Center. He experience a talented writer. Gregs project is ambitious. As he spent a quarter of a century reconstructing the life and times of 10 airmen aboard the between four liberator which disappeared over austria on october 1. As we will hear, he has a personal connection to this story and he has traced the lives of the fallen servicemen, situated them within a larger andy of combat in europe has reflected on his own personal journeys to the village in southern austria where the man disappeared. Willis the research we hear about today and it will inform his forthcoming book on the subject. Greg jones has been a Foreign Correspondent and investigative journalist for more than 30 years. He is the author of honor in the dust. Received stand, which a marine corps green junior award and red revolution which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Foras been a staff writer the los angeles times, dallas morning news, and the atlantic journal and constitution. He is covered the philippines as a freelance Foreign Correspondent. He reported from pakistan following 9 11. Hes also traveling widely in afghanistan covering the fall of the teleban, the fur search for Osama Bin Laden and the beginning of the ongoing u. S. War. Hes currently the Black Mountain fellow at the center theing on his book about multijake multigenerational legacy of a lost bomber from world war ii. We decided to conduct it as a conversation. Welcome, sir. Thank you. This story has a very personal connection for you. Lets start at the beginning and talk about what that personal connection is and how you came to be aware of this episode with these 10 men. Answer, there are several people that i want to thank. I want to thank this center, the veterans history project. Patrick and megan harris. They do great work in preserving the stories of our nations veterans. Megan has been very helpful in my research as well. Also, the center has been my home for the last three plus months. This is really an extraordinary place. I come from the journalism side of the world and that tends to be a shabbier side of the street. To walk into this magnificent building every day for the last three months has been a sublime pleasure. It has been made an even greater pleasure by the environment that has been created here at the center. Lu, think robert and mary bottom havep to made this and marvelous place to do good work. , anso want to thank katie intern who has been an invaluable partner and an important piece of my research on ambiguous loss and frozen grief. Thei want to thank scholars, the fellows with whom i have shared this space the last few months. A really amazing and warm smarting intimidatingly but incredibly Generous Group of people. I will never forget you all. One quick correction. As much as i wish that my book had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize it was my journalism work that was a finalist. But i will certainly take that. Is and iuestion am going to try, i have some images that i will share. This may not be entirely seamless, but i think these are worth sharing. The personalis connection how this has been woven into my life, i grew up image, this at this photograph that you see there. And much kept a small less crisp print of this on her bedroom dresser when i was growing up and my earliest was probably when i was 12 or 13. I remember looking at it and asking her about it. My mother did not have a lot of facts about this photograph. She did know that her brother is in the photograph. Hes the man in the lower lefthand corner. His name is white. He was a Technical Sergeant and a radio up her on this bomber crew. She knew that the crew had disappeared over austria during a Mission October 1. And beyond that, she did not know a lot. There were questions as to whether or not any of the men had been found. But there was one other twist to it. There was a survivor and my mother did not know much about it. But it obviously begged the question of how was there one survivor and how was it the other men were not found or did not come back. That photograph was really an entry point for me. I was very interested in history and curious in reading a lot of history. That really brought world war ii ally for me, but also there was this saga that was obviously tinged with sadness and mystery. The other episode that really started me on this journey was when i was 15 years old, my mother mentioned that she had a box of my uncles personal effects. This box had been left to my grandfather, man by the name of floyd white. When he passed away in 1967 he left that box to my mother and i took that box, i found it in the back of my mothers closet and i remember that it was a winter night. Boxt on the floor with this and i took each item out piece by piece. It was a leather flight suit, cap, jacket and pants boots and gloves. Binoculars camera, radio repair manual. A sheaf of official correspondence. Warletters that the department and the Army Air Force had written to my grandfather, to lhs father and a cigar box inside the larger box. Severalhat were letters. The final letters to my uncle had written to his father. And there were letters that my grandfather had written to lh. Each one had been stamped return to sender, missing in action. They had been returned and had never been opened. So, i opened those letters and read them and there is nothing especially profound. My grandfather was not an educated man. Sort of prosaic descriptions he was a small fiber and a livestock operator. Falllking about the harvest and what was going on with my mother and her next oldest sister, they were the two youngest children still at home. In the final letter that he wrote that at that point he had the missing in action telegram which arrived about a month after the crew disappeared and the anguish he was trying to be upbeat but at the same time there was this anguish and despair and concern that just effect andkable really i was gripped with the saga at that point, even as a 15yearold it was an experience that i will never forget. It started me on this journey. As a High School Senior you wrote a novella about this mission. When i was a 10th grader i did a history fair project on flownew and the crew had these men were assigned to a b 24 Liberator Group and it was part of the eight air force. The 93rd bomb group which was part of the second Arrow Division which was within the eighth air force. Wordhe b 24 liberators that utility players of the eighth air force. So they were based in england but they were sent down to north africa on temporary duty assignments on three occasions. So, the crew had actually flown the famous oilfield mission of august 1. They were foot flying from airbases around benghazi, libya actuallysert and i have this is this would have been what it looked like for the cruise. They were literally flying in it smokestack level on this raid extraordinary casualty rate. 177 aircraft took off from north africa and about one third of them did not return. So i did this project that feature the crew and told the story of the raid. School, ir in high wrote a fictionalized account of what had happened, of what i imagined had happened to the crew. That was really my first attempt to try to start understanding and telling the story. So that led to a larger investigation so that led to a larger investigation. How did that unfold . I became a journalist and my love of history is what led me to journalism. I had been a freelance Foreign Correspondent in Southeast Asia and mexico. I had come back from six years overseas. Myearly 1990, i was visiting parents in our hometown in southeast missouri. I went to my mothers closet and boxed my uncles personal effects out. Just like that night, it was 15 years after the night i had first gone through it. I went through this box item by item. I was taking notes this time and going through the sheaf of documents. The documents were documents like this. This was a letter that the Squadron Commander and much beloved men by the name of joseph tate had written my grandfather in december of 1943. The crew had been missing about six weeks at that point. Two days after, joseph tate wrote this letter he disappeared. He was shot down over germany. I can read the first sentence. You have been notified that your on is missing in action october 1, 1943. I am sorry that other than this we have received no further information. If we do, you can be sure we will notify you immediately within the bounds of censorship. First paragraph. In this box, there were again, like this but, there was such a dearth of details. One. That was in there in list of to this was a addresses. We may be locked up, so hopefully that will come. But the 1943 addresses what they they would list all the crew members, list the next of kin and send that to the families so that they could correspond with one another and keep each others spirits up in the absence of information. List had been circulated to all of the families and they began corresponding with one another. Theyve stayed in close contact for a number of years and parents had died in many cases and family strict apart. Decidedund this and i that i would try to track down the families. I started writing to hometown newspapers. Internet ll the Internet Access was still a few years away. Which dates me. Your best way to find somebody was to write a hometown newspaper. So i wrote query letters to the editor and explained why i was looking for them and described this crew that went down over austria in october 21 and i am looking for the airman from this hometown. I wrote all the hometown newspapers. The top gunner and Flight Engineer was from los angeles. But i noticed that his name was armenian so i figured it would be hard to find somebody by writing the newspaper newspaper in los angeles so i wrote Armenian Orthodox Church publications. I started filing freedom of information act requests with the pentagon and the National Personnel records center. I also started writing newspapers and austria. Time, i joined a group of veterans as an associate member i joined a Second Air Division association. And got the membership list and started sending out hundreds of flowns to the men who had with the 93rd bomb group, the 44th and the 389. Those are the groups that were flying on these missions on temporary duty in north africa. So all of these letters started to arrive. Actually heard from people . Absolutely. Within days i started hearing from the first family members. And rapidly and exponentially, my knowledge of who these men combatd their time in was really greatly enhanced. Is i will show you the couple other photographs here. These were the guys in training. So i started to learn more. I wanted to understand what they went through and how they became a crusoe i started going to the National Archives and this was in the days when that world war ii records were still downtown in maryland. Before that magnificent College Park Facility was opened. So i was pulling sortie reports. I was finding anything i could to piece together. I also went to the air force Historical Research center at Maxwell Air Force base in montgomery, alabama and i learned a lot about the training the extraordinary pressure that there was to turn out bomber crews. A really astonishing fact is deaths in were 15,000 training accidents of airman during world war two. 15,000 in the u. S. That number of astonished me. I read these documents, i started to understand why they had young green pilots and a shortage of aviation octane fuel. Lets talk a little bit about the crew . Where were they from. , ift was a crosssection you set aside segregation, so they were all white or hispanic of really covered the gamut city boys and country boys, wealthys the son of a new york city manhattan businessman who had gone to columbia university. There were a number of immigrants in the group. My uncle was in the back of the far right there. Next to him was jack s berrien. The son of armenian immigrants. Then phil bedwell, the third from the right was from marion, indiana. These other men in this photograph were on the crew but the crew still had a lot before they went overseas. With men going awol and having too much to drink and things like that. Were here andmen then they were gone. The plane. I did want to mention this. Something that threw me from that crew photo which you may have seen, the numerous were baby on the plane. It was actually not the plane they were flying in and i was puzzled for a long time why they posed in front of that. The aircraft were baby what was known as an assembly ship. Its typically a wornout aircraft that would take off and becomeart rotating and the rallying point for the other aircraft that would take off on a mission. Usually they would be painted garish colors and things so they could be distinguished. Offother planes would take in a fallen formation. My uncles crew pilot was a guy by the name of william stein, the son of lithuanian immigrants. A Brown University economics graduate. I will point them out when i shift to the crew photo but this should tell you something about this aircraft. They inherited a storied aircraft. This is a beautiful photograph taken in england. The name is distinctive and im sure youre scratching your head as to how we got this odd sounding name. The jerk was a nickname for the pilot and this was a reference to a soda jerk. Soda shops were popular at the time to dispense the carbonated water you had this lever that you would jerk and create carbonated drinks. Shakes and things like that. So john was the pilot who first piloted this aircraft and his nickname was the jerk. Was 23 7eleven. 23711. Role. A fortuitous it was a natural, hence, jerks natural. This was the aircraft, my uncles crew was part of the first wave of replacement crews it had gone to england in may of 1943. So the plane had a racing a lot of action by that time. One quick anecdote or side fact, you mentioned when we talked last week that, was it treadwell . One of the guys was a character clowning around. Quickly try to find those photographs. Was bear with me. He was hes in these photographs, and he was a marvelous character. He had flaming red hair from indiana. He wore his flight cap and he would turn the bill up and he painted hoosier on the cap. Proverbial life of the party. He loved to play drums. He had a sister. I have to mention her because she still alive. Around 90 years of age and barbara has been an extraordinary partner with me in this. If the first, one of the first people to get in touch. They had this magnificent collection of photographs. Barbara and phils mother and father, grant and in the bedwell , this corn fed, indiana small ava was known and by the nickname and she doted on phil. He was mischief this, mischievous, but very thoughtful and sensitive. But always doing wacky things as you can see. They had all these photographs and a lot of letter sent things that greatly aided me in my search. Lets talk about the context in which this is happening. 1943, there is some discussion about what the strategy would be. And the risks associated with that, european strategies versus american strategies. How can that factor in . That i wantomething to scroll back here i have a photograph of henry have arnold, the air force commander in chief on the right. On the left who commanded the eighth air force from december 1942 to december 1943. Aker was a longtime subordinate and had coauthored a couple books with have arnold before the war on military if you asian. World war ii on military aviation. World war ii was seen as a huge opportunity to finally proof that they were worthy of being an independent service, a service that could have escaped the tyranny of the navy and the army which always given short shrift in the budgeting time. In the 20s and 30s, all of these disciples of Billy Mitchell who was the fodder father of american air power who started to develop the doctrine of bombing as a decisive form of warfare. The bombing emerged in the 30s. Arnold became a proponent of it. Aker and several other were collectively known as the bomber mafia. They wanted to prove that daylight bombing would work. The british, when the americans entered the war or not warned hap arnold and the americans that you could not do it. The british had tried daytime bombing and had given up. Which is essentially that you fly over a city and drop bombs. By british could justify it saying that you have more factory workers there so war there so we are hitting military targets. The american precision daylight bombing would be more accurate and more humane. There were also some parochial interests that come into play. That fascinated me because it gets into the exercise of power. Not just the convictions of the bomber mafia, but this could be done, this sense that this is our opportunity to create the independent air force. Arnold was determined to keep pushing deeper raids into europe in 1943, into germany. Even another did not have the Critical Mass in terms of the numbers of bombers needed. One of the great failings is they had not developed longrange fighter escorts that could escort the bombers into germany. Arnold and the bomber mafia had a saying, the bomber will always get through. They were convinced that mass bombers at that point with 10 machine guns on each aircraft could fend off any german fighters. The germans changed tactics and started bringing down large numbers of bombers. Kept pressuring taker that you need to fuel more and larger missions keep pushing them deeper into germany. This ultimately led to a lot of deaths, casualties soared through the summer of and fall of 1943 and my uncles cruz was one of those crews shut down as the result of the prosecution of this without longrange fighters. Lets talk about this summer and the fall of 1943. Your uncles crew was first involved in the play risky raid ploesti raid. Extraordinary thing. It was a terrifying event. Nearly zerog at altitude. The pilot slid into the copilot seat. Their copilot had fallen ill in the desert caps so stein desert camps, so stein flew as copilot and hickman from Northern California flew the aircraft. They flew