Fellow ridiculous historians, we return to you, uh treats in hand, just like our good friends at Sweetwater with a classic episode I.
Love war and Candy. Yeah, oh wait, no, I smell it, I smell water, I smell sex, can smell sex. Yeah, that's right, that was the ref got was that Marcy's playground or just marcie playground? I don't think it's possessive. Yeah, yeah, you might be right. You might be right.
It's a it's a banger, though, but we are kind of talking about candy, and I think in this classic episode, the infamous Toutsy roll air Drop, we also air some of our opinions about scrumptious treats.
Is this the one where y'all gang up on me over Almond Joy? No, that's the one we did recently. Okay, well, I stand by it. All Enjoy is you're still on the almonds. I'm on the Almond Joy Baby, Mounds can take it or leave Almonds Joy, give me all you got.
Shung Wing this stand up cop that I absolutely love. He has a Netflix special wherein he has an extended rant about Almond Joy and Mounds, and I think that's a person who will speak to you on a spiritual level.
Yeah, well, Allmond Joy's got nuts, mounds don't. But during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, the First Marine Division seemed absolutely doomed. There were no nuts about it.
Yes, yeah, And a lot of times in the modern day, especially people in the West, we forget just how close the Korean War came to a total victory for North Korean forces before the before the temporary peace was achieved, the peace that exists today. The war has not officially ended.
So we're going to travel back there with you folks. Surrounded, outnumbered, out gunned, running low on every imaginable supply, the US Marines call for it air drop of AMMO, a life saving reup, and instead of getting AMMO for guns, they get what we could call AMMO for Halloween. They get Totsy rolls.
Man, AMMO for the gaps between your teeth and your molars. Yeah, Tootsio, you probably load those things up into some sort of blunderbus, you know, shoot them at people. Those things were seriously dense, But it turns out they were good for quite a bit more than maybe was anticipated. And this serendipitous there we say, fortuitous air drop mix up kind of had a silver lining.
To it, exactly yes, and oh gosh, I look back on this one fondly. I can't believe this was all the way back in twenty eighteen, but it holds up. No spoilers, folks, Let's roll the tape. Oh, can we totsy roll the tape? Let's totsy roll the tape. Yeah, ridiculous histories of reduction of iHeartRadio. A young hasio fellow, ridiculous historians. Welcome to the show. That is my poorly pronounced attempt at saying hello in Korean, or one version of.
Hello, Hello to you, Ben. My name is.
Nolan, Hello to you Nol, My name is Ben.
Yeah. Look at that. It checks out, And of course we're.
Joining as always with our super producer, Casey Pegram.
You know, Ben, there's one thing we did not learn how to say in Korean. Well, there's a lot of things we didn't learn how to say in Korean, but one of them it's tutsi role. And I wouldn't be surprised if maybe there was one of those phonetic pronunciations. Your girl friend showed me the other night we were hanging out a thing that she took back from your trip to Korea that had a phonetic pronunciation of the
word lighter. And it was just three characters, and it was Laja tour, I believe, which is nonsense in Korean, nonsense in Korean. So I'm wondering if maybe there's a similar thing for tutsiro.
So why are we saying hello in Korean today?
I don't know. I didn't do my homework. Can you help me out?
You know?
Surely? Well we were talking about, you know, the topic is related to Korea and a particular conflict that took place in Korea that I was woefully under educated about. And I know Ben that you probably were more educated about this particular situation than me. So why don't you give us maybe your background and why this might be the case.
Right, Noel, you and I before we went into this episode, I think we both knew a little bit about the conflict called the Korean War here in the States.
Yeah, just mainly from watching reruns of Mash.
Is Mash Korean War. I really I am not a mash Burt.
Yeah.
People always think it's about Vietnam because it was on during Vietnam, but it is in fact about the Korean War, even though it was kind of quote unquote also about Vietnam.
Casey on the case. So thanks for teaching me about Mash, Guys, I hear. It's a great show. I've just never seen it. Did you ever watch it?
Yeah? I didn't watch it a time, but I watched it enough to learn a little bit about the Korean War and also to know that the theme song of Mash actually has lyrics in the movie, and it's a very sad song.
Yes, suicide is painless. It's a wonderful song. It's beautiful, but it's sad. Yeah, beautiful is probably a better word there. So the Korean War, which is also called the Liberation War in some places, was waged between nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty three June nineteen fifty to July nineteen fifty three, a war between what we now call the DPRK or
North Korea and the ROK or South Korea. And it was a proxy war because there was support on the North Korean side from Russia and there was support on the South Korean side from the US.
It's because it was basically the Imperial spoils of the Second World War where Japan lost their territory, which was Korea, and so the US and Russia kind of had to split it up between themselves. So the US reluctantly were sort of in charge of South Korea and Russia Communist Russia was in charge of North Korea, and so it created this divide between communism and democracy.
Right, Yes, this is a very much a Cold War esque conflict.
I think it's considered the first step that led to the Cold War, right.
Yeah, yeah, in some ways it is because this was still this is what we would call a hot war, because there were actually weapons of war being waged. But it very much was a symptom of this ideological conflt that would later determine so much of geopolitics for decades. And we could get I don't know if we should get too far in the weeds on that one, because this is kind of the backdrop for our story, but I guess we should point out this war, in a
very real way, never actually ended. And if you go to Korea today, you will if you visit the capital city, Soul, you are very close to the de Militarized Zone or DMZ. Didn't you do that thing, Ben, Yes, yeah, I did. I went recently to the Republic of Korea and then visited the DMZ, which.
Is a weird place.
It was a weird place, but it's a physical, tangible reminder that this war, although it may sound like it was ancient in the nineteen fifties and stuff, it still affects the people on the peninsula and in the larger region.
I guess we didn't really fully get into what the conflict was. We talked about how the US and Russia inherited the Koreek Korea from Japan, but the Russian backed I guess you could say North Korea actually invaded South Korea. And that's what kicked off this big ideological battle because the US as opposed to, you know, practicing appeasement or something like that, because this wasn't really they didn't really
even want South Korea. It was just something they were kind of like saddled with because of, you know, the outcome of World War two, and they looked at this as not just an invasion into something that they responsible for. They looked at it as the potential match that would light the world on fire with communists.
Right.
Yeah, So this Cold War conflict results in Korea being split into two separate states on the peninsula. But the problem is both of those governments consider themselves the sole legitimate government of the entire place, so they look at the other government not as an equal separate state. They look at it as this regime that should be toppled as soon as possible.
And that was with under Kim Il Sung right.
Right, Kim Il Sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea from its establishment in nineteen forty eight. The conflict when it occurs becomes a war of attrition. At first, North Korea is whipping the South Korean forces like all the way down to Busson and Soul. Over the course of the conflict changes hands multiple times. Eventually, when the fighting actually ends and they sign an armiscice, they make this DMZ line along the thirtieth parallel, but they never
signed a peace treaty. So even today as we record this, technically the two nations are still at war, even after the fall of the USSR.
And ben What was it like to visit to be in that DMZ zone. Didn't you have to watch some kind of propaganda video. Yeah, that also explos how it was an amazing bird sanctuary.
Yeah, it's the only part of the tour I was not like I didn't have the option of skipping. So you see a couple of different places. You see an observatory tower, you see the train station that could ship people or transport people directly to the capital of North Korea. And you go down a very steep tunnel, an invasion tunnel. There are three or four that are discovered, but there are multiple other ones suspected to exist.
And you see how the.
Tunnel was constructed through the DMZ and it's not a comfortable walk, but estimates say they could carry thirty thousand plus people through there to invade Seoul. But the one part of the tour you cannot skip is at least our tour guide tell us you couldn't is after you get out of the tunnel, Chicken is a very very
steep walk. You have to watch about an eight to ten minute propaganda film from the South Korean side, the rok side, about how great the DMZ is for migratory birds and biodiversity, which is actually that's true, and you know it's got the whole nine of every propaganda movie you can imagine. You can see that, like the hands from opposite sides of the screen clasping each other, like that meme that's so popular nowadays. And it's strange because
I was expecting propaganda from the North Korean side. I was surprised how much exists on the South Korean side. There's still very much a conflict. And today's episode takes us back to when that was a hot war, not just an armistice. So Noel, our story today concerns those two things we mentioned. We talked a little bit about Korea, but we teased at the top of the show Tutsi rolls, and this is something where I wanted to check on
our mutual americanisms. I feel like for all three of us, Casey, you and myself, tutsi roles seem like a very well known thing.
Right.
Are they a US famous candy or a world famous candy?
You know that's a good question, Ben, I don't know. Well, just to be.
Safe, we can give the quick and dirty. Tutsi rolls were invented by a guy named Leo Hirshfield, who sold them out of a Brooklyn candy shop before he sold the idea to a group called Stern and Solberg.
And that could actually be an episode unto itself, because there's a really intense, kind of tragic ending to that story. And there is a lot of hot debate as to whether he invented the candy and then sold it to them, or if it was the other way around. He also invented or he had several patents for different candy making equipment, but he also this is probably my favorite name of any product ever. Yeah, he invented a type of gelatine that was pre jello called Bromangelon.
Bromangelon, which I think would be great on a T shirt and a great nickname for one of those not just nicknames like Brusve.
Yeah, exactly, Bromangelin I'm gonna use that. But anyway, a point being, if you don't know what it's zero is, where have you been. They're not that good. They get stuck in your teeth. I'm not a huge fan, but they are very tightly wrapped in these little you know, with the ends and the little bow ends on the side. You can also get them in like a stick form. You know. They're much larger, and they're kind of the candy that you got at Halloween that you would rather have gotten something else.
For me, they were acceptable, They were passable Halloween candies. Anything was better than that orange and black wax paper taffy. Do you guys remember that Casey is nodding. He is so tired of that.
Yeah, it's gross.
It's like the last stuff you eat, and you do eat it, but it's the last thing you eat and you feel gross afterwards.
And that's been Casey on the case part too. We're doing them in installments now, which is important because when you take them all together, it creates a whole picture.
And we're going to syndicate these onto other shows. We're just not going to tell the other shows. Casey will pop in and hopefully it'll make sense. But Tutsi rolls, which you know which I think you're right, are a story all their own. Tutsi rules were also valuable, not just as Halloween candy, but as World War Two rations because just like you said, you know how, they're individually wrapped,
they have a very high temperature tolerance. It's pretty much like chocolate wax almost, and they were seen by Uncle Sam as a source of quick energy because they also would remain edible for a long period of time.
When you say energy, we're just basically talking like sugar, right, Yeah, just full of sugars. There's no other nutritional value in tutsi rolls.
No, No, they're not part of a balanced diet. But yeah, it was a burst of energy kind of thing. And there are stories you would find about how tutsi rolls helped soldiers, like how there was actually some fire behind the smoke. One story is of a pilot whose plane was shot down over the Sahara Desert and survived for three days just on tutsi rolls. But today's story is much less anecdotal, much more provable, and it's about a group of Marines who were in a particular battle in the Korean War.
Yeah, that battle was called the Battle of Chosin Reservoir Chosin, which is also called chang Jen. This was one of the first campaigns of the Korean War. It was called the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, and they got involved because they felt like American troops coming in to North Korea was in some way encroaching on their territory. And I was a little foggy as to why that was, because it didn't seem like they necessarily had an axe to grind in this particular war, and yet they made their
troops available to help the North Koreans. Yeah.
So Chinese sources refer to this battle as the eastern part of the Second Phase Offensive. They entered the conflict to infiltrate, as you said, part of North Korea. We know that they were under the command of Song Shi Lun, who had been ordered by Mao Zedong to destroy the United Nations forces. We have to keep in mind that at the time this was the United Nations was a
part of this conflict. There were I think thirty thousand United Nations troops here and about one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese troops who were essentially attempting to eradicate the United Nations. But no, there's an article you found that goes into a little bit more detail about this.
Correct. Yeah, it's true. It's from a site called Inquiries
Journal dot com. It's an article written by Bang Ming Tzu for the Journal of Interstate Affairs and it was reposted on this increased Journal site, and it basically says the historians believe that the Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party, was really making preparations in Taiwan to unify China because it had been fractured, its economy was in shambles because of World War Two, and most scholars agree that the reason they got involved in this North Korean conflict was
because they looked at the potential of an American invasion of their country as being on the table. If they successfully invaded North Korea and did this, you know, were able to stem the tide of communism as it were.
Yeah, the communist capitalist confrontation. To a lot of the leadership of China at the time, this was seen as inevitable, and China and the US were seen as natural enemies by the leadership of China at that time and probably by more than a few senior officials in the US. So this battle was looking terrible for the US side. First off, they are drastically outnumbered. Secondly, the area that they're in, chang Jin, or Chosen as it's often called,
was just brutal. It was terrible. The temperature was around negative thirty fahrenheit yikes. Yeah, And because they were outnumbered, surrounded by one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese troops, as we said, which seemed like a death sentence and the US Forces.
Oh we should say who they were specifically. Yeah, they were the first Marine Division of the US X Corps. Yeah.
So they put out this request for mortar shells to be delivered via air drop because again, they can't get them through land sources. They're surrounded. But the problem was the problem was they didn't want to go on an easily interceptible line of communication and request mortar shells because then the enemy forced would know.
So they had to use a code word, yeah, which we've been harping on at the beginning of this episode, and he might have been wondering why, and it was tootsi rolls. It was tootsiras toutsi rolls was the code word for these particular types of mortar shows. But unfortunately, the person that intercepted that request, he didn't have his like handy dandy code book translator with him or something. And you think that'd be one that people would know though, you know.
Right, mortar show requests would have been not uncommon, right, I guess not.
Maybe I'm confused as to why this guy was so confused. But confused he was because he did, in fact call in an air drop.
Yeah, He panicked because he was like, I don't know what they're asking for exactly, but they said it was urgent, like life or death. So he calls in this air drop, But what exactly drops from the air there?
Noel, Yeah, And it's not clear exactly how many were talking, but it was a must have been a quite large shipment packed I'm picturing it like parachuted down, packed in like wooden crates of actual facts, tutsi.
Roles, palettes, multiple palettes, yeah, exactly, and the troops, instead of completely losing all hope, they said, well, we let's, I don't know, let's see what we can do with these, which just sounds such like such a terrible situation. You're surrounded by more than one hundred thousand people who want you dead. Yeah, you request some sort of ammunition, and all of a sudden, you get palettes of Halloween.
Can you know? When I first started looking into the story, and it reminded me a lot of the episode we did about the US naval men who threw potatoes at the Japanese submarine. Yeah, yeah, submariners by the way, Mariner, thanks everybody, thanks, right, And yet there is a superhero named the sub mariner. So yeah, you know, I don't know.
I think that's where we were both coming from.
I think that's exactly where coming You never.
Understood why that guy has wings on his feet.
He does? Yeah, is he kind of the precursor to Aquaman.
I can't remember who came first, but I would say the main differences are that nay more the submarine or sub mariner can fly, So I guess that's why he has the wings on his feet, and Aquaman can speak with the creatures.
Of the deep. He's like the Doctor Doolittle of the sea.
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it.
So I'm picturing them just like chucking these these tutsi rolls at the enemy, the Marines, not the submarin. No, No, that'd be strange. Both would be pretty strange. But no, that's not what they did. They decided to get a
little bit more crafty with it. They had a hard time because of the sub zero temperatures cooking their food and eating their food up, and so they were actually able to, like your story earlier about the pilot who subsisted on tutsi rolls for a long time, they were able to use their bodies to get these tutsi rolls to warm up to a more pliable, you know, edible, edible state, and then eat them. And they would also you know, they could do that in their mouth or what.
I'm not quite sure why they used their bodies.
Do you put it in your armpits? You can still do stuff, probably too, Yeah, well, war as hell, war as hell.
Not only that, though, they were able to do some other pretty clever stuff with them too.
Yes, yeah, that's absolutely right. So not only would this stuff become pliable when it was warm through body heat or in someone's mouth, but it would quickly freeze when it left that warm environment. And so they found these marines found that they were able to get a tutsi roll pliable and then use it as a type of makeshift weld. They were able to patch bullet holes in vehicles, They were able to patch hoses other equipment. Now this
is over a period of two weeks. This battle the Chosen Reservoir and the fifteen thousand men the Division of Marines did not leave unscathed and where Kia killed in action, six thousand were wounded, and thousands had you know, terrible, terrible, terrible frostbite and they were living on Tutsi rolls because I believe all the other food was just frozen solid, correct,
that's right. So you have to wonder if it's a function of the extreme temperature that allowed a Tutsi role to be so useful there, because ordinarily, like if we were if we were in a less frigid environment and we tried to patch a hose with a Tutsi role that we had chewed on, like, that wouldn't work, right, clearly.
Not, I would think.
Not.
Okay, So all that's pretty rough, But there's good news because they did persevere and they were able to stave off the enemy forces, and despite those casualties and those injuries, they ultimately survived. A group of them known henceforth as the Chosen Few. Get it, c Hosi n oh I didn't even catch that pen you got, I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't. Uh. Yes, So they did.
They did manage to survive, and not only to survive, but to emerge victorious, and they returned to the US lauded as heroes. And you know what, the Tutsi Rule Company had to love this.
Yeah, you'd think, so, I'm sure do you think they capitalized on it in their marketing materials.
I don't know.
I didn't find anything indicating that that would be a missed opportunity, though for sure maybe they felt it was too exploitative. Well, it's sort of like the potato story where the Idaho Potato Growers Association or whatever totally made a plaque about it the main potatoes. Excuse me, the main potatoes.
Yeah, so, well, maybe they thought it made their candy look bad. There's also that.
That's true that it was like the last possible thing you would want to eat. And it's literally, you know, you are dying in the frozen waists and you use their product to plug bullet holes keep them in their armpits.
And yeah, just to I just said, I think that's it because it's kind of like with a you know how a lot of soda due to the bicarbonate and it can dissolve things. It's like if someone used Coca cola to dissolve something in the midst of war. I'm sure Coca cola wouldn't be like, hey, drink this thing that can You know, people.
Used to like clear the corrosion on their battery terminals, right right, No, No, not a good look.
So it is a good look for these guys when they return. Although the Tutsi roll Company does not, for one reason or another, capitalize on this story. In the US, people were impressed these folks have used what side note here was Frank Sinatra's favorite candy?
Yeah, it wasn't he like buried with a bunch of them? Do you think it was a palette? Yeah? I don't know.
I remember we were reading that in a great article on Tutsi Rolls by Jeff Wells. Jeff mentions that Old Blue Eyes himself was buried Tutsi Rolls cigarettes a lighter at a bottle of Jack Daniels. But we digress to get back on the rails. These guys returned to the US, As we said, they are lauded as heroes, and they were I don't know, nowadays largely forgotten. This is somewhat of an obscure story, but people still remember it.
Yeah.
Well, in twenty eleven in South Bend, Indiana, they actually did a recreation of this event at the Southwest Michigan Regional Airport, which is in Benton Harbor, So I guess that's near South Bend. This was reported in the South Bend Tribune, and a guy named Don alsbro is, the president of a veterans group called Lest We Forget, was in charge of this event and they organized an air drop where thousands of Tutsi rolls were dropped on the
airport to commemorate that day during the Korean War. And Alsborough himself was part of this team, the unit, and he was actually handed a medal by President Eisenhower himself. And he says in this article that Eisenhower told him you must have a body of steel. So you know.
Steel, it's like in terms of durability, it's just under Tutsi roles, I believe.
Yeah, And this guy is the real deal in terms of heroism. He had already been injured by a grenade and then while one of their machine gun squad leaders was getting treatment, medical treatment, another enemy grenade got lobbed at them, and this guy smothered it with his own body. Oh one of those, yeah, yeah, and he survived. And that's where you must have a body of steel comment came from.
And so we conclude our tale, the strange story of Tutsi roles in the Korean War. It seems as if we're generating kind of a theme here a running series on food in war, But I'm fine with that. You know, I think this is an interesting topic. We hope you think it's an interesting topic too. Let us know if you'd like to hear an episode about the surprisingly somber origin story of Tutsi roles. But the show's not over yet.
We were talking earlier off air, and you know what, we're over due for NOL a little listener mail.
Our first letter comes from Kelsey and it has to do with farts, which is one of our favorite topics of all time. So it says, Hey, Ben and Noel and Casey. As a longtime listener of the show, I felt I had to reach out to you after the episode on rolland and professional Farting. I do historical re enacting and have a tendency to listen to podcasts while working in sewing dresses. While you were having Casey translate Roland's names from French, it reminded me of one of
the biggest mysteries and historical costuming. Help me with this, Casey the peton Laire, The peton Laire, Casey on the Case third installment mid Listener Man segment within a segment. So, the petentlaire is a traditional French court dress worn in the eighteenth century. It is essentially a large gown with a fitted bodice that is jack at length and is the shortened version of the robe a la frances casey lajo.
You've got closer casey on the case.
That's never gonna happen for me. However, no one seems to know where the name comes from, as petent lais roughly translates to fart in the air. I can only imagine the name came from a very embarrassing moment in court and the name stuck. Anyways, I'm a huge fan of the show and thought you might enjoy some more flatulence related history. Kind regards, Kelsey.
Thanks so much for writing in, Kelsey. We love a good historical mystery and this is something that maybe we can also refer to our colleagues on our peer podcast Dressed.
Yeah, and I think we're overdue to have them as guests.
Yeah, we could definitely bring them on for a segment. Maybe we could do one on fact any stuff. So also, I really appreciate any good fart joke. I was close years back when I was doing brain stuff things for audio and video. I was terribly close to becoming the fart Guy, and I was very hesitant to talk about farts at first.
Leaving the fart.
Guy, I was doing a lot of fart science fart material.
Yeah, I was going blue. You need to be like mister Methane, remember him.
Yeah, I think mister Methane's got his own lane. I think we should let him be him. I don't want to take that away unless there's but you know what, if there's a Sergeant Sulfur out there somewhere, you can write to us. We'll give you some aritime we'll record you separately. We have another letter from someone who's been writing to us pretty frequently, and that is a Umi, who lives in Japan, I believe, and is an English teacher.
Umi says, hello, gentlemen, after an episode where you both pronounced port manteau or port man two in the way that you were called out on before, I made a Twitter poll out of curiosity, because as I am an English teacher, I'm incredibly aware that a lot of words have multiple acceptable pronunciations. Also, your podcast was not the only one in which I heard this pronunciation. Here are
my results. So Umi has posted this on Twitter, and there's one Portman two spelled two and then Portmanteau spelled t ow And did you just see.
This null de oh? I did, yeah, And first I was at my heart set on us being vindicated.
So the two, the Portman two got fourteen percent of the votes and Portmanteau got eighty six percent. Now, she continues, she had seventy two people vote. She says, seventy two votes is not a huge sample size, but if I remember correctly from high school statistics class, it's enough of one to say that you are not inherently wrong. Pronounce an import man too, So you can go either way. Have an excellent day regards Ayumi. And this got me thinking,
you guys, we should do more polls. But you know, we can go onto our Facebook group it's true, and do do polls to our heart's content.
I think we should. And the name of that Facebook group is the Ridiculous Historians, where you can join, become a member, and get in on all the polling fun the future polling. There isn't any there yet, not that we know it. Soon. You can also send us email where we are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot Com and you can you know, do the regular Facebook page if you want, which is just ridiculous history on Facebook. I think we're
on Twitter's ridiculous history as well. And Instagram and all the stuff.
All the hits, all the good ones, all the good ones, and some of the weird ones. We'd also, of course like to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram and our research associates Christopher Hasiotis and needs, Jeff Goat.
Oh and let's lest we forget Alex Williams, who can post our theme. No.
Uh, I'm not completely sure how to say goodbye and Korean, but I think you I think the same casual hello is the same casual goodbye.
So on Youngs. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.