Episode 167
From Hamilton to History Buffs: Our Favorite Interviews!
We're looking back at some of our favorite chats, including an epic throwback to one of our very first interviews with an amazing guest – JD from History Underground. He's got this wild family story about his great-great-great grandma who secretly buried Confederate soldiers during a chaotic time, all to protect her town from the craziness of war.
Plus, we’re super pumped to look back at our 100th episode with none other than Christopher Jackson, the man who rocked the role of George Washington in Hamilton! So grab your snacks and settle in, because we’ve got some inspiring tales and a whole lot of history to share!
Episode 33: JD of History Underground
Episode 100: Christopher Jackson of Hamilton
Episode 139: Last Flight Out of Vietnam
Episode 145: Jeep Shows during WWII
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Transcript
Welcome to Talk with History.
Speaker A:I am your host, Scott.
Speaker A:And this week we are revisiting parts of our favorite interviews from the show.
Speaker A:We are going to revisit one of our first ever interviews here on Talk with History with a fellow history creator who now has almost a million followers, an actor made world famous by the Broadway play Hamilton, and a couple of book authors with some amazing stories to tell.
Speaker A:We are chatting with JD from the History Underground YouTube channel.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I have an ancestor who has kind of a neat story.
Speaker C:There's a.
Speaker B:There's a highway, a state highway.
Speaker B:It's probably about 30 miles from me.
Speaker B:And off on the side of the road, there's a Confederate grave marker.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And it says, here lies the bodies of three unknown Confederate soldiers.
Speaker B:Well, my great, great, great grandma buried those men in that grave.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:And there's actually two.
Speaker B:The grave marker is wrong.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker B:There's actually two in there instead of three.
Speaker B:But the story is her husband was off to war.
Speaker B:This whole area was filled with a bunch of Confederate guerrillas.
Speaker B:And just bordering on anarchy around here is a dangerous place to be.
Speaker B:But she overnight would run supplies through the lines because women.
Speaker D:There's a great article about Missouri women running contraband.
Speaker B:Oh, I'll have to check that out.
Speaker D:Yeah, I'll have to send it to you, J.D.
Speaker D:i read it grad school, so I have it.
Speaker D:I had to read it for school.
Speaker B:I would love to see that.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker B:So, yeah, my.
Speaker B:My great, great, great grandma would have been one of those women.
Speaker B:So she was getting, like, quinine medicine, food supplies and stuff like that.
Speaker A:Holy cow.
Speaker B:And smuggling them back and forth across the lines.
Speaker B:Well, one day she came across these dead Confederate soldiers and knew that if these Confederate guerrillas came and found these dead Confederates, that they would likely come into the town and burn it down or hang some of the men or something like that.
Speaker B:And they said she was a short woman, but real strong and, you know, spunky.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:So she buried those men there at.
Speaker B:At that grave.
Speaker D:That's awesome.
Speaker D:Did you do a.
Speaker D:Did you do an episode on that?
Speaker B:Not yet.
Speaker B:I'm going to.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So was that kind of like a.
Speaker A:That's like the perfect example of like, regional family history.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's like super local, super hyper relevant.
Speaker A:So was that just kind of like a family story that was kind of just verbally passed down?
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker B:As that was one of my grandpa.
Speaker B:My grandpa took me out there and showed me whenever I was really young.
Speaker B:We were turkey hunting.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And in.
Speaker B:In Missouri, you have to stop hunting at 1 o'.
Speaker B:Clock.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So after 1 o' clock we got done turkey hunting and he said, hey, so let's run out here and I'm going to show you something.
Speaker B:And I was, I was five years old.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker B:Whenever he took me out there and it was really funny, I hadn't been back.
Speaker B:My grandpa passed away a couple years ago.
Speaker B:But I wanted to, to show my kids.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I was, I was able to take them right back to that spot.
Speaker B:Like it had that much of an impression.
Speaker A:How cool.
Speaker B:So I hadn't been there in, you know, over 35 years.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But was able to take him back.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:Jen, this is our hundredth episode.
Speaker A:We've been doing this for a couple years now and we have a very special guest joining us today.
Speaker A:So we really have a guest who needs no introduction, but I'm going to give him one anyways.
Speaker A:He originated the iconic role of George Washington in the groundbreaking musical phenomenon Hamilton.
Speaker A:His powerful vocals and nuanced performance captivated audiences worldwide.
Speaker A:And his portrayal of the first president sparked important conversations about history.
Speaker A:From there, he only picked up steam, continuing on his career on the silver screen and television.
Speaker A:And I'm making his career very, very short.
Speaker A:But most importantly, the most important thing about our guest is he has a passion for history.
Speaker A:So welcome.
Speaker A:Mr. Christopher Jackson.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining us on Talk with History tonight.
Speaker E:Thank you for having me.
Speaker E:Happy 100.
Speaker E:So the first six years of my life, the real formative years, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents who were both black entrepreneurs.
Speaker E:They came out of sort of that the Booker T. Washington sort of like, yeah, bootstrap, go to technical school, get a trade.
Speaker E:They were, they owned funeral, funeral homes, Jackson Funeral Homes.
Speaker E:And they were self made is not even.
Speaker E:Doesn't really begin to describe them.
Speaker E:They were old enough that the old ways were still very much an everyday thing.
Speaker E:So I remember my grandmother making her own washing powder out of lye soap.
Speaker E:And our body soap was lysoap.
Speaker E:And I used to cut the get to cut the blocks of lyso.
Speaker E:Like that was all a part of my life.
Speaker E:And then on my mom's side of the family, they were all farmers.
Speaker E:And so I grew up, I spent half my time with my, with my father's parents, with my father, saw my paternal grandparents and then with my maternal grandparents, they were very much farmers.
Speaker E:It was, they lived in and around and on the land.
Speaker E:And so I got that education as well.
Speaker E:I mention that because culturally and historically both of my grandparents placed a great deal of importance on understanding what I was a part of and where I came from.
Speaker E:So I was ever aware of the importance of knowing who and how the civil.
Speaker E:How exactly the Civil rights movement.
Speaker E:Movement not only came to be, but was sustained and how it was changing shape.
Speaker E:I remember watching Jesse Jackson at the Democratic, you know, convention.
Speaker E:I remember his I am Somebody speech.
Speaker E:I was watching it.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker E:I remember those moments, and they were codified because my grandparents sat me down and explained it to me in real time.
Speaker E:I was four or five years old.
Speaker E:You know what I mean?
Speaker E:So those kinds of things, like, I always had a sense of what was happening in the world and what.
Speaker E:Not only what my place was in it, but what was expected of me as a citizen, as a black man, as someone who was through my life, circumstances forced to move between both sides of my family.
Speaker E:And it's still in a.
Speaker E:Still very segregated emotionally and mentally part of the country.
Speaker E:And so I learned how to code switch.
Speaker E:I learned how to go along, to get along.
Speaker E:I learned how to push slightly and softly.
Speaker E:I learned how to push loudly and not so, not without.
Speaker E:With a lot of nuance.
Speaker E:And it was a great benefit to me.
Speaker E:So as I moved through my schooling, history made sense because I had already received an education, a foundation in that and taught how important it was.
Speaker E:I always took.
Speaker E:Always took history very seriously, second only to music.
Speaker E:That was.
Speaker E:That's just how it had that and lunch.
Speaker E:But that's how it kind of.
Speaker E:That's how it kind of formed.
Speaker E:That's how it kind of formed me.
Speaker E:And I.
Speaker E:And I. I've been ever grateful, especially in this Hamilton experience, because I felt I was primed already to understand the context of it and to really play it with commitment.
Speaker D:It's perfect.
Speaker D:It's the two things you love now.
Speaker D:Your paternal grandparents, your African American grandparents, were they part of the Great migration?
Speaker D:Did they Were their families from the South?
Speaker E:So this is the funny story that I meant to tell you.
Speaker E:I promise I'll give you the short, shorter answer than the last two.
Speaker E:So my wife and I get on Ancestry.com the other day.
Speaker E:I have avoided it.
Speaker E:I have avoided it.
Speaker B:I have avoided it.
Speaker E:My last name.
Speaker E:There's not a lot of touchstones that are.
Speaker E:That are positive, but it turns out that we're in the same bloodline as is old Andy, which is crazy to me.
Speaker E:He and his wife didn't have kids, but his.
Speaker E:His parents are in my family's bloodline was crazy.
Speaker D:You got to go to Tennessee, then that means you got to come to the Hermitage.
Speaker E:But, but they go back even further because John Jackson, who was a captain in back in the colonies, was a member of the Prince Philip's War, who was also, I mean that whole anti Native American thing runs all the way.
Speaker E:There's two genocidal maniacs in my family tree and I'm like, yo, this is, this is nuts.
Speaker A:We are talking to author Mickey Nguyen.
Speaker A:He's actually the son of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Ba.
Speaker A:His father was a Vietnamese, a South Vietnam Vietnamese pilot who escaped Vietnam with his family when Saigon, when the country was falling to the communists that were coming down from the North.
Speaker A: helicopter escape in April of: Speaker D:Let's tell the story of from your six and a half what's happening in Vietnam at the time.
Speaker D:Your father is a South Vietnamese officer, he's a pilot.
Speaker D:Vietnam is falling.
Speaker D:What's going on with South Vietnamese people?
Speaker D:And tell us the story of your family's survival.
Speaker C:So yeah, I'll, I'll try to condense it as much as possible, but there, but there are fun parts in there that it's like sure, yeah, there's just some, some interesting parts in there.
Speaker C: most recent up leading up to: Speaker C:The way that independent from the French and other things.
Speaker C:But in this particular case the communists were wanted to gain control of the country and my dad being from the south with support from the US was involved trained with America, with Americans in the early 60s he had a chance a couple times to come over to Alabama and to Texas for flight training.
Speaker C:And you know what?
Speaker C:He decided to focus more around helicopters and get training around that.
Speaker C: ,: Speaker C:The Communists were coming down and encircling the, the city of Saigon.
Speaker C:And at this moment in time I was again six, six and a half.
Speaker C:So I'm sharing the story from my perspective.
Speaker C:But sure as we talk about the, the book itself, he wrote many of these stories himself and but the way that I'll dare is from my perspective.
Speaker C:But knowing, knowing that the, the communist was about to come down, he knew that it was, it was time to start making option A or option B and perhaps option C if, if things didn't, didn't, didn't turn out well.
Speaker C:But as we all know, they did.
Speaker C:The communists did come down.
Speaker C:And the last few nights my family, my mom and I, younger brother, younger sister, had to go to our grandma's house, which is basically in the middle of Saigon, okay?
Speaker C:And he told us to go there and he told us that in the event of, of things just falling apart, I'm gonna come and get you.
Speaker C:Somehow, some way we'll figure out this out.
Speaker C:We'll go, we'll figure out option B.
Speaker C:Because if he would have gotten caught or captured, it would have been many years of re education camp, which is hell.
Speaker C:Sure, his buddies and family members who didn't get the chance to leave had to deal with just that concentration of activity.
Speaker C:But in this, knowing what he knew, hearing intelligence in the radio and his superiors and his commanding officers and everybody else, simply knowing that it's.
Speaker C:There is no other option, they took off.
Speaker C:They took off with their family.
Speaker C:He waited for orders until the very last moment where at this time there was no further orders for him to, to execute this or execute that because again, his superiors took off themselves.
Speaker D:Yeah, everybody was trying to save their families.
Speaker C:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker C:And at this point, he, he had what he called his, his horse, right?
Speaker C:His Chinook.
Speaker C:There's only thing that he can ride in and out of.
Speaker C:They bombed the, the main airport, Tang Sanyok Airport, okay.
Speaker C:And so you couldn't take a big plane and route.
Speaker C:So he flew the Chinook helicopter into the city towards my grandma's house.
Speaker C:And mind you, this was like, you know, any metropolitan, major city and just, you know, genshinooks, right?
Speaker C:The CH47 is loud, thunderous.
Speaker C:You can hear that from miles away.
Speaker C:Oh yeah.
Speaker C:And it causes a commotion.
Speaker C:But it, the net, net here is he landed that thing in front of a.
Speaker C:My grandma's playfield, little schoolyard or playfield in the front and obviously caused a lot of commotion in the neighborhood.
Speaker C:And many of the homes back then had tin roofs and blew many of those things up in a way.
Speaker C:But told his co pilot his lower the, the back hatch and we all ran in and to the back of the Chinook and took that thing up quickly.
Speaker C:There were folks that were military police around there rushing towards him.
Speaker C:And so we had to get the heck out of there.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker D:So let me ask you this.
Speaker D:So did your, you went to your grandma's house, I would assume because of the protection, as it's more central to the city, it's going to, it's going to take longer for the North Vietnamese to get into the center of the city.
Speaker D:So he's like, get there for protection.
Speaker D:Plus he has the LZ there.
Speaker D:So he has a landing zone picked out because of the playground.
Speaker D:Now were you the only family to get on board?
Speaker D:I mean, did other families see this and want to try to save themselves too?
Speaker C:Yeah, my dad's side has a lot of oldest son in the family.
Speaker C:He had a lot of brothers, my aunts and uncles.
Speaker C:But they, as we were running into the, the Chinook, my mom would look back, hey, come on with us.
Speaker C:But they, they said, go.
Speaker C:Yeah, go with, go with your husband.
Speaker D:Okay.
Speaker C:From that standpoint, and the reason why we were at my grandma's house was because we were living in Binh Wah, which was about half hour away, a military base.
Speaker C:And obviously the military base was probably too hot of his own to be there.
Speaker C:So that's why he moved to our family, to grandma.
Speaker D:But so it's just immediate family.
Speaker D:No uncles or aunts came.
Speaker D:Your grandmother didn't come.
Speaker D:No cousins.
Speaker D:It was just you guys.
Speaker D:Okay.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:No, Many, many of them back then, who was to say where, where my dad would go and how we would end up.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker D:Nobody knew what was happening.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So perhaps some regret here and there from the family members not, not going.
Speaker C:But eventually some of them had the chance to, to, to leave.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So basically got out of, got out of Saigon, got out of that, that area and headed further south just to get away from the, the city and to consolidate with his other, other pilots.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:Trying to figure out the next thing.
Speaker C:And the thought was to get rationed, get food, gas, just gear up and try to find a, a remote island further south.
Speaker C:Just lay low and they'll figure out from there.
Speaker C:And that's what, that's what we did.
Speaker C:That's what, that's what my dad did, was just met up with radio, the other, the other folks, other folks, other pilots and met at a location and to figure out what, what the next thing to do was.
Speaker C:But he heard on the radio a lot of US Communication chatter.
Speaker C:He also knew many of the US ships that were still out in the Pacific there.
Speaker C:And the thought was maybe go out there and check it out and if there's a ship that was big enough, maybe they land on it and, and get, get out of town.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So that's what, that's what he did.
Speaker C:He flew out towards the, the ocean there Was no, there was not an exact point.
Speaker C:He just flew out there to see what, check it out.
Speaker C:And mind you, Jen, you probably know they don't, they don't have flotation devices or any life jackets at least with this Chinook that my dad had.
Speaker C:And so it was, it was a risky effort to go out there not knowing exactly what's going to be out there and if, if maybe he had enough gas to make it out or to figure all that out, but eventually flew out there and on the distance he saw, you know, a ship and headed in that direction and as he got close to it, eventually, you know, throttled back a little bit.
Speaker C:Didn't want to look too aggressive.
Speaker C:Sure.
Speaker C:Obviously, because the, the, the American Navy men below, they were, everybody was heightened, heightened tension.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Not knowing that this was a communist, you know, plane coming out and doing wrong to the ship.
Speaker C:As he approached my mom, him and others, there's like about 15, 16 people somewhere on the, in the Chinook.
Speaker C:Our family.
Speaker C:And he had a co pilot and his gunner and maintenance guy and their, their girlfriends and things like that hovered up there.
Speaker C:And we can see the, the ship below continuing to maintain its, its course or just three or five knots.
Speaker C:And he kept hovering it and circling around it while at the same time that you can see the folks below holding, holding big guns up at him just like, hey, we got our eye on you and like a warning.
Speaker C:Yeah, just exactly.
Speaker C:And my dad with his broken English that he can speak was able to communicate with the captain in the ship.
Speaker C:And finally Captain Paul Jacobs talked with his crew and started to figure out how to, how are we going to do this?
Speaker C:How are we going to help help this guy in the, the folks in the Chinook.
Speaker C:And so in the video, there's a video in the, in the film where you can see my mom holding up Mina, my, my baby sister, 6 month old up to the window and say hey, there's, there's women and kids on board here.
Speaker C:We need help.
Speaker C:And so with the, the compassion in the, the, the, the heart of the, the Mr. Paul Jacobs quickly just scrambling to figure things out and finally.
Speaker C:Okay guys, we got, we got to help this, the pilot up there in the, the Chinook up there.
Speaker C:And so basically the, what my dad did was.
Speaker C:And again the, the, the ship had to maintain a steady course, right?
Speaker C:Maintain a steady course.
Speaker C:And so he, he hovered the, the Chinook towards the, the stern, the, the rear side.
Speaker C:And obviously this particular USS Kirk found out later on was a submarine, a destroyer type.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Where it Was looking for sonar and just a lot of expensive equipment, very high tech back then.
Speaker C:Antennas, radars, all of the surveillance.
Speaker C:And so he didn't want to, my dad didn't want to get too close to the, all the, the mass and the equipment because it can put that ship out of commission quickly.
Speaker C:Anything could have happened.
Speaker C:Wind or a swell could have knocked the Chinook into the, to the boat.
Speaker C:And so he hovered, he hovered behind, falling behind.
Speaker C:He hovered the Chinook behind the ship and on the starboard door.
Speaker C:Opened the door and hovered it, lowered it down and we can, we can see hovered at about 10, 13ft above the, the deck.
Speaker C:And we can see the American Navy men below.
Speaker C:Hands up and jump.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:One by one we jump.
Speaker A:Holy cow.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And the last few that left the, the Chinook, my mom had to drop a seven month old baby onto the hand below.
Speaker C:That gentleman who caught my sister's name is Mr. Mr. Chipman.
Speaker C:Met him in Washington D.C. yeah, Texan.
Speaker C:That's amazing and just amazing reunion.
Speaker C:But Mr. Chipman and others down there, brave, brave Navy men rest of their life as well just to, to help us out.
Speaker C:And so we all got down.
Speaker C:I jumped down and the only injury was one of the, one of the girlfriends of one of the crew member sprained her ankle.
Speaker C:But fortunately everyone was okay.
Speaker C:They quickly ushered us, pushed us in inside.
Speaker C:You didn't want any kids or anybody running out on the deck, right?
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:And so the, the last thing I see my dad as I turned around was him hovering away from, from the ship and went in inside.
Speaker C:And that was it for my own eyes.
Speaker C:That was the last time I saw my dad.
Speaker C:Everything else was just hearing stories of him telling it and eventually seeing all of the, the photos and everything else from the US Navy many years later.
Speaker C:But as I share this with you through, through what my dad shared with me through dinner tables as we grew up, he hovered away from the ship 100 yards or so and hovered the, hovered the, the Chinook on the water.
Speaker C:So I can take off all of his gear and his gun, his sidearm and the, the flak jacket, right.
Speaker C:I mean it's full, it's hard to put that on, let alone take it off while he's hovering.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:Shoes, boots, unstrapping, all that.
Speaker C:His only regret, his only regret in this whole experience was.
Speaker C:And the only reason why I found out was because of the book, the, the section that he wrote.
Speaker C:But the regret was that he should have asked his co pilot to at least hold the rudder so he can take all of his stuff out.
Speaker C:Oh before once he's down then tell the co pilot to jump.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:So he.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:He laughingly said next time if I have to do this again I'm going to tell the copilot.
Speaker C:You just give me like five minutes.
Speaker C:And also the other regret was not keeping his military.
Speaker C:Yeah, all of the ID stuff, everything was gone.
Speaker C:I'm telling you.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:Started, started in this new world with absolutely nothing.
Speaker C:A pair of shirt and boxer shorts.
Speaker D:That's amazing.
Speaker C:So down to his, down to his undergarment and hovered there.
Speaker C:Kicked the, the port door in the left side out.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:And basically with his, with his right leg pushed the rudder so that it would lean towards the, the right as he jumped over to his left into the water.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And he said the stories around the dinner table.
Speaker C:Tried to dive into the ocean but tried it two or three times.
Speaker C:But the saltwater is very buoyant.
Speaker C:You know he kept pushing him back up.
Speaker C:That was his biggest fear was a shrapnel or a blade or something just in the water.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Or the, the dynamics of the Chinook could have been.
Speaker C:It could have flipped back on him.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker C:Because how you can't really jump too far if just from this huge, huge aircraft.
Speaker C:But fortunately it leaned over to the right.
Speaker C:He was on the left.
Speaker C:And quickly on the third, third attempt diving, he, he dove down and finally as I said in the film, he pops back up and he's alive.
Speaker C:And it's like just huge relief.
Speaker C:They came the, they sent the little skiff to come out and grab him.
Speaker C:And we can see the video of him sitting in the the boat just like probably thinking God, thank God almighty I made it.
Speaker C:And the first thing, the first thing he said when he got on the the ship it wasn't like where's my wife and kids?
Speaker C:He's like give me a cigarette.
Speaker D:Oh my gosh.
Speaker C:Calm that nerve down.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker D:So funny.
Speaker D:That's so 70.
Speaker C:I can't imagine.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker D:It's such a pil thing.
Speaker C:It's awesome.
Speaker F:Oh my gosh.
Speaker A:We are doing an interview with author Robert o'.
Speaker A:Connor.
Speaker A:He's the author of Jeep Show a novel.
Speaker A:A Trooper at the Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker A:This is a fascinating book.
Speaker A:I think you guys are really going to enjoy this topic.
Speaker A: Tanzer enlists in the army in: Speaker A:He gets assigned to the Morale Corps.
Speaker A:Because of his show business background he's classified as MOS 442 entertainment specialist.
Speaker A:This is a true real MOS that was used in World War II and something that I learned about during our interview.
Speaker A:Private Jim Tanzer is shipped to the European theater of operations and assigned to jeep shows.
Speaker A:Three enlisted entertainers are driven to the front lines where they put on small variety shows.
Speaker A:Private Mickey Rooney leads Jim Squad the jeep show.
Speaker F:The concept was developed by a captain in the.
Speaker F:What I call the Morale Corps.
Speaker F:It was actually called Special Services during the war.
Speaker F:It had been called the morale Corps until 42 and they called it Special Services.
Speaker F:But the Broadway director, Captain Joshua Logan, who directed South Pacific and many other famous Broadway shows, How cool.
Speaker F:Realized the army had moved very quickly from France.
Speaker F:The Normandy area of France, the Hedgerows, which were a bit of a problem, the whole Morale Corps, Mickey Rooney and Jim Hetzer had come over as part of a big GI show called Hip Hooray with a band.
Speaker F:And what they were expecting is they were going to take this show around England and then France and, you know, it's pretty good duty.
Speaker F:But Joshua Logan, Captain Joshua Logan, disbanded the show and organized them into jeep show units.
Speaker F:Three entertainers.
Speaker F:So first of all, I was surprised that they didn't know the duty that they were going to be doing when they came over.
Speaker F:Although you both are veterans, you know what that's like, right?
Speaker C:Oh, for sure.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You show up expecting to do one job and you end up doing something completely different.
Speaker F:Exactly.
Speaker F:And they never tell you why.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:We just need you to do it.
Speaker F:Go and do it.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker F:They never tell you why.
Speaker F:So that was probably the most surprising thing.
Speaker F:But then I think, as you know, soldiers and sailors and airmen, you're given this crazy duty to do and you just do it and you get used to it.
Speaker F:So that became their routine.
Speaker F:And they would do as many as 10 or 11 shows a day.
Speaker F:They would be going up and down the front lines.
Speaker F:And as you may or may not know, since your navy, since you're sailors, is on the front line, In World War II, the army would disperse company size units in various villages and hamlets and all that.
Speaker F:So there'd be, you know, Baker Company would be in one village and then 10 miles up the road, Charlie Company would be in another.
Speaker F:So it's that size unit.
Speaker F:So these Morale Corps soldiers, these entertainers would just be going up and down the border in their jeep.
Speaker A:Gotcha.
Speaker D:So they'd drive to company to company, and their shows would be about an hour, 45 minutes.
Speaker F:Hour shows would be about an hour.
Speaker F:And then they try to hang out for an hour, you know, for a bit.
Speaker F:Obviously, Mickey Rooney would sign autographs.
Speaker F:You know, none of the other guys were asked for their autograph.
Speaker F:By the way, Mickey Rooney was of course world famous when he was doing this.
Speaker F:And I'm full of respect for him because he did not have to go overseas.
Speaker F:He could have done his army service in Hollywood.
Speaker F:But there were many, many men who were not the least bit famous when they were 44 2s, Morale Corps soldiers, but became famous.
Speaker F:You've heard of Mel Brooks, Young Frankenstein.
Speaker C:Oh, wow.
Speaker F:Sammy Davis Jr. Was a famous entertainer and friend of Frank Sinatra's back in the 60s, 50s and 60s.
Speaker F:And actually, you probably know there's a little trivia and, you know, since I'm not a historian, Jen, I really shouldn't say this, but I will anyways.
Speaker F:You know, the army was segregated in World War II.
Speaker F:Well, Sammy Davis Jr. Was a black man, of course, and he was on a jeep show squad with white.
Speaker F:Two other white soldiers.
Speaker F:So Sammy Davis Jr. May have been the first person to integrate the U.S. army.
Speaker F:That's my theory.
Speaker F:I, I should back that up with some research.
Speaker F:But.
Speaker F:And then Burt Lancaster, Dick Van Dyke, red button.
Speaker F:So a lot.
Speaker F:Yeah, it became kind of a.
Speaker F:You know, of course there were probably dozens and dozens and dozens of entertainers like Jim Tanzer, the protagonists who were not of that star caliber, but did their job.
Speaker A:Did I miss any guests that were your favorite?
Speaker A:Maybe someone we should have back on the show?
Speaker A:Reach out to us at our email in the episode show notes and let's see what we can do.
Speaker A:This has been Walk with History production.
Speaker A:Talk with History is created and hosted by by me, Scott Benny.
Speaker A:Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.
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