Medal Of Honor Monday featuring U.S. Army WW2 vet Staff Sgt. George John Hall

because it's time for Medal of Honor Monday. And after Medal of Honor Monday, I should say, kind of around Medal of Honor Monday, we're gonna do another little history tale.

name is George John Hall. George J. Hall, staffed sergeant in the United States Army. So, without further ado, hey honoring those who went above and beyond. It's Medal of Honor Monday for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above a beyond a call of duty. Attacking across flat, open terrain under direct enemy observation, Staff Sergeant Hall's company was pinned down by grazing fire from

three enemy machine guns and harassing sniper fire. Staff Sergeant Hall volunteered to eliminate these obstacles in the path of advance. Crawling along a plowed furrow through furious machine gun fire, he made his way to a point within hand grenade range of one of the enemy positions. He pounded the enemy with four hand grenades, and when the smoke had died away, Staff Sergeant Hall in two dead Germans occupied the position while four of the enemy were crawling back

to our lines as prisoners. Discovering a quantity of German potato masher grenades in the position, Staff Sergeant Hall engaged the second enemy nest in a deadly exchange of grenades. Each time he exposed himself to throw a grenade, the Germans fired machine gun bursts at him. The vicious duel finally ended in Staff Sergeant Hall's favor, with five of

the enemies surrendered and five others laid dead. Turning his attention to the third machine gun, staff Sergeant Hall left his position and crawled along a furrow, the enemy firing fanatically in an effort to halt him. As he neared his final objective, and enemy artillery concentration fell on the area, and Staff Sergeant Hall's right leg was severed by a shell burst. With two enemy machine guns eliminated, his company was able to flank the third in continue its advance

without incurring excessive casualties. Staff Sergeant Hall's fearlessness, his determined fighting spirit, and his prodigious combat skill exemplified the heroic tradition of the American infantryman. And don't worry, that's it. He didn't die, all right, I know everyone waits at the end of those things. Look, hey, I do too. The second I'm going through him, I skipped to the end. Did this guy die? Because they almost all die, right, and then we have to play tabs and we have

to be sad he didn't die. Now, do you believe in the concept of cursed ground, that there are locations on the planet that are simply cursed? Chris does not. Chris does not. Corey do you believe in the concept of cursed ground? Corey doesn't believe in it either, But a couple of cynics. I do, and I don't even understand really what I mean by that, except there are places on this earth that appear to be the location of way more human suffering than other places on the earth,

and some places that can be easily explained. For instance, if you said Istanbul formerly Constantinople, if you said that was cursed ground because lots of people have died there, well I would probably the argue with you and say, well, that's such a geographically perfect location that of course nations are going to fight over that location, and of course people will die there, So that would be that would

explain it, right, doesn't explain Haiti. Haiti was some of the worst slavery in this hemisphere, and after they ended that, it somehow got even worse. Curse ground and it certainly doesn't explain a place called Antium in the ancient world, or better known as Anzio in the modern world. You've heard of Nero, correct, that evil Roman emperor? You know he was from Antium. He was actually in Antium when Rome was burning? Did you know that he was not

in Rome playing the fiddle? That's a historical myth. Nero was in his hometown where he was born, Antium, as Rome burnt. Who's another Who's another Roman emperor you consider to be evil? Caligula is normally the one everyone would name. Guess where Caligula was born? Same place, Antium. Now let's discuss a terrible, terrible affair that may or may not have been necessary. But we'll discuss everything around it and what happened at Anzio, and then you can make up

your own mind. I'm gonna have opinions about it. You don't have to share my opinions about it. You probably shouldn't look into it yourself. Come up with what you think. Now, let's first we have to talk about the When you know I don't kill you with details with dates and names and things like that. I only give a few

because details kill a story. But what was happening at this time time matters a lot, and our minds as we look back at World War Two, we can get all kinds of screwed up on the timeline of World War Two. They were just I mean, especially the way the Pacific War didn't line up with the European War, which didn't at all line up with the Russian invasion of the Soviet Union. It's just there's it doesn't line up.

But where we're at here is nineteen forty four, and this is well Anzio takes place at the very beginning January of nineteen forty four. Here's what you have to understand about what is happening in the world up to this point in time, or at this point in time in nineteen forty four. First, the Soviets. The Soviets, they officially have the Nazi Army on the run out of the Soviet Union, but on the run probably isn't the

best way to put that. Remember, the German army in World War Two was a very fine army led by a bunch of outstanding World War One generals. So it wasn't like they just turned and beat feet back to Germany. They fought, in most cases a very orderly withdraw, trying to fight the or trying to fight the Soviets every step of the way as they slowly but surely backed away from the Soviet Union. And that is turning into

a brutal slog and a brutal fight. And the Germans are fighting as hard, harder on the defensive than they were on the offensives. So that's taking place there. There's something else taking place. The invasion of Normandy hasn't happened yet. We understand that Stalin is probably going to fail. Stalin probably can't pull off his war against the Germans without our help, without the Allies invading Europe, and that might

be the best case scenario. Meaning if Stalin can prevail, then we have somebody we didn't trust, somebody we knew was evil, probably taking over all of Europe, and let's all be honest, Stalin wasn't gonna give it back. So it wasn't just that you needed Stalin's Red Army to attack the Nazis. You couldn't allow Stalin to be alone in his victory over the Germans. Otherwise they'll be praying for Adolf Hitler back with Stalin. I mean, look, they're

both a pick. You're demon right, They're horrible. It's a horrible. We have to get into Europe. We have to get into fortress Europe. They're already starting to focus on places like Normandy. I will continue with the Macro and then we'll get into close so the Battle of Anzio in just a moment. Before I do any of those things, let's stop for just a moment and take an honest accounting of something. It's about you, It's about the person

you love the most. If a bad man comes to visit them right now, slips right in that back door at home, comes up to their car in the parking lot, approaches them at the gas station, can that person can you right now stop them? I don't want to hear about a gun you have at home, or I'll make a phone. No no, no, no, no. You have about ten seconds before that violent felon wraps his hands around your throat. Can you stop him? If the answer to that question is no, you need a burn a pistol launcher. It

is non lethal, so you don't have to stress. I don't like guns. That's fine, that's fine. Maybe you love guns like me. I still carry a burna on me everywhere. I love having a non lethal option. But because it's non lethal, it's legal everywhere all fifty states without a permit. You just order it. It shoots a pepper ball or a tear gas ball. That daughter of yours, who can't fight off the two hundred and fifty pound barbarian, can pop him in the chest with one of these. He

lays on the ground crying. She goes home unmolested. Ten percent off b y Rna Bernard dot com, slash Jesse Bernard dot com slash Jesse. We'll be back the Jesse Kelly Show on a Monday. Of course. It's been an amazing money. If you miss any part of the show, download the whole thing on ihard, Spotify, iTunes. If you're just now joining us, congratulations, you're just catching us at the beginning of a little bit of Monday history that'll

probably extend into Tuesday and maybe Wednesday. I've no earthly idea, but it's about the Battle of Anzio, World War two. We haven't even gotten to Anzio yet. To just stay with me. It's nineteen forty four. We think of nineteen forty four as when our war, at least in Europe is about to kick off, and that's true. But the war in the Pacific has been going on for years. The war with the Soviets, Soviets versus the Germans has

been going on for years. In fact, by this point in time, the Germans are on the run, running no, but they're leaving the Soviet Union as orderly as they can. They keep trying to hang on to a little bit, losing it, hang on to a little bit, but it is a nasty, nasty affair going on there. We Americans and the Brits. We want to get into Europe. It's time to start fighting the Germans in Europe. Hitler and his generals are well aware that we're trying to get

into Europe. This is nothing that's going to shock them. They have spies everywhere, they know about our troop build up in England, and they know we're coming at some point in time. So we have to figure out where and when do we go in, and how do we ensure when we go in that we're not facing every single German soldier who's not currently fighting in the Soviet Union. Remember this was a very large, very well equipped, well trained,

and well led army. This is a near peer. At the time, they didn't have twenty twenty glasses, the hindsight twenty twenty glasses we have now. They were pretty confident in victory, but you'd never know. So they had to come up with some way to pull Germans away from the Soviet lines and away from Europe, from northern Europe where we were going, we were planning on coming in. Remember Normandy was June of nineteen forty four. What I'm describing is January of nineteen five four. Not killing you

with details, but it gives you an idea. This is why we did what we did. And so a lot of this is Churchill's idea, but I don't want to put it all on Churchill either whether you love it or hate the idea, or love or hate Churchill. Italy was thought of, thought of such a ridiculous notion, looking back on it now as the soft underbelly of Europe. It was thought of as a soft underbelly because Italy was defended by Italians at the time. The Italian Army

back then under Mussolini was pathetic, pathetic and embarrassing. All those jokes about the Italian military, they all come from this time period where they had a small, poorly equipped, poorly trained army that couldn't take on anybody. The problem with Italy being the soft underbelly of Europe is, well, it is until the Italians get replaced by Germans, and then it ain't anymore. The Italians submit, you know this story. Already, the Italians back out, they don't stay with the Germans

and Japanese. They say, hey, we're done with Mussolini, We're done with this fascism thing. We're done. Well, Hitler's not just going to allow Italy to go to us. About five seconds after Italy said they were done, Hitler, who really saw this coming, was already moving German troops into Italy. And for the purpose of our Battle of Anzio here you should know, they weren't chumps. We weren't facing a

bunch of German chumps. It wasn't exactly all their crack troops, but we were facing some cracked troops, and we were facing them in a place that is an offensive war nightmare. Italy is all mountains, all valleys, all rivers, mountains, valleys, rivers. If you are defending an area like that, you're If you're on the defense and someone's coming for you, it's heaven for you. I don't have to explain why a

mountain is wonderful fortification you already know. Let's just talk for a quick second about the rivers, because you don't think about that really. Even if you do a large army, surely you can cross it. Okay, think about you. You're out hiking, just you by yourself, and you come across a large stream a river. It's an obstacle, is it not. You have to make a decision in that moment. Are you going to take off all your clothes and try to get them waterproof and try to swim across? What's

the current like? Are you even gonna be able to make it? What's the depth like? Even if you test? Okay? Or you maybe going to try to come up with a raft, try to locate a different Okay, you realize it's a pain. Now, this is you by yourself, out for a hike. Now you've got a dog. You've got your dog with you. How much more difficult did that problem just become? You can't lose muffy. But what if he takes off that? Now you see that's a problem. Now here's an army across the river. Do you think

that would be difficult? Of course it would. Do you think if you're on the defense, that you would be on the lookout for an army trying to make their way across the river. Do you think that would be a good time to drop a bunch of bombs and bullets on somebody? It would be, of course it would. And again, the Germans were no chumps and no idiots. They knew this whole place was full of rivers and valleys. Once the Allies started storming in, the friggin Germans started

blowing all the bridges. Now you came to that river, now you have to come up with a way to get across. And they didn't leave anything. They were famously good at demoing the bridges. Italy is the place you want to defend. It's not a place you want to try to conquer. We we're trying to conquer it, kind of. I'll get to that point in just a moment, before I get to the kind of conquering we were trying. Do you like history? You enjoy walking through history? With me.

Somebody emailed in and asked about Hillsdale College and they're they're free online courses. Hey, can I listen to them on my phone? Of course you can, man, you can sit down and watch them on your computer on your phone. These are online courses. They're giving us free. I just can't stress this point enough. Hillsdale's giving these to us

at no cost. They're giving them to us so we can learn more about history and the Constitution and the Roman Republican more subjects than I could ever go down the list of free from the greatest college of the country. It's a dream come true. I would so appreciate them for it. Hillsdale dot edu slash Jess is where you go to enroll that gets you no cost. Hillsdale dot edu slash Jesse. We'll talk about our kind of conquest than what we had going into Anzio. Next, it's the

Jesse Kelly Show on a Monday, all right. So the Germans have taken over the defense of Italy. It's nineteen forty four. The Allies are trying to figure out how to pull German units out of the Soviet Union away from Northern Europe so we can do the D Day, the Normandy invasion. Now the problem is and this is look, it's a problem we debate about to this day when people have historical debates. If you're America and the Brits. But we'll make this about America. Who do you send?

You know there are cracked German units there. Remember we were reading all the Germans mail, all their cables. All we were reading the German mail, the Japanese mail are code breaking stuff was top notch in World War Two. So we knew the units. We knew that back and forth. You know, you have cracked German units taking over a place that's built for the defense. The Germans know what they're doing. Who do you send? Now, maybe instinctively, I understand if you said this, you say you would send

the best. It's gonna be the hardest fighting. You send the best? What about D Day? Everything is finite. Everything in life is finite. There's no such thing as an infinite supply of anything, including cracked troops, cracked generals, great equipment, boats. You don't have an unlimited supply of those things. You have only so many for here, only so many for there. Who do you send? We sent General Lucas I'm only gonna give you a two names said, don't worry. Our

guy was General Lucas, the German Guy. This is the only other name you're gonna get is General Kesserling. Don't worry about remembering the names. General Kesserling, the German guy was an extremely capable man. If you ever see pictures of video of him, and there's all kinds of pictures and video, I bet you money he'll be smiling. It was wild. One of the things I've been learning is I've been reading and reading up on all this stuff and going through it all. The dude just always had

a smile on his face. I actually saw someone had nicknamed him the Smiling General. Smiling as he may be, he was very sharp man, and he definitely knew how to defend areas. So here was what the Germans had laid out in Italy, and this is what we were trying to kind of conquer. Always keep in mind as we have this discussion about Anzio, this was the secondary part of the war. It was almost a large distraction effort. Yeah, we wanted to get into Rome, but none of these

things were winning the war. This is kind of a side issue which is what so many of the veterans had. It was an issue so many veterans had with this campaign after the war. Anyway, So you know what Italy looks like. It looks like a boot if you're if you're unfamiliar, I realized not everyone knows maps. Italy is shaped like a cowboy boot, all right, a cowboy boot. So the tip of the boot, where your toes go, it's pointed west. It's pointed left. Okay, as you're looking

at a map, it's pointed left. You got me off. The toe of that boot is a huge island called Sicily. We had already taken Sicily because we were going to try to get into this soft underbelly of Europe Italy, and then we landed. We'll call it towards the heel of the boot. You're with me, so far we land there. That's not Anzio. Okay, that is not Anzio. But we're going to encounter something as we go north through Italy, not one, but two different defensive lines. Most people know

about one, they don't know about the others. Essentially, halfway up the shin, I'll call it halfway up the shin of the boot. The Germans found a line of areas where they thought they could fortify that would make it very difficult to get through. And then after that, as you keep going north, as you keep going up the shin towards the knee, there's another line, the gustav line, where they really dug in. So our allies had landed on the heel of the boot they began pushing north.

They were running into so many problems, not only German problems, weather problems. You know, Italy has some of the most fertile soil in the world. Remember I told you we went to Italy at Christmas time. We stopped by a vineyard to have this meal, and they brought us out grapes for appetizer. That grape. Have you ever seen a crab apple? Crab apples? I would say a third the size of a regular apple, maybe half. This grape was that big. I'm not exaggerating. Oh yeah, Chris, It had

like six seeds in it. It was enormous. Italy is famous for their wines and things like that because Italian soil is mega rich. Well, what do you need if you're gonna grow things like that? Rain water? When the rain falls in Italy, it falls without end. Our troops were getting bogged down in the mud. They're getting shot to pieces by Germans. Our push north from the heel of the boot is failing. You don't ever think about that when it comes to World War two, do you?

When we look back on World War Two, all we see is American conquest after American conquest, win after win after win. All we did was win, right, That's not true at all. We were losing and losing badly in Italy. We were losing so badly in Italy. The big cheeses, the Churchill's, the Roosevelts, the generals, Eisenhower, these guys, they had to get together and they had to have a discussion of hey, do we pull out? Do we just try to dig in here? We can't lose every soldier

we have here. That's the kind of trouble we're in right now fighting these Germans in Italy. And so they came up with an audacious plan that everybody. Everybody loves a plan like this until a plan like this goes wrong. And the plan was, Hey, let's land behind enemy lines and go on the offense. So the Germans have to pull troops away from these defensive lines from the gustav line and whatnot. They'll have to pull troops away from the gustav line to fight us behind them. Then then

we'll be able to break through the gustav line. And look, it sounds really cool, right Land, Hey, let's just do an audacious landing behind enemy lines. Everyone loves how that sounds. Unless sure one of the units behind the enemy line, and you're not taking on some chumps, you're taking on some Germans. Look, we'll make it about modern day. Zelenski did this with Ukraine when they were getting slapped around and the Russians had held on to some Ukrainian territory.

They did the exact same kind of thing, and every general loves it, right, every armchair general loves it. Hey, I know what we'll do. We'll go on the offense. We found a weakness in Putin's line and we'll go on the offense and we'll we'll create this big, this big bubble inside of Russia. It'll really wrong foot Putin. Yeah, as we speak, large numbers of Ukrainian troops are now

surrounded and maybe slaughtered because of that move. You can die very very easily behind enemy lines with nobody there to save you. We picked a man named General Lucas. There are gonna be times I'm gonna sound very critical of him. History is very critical of him. There are times I'm going to defend him, and I guess this would possibly be one of those times. General Lucas was warned extensively by generals who were above him, Hey, this is very dangerous and you might die here. Hey, you

might get wiped out here. General Patten himself basically told Lucas, you know, there's a chance you're gonna die here. In fact, there's a chance all your troops are going to die here. Patten was no woos and he was no wallflower. Patton looked at Anzio, he looked at landing above the Gustav Line, north of the Gustav Line, and Patten's doing the numbers in his head, and Patten's thinking to himself, you're all

gonna freaking die if you're not careful. And so that's what's rattling around in General Lucas's head as American troops and British troops make their way to the shores. I'll wrap up today's portion of this and then we'll revisit again tomorrow. Next this City is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Wonderful Monday. We'll get to Pam Bondi talking about prosecuting people for fraud, which I freaking love, Lee Zelden's killing it, how much you're paying for America's communism,

and more. But that's gonna have to wait for another ten minutes or so. We're still gonna talk a little bit more history on Anzio. If you'd like, you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Now General Lucas gets his forces and he starts heading to towards Anzio. General Kesserling, the German, he had been given bunk information, bad information. His information told him that there weren't going to be any Allied landings in December or January,

that it was going to wait. So Kesserling actually doesn't have any troops in Anzio, or not many. He had some some people he left behind, but not many troops in Anzio. At the time, he had pulled his cracked troops away and sent them down south to fight the other Allied forces. This plan, the plan to land behind German lines, worked perfectly. It worked exactly as intended. They landed and shocked the Germans. General Lucas lands. He immediately

takes a couple of days establishing a beachhead. He's grabbing ground right by the ocean. That's what establishing a beachhead means. He grabs ground by the ocean. And he's flabbergasted. The troops are flabbergasted too. He's not getting really any pushback at all. Where are all these German divisions? Where's all

this artillery? And this is one of those moments. It's amazing when you get in something great or famous or terrible or whatever it is, how often you can be defined by one moment, be it your best moment or your worst moment. I know March madness is going on right now. Remember Chris Weber from Michigan, one of the great college players ever played hoops in the NBA forever. What's Chris Webber most remembered for in his entire career.

He called a time out when he didn't have one, and I'm not going to say lost the game for his team, but gave up any chance his team had it coming back and winning that game. General Lucas had a long career and a great career, but he landed with his American troops at Anzio. The surprise he achieved it. The resistance was virtually nonexistent. I realized that's a bad way to say that. But General Lucas had been so freaked out and paranoid about what he was promised was

going to be terrible German resistance. Instead of grabbing his army and taking off towards Rome, he stopped and he simply waited there, trying to figure out, Wait, where are the Germans. They've got to be here, surely they're in hiding. Are they under the ground somewhere? Where are these Germans? But the Germans were not there, you see. They did, however, leave behind Kesserling left behind enough troops and enough spies.

The Germans found out almost immediately that the Americans had landed a large force at Anzio, and while General Lucas was establishing a beachhead troops were digging in, the Germans were sending some of their finest troops as fast as humanly possible to Anzio to try to kill all the Americans. Do you have anxiety yet? Do you have stress? Because it stresses me out to no end. Knowing it's day two of Anzio, and all these brave troops are sitting

there twiddling their thumbs. And the Germans had recently created a quick reaction force for just this purpose, of highly trained stud troops, and they were rapidly heading towards Anzio where the Americans were trapped. You see, because when you establish a beach head, yes that's nice. You have a place to put men in equipment and artillery and tanks, but you also have nowhere to run to. There's only

the sea sitting behind you. And as the Americans sat there because General Lucas was too afraid to move forward, the German units raced into place, got into place, did not take them much time at all. Now, what was Lucas waiting on? If you have to defend General Lucas at this point in time, Lucas was waiting on more stuff. He was waiting on more tanks. He wanted more armor, He wanted more things because he didn't trust what he was pushing out into He wanted to ensure that he

had instead of maximum speed, maximum stuff. And how many times have we had this argument When we've talked about a historical battle of any kind, it's always a give or take what's the right way, what's the wrong way. I don't know. I don't think there is one right or wrong way. I think it's always situationally dependent. Speaking of World War Two member Sipan, when we talked about Sipan,

the Marines were famously moving very, very quickly. The army was not, so much so that the marine commander fired the army commander. He said, the Marines are moving quickly, you're hardly moving. Well that look we Marines. We love that story. But it's more the marine philosophy, not maximum stuff, not getting all the food and everything you need, speed, speed, move quickly, wrong foot the enemy. The army had a not only tougher assignment on Sipan, they had a different philosophy. No,

let's take our time. Move the artillery up, the food, move the food up, move the bullets up. Let's make sure we're doing this slowly, but surely the right way. I know which way I lo. I'm a marine, but that doesn't mean i'm right. Lucas was faced with this exact same situation. Julius Caesar did this. Alexander did this all the time. Speed do we go with? Speed? Do we wait? What do we do? Lucas had speed laid out in front of him. He chose caution, and that

choice will define him forever. And as unfair as that maybe life is unfair, war is certainly unfair. That choice to wait it killed a lot of Americans. It's the reason a lot of Americans got to find out that dad wasn't coming home, that my son wasn't coming home. Those are the real consequences of war. And if you think that particular story is heartbreaking, you're really gonna wait until hour two tomorrow because there's a brutal one that

happens in Anzio. Honestly, it's just it's more brutal than I can even put into work. We will discuss that tomorrow, though this has been a podcast from wor