How Big Bill Speakman Fought Off North Korea With Beer Bottles

Bill Speakman, better known as the “Beer Bottle VC”, single-handedly took on a brigade of Chinese People’s Army Infantry in four hours of close-quarters combat. As he ran out of actual weapons, he began throwing beer bottles -- and, somehow, survived. Tune in to learn more about Big Bill Speakman, the Beer Bottle VC (and learn why he came to hate this nickname).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm

(00:27):
Young Hascio. Everybody, welcome to Ridiculous History. I'm Ben Mushy Mushy,
my name is Noel, and yes, this is indeed Ridiculous History.
And I know that was the incorrect greeting. You set
up the theme correctly with your greeting, and you said
it beautifully, Ben, I said it terribly. Did I say
it better? Uh no, no, No, it turns out that

(00:48):
neither of a speak area and that's true. Is that
gonna be a problem for today's episode? It shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be. Did I tell you that story of
the last time I was in Korea? I went So
I was walking around, right, and I'm in Soul and
everybody is very everybody's very friendly. Walk into a shop

(01:09):
and well dressed here as well, right right, and yes,
very much so. And people with his shop owners or
shop employees when you walk in, they greet you. They
say hello on young Hasio, and they say it usually,
you know, in a loud stride and tone. And I
thought I was saying whatever the proper response was. And
so I walk in, these people would say hello, and
then I would say, I would do my bit in Korea,

(01:30):
which I do not speak, and then they would switch
to English and asked me, you know, if I needed help,
if it needs to look for anything, And I thought, okay, sure.
My Koreans admittedly garbage. It wasn't until I was driving back,
when I was riding back to the airport, when the
cab driver asked me, had I learned any Korean? And
I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know this, and

(01:50):
I know this and when people say hello, I say
this and he and he stops and he goes, oh, man,
you haven't been like doing that, have you? He said,
you do? You know what that means? So what? And
he said it means where am I? So I was
walking in people are saying hello, and I was waving
at them and going where am I? And that's why
they switched it into like this man has in a

(02:11):
feug state of some sort. He is confused and stumbling
around and doesn't know what's going on. But what an adventure.
And despite our mutual lack of fluency in the Korean language,
we're still going to have a great time with today's story.
Oh we should also mention super producer Casey Pegram is
here always. I don't know. I did that like a

(02:34):
late show intro. We've got a great show for you today,
exactly that. I love it. He's always here, He's a staple.
When he's not here, I die a little inside a
little each time when he cries. So, no, we're we're
mentioning Korea. Not for nothing. We're mentioning Korea because it
is part of our story. Today's story is about a

(02:58):
war hero, right, Yeah, can I say badass on air?
I think he can? Ben Okay, I think you can.
We think you just did. We've been going back and
forth off air before about whether we can say the
three we agreed on if I remember what were they?
So there was ass. I mean, we're gonna just lay
them all out. Damn in hell? Should we save those? We? Well,

(03:20):
I mean I don't know. Um, those I think are approved. Um,
but when you say them all in a row like that,
it seems a little blue bend, seems a little blue.
Oh well, I'm sorry. Yeah, we went blue blue. You
never go blue. Once you go blue. We should just
do the episode. So yeah, Well, it's about a kind
of an unconventional war hero, a badass and his particular
flavor of badassery involved single handedly, largely single handedly, fending

(03:45):
off a wave of Chinese forces that were coming at
him with all they had, with all there might. Yes,
the story of William Speakman known as Bill to his friends,
Big Bill to his close friends, Big Bill Speakman, Big
Bill speak And was born on September n seven in Cheshire.

(04:05):
He was one of his kids who always wanted to
grow up and be a soldier, right and growing up,
a lot of us, regardless of where we live in
the world, a lot of us have known children like that.
When he was a teenager, he was watching the British
forces and the Allies takes on access powers. This inspired him.
He joined the army in nineteen forty five, which means

(04:27):
that he just barely missed the conflicts of World War Two. Yeah.
He was also part of admittedly like Game of Thrones
esque sounding order called the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment Um,
and then, as was his wish, he ended up joining
the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and that is the outfit

(04:47):
that he served with in Korea. And the King's Own
Scottish Borderers does sound like a band name, really does?
You know, so Bill, Big Bill goes to the Korean
Peninsula to take part in the Korean War. What's the
Korean War? Great question. The Korean War is this back

(05:10):
and forth struggle that has not yet officially ended, which
is crazy. It was a ceasefire, right and they have
you know, they have consistently not fired, but there was
no formal peace treaty. And it was a war that
had so many ideological you know, underpinnings because it was
essentially this conflict between communism and capitalism. And the United

(05:32):
States got involved because it was they looked at it
as very much a war against the forces of communism,
this ideological war. And then the in China has always
been a staunch supporter of North Korea. And even though
that makes for some funny bedfellows with us in China
and our relationship with them, and that's one of the
reasons we can't just go in to North Korea and

(05:53):
mess things up, because that would totally torpedo our relationship
with China, and we can't have that. Yeah, this was
a proxy war, also called a limited war, wherein the
superpowers of the world picked a third country so that
they weren't waging actual war on each other's soil, and
they fought their war. They're terrible, terrible thing for the

(06:15):
people who live in that third country. Right. So this
war began June nineteen fifty, and it went back and
forth for a time. The South Korean forces were on
the precipice of losing this struggle. In October of nineteen fifty,
hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers entered the border, and

(06:39):
the capital of Korea, Soul, would change hands what four
times during the struggle? And what is the thirty parallel,
ben that's a great question. The thirty eight parallel existed
originally as the boundary between the Soviet and American occupations

(07:00):
owns in Japan, but in nineteen it also became the
boundary between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea DPRK a
K North Korea and the r OKA or South Korea.
At the time, as you know, they both claim to
be the legitimate governments of the entire peninsula. And this

(07:20):
this changed a little bit when they signed their armist
Disagreement in nineteen fifty three, but we'll we'll get into
that later. The the important part is as as we've
established that the thirty eight parallel is where things reached
a stalemate. Enter big bills. Speakman, he's twenty four years old.

(07:41):
He's full of them, vigor, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and
thirsty to serve his country. So, as we said, he
volunteers in Korea. And when he is volunteering to engage
in this conflict, it's still very much anyone's game. It's
going back and worth soul is being captured, recaptured, and

(08:04):
he transfers to was the name of the group you
mentioned earlier, the King's own Scottish Borderers. So he transfers
to them expressly to join the fight in Korea. He
wants to see actual field service. And boy does he ever,
because Speakman's battalion was um up defending a position on

(08:26):
Maryang Son in Korea, and that is when six thousand
Chinese soldiers laid siege, and we're trying to remove them
from that position and take over. So let's set the stage.
It's the early hours of November four. The defending battalion

(08:50):
is coming under increasingly aggressive and dangerous mortar fire and artillery,
and that is followed by a wave of Chinese troops
advance sensing from their positions, they attack the Commonwealth trenches
and by a little bit before six in the morning
or so, the sides have entered Malay hand to hand combat. Yeah,

(09:12):
I'm confused about this. So why were they doing hand
to hand combat? Why weren't they shooting at each other?
Because they got close enough too. So so the mortar
fire and the artillery it's smacking the tar out of
the Commonwealth troops. And while they're on the defensive, the
soldiers are getting close enough too. This is trench warfare.

(09:36):
It's essentially like that going over the top kind of
situation right right, So they couldn't shoot from you know,
from like a rifle position, an individual walking position. You
can't shoot into the trench easily. That makes sense. So
when we say hand to hand, we are talking largely
about I mean just that there's fists involved, there's hand

(09:58):
grenades involved, eyes, there's chucking anything that you can get
your hands on involved, and that that becomes a big
part of the story. So Private big Bill Speakman is
prepping hand grenades when he hears a message over the
radio saying that two groups have been overrun, two platoons

(10:19):
and that the ridge may fall into enemy hands, so
he gets the band back together. He gathers up whomever
is closest to him, hands out grenades and says, let's go.
And there's this quote in an article from The Independent
that has speakman describing the scene like this. He says,
it was hand to hand. There was no time to

(10:40):
pull back the bolt of the rifle. Um. It was November.
The ground was hard, so grenades bounced and did damage.
It makes you think of like a video game called
Borderlands where you could get different mods for your grenades,
and one of them made them like bouncing grenades, so
they would like literally bounce off of things and then
explode continuously. I know it's not the kind of sci

(11:01):
fi situation that's going on here, but what would Why
would a bouncing grenade do more damage? I'm trying to
picture that because it only blows up once, so I
guess we're speculating. We would say that the bounce puts
it in a different position, you know, sort of like
hitting hitting a cool trick shot on a pool table.
Maybe it gets it makes it go farther too. You
can literally bounce it off because the ground is cold

(11:22):
and frozen, you could bounce it off and then it
would go farther, and if you're just chucking tons of them,
then it would just create absolute havoc. So he's got
his group of six men who have joined him in
collecting piles of grenades and and and throwing them right
at the enemy forces. It's important to say that speakman

(11:43):
does this on his own initiative. He's not ordered to
do so. He gets hit in the leg because war
is an ugly, nasty, dangerous thing, but he keeps fighting,
and he holds back the Chinese forces long enough for
those platoons that were overrun to evacuate their wounded, and
he keeps going. We'll never know how long he would
keep going. He didn't stop until he was directly ordered

(12:07):
to get his leg looked at. Yeah, but in the meantime,
when they ran of grenades, he started just grabbing whatever
he could get his hands on, and um. In these days,
the troops were allowed to have some beer, so they
had a whole kind of pile of empty beer bottles,
and he was able to kind of create a diversion

(12:27):
just by hurling beer bottles at the oncoming opposition, and
probably didn't actually kill anybody or hurt anybody too badly.
But it certainly would have been annoying, and it certainly
would have caused a distraction, right, I mean, it's the
thought that killed absolutely reminds me of that story we
did about the Americans throwing potatoes at a U boat. Yep, yep,
that really happened. It was. It was perhaps exaggerated in

(12:53):
later retellings, but it did happen. There's there's a great
article of war history online by Jeff Edwards about this
worry about Big Bill Speakman, and it confirms that he
did indeed throw these beer bottles. This this story gets
a little bit exaggerated sometimes because you'll hear people say

(13:13):
that he just started throwing everything he could hand grenades,
beer bottles, empty ration tens, pencils, small woodland creatures, kitchen silverware,
cricket bats, and his own well, we'll we'll edit this
for the air, his own blank meaty fist that comes
from the great website Badass of the Week dot com,

(13:33):
which I highly highly highly recommend. He did throw more
than grenades and more than beer bottles too. They threw
ration tens, they threw stones, and this did work. The
press loved this. By the way, they started calling Bill
Speakman the beer bottle VC. And I don't know if
I don't know if you saw this partner, he hated

(13:56):
that nickname. What is VC mean? That's a big part
of the story too, that that's the Victorian Cross. Yes,
the Victorian Cross. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah.
The Victorian Cross is the highest military honor in UH
in the United Kingdom. It is awarded for unparalleled bravery
in the heat of battle and was first awarded in

(14:18):
eighteen fifty seven by Queen Victoria Um. She presented them
to sixty two soldiers in front of about a hundred
thousand people at Hyde Park. UH. And it has gone
on to remain the highest military honor that one can receive.
And Bill Speakman got it right away. Because of this,
this story caught the public's imagination. Uh. He really was

(14:42):
incredibly brave. And to hear him talk about it, he's like, man,
you know, it was just doing what I was trained
to do. So yeah, it's it's rarefied air. Indeed, the
medal has been awarded one thousand, three d fifty eight times,
but only fifteen medals been awarded since World War Two.
And if I'm not mistaken. This would have been the

(15:03):
first VC to be awarded by the current Queen, Queen
Elizabeth the second. Yeah, that's correct. So he loved his country,
loved being a VC recipient. He did not care in
any shape, form or fashion to be referred to as
the beer bottle VC because he thought it made the

(15:26):
army look bad. He thought the implication people would get
from this was that he and his colleagues were drinking
on the job and they weren't weird. Fact, you know
what they used the beer for. They used it to
cool down gun barrels. Apparently I didn't know that. I
did not know that either, and I still. I mean,

(15:46):
if you are listening and you were one of your
relatives was in the Korean War or associated with it,
let us know if that's true, because it sounds like
a convenient excuse, you know what I mean, Sorry, Sarge,
we're not This beer isn't for drinking. These guns just
gets hot. Well it's true, though, Ben, they do get
pretty hot. And you know, these kind of situations require

(16:09):
thinking on your feet, using once you have around, as
evidenced by this whole situation, which made him one of
the like a national hero basically, and he returned back
to his home town of Altrinsham in Cheshire, and he
was beloved. There was a parade for him before he
got home. People had like cleaned his house for him,
and he was treated very differently and he didn't particularly

(16:32):
care for it. He did not adjust very well to
life as a civilian, and he re enlisted pretty quickly. Yeah, yep.
He went on to serve in the army until nineteen
sixties seven. He served in the Indonesia Confrontation, the Aidan Emergency,
the Malayan Emergency. In twenty fifteen, he made a return

(16:52):
trip to South Korea along with other veterans of the war,
and when he was there he donated Hisctoria Cross to
South Korea. He believed it started there and he thought
it was sensible to leave it there and believe he
had a replica made that he gave to North Korea.
Does the yeah, yeah, right, because you know, you want

(17:14):
to be fair. What's interesting here is that the Victoria
Cross he donates to South Korea is not a replica,
but it is a replacement. You see, like so many
veterans of wars Speakman was lauded at the beginning, but

(17:37):
later fell on financial hardship, right, and he sold his
original Victoria Cross, using the money to put a new
roof on his house and only later was given a
genuine replacement. Not to mention that in nineteen UM he
was actually given an absolute discharge from the service because

(17:58):
he was arrested and borrow for stealing hundred and four
pounds from a woman's purse. Um. And it was likely
only his you know, lauded military career that kept him
out of jail, right. And he was never really comfortable
with this um, this heroic image. He wasn't comfortable being

(18:19):
a walking icon. We've got a quote from an interview
he did with the BBC around the time he went
to South Korea. He said, it started to dawn on
me as the days went by, stopping in the street.
No matter what where you went in ultra cham, people
were trying to do things for you. I didn't realize
why it's got the VC really, because I only did

(18:40):
what the other guys did. We fought and that's what
we were trained to do. So he wasn't into the
you know, the ego boost the hero worship stuff, and
he didn't want people to think that he was some raging, violent,
drunk carousing and careeming throughout the Korean War. He was

(19:00):
a guy with a job and he did it as
seriously as he could, even when that involved throwing rocks
and stones and ration tins, which technically, depending on whether
the tins were empty or full, could make this a
food fight. That's very true. He only just recently passed
away in June at the age of ninety um. He

(19:22):
had immigrated to South Africa several times and come back,
but then ultimately returned to the UK, to Chelsea, which
is where he passed away at the Royal Hospital and Chelsea, Yes,
it's a retirement home and nursing home for around three
veterans of the British Army. And with the passing of

(19:42):
Bill Speakman, we see the end of his story, his
his part, his small part of the Korean War, which
as we record this episode today still technically continues the
two countries sharing that peninsula, and he stayed, you have
not made peace, but it is an eternal hope for

(20:06):
the people and the governments of both sides. That was
like the safest, most diplomatic way to say. I think
that's very smart to keep it, you know, it. Diplomacy
is key here Ban diplomacy is key. And you've been
to South Korea twice. Yeah, yeah, I am probably going
back later this year. Actually really Yeah, it's a thing though,

(20:27):
I mean, you just find yourself in situations. Well, I guess,
so we'll make sure to bring me another hat. That's
become our tradition. Now. Yeah, I'm glad you appreciate it
very much. So you gotta go sometime if if you
get the chance, I'll say it. I know this is
the most square thing to say about visiting a place.
But the food is amazing. Yeah, it looks like it
every time you guys go. I can't, can't look away

(20:48):
from the Instagram stories. So much delicious Korean barbecue. There's
a new Korean barbecue place in Decatur as well, down
the street from where we record this podcast. Yeah, it's legit.
It gets the stamp. What's it called D ninety two?
No idea where the name comes from. I'll have to
check out. I love a good Korean barbecue and Ben,
by the way, unrelated with food related, Happy National Burrito Day.

(21:10):
Thank you, You're welcome. I didn't want to have to
remind you, so I'm glad that you're saying it. And
thank god we've got leftover Chipotle in the office today
so I can honor this holiday with Gusto. Yes. Yes,
And we also worked down the street from a restaurant
called Gusto and a restaurant called Chipotle, and a restaurant
called Chipotle. Uh, Casey, Pegram are you are you a

(21:32):
fan of burritos? Love a good burrito? Yeah? How what
would be your ideal burrito? Um, I'm pretty weird about burrito's.
I I do not pack my burrito with much of anything. Yeah, exactly.
I get like steak, rice, cheese, and that's that's it.
I'm good. No beans, no, no beans, bean free, Casey,

(21:52):
no beans, Beegram on the case. So this concludes our
This concludes our episode, but not our show. Thank you
so much for tuning in. We would like to hear
your stories of unorthodox, strange, or fascinating events in times

(22:14):
of conflict. You know, whether from civilians, whether from soldiers,
whether your first hand experience, a story from one of
your relatives. Hit us with it. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram. We're also
on in a stunning plot twist Twitter it's not really
stunning plot twist. That's kind of required, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's uh, it's standard operating procedure. I don't really

(22:35):
mess with Twitter. There's a whole language and vocabulary surrounding
Twitter that I am just blissfully ignorant to. I am
an Instagram kid and you can follow me if you
like at Embryonic Insider. You can find me and my
various misadventures getting kicked in and kicked out of countries
around the world on Instagram at Ben Bowling. You can
see me on Twitter at Ben Bowling h s W.

(22:58):
Most importantly, you can see our favorite part of the
show your fellow listeners, live and direct on our Facebook page,
Ridiculous Historians. Thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegraham,
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
our research associate Gabe Lousier, Thanks to Bill Speakman, thanks
to Christopher Hasiotis, thanks to whomever invented the burrito, and

(23:20):
thanks to you weal Hey Ben, Thanks to you too,
and thanks to our next episode, which you can join
us for or we talk about weird Chinese cult surrounding
a certain Jesus of Nazareth fellow Yeah Cults. Oh uh wait,
are you thanking our episode? I am in advance. Okay,
well let's make it good. You see you next time, folks.

(23:47):
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