Published by a traditional publisher and that average age is 37 years old. So, i will tell you, bill, you are skewing the numbers very much. Bill walker grew up in knoxville, tennessee and went to the university of virginia for his undergraduate and masters and went off to teach at College Teaching at the university of new orleans and at Lamar University in texas. Then he went into the administration to be a Public Information officer, associate Vice President for Public Information. He was at Gettysberg College and Virginia Tech and finished up his work at william and mary. I first met him in a class on Woodrow Wilson world war one and i know some people in the audience were in that class and other classes like it. As he told the stories of world war i and specifically making thosef o those of us that live in wilsons birthplace understand the meaning of that man and world war i. He talked about the research he was doing for his book in the classes and later on i would see bill around town and i would say bill, how is the book going . And he would say going well. One day i walked into the bookstore excuse me, i walked into a coffee said and said how is the book going and he said i have a publisher. And i thought for years after working in the industry i hope the book industry doesnt chew him up and spit it out because they can be difficult. I said who is your publisher and he said simon and shuster and my jaw dropped to the floor. The firsttime author getting printed by this publisher is amazing. My earlier thoughts were it is great bill got simon and shuster but now i have read the book i think simon and shuster should be glad to have bill walker. So please join me in welcoming bill walker. Thank you so very much. Thank you for so many of my students showing up. I certainly appreciate it and look forward to this. The book is about a battle in france that killed 12 killed and wounded 122,000 in the battle. It has an unusual genesis, if you will. The prologue is called words tongued with fires. Winters are seldom kind in southern pennsylvania. Around thanksgiving snow surges out of the allegheny to cover the battlefield of gettysburg. The sins of power of the death that harbor the town and the college. In 1993, on a bleak winter day, i entered the College Library and first encountered the marginal that would change my life. Searching for information about my great uncle who had been killed in world war one i picked up an old book entitled the American Army and france by general james harbard. After blowing dust from the cover and leafing through the volume i began to notice marginalia and if you know that that is the notes that people often write in the margins of the page, and i began to notice the marginalia signed and inscribed by the author who was a member of the 79th division who fought to bring the war to an end. The major himself led an assault to capture at the site of a top german observe protected by an underground fortress. In several places, parkins marginalia took issue with the books conclusions about the attack. And he challenged readers finally challenged them to turn to the back of the volume to learn the truth. On two empty pages in the rear, harkin wrote, boyd, one of the senior generals of persian, one of only two generals in france in world war one that robert boyd failed to support the attack and the deliberate act caused the death of Many American soldiers. For an instance, i felt like the innocent passerby acosted by the ancient mari skare mariner. Harry grabbed by arm and revealed a harrowing tale. I tried to push the story from my mind over the next few months. As a student of military history i knew the misleading lore of old soldiers. Reaching a zenith in battle and who they are after embroided the tale with extra meaning. I also understood the fog of war and the confusion of combat and how that distorts judgment often. For those reasons, thought ha i harkin had to be mistaken. No general would refuse to assist fellow soldiers. I was skeptical of the charge. I was finally forced to acknowledge the story intrigued me. Disproving parkins, a i set a demanding task of looking into the memior to see if the commander was mentioned. If he discussed the incident, the marginalia might warrant further investigation. Went to persias memoirs and found a description of that. Persing wrote it resulted in failure to capture the mouth. He had pledged not to cast blame but the gentle reproof was telling. I was hooked. I have got to say this really caught my attention of course mentioning the orderers were misunderstoodstood means the orders were right. I pursued with all of the vigor i could imagine. Pondered bookstores and interviewed sons and grandson s and soldiers killed in france. Stood in the trenches of the line and descended in the bunkers where light never shined. I seldom encountered a blind alley. On the few occasions when the search was stalled the discovery of new evidence propelled by investigation forward. These discoveries enabled me to determine the truth about the 79th division, to solve the m mystery and demonstrate long forgotten marginalia to prove the communication beyond the fire of living. When you talk about world war i and i know you will set it up for 1918 when the battle happened but before the battle give us background. It was 1914 when the war started. 1914 the war starts and germany fired the first shot. That is the book that started the quest. The attack was on the battlefield that stretched 20 miles broad. And general boyd disobeyed orders. His disobeadance order killed thousands of troops and i can say he is probably responsible for killing thousands of troops. He charged and parkin said that he got all of the medals from britain, france, belgium, and u. S. But what he really deserved was a long term in military prison. That is pretty hard words if you can think about man who was a major who wrote them. That is what launched by quest. As you can see, as tom said, by 1918 connie spring of 1918, there were 89 million soldiers dead and more civilians, of course. By 1918, hundreds of troops were arriving every month and the final analysis was about two million troops. Everybody believed the war would last until 1919. That is what everyone was expected. We would adjust the line and go into the next year. But the Supreme Commander who was the frenchman came up with a new idea and he believed that the germans were so depleted that we could beat them in 1918. This is his plan. It was to launch a series of offenses against the german. You can see the british were at heap in the north, then the french kicked in, and the americans ended up with what was the toughest, but the most promising offensive and that is the muse argon. The u. S. Drive was supposed to drive 35 miles to cut a rail line that supplied 50 of the munitions for the germans on the western front. If it cut this rail line, the germans would either have to surrender or starve. It was the most promising drive but it most difficult, too. One general said compared with the wilderness compared with the argon the Wilderness Battlefield in Northern Virginia was like a manicured park. Rivers to cross, broad fields where the machine guns could get at the troops. In addition, the germans had used their time to build a hendenburg line named for one of their major generals and it had four defensive positions across france. Each of the four positions had four prince Lines Associated with, of course, barb wire and everything else. This was one of the most stout defenses the world has ever seen. The main thing in the american sector was there was a top secret observitory on the highest hill and that could slow progress of the americans forward and exact a terrible pill. As you can so, the building in the upper left is a ruling manner house. Ificide it, if you look just at the top inside you can see a substructure in there. It was a huge, concrete, and steel tower surrounding a periscope topped by a telescope. On the top floor, it extended to all three floors and out the roof and the germans could use it to spot targets anywhere on the battlefield, the american sector of the battlefield. The bottom picture shows the bottom part of the periscope. So you can see this was a huge thing. The germans were absolutely committed to protecting it. The crown prince of germany built it in 1916 but it remained in place in 1918 and the germans knew an offensive was coming and they were going to use it to blast americans. The plan called for cabture of the cap clr of the observatory. The french declared in 1916 they tried to capture this hill and said it was not possible. It was a little gibraltar. You can see this heavily camouflaged and if you were walking along you would have no knowledge of what you were looking at. It would be a hump in the ground and the next thing you know the machine guns would start firing. In the upper right, you can see a twostory entrance, and i stress entrance to a bunker that held 1,000 men. That was below the level that american artillary could hurt them. You can see the german artillery built in. They were waiting for the word on where to target americans. On the left, perhaps the most difficult thing, if not the deadliest thing, was this. 4060 million shells had been launched by both sides and it made the ground look like the surface of a golf park. In addition, the assault would be launched in the fall and these holes were muddy. So the soldiers who even got at the germans had to go through the muddy battles and holes over barbed wire and trees in the way and this really caused great deal of trouble. This was the attack plan written. You can see here in the middle, the plan was for general boyds third core to go forward with the Fourth Division in a weak sector and cut into the left and surround it from the rear. The 79th division, which is a green division, most of the soldiers had been in the army four months. The real damage would have been done by boyds troops at the rear. Keep in mind the core commander is a man named George Cameron and that will come into play at the end and you will learn something rather amazing about him. There were some firstperson accounts of this by journalist and i found one in leslies illustrator that was published until 1922 and was a weekly news magazine. Kirkland was their staff correspondent on the ground and here is what he said he saw. He said just as we were starting, general persing came out of the barracks to enter his car and we talked for a few minutes and i thought of the rows and rows of military history volumes in the library. The battle then ranging was not a battle of a continent but a worlds battle. If general pershing remained calm under the threat. That is correct. You know, general pershing had a tragedy. His wife and two daughters were killed in a fire earlier and after the fire he closed down emotionally and was a very stern person. Always felt that he should be very optimistic and during this period when the bad things started to happen he did develop some severe depression and had doubts on his own. What happened to the plan . The plan, it is very interesting. You can see that the 79th was going toward the center but the 74th was supposed to surround montfaucon from the rear. Boyd changed the order. He wanted to capture the glory on the first day and told his men dont worry about anything to the side. We will go straight ahead. You can see where the floor is up there that they were the division that went the farthest on the first day. That is a great achievement according to military people. During that day, there were two golden opportunities to attack montfaucon. You can see germans were protecting them. They can have taken up the hill before the 79th came into combat. The Brigade Commander ordered that battalion to come across the line into his sector and continue to the front. Boyd was galloping for glory as they might say. Later in the afternoon, a general who commanded the 8th briga brigade knew what happened in the orders. In a swift way they march around and in effect he had to ask his commander for permission and asked for that and got the permission and started to make the movement. Boyd interceded and stopped the movement. The observatory lasted and using that artillery they slowed the americans and rushed to the front and halted the offensive in its tracks. Pershing was furious and blamed the 79th. You must know general boyd was an old friend from west point days. He said it is holding up the entire observatory. The biggest rulings are the church and the observatory is on the far left. You can see the building on the horizon. It was a horrible fight. They lost about 1500 people going up that hill. This regimen was from baltimore and caed baltimores own. They lost a lot of troops. After the battle, pershing relieved cameron. He was demoted to the rank of colonel from twostar general and moved and retired from stanton, virginia later and i didnt know that. It was an ominous delay. The general wrote in his diary and said already in the evening the danger was averted. That is, he knew he stopped the attack and brought up the reserves. As you know, time equates to lies. For the next three weeks, the americans were forced to fight trench warfare to restart this offensive. I did a, you know, just to give you a sense. 122,000 americans were killed and wounded in his battle. If you kept the history books, most history books tell you this was a huge american victory and we won the war. Well the truth is, unfortunately, we never took the objective and cut that rail line. We were near the rail line but did not cut it. It was sent to a quite sector shortly after the initial battle. There were rumors it was going to be broken up because no one wanted it serve. Generations of historians have flamed the 79th and said the soldiers were not prepared for what they had to do and they were blamed. There are still books blaming the 79th for this debacle. They were later redeemed. They took another ridge and fought to the top of it in good order and drove the germans off after a vicious threeday battle. It wasnt recognized as redemption for the pro79th. As a result, the offensive is still the biggest and bloodiest battle of u. S. History. 1. 2 million involved and 122,000 casualties. The next biggest is the battle of the bulge in world war ii and that is where dday falls. A proximate example of how this measures up. The invasion of iraq there were about 300,000 american troops. So this was four times larger than the invasion of iraq. Lets go back it the mystery and cover up. How did you walk your way through so you could make the argument successfully . Quite an intellectual puzzle. I look back on it these 20 years from the time i found this to unravel this. It is an amazing thing and the thing that put me on the path parkers affidavit. Here is the only picture i know to exist of him. I got this from his grandson. He is quite an uncommon man. Came from pittsburgh, earned a bachelor at harvard in the same class that Franklin Roosevelt graduated. Went to a year of law school at harvard until board out of his mind with authorities and contracts and decided to go back and get into, i can see doug adegregreedegrees agrees wit to get into business with his family that supplied the Steel Industry with equipment. He was fascinating from his boyhood with military things. The grand army of the republic met in pittsburgh and he was able to meet soldiers from the civil war and was fascinated. When war was imminent, he underwent training at what was called the plattsburg plan which gave leadership training to men who might be expected it serve as officers in the army. Perry, in the second assault i told you about, was leading his fen men and was always out front with them. He was wounded four times by a german machine gun and couldnt be moved and the germans captured him and led him to captivity. We won the distinguish cross and the legion of honor which are significant awards for valor. After the war, he became obsessed for montfaucon and with boyd. He attended a reunion in 1936 or 1937 and his chaplain told him about the refusing to obey or r orders and assist american soldiers on the battlefield. He became incensed and tried his best to determine whether it was true. The records were closed and he could not get through them. He was left without an option. I found pershings memiors memory and found he had been given assignments to write the chapter. And Dwight Eisenhower wrote about the montfaucon and said the Fourth Division failed to turn montfaucon. Interestingly enough, in the library of congress, the draft shows pershing struck that fourth write statement out and substituted language that obfuscated who was to blame. He substituted the language below through a misinterpretation. When you see the passing voice appear anywhere, you know that the author of that language is probably trying to dodge some reality that he does not want to face up to. It is as though, and we have heard this hundreds of times, mistakes were made. Here are the two orders. You can see the original orders that will turn montfaucon by coming within the zone of action of ccore and that is camerons core. It says they will assist the 79th not by advancing into the area of the 79th, not by surrounding montfaucon from the ear, but by moving as rapidly forward as possible. This is just remarkable. No one had noticed this before. So instead of surrounding montfaucon here they just charged forward and they were the division and he was proud they were the division. You can see the 79th stalled in front of montfaucon. At this point, and there is a new name and i actually mentioned it a few minutes ago and that is a man named booth. Booth was an honest general, had not again to west point, came up through the ranks, started in the Colorado National guard before the turn of the century. He had seen all of these shenanigans and witnessed them. He was the fellow who tried to rescue the situation by moving troops into the montfaucon. He felt after the war that he was going to unfortunately his division would be blamed if the correct interpretation were applied. So he began a 20year investigation on his own, he was still in the army, but he was a brave man and began to write his colleagues and he compiled a pile of 50 letters and that pile is in the national archives. It has been viewed by people before but it is an awfully difficult group of letters to understand. I finally took them and it took me two months t