Question about that when he died, he was utterly inconsolable. Though he tried to console his children, it was a pretty tone deaf letter to his other son and he was saying whatever you have to make it half but to the soldiers. Its a heartbreaking moment he felt completely responsible for his sons death. [inaudible] microphone o microphone or i will shout it out again. Which of the wise did you wiu find the most abound of material did which was the most difficult . Most didnt keep their wives letters because they were in the field and couldnt you or they would protectively destroy them so they couldn could be capturd read. But he saved all of his wifes letters. He wrote her a letter in which he said i will tear every one of your letters up because every ounce on the march tiles and he didnt. That is the most complete. It was astonishing because the two of them were incredibly beautiful writers and if you do nothing else than find and read the letters you will have done yourself a favor. The one you first wrote to president lincoln and the one in disfavored of the four. I had the most information. Belinda was the most difficult to write only five by julia grant and jessie fremont. The fact that mcclellan extracted a promise every single day they were a part meant you could read the letters because when you write to somebody you are reacting. People have read the letters saved unbelievably and allowed to be published. They read about letters to understanthe letters tounderstat about other people. I think im the first one. Onconce grant left the army afta drinking binge, because he didnt want jjuliett to know about the drinking and went home and tried to work on other things can you address the role and knowledge of the drinking . Absolutely. When hes stationed at this remote and isolated post in Washington State it was a time where there is evidence that he was drinking the evidence is almost Crystal Clear he was drinking because he was so depressed he was hearing nothing from julia. Other men were getting letters from their wives and he was even getting letters from other people in his family. It took more than six months to learn he had a son. She didnt write to him as much as he would imagine and he became very depressed and he drank. On the same day he resigned from the army into this because apparently he had been found of drundrunk as a paymaster. It revolves around the fact people claim they brought julia to live with grand that isnt true because he was trying from the first day of the war to have her with hi him all long and sot wasnt in response to the need to keep him from drinking, it was his own nee needed to have r there and desire. There are clearly a lot of stories about his drunken spre sprees. They would absolutely not supported by the facts. Congratulations. Hispanic did you also speak to what happened in the distancerer had and what part of the book did you wish was in there . I convinced the publisher people would want to know that. What happened is they were made incredibly wealthy because they finally did so in the valley for more than 4 million which at that time was worth more at thio time a lot more. They lost all so jessie began writing stories and books. Although she would never writ wa link and after what he did toe her husband. He did get a pension after the war that he died within a week of having been awarded to them, and so. He died in a flat in new york city and because they couldnt afford to send his body back to california, he was buried on the hudson river across. That mcclellans, general maclachlan died suddenly of a heart attack that same year grants guide. Ck the s then ally. She knew what was going on and allowed it to happen but she lived the rest of her life in france. Was that a villa owned by her daughter and soninla soninly get namehad named after her huss greatest victory. Or that he would consider it grybody elses victory. The shermans as i said. They were threatening the Transcontinental Railroad and she was doing indian missionary work in washington. Her husband there have been a lot of talk and there is evidence of that but its clear that he loved her dearly and atr the last moment he had the last rites that overtime as the mother would have wished wase. Done. The grants you probably know more about them than any other. He did go on to become president and gave up his military pension when he became president. Julie about being the first lady. After the second term they went on a tour in europe and in the memoir it takes up more space than any other part of her life with all the things she bought an and eight. But then disaster struck. First the Financial Firm that he invested in. They sold everything except one of his words but they later presented at the smithsonian and diffusion. Within a few months o of data, conduct that he had throat cancer. He died 11 months later. During the months he wrote personal memoirs of ulysses s. Grant, more than a thousand pages in order to make money because as i said he gave up hi military pension to become president and there was no president ial pension at that time. Sherman came to washington but the memoirs which mark twainmemo published about her income of the equivalent of a 10 million in her lifetime. She lived into the 20th centuryt and died in washington and is in grants tomb in new york. If you ever have the chance because it is based on napoleon with the dome and the red, napoleon is in this undated singularity coming and when you walk into the tomb, you see two of those because the last thing he wrote us a note that he puthe into his pocket before he died that said he wanted to make sure that julia was buried next to him. Julia was buried next to hi. Thank you all so much. [applause] it starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Good evening, welcome to the Rr Smith Center in virginia. My name is rick and i will the president of the Augusta Historical Society which is the sponsor of the event. We have been preserving and promoting the history of augusta county, virginia for over 50 years. Or county was created in 1738 and at one time extended all the way to the mississippi river. We are pleased to welcome you and viewers to an event with residents and members of society. William bill walker. We will explore with their assistant who is a retired cspan journalist and board member of the society. If you join me in silencing all electronic devices, lets welcome bill and connie. Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming. While i was preparing to introduce bill walker i googlepgoogled a little. The first thing i googled was the average number of people who come to a book signing event. I will tell you it is in single digits. So please give yourself an applause for being here this evening instead of watching megyn kelly and donald trump on television, okay . The second thing i googled was the average age of a firsttime author who get published by a traditional publisher and that average age is 37. You are skewing the numbers, bill, i will tell you that. Bill grew up in nashville and went to the university of virginia for his undergrad and master work and went off to teach at college. He taught at the university of new orleans and Lamar University in texas. He went into administration to be associate Vice President of public information. He was at get college and Virginia Tech and finished up at william and mary. I met bill in a class on world war one and i know some people in the audience were in the class. As he told the stories of world war one and those of us who live in the birthplace understand the meaning of that war. Bill talked about his book and the research he was doing about his book and later on i would see bill around town and say bill, how is the book going. I said i have a publisher to him. And i said i hope they dont chew him up and spit him out because they can be very difficult. I said who is your publisher and he said simon and shuster and my jaw dropped to the floor. A firsttime author getting published by an imprint of simon and shuster is amazing. Take my word for it. Please join me in welcoming bill walker. He agreed to start with reading from his book. I think simon and shuster should be glad to have bill walker. Please help me in welcoming bill walker tonight. Thank you so very much. And thank you for many of my students in the classes showing up. I certainly appreciate it and look forward to this. The book is about a disast battle in france. 12,000 americans were killed and wonded 122,000 wounded in the battle. It has an unusual genesis, if you will. I will lead you how it came about the prologue is called words tongued with fire. Around thanksgiving snow surges out to cover the battlefield. The landscape full and lush in other seasons assumes the power befitting the death that hollowed the field surrounding the gun and gettysberg college. 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 in france by general james harbored. After blowing dust from the cover and leafing through the volume, i began to notice marginalia and that is the notes people often write in the margins of the page. I began to notice the marginalia signed and scribed by the latest owner. The major led an assault to capture the butte of the site of the top secret german reserve tory and that is the Little Gibraltar that is noted in the title of the book. Parkins marginalia took issue with the books conclusion about the attack in several parts. He challenged readers to turn to the back of the volume to learn the truth. On two empty pages in the rear parkin wrote that boyd, one of p perishings general, he was wony one of two, that boyd failed to support the attack and the deliberate act caused the death of american soldiers. I felt like the innocent passerby acosted by an ancient mariner. Just like the compulsive wrack and tool, harry grabbed my arm and revealed a harrowing tale. For the next few weeks i tried to push the story from my mind. As a student of military history, i knew the misleading lure of old soldiers. He and his lives reached a zennith embattle and they embroided their tail with extra measures of me. I understand the fog of war also, the profound confusion of combat and that often distorts judgments. For those reasons, i thought that harkin had to be mistaken. No American General would refuse to assist his fellow soldiers. I was very skeptical of the charge. I resisted dwelving in the matter but i was forced to acknowledge the story intrigued me. To disprove it charge so i could put the issue aside i set a very demanding test. I would look into the memoir of pershing to see if it was mentioned. If he discussed the incident the marginalia might warrant further investigation. So i went to the memoirs and found a brief section that described that incident. It was written a misinterpretation of orders resulted in the failure to capture the mouth of the falcon on the first critical day of battle. For persian who reroof was telling. I was hooked. I have to say this really caught my attention. Just to mention, of course, mentioning that it was the orderers misunderstood means the orders had perhaps parkin was right about what the orderer said. In the 20 years since the discovery of the marginalia i pursued the victory. I became acquainted with the dust and haunted books in search of critical volumes, interviewed sons and grandsons and soldiers killed in france. Stood in the trenches of the hindenberg line and descended into the banks of the area where the light never shines. I seldom encountered a blind alley. On the few occasions when my search seemed stalled, the discovery of new evidence propelled my investigation further and enabled me to determine the truth about the 79th division, solve the mystery, and demonstrate long forgotten marginalia can show the communication of the death is turned with fire beyond the language of the living. So that is the way the book starts. We will go from there. When you talk about world war i, and i know you will set it up for 1818 for when the battle happened, but before getting to the battle. Give us a little background. 1914 when the war started. 17 when the americans got in. 1914 is when the war started and it is still dispute who started it. Most people think germany and germany fired the first shot. There is no doubt about that. But it dragged on for the next four years and when they reached 1918 they were no closer to having a solution than in as the 1914. This the affidavit. You can see it here. It is hand written. General boyd disobeyed orders. Harkin charges that boyds disobeadant to orders killed hundreds of troops. I can expand that and he probably is responsible for killing thousands of troops. It was said boyd got all of the medals from britain, france, u. S. , belgium, but he really deserved a long term in military prison and that is hard words if you think about it. As you can see, by the spring of 1918 there were 89 million soldiers dead. It was static, the might drift one way and then drift back but was static. The germans were depleted. The allies were exhausted. Neither side could through another punch and the yanks were arriving. We declared war on april 6th, 1917, and there after, of course, there was a great rush to get the troops together and get them to france. By 1918, hundreds of thousands of troops were arriving every month. I think in final analysis we had about two million troops. Everybody believed that the war would last until 1919. That is what everyone was expecting. They would adjust the lines a bit, but it would go into the next year. But the supreme allied commander who was the frenchman came up with a new idea. He believed that the germans were so depleted that we could beat them in 1918. This is his plan. He was to launch a series of simultaneous offenses against the germans. You can see the british were at heat in the north, the som, and then the british kicked in and the americans ended up with what was the toughest and most promising offensive and that is the news argon. The u. S. Was supposed to drive 35 miles to cut a rail line that supplied 50 of emissions for the gem germans on the western front. If they cut the rail line the germans would have to surrender or starve. And they knew they would not come out of the war. It was the most promising but the most difficult. One general said compared with the wilderness excuse me, compared with the news argon the battlefields in virginia were like a manicured park. There were ravines, river to cross, broad fields where machine guns could get at the troops. In addition, the germans used their time to build a line named for one of their major generals. It had four defensive positions across france and each four position had four troop Lines Associated with barbed wire this was one of the most stout defenses the world has seen. There was a top secret observe on the highest hill. That could slow progress of the americans forward and exact a terrible pill. As you can see, the building in the upper left is a ruined manner house. Inside it, if you look just at the top, you can see a structure, a substructure. It was a huge, concrete and steal tower surrounding a periscope topped by telescope. On the top floor, they had this extended to all three floors, and it extended out the roof and the germans could use to spot targets. Anywhere on the battlefield, the american sector. The bottom part shows the bottom part of the periscope. So you can see this is a huge thing. The germans were determined to protect it. It remained in place in the 1918 and the germans new the offensive was coming and they were going to use it to blast it americans. The plan called for a capture of the observatory. If they were not captured the artillery could stall the offensive. The french declared in 1916 they tried to capture this hill. It was virtually a Little Gibraltar. That is what it was known as across the western front. Here are some of the fortifications of the Little Gibraltar. Upper left, you can see a machine gun that is camouflaged and if you walked by you would have no knowledge of what you were looking at. The next thing you knew the machine guns would fire. The upper right, you can see a twostory entrance, and i stress entrance, to a bunker that held one thousand men. That is below the level of american artillery could hurt them. You can see it was built in. They were waiting word from the buke about where to target americans. On the left, the most difficult if not deadly, thing the american troops faced was the land. In the four years of fighting that took place, 4060 million shells were launched by both sides. It made the ground look like the surface of a golf ball. The assault would be launched in the fall and the holes were muddy. So the soldiers had to go through these muddy holes over barbed wire and trees lying in the way and this caused a great deal of trouble. Here was the attack plan. This was the plan written. You can see mont con in the middle. The plan was for general boyds third core to go forward with the Fourth Division in a very weak sector and then cut into the left and surround the area from the rear. The 79th division, which is a green division, most of the soldiers had been in the army four months. They were supposed to attack from the front but the real damage would have been done by boyds troops at the rear. Keep in mind, the core commanders is a man named georgia cameron and that will come into play at the end. You will learn something rather amazing about him. There were some firstperson accounts of these by journalist and i found one in leslies illustrate that was a weekly news mack magazine. Here is what the staff correspondent on the ground said he saw. Just as we were starting, general pershing came out and we talked and i thought of the rows and rows of military history volumes in the libraries, the minute dissection of campaign, the battle then raging was not a battle of a continent but a worlds battle. If the decisions were to be analyzed and dissected by future historians at least it was to be said he remained calm under the threat. That is correct. The general had a great tragedy. Several years earlier his wife and two daughters had been killed in a fire. After that fire, he closed down emotionally. He was a stern person. He always felt he should be optimistic. But during this period, when the bad things started to happen, he did develop some severe depression and had some doubts on his own. What happened to the plan . The plan, it is very interesting. You can see that the 79th was going in the center and the 74th was supposed to surround the area from the rear. Boyd had changed the orders. He wanted to capture the glory on the first day and he told his men dont worry about anything to the side, we are going to go straight ahead. You can see where the four is up there, they were the division t