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Cowboy Amongst Thieves

The content below is from Episode 84 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast.

  • This week I welcome you to join me as I explore the life and legend of Ralph Lamb. A true cowboy who lived amongst theives.
    • But before we get in to that, let’s do the recommendation segment.

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

9 More Excellent Classic Movies to Watch After Casino
  • Casino
    • This 1995 mobster film is one of the coolest movies ever made.
      • Here’s what it is about:
    • In early-1970s Las Vegas, low-level mobster Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro) gets tapped by his bosses to head the Tangiers Casino. At first, he’s a great success in the job, but over the years, problems with his loose-cannon enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), his ex-hustler wife Ginger (Sharon Stone), her con-artist ex Lester Diamond (James Woods) and a handful of corrupt politicians put Sam in ever-increasing danger. Martin Scorsese directs this adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book.
    • Casino is the movie that made me really understand the acting chops that Joe Pesci has. You love to hate his character so much.
Top 3 Best Casino Movies! - Movie Blog

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVEN

  • Lamb was born in Alamo, Nevada in 1927 as a poor 4th generation farmer, and He was one of 11 kids growing up.
    • His father, William Grainger Lamb died in a rodeo accident when he tried to stop an uncontrollable horse from heading through the crowds on July 3, 1939 in Fallon, Nevada. When he died, William Lamb was 46 years old, and his song Ralph was only 12.
    • Ralph’s father was buried at the Alamo Cemetery. Lamb and his siblings took odd jobs to help make ends meet during the Great Depression.
    • Then one day Ralph enlisted in the Army and served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He returned to Nevada and took a position as Clark County Deputy Sheriff. Lamb said he walked in to the sheriff’s office and was put to work that very afternoon. He was given no formal training and had to just learn as he went. He left in 1954 to start his own private detective agency.
They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To: Sin City Sheriff Ralph Lamb
  • But he came back and in 1958, he ran for election as Sheriff of Clark County… and he lost to a tough old school son of a bitch named Butch Leypoldt.
    • Leypoldt served until 1961, when he resigned and was appointed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. And wouldn’tcha know it, Lamb was named his successor by the Clark County Commission and served until 1979. As Sheriff of Clark County Lamb doled out his own brand of justice over the increasingly corrupted and crime filled city of Las Vegas at the time.
      • Lamb spearheaded the charge against the mafia moving into post WWII Las Vegas.
      • Coinciding with Lamb’s initiation into the force was the Mob’s arrival in Las Vegas. In 1945, the notorious “Bugsy” Siegel moved to Vegas to gain control of the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, though his outrageous spending is believed to be the reason he never made it to the opening of his grand achievement, having been shot to death a few months earlier in 1947—the year Lamb signed on.
        • Lamb once said in a television interview: “People … think the only time I was there was from 1960 to ’80, but I’d been there a long time before that,” “I’d been working on these ‘hoods,’ watching them and keeping records on them. Then I got to be sheriff, and I got my own crew there, and we continued right on doing what we’d been doing before.”
    • To put Lamb’s time in law enforcement in to perspective, let me throw a few numbers at you:
      • In 1945 (the year WWII ended) Clark County was home to just 15,000 people. Today Clark County is home to over 2.3 million residents.
      • The time period in which that population saw the most growth was during Lamb’s law enforcement career. Even without the influence of the mob Lamb’s job would still have been a nightmare with all that explosive change brought on by that insane population boom.
Star power: Lamb was a longtime lawman — but also did stints as a bounty hunter and private eye.
  • This time period is what took Las Vegas from a humble watering hole to the Mega Resort and global destination spot.
    • Here’s some quick history of the city of Las Vegas because it interests me like mad. If you’ve ever been to Vegas you know it is a BIG BRIGHT AND SHINY sin playground surrounded by nothing but dust. I have family out in Vegas so I’ve been going there since I was a little boy and for as long as I can remember I’ve always wondered: “what is the story behind this bizarre place?”….
    • When talking about the history of ANY place in the Amercias I like to give as much info on the people who lived there long before it was called the Americas:
Paiute | people | Britannica
  • Then a few hundreds years after all the white people started showing up from the Atlantic some 2,000+ miles away on boats the history of Las Vegas gets a whole lot more detailed:
    • The name Las Vegas was given to the city in 1829 by Rafael Rivera, a member of the Spanish explorer Antonio Armijo trading party that was traveling to Los Angeles, and stopped for water there on the Old Spanish Trail from New Mexico. At that time, several parts of the valley contained artesian wells surrounded by extensive green areas; Las Vegas means “the meadows” in Spanish. The flows from the wells fed the Las Vegas Wash, which runs to the Colorado River.
    • John C. Frémont traveled into the Las Vegas Valley on May 3, 1844 while it was still part of Mexico. He was appointed by President John Tyler to lead a group of scientists, scouts, and spies for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which was preparing for a possible war with Mexico. Upon arriving in the valley they made camp at the Las Vegas Springs, establishing a clandestine fort there. A war with Mexico did occur, resulting in the region becoming United States territory. The fort was used in later years by travelers, mountain men, hunters, and traders seeking shelter, but never permanently was inhabited.
      • After the end of the Civil war in 1865, Octavius Gass, with a commission from the federal government, re-occupied the fort. The Paiute nation had declined in numbers and negotiated a new treaty with the United States, ceding the area around the fort to the United States in return for relocation and supplies of food and farming equipment.
      • Did the deal go down that way in reality? Maybe. Although a lot of deals brokered between the white men and native peoples didn’t go so smoothly, some deals were done fairly.
    • Consequently, Gass started irrigating the old fields and renamed the area Las Vegas Rancho. Gass made wine at his ranch, and Las Vegas became known as the best stop on the Old Spanish Trail.
      • Las Vegas was purchased in 1902 by the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad, then being built across southern Nevada. The railroad was a project of Montana Senator William Andrews Clark. Clark enlisted Utah’s U.S. Senator and mining magnate Thomas Kearns to ensure the line’s completion through Utah to Las Vegas. The State Land Act of 1885 offered land at $1.25 per acre ($3.09/hectare).
        • As a reference: I read a small part of an article that said the land purchased in and around Las Vegas during the year of 2015 went for an average of $317,000 per acre.
    • Clark and Kearns promoted the area to American farmers who quickly expanded the farming plots of the areas. Not until 1895 did the first large-scale migration of Mormons begin in the area. Through wells and arid irrigation, agriculture became the primary industry for the next 20 years and in return for his development, the farmers named the area Clark County in honor of the railroad tycoon and Senator.
      • By the early 20th century, wells piped water into the town, providing both a reliable source of fresh water and the means for additional growth. The increased availability of water in the area allowed Las Vegas to become a water stop, first for wagon trains and later railroads, on the trail between Los Angeles and points east such as Albuquerque, New Mexico.
      • The settlement of Las Vegas, Nevada was founded in 1905 after the opening of a railroad that linked Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Urbanization took off in 1931 when work started on the Boulder Dam (now the Hoover Dam), bringing a huge influx of young male workers, for whom theaters and casinos were built, largely by the Mafia. Electricity from the dam also enabled the building of many new hotels along the Strip. The arrival of Howard Hughes in 1966 did much to offset mob influence and helped turn Las Vegas into more of a family tourist center, now classified as a Mega resort.
        • And as this episode will show, not just Howard Hughes, but also rough and tough law enforecment such as the Cowboy Sheriff Ralph Lamb.
  • Our Cowboy Sheriff Lamb was in the thick of it as a law officer from 1947 to 1979, going head-to-head with Mobsters, biker gangs, and whoever else thought they could operate outside the lines of the law. When they did, Lamb was quick to rectify their misgivings, and had no problem getting tough if that’s what the situation called for.
    • There are many stories from Lamb’s career.
    • One of them was in the paper and said the sheriff had just got done “slapping the cologne” off revered gangster and former handyman to Al Capone, “Handsome Johnny” Rosselli, before sending him to jail.
    • Lamb had little direct trouble with mobsters after his go-round with Rosselli. Others also learned the hard way that Lamb wasn’t to be messed with.
    • Lamb himself has told reporters of being threatened by the Mob, only to let them know if they hurt his family, he would personally kill 10 of them each day. Amazingly, Lamb claimed to have never shot anyone in his years at the department, preferring to convey his messages with his fists.
    • Once, in the mid-1960s, Lamb reportedly greeted a rolling herd of Hell’s Angels by first destroying some of their motorcycles, then giving the men haircuts.
24 Las Vegas 1960s Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock
Calling for photos that show Las Vegas in the 1960s through 1990s | KLAS
  • Although the story about Lamb “slapping the cologne” off of Handsome Johnny Roselli was the most well known story, it wasn’t nearly the best.
    • the sheriff says the dapper gangster was a creampuff compared to a few other tough guys. “Rosselli was the kind of guy who would hire someone to take you out,” Lamb said. “But there was another guy who would have done that kind of thing himself. Johnny Marshall was the probably the toughest mob guy I ever tangled with.”
    • Marshall was one of the aliases used by one Marshall Caifano, a Chicago killer who was sent to Las Vegas to watch over Mafia interests, an earlier incarnation of rackets boss Tony Spilotro. Lamb says he personally arrested Caifano a couple of times and tried to question him, but the only reaction he ever got was a stone-cold death stare and a demand that he be allowed to call his lawyer.
    • In addition to facing down and arresting Caifano multiple times, Lamb said he single-handedly confronted six mob guys and ordered them to get out of town. It was Ralph on one side and six Chicago hoods, including Momo Giancana and Big Tuna Accardo, on the other. They left.
Ralph Lamb, The Cowboy Sheriff | American Cowboy - American Cowboy | Western Lifestyle - Travel - People
  • The Cowboy sheriff’s style of law enforcement was very much like what you might see John Wayne do in an old western. And just like the actions in an old western movie, what Lamb did sometimes would NOT fly today.
    • Now, Sheriff Lamb didn’t tolerate his officers abusing suspects during interrogation or anything like that, but a lot of what he did would land his ass in jail today.
    • Gene Perry, a lifelong friend to Lamb, says the sheriff went to Lincoln County to help a friend of his catch some rustlers who had been stealing livestock. When Lamb caught the two thieves, he’s said to have dished out on-the-spot punishment: Using a red-hot branding iron, he burned a brand on both of their bare asses.
    • Williams remembers a time in the early ’70s when Las Vegas got an influx of flashy pimps who drove up and down the Strip in fancy pimp-mobiles. Lamb reportedly authorized his men to kidnap the pimps, put a hood over their heads, and haul them out into the desert to a spot where a grave had already been dug. When the hoods were pulled off, the pimps were given a choice of leaving town or staying in the hole.
Who was Ralph Lamb? - Las Vegas Weekly
  • George Knapp, a good friend of Lamb’s, recounted many of these stories on Nevada Public Radio article. But because he was such a good friend he also got to know some personal sides to the Cowboy Sheriff.
    • Like how he was a total chick magnet.
    • Ralph Lamb was tall, tanned, strong as an ox, impeccably dressed and movie-star handsome. For 18 years, he reigned over Las Vegas, more powerful than any casino boss or mobster or elected official. That kind of power reportedly can be attractive to women.
    • Rae Cornell Lamb, still petite and striking today, recalls the first time she saw Ralph Lamb in person. It was 1973 at a tack store. He spotted her. She looked at him. Sparks.
    • “He was tall and strong and had these piercing blue eyes,” she said. “I didn’t talk to him that day, but he tracked me down and that was it.”
    • Rae would learn that the sheriff was still married at the time. Each of his three marriages proved tumultuous, in part because Ralph had a weakness for women. Lamb would never reveal anything about his liaisons, but others who knew him have dropped hints about his “friendships” with some of the most famous women of the 20th century … singers, starlets, you name it.
Former Sheriff Ralph Lamb's old-school manner inspires TV character - Las Vegas Sun Newspaper
  • Ralph Lamb may have known as a tough son of a bitch, but wasn’t all brawn. He was smart as a tack and his contributions to Las Vegas law enforcement are commendable.
    • “A few people over the years heard him speak with that slow cowboy accent and then made the mistake of thinking he was a dumb hick,” says businessman Kevin Buckley, one of Lamb’s closest friends. “They were in for a big surprise.”
    • During one interview session, Lamb told us about a fugitive he had busted Downtown in the early ’60s. He spotted the guy because he’d read the man’s license plate on a bulletin issued days earlier. To everyone’s amazement, during one interview, he rattled off the plate, though the arrest had occurred five decades earlier. He likewise remembered the name of a sleazy bar from arrests he made decades ago, and many other minor details from long ago events.
    • Like most intelligent men, Lamb knew the power of information. He had his own spy ring amongst the blue collar workers in Vegas
      • Lamb developed a network of eyes and ears by befriending bartenders, casino dealers, bellmen, taxi drivers and working stiffs. When they saw something of interest, they let the sheriff know.
      • His two sons Cliff and Clint (some of the 2 most cowboys names I have ever heard lol) would try to get into mischief when they were youngers.
        • As any young man would do living in Vegas.
      • But Lamb’s bartenders, bellmen, and casino dealer spies would rat them out at the first sight of them.
Ralph Lamb | Las Vegas Review-Journal
  • In his years as sheriff, he is credited with creating the modern police force Las Vegas now knows by organizing a merge of the city and county police departments, bringing a forensics team to Las Vegas, hiring the department’s first minorities (female and ethnic), putting the first computers in police cruisers, and, among other improvements, introducing motorcycles to the fleet, even though he probably wouldn’t have been able to handle the 250 head of cattle that escaped the corral behind the Stardust Hotel the same way on a motorcycle as he once did from his horse.
    • Yeah, Lamb was a bonafide cowboy. He strode around Las Vegas on horseback, wearing a 10 gallon hat, and rifle in hand.
      • Ralph didn’t just ride a horse around town to look the part of Cowboy. He had grown up on horseback and had a ranch in the area. He’d host ropings and rodeos on the grounds, competing with local cowboys and even the likes of hotel and resort mogul, Steve Wynn, who kept his horses at the ranch. Rodeo remained a constant in Lamb’s life and he was competing into his 83rd year, when loss of eyesight forced him to quit.
    • In 1977 Sheriff Ralph Lamb was indicted for tax evasion for somewhere around $30,000 that he took from a fellow cowboy, entreprneur, and old friend Benny Binion.
      • Lamb was acquitted of all charges, but not before his reputation was dragged through the dirt. The Judge decided the loans were gifts from a friend and not subject to taxation, but Sheriff is an elected position. And elected officials don’t usually survive such a scandal. When the Clark
        County Sheriff elections were held in 1978 Lamb lost. He would give up the badge the following year in ’79.
      • The next decade would see Metro Police, state gaming investigators and federal agents chip away at the Mob’s presence in Southern Nevada.
  • On September 25, 2012, a show titled Vegas was aired on CBS, based on Lamb’s time as Sheriff. Dennis Quaid portrayed Lamb. The show was cancelled after one season on May 10, 2013.
    • I have not seen the show, but I’m going to have to check it out.
Ralph Lamb's Legacy As Sheriff During Las Vegas' Mob Years | Nevada Public Radio
  • Lamb died on July 3, 2015 at Mountain View Hospital of complications from surgery in Summerlin, Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of 88
    • For years after he left Metro, Lamb worked for Steve Wynn and must have seen a lot of crazy stuff. This was during the time the dapper young casino magnate was a rising star. But if he did, Lamb never told his friend Knapp who wrote a story about Lamb’s life. He never spilled about any of it. Several times Knapp returned to the subject of Wynn, asked about the people around him, associations he may have had, women he chased. If Lamb knew anything juicy — and he always did — he never gave it up. Not even a tidbit. He never revealed anything that might have been embarrassing to a friend of his.
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb poises with is service revolver and badge at his northwest Las Vegas home, Friday, Aug. 3, 2012. The upcoming television series,"Vegas," scheduled … | Las Vegas Review-Journal
  • Just a year before Lamb passed away in 2014 the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement in Las Vegas—or, The Mob Museum, as it’s more commonly known—honored Lamb with an exhibit featuring the toughest law enforcer in the history of the city.
    • I toured this exhibition years ago while visiting family members who live in Las Vegas. Out of all the exhibits, Lamb’s stuck out to me most. That visit to the Mob Museum is why I decided to do this episode.
    • The exhibit included Lamb’s custom saddle and gear, cowboy boots, photographs, and awards, celebrating the cowboy cop who forged a modern police force with his Old West ways.
Las Vegas says farewell to legendary Sheriff Ralph Lamb

CREDIT


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Silent Winged Flying Coffins

Below are the notes to Season 2 Episode 12 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast.

  • The Coolest Tourist Shack west of the Mississippi
    • I was a junior in college when my mom suggested she and I travel to see my Aunt (as well as my grandparents and cousins) in Las Vegas. Mom booked the flight over my winter break. While there my mom got the idea to drive to Phoenix Arizona to meet other friends and family.
    • So mom rented a car and we drove 5 hours through the desert together. Luckily I have a good relationship with my mom, because most guys wouldn’t be able to stand such a road trip.
There is a 2012 movie called The Guilt Trip starring Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand. The plot is all about the nightmare of being stuck in the car with your mom as an adult guy for a really long road trip.
  • But I had a lot of fun with my mom. I actually loved the desert landscape, the bizarre desert communities, and the hours of listening to each others’ music of choice.
    • But without a doubt the most memorable part of our trip was on our way back to Vegas.
    • Just north of Phoenix is a town called Peoria Arizona where, if they had their own newspaper, a tumbleweed might make the front page.
    • As mom and I were passing through we spotted a faint silver glint in the air with the backdrop of that pretty pale blue cloudless desert sky. I said “what is that? Is it a plane? It’s so small.”
    • Then my mom noted “but there is no sound, no engine noise.”
    • Five minutes later my mom spotted a big white makeshift sign made out of plywood. In big black lettering the sign said “GLIDER RIDES, NEXT RIGHT”
    • My mom has always been an advocate for new experiences so she decided right then and there: We were going to ride in a glider.
    • I vividly remember the the shack that the glider operation was run out of. Standing on the wind and sand worn floor boards under the ramshackle roof I felt like I was on the Australian outback. The friendliest employee was a big white cockatoo that stayed up in the rafters saying “hello!” every 60 seconds.
    • Mom and I waited for a few hours for each of our turns in the engineless flying vehicle, but it was worth it.
    • The glider we rode in was small, just meant for about 2 people. In the front was the pilot and in the passenger rode directly behind him. The glider was towed in to the air by a metal cable attached to a motorized airplane. Once at an acceptable altitude, the cable was detached. At which point the heavy-set glider pilot turned to look at me with a sinister grin and said “Alright! we are now hundreds of feet in the air with no engine. Better hope I don’t have a heart attack!”
    • I thoroughly enjoyed flying through the air with hardly any sound. and at one point the pilot let me experience 0 G… it made me want to throw up, but I’m glad I got to experience it.

Home – Pleasant Valley Airport – when I googled the glider ride place, this is the website it led me to, but I don’t think the glider place is open any longer.

  • The Combat Glider
    • I thought this glider technology was cool to experience, but I couldn’t think of a practical use for gliders past recreational fun.
    • Little did I know that aviary glider technology was used by the military for stealth operations. Using a glider meant No engine, no noise, and very little chance of the alerting the enemy.
    • Apparently during the invasion of Normandy, D-Day, there was a company of Glider men who launched a massive operation to deploy troops behind the enemy lines.
    • These crazy SOB’s flew over one of the largest and most dangerous military operations in human history in canvas covered engineless aircraft. The only sounds they must have heard were the engines of other aircraft, non stop gunfire, and hundreds of explosions going off beneath them. All this knowing they physically couldn’t just turn around and fly home. They were without any propulsion so they were on a 1 way ticket behind enemy lines.
    • The glider pilots had no weapons, no parachutes, and no second chances. They were behind the wheel of what would come to be known as the flying coffins of WW2
    • For the benefit of stealth, these specialty trained pilots and soldiers got in to notoriously dangerous and unreliable aircraft. To the axis anti-aircraft gunners on the ground they were especially easy targets as they couldn’t make quick maneuvers to evade fire.
    • These silent winged warriors were history’s first ever stealth air fighters. Although incredibly dangerous, the gliders were present for every major allied operation:
      • The Invasion of Sicily
      • The Liberation of France and Holland
      • The Battle of the Bulge
      • The Crossing of the Rhine River in to Germany
      • and they were present for many operations in the Pacific against the Japanese
    • Their jobs were so dangerous that Senior officers wrote off glider missions as dead the minute they took off.
  • The Tactics
    • When Aviation was first invented in the early 1900’s in North Carolina, the Wright Brothers used a glider to fly. When motorized flying was invented, gliding technology became less popular. It was mostly recreational sports that kept gliding going.
  • The first use of gliders in combat was thought up by Adolf Hitler himself during his siege of the Belgian Fort Eben Emael.
      • General Karl Student of the 3rd Reich led an elite force of Luftwaffe paratroopers to invade Fort Eben Emael in the experimental and untested combat glider. Hitler’s gamble payed off. 780 Belgian soldiers surrendered. Only 6 German soldiers were killed. And then Hitler had a straight shot to France with no opposition in his way.
      • Hitler knew the advantage glider technology had over paratroop tactics. Where paratroops dropped in a widespread area, taking time to regroup and be battle ready, gliders landed all vehicles, equipment, and troops in the same area. Glider missions could be carried out with much more speed and efficiency.
  • The allies primarily used the Waco CG 4A glider. It was a massive piece of machinery. They were nicknamed Silent Wing.
      • The Waco CG 4A glider could carry 13 fully equipped soldiers, a 4 man crewed jeep, or a 75mm howitzer with supplies and ammo.
      • The Waco’s were towed by Douglas C47 airplanes. They were towed by a cable that double as a communications wire between the airplane and glider before the glider detached.
      • Unlike motorized airplanes, gliders don’t really soar. Instead of a flight, it is more like a planned fall.
      • The Waco glider pilots were towed up to about 500 feet above their landing zone. After being detached from the airplane, pilots had about 20 seconds to decide where to land.
      • If WW2 airplanes were metal eagles, WW2 gliders were bricks with wings.
Imagine it: you are 500 feet up hurling through the air in a giant metal box with no engine. 13 smelly paratroopers are behind you putting their lives in your hands. You get a radio transmission from the pilot of the C47 plane that is towing you stating “alright, we are nearing the drop zone. Detaching tow cable now.” You feel the force of the plan leave your glider and the weightlessness of it all come through your feet. You have 20 seconds to pick a 400 foot field to land in. You took down for the controls you have at your disposal and see this….
  • I’m convinced the men who volunteered to get in to these gliders were nutcases. 6,000 allied troops were trained as glider pilots. They were given the possibility of an officer’s pay and the opportunity to fly. They were daredevils.
      • If the thought of “planned falling” in a giant metal “flying coffin” didn’t convince you how crazy combat gliders were, let me tell you about the Snatch Pick-Up tactic.
The C47 plane is flying with a tow pole and cable handing beneath it. On the ground is an undamaged glider. Just ahead of the glider are two tall stakes with the glider’s tow cable hung between them. The C47s pilots were so good they could get their tow cable in between those stakes and tow the undamaged glider (with passengers) to safety.
  • The C-47 planes would fly in to enemy territory with a tow pole hanging from the belly of their aircraft. They would look for undamaged gliders that set up their tow cables to be intercepted. Then the C47s would tow the Waco gliders (typically full of troops) back to safety, like a reverse glider take off. What a legendary maneuver that would be to see in real life.
  • For operation Overlord (that’s the D-Day invasion of Normandy) the glider pilots were up against their greatest threats. Normandy Beach was armed to the teeth with anti-aircraft guns and the fields, where it would have been most opportune for gliders to land, were full of traps.
    • They were known as Rommel Asparagus. The German army set thousands of 10 foot metal spikes in the ground that would impale the gliders and their passengers.
    • If that wasn’t enough, some of these spikes were strung up with wired explosives.
    • If you have watched any WW2 documentary or read in to the allied invasion of Normandy, you know secrecy was of the utmost importance. So radio silence was necessary. On June 6th 1944, 867 gliders carried nearly 4,000 allied troops (plus equipment) across the English channel to land in fields as small as 400 feet.
    • A heavily fortified Nazi gun nest was causing massive casualties on to the amphibias troops on the beach. So a Waco glider was tasked with transporting a light tank behind the gun nest’s position. Attesting to the efficiency of glider operations, the tank was able to take out the gun nest within 2 minutes of landing.
Glider pilots of Operation Overlord
  • The glider pilots that took part in the successful mission of D-Day got a special Air Medal with a big G in the middle.
    • The G officially stood for Glider, but the pilots went on to tell anyone who asked that it stood for “GUTS!”
  • The more I do this podcast and read up on history, the more I understand why it is cliche for old guys to be big history nerds. I’m quickly turning into a grandpa who sits on the couch and watches WW2 documentaries all day.
    • WW2 is the largest known war in human history. The amount of stories that come out of it are seemingly endless. Be prepared for more WW1 and WW2 episodes on this podcast.
    • Until next time Who’d a Thunkers!

CREDIT:

What it was like to land behind enemy lines in a glider on D-Day – We Are The Mighty

The 327th Glider Infantry Regiment (GIR) during WW II (ww2-airborne.us)

WACO CG-4A (airbum.com)

If you are like me and prefer to listen instead of read, then you are in luck. Everything above is read aloud by me for the Who’d a Thunk it? Podcast. By now the Who’d a Thunk It has reached people in 44 countries. It is hosted by Anchor.fm but you can also find Who’d a Thunk It on:

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Revered… Inaccurately

The following are the notes from Season 2 Episode 9 of the Who’d a Thunk It Podcast. More is discussed in this blog than is read aloud in this podcast episode.

  • Who was Paul Revere?
    • Paul Revere was born in Boston’s North End at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family.
      • That word “Huguenot” refers to French Protestants who fled France to escape violent prosecution from the Catholic French Government in the 16th and 17th centuries.
      • I wanted to explain this because one can see a connection between why Revere’s father fled to America and why Paul would be willing to side with the colonists during the American Revolution. They both were being oppressed. His father was being religiously oppressed, and Paul for political and economic reasons.
    • The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father. At age 19, Revere inherited the business upon his father’s death. But he left the business briefly and enlisted in a provincial army in 1756 during the French and Indian War. So the American Revolution was not his first military experience.
    • Paul was a colonial Boston silversmith, industrialist, propagandist and patriot immortalized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem describing Revere’s midnight ride to warn the colonists about a British attack.
    • He died of natural causes on May 10, 1818 at the age of 83 at a time when the average life expectancy was 30 to 40 years of age. He left five children, several grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. The son of an immigrant artisan, not born to wealth or inheritance, Revere died a modestly well-to-do businessman and a popular local figure of some note.
  • This is who Revere was. Below is the poem that made him famous. For the Podcast I’ll be reading the beginning and end, while skipping the bulk of the poem’s mid section. It is along one, but in this blog post I have included the entire poem.

THE FAMOUS POEM: Paul Revere’s Ride

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1807-1882

  • Note: When Revere died, Longfellow was only about 11 years old.
This image was taken in 1868. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the “Fireside Poets,” wrote lyrical poems about history, mythology, and legend that were popular and widely translated, making him the most famous American of his day. 


Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  • The Legend
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as having one of those really cool names you have to say in its entirety every time you say it, could write one heck of an epic poem.
      • “A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
      • A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,…”
    • That is poetic gold. It really did immortalize Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride years after his death. The poem written about Revere’s ride was so popular that it was taught in American public schools.
      • I didn’t have to look this up. I remember being taught the accounts in this poem as if they were facts.
    • But it turns out the American Public school system got it wrong. That night did NOT happen the way we were all told.
  • April 18th, 1775
    • Paul’s mission was to warn the militiamen of Lexington and Concord if the British attacked. That is true.
    • But he never said the famous words “The British are coming,” like all the reenactments us American’s have seen.
      • I don’t actually know where this idea came from, because the line wasn’t in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem either.
      • During the 1770’s everyone considered themselves British. The citizens at the time may have distinguished themselves as colonial patriots or loyalists… but they all considered themselves British. Because they were… they had all recently immigrated to the Americas and/or they were still technically part of the British Territory that was America.
      • So if Paul Revere actually did say “The British are coming,” it would have been very confusing and wouldn’t have accomplished much at all.
      • Instead, Revere and his compatriots referred to the British army as “The Regulars”
    • Ok so far I’ve only said that 1 word out of the story is off, but all my fellow middleschool classmates and I were shown an image of Paul Revere riding around the streets on his horse yelling at the top of his lungs… that is not how it went down.
      • This was a covert intelligence operation. Instead of yelling on the streets (which would have gotten him captured by British authorities immediately) Revere went specifically to known colonist patriots and most likely whispered the news.
      • But I understand why this part of the story was doctored. You try getting a bunch of kids excited about a guy traveling to peoples’ houses at night and whispering news in their ear… much more exciting sounding if he is frantically racing around shouting at people in the middle of the night.
    • Now the biggest inaccuracy was that Revere didn’t complete his mission. He actually failed miserably.
      • The lanterns that Revere supposedly saw as signals for whether the British were coming (One if by land, Two if by sea) well Revere didn’t even see those lanterns.
      • Those lanterns were set up to signal this message, but it was Dr. Joseph Warren (a different son of Liberty) that received the message.
      • But Dr. Joseph Warren wasn’t the one who sent the message to Lexington and Concord, instead he sent a man named William Dawes. Dawes was the first Son of Liberty to set out on the Midnight ride. Revere joined him later. They warned Lexington together. Then Dawes and Revere were detained by the British/Regulars. They never made it to Concord.
      • It was Samuel Prescott who warned Concord. There were numerous riders that night dispatched to warn all sorts of towns…
      • This means Revere’s contribution was minimal compared to other riders that night. In the time between his failed midnight ride and his death, people forgot about his contribution to the revolutionary war. Revere’s Midnight ride wasn’t even mentioned in his Obituary.
  • So why do a podcast on this topic?
    • To sum things up, the Midnight ride was an impressive intelligence operation during the revolutionary war. The colonial army’s spy network showed great organization skills and that they could carry out such an operation affectively.
    • It seems that years later a talented poet heard about this impressive operation, picked the coolest sounding name out of those who were involved (Revere) and used that name to construct a more interesting narrative to grab the attention of the largest audience possible.
    • For 200 years, the American public schools then taught this narrative as fact to the youth of the nation. Now everyone knows the fabricated version of the events of the Midnight Ride instead of the actual facts.
    • The reason I wanted to do a podcast on this is because stories like this have changed how I view the world. Stories like this helped me realize a few truths:
      • Doubt can be a debilitating thing if it goes unchecked in the human psyche, but if used properly it can be a powerful tool for uncovering the truth.
      • Education is important and usually benefits society, but it is an institution run by human beings. Therefore it is susceptible to error.
      • Educate yourself, but never trust blindly. Put a little bit of doub in to everything. If it is worth while, it will withstand the doubt.

CREDIT

If you are like me and prefer to listen instead of read, then you are in luck. Everything above is read aloud by me for the Who’d a Thunk it? Podcast. By now the Who’d a Thunk It has reached people in 38 countries. It is hosted by Anchor.fm but you can also find Who’d a Thunk It on:

If you would like to contact me, feel free to comment on this blog post, or email me at WhodaThunkItPodcast@gmail.com