Transcripts For CSPAN2 Andrew Carroll Discusses My Fellow Soldiers 20170513

Bestsellers including war letters, letters of a nation and behind the lines. Andrew carroll edited on a pro bono basis operation homecoming, iraq, afghanistan and the homefront, the words of us troops and their families which inspired the Emmy Awardwinning film of the same name. In 1998 Andrew Carroll founded a legacy project, all volunteer initiative that honors veterans and activeduty troops by preserving their wartime correspondence. Andrew carroll has traveled 1250 states and more than 40 countries including iraq and afghanistan and he has collected an estimated 100,000 previously unpublished letters and emails. Andrew carroll donated his massive collection to Chapman University which is where rogers and my son went to school. The legacy project has been renamed the center for american war letters and is part of Chapman University. Andrew served as the centers director. Andrew is embarking on the Million Letters Campaign to seek out and preserve at least 1 million war related correspondences from every conflict in us history. Andrew will talk about the Million Letters Campaign tonight as well as his book my fellow soldiers general John Pershing and the americans who helped win the great war. Andrew carroll is also featured in the new Television Film on world war i the great war, broadcast throughout the country this spring and summer on pbs. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Carroll. Thank you so much. Good evening. Thank you all so much for coming out on this beautiful night, i appreciate it. I am so grateful to Vivien Jennings, one of the great independent bookstores in the country, and laura for her participation in setting this up. Coming to this museum many times as a sightseer and visitor, researcher and i always loved coming back here and it is an honor to come back in this role. I want to give you some behind the scenes story about my fellow soldiers general John Pershing and the americans who helped win the great war. I want to talk about the overall war Letters Campaign because it is integral to the creation of the book and i want to show you some extremely rare and i think in some cases breathtaking original war letters. I love the discussion part of these events. Feel free to ask questions and if anyone would like to talk more personally, if you are considering sharing i would love to discuss that with you. As Vivien Jennings noted i had the opportunity to travel the United States and go to countries around the world in search of wartime correspondences. One of the most surreal and meaningful conversations i ever had was in baghdad. I was waiting for military escort to take me to the airport and i saw these four young iraqi men standing 15 feet away from me. They were in their 20s, i knew they spoke english, i really wanted to talk to them. I had been to iraq and spent my time in the us military with an incredible experience but wanted to talk to actual iraqis about the war and their culture and history and so forth but i was hesitant about walking up to this group of iraqis. I tentatively won over, introduced myself, said i was a writer traveling the world looking for war letters and curious to talk to them. They looked at me and each other and silence. One of the young men whose name i later found out was a mark looked like he was about to Say Something and then held back. I said please ask me anything you want. He looked at me, breaks out in a big smile and says who are your favorite british authors . There is a war going on around us and this is the question he wanted to know. So i thought you are a writer. This is a slamdunk. I started thinking and not one name came to mind. Little beads of sweat started forming on my 4 head because i felt i was representing the American Education system. I finally got to the point where forget favorite british authors just name any british author and i stood there and was still thunderstruck by the question, i could not think of a single name. The iraqis to be helpful gently started throwing out suggestions, wordsworth, dickens, longfellow. After a painfully long time i came up with a name all by myself which was shakespeare. And as awkward as the moment was it helped break the ice and we had a really fascinating conversation about our two nations, what had been going on. Amar said one last question. Why do you focus on letters . I was halfway around the world and no one had asked me that question. We all took for granted sentimental value and historical importance but i had never really been asked what is it about these correspondences. Amar told me he was in the first gulf war and he wrote home and he hated Saddam Hussein but he couldnt say that in his letters which i asked did you save the correspondence . He said no. We burned them all. That stayed with me, that question of what is it about correspondences, one of the ironies is i have no military connections, to be perfectly blunt, i didnt even like history growing up. To me it was a tedious memorization of dates, names, places and so forth and then something extraordinary happened. Our house in washington dc burned to the ground. Nobody was hurt which is the most important thing but everything we had went up in smoke and back then when you lost your letters and photographs they were gone forever. Soon after the fire we got a call from a distant cousin who had he was a world war ii veteran, his book was dedicated with another extraordinary veteran, he wanted to check in and see how we were doing, all of our memorabilia, irreplaceable family items are gone and he said makes me think, i was going through my old world war ii box and came across a letter i wrote to my wife, and he sent me a copy of it and i will never forget, it said april 24, 1945, i saw something today that makes you realize why we are fighting this war. He goes into graphic detail about walking through the nazi concentration camp at buchenwald which had just been liberated. It is very graphic. I will never forget holding this thin, onion skin paper correspondence in my hand and thinking how fragile it was and how significant the weight of the words and what he was writing about and i called and said this is unbelievable. I will return it to you. He said just keep it. I was going to throw it out anyway. Soon after that experience i was talking with a young woman who has become a dear friend and telling her this story and she said my grandfather just wrote a letter, his 50th wedding anniversary he had written during world war ii, he became he wrote this letter before they were surrounded by germans, world war i world war ii, they were saved by the japanese regiment of combat team, a story i knew nothing about. This is how it began, word of mouth, talking with veterans, families and eventually i reached out to dear abby because she continues to write a lot about veterans and military support of our military community. I said i want to encourage americans to go to attics, basements, closets, see what they havent preserve them. People are throwing these things away and losing them to neglect. I wrote out a po box and wrote her a letter saying can we start this project . She went back and said lets do this. On veterans day in 1998 this column appeared in newspapers across the country and the floodgates opened, thousands and thousands of letters were coming in and i didnt know this, the post office, they said you need to get down here now and pick up your mail. This is four days i will jump on my bike and be there in 30 seconds. He said you might bring a car or a van. There were bins and bins of letters from all over the country and these were the people the very first day, just the tip of the iceberg. I will never forget sitting in my car going through these letters and what first struck me were the cover letters which i wasnt expecting that. Messages from veterans saying why they were sending in the letters. One woman wrote, she sent the original letters from the amount her brother had written and explained my brother is gone, missing. Then she put not a pow. He came back from the war but he was so traumatized by what he had seen and experienced the one day he just walked out the front door of the house and we have not been able to find him since. She ended with a sense i would hear time and again which is i just want someone to remember who he was. What was also important about the cover letters is the context of the letters that were not immediately apparent and this is not the original too fragile to travel, it begins dear mom and dad, here i am in, from the philippines, november 1944, the whole part of the loader is gone and at the bottom it says i hope so too. Love, bill. Ps, they might censor this letter. I had seen letters where the name of a ship was cut out, some little detail, this is like he gave away the whole pacific campaign. From his brother ernie who sent it in, what i learned is they would take a piece of paper, time and time again, right the last lane. He would cut out the middle, blame the sensors, because he hated writing letters home and this was just easier. For the service members, the history they were witness to was extraordinary. This is one of the letters we received, it is sunday morning, we have been bombed for over an hour, our antiaircraft guns are yammering away, he is trapped in the forward engine room of the ship he says i can hear men screaming over the intercom of people are rushing for gas masks, look at the upper righthand corner, december 7, 1941, uss new orleans, pearl harbor. He is right there in the eye of the storm describing what it is like it because he is trapped in the forward engine room there was nowhere for him to go, he wrote a 50 page letter which he cannot send originally, he held onto it and thankfully he survived which is how we have the letter. We get emails from different generations, we see echoes overtime, similar experiences. One of the most powerful letters we received, 14 pages hand written by a young woman, anna miller, who was also witness to one of the most terrific days in American History and she writes he is off to safety, not writing it the way it was in world war ii but soon after it happened, ready letter to her parents, and we hear this massive boom outside and everybody stops, talking among ourselves, scaffolding, walked in, we start to hear sirens and they are getting louder and louder. We hear people screaming, someone in the audience stands up and says sorry to interrupt you, can we look outside to see what is going on, walked to the large bay windows and, wednesday look up they see the second plane hit the world trade center. In the marriott next door. Anna goes on to describe in detail about rushing toward the exits because they are told to evacuate the building, marriott security guards blocking the way, like he has seen a ghost. We got to get out, we were told to evacuate, you cant go out there, you cannot see what is out there. They were told by the police to get out of the building and he says to them i want you to run as fast as you can and do not look in the streets which was impossible for them not to do and goes into detail about what they saw and how she was caught up in smoke and debris, almost died and theres one little comment i want to add, this is hard to see but we are meticulous with the letters we received to make sure they are kept in pristine condition and i noticed these little blurs, i hope we didnt do anything to this. I called and said i have to be up front, i noticed these two water stains. Were those there before . She said yes, those are my tears because i was crying when i wrote this. People assume going back to the first and Second World War because of censorship, letters cant or dont say anything as the pearl harbor letter demonstrate, they got around censorship but in some letters there is an unsuspecting message. This is a letter written on april 29, 1945, camp lejeune. He begins my beloved, another sunday, we are still a part. Wondering how many more days will be like this. Mainly i am worried about you and aunt ruth. Pretty common expression of affection. Then we got the code sheet. When i start a letter my beloved, as he does here, look for codename of and or uncle. There were no its or uncles. On this site are the more fictitious names, aunt ruth, saipan, bud, philippines, he goes down the list. In a way the letter was saying much more than it let on especially to the sensors. What was so extraordinary about the letter is the paper itself reveals something about the life and circumstances under which these troops were living. We have letters from desert storm and Operation Iraqi freedom that are coded in the stand, we have letters from the civil war with splotches of mud and blood, letters from korea that the ink is stained because it was written during a snowstorm but the most dynamic letter we have shows this, from world war ii, by a soldier writing to a friend about a close call where a shell dropped next to him and didnt explode so he is telling his friend about the close call he had, put the letter in his rough stack, gets shot through the back, survived but this is the bullet hole right through the letter, the singe marks. He did survive. One of the things about letters is in many ways letter writing is the most egalitarian artform there is. You need a pencil and piece of paper. One of the most powerful letters was by a slave who escaped freedom, joined the union army and found out his regiment, bearing down, held as a slave and where his daughter was cold held in bondage. On september 30, 1964, he wrote this letter to his former master. I received a letter from caroline telling me you say i tried to steal my child away from you. I want you to understand mary is my child and godgiven right to my own. We are making about 1000 black troops and when we come, we will be to the slaveholding rebels, we dont expect to leave neither route nor branch. I often offered to pay 40 for my own child but im glad that was not accepted. You hold on as long as you can and it will be power and authority to execute vengeance on those who hold my child. You will then know how to speak to me. Not all of the correspondences we get our serious. There is a lot of levity through these correspondences. One of my favorites is by an Army Sergeant named sharon allen who was serving in iraq and she wrote home and email about a campfire singalong with a group of kurdish soldiers, slightly misinterpreted a famous beatles song the we think has to do with finding peace and serenity in the world and they thought was about a little green vegetable. Im not going to sing this but i will give you a sense of what happened. This is sharon writing home to her family. July 2004, especially kurds, kurds love us. One of our guys brought a guitar to the guard shacks and played some music for them. Sometimes they try to join in. You havent lived until you have seen a bunch of kurdish soldiers complete with ak47s sitting around singing with gusto as they mangle the beatless let it be. When i find myself in times of trouble, mother mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, little p little t. They really got into it. Whisper words of wisdom, little p. That was a good day. Not all the letters are combat situated or written in a war zone, one of the most powerful letters was by a young kid, 19 years old, finally realized he was on his way back home and wrote this to his family. I am coming home, it is official as of this morning, it will be a few days before i crash on your door, a few weeks maybe but i am coming home. Im looking forward to seeing you again but i cant wait to see your expressions when you see me. I spent 12 months over here, the longest 30 years of my life. There were times i would have traded my soul for a drink of cold water or a drink of hot coffee but i am coming home now. It is almost funny to see a guy in a wheelchair, guy on crutches, one arm, hooks for hands and we break our backs trying to help them but what about the wounds you cant see . The phantoms, the nightmares, put those in your head. You will need a lot of patience with me, patience and understanding. We all will. See you soon, see you soon, see you soon. Then we see how war affects not just those who served but those on the home front. One of the most poignant correspondences we came about was a woman whose son charles was caught in the ambush in iraq, lost his leg, very athletic young man, and this was a grave injury. She lived near Walter Reed Hospital when walter reed was open and she sent this email journal, i brought charless home from walter reed, everything had gone to the wash and dry cycle, dropped freshly laundered clothes onto the bed to fold them. It was late and i was weary so i wanted to try for a better nights sleep than i had been having before. I found one sock, just one. I pulled the rest of the clothes and just the one sock. Without thinking back to the laundry room, i looked between the washer and dryer and all around the floor to the other stock, unloading process. My tired and preoccupied mind didnt get it. As i walked to the bedroom with one sock in hand it hit me like a punch. There was no other stock. There was no other foot, lower leg. I pushed that one clean sock to my breast in an involuntary moment, came from my throat, originated in my heart. I really could i will Say Something dynamic and important about handwritten letter. When i was in iraq i saw a young soldier who was standing in front of a video camera. I asked dont mean to interrupt you, this is not the original. I am burning a dvd letter to my mom. This dvd, probably obsolete. And vietnam troops, this letter is from the american revolution. One of the oldest war letters, it is as pristine as the day it was written in 177mdcclxxv. Moving on the general pershing and world war i. Like many americans, survey after survey has shown. I was not interested in the conflict, after the war letters project. After we moved out of the house had burned down, we moved into another part of washington dc called Spring Valley by American University and as it turned out, a you working during world war i to create the most lethal gas ever constructed by man. Dumped the munitions in the ground, and a rural area back then, after we moved in there. The army corps of engineers said we have to evacuate the area, discovered poisonous gas around the area. This is what intrigued me about world war i, i will say as passionate as i feel about these two i hope the next book does not involve the house burning down, i love this quote in the paper 70 years after the first visit. I found more of this, the Health Department Hazardous Material and toxic substance said the risk, what the familys behavior is, should have more concern than residents who do not spend that much time in the dirt. As long as you eat the ground you are okay. To me general pershing is a distant figure to be perfectly honest almost as boring as the war itself. Until i started to learn his personal story. And an interesting character he was there. He was in fort bliss texas, to San Francisco where his family was, 3. As a young boy warren. He wanted them to stay there because they would be safe when she was in mexico because bandits were flying across the border, on the morning of august 27th the phone call came into purgings headquarters in fort bliss and a reporter said i need to get a quote from the general about the fire, and purging picked up his own phone. He said what fire . The reporter realized who he was talking to and said have you not heard the news . Purging said i have no idea what you are talking about. His reporter said i am so sorry to tell you this, your wife and your 3 little girls are all gone. They all died in that house fire. Only warren, who pulled alive, unconscious. Purging became human to me and someone i wanted to learn more about, learning as he went to the war, trained handbuilt an army with the allies he was caring this enormous brief with him. When i started looking for correspondence, i came across, those who have correspondence by purging dont realize how significant he is, eisenhower, patton, outranks all of them. The only general to be given a 6 star in his lifetime. In this letter, 3 months after the fire, waiting writing to his wifes best friend, purging says warren, 6yearold son doesnt know of this loss. Includes mama and helen and dan and mary margaret, sisters, he thinks they are in cheyenne. And part of personal history. And he became not the rigid more of a statue than a man, a real human being who showed empathy for others and purging was friends with the other roosevelt and teddy wanted to go to france to lead a regiment and wilson is in no mood to give roosevelt what he wanted, a coward and a pacifist, before the war started, wilson rejected his appeal. Teddy sent his four boys, the youngest, clinton, wanted to become a pilot and he wrote these letters about his experiences and on july 14, 1918, shot down and killed and purging was one of the first to reach out to tr. Time alone can heal the wounds and such a time the stumbling words of understanding from ones friends help. To express to you my deepest sympathy, perhaps i can come is new to realizing what a loss means as anyone and tr responded i am touched by your letter. My dear fellow, you have suffered more bitter sorrow and has befallen me. You bore with splendid courage, i should be ashamed of myself as i try in a letter way to emulate that courage. Because of roosevelts status as a president he received letters and telegrams from other kings and so forth but there was one letter i wanted to include that shows a side of him as well that really touched me. Apparently, teddy would mostly send back a one sentence thank you for your message but he really responded to this woman. I will quote a few sentences from a four page letter and he is saying the loss is hard on mrs. Roosevelt. Clinton was her baby. The last child left in the home nest. The night before he sailed a year ago she did as she has always done, went upstairs to talk him into bed. That he was laughing gentle hearted boy. He was always thoughtful and considerate with those with whom he came into contact. It is hard to open the letters coming from those you love who are dead. This is common, the pilots killed, and keep getting the letters, they were notified. But the last letters written during his 3 weeks at the front when of his squadron on an average man was killed every day, written with real joy of the great adventure, engaged to a fine anticharacter, heartbreaking for her as well as his mother and they both said they would rather he never come back to never have gone. He died at the crest of life in the glory of the dawn. As an aside, despite Theodore Roosevelts bravado about war, the loss hit him almost harder than it did mrs. Roosevelt and he died almost of a broken heart just months later. Before he passed away could be seen at the stables at the oyster bay home with the horses and he would sit there looking and saying to himself the childhood nickname he had given his son. They left his body in europe where he was buried but they did receive the mangled axle of his plane which is on display. Not all the people i focus on in my fellow soldiers general John Pershing and the americans who helped win the great war are president s are famous general, the most compelling are the characters who never had names in history books. I want to introduce you to a nurse, she wrote letters in journals starting with her training, in the atlantic and into combat and like the men she wanted to see action. She was gung ho to get to the front and participate and like the men with the combat experience once she saw it firsthand her enthusiasm was tempered. There was one part of the hospital once the wounded started coming and that affected her more than any other and a group of patients were so terribly wounded that even the doctors and nurses could only spend a few days at a time before they had to be replaced. This is what she wrote about in her journal and letters. In a low, roughly furnished ward on the fourth floor of the hospital where the windows brought into relief the rough red bricks of the unfinished walls, one finds the jar the true conception of the hordes of civilized warfare are painfully evident, congregated victims of the war, strong viral young men permanently disfigured, deadly shrapnel has worked with the most cases and others bullets have exploded in their mouth. This becomes very disturbing. I wont read the more detailed parts but she goes on to say these are called upon to bear more than their share of suffering. It is horrible and cool, and how they are coping with it, quite positively, she wrote an atmosphere of heroic, prevalent among them all. Most visit around the war playing games, and their jovial banter. All rfid nourishing foods like raw eggs beaten with milk, juices and thin cereals. Most are fed through tubes which are inserted through their nostrils and into their throats through which gaping wound on the side of their faces. Taking turns, pouring liquid into their funnels. The enormous capacity someone may suggest, their speech is almost incoherent, this is the most pitiful part of war, they are so happy and carefree, bravely enduring untold physical suffering while getting concerned. How different it will be when they are separated and returned to civilian life. Andrews ends her journals with a visit from woodrow wilson, negotiating the treaty of versailles. An interesting story because he visited all the wards and was about to leave and said i want to make sure have i seen everybody . Wilson said wait a minute. Have i seen everyone . We have a ward you have not gone to. But doctors and nurses find it so disturbing they cant stay for long. Andrews got to witness this event, wilson, exhibiting splendid courage, and they talk to poor boys and understand the incoherent replies given with great difficulty. Wilson met with men who suffered ghastly wounds. And on leaving the chamber of horrors the president was as white as death and his hands trembled. He appeared to stagger. A look of suffering was on his face and he seems completely crushed. The letters and journals were found here at the National World war i Museum Thanks to a wonderful archivist who helped me name Stacy Peterson and never published before. We think of memorials, we think of massive structures, the incredible Liberty Tower outside. These letters and emails as fragile and delicate, among the most powerful and enduring forms of remembrance we have, why letters, they capture history like answering amars question, they put us in the eye of the storm, these troops and families are more than mechanically recording what they have seen. What they created is a real work of art and like all masterpieces they transcend the subject. It is not just about war. These are about love and loss, grief and courage, heartbreak and resilience. War is never about abstract ideas. It is about people, men and women who serve and continue to serve are not sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen, they are somebodys spouse, sibling or best friend, these are there words, their voices, their experiences, their story and no one can tell them better than they can. Thank you very much. [applause] i would love for you to ask me questions about world war i, we get a microphone to you before someone can hear it. It takes me a little time to walk over, dont hesitate to put your fingers up a little. Good evening, thank you for your lecture. I have two questions, first question very much general pershing oriented. Your reflections of your letter project. My first question, why did general pershing decide not to allow the marine brigades to form a division and fight independently. General butler, noted marine corps hero relegated to desk duty, second question, having spent a day or two in the military myself i noticed the type of person that becomes a soldier or marine transcends time. I would like to know based on your research and your project how we differ from generation to generation. To the first question with general pershing allowing the generations to join, purging was a man of faults, no question. I dont gloss over those. One of the issue is was he does not want the american troops separated. This is one of the debates he had with french and british going into detail behind the scenes of the classes he had he literally almost punched a french gentleman in the face when he kept persisting saying get your troops to the french line and purging says i wont allow our boys to become cannon fodder which is what they would have become because they were thrown in untrained with officers who spoke a different language, different training, different rifles, everything, would have caused untold chaos and casualties if that had been done. He makes an exception for the African American troops who he gives to the french as almost indefensible and i go to the race issue about purging and so forth and when it comes to the marines it is trickier because purging had reasons to make different decisions and one thing i am sympathetic, he was bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders because he had come in there and secretary baker and president wilson dedicated the war to purging and it is not known how much responsibility he talked. If he said to them to automate the troops, if that is your view do it but purging held strong, keeping the americans as solidified as possible. Some decisions were not worn to others because he had his own reason to do something a certain way. If these divisions were treated differently other divisions would be treated the same, we just dont know. Looking at the responsibility he bore when we lost the war he would have been blamed, the french and british would have said we told you get your troops in, week could have hit the german juggernaut and you said no, lets wait and we lost. If that had happened americas reputation, everyone its reputation would have been destroyed. I cant imagine the tension he was under and it makes me more sympathetic to the decisions he made, he had his reasons. In hindsight we can secondguess why he made certain decisions but in this case he felt strongly about keeping everything together as an American Army and i talk about how during this, he tried to run the first army and American Army, first army was a major part of this but they were distinct and he admitted he was overwhelmed, delegated to another general to take over the daytoday operations of the first army. With respect to your second question about a timelessness about marines and soldiers over the generations i have to say what struck me reading letters from the revolution of iraq is how universal they are, whether you are at lexington or concorde or going doortodoor as the marines were doing in iraq. The combination of the terror, exhilaration, sense of duty, sense of fear. All these things coming together transcend any one generation. How they express themselves is different. When you read world war i and civil war letters they are so flowery and poetic, they sound different. That is because most of the troops were illiterate. The one book they all read that was written so beautifully was the bible. In many ways their letters reflected that same formality. You read emails today, you brought this up, there is this belief that the correspondence cant be as good as it used to be, false. With marine soldiers, sailors or airmen, letters are profound, poetic, beautifully expressed as before. The tone overall has changed. It is more conversational. That is the big difference. It starts even in world war i where you see that switch from the civil war to the First World War and world war ii in vietnam and korea, their letters were very different but i think overall, iraq and afghanistan we see a generation of writers who are absolutely brilliant and some have gone off to write their own books or screenwriters or playwrights and it is proof how intelligent and how, i think, artistic, a lot of members of the military are and they dont quit credit for it and they crafted beautiful works. Any other questions . My dad was in world war ii and i am reading all the letters he wrote and my mom wrote to him. Close to 300 from the time he went into the military for training and i have been amazed. The power of seeing my parentss handwriting little and reading what he said. I am in the midst of this and no one would be interested in these. We are definitely interested and this is a great opportunity to talk about the project. If anyone has letters we love getting originals, the personal meaning to them it is a doubleedged sword. We cant let go of the originals that is great. If something happens it is a backup. Something about originals, scholars, like to see the postmark, paper and so forth, what a lot of people have said the next generation or family were the one after that will throw the families away. By donating to the war letters project they are preserved forever. Anyone if you have letters, go to our website, very easy to remember, warletters. Us. Everyone goes to this archive at Chapman University which i pick out of a lot of institutions because i can sense how passionate they felt about this, students were so respectful of the material and use letters in their own classrooms, not just history but it was literature and the Theater Department but also how to support faculty and administration, my concern was to block it up and say thank you, we are done. We want to grow this collection, the largest archive of american wartime correspondence anywhere and we think it is. Our hope is people spread the word. If you dont have letters, you might have a cousin who served in iraq and afghanistan and korea, please get the message out there. One thing i will say is it is a wonderful Family Activity to bring these letters out and go through them. What strikes me is younger generations, grandpa is the grumpiest guy i ever met, then they read love letters when he was 19 years old, where was this guy . He was really funny and engaging and like a kid. It shows them a different side of family members they think they already know. There is something about the tangible aspect, it creates a bond. One of the things we are doing is going around the country, we let students and others hold these letters, i hold a letter by general purging, that is the effect we have on other generations. Thank you very much for your question and comment. You and i have known each other almost 20 years. I know that you took an opportunity, i am a vietnam veteran, can you speak about talking about war letters from the other side that you discovered in vietnam . Part of the reason for my trip is i went to 40 countries around the world to find letters by our troops on our military bases in combat in iraq and afghanistan. I was never a combat but i was meeting with them, they got back from asians but the story with amar and his friend i wanted to see what iraqis were writing, a quick side story on that i went to iraq, a lot of people, iraqis, the group who promised me they would look for letters and emails got nothing, came home, this wonderful assistant from a small town in nebraska. I went to iraq, didnt get any iraqi letters, a lot of iraqis in nebraska, i could ask them. He went to the iraqi community, immigrants, they talk to their family members and all these letters and emails about the iraqi perspective, not the enemy perspective but iraq under Saddam Hussein and so forth but vietnam was interesting because encouragement of Vietnam Veterans who said we are curious what the other side was writing in this. Vietnam with an interesting dilemma because it is a communist country and their archives are heavily censored and what they would allow us to see was well picked out. The way i got these letters, i was lamenting to someone about these archives and this was a gentleman who worked, i had a guy here looking for stamps, and this Little Antique shop, letters he had no use for, that is what im looking for. We went back to this antique shop, just go through and with my interpreter, a battle letter, was really for the stamp collectors and they couldnt care about the letters that were inside so that is how i think it was south vietnamese letters, what struck me, the issue of timelessness, we have a beautiful letter by a south vietnamese officer working with the americans, your little boy wont let anybody for your seat at the dinner table, that is for poppa and saying your name all day long. I had a civil war letter from the American Civil War almost identical. Little robert wont let anybody sleep in your bed or sit in your chair and goes around the house saying pop pop pop all day. South similar the emotions were is what it comes down to, a human experience. That trip to vietnam was powerful because i went there with you, what was the highlight for me was this is the group of american soldiers and scientists who scoured the world to find the remains of american troops. They will drain an entire lake in vietnam, pond may be because they think american servicemembers in the plane crash come of able scale mountains, go underwater, do everything they can. Missing service members. One letter out of that trip was the guy who headed the vietnam mission. The mother of a young man killed in vietnam, my favorite correspondence, in a book behind the lines, letters from all different, allamerican wars but what russians were writing and germans and french and britain and all these countries, to give an International Perspective on how the emotions are timeless and universal. Maybe one more question. Yes . I will repeat it. Technical question. [inaudible question] they didnt have all points. They had trench pens. They read ingeniously configured so they wouldnt blot up a lot. It is very common. And it is because of world war i we had this revolution, people using personal pens. And the censorship issue that this is the first time there was massive censorship throughout the letters and it is interesting how people got around those and one of my favorite a local perspective my favorite people i focus on is young harry truman who was an artillery captain. I grew up in a household of republicans who refer to truman as a failed hat salesman who became president. How this haberdashery became president read trumans war experience, he literally was almost killed several times in that war not just from artillery fire but brought all his men home alive which is rather impressive in itself but there is a story i havent read anywhere else and include as an anecdote in my fellow soldiers where during shell fire his horse toppled over and fell on top of truman and he was suffocating to death she wrote about this. I was within seconds of lights out and his officer, lieutenant Vic Hassell Berger called truman to safety and saved his life. At the end of the book i do a postscript where i follow back on all these people, young Pat Macarthur and one of i of my fa, wild bill donovan who was again like truman under fire during world war i, what happened to these guys . Speaking of truman and donovan they had a big clash in the white house, when truman was president donovan came and said we need to create a Central Agency that gathers intelligence and truman said no. Im not going to do it, not in peace time. Agents like that will turn on its own people and by on cement donovan said that will never happen. What was interesting, donovan said you have to have some kind of intelligence gathering institution. Both men proved to be right. We need the cia. There are examples in the past where they did turn on americans. These intersections of how these guys served together, speaking of truman, after truman became president , all the other men wrote and congratulated, truman was trying to win the war, 1 million things going on at once but vic sent him a second letter and referred to him as president perry, they called him captain harry is a term of affection. Hope you got my letter of congratulations. I am calling you because my grown son has been lost in combat. He was shot down and we cant find him. He said i know you have all these things going on but if anything you can do to help find my boy i would be so grateful. Very poignant story. I believe it at that. This circles back to your original point, truman was also reading the letters, as a sensor he got around censorship, saying this is what is really going on, other troops would do the same thing which interesting to hear his comments about what his men were writing, modest about their experiences, truman is an interesting character and that he would talk about himself and how men said great things about him but he would write it in a way, there captain, you got a sense of humor, got a kick out of it. I am going to the truman house, his letters at the truman president ial library. I cant encourage people enough to check them out. You got to slog through a lot of stuff, some wonderful gems from his training through combat coming home and president ial papers. And with general purging, the National World war i museum, coming out and a chance to talk to you all especially if you have letters or emails and thank you so much. [applause] just like the national wilbur museum and memorial, the war that his project is a google story, dont forget www. Warletters. Us but also like us, the global story. If you are looking to the clinton, roosevelts propeller or purgings flag across the glass rigid is in the main gallery, if you havent been there, those are there. It is more poignant after you have read Andrew Carrolls book. Please join us for the book signing. Watch the 2017 colby military writers symposium today at noon eastern on cspan2s booktv. Willing. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. And now booktvs monthly in Depth Program with author and astrophysicist neil