Washington post, and many more. He is also cofounded the National Riders series which is a yearround book festival as well as the french street riders for Public High School students. We are very excited to be hosting this novelist today and it is my honor to introduce doug stand. [applause] thank you everyone. Thank you for the nice introduction. It is an honor to be here. We have some special guests and some special friends who have come to visit. This book has just come out and it has been a labor of love, beginning in 2005 when i was on the helicopter in afghanistan, researching my second book Horse Soldiers. I was trying to get to the pakistan border to a special forces camp, and there was a gentleman in the helicopter who seem to be a bit older than everyone else, Walking Around the area and we began to talk and we had a very pleasant conversation and finally the conversation turned to my first book, in harms way which is about uss indianapolis and the sinking of that ship in 1945. I saw that as a survivor story and the story of young men trying to make right decisions at the hardest moment, and i like to write books about those moments in someones life, both Horse Soldiers and in harms way are books about war but the really about people, their about people trying to overcome something extraordinary, and i like to tell a story that you can slide across the Kitchen Table and say, in the case of this new book, the apathy of echo company in vietnam, and asked, werent you there. So, to go back to 2000, the early 2000 in afghanistan, this gentleman, stan parker asked, did you write in harms way and he read it and enjoyed it and as conversation moved on, we started talking about vietnam. This is 2005. Its a long time ago. We are finding these small settlements and im concerned about being in afghanistan in broad daylight in a helicopter but stan parker, special ops command officer was talking about vietnam. He became clear to me that the story was important to him and many of his platoon mates, the Reconnaissance Platoon of echo company was part of the 101st airborne in vietnam in 1968. We kind of left that meeting thinking maybe i would write about this someday, but i wasnt so sure america was ready for that story just yet. I think vietnam is one of americas unfinished stories. As ive traveled around talking to people, it is first hard to have that conversation and yet here we have a whole generation of men and women because the wives and girlfriends and families who grew up in that are era which was so tumultuous and went off to this conflict and bled and died and then when they came home they quickly learned they couldnt really talk about this. That to me is a national shame. I dont think we can really move forward as a country until we put a period on the end of the sentence which is what happened to you in vietnam. Weve talked so much about how we feel about the war, how we felt about the war, in this book, i wanted to talk about how the war made people like stan parker feel. Its kind of flipping the mirror, the telescope a bit in the same way i did within harms way. I see them as similar books, in some way. Of course its a large battle but with different points of view, including afghan points of view. I went there twice as i was researching. So, that is one of the reasons i wrote this book, the answer this question for myself. This was a generation or two had a me so this was not part of my experience but it certainly was up and down the street where i grew up. I remember doors opening and teenagers running outside, i remember the body count on tv and all those images were flickering and i can never make sense of them. Adding this book has been a journey for me, for sure hendon a little bit we have some special guest we will bring up here. I dont want to give it away just yet. What i think i want to do is read something from the book to set the scene and then we will watch a short montage in them will meet our special guest. This is a section of the book that was difficult to write so i can only imagine how difficult it was to experience, when you see someone who is about 70 and you see them at the library or the checkout line, they are thinking about vietnam. The question is, we can talk about world war ii, we can talk about the spanish civil war, we can talk about iraq and afghanistan, but the question is how we talk about vietnam. I think you do it through story. This is not an intellectual book, so to speak. This is not a political book, its a book about people. When i tried to do is just listen. One of the biggest things Vietnam Veterans have are being judged for whatever story they have, and believe me, if you scratch the surface , and i urge you to do that. If youre at a dinner party or Family Reunion and you know uncle george did something in 1968 or 69 but he never talks about it, go ask him. He will have something to say. It may be i dont want to talk to which is fine but at least he knows and some of part of his heart that youve asked. In some ways i feel this book is an active citizenship on my part to be a writer who sat and listened and tried to create a story that i found compelling. It ends with a smile. We dont get closure much only talk about vietnam, but i think in some ways we do in this book because something happens towards the end of it when we go back to vietnam with stan parker and tom souls and we have an amazing meeting. Before that happens though, before, this is happening in the middle of the conflict which kicked off january 30, 1968. These guys, the platoon is between 40 and 46 but quickly understrength because of attrition. It really never was squad by squad, fullsize. Their living out in the bush and their job is to be the eyes and ears of the entire battalion and report back enemy activity. Its dangerous duty. Theyve all volunteered for this, to be pair treatment troopers. So not only did they enlist willingly but they also volunteered to do this. Quickly, being the sons world war ii, growing up around the Kitchen Table for instance, stan parker listening to his father being a bomber in world war ii which only ended three years earlier, to just stop for a moment. Today were 16, 17 years on from 911 in 2001. You can imagine how much 911 still infuses our daily behavio behavior. That is whats happening in 66, 67 when these young guys are enlisting. Theyre being influenced by world war ii. But of course the war in vietnam is fought differently. Its asymmetrical. The pressure is constant. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and its tough duty. Well talk about that a little bit more in the program, but heres one of those moments of tough duty. Stan is walking in a gray drizzle and their wrapped mommy style and clear shower curtains. Theyve torn down from the nearby schoolhouse. The curtains are their only protection from the cold rain. The weapons poked through part of the curtains and they make a strange sight. Stan sees a little girl standing in the middleoftheroad up ahead, watching the groups advance. She looks scared, filthy, and very alone. As he gets closer, he sees she is also very young and streaked with tears. Stan takes off his shower curtain and offers it to her. She doesnt move so he wrapped it around her, but its too long in bunches around her bare feet. He takes his knife and hacks away at the extra length to shorten it. She doesnt say anything. She doesnt ask for anything and she doesnt shy away. She stands there looking at him, mute, and passive, courageous. Stan feels the need to do something for her, but he simply stares at her and is confused and sleep deprived and he looks at her and he has we can only describe as an epiphany, and awakening as if his eyes are snapping open after a long nap. He is able to see the whole lousy war through her eyes. The shooting, the killing, images rollback and forth over her face and he watches him pass before her. A movie of who he is, who hes becoming, an animal, a killer, a young man filled with hatred as president johnson predicted all young men would be common war. He has an overwhelming desire to make the girls safe. He doesnt know how. He wants to give her something, clean clothes, food, shelter. He has nothing to give her except his attention. Then he remembers he has a can of peaches in the bag on his chest where he stores, he pulls out a can of the fruit and bends down to offer it to her. The can is large and her dirty hand which sags under its weight. Its okay he told her, go away now. He makes issuing gesture with his hand. He would like someone to come and take care of her. He would like to come back to vietnam as another kind of person and be able to offer her some peace and attention and safety. Its quite between the two of them punctuated by the shower curtain wrapped around hirsch shoulders. He stares at the peaches and back at him as if asking him what he she should do. Then he realizes hes been left behind. He knows they are in a no mans land where they could run into any number of enemy and he feels exposed. Theyre calling out him come on weve got to get out of here, weve got to go. He finally turns from the girl, touches her gently on the head and says goodbye. He runs to catch up. He rounds the corner and sees the other guys up ahead. A few seconds after that he hears the gunshots behind him. He thanks not the girl. He wheels around and runs and turns the corner and there she is, a tiny clump no bigger than the pile of rags in the street looking down the road he sees four soldiers fleeing among the building. He levels his weapon and fires but misses and curses, how could he miss when he had killed so many men before. He runs up to the girl, looks at her and drops to his knees crying. Why zero why zero why. He knows why, because hes a bad person because hes an american strip soldier. Because hes a man filled with madness. He looks down at her Still Holding the can of peaches, her hand tightened and spasmed around the can. Her hands are slender and tiny. Why did he give for the can of peaches. He would love more than anything to reach back your time and take them back. Shes dead because she accepted the americans peaches. The irony is that he had no compassion for her, if he had ignored her she would still be alive. He might as well have aimed his rifle, pulled the trigger himself. He looks up at the sky with a horse cry and thinning from his stomach, more animal than human. The rest of the guys run back and they stop. Theyre not sure what they do. They start circling him as he rocks back and forth in the street. Riley walks up and says we gotta go. We gotta get outta here. Lets call the sin. Stan reaches over and picks up the little girl and cradles her. She is warm. He figured she died instantly. He takes her across the street to an empty building thats been bombed and reduced to rubble but the front wall is Still Standing and he thanks she will be safe away from the street. Next door is another building thats been bombed and emptied two. Riley and i want to leave the street but stan refuses. He tells them he will not leave the girl alone there. He tells them he wants to go across the street in the safety of another building and wait to see who comes passing by, maybe the soldiers who shot her or some of their friends or maybe her family or someone who knows her either way he cant leave her in an empty building alongside an empty road as twilight falls. Through the long night, cold and raining, he thanks he hears footballs in the dark, the steps of the approaching enemy, but nothing materializes as the sun rises. He gets up feeling sore and stretches. He has that feeling of one out, rinsed out after great strain as if the terror of the past days had burned away his nerve endings. Across the road, he sees the rats. They are crawling all over the girl. He can hear their scratching and he puts it all together. Oh god no. Real calm he lives his m16 against his cheek, takes aim and fires. One of the rats goes flying backward, away from the girl and he aims again, careful to go around the girl and fires a rat from her frame. He thanks they wouldve scattered, but they are persistent. He starts firing more rapidly, knocking them down and he keeps firing even after the last rat is dead, getting more excited. His nerve endings coming back to life as if sprouting through his skin. He keeps pumping around into the dead rat bodies. He shot them all, everyone, at least several dozen. He says over his shoulder to riley, 19 more bullets. He jams the makeup and the receiver and charges a weapon and fire some more. He fires several more magazines and stops and its quiet. Real quiet. They tell them its okay, you did good. After a few moments, he gets up, walks across the street to the girl and looks at her. He can barely stand it. Looking at her, the ugly thing that happened at his attempt of kindness. She Still Holding the peaches in her tiny hand. For the second time he has let her down. He screams when i heard stan tell me that story, it was incredibly moving. The entire book is somewhat like this. I think stan partner jan parker and his platoon mates are courageous for two reasons, one for having going there and survive this and to, stan in particular, for talking with me. Can you imagine yourself being in a helicopter or sitting down with a stranger such as i was and having the courage to tell the story . This is why i think now is the time to have this conversation about vietnam. Im hoping its a national one and im hoping before these gentlemen and their families turned 80, now that their 70, its time. There are many more stories like this in the book which really charge stan parkers beginnings in gary indiana is the son of an ironworker through his childhood, moving around the country, and as my own father pointed out to me which he read it and he enjoyed it and hes a tough reader, he said this book is really about stans parents. I had had a hunch writing it why i was so fascinated by his boyhood. You will see some scenes in the book where his father and mother love him unconditionally and create a young man in a family that is robust and healthy, and a lot of that is what got people like stan through this war. Theres a sense of in thi innocence of the book begins in. It ends back in acceptance and reduction. The journey of the book is from, theres this long dark night of the soul in between. It ends in 2014 when stan parker and tom souls and my photographer friend, tony returned to vietnam and with stan and toms help, we returned to some key places. One of the things about the vietnam story that so important is all of us being aware that the veterans have many memories, unlike the world war ii veteran who fought a different kind of ward after day, but moving forward, gaining ground. The combat assault by helicopter changed th vietnam and changed warfare and change the minds and memories of young men fighting it because i imagine we are standing here right now, any moment helicopter lands, we get on, we fly 15 miles out, we get off, we do something intense and terrifying and in the end, incredibly meaningful to us in ways we dont understand we get back on helicopter and come back here. Six hours later we go off in the other direction. You just do that day after day. Going back to vietnam was an important, it is an important process for a lot of veterans to look at the ground and start to connect the dots, i highly recommend that journey for anyone who has the slightest bit of trepidation. It turned out to be quite an amazing experience. I want to play something now about that journey back just one moment. This is me walking up the draw from january 30, about 4 00 a. M. This is outside the village of highline. The north vietnamese were running up this health for these positions. We were right over here. They came up that draw. Who are you i say. [inaudible] they appear nighttime and killed one by one. When you follow them here, you came and you kill them and they had to be killed. You knew the reason why you come here. If they hadnt shot him, we would not have known they were here. You were wounded and the american soldiers had to burn things. It was a little further back from that, maybe only 25 meters and finally i was able to raise up and shoot the wall across this road and there was a bunker there. It was attached to house. It was a thatched hut and the bunker was part of it and it went into the bunker and blew up and i got up and went over there and as a finished off the other soldiers came running and he iran right up beside me. This is great. I tell you what. My days made. Thank you for watching that. I think it gives a sense of the journey that is the latter part of the book. Without further ado, i would like to bring up stan parker himself and his good buddy john lucas. They have just reunited after 50 years, just several days ago. It warms my heart so much to have john and his wife sharon and if they wouldnt mind sitting appear on the stools and we can just ask some questions. Weve not done this before and so we will take it as it comes. Everyone please welcome stan parker and john lucas. [applause] is to ensure that. Hello. Welcome to this experience. Thank you for being here. [applause] ill give you little feedback on what brought us together. When we started doing the book, i had a list of everybody who was in echo company, and i had kept it for 40 some years and i dont know why he kept it, but i just did. I was doing other things and i started writing some of my own memoirs on what was going on over there. When i got hooked up with doug , we were trying to locate some of the other guys. I was in contact with two or three of them, but at one time there were 40 some of us and i know that three had been killed while we were over there and a number had been badly wounded and weve lost contact so doug took the set of orders and was able to track down, through a private detective, a bunch of them, and when he called me up, he would give me these names, ive got soandso and soandso and im going down the list and write these down and heres john lucas. We used to call him ranger john because he was the ranger in our platoon. He was ranger qualified. We look to him for advice and experience because he had the special training we needed. So anyway i said i was a minute call these and i called some of the numbers but they, individuals didnt live there or the number was disconnected and there were 45 that i did make contact with but i called johns number and he answered and i said my name is stan parker and i said you remember who i am. He said i sure do. Wow. We got to talking on the phone and we talked for several hours and we decided wed stay in touch and we did. Well, about ten days ago my wife and i came back from florida, we went down there for vacation and we literally got sucked into hurricane irma. Ive got this recording on my phone when i came home and it said this is john and my wife and i are gonna come to colorado, you can be around. Im looking at the date on the phone call and that was a week prior. So i called them and he said we didnt leave yet because no answer but were coming ou