Ed Helms

Does this describe you at all?

Are you like an outdoorsy?

And if you inhale too quickly, like you get a lung infection from frozen.

Indeed.

All right.

So this special unit is training in Montana and the Norway plan collapses.

Turns out it was a logistical nightmare and allied priorities were shifting fast.

So what was this badass new outfit to do?

Well, fate would take them to another frosty theater of war, the Aleutian Islands.

Do you know anything about the Aleutian Islands?

I do not.

The Aleutians are that long sort of ragged tail of islands that stretch nearly a thousand miles between Alaska and Russia.

It's that little the beard of the sort of face that is Alaska.

It's kind of what separates the Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea.

And they're home to the Aleut people who've lived there for millennia, fishing, hunting, those brutal waters places.

since long before the emergence of nation states and world wars, of course.

The current population of the Aleut people is estimated to be around 15,000 across the United States and Russia, with the majority living in Alaska.

So they obviously live there and carve out a living.

But for outsiders, these islands are a very punishing place.

Jagged volcanic rocks surrounded by frigid ocean, broken up by vast stretches of soggy tundra called muskeg.