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 that went the farthest on the first day. That is a great achievement according to a lot of military people. During that day, there were two golden opportunities to attack montracon. The first one, as you can see you can see the open trench leading up to the hill. They could have taken the hill before the 79th came into the contact. Recalling what boyd said, the Brigade Commander ordered that battalion to come back across to line into his sector and continue toward the front. Boyd was galloping for dmrory as they might say. A general who came into the 8th brigade knew what happened in the orders. He proposed in a very swift way that may march around the area and in effect do the plan called for originally. He initially had to ask his commander for permission. He asked for that permission. He got the permission, started to make the movement, boyd interceded and stopped the m maneuver. He said go on straight. All of the americans then, the observatory lasted for another 24 hours. Using that artillery, they slowed the americans and the germans were able to rush reinforcements to the front and halted the offensive in its tracks. Pershing was furious and blamed the 79th. General boyd was an old friend from west point day. He blamed the 79th. He said it was holding up the entire army because of the observatory. They had to go up this bridge you can see. The big ust ruins 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 the hill. General said, he wrote in his diary that night and said already the danger was averted. That means he stopped the attack and he had brought up the reserves. Now as you know in combat, tim equips and they were forced to restart this offense or to give 122,000 americans were killed and wounded in this battle. And if you check the history books, most will tell you it was a huge american victory. The truth is unfortunately we never took the objective, we never cut that line. Where the line but we hadnt cut it. It was the sector after the initial battle there were rulers that it was going to be broken up because no one would want to serve in the unit again so they were going to disband 79 and send the soldiers to other units. Generations of historians have claimed and said soldiers were not prepared for what they had to do and they were blamed. They were thought to blame for this debacle and were later redeemed and fought to the top of it in good order after a vicious threeday battle but it wasnt recognized as redemption for the 79. It is still the biggest and bloodiest battle of u. S. Military history. History. 1. 2 million men were evil. 122,000 casualties. It was the larges largest battle bulge in world war ii and you can see where dday falls. To give you a more approximate example of how this measures up, the invasion of iraq with george w. Bush enacted there were about 300,000 american troops so this is four times larger than the invasion of iraq wa but back toe mystery and the coverup. It was quite an intellectual puzzle, and i looked back on it these 20 years its taken me 20 years from the times i found this to unravel this. Its an amazing thing. What put me on the path is the affidavit. And i wanted to know first of all here is the only picture that i know to exist. I got this from his grandson and he is quite an uncommon man. He came from pittsburgh and earned a bachelors degree in the same class that franklin d. Roosevelt graduated, went for a year to wall School Harvard until he was bored out of his mind and he decided to go back and get into to get into business that supplied the Steel Industry with equipment. He was fascinated with the grand army of the republic and he got to meet the soldiers from the civil war so when it appeared imminent, he underwent military training which gave leadership training to the man who might be expected to Service Officers in the army. On the second assault if i told you about, he was always out front and he was wounded four times by the german machine gun and couldnt be moved and the germans captured him and let him off into captivity. He won the distinguished Service Cross and the legion of honor, which is a very significant award for valor. He became obsessed and retained in 1936, 37 and told him about refusing to obey orders and to assist american soldiers on a battlefield. And he tried his best to determine whether it was true. The records were closed so he was left without an option. Now, the next thing i did, and this is when i really knew that i was on to a story that was important. I went to see and found the memoirs, but i noticed i knew that the drafts of his memoirs were in the library of congress. It turns out that he had given his Staff Officers assignments and none other than Dwight Eisenhower got it right about the attack. Being an honest person, hed go to forthrightly and said that it failed. Interestingly enough in the library of congress, the draft shows they substituted language. Through some misinterpretations, the opportunity to capture him that day was lost. When you see the voice appeared anywhere, you know that the author of that language is probably trying to dodge some reality that he doesnt want to face up to. We have heard this hundreds of times. Mistakes were made. Also coming into play, the west point protective association. [laughter] and the Army Officers that are educated at west point protect each other. Bullard and pershing were friends, and he decided that he wasnt going to let that become public. Here are the two orders you can see the original says that they will come within the zone of action. It says that its not by advancing into the 79 and by surrounding papaya moving as rapidly forward as possible, and this is just remarkable. No one had noticed this before. So they charged forward and they were a division. You can see it stalled in the front of montricon. I mentioned a name, booth was an honest general and havent gone to west point. Came up through the rank and started in the Colorado National guard before the turnofthecentury. He had seen all these shenanigans. He had witnessed a all of these and he was the fellow that tried to rescue the situation by moving his troops in behind montricon. 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 20 year investigation on his own. He was still in the army that he was a brave man and he began to write his colleagues and he compiled a file of 50 letters that have been viewed by people before but its an awfully difficult group of letters to understand. It took me two months to get them in order and he got the chief of staff but they chose not to do it. He had that fire within the official records. From 1922194 1920 to 1944 to esh what had happened. He didnt write the report or blast the new south. He filed it, and thats where it stayed ever since. Now, heres the other general. This is general bullard. In his autobiography after the war, hes a self impeaching individual. He had disobeyed the order and every time he disobeyed the orders he would do it again because he was right. This was after he had protected him. Hes known to dislike complex attacks and attacks from the flanks and his objective was to become the commander of the second army and they were competing for the. He got the three stars and to do so he took cameron down and made him fail by not obeying the orders that the staff had written. The cost of disobedience never captured the objective an average of 6,000 deaths per day among all combatants on the side and you can see the cost. 950 men were in the cemetery from the 79. I want to put a little bit of a human face for you on some of these big statistics. This gentleman was shot on the first day of battle and the rest. He bandaged his wrist and kept going and leading his men. Most of his men were wounded or killed. He volunteered to help in the rest of the battle. He asked him and he had no right to command him. As he said well you lead the charge into the mainline of resistance against the germans . Heated that it was shot in the chest. He rushed to his side and loaded them on a stretcher. He watched as the men were taking him back to the Field Hospital and a german artillery shells landed on the stretcher and killed all five men. The only thing that was left was one rubber heeled. He won the distinguished Service Cross. He was one of six sons in the South Carolina governor to volunteer for the army. He was a close friend of harry and after he was captured, they made a desperate charge to try to rescue him from the germans. He was shot in the head and killed immediately, killed instantly. He is buried at arlington with five brothers as his pallbearers. Purging was there and he is a great nephew of banning or friend and colleague. Perhaps the saddest case is henry gunther, a german from east baltimore. He was such a good soldier he made sergeant immediately. They interviewed him and said mr. Gunther, where was your mother born and they said that germany. Where was your father born . Germany. You can return to your duties. She made the mistake of his life when he wrote a letter to a cousin and it was deemed a defeatist letter. He said dont come here. Its awful. Dont come here if you can avoid it. They founded, accused hi found f defeatism and he was brushed over for the rest of the battle he did every dangerous task that he could do including being a runner with seconds to go all they had to do this lie down on the ground and stay still. He stood up with seconds to go he stood up and walked towards the automatic rifle and was shot in the head and killed. He is officially the last man to die in world war i. Theres a monument that was erected by a small village as you can see in the lower lefthand corner in france. Here you are driving out in the middle of nowhere this isnt an incredibly active area where you see a lot of monuments into this American Flag in this tiny Little Village they took up a collection, but in the ston putd maintain the American Flag. Now, what happened to the Lieutenant General . He was one of the top three generals to emerge from world war i. They were one of the top three. After he retired this means he was in the company of people like patton, bradley, macarthur in world war ii. He became president of a think tank called the National Security league. He warned the radical professo professors, the Mexican Revolutionary just across the border, and he wanted to harm civilians for defense and that reminds me of a couple president ial candidates. [laughter] he got in trouble towards the end he took a payment for appearing in his uniform and his colleagues turned on him. You can see the ad reach for a lucky instead of a suite. And so he died in about 1944, a thoroughly dislikable person. His autobiography is remarkable. Now, he decided and i wonder why he did this come he placed the main american monument. There it is, have you ever seen it before if i put it up there without language would you have known what it was . Most americans wouldnt. Ive asked classes about this. It was designed by the person who designed the Jefferson Memorial and the 79th assault is not mentioned. Its one of 20 divisions that are mentioned and its forgotten today. Today. Either way, the rules are still there. They havent been straightened up. The french left it as a memorial and my question is does this monument celebrates victory, or does it mask a debacle . I think the chances are good that it masks a debacle. You hide something in plain sight. The major became a land developer in los angeles. He won the distinguished Service Cross. His grandson told me my grandfather never had a good day after the war. He was ruined, just psychologically ruined and obsessed. And unfortunately he lived a mile from the general who had the goods on what had happened but those two never met. So harry parkin although he sent me on that quest come he never knew the truth of what had happened. Towards the end of his life, he wrote this passage, which i think is very poignant. Are we that survive to become old man in time, are we the fortunate ones or are those who died doing something wonderfully fine and heroic are they the