Rum Ration turns one!

In Episode 33, former infantry officers Rejoy Chatterjee and Colin Robinson celebrate together a full year of rum, banter, and battlefield history, plus their ongoing hunt for a sponsor.

Listen in as they revisit Canada’s early conflicts, from Queenston Heights to the 1775 march on Quebec, then fast-forward to Paardeberg’s “Bloody Sunday.” The First World War dominates a lot of their episodes: the grind of trenches and logistics, the Ross Rifle’s failures, and the shock of chlorine gas at Second Ypres, where Canadians and their beloved unit, The Royal Montreal Regiment (RMR), helped hold a collapsing line. Vimy Ridge returns as a turning point, alongside lessons from General Sir Arthur Currie at Vimy and in a separate episode about Hill 70.

The recap also ranges across Hong Kong, Canadian volunteers for the Vietnam war, the Sten gun, the RMR’s fight for an armory (and survival!), Hannibal’s Cannae, and the Avro Arrow vs Bomarc missile debate, before landing on the show’s core theme: selflessness, remembrance, and camaraderie, plus a teaser of what’s ahead in 2026.

Cheers to history!

In this special Christmas episode of The Rum Ration, Colin and Rejoy head to Ortona, December 1943, the “Italian Stalingrad,” where Canadians fought for every doorway. A minor port guarding Highway 16 became a fortress held “at all costs” by the German Fallschirmjäger “Green Devils,” as record rain and the Moro River’s mud turned approach routes into misery. Inside Ortona, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders improvised “mouse-holing,” blasting through adjoining walls to stay off kill-zone streets.

The cost was savage: leaders exposed, buildings booby-trapped, civilians trapped in cellars, and over 1,300 Ortonesi killed. Yet on Christmas Day, the Seaforths staged a proper dinner in a ruined church, officers serving troops, while machine guns rattled outside, a moment that even impressed nearby Germans. Days later the enemy slipped away, leaving “Bloody December” and a legacy of resilience, ritual, and hard-earned truth about the famous Ortona Dinner photo, for Canada today.

Shout out to Petula Clark for her musical inspiration!

In this episode of The Rum Ration, Colin and Rejoy head to the Ardennes in December 1944 for Hitler’s last desperate Western gamble: Wacht am Rhein. With Allied supply lines stretched and American units recovering in a “quiet sector,” the assault on 16 December erupts under fog, snow, and frozen rifles. The green US 106th Division is mauled and surrounded, while stubborn holds at St. Vith and Elsenborn Ridge bleed away the Germans’ one resource they cannot replace: time (okay, and fuel - the Germans couldn't replace that either!).

They also unpack the psychological chaos of Otto Skorzeny’s Operation Greif—Germans in U.S. uniforms, rumours of assassinations, and checkpoints quizzing GI's on trivia. The turning point comes at Bastogne: “Nuts!”, a Christmas airlift, and Patton’s dash north to break the siege.

We close with why the attack on the Bulge failed—logistics, terrain, delays, Allied airpower—and the brutal cost that made it one of the U.S. Army’s deadliest battles. Episode suggested (and birthday-dedicated) by friend of the show, Simon McLean.