What We Get Wrong About WW2

Is the film Pressure accurate? Was Matthew Ridgeway a good general? And, how did WW2 shape the early leadership of NATO? In this special episode, recorded live at We Have Ways Festival 2026, Jim and Al are joined by John McManus to discuss tanks, films, Monty, and more! Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Get your WHW Merch here! A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: James Clayden Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: [email protected] Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 1:49Speaker 00

  Well, Jim, act on, act on, as we, as we

• 1:52Speaker 05

  We used to say.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  We used to say. We don't say it all the time anymore, do we?

• 1:54Speaker 05

  But now what do we say? Fire in the hole!

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  Fire in the hole!

• 1:57Speaker 00

  On this occasion.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  When we've got American guests on.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk here at We Have Ways Fest VI, Mark VI, the Tiger.

• 2:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, sext.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  And we're sat here on the Thursday as the festival sort of assembles. So if you hear music in the background, if you hear

• 2:13Speaker 05

  Hear the rumble of tank tracks.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Yes, a great, great, great friend of the show.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  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 armoured cars.

• 2:35Speaker 06

  I mean, what could be better? This is just awesome. And I love the fire in the hole. I am totally for that.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Okay, well, that's now solemn vow. Every time you count on, we won't do act on, act on, we'll do fire in the hole.

• 2:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, fire in the hole.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  So, thanks for joining us again. You've been to the festival before, so you kind of, I mean, you know, you know what to expect. If you had to sum this event up to someone on the other side of the Atlantic, what would, what would you say about this festival?

• 3:01Speaker 06

  I mean, it's hard to, to come up with one word, but I think just fun. I mean, it's just a blast. It's, it's so much fun to, to, to, you know, 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.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  The parachuteist.

• 3:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. They, they know their stuff.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 06

  And it's, it's, what I like about it too, it's, it's a very welcoming environment. Just the people who come here, I don't know why this is, but they're just, they're all nice.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  They're so much fun.

• 3:34Speaker 05

  We only have nice people.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  I think that's largely down to us, isn't it? Everyone being nice, Jim?

• 3:38Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  I think, I think that's us, isn't it? I think we can take responsibility for that.

• 3:41Speaker 06

  I mean, it starts with you guys and goes on down.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks for bringing out what great guys we are, John. I think that's, I mean, you know.

• 3:46Speaker 06

  You're just peaches of guys, that's for sure.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  That's why you've been asked back, obviously. I think it's really fantastic that we can attract people like you to come though. It, it makes it very special, doesn't it, Jim?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  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. That was great, wasn't it? We got Kev Heimel, hopefully coming over this year.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  I hope.

• 4:08Speaker 05

  You know, flights, flights permitted. We've got John Parshaw. We've got all sorts of people coming. So it's just, it's fantastic. We've got Mark Milner, although he's, he's Canada and now an enemy of the United States.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Well, unless it becomes a 51st state.

• 4:18Speaker 06

  The whole huge country is one state. I mean, what, what could go wrong with that?

• 4:22Speaker 00

  What could possibly go wrong with any of it?

• 4:25Speaker 00

  But we're not only here to talk about politics.

• 4:27Speaker 05

  No.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  No. I have to say, I rather like where we found ourselves sitting here.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, me too.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Because we're between the best tank of the Second World War and it's the close runner-up, aren't we, Jim?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. The Sherman and the Cromwell.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. In which order?

• 4:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, which order?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  I have to say, because this is behind us here, Jim, the Sherman, but this is the

• 4:46Speaker 05

  Reinforced plates on the side.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. This isn't the welded hull, is it?

• 4:50Speaker 05

  No, it's the molded hull.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  This is the cast, the cast one.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  How rough the finish is, is quite interesting, isn't it?

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Which tells it

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Well, it was probably, you know, sat in a field getting rusty for 40 years, didn't it, before it was done up? I don't know. Yeah, maybe. But they did, they did, you know, they did churn these out and

• 5:10Speaker 05

  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.

• 5:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's modular. I mean, that, so the US produced 86,000 tanks in World War II, you know, the preponderance of which were Shermans.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 06

  So it's designed to be very, very replaceable and, and shippable. I 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 would have happened.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. If it comes out of the mould, that's fine.

• 5:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was rereading that book about tank production, British tank policy.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  I've got to get sleeves of Luger over.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  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 their surface requirements, because the Sherman comes on, online a little bit quicker than they're expecting. And that, that preponderance of stuff, that redundancy in your industrial policies is amazing, isn't it?

• 6:10Speaker 06

  It really is. And then 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 prioritised. That, that speaks to some, you know, value systems, I think.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  And, and again, you know, once the Sherman is shippable, it now is definitely going to be the main battle tank.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 06

  The Lee is outloaded.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  But the noise is off, by the way. There's a

• 6:32Speaker 05

  There's a light aid detachment just going past.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right. That's exactly where they are, aren't they? Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  But also, you know, shout out for the Cromwell.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Oh!

• 6:40Speaker 05

  Which, which is, which is obviously lower in profile, absolutely goes like SH1T off a shovel.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  And can turn on a sixpence and can go into reverse as quick as it can go into, into forward gear. And, you know, it's still got a sixpowder on it, which is a pretty decent gun. And it just looks cool.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Well, but also

• 7:00Speaker 05

  And it's got silver paint inside, not white.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Well, we went past, yeah, we went past it earlier, JR and I, our producer, we went past it. And he went, well, what are those, 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, it's about being able to deliver the item, churn them out, knock them out. And that's exactly what that is.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  And actually, those Lees, Lees played a very important part in Burma.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  And North East India.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely perfect for that.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  Right. A light tank can really succeed in that kind of environment. And that's, that's what we see. And of course, the Japanese opposition isn't exactly impressive.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  But weren't we going to talk about movies, war movies?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  I think we were. But I just, you know, you can't sit us between a pair of tanks. And also

• 7:45Speaker 06

  Between two tanks.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  This Morris armoured car, which, which looks, really does look like it's been made of offcuts.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  That looks, it's an ugly brute, isn't it?

• 7:55Speaker 00

  You know, when you go on holiday, you go to one of those handbag shops where the handbags are all made of offcut leather.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Right. And they go, look at us, we're doing the right thing by using this offcut leather.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  So that armour car looks like an offcut leather handbag.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Yes, it does. Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 06

  It does. With wheels.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  It's a very peculiar item, that.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. It is, it is very odd.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Real ugly duckling. And not, not going to go into anything, anything beautiful. We were, but we were talking about, yes, before we started, we were talking

• 8:19Speaker 05

  It's actually almost taller than the Cromwell.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  Well, that's what the Cromwell has a lower silhouette. That's an asset too.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Amazing. Yeah. We were talking about films. We were, in fact, we were talking, before we came on air, about pressure.

• 8:35Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Now, I've seen Pressure, you've seen Pressure, John. Jim, you've

• 8:38Speaker 05

  I've seen most of Pressure. I've seen enough of Pressure.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  So what didn't you like about it?

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Quite a lot, to be honest. A funny thing is, is ages ago, I got asked to, to, if I'd be interested in being a historical advisor on it. And I went, yeah, sure, great. And, you know, I was going to have to go and brief Brendan and Damien and

• 8:57Speaker 00

  I remember you telling me this.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  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 put, forgot all about it, to be perfectly honest. And then suddenly it's out. You know, it's coming. And we're being offered the opportunity to go to screening or something. But the problem is, it's the last thing that a film coming like that wants. They don't want us going to see that because we're going to, we're going to pull it to pieces because we know too much.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  You say that, James, but I wrote like 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

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Magnificent.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Yes, magnificent.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  Leash it.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Of course, that's the, that's the joke, isn't it?

• 9:37Speaker 06

  Master of the quote.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. But they, they got the pull quotes out of me because I thought Andrew Scott, who plays Stag, he's a tremendous actor. And he, and he, even in the, even in the sort of swirling melodrama around him, he gives this quite fantastic performance. So you, credit where it's due. But the, I thought the, the problem was the sort of, the rest of it.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  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 ships, 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, this 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.

• 10:25Speaker 06

  Definitely.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  But what he was really brilliant at was containing it.

• 10:29Speaker 06

  Containing it because he, 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, to, 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 know, as a chief commander. He's a master at maintaining an even keel. And so that, that's one thing that I, I just didn't feel they got right. Uh, 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, I just don't think that's the right vibe for, for Ike.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And where was Beetle Smith?

• 11:04Speaker 06

  Nowhere to be seen.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Nowhere to be seen.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  But at least they didn't have. He was this kind of go to man to talk free military things. I mean, I know he had this relationship with Kay Summersby, but.

• 11:13Speaker 06

  At least they didn't go that route, like that he and Kay Summersby were a couple.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yes, that was sort of.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  I liked that they didn't do that.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  Interestingly chased, wasn't it? And I, I, 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, oh, you know, to add some drama that, that they, that, 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 was, is sort of wild and weird.

• 11:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you guys. What did you think about the Montgomery?

• 11:44Speaker 05

  Well, it just wasn't even remotely like him.

• 11:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, did, did you find it kind of offensive almost like?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Well, what it.

• 11:50Speaker 06

  They're making a buffoon out of him almost.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Well, what it, what, what, 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? But it's almost like that thing, you can say anything you like about him now.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  And, and he's depicted as too cautious, too cowardly very often, or like not as committed as, say, an American general say like Patton. If we're gonna, if we're gonna, if we're gonna 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, and you think, right, okay. So this comes from, Monty is a baddie. So we can have him be a baddie in any, in any permutation. It doesn't matter because we've written him off.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Also, what's really annoying about that is, is the doll has changed dramatically in the last 10 years about, about Montgomery. It just has. In academic circles, it has. He's, he's not, he, 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 thirty years out of date kind of meme on the Second World War. Rather than try and present a kind of new, interesting new.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Right? Cause he is, he is 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.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  He's, he's shown as being completely unreasonable.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  And they're all reacting to him like, this guy's a moron. I mean, it was really over the top.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:22Speaker 06

  It was, it was almost as if nothing had changed from, from that infamous line in Saving Private Ryan.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 06

  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 out of nowhere? It's one of my least favorite parts of the movie, honestly. But it, it seems like this is the same Monty sort of that we can just use as any kind of foil.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  Sort of, he's a foil to kind of, you, you, you know, I just find it so irritating. It's just.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Come on, cause, cause again, it's time and time again, the reality is so much more interesting than that.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Well, you're, but you're, you're very stuck on the, the fact that this, this sort of perceived story is wrong anyway, that stag.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  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 Sverpeterson on the other. And Crick is for the kind of analog study of, of weather patterns. Whereas Peterson is very much, no, that doesn't count. What you need to do is, is, is see what's in front of you. But the problem you have with the kind of not going on the fifth. 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 hit 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.

• 14:46Speaker 05

  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, a much nicer morning than the sixth overall. It's just that the rain and the squalls stayed in till about two thirty, which would have had a very problematic effect on the British airborne drop.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 05

  But the rest of it would have been a lot easier.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  So, don't watch pressure. I think that's what we're, is that where we, is that where we've got to?

• 15:14Speaker 05

  I mean, first of all, don't watch it.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  Beach scenes, aren't they with the kind of, you know, because it's, it's the observation bunker from, from Longzumer again, which they had in Saving Private Ryan, which was wrong. And, and the reason it's been put in this film is because in the mind's eye of people, that's what the Normandy coastline represents. So. So movies have, have created a kind of truth all of their own, which isn't a truth, it's nonsense.

• 15:39Speaker 06

  And I thought that, that there was no need to have the invasion scenes. That's not what the film is about. That, that those scenes have been done and very well in Private Ryan.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 06

  You know, so I, I felt that the, that's kind of beyond the scope of the movie. That it was more interesting to see this whole dynamic with stag. Cause that 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.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  Because that part really is dead on. And, and that, that creates a lot of interesting dimensions to it. But what I was a little disappointed in is like how the superior acts, Eisenhower.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 06

  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.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:22Speaker 06

  To try and bully somebody into telling him what he wants to hear.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 06

  He's quite the opposite, actually.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did like the bits, the, the parts of the film where they would, where they were arguing about, about data and about methodology and. And that, I mean, that was, that was a really interesting thing to see on screen.

• 16:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  You know, people 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, I'm sold on the idea that making that decision is a lot of pressure to be under without.

• 16:57Speaker 06

  Right.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Without family drama in the background, right? You know, they teed up as the biggest invasion of all time. Yes, it is. So that's, that's plenty. That's plenty, right?

• 17:04Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, there's enough there to chew on, I think. Yeah, we don't necessarily need the rest of it.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 06

  I guess that was an attempt to humanize him.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Yes, I guess, but, but it felt glued on because it was.

• 17:15Speaker 06

  Jim, they should have had you as historical advisor. I think that's the upside of the whole conversation.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Don't want to hear.

• 17:20Speaker 06

  And yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 06

  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. What do I do now?

• 17:29Speaker 00

  The, the bit that did, did move me though, I was, you know, because they, they're all these, they're pulling all these levers to try and move you as well. 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've, who've read about the history of D O, you know, should this all, all go wrong, best effort to be made, but it was, it's on me. When he reads that out, because it's what really happened. And Brendan Fraser, he's a great, he is a great actor and, but they had him, you know, like I say, slamming doors and.

• 17:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Balling people out. For that bit, I found, I found that very, very moving.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  That part was.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 06

  You know what else? One thing I really liked in that kind of part of the movie, uh, not only do they show the westerns, you know, that he was reading.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  Did you notice they had a picture of Grant? He had a picture of Grant. And I, I really liked that because Eisenhower tried to emulate Grant.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 06

  And that, 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.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like there's two films going on at once.

• 18:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  It, it, you know, there's the one with the sort of dramaticy bits and then there's the, there's the story and the actual people. Then they're kind of. Running alongside one another, not necessarily in harmony, but.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Group hugs at the end, it didn't, didn't work for me at all.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you what, we'll take a break for a quick group hug and then we'll come back.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  To talk some more.

• 18:54Speaker 02

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• 20:25Speaker 00

  Right. Welcome back to Weird Ways to Make You Talk with me, 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?

• 20:33Speaker 06

  Oh, tons. I'm doing a biography of Matthew Ridgway.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 20:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's a whole biography. You know, the World War II part is enough, but he had this really fascinating career.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Any other career?

• 20:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, Korea is arguably the most consequential part of his career. Because I think personally, there's a South Korea today, in to a great extent, because of Ridgway, because of the way he turned things around. That's rare. Then he, of course, succeeds MacArthur when MacArthur gets fired by Truman. He succeeds Eisenhower as NATO commander when Ike ran for president.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:06Speaker 06

  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, 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.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 21:39Speaker 06

  Yeah. Isn't that crazy? So he, that really is what launched his career because he got a sponsor in a, 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 Ridgway 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, he started to get very noticed.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:13Speaker 06

  And this all was due to his Spanish language skills and his cultural sensitivity.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Where, where does Ridgway come from? What's his background?

• 22:21Speaker 06

  So his background is he is the son of a, of a West Pointer, of an army coast artillery officer who retired as a colonel. So his, this Colonel Thomas Ridgway. And so he's, 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, the officer quarters, the remnants of them where they, where they lived. So, so this was Ridgway's life to become a soldier. And he, so he goes to West Point. He was class of 1917 infantryman. And, and he, 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 they're

• 23:05Speaker 06

  going to deploy. If you've ever heard of the, the old guard that, 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, surprised 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, as an instructor. And, and he's like, okay, I guess they're going to have to teach, have me teach Spanish. Nope, it's going to be French. And he, he barely passed French. And 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.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  God.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. Because obviously we need French, you know?

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 06

  So, yeah, he felt that his career was probably over.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  So he's a pretty smart guy?

• 23:49Speaker 06

  He's a very smart guy. Yeah. He's, he's, so he has this really interesting kind of blend of, 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. He's, he's really just fascinating. And then on a personal level too, he's married three times. And, you know, that isn't supposed to happen in, you know, with your career. So.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Was it just him being particularly difficult?

• 24:26Speaker 06

  Um.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Being away a lot?

• 24:28Speaker 06

  First, yeah, he's, he's so dedicated to the army. And I think that's, now I'm only, this is only a supposition based on whatever I could find. I think that he decided on going ahead with his career rather than his marriage the first time around. I think that his wife said, I want to want you out of the army. Because I found that he had actually submitted a resignation letter.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. In his personnel files. And I've never really seen that. And, and so.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 24:58Speaker 06

  And then he rescinds it on a, he was, he was stationed in China at that point. So they're coming back home on, you know, on a ship. And then he rescinds it in a, in a telegram or whatever. And then when he gets to America, he basically abandons his wife and his two daughters.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Gosh. But it didn't affect his career?

• 25:18Speaker 06

  No, it didn't. The other divorces did not have an adverse effect on his career because he had went through two of them. And that's, you always hear that. And I, that's why I think that's kind of mythology, because MacArthur had a divorce too.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 06

  So, and, and 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 his true soulmate. They stayed married the rest of their lives. And, 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.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Can I ask you one thing? So, so there was this book, I think I may have mentioned to you before. So there's this book of D-Day essays. And one of them is about the airborne bit. And it's by Alan Milward, is that right?

• 26:08Speaker 06

  Millet.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Alan Millet. 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.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree. I, I would, I didn't find anything of the kind either.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  They got on fine, didn't they?

• 26:37Speaker 06

  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, you know, even chief of staff.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  They got on well, right?

• 26:46Speaker 06

  They got on, 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, you know, he was slippery. He was, he was political in a way. And he, you know, he would range around a little bit, you know, in terms of his value systems. But Ridgway thought very highly of him as a professional soldier. There 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 a, he was an airborne colonel who, 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

• 27:30Speaker 06

  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 cross word. And that's usually the pattern. The 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's a guy named Charles Wilson, who was Eisenhower's Defense Secretary.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:55Speaker 06

  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 just my opinion.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Was, that's during getting NATO going properly and that, that phase, right?

• 28:10Speaker 06

  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.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 06

  And we're cutting your ground forces. So they would tell Ridgway, you've got the same missions, the same responsibilities globally, but what you're cutting your budget by about 40%. And we're cutting your force strength by, you know, X number of soldiers. And he's like, this is dangerous.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 06

  We will, you know, we will suffer consequences of this. He's shouting it to the heavens, you know? And it's, 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.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  But they have very divergent ideas. And I think Eisenhower tired of Ridgway in that position. He was glad to move on. So, 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 Ridgway. And he's kind of pushing back whenever he can too. And he even wrote a book excoriating the new look, once he had retired.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  In the end of 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.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, Jim, you've been talking, talking and thinking a lot about defense cuts and the like.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, you know, well, it's, it's, it's absolutely crazy. I mean, you know, over here, we've got such depleted armed services, but we're also, we're 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, et cetera.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Jim, I went to the Edinburgh Tattoo over the summer. We're not short of bagpipers.

• 29:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Right? Deeply resilient in terms of bagpipes and drums.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  We're pretty resilient in shiny breastplates too.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  I mean, you have no idea. And, and these pipers, they can, they can play and march in weird formations at the same time. They could, they could do that thing where they march right at each other and then suddenly swerve. Right? We are absolutely, you know, if it's soft power you want, we're the softest of the lot.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  You know, high vis jackets.

• 30:16Speaker 06

  That's a feather in your cap.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  I just find it. But I have, I did, 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 is about before, you know, our navy is depleted. We haven't, we haven't been looking after it, you know, danger lurks on the horizon, all this kind of stuff. I mean.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Twas ever thus, right?

• 30:42Speaker 05

  Wow. Yes, but, but it seems to be kind of, you know.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  More so at the moment, doesn't it?

• 30:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Anyway. Yeah. And what are you working on, James? Because we've seen, we've got, we've got, we've got right into what John's looking at.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  Well, yeah. And then I've got, can I tee you up for what you're working on?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 06

  Please do.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  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.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  Really?

• 31:13Speaker 05

  The Michael Sharp book, which is not so well-known over here in the UK, but is absolutely kind of required reading for anyone in the US military. And I think one of Pulitzer Prize or something in 1973 or four, whenever it came out. And this is of course about the Battle of Gettysburg, and everyone in it is real. It's researched brilliantly, but it's a novel because Michael Sharp gives some thoughts and gets into the heads of Chamberlain and Pickett and all the rest of them. And 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 fictionalized non-fiction of the evacuation of Dunkirk with all its sort of swings and

• 31:56Speaker 05

  roundabouts and folds and, you know, all the drama of it, because it's just such a dramatic week, 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 audiobook, which has been quite interesting. And then I go on to a biography of Alexander and then I do the bulge.

• 32:18Speaker 06

  Oh, you're gonna do Alex?

• 32:19Speaker 05

  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 gonna do it. Just gonna do it, you know?

• 32:26Speaker 06

  Gotta be done.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Did you take the advance?

• 32:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 06

  Then you may want to actually write it.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Fantastic.

• 32:36Speaker 06

  Usually a good idea to write it.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  A long time ago.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Spend that a long time ago, mate.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, all gone. Pissed it down a boosa, didn't I?

• 32:46Speaker 00

  You'll have spent it on a jeep or a...

• 32:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, or something like that. But, but, but, Al, you've just started your new one, haven't you? This is terrifically exciting.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Well, yes, so I'm writing, again, 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 Udna. They land up the road at a place called Depien, and then the relief column never comes. And he's five days, ninety, they land ninety miles behind enemy lines in Tunisia, and then have to tab out with the Germans hot in their heels everywhere they go. And it's this very dramatic story, but because there's been so much odyssey in the, in the air because of the movie, I reread his, his personal account, and it's like he's Odysseus. There's, there's an extraordinary bit where they find a farmhouse, they fall upon this French farmhouse, and the lady makes them breakfast with champagne,

• 33:40Speaker 00

  you know, but does some ham and eggs with champagne. And it's sort of like, do we leave? Do we start? 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 to whatever terrible situation they're in. So I'm gonna write about that, but also frame it with, there's the Brunel Val raid before that, Operation Biting in February of 42. 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

• 34:25Speaker 00

  chiefs of staff. So he's sort of like this Odysseus figure, and I'm gonna try and write the book like a, like a page turn. And you have the triumph of Brunel Val, and then this weird protracted disaster.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  So that's the fall of Troy?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. The fall of Troy is Brunel Val, and then, and then the odyssey is this next operation they go on, which is a complete disaster, and his whole battalion deploy, and he gets a couple of hundred of them home out of the Tunisian desert. And it's, it's an extraordinary story, but the key part of it is, they don't know where they're gonna land, and he has to stand at the door of the aircraft and choose the drop zone as they're flying.

• 35:05Speaker 06

  Just on the fly.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  On the fly. And he's been desperate to do an operation, 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'd gone...

• 35:27Speaker 05

  He didn't have to do it, did he?

• 35:28Speaker 00

  Doesn't have to do it. If he'd gone, no, 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. They may have gone, you know, well, that's a very sensible decision, because after all, we've cancelled, we've cancelled relief offence. You know what I mean, right? The next day, they'd have gone, 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.

• 35:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, right. It was your decision.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  And then he has to come back home and kill his wife's suitor.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. We don't quite get there. He doesn't shoot an arrow through thirty axe heads or whatever.

• 36:08Speaker 05

  He's so relieved to see him, there's one last sigh and wag his tail and dies.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  There's no dogs dropping dead. But I just think it's a great, it's a great yarn.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  It's a terrific idea.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  And, you know, because this idea of that responsibility, of you've got six hundred or five hundred and fifty chaps, and you've got to get them back, and you, it was you that got them in that mess.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  And you've got to be an independent thinker.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Exactly. Because you were desperate to prove your mettle and to prove their mettle and to prove your worth and...

• 36:36Speaker 06

  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. The idea of being cut off and nobody getting to you.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 06

  So he kind of had similar experience.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, and then in Sicily, again, at Flimmasoli, you know, it's exactly the same thing happens. Eighth Army don't show up.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  But, but the amazing thing is that, you know, 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. You know, he's like Achilles as well, isn't he? And, you know, Frost is flawed. But, but total days in combat, thirty-eight, forty, something like that.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, because he's an airborne soldier.

• 37:13Speaker 05

  Knife DLI, probably, you know, or Third Infantry Division, five hundred and forty-six.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  Five hundred something, you know, yeah. I mean, it's like...

• 37:22Speaker 05

  You know, but forgotten about, not really interested.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Whereas this mustache-tugging, flinty fellow with his middle-distance gaze.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  Yes. Are you, so the moustaches for festival, is that, is that in honour of Johnny Frost or Windy Gale or a bit of everything?

• 37:39Speaker 00

  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.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Next year, I'm tempted to do the...

• 37:46Speaker 00

  This is a moustache my father had when, when I was a small boy. And when I have this moustache, I look in the mirror, and it's, oh my God, it's him.

• 37:54Speaker 06

  Time does its ravages, doesn't it?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 37:57Speaker 06

  Did your father know Frost, like in airborne circles?

• 37:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. You should ask him. He's around this weekend.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  What did he make of him?

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Frost and Pearson would show up at the Brigade Mess.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  Be team heroes.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  And they'd be absolute team heroes, you know, with their military crosses on. And you'd think, and Dad says, and then you'd think, right, we're in for it now. We are going to all get very, very drunk. And no one can leave until they leave. And he said it would go on till four in the morning, and it would be really, really quite emotional the next day.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  Oh, really? And how did they react to that?

• 38:43Speaker 00

  And they were like, yeah, fine, of course, of course. But, you know, because basically all of the, all of the other, older tier, every, every 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 Dun Vastie, Dun the, Dun the Bulge, you know, all the six airborne people, you know.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Amazing.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  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...

• 39:10Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  No, I mean, the weather gets a vote, but fingers crossed.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  Scudding across the sky.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Exactly. I just want it not to be windy on Saturday for the parachuting.

• 39:17Speaker 06

  You'll have to make the ultimate decision whether to go forward with the fest in spite of the weather or not.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  I tug my moustache.

• 39:22Speaker 06

  It's pressure.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  You'll sit there.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Pressure, exactly.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  Put your hands on your head, then look up and go, okay, let's go.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Well, thanks, everyone. We'll see you soon. Thanks, John, for joining us. We've got a fun weekend ahead of us, no doubt.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Cheerio.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Cheerio.

• 39:35Speaker 06

  See ya.

• 39:43Speaker 06

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• 39:50Speaker 03

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