Rum Ration

Expect episodes that discuss the human aspect of warfare throughout the evolution of weapons, tactics, strategy, and leadership. Topics will vary but will always bring in the aspects that your average soldier, sailor, and aviator had to endure when giving their all for their cause.Rejoy Chatterjee and Colin Robinson are two amateur military historians who were both infantry officers in the past. They have a shared love and admiration of the camaraderie and selflessness of combatants the world over, and are eager to bring to life stories of ordinary folks who achieved the extraordinary

Rum Ration is a history podcast hosted by Colin and Rejoy, with 58 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Colin and Rejoy hosts Rum Ration, a history show with 58 episodes published.

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  Episode #59

  Episode 59 - The Dieppe Raid: Courage in Chaos

  Aug 19, 20261h 39mS2

  On 19 August 1942, thousands of Canadian soldiers landed at Dieppe expecting a bold raid against occupied France. Instead, they found a killing ground. Poor intelligence, heavily fortified beaches, immobilized tanks and collapsing communications turned Operation Jubilee into one of Canada’s costliest days of the Second World War. In this episode of the Rum Ration, Rejoy and Colin are joined by historian Julien Lehoux of Canada Company’s Je me souviens program to examine what went wrong—and, more importantly, what soldiers did when the plan fell apart. From Dollard Ménard leading the Fusiliers Mont-Royal despite being wounded repeatedly, to Charles Merritt’s astonishing courage at Pourville, the story is filled with individual acts of determination. At its heart is Montreal signaller David Hart, whose decision to keep transmitting helped save more than 100 stranded soldiers. Dieppe was a disaster of planning, but amid the chaos were examples of courage, initiative and comradeship.

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  Episode #58

  Episode 58 - St. Valery-en-Caux: Dunkirk Without the Miracle

  Aug 16, 202641 minS2

  Dunkirk is remembered as a miracle. St. Valery-en-Caux was the bitter sequel. In June 1940, the 51st Highland Division, fighting alongside French troops, was driven toward the Normandy coast as Rommel’s forces closed in. Their escape route through Le Havre collapsed, leaving thousands trapped in a small harbour town overlooked by cliffs, German artillery, machine guns, and armour. The Royal Navy mounted a desperate evacuation, but fog, poor communications, air attack, and enemy guns turned the harbour into a killing ground. Canada was there too. HMCS St. Laurent and HMCS Restigouche rescued wounded soldiers and exchanged fire with German shore batteries, among the Royal Canadian Navy’s earliest engagements of the Second World War. This episode explores the men behind a forgotten defeat: exhausted soldiers, sailors heading toward the guns, and the cruel reality that not every desperate evacuation ends with a miracle. Sometimes history arrives not as rescue, but surrender.

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  Episode #57

  Episode 57 - Tannenberg: Wireless, Railways, and Ruin

  Aug 7, 202644 minS2

  In August 1914, Russia’s Second Army marched into East Prussia expecting to help trap Germany’s outnumbered Eighth Army. Instead, it walked into one of the First World War’s most devastating encirclements. In this episode, Rejoy and Colin unpack the Battle of Tannenberg, where German railways, rapid concentration, intercepted Russian wireless messages, and bold command decisions collided with poor logistics, weak coordination, and overextended Russian forces. At the centre is General Alexander Samsonov, a commander burdened by collapsing communications, exhausted troops, and the unbearable knowledge that his army was being destroyed around him. The battle became a celebrated German victory and a national myth, but its reality was messier: confusion, refugees, failed communications, courage on both sides, and enormous human loss. Tannenberg reminds us that numbers alone do not win battles. Armies succeed when logistics, intelligence, movement, and leadership come together at the decisive moment—and fail when ambition outruns readiness.

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  Episode #56

  Episode 56 - Project Habakkuk: Churchill’s Iceberg Navy

  Jul 31, 202626 minS2

  In 1942, with German U-boats ravaging Allied shipping in the North Atlantic, Britain faced a brutal problem: how to close the Mid-Atlantic Gap without enough steel to build more carriers. Enter Geoffrey Pyke, a brilliant and eccentric inventor with an idea so strange it almost worked—build a massive aircraft carrier out of ice. In this episode of The Rum Ration , Rejoy and Colin dive into Project Habakkuk, the secret Allied plan to create a 2-million-ton floating airbase made from pykrete, a mixture of ice and wood pulp. From Churchill’s enthusiasm and Mountbatten’s infamous live-fire demonstration to the hidden Canadian prototype built by conscientious objectors at Patricia Lake, Alberta, the story is equal parts ingenuity, desperation, and absurdity. Ultimately undone by physics, cost, steel demands, and changing technology, Habakkuk remains one of the Second World War’s strangest “plausible but ludicrous” ideas.

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  Episode #55

  Episode 55 - The Somme: Mud, Blood & Wire

  Jul 10, 20261h 21mS2

  On 1 July 1916, the British Army suffered the bloodiest day in its history as the Battle of the Somme opened beneath machine-gun fire, unbroken wire, and shattered expectations. Yet the Somme was more than one catastrophic morning. In this episode, Rejoy and Colin examine why the offensive was launched, how the crisis at Verdun reshaped Allied plans, and why citizen soldiers were asked to solve a battlefield problem no army had mastered. They challenge myths of mindless generals and unquestioning troops while never minimizing the battle’s human cost. From the devastated Pals battalions and Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel to the Canadians at Courcelette and the Royal Montreal Regiment’s 40-hour fight, the episode follows ordinary men through industrial warfare’s machinery. The Somme produced no decisive breakthrough, but it relieved Verdun, weakened the German Army, accelerated tactical innovation, and transformed British forces. Its legacy remains horrifying, complicated, and impossible to dismiss.

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