Six Impossible Episodes: Soldiers, Snipers and Spies

This installment of our impossible episodes series features a set of stories that are all about front-line heroism. Most of them are listener requests.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. It is
now a tradition to do six Impossible Episodes a couple
of times a year. Uh, full of topics that, for

(00:24):
whatever reason, we can't cover on their own as a
standalone episode. Sometimes there's not quite enough information. Sometimes, uh
there's something about it that just doesn't lend itself to
the standalone treatment. Whatever, we are new for one of these.
So today we have a set of stories that are
all about frontline heroism. Most of them are also requests

(00:46):
from listeners, and so we are calling it six Impossible
Episodes Soldiers, Snipers and Spies. And first up is the
only one of these who was not a listener request,
at least not one that we can recall or know of.
But it came from a Mental philosos article called five
of the Fiercest one liners in History. Mil Lunca Savage
was born in Serbia on June and in nineteen twelve,

(01:09):
at the age of twenty four, she joined the Serbian Army.
There's a bit of discrepancy about how this came to
be whether she adopted her brother's name to enlist, or
whether she went with her brother in disguise and they
both enlisted together. But regardless, mid Lunka wound up in
the army under the name of her brother Milun. Savage

(01:29):
maintained this disguise and served in both the First and
Second Balkan Wars, and by the second she had earned
the rank of corporal in the Iron Regiment. But then
in nineteen thirteen, she was wounded in the chest at
the Battle of Rigglemichka, and while treating this injury fields
Field surgeons discovered her disguise. It's like shades of Mulan. Yeah.

(01:53):
Women were not allowed in the Serbian Army in combat roles,
but Savage had already been serving honorably for quite some time,
so punishing her for it would have been awkward at best.
She was offered a transfer to the army's nursing division,
but Savage didn't want to be a nurse, and standing
at attention, she made it clear that all she wanted
to do was to serve her country in combat. The

(02:15):
commanding officer told her that he would consider her request.
He would give her an answer in the morning, and Savage,
still standing at attention, answered, I will wait. She stood
at attention for the next hour until being given permission
to go back to the infantry. From there, Savage served
for the entirety of World War One, and there's a

(02:35):
lot of incredibly dramatic stuff in terms of stories about
her valor in battle, but at this point it's a
little hard to establish what's factual and what's legendary. It
is clear though, that she fought bravely with multiple units
across more than one Allied military. By the end of
her service, she had earned Serbia's highest military honor, the

(02:57):
Order of Karajorty Star was awards. She also received Serbia's
Gold Medal for Valor, the French Legion of Honor grades
four and five, the French quadri Guerre, and multiple other
military honors from multiple other nations. She became the most
highly decorated woman in all of World War One. After

(03:18):
the war, France offered her a military pension, but instead
she went back to Belgrade, got married and had a daughter,
and adopted three other children. She was named a National
Hero of Serbia and established a small hospital, and for
this hospital work, she actually wound up in a concentration
camp for part of World War Two. She was eventually released,
and she lived until October of nineteen seventy three. In

(03:42):
the Serbian Armed Forces Military Club opened an exhibition called
Milunca Savage Heroine of the Great War. But even so,
there is not a whole lot of information available about
her in English. I wish there were. I found one
video that had all of these stories of battlefield daring do,
but I couldn't even figure out what the sources for

(04:04):
that video's stories were. Uh, But anyway, she seems amazing.
And now we have someone else who served in the
Serbian Army, also in World War One, but in this
case was not Serbian. Listeners Laura and Meg have both
asked for a podcast on Flora Sands, who after her marriage,
was Flora Sands Niche. She was born to an Irish

(04:26):
family on January eighteen seventy six near York, England, and
she was the youngest of eight children. She got what
was a standard education for her her social class. She
was educated by a governess and she trained to be
a secretary. She also learned first aid through the Ladies
Nursing Yeomanry. After the start of World War One, Sans

(04:48):
tried to volunteer with the British Armed Forces but was
turned down, so she volunteered with a Saint John ambulance
unit that had been mustered to work in Serbia, which
departed on August twelve, nineteen fourteen. After a difficult and
dangerous journey, the last leg of which took place aboard
a cattle transport that sailed through a huge thunderstorm, she

(05:10):
arrived in Serbia to find a telegram waiting for her,
informing her that her father had suddenly died. For the
next three months, Sands threw herself into exhausting, difficult work
as a nurse. The hospital where she was stationed with
short staffed and low on supplies, and their accommodations were
so limited that she and six other nurses had to

(05:31):
take turns sleeping on straw mattresses in a single room
with only one blanket shared among them. So she went
home not to argue for reassignment, but to raise funds
for desperately needed supplies for the Serbian troops. She spent
six weeks doing this and raised two thousand pounds, then
made then made the trip back to Serbia. With a

(05:52):
hundred and twenty tons of supplies. For a time, she
continued her work in hospitals, learning on the job and
performing everything from minor surgical procedures to administrative work, and
her work was important from the start, but it became
especially critical in February of nineteen fifteen, when a typhus
epidemic claimed as many as two hundred victims a day,

(06:14):
including hospital staff. It was so bad that by the
time it was over there were only one doctor and
orderly and some nurses left at Sands Hospital. San's returned
to England again for a time in nineteen fifteen, but
when the war escalated again in Serbia, she went back.
She intended to go back to the hospital where she
had been working previously, but once she arrived that proved

(06:38):
to be impossible. It was just too dangerous and there
wasn't any kind of unit or convoy going that direction
that she could travel with, so instead she began working
as a Red Cross ambulance driver alongside the Iron Regiment.
When Serbia was invaded in October nineteen fifteen, the Serbian
army was forced into a long retreat through Albania over

(06:58):
incredibly difficult terrain, and in desperately cold weather and SMS.
Service during this retreat was so dedicated that the unit's
commanding officer, Colonel Millich, allowed her to officially enlist, at
which point she took on a combat rule. And she
was at this time thirty nine years old. This seems
like a discrepancy between Meluca Savage's story and Flora sands

(07:22):
story in terms of how easy it was for them
to become actually enlisted in the military. I don't know
the reason for that, other than the fact that this
happened a few years later and the circumstances were a
lot more dire in terms of the laure But if
you have knowledge, feel free to drop us a note.
Regardless though, Sands spent the next six years with Serbian Army,

(07:42):
ultimately attaining the rank of captain. Initially, the other soldiers
in her unit called her our English woman, but eventually
they started addressing her with the same word that they
used for each other, what's translated to brother. Even when
Sands was at home on leave or recovering after being wounded,
which she was twice, she still tirelessly worked to support

(08:04):
the Serbian cause. She raised funds, she rallied support, she
gathered supplies. She wrote an autobiography titled An English Woman's
Sergeant in the Serbian Army, specifically to try to raise
Serbian support among the British, and when an injury prevented
her from returning to the front, she went back to
working at a hospital. Like men Luca Savage, she was

(08:27):
also awarded the Order of Carrajority's Star. Sam's married Yuri
Viliamus Niche on May fourteenth seven and they moved to Belgrade.
They both retired from the service, but she was really
not good at living the and the quiet life. She
tried her hand a lot of different projects before she
and her husband were called up for service again in

(08:47):
World War Two. They were soon captured by the Germans
and imprisoned, and they were eventually released all of her
husband died in ninety one. At that point she went
back to England, where she died on November of nineteen
fifty six. Before we get to two more stories, we'll
have a quick sponsor break. Our next story is from

(09:15):
World War two and it was requested by Jack Kate, Pavel,
Molly Amber and Shirley many many others. Uh Ludmila pablo
Chenko was born in Malaya Tserkov, Ukraine, not far from Kiev.
In nineteen sixteen, in her youth, she joined the Volunteer
Society for the Assistance of Army Aircraft and Fleet. This

(09:36):
is an organization that combined patriotism, athletics, and some paramilitary training,
and in spite of the term volunteer, it was one
of those things where participation was basically expected of all youth,
and it was here that Pavlicchenko started learning to shoot.
She earned a certificate in marksmanship and a badge and
sharp shooting, and when she enrolled at Kiev University in

(09:57):
nineteen thirty seven, she joined the track team also went
to a sniper's school to further develop her skill. When
Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June twenty nine, Pavlochenko
decided to put her training to use and tried to
join the army. She was at first turned down because
she was a woman, even after she showed them her

(10:19):
certificate and badge, and in what's become a running theme
on this episode, she was encouraged to become a nurse instead.
Pavlichenko persisted though, and she was finally accepted into the
Red Army's Chapayev Rifle Division after passing an impromptu test.
She was basically with a unit that was defending a

(10:40):
hill and someone pointed out two Romanians who were working
with the Germans and told her to shoot them, which
she did. Pavlochenko became an exceptionally skilled and feared military sniper.
In her first seventy five days of service, she had
one hundred eighty seven confirmed kills. By the end of
her service that number had risen to three hundred nine

(11:03):
thirty six of those were German snipers, some in what
were effectively duels with the enemy. From her point of view,
especially when it came to the snipers, the work she
was doing was ultimately saving many other lives. Her reputation
really spread among the German military, which knew her by name.
They started playing announcements over loud speakers and places where

(11:25):
that they thought that she was trying to get her
to defect. They were basically like, lad Milla, come over here,
we have chocolate. Over the course of her career, she
was wounded in combat four times, including being hit with
shrapnel in the face. She also became the face of
some of the Red Army's propaganda. In addition to her

(11:47):
skill as a marksman and sharpshooter, she was also very attractive,
and while trying to join the army in the first place,
people had commented on her well styled hair and beautifully
manicured nails, as well as making sex. This remarks about
whether she should even be in the army in the
first place. Uh, and that line of questioning did not
stop even after she had distinguished herself in the army.

(12:10):
In two, at the age of twenty five, Pavluchenko became
the first Soviet soldier to visit the White House as
part of an effort to get the United States to
support Soviet war efforts on the European continent. It was
during this tour that she became friends with the First Lady,
Eleanor Roosevelt. But the media coverage of this visit and
tour really focused relentlessly on her appearance and what she

(12:35):
was wearing, which often was literally her uniform. Reporters frequently
criticized it for not being very stylish or flattering to
her figure. I know you're an amazing sharpshooter, but can
we talk about your outfit? That was really the subtext
a lot. She eventually stopped, She stopped playing nicely. She

(12:56):
was like, would you ask that of a man? Once pablished,
go return home. She was promoted to major, was named
Hero of the Soviet Union, and eventually was put on
a postage stamp. When the war was over, she finished
her education and she became a historian. In nineteen fifty seven,
she reconnected with Eleanor Roosevelt and what was an emotional reunion,

(13:18):
which is covered beautifully in the Rejected Princess entry on her.
We will link to that in the show notes. For real.
It does, especially this part of the story, a lot
of beautiful justice, far more than we did just now.
After three stories about people who were offered jobs in
nursing rather than combat, or went into combat after nursing,

(13:39):
we wanted to make sure we also talked about someone
who was a nurse through and through, and that's Lieutenant
Colonel Vivian Bullwinkle, also known as bully h. This one
is a tear jerker, and the listener request we got
for it was actually about a massacre that she survived.
Vivian Bullwinkle was born in South Australia on December eighteenth
nineteen fifth team. She was trained as a nurse and

(14:02):
midwife and was working at Jesse McPherson Hospital in Melbourne
at the start of World War Two. At that point
she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service. She was assigned
to the thirteenth Australian General Hospital or thirteenth a g H,
although she also spent a few weeks with the tenth
a g H. She was ultimately stationed in what's now Malaysia.
In late nineteen forty one, Japanese forces started moving down

(14:25):
the Malay Peninsula, and at the start of nineteen forty two,
g H was forced to evacuate across the Straits of
Jehore to Singapore. Soon, Japanese forces moved on Singapore as well,
forcing a second retreat aboard the s S. Viner Brook
on February twelfth, nineteen forty two. Bullwinkle was among the
last group of nurses evacuated, along with a group of

(14:47):
women and children, as well as injured soldiers. On February thirteenth,
a Japanese bomber spotted the Viner Brook and attacked. The ship,
sank and some of the survivors came aboard on Banka
Island off the coast of Sumatra, where they gathered on
Raggi Beach. At first, their group was made up of

(15:07):
twenty two nurses, including Bullwinkle, along with some women and children,
and about a hundred British soldiers joined them on the
beach the following day. Eventually, the group decided that their
best course of action was to surrender to the Japanese.
The civilian women and children left to find someone to
whom they might surrender. The nurses and soldiers, including the

(15:28):
wounded men, stayed behind. But when the Japanese soldiers eventually
did arrive at the beach on February six, they did
not accept any surrender. They divided the soldiers into two groups,
shot them and bayonetted the survivors. Then they directed the
nurses to march into the sea. As they did, their matron,
Irene Drummond, told them, chin up, girls, I'm proud of

(15:51):
you and I love you all. Then the Japanese soldiers
opened fire and they machine gunned them all to death.
From behind. Vivian Bowlwinkle shot and the abdomen played dead
in the water until she washed ashore, which point the
Japanese soldiers had gone, she found a surviving soldier, Private Kingsley,

(16:13):
and the two of them hid in the jungle. Bowlwinkle
tended to both of their wounds and sneaked to a
nearby village to beg for food for them, putting her
life at risk every time she did. Soon, though, it
became clear that they could not survive long term in
this way, and she and Kingsley decided to once again

(16:34):
try to surrender, and this time they did successfully surrender,
although Kingsley died shortly afterward as a result of his injuries.
Bowlwinkle was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Sumatra,
where she was reunited with the survivors of the sinking
of the viner Brook, who had not come ashore at
that beach. She told them what had happened and how

(16:55):
she had survived, but from there they all kept its secret.
It was obvious that her life would be in serious
danger if her captors learned that she had witnessed the
Banka Island massacre. Bullwinkle and the other survivors of the
winer Brook were all kept as prisoners of war for
more than three years, and that whole time Bullwinkle continued
her work as a nurse, keeping both herself and many

(17:17):
of her fellow POW's alive, and in ninety six, once
the war was over, Bulwinkle testified before the War Crimes
Tribunal in Tokyo as to what had happened. She also
contacted the families of the nurses that had been on
that beach with her to tell them about their loved
ones last moments and final words. She retired from the
army in nineteen seven and returned to civilian life as

(17:40):
a nurse. She eventually became director of nursing at Melbourne's
Fearfield Hospital, and she spent time raising funds for a
nursing memorial and a memorial to those who were killed
on Banka Island. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross
for exceptional services, devotion to duty and professional competence in
British military nursing. Her uniform, complete with a bullet hole,

(18:02):
is part of the collection at the Australian War Memorial.
In nineteen seventy seven, she married, becoming Vivian bowl Winkle Stathum,
and she died on July three, two thousand. We're going
to take one more quick break before we have two
more stories. Our next request actually comes from author Mary

(18:27):
robin at Coal. When we did our live show at
C two E two in Seen, I stopped by her
booth to say hello because I love her books, and
she suggested that we look into it. And then she
followed up on the Jonathan Colden Cruise in which she
was one of the entertainers on and I went on
vacation on. So we're hopping back to World War One

(18:49):
again for the first Russian Women's Battalion of Death. Individual
women were involved in the Russian military, both officially and unofficially,
from the very beginning of Russian involvement in World War One,
so many women had expressed an interest in serving that
on June tenth of nineteen fifteen, an official policy was
handed down that women could join the army on a

(19:10):
case by case basis, as long as each case was
approved by Czar Nicholas the Second. All of that changed
following the February Revolution, which began in March nineteen seventeen
on the Gregorian calendar but in February on the Julian calendar.
The February Revolution was the product of both food shortages
and Russia's involvement in World War One, which had been

(19:32):
just devastating in terms of both the Russian economy and
the cost of human life. The February Revolution began with
food riots and strikes, and ultimately ended with the forced
advocation of the Czar, who would later be executed. The
provisional government that followed the end of the Czarist rule
granted women a number of rights, including the right to

(19:53):
vote and to serve on juries. The provisional government was
also far more open to the idea women in military service,
especially given a dire need for new recruits and the
fact that the revolution itself had really disrupted the Russian military.
The first Russian women's Battalion of Death was the work
of Maria Botchkareva, also known by the nickname Yashka. She

(20:17):
was one of the many women who had individually petitioned
to join the Russian army in nineteen fifteen and had
ultimately been allowed to join. She had already been wounded
and recovered twice and had been awarded the Saint George's
Cross for valor when the February Revolution began. About two
months after the February Revolution, she conceived of forming a

(20:38):
unit of about three hundred women who would quote serve
as an example to the army and lead the men
into battle. These women would be highly trained and extraordinarily disciplined,
and they would follow the same protocol as other Russian
Battalions of Death, which was a formal designation within the military.
These all volunteer battalions swore to fight to the death

(20:59):
and marked with special red and black chevrons on their
sleeves and skulls and crossbones on their banners. Boshkareva began
recruiting on May twenty one, nineteen seventeen, and she got
two thousand responses. Almost immediately following her example, other women
began seeking approval to recruit for additional women's units all

(21:21):
around Russia. The First Russian Women's Battalion of Death ultimately
had three hundred members, but at least four thousand women
joined the Russian military and other women's units in World
War One. On June twenty one, in uniform and with
close cropped hair, the newly formed First Russian Women's Battalion
of Death marched through Petrograd in front of a cheering crowd,

(21:44):
where they were given gifts from the First and Third
Russian Armies. As well as a banner from the Minister
of War. Part of their route was to the graves
of protesters who had been killed during the February Revolution.
At this point, the First Russian Women's Battalion of Death
seems like it's on track for a similar story arc
to World War Two's Night which is uh The Night

(22:04):
Whiches were founded, along with two other all female regiments
by Marina Riskova. The Night Whiches went on to become
a household names in the Soviet Union, and they spent
most of World War Two harassing and terrifying the German Army.
We have an episode about them in the archive, but
that wasn't the case. When the First Women's Battalion of

(22:25):
Death arrived at the Western Front, they faced derision and
harassment for the men in the Tenth Army that we're
already stationed there. The Women's Battalion was part of the
Kerensky Offensive, and they did exactly what they'd intended to do.
They charged into the fray, essentially shaming reluctant male soldiers
into following. They also reportedly found and destroyed a large

(22:46):
stash of vodka in the Austro German trenches. Before the
other Russian soldiers could get to it. That influence, which
was part of the point from the beginning, didn't last though.
The Kerensky offensive was ultimately unsuccessful, and as the tied
turn against the Russian army. The Women's Battalion of Death
wanted to keep fighting, as had been their mission from
the beginning, but their determination really started to inspire resentment

(23:10):
instead of valor from the male soldiers already there By
July three, the offensive had dissolved completely, and Botkareva herself
was attacked and beaten by a mob that demanded that
the women stopped fighting. Not long after, General Laver Kornilov
replaced General Brusilov, and a second set of demonstrations, known

(23:31):
as the July Days rose up in Petrograd. Many of
the July Days demonstrators were soldiers, and Kornilov deployed the
military to try to suppress the uprising. Because Botchkareva knew Kornilov,
she and the rest of her battalion suffered guilt by association,
and they were branded as counter revolutionaries. They faced so

(23:51):
much violent hostility from the rest of the force that
they were moved out of combat Kornilov, who had not
shown brusselav approval of women's battalions in the first place,
then stopped accepting new female recruits and started the process
of dissolving the women's battalions. By this point, Russia was
facing catastrophic economic and human losses from the war and

(24:15):
an uprising from within in the form of the Russian Revolution.
When demobilization of the military began on November tenth, nineteen seventeen,
there was almost nothing in the way of support for
returning soldiers. Records from this period are so spotty that
the ultimate fate of most of the First Women's Battalion
of Death is unknown. Regardless, what had initially seemed like

(24:37):
a bold attempt to democratize and bring gender equality to
Russia's military ultimately fell apart. Box Creva herself traveled to
the United States in nineteen eighteen and dictated a memoir.
While she was there, she also met with President Woodrow Wilson,
where she pleaded for American assistance in Russia. She later
went to London, where she did the same thing. Before

(24:57):
George the Fifth she was a apparently invited to join
the White Army during the Russian Civil war, and this
led to her being captured by the Bolsheviks and executed
by firing squad on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty. Now we
were going on to our last story, which we are
going to end with a spy. Which does a spy?
Lots of folks have asked for but most of the

(25:20):
requests came by a people sharing her obituary to our
Facebook wall or tweeting us a link to it, so
we don't have a list of names. Is much easier
for us to find episode requests in our email than
on our social media most of the time. Stephanie Check
Raider was born Stephanie Check on May sixteenth, nineteen fifteen.
She grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her parents had

(25:42):
immigrated from Poland and they didn't speak much English, so
she learned Polish at home and actually didn't begin to
learn English until she started school, but she eventually became
fluent in both languages. In high school, one of her
teachers submitted an application to Cornell University on her behalf,
and she was a war did a full scholarship to
go there. She graduated with a master's degree in chemistry

(26:04):
in ninety seven and She later got a job as
a translator. When the United States entered World War Two,
she joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, but within a
couple of years she had caught the attention of the
Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS. This was an
intelligence office and a precursor to the CIA. In she

(26:25):
was stationed in Poland, ostensibly to work as a clerk
in the U. S. Embassy, but in reality she was
a spy. She did most of her work in plain
clothes and unarmed. She would later say, quote, they gave
me a gun, but I never carried a gun. What
the heck was I going to do with a dumb gun.

(26:48):
Under the pretense of finding members of her family, she
traveled extensively away from Warsaw alone, gathering huge amounts of
information about Soviet troop movements and social conditions, and passing
all of that information back to the OSS. She also
started to work as a courier carrying secret information, and
this was a particularly risky assignment, since if she were caught,

(27:11):
she would probably just disappear. Some of her male colleagues,
in fact, were caught and just disappeared. During this period,
she was very nearly apprehended. On January fifteenth, nineteen forty six,
she was leaving the embassy in Berlin and she was
given a set of documents to take with her back
to Warsaw. She really didn't want to do this because

(27:32):
she had been under an increasing level of scrutiny. She
suspected that authorities were going to try to take any
opportunity to arrest her. Some of her colleagues at the OSS,
as we said, had simply vanished at this point during
their service in Poland. As she approached a border checkpoint,
she realized that Soviet police were there waiting to arrest her,

(27:54):
so she took a really risky move of passing the
documents off to a civilian with instructions on here to
deliver them, so she did not have those documents on
her when she was questioned. While she was still serving
in Poland, her cover was actually blown by the careless
behavior of a superior officer who was stationed in Paris.
Even though her cover was blown, she insisted on staying

(28:15):
in Poland, even though she was at much greater risk
until she had finished her assignment. Finally, back in the
United States, she married Brigadier General William Rader and eventually
retired from the Army. She attained the rank of captain,
and the U. S Department of Veterans Affairs has called
her one of the most successful intelligence agents of post
World War two Poland. She died on January one, at

(28:38):
the age of one hundred, and she was buried at
Arlington National Cemetery. She was posthumously awarded the Leading of
Merit in sixteen as well. That was something she had
been recommended for all the way back in nineteen forty
six and denied, possibly because at the time there were
so few women working as covert agents for the United States,

(29:00):
and those are soldiers, snipers, and spies. For our six
Impossible episodes today, what's up with listener mail? Tracy? I
have some listener mail from Jenny. It is called Kentucky
Colonels and it is following our episode about the Kentucky Derby.
I am going to stick up some particularly fond introduction

(29:23):
because she's so kind. It feels a little self congratulatory
to read it. Uh, And then continues I just finished
the episode on the Kentucky Derby and had to write
in you giggled when you mentioned that habit of the
state of Kentucky to call people colonels when they held
no actual military role. This reaction is shared by much
of the world outside of Kentucky, and it's one that
I found myself laughing at two when I first heard

(29:45):
about it. Being born and raised in New Hampshire, I
often felt like I'd moved to another planet when I
moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky to teach. Once there, I
learned more about this proud tradition from students and colleagues
and thought i'd share a bit with you. The title
of colonel can be the stowed upon anyone in recognition
of their accomplishments or works serving their community, state, nation,
or the world. New colonels are nominated by active colonels

(30:09):
and can be national heroes like astronaut John Glenn, writers
like Hunters Thompson and Duncan Hines, artists and entertainers like
Ansel Adams, Johnny Depp, Ashley Judd and Betty White. I'm
just gonna pause for a second and say I love
that Betty White is a Kentucky colonel. To return to
the letter, athletes like Mohammed Ali and Arthur Ashe, world leaders,

(30:33):
and foreign royalty like Winston Churchill or Princess Anne, and
of course businessmen like KFC's own Colonel Sanders. They can
also be private citizens from all works of life, working
to better the lives of people of Kentucky. The title
is bestowed by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky
by issuing letters patent and has been around since the
American Revolution. They even have their own tastes written in

(30:55):
ninety six that I thought you'd both love. Our show
has run a little long today, so I'm not gonna
read this entire toast, but we are going to put
it in the show notes, so you can go to
our website and read it. Uh. And then uh, Jenny
says that a dear friend of hers became a Kentucky
colonel um, which is a lovely story. So thank you
so much for for all of that information, Jenny, that

(31:18):
is indeed lovely. Thank you for not being one of
the folks who assumed we had literally never heard of
Colonel Sanders. We got a number of emails assuming we
had never heard of Colonel Sanders. But uh, we don't
live under rocks, so I do. I'm like Patrick the Starfish.

(31:40):
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