All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 25, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
49:00
Episode 5023: WarRoom Christmas Day Special 2025 cont.

Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join Aired On: 12/25/2025 Watch: On X: @Bannons_WarRoom (https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom) On the Web: https://www.warroom.org On Gettr: @WarRoom On Podcast: Apple, iHeart Radio, Google On TV: PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on https://AmericasVoice.news. #news #politics #realnews

|

Time Text
Okay, welcome back.
It is the 25th of December in the year of our Lord 2025.
Thursday is Christmas Day.
Or to be exact Christmas morning.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, having lost everything, having tremendous pressure.
In fact, I think the Continental Congress had already were no longer sitting in Philadelphia.
I think they went down to Annapolis.
They got out of town because this thing was looking bad.
And the British said they were going to hang, they were going to hang everybody that signed the Declaration.
In fact, there's an apocryphal story.
I don't think it's ever been totally verified.
The one of the signers of the Declaration, I think from New Jersey, had already renounced the Declaration.
I think he had been captured.
They run up on him.
A string of defeats, tremendous pressure on General Washington.
If it had been really a rival around, they might have even traded him out.
Of course, his rival was captured by the British.
One catastrophic defeat after the other, but he's still got an army of 3,000 or 4,000 men, but they're in bad shape.
They've been fighting constantly in a retreat and not a route, in a retreat for like three months.
They get across the Delaware.
Walk me through the plan.
How does Washington come up with this plan, which is really what I call a throw of the iron dice of war?
As you mentioned, Steve, the Crown has seized New Jersey, and they are now offering the population an oath of allegiance.
If they sign the oath of allegiance and they sign their fealty to the Crown, all will be forgiven.
And even a signer of the Declaration of Independence does sign that.
But the tides of war are really shifting.
And with it, the political climate has shifted too, where there is real doubt that the Revolutionary War can be won by the United States at this point.
And Washington knows that he has to stake everything on a single operation that will somehow turn the tide of battle.
And it's at Trenton.
The British have a number of small outposts across New Jersey to hold the ground that they have just seized.
And the problem is they've got these little outposts, and they are supposedly interlocking in terms of the way that they're able to be quickly.
If one is attacked, they can redirect their forces in a quick reaction force to support the other.
But Trenton's is a little bit more vulnerable.
And despite that, British intelligence picks up that Washington will attack Trenton within the next few days.
And Johan Rawl is warned.
And he is constantly under attack by small militia and other forces.
He's been harassed for the last several days.
And what happens is on Christmas Day, there is a massive Nor'easter again.
Think about that.
But hang on, hang on a second.
But hang on.
Hang on a second.
What were the circumstances?
I want to put people inside of Washington's head.
Why did he decide to do one of the hardest things to do is a forced cross of a river at night that is armed on the other side?
Now, he didn't realize it wasn't going to be the activity.
He didn't realize there wasn't going to be a lack of activity until they got to Trenton.
But when you're planning this, you're rolling the dice to do a cross with an army that's been beaten and is still underfed and cold to cross the Delaware to get to the other side to do a night attack on these mercenaries that are supposed to be even tougher than the British Army.
Did he believe that if he didn't show at least some momentum with enlistments running out, things like that, that the army would just fall apart, that he had to do something?
He had to, he needed something, you know, victory begets victory.
You needed something that men needed something to hang on to, that the Continental Congress down in Annapolis needed something to hang on to, that they had nothing.
And if they went through the Christmas season and started the new year and were still just freezing in Pennsylvania, that it'd be over because it's really one of the most audacious moves in the history of this country because the odds of this succeeding were incredibly long.
I mean, you're banking on a lot of things going right.
And as you said, oh, by the way, when they got ready to cross, they had another Northeaster hit them and hit them hard.
This is the odds of this thing are extraordinary on so many fronts, Steve.
Because, for instance, if everything just sort of went normally, for instance, and they had a regular battle and the British were able to, or the Hessians were able to retreat, it would have been sort of a nothing burger.
But it's a catastrophic double envelopment, which basically captures almost all of Rawl's forces.
But let me just go backwards a little bit and just walk everybody through sort of the things that take place on Christmas Day.
There's a massive nor'easter.
Washington loves complicated plans.
He divides his army into three parts to cross the river.
The only part that gets across the river are the forces under John Glover's command.
And that is the main, the force that's taking the main force across.
Everything else fails because the river is filled with ice.
It's a raging torrent.
There's a nor'easter howling and pelting the men.
All the other efforts to cross fail.
The first effort, that effort with the Glover, they cross.
They're about 12 miles north of Trenton.
And then they have to somehow stealthily get to Trenton without Johan Raul knowing that they're coming.
And it's here that there's another really extraordinary coincidence that occurs.
It's in the middle of the night that Washington comes across several companies of riflemen that are on the other side.
And he's absolutely dumbfounded that these men are there.
And they're there because they make, according to most theories, they make a revenge attack because they lost some men on an earlier raid.
They should have never been there under Adam Stevens command.
And they make the raid and they suddenly find Washington's men.
Many people believe that in this raging snowstorm, that it's that militia, those militia companies, those riflemen that Johan Rawl believed was the attack.
And then they basically are dispersed by the Hessian soldiers.
And it's that belief that they already overcame the attack and that they also, nobody would attack in the middle of a nor'easter.
And it's this that screens Washington as he trudges down the 12 miles.
And at daybreak or a little bit after, they attack Trenton and they surprise Johan Rawl, who then puts up really a tough fight.
They move a number of guns in place and he rallies his men.
But in this battle, a number of prongs of Washington's main force break out and John, the one force under Glover is able to seize the Assampee Creek, the Vital Creek, which bridge that would allow Johann Rawl to escape.
Instead of a situation where it's a typical 18th century battle where they fight, and then if one side feels that they have an advantage, they will retreat.
Johann Rawl did not have an opportunity to retreat because he also receives a rifleman's bullet that mortally wounds him.
And his escape route is basically snuffed out by the Marbleheaders.
And it's an overwhelming victory for Washington.
But it's only one 10 crucial days that are together.
There are two more people.
They get on and hit.
Give me the two more victories quickly because I want to get to the overall picture.
But they get momentum right then, right?
Tell me about the other two victories.
They get momentum, but what Washington does is then crosses back across the Delaware.
He's got about 900 Hessian soldiers along with their cannon and arms.
He's like, I'm going to sit back.
I'm going to savor my victory.
But what happens is one of those other forces under John Cadwallader, these are the Philadelphia Associators.
These are a militia group in Pennsylvania.
They cross without orders because they still think that they're supposed to attack Trenton.
And now what happens is there's a force of about 2,000 militiamen on the other side and the local militia in New Jersey uprise because of the great victory at Trenton.
And Washington is faced with the decision.
Does he order Cadwallader back or does he reinforce him?
And he reinforces him at Trenton, which a week later sets up the showdown for the second Battle of Trenton or the Battle of S P Creek.
And it's another situation, Steve, where they hold a bridge at all costs.
I tell the story in Washington's Immortals and the Indispensables.
It's one of the great untold stories of the American Revolution.
If they break through and they seize the bridge, they surround the army.
The Revolutionary War is over for all intents and purposes.
But they hold the ground.
And then Washington rolls the iron dice once again and attacks Princeton and overwhelms the garrison there.
Part of the 10 crucial shays that will change world history forever and the momentum of the revolutionary.
It started with just the boldest gamble of all.
Tommy got left.
I want to start in Annapolis about the thinking on Washington changed dramatically, but also in London and also in the British Army, because they thought we were pretty hapless.
And then they saw this incredibly, not just bold initiative, but the combat really tenacity of the troops.
Let's start in Annapolis.
How did the Continental Congress attitude to Washington at least change for a while?
There was a sense of this overwhelming victory, and it spreads.
It takes time because you've got an ocean to deal with where there's a massive lag in time, where eventually it does reach Europe and it has a seismic impact on world leaders that are suddenly looking at the American cause as something that's winnable.
The French in particular, Spanish, others are looking at this and saying, wow, this is amazing what these Americans are able to do.
And it's another step towards an alliance and more aid from foreign powers.
But it's a shift in momentum.
The British are scared.
No, because the 12 days, that 12 days, you're right.
It was just incredible.
As we go to break, Christmas.
Washington very specifically chose Christmas.
Why did he do that, sir?
He won.
He wants to, it's the element of surprise.
It's sort of the ultimate element of surprise.
There's a thought that nobody would attack at Christmas, right?
The British themselves, they go into winter quarters like most European armies.
As the winter strikes, there's a real critical shortage of forage, for instance.
This is the thing that's the gas that powers the 18th century.
You've got horses and wagons and they have to move cannons around and everything else.
So forage is scarce.
It's hard to conduct warfare if you're a European army during the winter.
So they go into winter quarters.
And they want to consolidate their gains and just basically, hopefully, wear down the Americans when in fact it's the Americans that are wearing down the Great Empire.
Were the Hessians lore has it that the Hessians, as Germans are wont to do on Christmas, were pretty under the weather with grog, with adult beverages?
Is that true?
Particularly Rawls, were they all drunk?
No.
What you see is it's a myth.
In fact, Rawls troops are some of the best troops in the British Army.
They're trained.
They're in their uniforms that night.
They're with their muskets.
They're armed as much as they can be.
And they've just been, they're in the ready, if you will, but they've been worn down by all these little raids that have taken place.
And they're constantly going out and chasing the Americans.
So there's a little bit of a lag that occurs because they think that the militia that attacked earlier may have been the main effort that the British intelligence had predicted would occur.
And then also the snowstorm itself, I think, quells their fears of an American attack, thinking almost nobody would attack in this massive snowstorm.
Nor'easter.
Patrick, hang on for a second.
We're going to take a short commercial break.
On Christmas Day in 2025, as we relive the combat history of American troops in Christmas's past short break.
Combat history of Christmas, and we've got Patrick K. O'Donnell with us.
Patrick, first off, real quickly, the first two books you find out about the Revolution, Washington and Mortals, about this incredible regiment from Maryland and the Indispensables.
Where did people go to get those?
Those are two massive bestsellers.
We were very proud of being part of the effort to drive the sales of both of those.
Audience love, the feedback I got was tremendous.
You give talks all over the country.
Where do people go to get those books?
Those books, you can get them in any bookstore, pretty much.
Barnes and Noble is probably the best place.
They feature the book where Amazon.com is a great place to get it as well.
The book, Washington's or The Indispensables is almost approaching 2,000.
It's all five-star reviews on that book.
And the other one has got four and a half stars.
Almost, yeah, almost 2,000 as well.
Five stats, five, and the five-star reviews are so hard to get.
Okay, I want to go.
We've got the Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War to get through for the rest of them.
We're going to do it.
I want to go Unvanquish, your book on the Civil War.
Unbelievable.
Tell me about the combat history of Christmas as shown in The Unvanquish.
Of course, you had a piece up on Breitbart about this.
Tell me about it.
Well, The Unvanquished is really one of my finest books.
It'll give you a different view of the American Civil War.
It really captures three stories.
It's the main story on that is the Jesse Scouts or Lincoln Special Forces who hunted the South's most dangerous men.
And that would be John Singleton Mosby and the Confederate Secret Service.
And it's the story of those three units really converging.
And the piece that I wrote at Breitbart is about the death of Blazers Scouts, which occurs in a forgotten field in Meyerstown, West Virginia, which is right along the Potomac near the Virginia border.
And it's here that these forces clashed.
And the main, the first Blazers scouts or the Jesse Scouts, an element of the Jesse Scouts, they formed the first hunter-killer teams to go after Mosby.
And these guys were total badasses that were very, very effective as a part of partisan hunters, but they were modern in the sense that they weren't using like a blowtorch.
They were using intelligence to gather, you know, tactical intelligence to go after their partisans where they needed to go after them.
And they were going after Mosby with the latest weapons, the Spencer repeating carbine, for instance, and rifle.
But at Meyerstown, at a forgotten field, Farmers Field, they clash.
And Mosby's got three companies in.
They basically lure them into a trap.
And as Mosby's men feign a retreat off the field, Blazers' men who are about to dismount are about to then remount their horses and then pursue.
And at that point, a massive they are enveloped by Mosby's men and they are in an open field, which is an it's a giant gun battle on horseback in this forgotten field in Meyerstown in West Virginia.
And it's one of the great untold stories of the Civil War.
This field, for instance, is now going to be a solar panel farm.
They've never done an archaeological survey.
They've never marked it.
Pretty much one of the only places it's ever been written about is the unvanquished.
But it's here that the leader of Blazor Scouts is running for his life along with these Jesse Scouts.
Many of these guys are dressed in Confederate uniforms, and they are pursued in a massive horse race by about 30 or 40 of Mosby's men on horseback with their pistols peppering them, eventually capture Blazor.
And what's important about the story is that the man that captures Blazer, one of them, is Lewis Powell, who is John Booth, John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirator.
And what makes this important is that he is a member of the Confederate Secret Service.
And the Unvanquished puts together a lot of connects many, many dots on the assassination and the important thing being the kidnapping of the president.
And I tell an important story there.
The kidnapping, the kidnapping that didn't take place, they tried.
Jesse Scouts is named after one of my favorite characters in American history, Jesse Benton Fremont, who was General Fremont's great pathfinder, his wife, who was a hammer, right?
One of the greatest women in American history.
Talk to me about the Christmas.
Talk to me about the Christmas episode.
Well, I mean, in a sense that there are multiple things that take place, the first being in 1862, which I bring about, which I bring into focus in the unvanquished, is the Great Battle of Fredericksburg, Steve, which is a tremendous tragedy that, you know, they're hoping to end the war by Christmas and seize Richmond.
And, you know, Burnside, General Burnside, who has a bridge named after him in Antietam because it was a bloody affair there, has one of the most brutal and devastating battles of the American people.
We talked about Washington the previous that the Christmas Day of Trenton came about because he was under such pressure.
He had to think it's something outside the box and said, let's attack them on Christmas night when they're all going to be drunk and eating and celebrating Christmas.
These German Christians will be taking the day off.
We got attacked.
The same thing happened really in Fredericksburg in that Antietam, although it was a draw, Lincoln was under pressure like, dude, this thing is a disaster.
This is a fiasco.
The Southern Army is winning the Times, the Illustrated Times of London.
Every time you pick up the, it's like the Daily Mail today, right, on the internet.
You pick up a thing.
He's got a picture of Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee on the cover.
All the European capitals are going, hey, this Confederate Army is probably pound for pound, the best army we've ever seen.
Lincoln is under tremendous pressure by the governors, by Congress, by everybody.
They said, you've got to start booking some wins here, right?
And so that's why they do something that everybody argues against.
You cannot go down and leave Washington on a direct line to Richmond as entrenched as the Confederate Army is with the type of leaders they have and try to cross a river at Fredericksburg and try to beat the Confederate Army.
I mean, it's a suicide attack, is it not?
Well, the biggest problem was they sort of telegraph where they're going to go.
And oh, by the way, the pontoons that they need to use to span the Rappahannock, they don't show up for eight to 10 days.
And then they dither away until December 11th, where they finally decide to put the pontoons together and cross.
And then Confederate sharpshooters and snipers are pelting them.
They delay them again.
And it's not until really the 13th of December that they make the attack.
And, you know, meanwhile, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, they have time to build up their defenses.
And they have really one of the greatest defenses in the Civil War, which is behind a stone wall and a sunken road at Mary's Heights, which, oh, by the way, is really just a diversionary attack.
The main effort being a place called Prospect Hill, which is five miles down the road, down the line.
But it's an absolute fiasco, especially the diversionary attack, which consumes about 16 brigades.
30,000 men attempt to storm the stone wall and are basically annihilated in one way or another by the rifled musket, which can now reach out and touch you, and there's no cover at all before that stone wall.
In fact, several people.
I mean, even members of the Confederate Army, when the Irish Brigade and others attacked over that open field, were saying this is not even war.
This is just a slaughter pin.
It was of all the bloody, I mean, you had had so much blood spilled to that time at Shiloh and other places.
People considered Fredericksburg.
So one of the reasons it's not talked about is that Lincoln and his team did not want the northern media to cover it because it was the type of thing that people would throw in the towel right after that.
Is that not correct?
It's true.
I mean, and then it's just, it's a victory for the, I mean, the South holds, they have a, they do it in the cheap, effectively, in the sense that anything that went up against that stone wall was like eight to one odds that, you know, the men that were valiantly storming that wall, but they were, they were slaughtered, as you mentioned, in front of that field, which has no ground.
There's a, there's a small swale where many of the men were hunkered down behind, but there's really very little cover.
And then you have the guns.
There are like, there's, there's Confederate artillery atop the hill itself that are firing down upon them, as well as the rifled muskets from behind the stone wall.
Many of the, if you read the memoirs of the leaders of the Union Army, and I'm talking about not the senior leaders, but the combat leaders, the colonels, the majors, the captains after the war.
That was one of the hardest nights after that attack because they said it felt like the earth was moaning.
There were so many wounded soldiers out there, so bitter cold, they couldn't go get them, that it was just a horrible night to hear the agony of these soldiers before they died.
And it left, it really burnt into the soul of the Union Army exactly what a catastrophe this was.
It was a memory that just seared into the soul of the Union Army.
It looked like a total just waste of manpower.
Like you said, up near that stone wall, I think it was eight to one casualty ratio, but it shows you once again during some of the holiest times of our Christian calendar and during the times of what people think of families, we had some of the most horrible, horrific combat.
Let's take a short break.
We're going to get in.
You've got in your book, Unvanquish, I can't recommend enough the Jesse Scouts, this whole story of really America's real beginning of the special forces of the United States.
And for folks like, if you're like me from the South and you've read about Mosby's Rangers in Colonel John Mosby, this is a different take on things.
It's really very, very enlightening.
The Unvanquish from Patrick K. O'Donnell.
The Battle of the Bulge and Chosen Reservoir.
I mean, think about the horrible fighting that's going over the Christmas season.
Next, we're going to go to World War II and the Korean War with Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Okay, welcome back.
We're now going to go to the 20th century.
Shows you the spans a pretty big part of time.
20th century, we're going to go to which really happened six years apart, which I don't think people make that much connections between the Battle of the Bulge and Chosen Reservoir, World War II, towards the last year of World War II and the first year of the Korean conflict.
Let's go first off to the Battle of the Bulge, one of the most famous battles.
What it's known for is really the holding of Bastogne by the 101st Airborne, Moe's Division.
Historic really made them legendary, but it starts off with really the 82nd Airborne.
Let's see if we can get it all in in about eight minutes.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, you wrote a great, the book on this, you wrote an amazing book on this.
What's the title of it?
The title of that book is Beyond Valor.
That really is the oral history of the Rangers and the Airborne in World War II.
I started out with another book called Dog Company, though, that fights in the Hurricane Forest at Hill 400.
And they oversee sort of the assembly areas and see what's going on.
It's an epic battle.
It's a bayonet charge up a hill, and they have to hold the hill against all odds for three days, which they do.
One reason I want people to understand this is that at this time, when we're delivering the hammer blows to Germany and we're trying to cross the Rhine to try and get to the heart of Germany, just we're pouring troops in, and these troops are very ill-trained.
In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, I think the biggest surrender wasn't an entire regiment that like surrendered virtually unharmed because just the leadership kind of collapsed because the intensity of what happened at the bulge.
And a lot of this was just from green troops that had basically 90 days of kind of some de minimis training.
And they were just pouring troops in here right now because it was a slugfest between the Americans and the Germans on the Western Front.
Well, what's going on here is it's December 1944, and there's some believe that the war could be won by Christmas.
Germans are in full defeat.
They're streaming back across the Rhine and they're advancing.
But there's problems with the Allies.
They have supply problems, for instance.
They're not able to pursue as quickly as they possibly can.
But Hitler has other plans.
It's a bold counteroffensive to somehow split the Allies.
And he attacks in the quiet front, which is the Ardennes.
And this is where in 1940 to attack France, this is where Hitler makes his bold gamble.
And they go through the Ardennes and they split the French army here.
And he thinks that history can repeat itself.
And they strip many of the finest units, the Waffen-SS, paratroopers, and others from the Eastern Front.
And they secretly assemble them in front of the Ardennes Forest.
And they realize that they suspect that the Allies have cracked some of their codes.
And they insist that all communications have to be done in paper.
And much of the preparations is as stealthful as possible.
And then the Allies make it a little bit worse because, for instance, the OSS, the Office of Street Services, is stripped from some of these frontline armies.
And so their eyes and ears are gone.
And it's December 16th, the morning hours of December 16th, and a massive juggernaut of the German army led by the Waffen-SS and the First Panther Army basically descends upon the sleepy Ardennes.
And it's here that they have an overwhelming surprise.
The weather is not cooperating with the Allies, and it's wintry initially.
And this grounds many of the Allies' greatest asset, which is air power.
Able, the Yabbos.
They call the Germans the fighter bombers that can strafe uh.
Armor columns are basically uh put on hold because of the weather and the and the Germans are able to pursue an attack and their goal is to reach the river, crossing the Meuse river, and then push on to Antwerp and then thereby that's the.
That's the goal, to divide the allies between the, the British and the Americans, and they have stunning initial momentum uh and many units surrender um, but then there are small groups of men that hold out and they stop um the SS and the.
The only real uh reserve that the allies have of quantity is the 18TH Airborne Corps and it's the airborne the, the 82ND, the 101st and then later the 17TH airborne which will be thrust into this.
You know, vortex of battle, as the uh, the Waffen-ss IS, is quickly advancing towards these bridges.
Small groups of men like the uh engineers, combat engineers, uh mine bridges or or destroy uh.
You know uh trees to to block their advance, but they're still moving forward at great speed.
You know, within this battle, space is um, the SS, or specifically special units within the German armed forces, are disguised as as Americans, uh speaking, American changing roadsides, you know, creating mass confusion.
Um, and it's it's here that the 82ND finds itself first.
There they they move in a place called Warbamont around december uh, 19th or so, and they are.
They're quickly moving towards where the SS are trying to cross uh several rivers to get towards the Meuse river and um, they're near a place called Tropon and um, another place um uh uh, that that is just it.
It's just swarming with SS troops.
I mean, one of my favorite stories is with the 504 uh parachute infantry regiment led by Reuben Tucker, and these guys are the guys that went after the Nine Manga bridge uh, in a bridge too far.
They are uh tasked with with with clearing out Chenot uh, which is a town that is swarming with SS, and they have uh dismounted uh, there's armor, you know there's, there's panther tanks, they have uh flak guns and all kinds of stuff.
They're waiting for tank destroyers to attack.
These guys say it's too dangerous, they're waiting for a, you know, artillery barrage to support the attack.
They don't get any of that and they attack anyways, and these men take out several of the SS.
They slow down uh, the SS advance, which is absolutely critical, and then they position themselves in and around this territory and then it's.
It's hand-to-hand combat with some of Germany's toughest troops and um you know they.
Eventually, there are massive reinforcements that are coming in from the Germans, and they are.
There's a decision that's made to pull back the 82ND by British general uh Montgomery, who's in charge of the northern shoulder at this stage, to shorten the line and to tidy it up, so to speak, which is probably uh a good decision, because many of these German units could have surrounded uh elements of the 7TH uh armor division and others uh, as well as the 82ND uh which were still holding the line,
which are really a critical role.
And it's at this time the 101st comes in and they um move into position at a place called Bastogne, which is a crossroads town where multiple, it's called a road octopus because there's so many crossroads, critical roads that are that, you know, that span out from it.
And they're joined by elements of tank destroyers and armor.
And they basically have to hold the line at Bastogne.
And after the 82nd basically stabilizes things and the Germans realize that they're not going to be able to reach the Meuse River, they then focus their attention on Bastogne itself.
And it's the 101st and then many of these other smaller units that make an epic stand.
And, you know, at this point also, Patton's army.
This is the famous one where Patton's army, the third army, comes racing, what, in 72 hours or 90 hours to save the, it's like Fort Apache.
They're at Bastogne and completely surrounded, outnumbered, getting shelled, bombed.
And Patton's army hurdles across really that part of Germany to relieve the 101st at Bastogne, correct?
Correct.
I mean, it's worth pointing out that paratroopers are always surrounded.
So this is not anything new for them in many cases.
And they were willing to hold out.
But it was a welcome sign when Patton's troops do break the siege.
They were being air supplied at this time.
And they were really holding their own, too.
It's worth noting, along with the other elements of tank destroyers and armor and other sort of cats and dogs that were in Bastogne.
They were holding the sort of the villages that were the Germans didn't want to figure they didn't want to annihilate these guys, so they gave them an opportunity to surrender.
And I think it was the general that sent back a, at least in history, it's passed down as saying nuts about an unconditional surrender.
But lore has it, he might have used a more spicy term from the Germans that the 101st are going to fight, we're a standard fight.
I interviewed hundreds of paratroopers and rangers that were in, as well as their opponents, too.
I'll put that, point that out, the SS.
I interviewed the SS and German paratroopers, but I interviewed General Kennard, who is Henry Kennard, who was there right next to Anthony McCall, who's the assistant division commander, who was in charge of the 101st at the time.
And his response is, there was something to the effect that a word I won't use on the air, but the official response was one word, nuts.
And they send it back to the Germans who are befuddled by this because they have an overwhelming force that has surrounded Bastogne.
Because what happened is as the SS attack up north collapses, many of those units are then sent down towards Bastogne to crush Bastogne.
Hitler wants a moral victory of destroying Bastogne and the 101st in it, as well as the other units.
People have to remember that with Normandy and the landing in June of that year, there was a huge effort because the American people, people were getting tired of this war and the casualties were mounting.
There's a big pressure to end the war by Christmas, the Christmas of 1944.
In fact, if you've seen a bridge too far, that whole effort of market garden to take those bridges in Holland and get to the Rhine quickly was all targeted to end the war by Christmas.
And of course, that wasn't going to happen.
And you saw the Christmas season fighting at Bastogne.
People realize that the Germans, although they're tied up on the Eastern Front and getting bombed every day, the Wehrmacht had a lot of fight left in them, Patrick.
People realized this is going to be tough.
And of course, we finished it in May of the following year, but folks realized that this is going to be tough every day.
The Battle of the Bulge lasts almost a month, Steve.
It goes well into the second week of January.
And it's one of the bloodiest battles for America in World War II.
It's a tremendous 19,000 killed, you know, nearly over 85,000 casualties total.
It's an incredible battle that was very tenacious and ruthless.
And then it's also the cold, the cold weather.
Many of the men are not properly equipped to deal with the cold weather.
And almost all of the veterans I interviewed had frostbite either in their, you know, their hands or their feet from battling in the Battle of the Bulge.
Amazing.
Incredible.
That book, again, is what I want to make sure people get access to.
Give me your books on the bulge.
It's Beyond Valor.
It's an oral history of the men that I interviewed, as well as a bit of a narrative history.
It ties all the stories of the bulge.
And then Dog Company is a band of brothers on Dog Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, the boys of Point D'Ha, and their story all the way through the Liberation of Europe.
We're going to put them all up and get them all out.
Hang on one second.
We're going to come back.
We've got the Chosen Reservoir to finish up Christmas Day here, or Christmas morning, actually, in the war.
Back in a moment.
I want to thank you for being with us on our traditional combat history of Christmas done to show the American sacrifice during this most family-oriented, holiest of seasons.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, your book, Give Me Tomorrow, the Chosen Reservoir, the Marines and Army Elements, but ma'am, is one of the most moving of all your books.
It's the one that I think often sticks with you the longest, just given the suffering.
And honestly, the lack of preparation these troops had is just incredible.
The lack of material, the lack of clothes, the weapons.
It's horrific.
Talk to me about Christmas 1950 in the Chosen Reservoir, sir.
All the books I've ever written have found me.
This one is a classic.
I got back from Iraq and I was alone.
I told my family not to show up.
I just didn't want to.
I had a lot to deal with pollution and everything else.
And these old men came up to me and said, well, who are you?
And I said, I was a combat historian.
I said, we were George Company 3-1 in the Chosen Reservoir.
And we held a hill against a Chinese regiment of about 2,000 men.
And this is a company of 200.
And the next thing I know, they're like, would you like to go to lunch?
He said, sure.
You need to come to our reunion.
And I said, no problem.
And the next thing I know, I've got a book that Give Me Tomorrow, which is really a band of brothers on the Korean War, which is an untold story until this time.
It was an epic one.
And it's Christmas 1950, Steve.
And the 1st Marine Division is in near the Chosun Reservoir in North Korea.
It's not far from the Chinese border.
And the Marines know that the Chinese are active and around them.
And, you know, the last weeks of around Thanksgiving, the Chinese army of 120,000 or more of Mao Zedong's so-called volunteers descend upon elements of the 1st Marine Division.
And it's really one of the greatest stories of the Marine Corps of how the 1st Marine Division is surrounded.
And as they like to say, they were advancing in a different direction.
And they basically, in many cases, they really tear up the Chinese forces.
Overwhelmingly, they have all the odds on their side.
I mean, in some cases, it's a 10 or 20 to 1 advantage of numbers that the Marines are facing.
And the men of George Company really have a truly epic story.
They're under the command initially.
They were one of the units that was under Chesty Puller at a small mountaintop type, small hamlet called Cota Re.
And the main 1st Marine Division base was in a place called Hager Ree, which was several miles down a road, which it was a valley, and the Chinese had a division of troops on the heights of that valley.
They had to go down the road.
And something called Task Force Drysdale was organized by Chesty Puller.
And the task force commander was a Royal Marine by the name of Royal Marine Commando by the name of Drysdale.
And the George Company, along with a company of tanks, were put in the front of this long column of trucks as they had to break into Hagru-Re.
And they were faced immediately by thousands of troops that were trying to destroy the task force as it was moving up the road.
And it was an against all odds kind of battle that these reinforcements were absolutely critical to holding Hager-Ree.
And the reason why that is important is because this is the consolidation point where all of the wings of the 1st Marine Division, as well as army elements, will consolidate and move towards the coast towards safety.
And they have to break in to Hagru-Ree.
And it's up this long road called Hellfire Valley that, you know, it's 20, 30 degrees below zero, Steve.
The wind chill makes it such.
The men are, you know, not properly clothed, just like the Battle of Bulge, and they are fighting for their lives.
My first, my main, the main character in my book is a tough Vermont New Hampshire native named Rocco Zulu, Sergeant Rocco Zulu, who was a, you know, a star.
He won a Silver Star at Pell One.
He had to train these men, which had no training at all.
They were reservists.
Many of the men in the book, it shocks many people.
They had never gone through boot camp as Marines.
They were just reservists.
They therefore did not receive boot camp training, and they literally had to learn how to fire M1 Grands and throw grenades on the ships as they were going towards First Incheon, where they have the great counteroffensive that turns the tide against the North Koreans.
And then later at Chosen Reservoir.
But these men come together and really have an amazing fighting unit.
It's Rocco Zulu that's on a 50-caliber machine gun on a truck as they move towards Hagru-Re.
And they come across a tent that is, they think they're greeted by friendly Americans.
It's actually Chinese soldiers that are dressed in American uniforms.
And they fire upon Zulu and he gets around in the chest.
I'll never forget.
I'm interviewing him at his place in New Hampshire.
And he pulls up his shirt.
He's like, yeah, it's the mirroring screen.
His whole chest, side of his torso was blown out by the rifle bullet.
And they believed that their leader was dead.
And they put him on a pile of dead bodies.
We've got to bounce.
But where do people go get the book?
Amazon.com.
I'm on X and Getter at Combat Historian.
The book's the bestseller.
You can get it anywhere at Barnes Noble or any bookstore, pretty much.
Both hands, I want to tell the story.
They go by these troops and they ask this young guy what he wants for Christmas and what is his answer to give me tomorrow.
And that's the photo on the it's one of George, the members of George Company.
Famous photo taken by David Duncan.
And he gave me permission to use it for the cover of this book.
It tells it's a photo that's just that captured the entire chosen reservoir.
What do you want for Christmas?
All those troops.
Give me tomorrow.
Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Thank you very much.
Merry Christmas, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
Appreciate you doing it.
Appreciate you doing it, sir.
Thank you.
And for the War Room Posse, have a great rest of the Christmas day.
Enjoy it with your family.
And we'll see you back here.
Raheem will be here tomorrow on Boxing Day.
I'll be back on Saturday.
See them.
The holy birds of Mary's Whose grace
▲
Export Selection