hear the rumble of tank tracks. Exactly. Or the odd JCB. That's because that's where we're on site. But we are delighted to be joined this afternoon by John McManus. Yes, a great, great, great friend of the show.

1:26Yep. Occasional co-host, former regular co-host. John, it's fantastic to see you here in an English field surrounded by oaks and a Cromwell and armored cars. I mean, what could be better? This is just awesome. And I love the fire in the hole. I am totally for that. Let's do it. Okay, well, that's now a solemn vow. Every time you can one. We won't do act on act on. We'll do fire in the hole.

1:51Al Murray: So thanks for joining us again. You've been to the festival before. So you kind of, I mean, you know what to expect. If you had to sum this event up to someone on the other side of the Atlantic, what would you say about this festival? I mean, it's hard to come up with one word, but I think just fun. I mean, it's just a blast. It's so much fun to hear the speakers, but also all the hardware, the equipment, some real reenactors who do it the right way. Monty's men I'm talking about, and others too, obviously. I mean, these guys. Parachutists. Yeah, exactly. They know their stuff. And what I like about it too, it's a very welcoming environment.

2:31Just the people who come here, I don't know why this is, but they're all nice. They're so much fun. We only have nice people. I think that's largely down to us.

2:39Al Murray: Isn't everyone being nice, Jim? I think so. I think that's us, isn't it? We can take responsibility for that. I mean, it starts with you guys and goes on down. Yeah, thanks for bringing out what great guys we are, John. Absolutely. You're just peaches of guys, that's for sure. That's why you've been asked back, obviously. I think it is really fantastic that we can attract people like you to come, though. It makes it very special, doesn't it, Jimmy? Well, yeah, and we always want a few Yanks over every festival. John, you're always absolutely top of the list, obviously. But, you know, we had James and Scott last year.

3:06That was great, wasn't it? We've got Kev Heimel hopefully coming over this year. You know flights for missing. We've got John Parshaw. We've got all sorts of people coming. So it's fantastic. We've got Mark Milner, he's Canada, and now an enemy of the United States. Unless it becomes a 51st state. A whole huge country is one state. I mean, what could go wrong with that?

3:24Al Murray: What could possibly go wrong with any of it? But we're not here to talk about politics. No. No. I have to say, I rather like where we found ourselves sitting here. Yeah, me too. Because we're between the best tank of the Second World War and it's the close runner-up, aren't we, Jim? Yeah. the Sherman and the Cromwell yeah which order I have to say because this is behind us here Jim the Sherman with this is the reinforced plates on the side yeah this isn't the welded hull is it so molded this is the cast the cast one yeah how rough the finishes is quite interesting isn't it which probably a you know sat in a field getting rusty for 40 years didn't it before it was done up i don't know maybe but they did they did you know they did churn these out and um but i mean it doesn't it doesn't matter if that is genuine roughness because the whole point about a sherman tank is you know trying to make a really complicated thing as simple as possible it's modular i mean that's so that the u.s produced 86 000 tanks in world war ii you know the preponderance of which were sherman's yeah so it's designed to be very very replaceable and shippable.

4:32I mean, that's the whole thing, everything. And so, yeah, the roughness of the side, I mean, that totally makes sense regardless of what year that will happen.

4:40Al Murray: Yeah, if it comes out of the mould, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was rereading that book about tank production, British tank policy. I've got to get Steve's a little over. Industrial policy. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, to talk about that, but Ben Coombs' book where he talks about at one point the Americans have, I think it's 3 ,000 lees, but they just don't use them because they're surplus to requirements because the Sherman comes online a little bit quicker than they're expecting. And that preponderance of stuff, that redundancy in your industrial policies is amazing, isn't it?

5:13It really is. And the fact that you didn't need the Lees. And I think, too, the survivability might have been higher in the Sherman. So that is prioritized. That speaks to some value systems, I think.

5:24Al Murray: Yeah. And again, once the Sherman is shippable, it now is definitely going to be the main battle tank. The Lee is outmoded. Noises off, by the way. There's a light-aid detachment just going past. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly where they are, aren't they? Yeah. But also, you know, shout out for the Cromwell. Oh! Which is obviously lower in profile. Absolutely goes like SH-1T off a shovel. Yeah. And can turn on a sixpence and can go into reverse as quickly because it can go into forward gear. And, you know, it's still got a six-pounder on it, which is a pretty decent gun. And it just looks cool.

6:01Well, but also... And it's got silver paint inside, not white. Well, we went past it earlier.

6:07Al Murray: JR and I, our producer, we went past it. And he went, well, what are those sort of bolts? And I said, well, that's literally what that is. You know, the turret is a box, and they bolted on the armour plate because they couldn't do the casting, so why bother? So do something... Again, it's about being able to deliver the item, churn them out, knock them out. and that's exactly what that is. And actually those leaves played a very important part in Burma and northeast India. Yeah. Absolutely perfect for that. Right. A light tank can really succeed in that kind of environment and that's what we see.

6:37And of course the Japanese opposition isn't exactly impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

6:41Al Murray: But weren't we going to talk about movies, war movies? I think we were but I'm just, you know, you can't sit us between a pair of tanks and also between two tanks. This Morris armored car which looks, really does look like it's been made of off cuts.

6:56Al Murray: It's an ugly brute, isn't it? You know, when you go on holiday and you go to one of those handbag shops where the handbags are all made of off-cut leather. Yeah. Right, and they go, look at this, we're doing the right thing by using this off-cut leather. So that armour car looks like an off-cut leather handbag. Yes, it does. Yeah. It does. With wheels. It's a very peculiar item, that. Yeah. It is very odd. Real ugly duckling. And not going to grow into anything beautiful. We were talking about, yes, before we started, we were talking... It's actually almost taller than the Cromwell. Exactly. exactly yeah well that's why the crommel has a lower silhouette exactly that's an asset too yeah yeah amazing yeah we were talking about films we were in fact we were talking before we came uh on air about pressure yes now i've seen pressure you've seen pressure john jim you've i've seen most of pressure i've seen enough of pressure so what didn't you like about it uh quite a lot to be honest a funny thing is is ages ago I got asked to if I'd be interested in being historical advisor on it and I went yeah sure great I was going to have to go and brief Brendan and Damien I remember you telling me this and Andrew and the gang and I was all quite excited about it but it didn't work out for various reasons and that was that and kind of forgot all about it to be perfectly honest and suddenly it's out you know it's coming and we're being offered the opportunity to go to screenings and everything but the problem is it's the last thing that a film company like that wants they don't want us going to see that because we're going to pull it to pieces because we know too much.

8:22Al Murray: You say that, James, but I wrote an essay for the Patreons, a review for the Patreons, sort of 1 ,200 words, from which they were able to pull quotes because there were bits where I was... Magnificent. Al Murray. Magnificent. Leesh it. Of course, that's the joke, isn't it? Master of the quote, Al Murray. They got the pull quotes out of me because I thought Andrew Scott, who plays Stagg, he's a tremendous actor. And even in the sort of swirling melodrama around him. He gives this quite fantastic performance. So you credit where it's due. But I thought the problem was the sort of the rest of it.

9:02Al Murray: John, I thought the things I didn't mind about it is, you know, when Eisenhower goes, I'm staging the biggest invasion the world's ever known with this many troops, this many shit, it's fine. You know, military films, you can have people brief each other on stuff because that happens. It's believable. It happens all the time. You know, new person comes in. is what we're doing it's all quite believable but when but when he's slamming doors and banging telephones down and yelling at people and i and we know that eisenhower did have a temper definitely but what he was really brilliant at was containing it containing it because he had had monster temper tantrums when he was a kid and that's when he learned his lesson that he had to find a way to control his temper somehow and so by the time he's at this stage he's got a lot to be angry about you You know, as a shave commander, he's a master at maintaining an even keel.

9:50And so that's one thing that I just didn't feel they got right. This idea of him as this sort of loose cannon, live wire kind of guy, dressing people down like a drill sergeant or something. I just don't think that's the right vibe for Ike. Yeah. And where was Beetle Smith? No where to be seen. No where to be seen. But at least they didn't have— I mean, he's the person who was his kind of go-to man to talk for military things. I mean, I know he had this relationship with Kay Summersbee, but... At least they didn't go that route, like that he and Kay Summersbee were a couple. Yes, that was sort of...

10:20I liked that they didn't do that. Interestingly chaste, wasn't it?

10:22Al Murray: And I was sort of impressed by that, because we don't know, and it's a drama, right? So you'd think they might go, you know, to add some drama that their relationship would be an affair. What was interesting was the restraint in that. They could have used some of that restraint. You know, the depiction of Montgomery is sort of wild and weird. Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you guys. What did you think about the Montgomery Well, it just wasn't even remotely like him. Yeah. I mean, did you find it kind of offensive almost? Did it make you a buffoon out of him almost? What it made me think was like, because you know, I know perfectly well there are a lot of people who don't like him, right?

11:01Al Murray: But it's almost like that thing, you can say anything you like about him now. Yeah. And he's depicted as too cautious, too cowardly very often or like not as committed as, say, an American general say-like pattern. If we're going to play this bloody game, right? But in that, he's shown as reckless. In the film, he's going, oh, we should do it anyway. Who cares? I don't need my air cover. We should get... And you think, right, OK. So this comes from... Monty is a baddie. So we can have him be a baddie in any permutation. It doesn't matter because we've written him off. Also, what's really annoying about that is the dial has changed dramatically in the last 10 years about Montgomery.

11:38It just has. in academic circles it has he's he's not he has had a reappraisal and he is appreciated in a way that he that he wasn't before and it's so completely typical of a film to sort of hark back to some old school kind of 30 years out of date kind of meme on the second world war but it's rather than try and present a kind of new but let me know you've got the meme right

12:03Al Murray: because he's he's going around being reckless and he's trying he's saying let's just invade anyway who cares about the weather my men will wade ashore or whatever you know like who cares and which is the he's shown as being completely unreasonable yeah and they're all reacting to him like this guy's a moron yeah i mean it was really over the top yeah it was it was almost as if nothing had changed from from that infamous line and saving private ryan yeah how's things coming together oh it's okay but trouble is you know monty isn't moving so we can't do anything I'm like, where is this coming from?

12:36Out of nowhere. It's one of my least favorite parts of the movie, honestly. But it seems like this is the same Monty sort of that we can just use as any kind of foil. He's a foil to kind of, you know, I just find it so irritating. It's just, it's like, come on. Because again, it's time and time again, the reality is so much more interesting.

12:56Al Murray: Well, but you're very stuck on the fact that the sort of perceived story is wrong anyway, that Stagg. stag is a meteorologist but he's actually a geophysicist that is his that is his academic training and under him he's got crick on one hand and he's got sphere petterson on the other and crick is for the kind of analog study of of weather patterns whereas petterson is very much no that doesn't count what you need to do is is and is see what's in front of you but the problem you have with the kind of not going on the 5th is you're then dependent on this very very small ridge of high pressure which is coming in behind the main low pressure and could very easily have been siphoned off and whisked off into the north sea and never come to the normandy coast at all so so it is the right call because it it works out but it is complete luck i mean you know it might not have done it really might not have done at all it might have we might never have had that little window and the truth is had they could have gone on the fifth actually okay because it was a much nicer morning than the sixth overall it's just that the rain and the squalls stayed in till about 2 30 which would have had a very problematic effect on the british airborne drop yeah but the rest of it would have been a lot easier so don't watch pressure i think that's what we're trying is that what we is that where we've got to i mean don't watch it It is annoying the Amarok beach scenes, aren't they?

14:22Because it's the observation bunker from Long Sumer again, which they had in Saving Private Ryan, which was wrong. And the reason it's being put in this film is because in the mind's eye of people, that's what the Normandy coastline represents. So movies have created a kind of truth all of their own, which isn't a truth. It's nonsense. And I thought that there was no need to have the invasion scenes. That's not what the film is about. that those scenes have been done very well in Private Ryan. Yeah. So I felt that that's kind of beyond the scope of the movie, that it was more interesting to see this whole dynamic with Stagg.

14:57Because one thing I really do like about the movie is this idea of, what do you do as a specialist, as an expert, telling your superiors what they don't want to hear? Yeah. Because that part really is dead on. And that creates a lot of interesting dimensions to it. But what I was a little disappointed in is, like, how the superior acts to eisenhower yeah that he's sort of outraged that he gets weather data that he doesn't want to hear i mean that's not really the way eisenhower was no to try and bully somebody into telling him what he wants to hear yeah he's quite the opposite actually yeah yeah yeah yeah

15:29Al Murray: i did like the bits the parts of the film where they would where they were arguing about about data and about methodology and and i mean that was that was a really interesting thing to see on screen. You know, people are arguing, essentially arguing about how do you construct the truth and how do you, how do you construct an argument and what do you base it on? Which is a thing you don't, you don't see in the cinema. But what you also didn't need was his wife in the maternity hospital. I'm sold on the idea that making that decision is a lot of pressure to be under without, right, without family drama in the background, right?

16:01Al Murray: You know, they tee it up as the biggest invasion of all time. Yes, it is. So that's, that's plenty. That's plenty, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, there's enough there to chew on, I think. We don't necessarily need the rest of it. I guess that was an attempt to humanize him. Yes, I guess, but it felt glued on because it was. Jim, they should have had you as historical advisor. I think that's the upside of the whole conversation. Well, no, but I would have told them what they don't want to hear. Then they'd have been yelled at. Yeah, you'd have been yelled at. Right, that's what I'm saying. And then you'd be in that dynamic of like, oh, I'm telling them what they don't want to hear.

16:31What do I do now?

16:31Al Murray: The bit that did move me, though, I was, you know, because they're pulling all these levers to try and move you as well. And the bit that did move me was Eisenhower when he, you know, when he's drafted the letter that we all know, right, that people who read about the history of the day, you know, should this all go wrong, best efforts have been made, but it's on me. When he reads that out, because it's what really happened. And Brendan Fraser, he is a great actor, but they had him, you know, like I say, slamming doors and bawling people out. for that bit. I found that very, very moving. That part was.

17:04Yeah. And you know what else? One thing I really liked in that kind of part of the movie, not only did they show the Westerns, you know, that he was reading.

17:12Al Murray: Yeah. Did you notice they had a picture of Grant? He had a picture of Grant. And I really liked that because Eisenhower tried to emulate Grant. Yeah. And I think he's a lot like him. I think he's eerily similar, actually. So I did like that there was that kind of subliminal linkage. Yeah. It's kind of like there's two films going on at once. there's the one with the sort of dramatic-y bits and then there's the story and the actual people and they're kind of running alongside one another not necessarily in harmony Group hugs at the end didn't work for me at all I'll tell you what, we'll take a break for a quick group hug and then we'll come back to talk some more

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18:13Al Murray: right welcome back to we have ways to make you talk with me um al murray james holland and our special guest john mcmanus now john what are you looking into at the moment what are you up to oh tons uh i'm doing a biography of uh matthew ridgeway actually oh wow yeah and it's a whole biography you know the world war ii part is enough but he had this really fascinating career yeah i mean korea is arguably the most consequential part of his career yeah because i think personally there's a south korea today in to a great extent because of ridgway because the way he turned things around that's rare then he you know of course succeeds macarthur when macarthur gets fired by truman he succeeds eisenhower as nato commander when ike ran for president.

18:55Right. So he's dealing with this whole kind of early NATO period of the NATO partners promising things and then not wanting to follow through. And, you know, and Ridgway being Ridgway, he's pretty hardcore. Like, hey, we need to be ready here. We need to buck up our forces. Then he becomes chief of staff and he deals with the whole Eisenhower new look problem. But even before that, what's quite interesting is that he was the Army's leading Latin American specialist. He was fluent in Spanish and he served several tours in Nicaragua during the American Electoral Commission thing in the 1920s. Wow.

19:28Yeah. Isn't that crazy? So he that really is what launched his career because he got a sponsor in a general named McCoy who invited him to be part of that mission. And this is like the mid 20s. So there's nothing going on for professional officers. This was like the deployment you could get and so they were getting people like beating down their doors wanting to be part of this and Ridgeway got to be like the key guy for this this commanding general running it so this general became his mentor but it was also kind of the way that he started to get very noticed right and this all was due to his Spanish language skills and his cultural sensitivity

20:06Al Murray: where does Ridgeway come from ways what's his background so his background is he is the son of a Westpointer, of an Army Coast Artillery officer who retired as a colonel. So this is Colonel Thomas Ridgway. And so the Army is kind of all he knew. He grew up at Fort Snelling in Minnesota and other posts too, especially there. I went to the officer quarters, the remnants of them where they lived. So this was Ridgway's life to become a soldier. And so he goes to West Point. He was class of 1917 infantryman, and he wants to deploy, of course, to the Western Front, but he didn't. He decided he was going to join the 3rd Infantry Regiment because he thought, that's a leading regiment.

20:53They're going to deploy. Have you ever heard of the old guard that guards the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetery? So that's that unit. But in World War I, they figured that's going to be a combat unit. Well, surprise, they didn't get deployed. so he's he's there like sidetracked like along the mexican border for a while and then he gets orders to go back to west point as a uh as an instructor and uh and he's like okay i guess they're gonna have to have me teach spanish nope it's gonna be french and he he barely passed french and uh he's like i don't think i could even order a meal in a restaurant in french and the commanding officer's like you start tomorrow good luck god yeah because obviously we need French, you know?

21:34So yeah, he felt that his career was probably over. So he's a pretty smart guy. He's a very smart guy. Yeah. So he has this really interesting kind of blend of kind of high level strategic intelligence with field craft because he's a real combat soldier, as you guys know, from knowing, especially knowing the airborne side so well. I mean, obviously he's an airborne pioneer and he's a lead from the front kind of guy. Lafayette is like the prime example in Normandy. but he also really has this kind of larger strategic vision uh he's he's really just fascinating and then on a personal level too he's married three times and you know that's supposed to happen and you know with your career so was it just him being particularly difficult um being away a lot the first yeah he's he's so dedicated to the army right and i think that's now i'm only this is only a supposition based on whatever i could find um i think that he decided on going ahead with his career rather than his marriage the first time around.

22:33I think that his wife said, I want you out of the Army, because I found that he had actually submitted a resignation letter in his personnel files, and no one had really seen that. Wow. And then he rescinds it. He was stationed in China at that point, so they're coming back home on a ship, and then he rescinds it in a telegram or whatever. And then when he gets to America, he basically abandons his wife and his two daughters. Gosh.

23:05Al Murray: But it didn't affect his career. No, it didn't. The divorces did not have an adverse effect on his career because he had went through two of them. And you always hear that. And that's why I think that's kind of mythology because MacArthur had a divorce too. Yes, that's right. So I think there was some level of understanding. But what you did need was you needed a spouse, a supportive spouse and he hit a home run the third time around his wife penny was perfect for him and it was a true story they stayed married the rest of their lives and um and she was so like for the positions he had post world war ii these big positions she was perfect like as his sidekick because a lot of this is very diplomatic like a lot of the jobs he was doing it's really it's really interesting can i ask you one thing so so there was this book i think i may have mentioned this before so there's this book of d-day essays and one of them was about the airborne bit and it's by Alan Millwood.

23:56Is that right? Millett. Alan Millett. Basically, in this thing, he says, you know, the whole deployment for D-Day was completely ridiculous. And one of the big problems was that Maxwell Taylor and Ridgway hated each other's guts and so didn't cooperate properly and didn't come up with a plan. And I have researched this everywhere I can possibly think of, and I've never found any reference anywhere apart from this one essay that says this. Yeah, I agree. I didn't find anything of the kind either I didn't find anything of the kind and actually Taylor was kind of Ridgway's protege Taylor joked about it he would follow Ridgway into jobs even chief of staff they got on very well Ridgway had reservations about Taylor because Taylor being Taylor you know how he was he was kind of an eel he was slippery he was political in a way and he would range around a little bit in terms of his value systems But Ridgway thought very highly of him as a professional soldier.

24:55There was not, to my knowledge, any kind of great hatred or schism there. Ridgway had very few, like, broken relationships. One guy who hated him but it wasn't returned is a guy named Edson Raff. You guys may have heard of him. He was an airborne colonel who led some of the first jumps in North Africa. Had the 509th Battalion, which was really an unruly unit at that point and didn't blend well with the 82nd Airborne Division when Ridgway was commanding, you know, when it first came into the Mediterranean. So Ed Raff absolutely hated Ridgway for the rest of their lives. Ridgway never said a crossword, and that's usually the pattern.

25:31The only person I could identify that is like if Ridgway were sitting here with us now, he would say, yeah, if you want me to admit the truth, I detest this guy. He was a guy named Charles Wilson, who was Eisenhower's defense secretary. And was just, I mean, it was a total clash of personalities. And I think Ridgway truly did detest him, and probably for good reason, in my opinion.

25:54Al Murray: That's during getting NATO going properly and that phase, right? Yeah, it's this whole phase of, you know, the new look. We're going to get by with air power and nukes and, you know, massive retaliation. And we're cutting your ground forces. So they would tell Ridgway, you've got the same missions, the same responsibilities globally, but when you're cutting your budget by about 40 percent. Right. And you're cutting your force strength by, you know, X number of soldiers. And he's like, this is dangerous. Yeah. We will, you know, we will suffer consequences of this. He's shouting it to the heavens.

26:25Yeah. And it's very frustrating for him. It's about a two year period and he really falls out with Ike, you know, over just over their ideas, not really at a personal level. Yeah. But they have very divergent ideas. And I think Eisenhower tired of Ridgeway in that position. I was glad to move on. So they interview, Wilson and Eisenhower interview Taylor to be the successor. And like, what do you think about this? Because these are our policies. And he's like, well, you know, I just follow orders or whatever. So Taylor tells them what they want to hear. And then when he gets in as chief of staff, he pretty much agrees with Ridgeway.

27:00And he's kind of pushing back whenever he can, too. And he even wrote a book excoriating the new look. Once he had retired in the 50s, of course, as you guys know, Kennedy brought him back as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the 60s and then ambassador to Vietnam. Yeah.

27:14Al Murray: I mean, Jim, you've been talking and thinking a lot about defense cuts and the like. Yeah. I mean, you know, well, it's absolutely crazy. I mean, you know, over here we've got such depleted armed services, but we're also not very resilient in resources and all sorts of stuff. and we're very vulnerable because, you know, all those cables in the North Sea, etc. Jim, I went to the Edinburgh Tattoo over the summer. We're not short of bagpipers. No. Deeply resilient in terms of bagpipes and drums. We're pretty deeply resilient in shiny breastplates too. I mean, you have no idea. And these pipers, they can play and march in weird formations at the same time.

27:52Al Murray: They can do their thing where they march right at each other and then suddenly swerve. Right, we are absolutely... If it's soft power you want, we're the softest of the lot. in a high-vis jacket. That's a feather in your cap. I just find it. But I did get this book the other day. I picked up this book, and it was all about... It was about the state of the Royal Navy in 1913, and it was published in the early 1914, and it says, you know, terrible scandal as bad before. You know, our Navy is depleted. We haven't been looking after it. You know, danger lurks on the horizon, all this kind of stuff.

28:28I mean... To us, it was never thus, right? Wow. Yes, but it seems to be kind of, you know, more so at the moment, doesn't it?

28:36Al Murray: Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Yeah, and what are you working on, James? Because we've got right into what John's looking at. Well, yeah, and then can I tee you up for what you're working on? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Please do. Yeah, yeah. Would you? Yeah, why not? So I've just done this book for Audible on Dunkirk, Nine Days That Saved the World, which has been great, and this was inspired by The Killer Angels. really um uh the michael shawler which is which is not so well known over here in the uk but is absolutely kind of required reading for anyone in the u.s military um and and i think one of pulitzer plies or something in 1973 or 4 whenever it came out and this is of course about the the battle of gettysburg and everyone in it is real it's researched brilliantly but it's a novel because Michael Schauer gives them thoughts and gets into the head of, you know, Chamberlain and Pickett and all the rest of them.

29:33And it's a superb book. But that was a kind of starting point for me. I thought, wouldn't it be good to do a kind of, you know, I wanted to do a slightly fictionalised non-fiction, you know, of the evacuation of Dunkirk with all its sort of swings and roundabouts and folds and, you know, all the drama of it. Because it's just such a dramatic week, as such a particularly dramatic week for British history, and I suppose actually quite a dramatic week for German history as well, because, you know, they blew it, frankly. So I've been doing that as an audio book, which has been quite interesting. And then I go on to a biography of Alexander, and then I do The Bulge.

30:07Oh, you're going to do Alex. I'm doing Alex. Well, I was actually commissioned to write that 16 years ago, and I still haven't written it. But now I'm going to do it. I'm just going to do it, you know? Got to be done. Did you take the advance? Yeah. then you may want to actually rate it usually a good idea to rate it long time ago spent that long time ago mate

30:30Al Murray: yeah yeah all gone pissed it down a booter didn't I you'll have spent it on a jeep or something like that but but oh you've just started your new one yes yes this is terrifically exciting well yes so I'm writing It's another airborne thing, but I'm writing about John Frost in North Africa, where he takes his battalion into North Africa to seize an airfield at a place called Oudna. They land up the road at a place called Depienne, and then the relief column never comes. And he's five days, 90, they land 90 miles behind enemy lines in Tunisia, and then have to tab out with the Germans hot in their heels everywhere they go.

31:10Al Murray: And it's this very dramatic story. But because there's been so much odyssey in the air because of the movie, I re-read his personal account and it's like he's Odysseus there's an extraordinary bit where they find a farmhouse they fall upon this French farmhouse and the lady makes them breakfast with champagne you know, does some ham and eggs with champagne and it's sort of like, do we leave? do we stay? and it really feels like this he's the leader, he's got to get his men out and there's this whole thing of him always picking his moment, blowing on a hunting horn and then they extract themselves or whatever terrible situation they're in.

31:46Al Murray: So I'm going to write about that, but also frame it with the Brunival raid before that, Operation Biting in February of 1942. But basically they have this extraordinary thing where they seize a radar installation from the French coast and it's an incredible success. They go in overnight and it's this first parachute operation the British do that works, probably the only one that works completely. And he's a national hero and he's invited to Downing Street the following night has to go and explain himself to the chiefs of staff. So he's sort of like this Odysseus figure. And I'm going to try and write the book like a page turn.

32:20Al Murray: And, you know, you have the triumph of Bruneval and then this weird protracted disaster. So that's the fall of Troy. Yes, exactly. The fall of Troy is Bruneval. And then the Odyssey is this next operation they go on, which is a complete disaster. And this whole battalion deploy. And he gets a couple of hundred of them home out of the Tunisian desert. And it's an extraordinary story. But the key part of it is they don't know where they're going to land. And he has to stand at the door of the aircraft and choose the drop zone as they're flying. Just on the fly. On the fly. And he's been desperate to do an operation.

32:58Al Murray: He's desperate to go. And also, you know, airborne troops are new. And they've got to prove that they're worth something beyond raiding. So he decides to jump out the door. So he sets the entire train of events in motion. his decision at that door and i think that's because if he'd not done that if he doesn't have to do it if he'd gone no no we can't land here it's not suitable they'd have flown back to bone and they'd have landed and they did he may have been fired but he might not have been whom they may have gone you know well that's a very sensible decision because after all uh we've cancelled we've cancelled the relief offense you know what i mean right the next day they're going well that was pretty sensible of you and so it is all on him it's a really interesting thing where in his memoir he sort of portrays it as this i did awfully well to get these chaps out of this scrape and you think well you got them in it as well yeah right it was your decision then he has to come back home and and kill his wife's suitor that's yes exactly yeah we don't quite get there yeah he doesn't shoot an arrow through 30 axe heads or whatever his dog is so relieved to see him there's one last sign there's no dogs dropping dead but i just think is really it's a great it's a great yarn and and um it's a terrific idea and you know because this idea of that responsibility of you've got 600 or 550 chaps and you've got to get them back and you use you that got them in that mess and because you independent thinker exactly because you were desperate to prove your metal and to prove their metal and to prove your worth and you know what stands out about it is that and i didn't know this i mean the market garden experience then that wasn't new for him.

34:32The idea of being cut off and nobody getting to you. Oh, yeah. So he kind of had a similar experience.

34:37Al Murray: Yeah, and then in Sicily, again, at Plymouth Soli, it's exactly the same thing happens. Eighth Army don't show up. But the amazing thing is that these guys are kind of rightly fated as heroes because they are heroic figures. And actually, all the best heroes are seriously flawed as well. He's like Achilles as well, isn't he? And Frost is flawed. But total days in combat, 38, 40. yeah something like that yeah because he's an airborne soldier 9th DLI probably you know or 3rd Infantry Division oh my gosh 546 something you know yeah I mean it's it's like you know but forgotten about not really interested yeah whereas this mustache tugging flinty fellow with his middle distance gaze yes yeah you so the the mustache is for festival is that is that in honor of johnny frost or windy gale or a bit of everything it's a bit of everything it's a bit of it's a bit of an airborne battle tash yeah i've got to say next year i'm tempted to do this is the mustache my father had when when i was a small boy and when i have this mustache i look in the mirror oh my god it's him time does its ravages exactly did your father know frost like in airborne circles yeah yeah you should ask him he's around this weekend what did he make of him frost and pearson would show up um at the at the brigade mess be team heroes and they'd be absolute team heroes but you know with their military crosses on and you'd think and and dad says and then you'd think right we're in for it now we are going to all get very very drunk um and no one can leave until they leave and it would he said it would go until four in the morning and it would be um really really quite emotional the next day yes but you know he'll tell you about it you know these big figures and and he said when he used to run dinners he'd make he'd ask the old the previous generation not to wear any medals medals because it was too intimidating for the for the new people oh really and how did they react well it would be and they were like yeah fine of course of course but you know because that because basically all of the all of the other older tier every every other other every other one of them had an mc so you know it could be intimidating you know had been at had been at normandy had been at yeah done varsity done the done the bulge you know all the six airdre people you know yeah yeah amazing yeah incredible anyway that's all we have time for because as you can see we have a festival to get ready for it might be about to rain as well which no i mean the weather gets a vote but now scudding across the sky exactly i just want it not to be windy on saturday for the parachuting you'll have to make the ultimate decision whether to go forward with the fest in spite of the weather or not i'll tug my mustache It's pressure.

37:12You'll sit there. Pressure, exactly. Put your hands on your head and look up and go, okay, let's go.

37:17Al Murray: Well, thanks, everyone. We'll see you soon. Thanks, John, for joining us. We've got a fun weekend ahead of us, no doubt. Yeah. Cheerio. Cheerio. See you. See you.

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39:12Thank you.