Hello again everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the intel update for May 17th through the 23rd, 2026. It's been a very busy week as usual, so let's get right to it. This week, the flash points from last week continue to build on all fronts. Here at home, domestic crime and general public foolishness has frequently transitioned into a state of civil unrest in some areas, such as the more visible cases in New Jersey. Similarly, riot season is in full bloom this year within the homeland with many major US cities being host to pop-up parties or other similar rioting just for the sake of rioting. Around our hemisphere, the potential for some kind of entanglement in Cuba continues as the rhetoric has been dialed up on that front with American military forces being staged within the Caribbean once again. Overseas, our friends in the United Kingdom have had a rough week when it comes to the details coming out regarding the Henry Doak murder trial, which appears to be another watershed moment for the UK and their two-tier policing system. Around the world, industrial accidents continue to strike petroleum refineries as the global energy crisis continues with no end in sight. In the Middle East, tensions are growing once again as rhetoric from Washington indicates that the United States is interested in reuniting the war once again in an attempt to break Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, in Africa, an Ebola outbreak has been announced in the Congo and hantavirus cases continue to be reported around the world as the previous cruise ship situation has not yet been resolved. All in all, a very busy week once again. A lot of things up in the air and not a whole lot of resolution on many fronts. Moving to strategic movement for this week, there are two main theaters of war that are worth keeping an eye on. Firstly is of course the Middle East where American resupply operations have been conducted as best they can during the ceasefire. All assets and resources are already on station in the Middle East with the exception of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, which is still in the Atlantic somewhere. Depending on when she departed and how fast she is going, it could take a while before she's on station. I know a lot of people are speculating that the war in Iran is scheduled to to again to weekend because there have been some very interesting cases where President Trump has canceled a few functions and rushed back to the White House to be in Washington, you know, just in case national security needs take precedence, which most people seem to think is code word for yeah, we're going to strike Iran again. And especially considering President Trump also said that we are going to strike Iran this weekend. He said that a few days ago. So, this may indeed happen either tonight before this brief comes out or Sunday night or Monday night, who knows? It could happen any day now or it could never happen. We just don't know, so a lot of this is going to be guesswork. But if they are going to reignite the war, they're going to be launching it again without the Eisenhower being on station to protect Israel with missile defenses, which is probably going to be her primary mission if she was supposed to replace the Ford. The scheduling and mission set for a lot of these carrier strike groups is thrown all out of whack because this war has required three carrier strike groups when normally we have only one in the Middle East. So, saying exactly which ones are replacing who is sometimes quite challenging and we don't exactly know what the mission is going to be. If the Ike is replacing the Ford, then she's probably going to be on station in the Mediterranean Sea in the Eastern Med just off the coast of Israel. But if she's supposed to transit Suez and go south into the Red Sea, then that might take a couple extra days. There has been some concern with potential attacks or terrorism or something like that within the Suez Canal because it is again a choke point and a carrier is pretty much a sitting duck when transiting the canal, which is why the Bush carrier strike group when she arrived on station, she actually went around the long way around the continent of Africa. So, the Eisenhower, if she is indeed intended for CENTCOM and she is indeed headed for the Med, she's probably going to stay in the Med. But again, this is really conjecture and just kind of guesswork, but it's still quite handy to know where a lot of strategic assets are located. And right now there are a lot of assets in the Middle East ready to continue the fight if that is the chosen course of action. A little bit closer to home, another potential conflict is brewing, Cuba. And we can see this with the strategic movement once once So, 2 days ago the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Caribbean, taking up station somewhere off the coast of Cuba. This is why it's worth being aware of what high-level strategic military movements are being made, because if we remember, the US parked an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela about 4 months before that operation came to a head. I'm sure many of you were quite annoyed with me for many months talking about how there's an aircraft carrier down there off the coast of Venezuela, but that annoyance actually paid off because we actually did end up launching a little miniature war. Thankfully, it did not come to a full-blown war, and it was really more just a pre-planned raid, but still, that aircraft carrier was an indication. So, this is important in the context of Cuba because right now, basically no one thinks that military action is on the table. No one is seriously considering that the United States might actually engage in some kind of military operation in Cuba. That is not really on anybody's radar, even theoretically. Most consensus seems to conclude that all of this Cuba talk is just talk, and it's really just to satisfy one of President Trump's remaining support bases, the Cuban-American voting block. There is a substantial Cuban presence in Florida, so maybe this is more political rhetoric than anything else to secure votes. I don't know. However, moving an aircraft carrier is not something that is traditionally done on a whim, and based on his term so far, every single time President Trump has moved an aircraft carrier somewhere, he has used it. Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc. And since Cuba is 90 mi off the coast of Florida, there will be no observable staging of forces like we see around the world. For instance, we knew Venezuela and Iran were about to pop off almost down to the day because the whole world could clearly see the build-up at forward staging areas. However, in the case of Cuba, every potential target within Cuba is well within range of bases in southern Florida. The combat radius of the standard CH-47 Chinook is about 200 mi, and the MH-6 Little Bird is about 100 mi, so they may need to use the carrier to stage from for whatever they have planned if they have anything planned in Cuba, but at the very very wave top level if the US wanted to launch a some kind of operation in Cuba, there is little chance that we would know about it beforehand unlike the two previous wars we've started this year. So, on the more strategic level, we are working with a total of five active fronts around the world right now that the United States is involved in in some form or fashion and two additional potential fronts that might open up at some point. The United States is involved in the war in Ukraine, the Gulf War, and of course the war on narcotics trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The US is also somewhat involved in a loose collection of conflicts and civil wars underway in West Africa, and American air strikes in Somalia have been regular and routine for many years now. In addition to these active combat operations, two additional theaters are on the menu, Cuba and of course Taiwan at some point. There hasn't really been any update on either one of these. I'm just giving you the early indications and warnings to keep an eye on Cuba and Taiwan. There's very much debate about both of these locations and what might happen, and it's of course possible that neither of these make the transition to a more active front, but these are the conflicts that could potentially become hot later on. And speaking of the heat here in the homeland, riot season has begun to spread throughout many American cities and suburbs. This is no surprise to anyone who can read between the lines, but this week has witnessed a sharp increase in riots, street takeovers, and general foolishness being undertaken in the streets. Right up front, all of the incidents that have been observed in the headlines this week are not the result of anything specific. This is purely just due to cultural reasons. Most of the mainstream media are calling these incidents teen takeovers, but these are almost always attended by full-grown adults, and the media is just trying to find euphemisms to avoid pointing out the obvious. This week, there have been four high-profile takeover-style events which have occurred in areas not traditionally host to this type of activity. Places like Chicago, Detroit, and the like are generally witness to half a dozen street takeovers every single night, So, it's hard to keep track of them because they just happen so often in these cities, but this week more traditionally upper scale neighborhoods have observed the various exhibitions of churlish behavior such as in Long Branch, New Jersey and also in Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island. Two locations which were at one point staples of wholesome Americana, but lately the neighborhood has gone downhill for obvious reasons. As a result of this rash of takeover events, many towns throughout New England have quietly slipped into full-blown deployment mode with curfews popping up and being enforced with a heavy hand in an attempted to keep the situation from deteriorating into chaos. So, if you are in New England, particularly along the coast, be advised that you will probably see an extremely overwhelming police presence in most public venues, particularly at beaches, over the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of money in the tourism industry up there in the summertime and local towns know that all it takes is one viral video of dudes dancing on top of cars for people to avoid their town this summer. So, spicy times, keep your head on a swivel, be aware of when these crowds start showing up at places and just just be aware. Across the pond, things aren't much better and societal tensions continue to get worse by the day. Just as a bit of an administrative note, the situation has become too chaotic for me to track personally. It's just too big at this point. I try to cover the high-profile crimes and very big incidents that might result in spicy situations, but right now there is literally a groundbreaking major case nearly every single hour in the UK. There are assaults, murders, mutilations, and child trafficking incidents every single hour and I just cannot keep up with all of it. It has literally gotten that bad. Even this week, the murder trial of Henry Nowak is not even the biggest scandal to take place today. Last night, there was a mass stabbing involving six victims in London and there's also another mass rape trial which involves a group of Pakistani men getting very light sentences for the assault and abuse of children. There are around a dozen or so more incidents that I don't have time to get into including a knife-wielding man causing chaos inside a Morrison supermarket, a stabbing attack resulting from a gang initiation, and a handful of other crimes so bad that I can't even give you the approximate details in mixed company. So, suffice it to say it's mass hysteria. Well, maybe not that far, but still quite busy in the United Kingdom. There are many stabbing attacks every day. There are many assaults every single day and it's really hard to pinpoint down where these are taking place for one because a lot of the time, well, not a lot of the time, most of the time the British media has been ordered by the British government to censor this kind of thing. So, we're fighting a losing battle when it comes to the information space on a lot of these assaults and really, really horrific crimes because we just can't figure out that they occur until years later in some cases like the Henry Noak trial. In terms of preparing for what comes next, the United Kingdom is still in the early phases, but some elements might be transitioning to a more active approach to handling this sheer volume of horrific crime. Vigilantism is quite literally the only thing the British people have in some cases at this point, which is unfortunate to realize, but this is the reality of what happens next. In some cases, not all, but some, every option for a peaceful solution has been exhausted. And in some cases there really is no option left. This of course varies case by case, but many British people are finding that out and it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And more than that, the British government seems to be rather oblivious about what happens when the average Englishman gets backed into a corner. So, suffice it to say a mass uprising throughout the UK is very unlikely at the moment at least, but there are increasing numbers of fighting age males who are siding with their countrymen to make the attempt to take back their country from the foreign invaders that have been brought into the British homeland, especially the ones which are just absolutely inconceivably violent. Again, many of you have heard this before, so I won't dwell on it too much, but the situation is quite serious and we may start to see the the early indications of of more organized attempts to handle the situation. I'll just put it that way. So, it ain't over till it's over and as bleak as the situation looks for the Anglo population of Western Europe and by extension the United States as well, there are ways of handling these problems. And I'll just leave it at that for now and I'll continue monitoring the situation in the United Kingdom to see how our brothers across the sea can get by even when the situation gets tough. I'm confident they can handle it uh one way or the other, but it's going to be a long and hard road to get there. So, speaking of tough situations, the crisis in the Middle East continues to make life interesting for most of the planet as the energy crisis continues to grow by the day. Rumors have been flying out of Washington nearly every day this week regarding President Trump being inclined to restart the war, perhaps under a different name to avoid congressional approval, but nevertheless the war rhetoric has been ratcheted up once again. On the tactical front, if the conflict is to begin once more, the Iranians have been very clear about what their targets will be, which mostly comprises of desalination plants and oil refineries. The Iranians have also managed to resupply and build more drones and missiles during the ceasefire. This is all conjecture because there's no real way to know for sure, but some estimates are saying that the Iranians might have replaced a substantial number of missiles and drones to the point that they have largely recovered from whatever supply they depleted during the opening days of the war. Of course, the raw material production capacity, like their ability to make steel and aluminum, within Iran took a huge hit because the United States and Israel completely destroyed or severely damaged many, if not most, of the factories around the country. However, the most important industry for Iran right now is the defense industry and they have been working overtime since the bombs started falling to sprint towards replacing their stockpiles of missiles and drones. How many they have at this moment is anyone's guess, but going off of everything that's happened so far during this war, the United States has done nothing but underestimate the Iranians at literally every single step, which is kind of astounding if you think about it. So, as much as the Pentagon likes to look down on the Iranians, there is not one single aspect of how they have fought the war so far where the Iranians have underperformed. They have been punching above their weight to this entire time. The Iranians certainly and undoubtedly control the Strait of Hormuz, and they project enough influence over the Persian Gulf to keep everybody's head down indefinitely. So, even though technically the Iranians are under-matched in their fight against the United States, technically speaking, as long as the United States keeps fighting the war in the same way, the Iranians will continue to have, if not dominance, that might not be the right word, but they're going to have enough control over a small area to cause a lot of problems essentially indefinitely. But, once again, in time-honored tradition, we will have to see what happens. Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is an interesting position to take, but it's also what happens when American leadership is painted into a corner, which is exactly what's happened. And as far as the Israelis are concerned, this is exactly what they were going for. In the world of grand military strategy, many famous military leaders throughout history have been noted for leaving their options open until the very last minute, which allowed them to have flexibility for as long as possible. For better or for worse, this is the complete opposite of President Trump's personality, as he favors a completely different doctrine. He favors decisive and bold moves in nearly every aspect of his administration. Which is a respectable strategy in business, I guess, but when it comes to warfare, he was by far the most susceptible to this kind of trap. Even for people who wanted to engage in this war, even for the war hawks, even for the military strategists who have been looking to fight a war with their own for decades now, the way that this has come about has been less than ideal because it's left a lot of people with a lot less options than they thought they were going to have when such a war were to break out. During the opening salvos to this war, President Trump killed the Ayatollah, which limited his options right out of the gate. And this got messy very, very quickly. If he had not killed the Ayatollah and to most of the military leadership, I have no doubt that a peace deal would have already been signed. We would already be done with this war. But because the United States killed most of the moderates on the first day of the war, the hardliners are now holding out within Iran and taking the position of making this incredibly painful for the United States. So, the exact opposite of what President Trump has said is actually what happened. We did not kill the hardliners on that first day, and now we're dealing with a more amiable regime. Actually, it's quite the opposite. We killed the moderates first, and now the options are limited for getting out of this because the IRGC leadership has basically taken a position of bring it on. Anyone who has ever cracked a military history textbook could see this coming a mile away because this is essentially a very loose correlation with how World War I began. I'm not saying this is going to be a world war again, although you could argue that World War III has already begun in many other ways. But when it comes to the Iran situation itself, it's quite interesting because it turns out that one of the reasons why World War I began and transitioned from a series of smaller wars into one, you know, large conflagration throughout Europe and even Western Asia before transitioning around the world is that a lot of key leaders and key decisions were forced or were not made. For instance, we cite a lot of times the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as being one of the catalyst for the beginning of World War I. Well, why is that? Why was his assassination so important? Franz Ferdinand's assassination was so critical and so important because he was one of the last dissenting voices, one of the last big voices, that urged the Austria-Hungary Empire to not go to war with Serbia, when thus kick off the war. When he was assassinated, he could not oppose to the war anymore, and so it was on, essentially. This is the short version of it. Same thing happened in Turkey with Enver Pasha. Again, the critical people who were trying to force a war ended up forcing a war. So, we see the same kind of mentality today in Iran, and this has been a very strategic nightmare to manage because the senior political echelons of the United States have made decisions, they have done things, they've committed targeting actions on the battlefield, but also in the political realm that have resulted in having few options later on. So, right now, we're stuck. President Trump has neither a political solution nor a military solution, which is just what the Israelis wanted. And the few allies that we have left are pivoting to China or, in some cases, even Russia. All the while, our strategic petroleum reserve is being drained to sell to Europe to keep global fuel prices low. What's quite interesting about this conflict is that we don't have to wait 100 years to look back uh in retrospect and say, "Oh gosh, now we know what what what started the war." No, we actually know right now. Uh it's quite clear. So, we at least have that going for us. But, in terms of a solution, I really don't know what the US intends to do at this point. There are, indeed, about half a dozen different solutions that would 100% work to end the conflict, but the hard part is getting the ego and foreign influence out of the ear of military decision-makers long enough to actually let them see the light and end this on positive terms. Personally, I think that we're absolutely dealing with a Truman Show situation where President Trump is personally being sequestered from the truth of the military situation on the ground, which is why there's such a huge disconnect between reality and what the White House is saying these days. And breaking this spell is really the only barrier to getting sub $2 gas again, at least within a couple of years. This is most certainly not an apocalyptic all is lost situation. We can get out of this. There are solutions to end this. It just requires our political leadership to get us out of this. I did not declare war on Iran, so I cannot step forward and end the war, right? That's not how this works. Foreign conflicts, foreign wars are squarely in the realm of the executive branch and Congress, but Congress has, you know, shirked their duty on this. So, uh this is now the executive branch's job and because of that, we have to kind of rely on them. This is not something that we can do ourselves or even help with. So, we're kind of at the mercy of the White House when it comes to this war. And they've proven time and time again they're not interested in listening to us. So, that's what makes this hard. That's why we have to kind of prepare for things that are outside of our control. And if the United States goes back to war and the Iranians dutifully respond by blowing up even more petroleum infrastructure, we're probably going to hit that $200 per barrel milestone mostly for zero military gain. So, quite the cliffhanger we end on this week. The stakes are high and potential for another round of war is on the horizon once again. Not only are we not out of this conflict, but we are probably farther away from a peace deal today than we ever have been. This can, of course, be turned around on a single tweet, on a single email. That's all it takes to end this and then we can move on. But right now, we are still in a state of war and seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend, we have the 13 service members who lost their lives while fighting this war. Captain Cody Cork, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant First Class Nicole LaTour, Sergeant Decklin Cody, Major Jeffrey O'Brien, Chief Warrant Officer Three Robert Marzahn, Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, Technical Sergeant Tyler Simmons, Captain Curtis Angst, Captain Seth Kowal, Technical Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, Captain Ariana Savino, and Major John Kleiner. All of these service members were killed in action during the height of the conflict. I just wanted to take a moment to remember that this war has not just blown up pipelines in the Middle East and dropped a bunch of bombs on caves. It's also torn apart American families here at home. We should do well to remember that and hope and pray that these are the last lives lost and that a peaceful end to this nightmare can come about soon. The solutions are there. We can end this. We can walk away, admit our mistakes, and move forward. But until then, we can remember the lives lost and pray that there are no more. And with that, let's finish up today with the Intercepted Ghost Net reports. Surprisingly, this week's Thursday radio night check-in was absolutely packed with people, which was awesome to see. I guess the holiday weekend gave some people enough time to work on radio stuff, which is fantastic. I know I myself struggle a lot of time to finish up work early enough to hop on the net myself, but anyway, I saw a lot of new people testing things out, trying new antennas, new rigs, all kinds of stuff, and participating in the Ghost Net for the first time. So, that was really great. Learning new things, keeping skills sharp, and maintaining lines of communication when all other means fail is quite a useful skill to have. We want to be problem solvers, not problem creators, and trying to have more situational awareness even in a grid-down or a more censored location, this is going to be very helpful in the long run. So, that's all I have for today. Thanks for sticking with me, and as usual, all of my research notes and geospatial products can be found at the links below. And for those of you who are looking to be a little bit more prepared during this weekend of potential interesting times, you can download KMZ files of all of my mapping products so that you can have a better picture of your local area just in case you need it. So, for those of you nerds out there running A-Tac or CalTopo or some other kind of geospatial app, I've got plenty of KMZ files that you can load in for free as needed, so it's all there. All of this work could not be possible without those of you who support my endeavors on Patreon, so I cannot thank you guys enough, and I hope that the products that I'm building are useful, if not for now in some cases, then maybe for later on. We'll see. If nothing else, more tutorials are coming down the line, and I think that'll be pretty handy and maybe helpful for many others to have options and capabilities, especially while working through these strange and interesting times in which we live. So, thanks again for watching, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we're going to get right back on track and talk about our latest book club offering in this case it is the book The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman I know I'm a little bit behind schedule with regards to the book club so sorry about that but I'm I'm finally starting to get caught up and we can start to talk about the latest book that we uh chose for uh last month so just right up front before we get into the maps I wanted to talk about the book itself uh it's a very short read it's only about 300 pages so you can get through pretty quickly uh the ease of read is very easy to read not very hard at all uh you don't really need to have an understanding of what's going on or or the history of the Balkan region it does help uh because as we know this is probably the most complicated area of the whole planet to discuss in terms of the geopolitical history of how the region developed uh you have to really have kind of like a very basic understanding but uh the book kind of covers that as well because the book is trying to talk about a rescue mission so so that's the name of the book this is a book about a rescue mission uh that occurred during World War II in what was at the time Yugoslavia now of course we know that the book takes place or the events in the book the cities in the book mentioned uh take place in what is now modern day Serbia but at the time it was Yugoslavia again very contentious topic this book would make a pretty good book If you're looking for something for like a homeschool curriculum for like maybe an older young adult U maybe kind of like high school age this would be a a fantastic book um there's not a whole lot of vulgarity in the book uh there are some uh scenes of brutality for you know obviously this is World War II not exactly a a peaceful or happy time in many cases however uh it's pretty mild on that front so if you're looking for a you know decently family friendly book uh to to give to say like a younger adult who's got maybe a little bit more advanced reading level maybe High School level uh this will be a good book for that so for those of you who are looking for something there you go so what is the Forgotten 500 all about well let's jump to the map and we'll talk about it looking at this map from the time period we can see some of the challenges that the Allies might have had uh following their invasion of Sicily in 1943 once the Allies invaded Sicily and that sort of campaign kicked off and they expanded uh northward into Italy we can see that they had a few problems namely the German occupation of the Balkan region and what to do about it so obviously a lot of bombing raids of uh Allied Forces were carried out from bases in Italy and they were uh taking place over what at the time was Yugoslavia sometimes stretching as as far as Hungary or all the way over to Romania and Bulgaria the Germans had occupied the region a few years before and we're trying to to hold the region uh to make their Eastern uh campaign go a little bit easier so that's kind of the very broad brush understanding now this book picks up where a lot of um uh details sometimes get lost so as you have bombing raids uh we all know the sort of Target for tonight the 12:00 High version of um Americans and British uh Airmen taking off from Britain flying over Germany and dropping bombs on ball bearing factories right well the same thing was going on down in the south from Italy into this region well the problem is is that obviously Warfare is a pretty risky business and bombers are going to get shot down or they're going to be disabled to the point to where the crew has to bail out so the United States and Britain find themselves in a situation where they've got a lot of down Airmen in Yugoslavia so what do you do about it well first of all we have to have an understanding of who was on the ground in the area first of all we have the German occupiers uh the German Army who was occupying the area but we also have various partisan groups we have various resistance groups um that were local to the region that all had varying uh contrasting sometimes views one of the groups where the majority of you know Allied Airmen sort of came under the the purview of uh was led by General draza mahalovich now please forgive me if I'm not explaining this quite right uh it's very very challenging to kind of paint the sort of Bulan region with a broad brush sometimes and it's not as simple as good guy versus bad guy as we all know throughout the history but especially in this region so uh it's very hard and sometimes very contentious to even describe what's going on in the region but General mahalovich was the leader of the chetnik this was a local resistance group of ethnic serbs located in what is now uh modern day Serbia but at the time it was just basically a district of Yugoslavia or a region of Yugoslavia and he did not like the Germans so he was trying to fight off the occupying uh people who had invaded his country right so let's come back to the problem the Allies faced they have a lot of allies a lot of Allied Airmen that are down to the region they've got to get back to their home home base somehow they've got to get back to Friendly lines somehow they've got resistance guys on the ground willing to help them for sure and who are not super stoked to have the Germans in their country so what do we do about this well if you're the British and the Americans you do pretty much exactly what you did in France and set up a coordination movement between the uh resistance groups on the ground and say The British Special Operations executive the precursor to MI6 and the American office of strategic Services the precursor to the CIA so you can see how we get this sort of spy game going on here both of these agencies both the British and the American really sort of cut their teeth on these kinds of incidents throughout World War II the Americans already having experience in Burma and the British already having experience in France so we set up a coordination effort so the OSS and the S soe get together set up a coordination effort with this guy movich now most of the book uh the the first at least the first half of the book details the individual stories of the Airmen that were shot down so and I I think this is a lot less to do with politics or the time of the region it was probably more to do with just the good nature of human beings and Humanity at the time which is that if there's a person who's shot down they find themselves in a you know slung under a parachute you know floating gently down to a very unfriendly terrain well their average citizen wanted to take care of that person so uh a lot of the the the uh people throughout the region just wanted to help anyone really and we see this quite often we see uh a lot of mich's people not even really being affiliated with any resistance movement and just helping the Airmen and getting them uh to the to the right people so I think that it has less to do with um you know the serbs in the area at the time or the yugoslavs in the area at the time uh wanting to combat uh the Germans and this is just sort of the thing that they did so the first half of the book really cements the sort of good nature of of the people involved in the kindness and this comes back at the very end of the book so I I feel like I have to mention it it's not just a a tactical or strategic sort of situation there's a lot of humanity coming out here as well so again coming back to the Allies what do we do we've got a good resistance leader on the ground we've got coordination with the resistance how do we get our guys out well if you look at the map you can see that it's kind of a long way and and as uh you may not be able to see it from the map but most of the area at the time was absolutely covered in trees so as the book mentions most of the Allies even if they were damaged they did not even attempt to make an emergency landing anywhere in this region they just bailed out because they knew that there wasn't anywhere to land because of trees so the Germans were fairly confident that you know there wouldn't be any sort of you know Crash Landing attempts it's all basically just you know guys or Airmen jumping out of their planes when they become damaged to the point where they can't continue because of this the Germans also got a little sloppy and they assumed that the Americans would not be able to conduct any sort of large operation because they just couldn't land any planes there remember at the time World War II no helicopters right so you're only dealing with fixed wi aircraft which need a really long Runway right so the Germans were fairly confident that the Allies could not land any aircraft in the area so you know they they were kind of sloppy on that on that front so as we can see the Germans get a little bit complacent and they don't necessarily start putting uh this this many low-level uh anti-aircraft uh sites throughout uh their their occupied terrain now we can all see that this sort of sets the stage for what comes next enter operation halard this is the operation to do exactly what you might intuitively think the Americans the British the chetnik resistance fighters on the ground decided to all coordinate together to build an Airfield so they decide to uh build one uh major Airfield there were a couple others that were sort of involved uh this wasn't just one Rescue Mission this was a several uh Mission sort of thing so they decided let's cut an Airfield in the middle of this Forest here outside this town and we'll uh make it so that an American aircraft can take off from Italy fly really low come in land get all of the American Air Airmen that we have sort of um gotten together and put him on a plane and get him out of here sort of like a real life Hogan's Hero sort of situation the resistance Fighters uh would go out and find American Airmen that were down they would work with local people and sort of gather up all of the the people who jumped out of their planes and parachuted down to earth they would get them together run them through a secret Network rendevu them at a sight plane would land they would get on the plane and go back to Italy so that's basically how operation halard worked out uh there was very little confidence in working in the beginning but after the first uh first mission it actually worked very very well and uh as we can see uh little little more than 500 uh Airmen were able to get out of the area so it's not just Americans or British it's uh quite a few other Allied Nations as well uh had Personnel that were gotten out via this air strip so it's a fantastic story of uh evacuation Humanity uh you know humans helping out their fellow man regardless of being able to speak speak the same language or having the same culture or anything it's just the most wholesome story you could possibly imagine uh you know chetnik Fighters going to the woods taking fire losing men of their own in fact in many cases just to save one downed Airman that you know is is it's hard to top that in terms of you know rescue missions and Rescue Stories so why haven't we heard about it well here's the sad part of the story and why the book is called The Forgotten 500 and why the story was largely for Goten well if we back up a little bit in the story we remember that uh General movich was uh the leader of the chetniks right well the chetniks did not control the entire country they really just controlled what is now sort of Northwestern Serbia at the time it was like East Central Yugoslavia well up in the Northwestern part of at the time what was Yugoslavia now which is sort of uh Bosnia and some parts of Croatia uh there was another fella in town and he was the leader of the partisans and his name was Tito the man the myth The Legend Who eventually became known as Marshall ysep Broz Tito um so very very controversial figure he was essentially I know it's a loaded word to say but I think most people would consider him to be the dictator of Yugoslavia for many decades until his death and the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent Balkan Wars so the reason why this story is largely forgotten and it did not get its own Blockbuster hit featuring Steve McQueen or Gregory pek the reason for this is because the United States decided to after the war side with Tito so even though movich helped these Airmen out he was able to coordinate and get the you know help out the United States you know rescu their Airmen the most wholesome thing you could possibly do right uh the United States abandoned him uh in favor of Tito for a few reasons so some of these reasons for the United States siding with Tito is well he had a larger resistance group for one uh and Winston Churchill personally intervened uh because he thought that movich had communist ideations there was also some conflict between movich and uh the UK so it was just kind of like a lukewarm situation uh there were some um uh the the book I I me I'll mention this and it's very inflammatory and I don't know how historically accurate it is but the book does mention it so I think I'll mention it as well uh the book sort of hints that this was a scop within a scup within a SC up sort of thing where the OSS and the S soe had been infiltrated by Communists and those Communists uh sort of spread the rumor that movich was a communist and the higher up leader leadership Winston Churchill in particular heard this heard this you know what the you know is asserted to be a lie sort of thing and said oh well we we don't want any commies so we've already got enough trouble with the Soviets so we don't need any more problems with communist so drop this guy movich and go with this new guy Tito see what he's got he's more of a Yugoslavian nationalist anyway so maybe maybe that'll you know work its way out after the war well it turns out this isn't really true uh movich uh was was persecuted targeted and executed by Tito's government uh immediately after the war and uh the United States and Britain are sort of left you know with the surprise Pikachu face sort of thing because uh they had put Tito in power and now Tito is not doing anything remotely close to what the Allies wanted him to do so classic case of the United States sort of installing a a leader who actually doesn't really um well I should say just results in a lot of conflict throughout the region the United States and uh the UK uh during this sort of kurur fuffle uh after World War II really just had to drop movich and kind of pretend that he never existed they forgot these 500 Airmen they dropped the whole story they swept it under the rug because if they publicized the fact that this guy had helped them out and saved hundreds of lives then they would be admitting that they left their savior out to dry that they you know they they sort of left him hanging so really this is just an exercise in propaganda information Warfare uh and covering up a story uh so that the United States and the UK don't look bad for hanging their friend out to dry that's what this book is about you know if you were expecting to come into this thinking oh it's just a you know rescue story uh of you know down D during World War II cool enough as is but but really just on a sort of foul and bitter note uh that reminds us that uh some very very ugly things happened during World War II and uh the Allies were not necessarily the good guys uh in many many cases after the war after mich's death and after it became clear that Tito was not their guy after all um and was Pro well they knew that he probably wasn't going to be their guy in the beginning but they they chose poorly so to speak uh but anyway after it became clear that and became public that uh through the surviving Airmen who voiced their objections until basically until their the end of their days uh once that became clear that the United States and the UK did the wrong thing and uh sort of left these guys out uh in the rain uh both Eisenhower and Churchill attempted to make good on this uh Churchill says this was uh some sources claimed that he said that this was his worst mistake of the war um not choosing to stand up for movich and sort of go along the lines of a more Serbian nationalistic route uh and Eisenhower after the war ended up giving uh movich the Legion of Merit ously of course and uh for his conduct during the war and things like that so you can see where uh there there is the the the tacit sort of lukewarm admission you know begrudgingly that this was a very dirty dirty deal um and of course it's very very complicated but uh it it also is a reminder and this is a totally different topic but it it is kind of interesting that people outside the United States have long memories have much longer memories than the than the United States than the average American does I think especially for for Warfare especially if they experienced a war in their own Homeland um and I think that's very very interesting you see this sort of thing happening uh out in the East uh you know Russia every single year uh still has um uh sort of Summer archaeological programs uh where they go out and they they um try to locate the the graves and uh do you know remains recovery of the Battle of Stalingrad you know so they do that every year they do it up in the north as well and things like that there's a very and they have ceremonies you know when they when they find our remains they rebry them they have a whole big deal you know um so for Russia it's a huge deal same thing in in what is now modern day Serbia as a matter of fact I'll throw it up on the screen here they've uh actually just a couple of years ago unveiled a massive Monument to the Americans and to the chetniks and to um those who lost their lives trying to get allies out of the region so uh you can see that the locals absolutely remember uh what happened even though even sometimes in some cases their parents weren't there it was their grandparents their great-grandparents that were involved in this sort of thing so I find it very interesting to see you know the younger Generations in other countries having a a more understanding respect for the events of World War II you know and recognizing that it's it's not as simple as we might want to make it sometimes so I think that's probably the overarching lesson that I think most people will kind of walk away from this as you know not only will you know the the story of you know government betrayal uh sort of you know ring true for many people but it's also the fact that we do remember these things and no matter how much uh governments sometimes want to suppress their crimes these things uh these things come out and people remember and they have very long memories in some cases so you know a lot of times we can't do anything uh we can't do anything to stop you know a a government from doing the wrong thing thing we can't do anything to stop a conflict breaking out sometimes uh as an average person but we can absolutely remember uh that is the absolute least that you can do no matter where you're at in the world is remember so and I think that's probably one of the better lessons that we can learn from this book uh it's not again something that you would probably read uh on your own if you had you know the choice if you saw this in the book story you probably just walk right past it not understanding that you know we may try to get like some tactical or strategic knowledge uh in in these days because I think that particularly if you're watching this uh you're probably trying to learn as much as you possibly can as efficiently as possible and you're trying to just cram in a lot of knowledge before um the knowledge becomes useful you know what I mean so and I think that a lot of people would probably just kind of skip over this because well it's a good story it's a good read it's a it's a well-written book but it's not entirely applicable in terms of strategic or tactical like densely packed knowledge that we're trying to go for sometimes but sometimes it's get to take a break and remember what all this is for and remember the warnings you know remember the uh the the things that can happen and uh remember the bigger picture sometimes so uh a lot of times at least my takeaway from this book is all we can do is remember what happened and uh make sure that people don't forget what happened and uh that we don't make the same mistakes again so I think I'll leave it there uh for today and we'll move on to the next one so thank you all for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade

…and find the gay bars that are closest to the White House the Pentagon Russell Senate building Eisenhower Building you know the ones that are closest to that and see what their business is like and…

ence preparation of the battle space or ipb we might drop points on the map of various terrain features that one might want to reference quite quickly various mountains rivers buildings peaks saddles and other terrain…