Founding director of the dale center for the study of war and society. He has several major publications, including vietnams forgotten army heroism and betrayal in the aavin for which he won the society for military histories book award. So dr. Rice, i know i mispronounced part of that. But take it away. Good afternoon. I have the today of hosting the america war panel here at the mississippi book festival. And i would like to thank the festivals organizers especially ellen rogers, who we saw earlier. Shes wearing this beautiful dress with butterflies on it. Yall thank her if you see her and course would like to thank the audience members here and in who are in person on cspan for joining us today. Yall are in a treat. We get yall in for a treat. We get to talk about for that cover the entire span of u. S. Military history, all the way from how the creeks were up as a nation, all the way up to Operation Iraqi freedom and beyond. And 2003. First, id like to introduce our panelists in order that they appear in your program, which also be the order in which ill throw some airway first today to my far right is emily lufkin, who worked as a family physician on the Navajo Nation for many years, then taught science and math in rural colorado. Shes the author of the poetry collection manifold poetry of mathematics. I dont understand poetry or mathematics. I would be impressed to read that some point and her poems have appeared journals and anthologies today. Shes here to discuss her book titled thousand paces left behind one soldiers account of jungle in World War Two burma. Next is dr. Heather marie stir, a colleague mine in the History Department at the university of southern mississippi and a senior fellow and southern. Dale center for the study of war and. Shes the author many books. I mentioned to here saigon at war South Vietnam and the global sixties and combat women and gender in the vietnam war era. And today stir is here to discuss her new book titled 21 days to baghdad general Buford Blount and Third Infantry Division in the iraq war. Next up to my left is peter cozzens, whos the author or editor of 18 acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the indian wars of the American West and a hes also a member of the Advisory Council for the lincoln prize. In 2002, he was awarded American ForeignService Associate highest honor. The william risk award given annually one of the four as to the one Foreign Service officer for their exemplary moral courage, integrity and creative dissent. Today, peter is here to discuss his newest book titled a brutal Andrew Jackson the creek indians and the epic war for the american south. Our final panelist today, right to my immediate is chris wimmer, whos the creator, host and lead of the legends of the old west, a long form narrative that tells true stories. The American West. He has a masters degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite school of journalism at Arizona State university and has won numerous local, state and National Awards for his writing. Today, chris is here to discuss his first book, titled the summer of 1876. Now lets begin our discussion and i proposed deal with the books in order that. The authors were just introduced, which means ill throw a couple of questions to emily lutton first. For those of you who have not had a chance to her book, emilys a thousand pieces left behind is the story of detachment one or one of the army that operated behind japanese lines in the burma theater of World War Two, a unit in which her father served the japanese had rolled to victories against us and the british in southeast ever since pearl harbor, leaving on the military ropes. And one of our first local counterattacks was through the use of special operators had the daunting task of penetrate behind the japanese lines and sowing chaos in the nearly trackless jungles of burma. The story of a thousand paces left behind as one of great success, operating all odds and fearful terrain alongside a local group called the kachin people knew i was going get that wrong. And my first question for emily today is why do you think your fathers was so successful against such a long odds . What they do right so as you mentioned, this is sort of a memoir was a long time coming, but dictated into a tape recorder, 60 years after the fact. But he was for the majority of the in burma, which is now called myanmar. But for the purposes of the book, we say burma because thats what all the literature and referred to at the time. The americans were in the northern part of burma which is kachin state and the oasis and other intelligence Gathering Services also stands for offices Strategic Services for anybody who doesnt might not know it was sort of a military Intelligence Group but they also later in the war had the mandate to cause trouble in addition to just getting information and they were very successful in that. And i think the underlying thread through his book that he mentions a lot is that the most important thing he did there was learn language of the local people, ask for their advice and he and others in oasis one on one were very respectful of the culture of the people and the he as a 21 year old, figured that the way to survive to any or town that he went to, he would ask elders if they would consider going with him. His advisors. And so in of his adventure years there he always had a group of the kitchen words along the elder advisors who went with him. And i think this was really key. The extraordinary they had where they had, i think the oasis as a whole probably had less than a thousand casualties. And they there were at least 15,000 japanese casualties that conflict. And part of it was, or most of it was probably because of the kitchen people and the help that they gave us. And a lot of us dont know that, but thats part of the reason we wanted to get the book out. The next question i want to ask that china, burma, india, as is now and is probably the least research, especially in the u. S. Theater of of World War Two. And i teach a class on World War Two and the kachin people are even more underresearched than i had never even heard of. And which i hate to admit, somebody who gives final exams on World War Two, who were. They were. And why are they so understudied as well . Well, there are lot of ethnic groups in myanmar. People probably know theres many different people. And even in northern burma, this group is the Largest Group in the area where the americans, which is the very north of burma, the british, were a little to the south of there and. So they were a good group to affiliate with because they didnt want anyone invading and their country and the japanese had already started to do this and they were already fighting at that point. When we arrived and so they were a natural ally and they did a lot for us. So real undersung heroes of that war. Now, your dad actually had this wonderful chance to go back to burma to reconnect with some of these people. Long ago, after the war, how long after the war was that . And what was it like for your dad to go back . Did he meet anybody hed actually served with, which would be so fascinating. Yes, they are. So all of the went to what was this one on one veterans wanted to do something for the kitchen for a long time and they mostly werent able to for lots of different reasons, political reasons and, things going on in in myanmar, but when they all reached retirement age and most of family obligations were out of the way. They started and at that time there was a little window what was happening in burma also. So they started some projects to help the kitchens and about three different projects one was brick and mortar schools. One was they translated book where there is no doctor and two kitchen, which is david warner book thats been around for a while and they distributed those. But the main project they did was something called project old soldier, which was a farm promoting thing they had. They got see aids and they got expertise from agricultural in the United States and they went over. So this was in about in the midnight is from the mid from 96 i think until the last hour, says one of one veteran who was involved, died in 2017. They kept this Program Going and they met a lot of people who were in his battalion in but most of the ones that had been in positions he knew had already died. But there there were a lot of people who had with him who he got to visit. And it was really a wonderful experience. Now youve had a chance to read the book. Youll understand that the genesis of it dates all the way back to your father, telling stories when you were young. Whats it like to write a book, your father . And what kind of process did you have to go through to collect those stories . Because no, your memory of some of those campfire stories had to be a little perishable. How did you go back and get them all . So when became apparent that my dad was not going to write his book, we my youngest brother, sat him down when the recorder and a map of burma was very detailed. We just went through and looked at where he went and he told all his stories and we had that those 17 tapes transcribed and with about 800 pages of stories. And while he was still, we sat down with him and started working on editing. And for a couple of years edited and then even after he died, we continued to edit and fact check. And so yes some of the stories we didnt include any second hand stories really anything that he told it had happened to somebody else. We just stuck with what had happened to him. And then we tried as best we could to fact check. Then most of the people by that time had gone, so it was hard to do that. There are some books we referred to. There was a book by ray piers, who was his commanding called behind the burma road. Then there are some other books that there was a historian of ours, this one, a one, troy sac, and he wrote a book and we used those to kind of. To touch base, but it was difficult then we just tried to do the best we could and so if you read it, youll know that its what it is. Its an oral history told by an old guy, had a lot of great war stories, but some really good, i think, into war on foreign soil and what we can do when we when we do that and we have to now sadly for each one of these great books, i only have about 10 minutes worth of questions before i can have to move on to the next one. So this is going to have to be last for this one. But if you read the book, it has so many Great Stories in it too. Two of my favorites were your dad getting shot in the by a bullet ricochet and a and a tiger attacking people of all. Do you have a favorite little story that just stuck with you the most . I do. I have a my favorite story is is the story in the book called guide for general morale and yeah, my dad was sent a message, stillwell, that he needed to provide a a guide across this tract of just flat. So real briefly went to his elders asked can you get me a guide . And they all said no, cant. No one has been across there. They said there was guy who hunted in there. But. But hes dead. And then one of them said, oh, but he had a son. Maybe he could guide you. So they bring his son up and his son is 12. And since over there, the average height used to be about five, four. Hes also very tiny and we used to love to hear this story when we were kids, because this little. Says, yes, i can do this. And so my dad takes in general morale and morale kind of looks at him and, uh, but he he says, okay. And so this child leads them 40 miles of jungle and its kind of a great and very sort of interesting story because it tells you a little the people there, how responsible they are at such an early age and how they know so much about the jungle. Its a its a good its my favorite. And of course, the morale she refers to is the famous morale of merrills marauders. So its a big thing for a 12 year old to do well naptime heather sturt to get in the hot seat and i was going to say nobody here has had a chance to read dr. Shers book because it isnt out yet its this wonderful thing when you first get to hold your book in your hand and i got to see dr. Sturt hold her book for her first time in her hand the day that book is 21 days to baghdad, which focuses Operation Iraqi freedom through the career and eyes of general Buford Blount, who led the us forces of the Third Infantry Division into baghdad in 2003. Its a book thats part biography and part battle and how does the character Buford Blount hold that together . Because he has a very complicated history. Yeah. So the first thing that drew me to this project was general blunt himself. Hes a Family History. One of his sisters did genealogy of the family, and she was able to trace their ancestry back to a couple of brothers who fought at the battle of hastings in 1066. So they have a long military tradition in their family. They have had and have had ancestors who fought in almost u. S. War since, the american revolution. And so that Family History made him fascinating to me as i got to know him and and learn that he also has deep roots in mississippi they were blood relatives that were in mississippi as early as the beginning of the 19th century, eventually settled in the bass field area. General didnt really grow up in mississippi though, because his father was career military, so he lived germany. He went to high school in london. And so he just had a fascinating life himself as the son, a career military officer there. His dad was in the air force after war two and the cold war. And so i was interested in general blunt himself. And then i got to talk to him, especially about the invasion of iraq and the drive baghdad. It became very clear to me how central he was to what went on on the ground in, the invasion from crossing kuwait into iraq all the way to getting into. And ill give three examples of that. Well, one was he made the decision early to split the division in, take two routes towards baghdad. One that would be taking a paved road, a highway, and the other that the tanks and other tracked vehicles through the western desert. His thought was, you know, weve got 10,000 vehicles that need need to get from kuwait to baghdad, more than 300 kilometers. We can do that all up one paved road. And thats to take us a long time. Or we can split in the tanks or the tracked vehicles handle going on to the sand and meet up just outside of baghdad before the invasion. The reason why he came up with that is because he spent several years serving with the u. S. Army in saudi arabia. He was, the advisor to the modernization of the Saudi National guard, and he talked about being in his office in riyadh and imagining desert warfare and particularly imagining tank desert. And it was from that experience that he realized that we could actually do this and get all of our vehicles to baghdad more quickly. He sold it to his superiors and they and the division did that. Another example of something that he did that was very significant how the invasion played out is that he pushed for speed speed in terms of getting to baghdad, any waiting the enemy to regroup up to figure out what u. S. Forces are doing to make a plan. And he always push speed even when others might caution were not sure about through this area. I dont know if we can go through quickly. He always pushed speed and so therefore the division made it to baghdad in 21 days a a drive that was initially thought might take six months. They did in three weeks. And then the third example that shows how significant he was to what happened in the drive to baghdad is that the third id was not initially supposed actually go into baghdad. They were supposed to get just outside the city and then the 101st airborne was going to go in to baghdad. But blunt realized, is that one of the areas where the iraqis actually had some success against u. S. Forces was with their antiaircraft forces, that they were shooting down and really getting an american airpower in ways that the americans hadnt expected. So general blunt went to his superiors and said, a, an air assault in to baghdad, the iraqis are going to have a chance, really get get at us. And get in the way of us being successful in an air assault. Let the third i. D. Make a land assault into baghdad were weve trained for this. Were prepared for this. And i know my division can make this happen. And again, his superiors gave him the green light. And so the third id ended up being the division that the first into baghdad. So he it became very clear to me as was getting to know him and talking to him, that as a division commander, he actually was very significant to how the invasion of and the drive to baghdad and the entry into baghdad played out, of course, the conquest of baghdad. So and really unexpectedly was an incredible military feat for what blanton, his Third Infantry Division was be able to pull off. But of course, sadly, all know the war did not end. There rather devolved into a long and frustrating insurgency. What did blunt think of that transformation, and what did he think that for his war . Was this war a success or failure . Ken know he as a player in the war, he has to be guarded about that. But as a historian, perhaps you could weigh a little more. Well, when he saw the division arrived in baghdad, they completed their missions. The 30th division was told, your mission is well, initially it was to get to the outskirts of, baghdad, than it is to get into baghdad, secure the city. And that is the mission. That was the mission that the division trained for. That was the mission that division executed. But once the was in baghdad, it became clear that there wasnt a plan for. What happened next . And part of the reason for that