Fact that she can stay in the background. One of the surprises that she was a maintainer of on relationships. She had a brief marriage that may have laughed at possibly not any longer than the honeymoon. There were cables were shoe wrote very friendly ones to the exhusband. She was a very generous person to children and grandchildren and family employees and friends. When you say requisite big of a person who wasnt interested in people. But she was on the phone with people all the time and she was great comfortable and elegant in her conversations. So if you just talk to your attorney through the door never meet him, then you have issues with people. But shes quite comfortable in letter and on the phone and a steadfast friend as well. Bill and paul, we thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating discussion. We have some bucks and there were some books that were available right outside to be autographed. And that is number one, they will be signing books there in purchasing as well. And you might want to learn more about the festival by going onto the website. His new book, thank you for your service, is a follow up to that book and focuses on the lives of soldiers when they return home. Thank you for your service is a finalist for the 2013 national brook critics circle award. Thanks for being here, guys, and i think we should start by just each of you give a little brief overview of your books, and well start with ann. Okay. Let me say, first, its a big honor to be on this panel. Im a great admirer of davids book, and im also just happy to be here pause i take the presence because with i take the presence of all these people in the audience as a real transcribe piewt to books and writers tribute to books and writers. And in this kind of solitary profession, we dont often get that. So thank you all for being here. My book, they were soldiers, follows not soldiers home from the war, but follows the wounds of soldiers. My book tends to see, i tend to see the soldiers not so much as individuals whose whole stories i need to tell, but rather as i give little snapshots, because i see them as interchangeable parts in the Great American war making machine which is how the pentagon kind of regards them as well despite public statements to the contrary. I want to tell you how, a little bit about how i came to write this book. I went to afghanistan in 2002 as a humanitarian aid worker. I was a new yorker. I didnt approve of our policy after the attack on new york. I taught it was immoral and illegal and frightening and all of those things. So i walked my talk and went to afghanistan to help or try to be of assistance to women who had been victims of soviet and afghan and american violation there. Violence there. I should say that prior to this time my earlier career as a writer has been as a feminist writer of books about women and chiefly about violence against women. And then in 2006 i wrote a book about my experiences with women and others as a humanitarian aid worker there called kabul in winter. Thats an old book now. It came out in 2006. But if i say so myself, its still a pretty damn good guide to why things have gone belly up in afghanistan. In 2010 the military got the bright be idea of putting women soldiers outside the wire to make friends with afghan women and gather intelligence that would help us win the war once and for all. And i thought that was another, in the long line of misguided military strategies, and i got for the first time then i embedded with american soldiers in order to cover and participate in the training of the first of those teams of women. They were called female engagement teams or fets, and as i suspected, they did turn out to be a really misguided idea. But what happened when i went to forward bases to cover the training of those women was i found myself on bases that might have a handful of women, half a dozen, babe a dozen women soldiers maybe a dozen women soldiers in the midst of hundreds of men. And apart from my observations of american soldiers in kabul where they were extremely aggressive and in your face and made everybody really angry, made enemies everywhere they went, this was my first time spent among american soldiers. And i saw some of them melting down which started to change the way i looked at them. And then we happened to be most of that time on the border with pakistan which was very hot at the time. And so every day soldiers or were being wounded and killed. And what happens when someone, when a group, a squad goes outside the wire and someone is cut down, theyre picked up by a medevac helicopter, and the members of their own squad return to base in their Armored Vehicles and park and sit there for a long time. Trying to come to terms with the buddy or buddy cans who have dis buddies who have disappeared from their squad on that day. And it mayweeks or days may be weeks or days or even weeks before the squad finds out what happens to the wounded they left behind or sent off in a helicopter. So i wanted to foe what happened to those to know what happened to those wounded. And so it took me a year then to get permission from the military to embed in the medevac experience. So my book is about following Wounded Soldiers from the time theyre wounded in the field, taken to bagram, the central base, and then to, flown with full medical attention to the Military Hospital in germany which is americas largest hospital outside the United States. Where the operations and the treatment continues and then theyre flown on again to Dover Air Base in delaware and taken from there by ambulance to walter reed and bethesda. And then from there i went on to the homes of soldiers who were suffering psychological and physical wounds and looked at the impacts on the family and on the communities of which those soldiers had been members. And also visited families who had lost their sons to, sons and daughters to suicide after today had returned from combat. So thats what, thats mainly what this book is about. But i do, i should stress, too, that there is a lot about the medics and the medical personnel who treat these soldiers all the way home. Because one of the great surprises and revelations to me in following this story was to see the impact upon the medical personnel who have to treat the soldiers. And it is extreme. Extreme. Because theyve never seen such catastrophic injuries to the human body before. Yes. I think tucson, the doctor who came who worked on Gabby Giffords came out of iraq or afghanistan. David, why dont you talk to us about your book which has some similar things. Maybe a slightly different approach. First, thanks for onlying. I appreciate this for coming. I appreciate this very much. Ive been at this particular story since early 2007 when the iraq war it seems like a long time ago now, hmm. But at that point there had been several versions of the iraq war, and the consensus seemed to be that it had reached its last chance moment, perhaps its lost moment or to a writers way of thinking, its tragic moment. And in january of 2007 when george w. Bush announced instead of withdrawing, receding, he was going to try this thing called the surge and more troops were headed into this war, that interested me as a writer. And as a journalist. Pardon we. And so i wanted to write about that. First i did an article for the Washington Post where i work, and that turn bed into a book called the good soldiers. And basically what happened is i got in touch with a battalion commander, a guy named ralph, Lieutenant Colonel out of fort be reilly because his guys were going into this thing. And i said i want to go along. I want to write a book not a policy book, not a book with any kind of agenda. Im not out to say the war is good or the war is bad or the surge was a success or the surge was a failure. Thats not the point. Its not a first person book. I just want to see what happens to you guys. I want to write about your corner of the war. The far end of policy. He said, all right, if thats your deal, if you promise me you really dont have an agenda, come along, and my promise to you is you can have full run of the place. And he was good to his word. So away went 800 members of the 216 Infantry Battalion out of fort reilly. Pardon me. This is a group, or most of these guys were, what, 19, 20 years old, firstdeployment, and theres this line somewhere that war wouldnt be possible without the 19yearold male. Well, this was a battalion of 19yearold males, and they had a young mans invincibility, and they were going to go, and they were going to be fine, and they were going to win the thing. And then what happened is what happened. War happened. They lost their first guy, they lost their second guy. The bombs kept going off. They began losing arms and legs and eyes and toes. And bit by bit the invincibility was replaced, was transformed. And when they came home 15 months later, i think its fair to say and they would not disagree with this characterization that the experience had not only transformed them, but in many cases had degraded them. And when they came home, it wasnt about winning or losing, it was about im in it for the guy next to me. I dont care about the mission, but be i love this man next to me, and im going to fight. So that was it. Thats the story of the good soldiers. And i wrote it, it came out, i figured i was done with it. I had done my job as a journalist, i thought. I had paid attention to this corner. I had written a fair book. I find these to be significant wars, and i had added to the archive of Information Available down the line for people when they think about these wars and try to flush out what they meant. And then i started hearing from some of these guys. They werent sleeping. They were feeling anxious. Depression was settling in. And, look, you all may understand this is what happens, but these guys didnt understand that was going to happen. And it was happening. So these books, and so that led to the second book which is, it can stand on its own, but its basically a follow up to the good soldiers. Its called thank you for your service. And its the ongoing story of what i call the after war. Yeah. Its storytelling. Again, these arent policy books, there arent big numbers, but i do want to recite a couple numbers just to set some context, and then ill be done. Since 9 11 about 2. 5 million americans have enlisted in the various branches of service. And of the 2. 5 million, about 2 million have gone directly into iraq or afghanistan or both. Of those 2 million, according to the best estimates, about 1. 5 million have come home fine. Theyre okay. And this is a military community, so this is not going to be unfamiliar to you. In many cases, they have come home better for their experiences. That leaves, though, if these estimates are right, about 500,000 people who have fought in these wars and have come back with some type of mental or psychological wound. And what theyre now trying to do and will be doing for some time as happens in any war is recover. Recover from what they did, what they saw, what they didnt do, any sense of mission, any sense of guilt, shame. All the internal stuff we feel as human beings. And it was ramped up and amped up in the most extreme ways there. And now theyre back here, and now theyre trying to get better, and i guess what this book is about if i bring it down to anything, its not so much a litany of sad stories, although theres sadness in the book, but its, maybe its a litany of trying, of whats going on in households across the country. People trying to get better after experiencing what they experienced. And just to pick up that idea of the numbers, im just going to read a few numbers, and you guys can maybe comment on them just to kind of further the numbers. Nearly a million active Service Members since 2000 are diagnosed with Mental Health disorder. Among half of those, 22 veterans commit suicide every day, 2013 more u. S. Personnel died by their own hand than by the hands of others. Thats a first. Then there are the high numbers of unemployment, homelessness and a picture of complete neglect and disfunction in those people. Dysfunction in those people. I just, these numbers are pretty i mean, for most of us the overwhelming number is the suicide. And a lot of it has to do with when they come home, is it you guys answer this for me, is it because they dont were not equipped to deal with them . Its too many of them . The army doesnt its a new phenomenon . But it cant be a new phenomenon because wars old to. Is it just whats going on . Why does this problem exist between their Mental Health and the va or whoever takes care of them this. Do you mind if i take a swung at this real quick . Swing at this real quick . Go ahead. The vets committing suicide is a number im familiar with because the number for a while had been 19 vets a day, and what i do between books is i edit a small group of reporters, and one of my reporters drilled down into that number and came up with 22. So now its 22 thanks to the good work of greg jaffe. But look, look, the worrisome thing about that number is it sounds like 22 vets a day are killing themselves directly because of their war experience, and i dont think thats fair. Because some of these vets, you know, theyve liveed many versions of life since theyve come home. All kinds of things could have gone differently or wrong to heed to their suicide. So to lead to their suicide. So whenever i hear that number or see that number, i wince a bit because it sounds like directly because of war 22 vets a day in america are killing themselves. And i think we have to be careful with all of these numbers, including the ones i was just talking about, the 500,000 who were mentally wounded. We dont know. We dont know. Certainly, theres something significant going on, and there are plenty of people trying to figure it out. But its just and thisll be the other part of the answer. But i do caution you when you hear these numbers, bring a good skepticism to any number. Think instead about the intent under the number. Clearly, theres a problem. And clearly, people are trying to work on it and trying hard. And unlike any other war in american history, at least now there is some system in place to help these mentally wounded folks get better. But if you talk to the people in the system, they will acknowledge they are overwhelmed. It is a messy, haphazard system where some people get great help and some people get lousy help. But its not like walter reed and the hospital in san antonio where if youre burned or shot or you lose a limb, your medical care is just off the charts uniformly great. The Mental Health system for these returning soldiers, and, lets be honest, their families is a unfolding, messy thing. Well, i have a different response to that number. In the first place, most i agree that all of those numbers are dodgy, but i think theyre on the low side because they dont include when they count those suicides members who have already resigned from the service. They also dont factor in things that may be even larger causes of death that are certainly connect with the the war experience; the high Risk Behavior that veterans commonly engage in from drug abuse and be alcohol abuse to motorcycle accidents. The number of veterans killed on motorcycles near military bases is extraordinary across the country. And nobody, the pentagon doesnt keep track of any of those numbers. They are dug up by everyday working journalists at small papers across the country. And if you look hard enough, you can start to put those numbers together and see that this is really a very, very troubling thing. And the pent develops response has been the pentagons response has been to say theyre very concerned about it, but also to make, to fund a high profile study that now has come up with the new information that guess what, folks, most of these people were suffering from preexisting conditions. How they work that out when they havent tested anybody on their preexisting conditions beforehand, i dont know. But its clearly an effort to get off the hook. In the course of my research, i went to va hospitals across the country and talked to the people who are doing the treatment of these veterans or blowing them off in some cases. And in fairness to the va, we have to say that at the time veterans started coming home from these wars, the va was still chock a block with veterans from the vietnam war and others. And they had to immediately start a massive Building Campaign and staffing campaign all across the country. And that was admirable, but the result is that many of the counselors who were hired in to treat these guys were fresh out of grad school. And so knowing that that staff was not fully trained, protocols were established for treating the presenting systems of the symptoms of the veterans. And many of the oldtimers, many of whom were veterans of vietnam themselves who became psychologists to help out their old buddies didnt agree with the new forms of protocol at all and said we were simply retraumatizing our veterans. So this is part of the mess that david speaks about. And some people are getting one treatment, some another. Nobodys keeping track. Some are not getting any treatment at all. And it is, indeed, a great mess. But one other thing, if i may, that i discuss in my book is something thats been dug up by some of these reporters across the country that we ought to give a lot to of credit to. And that is the establishment by the pharmaceutical industry of foundations in which the pharmaceutical Companies Pay for doctors and psychiatrists to present themselves as scientific researchers at foundations that have been researching pain and wish to prescribe for all the people in the va whether their symptoms are mental or physical medication for the pain they are experiencing. Well, its the pharmaceutical industries that fund these foundations, and the doctors who are giving this advice. These protocols have been adopted by the va with the result that veterans are being extraordinarily overmedicated, and these drugs particularly the opioid painkillers are now implicated in these high rates of suicide. So theres just the possibility that we may be killing off our own veterans by prescriptions from the veterans administration. But we wont know this because since that question became a matter of congressional investigation about a year and a half or two years ago, we cant talk about it anymore. Well, go ahead. I mean, theres no doubt that guys are being medicated out the wazoo. And certainly, anecdotally, the ones i embedded with for my new book, everybody was on, was on some assortment of pills. And some were glad to be on them, but, you know, there was one guy, he was taking like 45, 46 pills a day. And he was and several versions