[inaudible conversations] betty evening everyone. Rainy daybooks International World war i Museum Missouri are pleased to welcome Andrew Carroll editor of several best sellers. Also edited on the pro bono basis operation homecoming for girl which inspires the Emmy Award Winning film and the same name. The of that honors veterans with those wartime correspondence in more than 40 countries and collected an estimated 100,000 previously unpublished letters in emails. The legacy project has been renamed the center for america and is now part of the centers director currently embarking on the campaign to preserve the least 1 million correspondence to talk about his fellow book of my fellow soldiers. En to also from world war i from the spring and summer on pbs. Andrew carroll. [applause] betty evening i really appreciated. On those great independent bookstores and in setting this all up and many times as a researcher aisle is love coming back here and want to give the behindthescenes but i do want to talk about the Overall Campaign is so integral to the creation of a book on to show you some extremely rare and breathtaking and i also love so feel free to ask questions for if they want to talk after words. Above to discuss that with you. To go to countries around the world of for term correspondence one of the most real place was baghdad. With those military escorts by some of these four young iraqi men standing menu they spoke english and theyre really wanted to talk to them. But i wanted to talk about the war in their culture and history if i was a little hesitant just walking up to them and i said i will never have the opportunity again so want to introduce myself and i was curious if i could talk with them and they looked at me and at each other. Then one of the and men looked like he was about to Say Something then held back and i simply ask me anything he said who were your favor british authors . [laughter] there is a war going on around us and this is the question he wanted to know. I thought this is a slamdunk for cars started to think and not one name came to mind little beads of sweat on my forehead i thought just the many british author and stood there but i cannot think of a single name sarah started to zero suggestions after a painfully long period of silence they came up with the name all by myself, shakespeare. [laughter] as awkward as it was it help to break the i. C. E. With a fascinating conversation. So i really had to go to the airport i was halfway around the world and then to have a sentimental value but i was never really asked of the correspondence and he told me about his brother and he wrote home he hated the army but he cannot say that in the letter. And simply burned them all. So that stays with me what about correspondence . And to be perfectly blunt i did not like history growing up. It was tedious memorization of names and dates and places then something extraordinary happened our consulate burned to the ground and nobody was hurt but everything we had went up in smoke. So back then was in photographs and letters for god forever. Then we got a call from a distant cousin so we just wanted to check to see how theyre doing. Head irreplaceable family items are gone. And to come across a letter and ended of sending me a copy. From 1945 by saw something today to make me realize why were over here fighting though board. He goes into graphic detail about going to the concentration camps that were just liberated. It does give very graphic and will never forget holding this onionskin correspondence thinking how fragile that was the significance of the weight of the words and of course, will return it to you and said just keep at or probably throw it out anyway. Instead my grandfather just read a letter at the 50th wedding anniversary in they wrote the letter and they were saying. So this is how it began with wordofmouth. So i reached out to dear abby because she continues to write about veterans and military. To encourage americans because a lot of them are throwing them away. I rented out a post office box were starting this project. Lets do this. And what first struck me were the cover letters. I wasnt expecting that. These were saying why they were sending in the letters and one woman wrote to me and said that the letters her brother had written and she explained my brother is gone, hes missing and then she put parenthetically not a pow. He came back from the war but he was so traumatized and what he had seen and experienced that one day he walked off the front door and we havent been able to find him since and she interred time and time again i just want someone to remember who he was. They gave context to those that were not immediately apparent. It begins here i am and this is from the philippines november 1944. The whole middle part of the letter is gone and at the bottom it says i hope so. They might censor this letter. [laughter] i have seen letters where its the name of a ship cut out, somewhat of a detail. But they gave away the specific campaign. And from his brother who sent in, what i learned is he would take a piece of paper, he did this time and time again, write the last line, blame the sensors and its all because he hated writing letters home and this was easier. [laughter] for the Service Members that decided to write something, the history that they were witness to was extraordinary. Our antiaircraft guns he is trapped in the engine room of the ship i can hear them screaming over the intercom you look at the upper righthand rid corner december 7, 1941 uss new orleans pearl harbor. Hes right there in the eye of the storm describing what its like it because he was trapped in the engine room there was nowhere for him to go. Because we get letters and emails from different generations use the piece echoes over time people had similar experiences and one of the most powerful was 14 pages handwritten and its by a young woman who was also witness to one of the most horrific days in American History and she writes a letter to her parents bought the way that this fellow did in world war ii, but soon after it happened and shes writing a letter to her parents narrating almost like a short story begins in a business meeting almost like the circumstance that a speaker of a hundred people. And again shes describing it in first person. We hear a massive boom outside and we talk among ourselve talks and realize theres probably construction in the building next door. So they go back to the meeting and we are sitting there and suddenly there are sirens getting louder and louder and then we hear people screaming. Finally somebody in the audience stands up and says to the speaker im sorry to interrupt you i dont need to be rude but can we see what is going on so they look at these windows with curtains and the moment they pull them back they look up and see the second plane hitting the World Trade Center and they are in the marriott right next door. So she goes on to describe in very vivid detail they are told to evacuate the building and its like hes seen a ghost. We are being told we have to evacuate. You cannot see whats out there. Then they are told by the police to get out 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 she goes into detail about what she saw and how she was caught up in the smoke and debris. I noticed these two little stains on them and i thought i hope we didnt do anything to this. I have to be up front i noticed a piece water stains. Were those there before and she said yes those were my tears i was crying when i wrote this. People assume going back to the Second World War but because the censorship as the letters demonstrate they got around censorship but even in some letters there is an unsuspecting message. This is a letter written apri april 291945 actually its the letterhead he was already a way into begins my beloved another sunday and we are still apart. Just wondering how many days will be like this. This. Mainly im worried about you and aunt ruth. Pretty common expression of affection and worry. Then we got the code sheet and when i start a letter start and look for the code name on this site are all the fictitious names in truth, god, philippines, and he goes down the list. So in a way its set up more thahad more thanits lead on to. We have letters in desert storm and letters from the silver war and from korea because it was written during a snowstorm but its the most dynamic that we have the shows this and its from a soldier writing to a friend about a close call where a shell dropped right next to them so he is telling his friend about this close call he had and he survives but this is the bullet hole right through the letter. Those are best inch marks and again he didnt survive. Its the most egalitarian art form there is. One of the most powerful letters ive come across this by a slave from eastgate freedom and joined the union army and found out his regimen by sheer coincidence was bearing down on the plantation where his daughter was still held so as they were approaching in 1964 he wrote this letter to a former master. I want you to understand mary is my child and a godgiven right to my own. We are making about 1,000 black troops and when we come we will lead to the slaveholdinleave itg rebels they dont expect to read them route or branch. I also want to pay 40 for my own child but im glad now he is not accepted so you hold out as long as you can and when i come after i will have a power and authority to bring her away and execute vengeance on those that hold my child. You will then know how to speak to me. Not all of the correspondence as we get are furious. There is a lot to. One is named sharon allen serving in iraq and she wrote an email about kind of a campfire singalong with a group of kurdish soldiers that had slightly misinterpreted the famous beatles song that we think of to do with finding peace and serenity in the world and they thought it was about a little green vegetable. I am not going to sing this but i will give you a sign of how it happened. July, 2004. The kurds love us. If one of the guys brought his guitar around and played music for them. Sometimes they try to join in. You havent lived until youve seen a bunch of kurdish soldiers complete with ak47s singing with gusto as they mingled the beatles let it be. When i find myself in trouble mary mother comes to me speaking words of wisdom little p. Little p. They really got into it. Whisper words of wisdom little p. That was a good day. [laughter] bought all the letters we have also combat situated were written in a war zone and one of those letters ive come across a this from korea a young kid about 19yearsold he finally realized he was on his way back home and he wrote this to his family dear everybody im coming home it is official as of this morning thermorning it will be e before i crash in the door a few weeks but im coming home. Im looking forward to seeing you again and your expressions when you see me. I spent 12 months over year, the longest 30 years in my life. There were times i would have traded my soul for a drink of cold water or a cup of hot coffee that im coming home now. We break our backs trying to help them carry it but what about those you cant see, the phantoms, the nightmares, the ghosts in your head. Im going to tell you now you will meet a lot of patience with me, patience and understanding. One of the correspondence as is by a woman whose son charles was caught in th an ambush in iraq d lost his leg a very athletic young man, and this was a grave injury. She sent this kind of email journal to other members of the family. I brought charles home from walter reed and everything had gone through the wash so i dumped the clothes on the bed to fold them. It was late and i was quite weary so i wanted to get to bed to try for the better nights sleep than i have bee had been g before. I found one saw, just one. I folded the rest of my clothes but still just the one without even thinking i went back to the laundry room an and search nothg was there. I looked between the washer and dryer in case i got the unloading process. Still, my tidier and preoccupied mind did not get it as i walked back with on one and hand in hae like a punch in the gut. There was no other sock. I stood there in my bedroom and clutch of one socks and in an involuntary moan came from my throat but originated in my heart. This was an email and i cannot emphasize enough what i say letters i do mean emails. I will say there is something rather dynamic in importance out of handprinted letter. When i was in iraq i saw a young soldier standing in front of a video camera and when he was finished i asked them i dont mean to interrupt you this is not the original. It would probably be obsolete within ten to 15 years which many vietnam troops did in the audio recordings. This is from the american revolution. The oldest letter that we have in existence. And it is in this pristine as it was written back in 1775. Moving on to general pershing in world war i. Like Many Americans a survey after survey has shown i was not particularly interested in this conflict even after i started the war letters project. After we moved out of the house that burned down, we moved into another part of washington called Spring Valley by the american university. When the war was over they dumped all that the munitions in the ground and didnt put up any signs in the area back then. All around this area this is what intrigued me about world war i an and will be focusing on the project and the book and i will say as passionate as i feel about these tw two im hoping my next book doesnt involve the house burning down or men showing up in biohazard suits. I love this quote that was in ththe theater and desist seven years after the first visit where they found more of this and it had the bureau that said the family with children that might ingest soil should have more than those that dont suspend duty to spend much time in th the dirksen as long as yoo not eat it you are okay. [laughter] to me, the sort of distant figure when i began all of this was to be perfectly honest almost as boring as the word itself until i started to learn his personal story. And whats especially stuck out about general pershing he went for Free Education and barely got in as a kind of interesting character after all this when he was a senior officer this was august 1915. Their three daughters and their young boy he wanted them to stay there because it would have been safe. He was in mexico because across the border they were going with other troops. The morning of august 27 a phone call came into the headquarters at fort bliss and a reporter from a briefly said i need to get a quote from the general about a fiveyear and pershing actually picked up his phone and said was fire. Reporter suddenly realized who he was talking to and said have you not heard the news and he said no i have no idea what youre talking about and a reporter from the ap said im so sorry. We dont want to tell you this, but your wife and your three little girls are all gone. They all died in a house fire and only warren was pulled out alive and conscious. And suddenly, pershing became human to be in someone i wanted to learn more about and knowing from that day on as he went to the war in the train and build the army and them to victory in the allies that he was carrying this enormous grief with them, so i started looking for the correspondence is that he wrote and i actually came across it because the. In fact pershing outranks all of them and is the only general American History to be given essentially a six star in his lifetime and is a fascinating character but in this letter that is dated 1915 this is out of the fire writing to his wifes best friend and they are both still grieving and this was a revelation because in the letter, pershing says he doesnt know of his loss that includes his sister in hi and his prayery night and i just cannot tell him. He thinks they are in cheyenne vacationing with his grandparents. He suddenly became not the rigid witbut more of a statute of a m, but a real human being who showed empathy and times of crisis. Wilson was in no mood and called him a coward, pacifist and all these others that he said over his four boys. He wanted to become a pilot and wrote these incredible letters i quote from him about their experiences and on july 14, 1918, he was shot down and killed and was one of the first to reach out. My deepest sympathy perhaps realizing what such a loss means as anyone and he responded i am immensely touched by your letter. Youve suffered more sorrow and have a splendid courage i should be ashamed of myself if i do nod not try any lesser way to emulate that courage because of the status he received letters and telegrams around the country from other heads of state and so forth. Im just going to quote from a few sentences of almost this fourpage letter quintin was her baby blues the last child left. The night before he sailed, a year ago, she did as she has always done and went upstairs to talk him into bed, laughing, gentle hearted boy. He was thoughtful and considerate of those he came into contact with. Hard to open letters from people you know are dead. The time difference, three weeks at the front, and average, a man was killed every day. Joy in the great adventure. He was engaged to a beautiful girl, it is heartbreaking for her and his mother. They both said would rather have them never come back. And at the crest of life in the glory of don. Despite Theodore Roosevelts bravado, almost hardened mrs. Roosevelt. And he died almost of a broken heart. Before he passed away, he was seen at the stables in the oyster bay home with horses clinton was riding and he would sit there, saying to himself the child nickname he had given his son. They left his body in europe where he was buried but retrieved the plane that is on display. My fellow soldiers, and i want to introduce you to the nurse, starting with her training, and then going into combat, and in the early letter she wanted to see action. She was gung ho to get to the front and participate and. Most of them are fed through the inserted through their nostrils and directly to wrote a speech to the help of the feedin the bf women thafeeding uponanother tae liquid into the finals often joking about the e the finals, often joking about the enormous capacity someone may possess. Their speech is incoherent and hard to understand. This must be the most pitiful part of war. They are so happy and carefree, bravely enduring until physical suffering well having an outer mystic concern but how different it will be to return to civilian life. And journals and letters with a visit from woodrow wilson, and came to the hospital, and visited all the wars and i want to make sure, and wilson said wait a minute. We have something you will lock onto. They cant stay long. Wilson said take it the