Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Here's a transformative character from history you've probably never heard of, Andrew Higgins.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower called him the man who won World War II.

Higgins wasn't in the army. He wasn't a paratrooper. He was a wild and wily

genius, a tough, crafty businessman. And he built the boats that brought troops ashore at Normandy

on June 6, 1944. D-Day. Higgins was a total character. Whatever he did, he did it a lot,

like building boats or drinking or swearing. Life magazine wrote, his profanity was famous

for its opulence and volume. So was his thirst for old Taylor Bourbon,

though he curtailed his intake by limiting his sips to a specific location.

He told life, I only drink while I'm working.

Higgins grew up in Nebraska, where he was expelled from school several times for fighting.

But he found that his temperament improved around boats. He built his first vessel in the basement when

he was 12. It was so large that a wall had to be torn down to get it out. Higgins moved south

in his early 20s, working in the lumber industry. He hadn't thought much about boats since his childhood

until he needed to remove a piece of timber from shallow waters.

He built a special vessel to do the job.

Soon after, Higgins signed up for a correspondence course in naval architecture.

And by the late 1930s, he owned a small shipyard in New Orleans, where he hung a sign that said, quote, anybody caught stealing tools out of this yard, won't get fired.

He'll go to the hospital.

Higgins had started selling his special shallow craft boat to loggers and oil drillers.

The boats were known as tunnel stern boats.

Their magic was in the way the hull incorporated a recess tunnel so the propeller wouldn't

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