Transcripts For CSPAN3 Life On The Battlefield During World War II 20140815

Also had had a daughter at 14. So all of those questions led me to pursue them. A very aristocratic family. We need to step back and say exactly who madam nhu was. He brotherinlaw, the brother of her husband became president of South Vietnam in 1956 or 55. 54 he becomes premier. So madam nhu was the de facto first lady, because the president of South Vietnam and theres a few titles before that, but for simplicity well calm him the president. He was a bachelor. That makes him sound like he was going to vegas on the weekends, but he was really very moral, he slept on a hardwooden cots. He signpersonally signed entry visas. Theres this kind of very catholic austere man who needs a first lady, someone to host the parties and go to the orphanages, host the flower shows. So madam nhu, his younger brothers wife becomes this woman and shes perfect for it. She looks great for the cameras, likes to be out there, and this sort of gives her a voice. All of her life i think she had been looking for this purpose. She was the second child. She had been overlooked as a child. I believe she always had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, so for her to be handed there, here you go, be first lady, the official hostess, she took it and ran with it. She bakley occupied this role up until 1963 when the government was upended by a coup. Her husband and her brotherinlaw were both executed. Thats right. One more thing. She wasnt just first lady. She was overwhelmingly elected by an unrealistic 99. 9 of the population to hold seats in congress in their legislature. So by doing so, she was still the first lady hosting parties, but she could also pass laws. So madam nhu passed what she called family and morality laws. Some of them were very wellintended perhaps they were all wellintended, but South Vietnamese women were not allowed to open Bank Accounts or own property before the laws, so madam nhu recognized what her husband and his brother did not, was that 50 of the population was being just ignored except by the communists who were doing a great job of recruiting women. So she thought, okay, lets give these women some rights and some power, and she did. And sort of took it upon herself to be the voice of the women. She wasnt like most vietnamese women. She came from a very aristocratic family. They spoke french at the dinner table. So for her to suddenly declare the voice of the vietnamese woman was an presumptuous. She was unto write in vietnamese. She didnt write. She could, but she expressed herself most fluently in french, which is what she studied in school and what they spoke at home. So the other laws that she passed were a little ridiculous. I mean, thinking about them in context, it seems to make sense. Vietnam was a country at war and the north vietnamese, the communists were doing a good job saying this is a war, we have to treat it seriously. Madam nhu was worried saigon was becoming a party. There were pizza stands and, you know, girly bars, all of that stuff starting in the 50s, and she said no, we have to take this seriously. She outlawed dancing along with prostitution, she outlaw hand holding and kissing. She outlawed underwire bras, but she wore them. The best was her sister had been married off young like madam nhu had, and she was married to a guy who worked for the ngo government, and they fell out of love, i guess, you know, it happened. She felt in love with a french guy, a big game hunter. Madam nhu thought you cant leave a good upstanding vietnamese guy for a french guy. This is looking sort of colonial. When her sister tried to divorce her husband, she outlawed divorce. The story goes theres no records of this, but the story goes her sister slashed her wrist and running through the palace, and it take their own mother to come down to saigon to break out the daughter who then goes to the United States and marries the french guy anyway. And theyre still alive. She lives in north carolina. Ive tried to reach out to her with letters, but theyve been unanswered. So her husband has published a couple memoirs, with a small press in canada or selfpublished. Quite interesting. Thats one of the things thats remarkable about your book. I should point on you, you mention, you no know, her looks. Shes a really striking figure. Its hard to characterize her, but this image on the cover says it all. The lei was with and high a high collar, a mandry collar. She was one of the first to say, show it if youve got it, flaunt it. So she cut the neck down so you could see her collarbone, and at the time it was really risque, so the president , her brotherinlaw says, dont you think thats a little too flashy, and she said Something Like its not your neck thats sticking out, its mine, so shut up. Thats a great line. What i was going to say its fascinating not vu,a gee rho political stepand historical standpoint, but it is a family saga as well. And one also where you see someone who was able to, whatever we think about her, and we can come back to that, but an incredible amount of gumption. She managed to, you know, create herself, and to really direct her own idea. It seems like when you made contact with her with advanced year, that sense of herself was very much intact. I love is the word gumption. I think thats a great description. Yes, madam nhu was going to tell her own story. So when i did find madam nhu, she was in her early 80s. She said to me, this is great, youre the angel that god sent to me. Were going to do my memoirs, youre going to get me bill clintons book deal, and it will be great. I thought, all right. I really wanted to hear what she had to say, but she had a spec way of seeing her past, which is understandable, but to madam nhu, she was vietnam was the center of the universe, and she was sort of the thing everything revolved around. So she was very much at the center of her story, but then again it was also understandable. Her husband and brotherinlaw were kill, you know, with the sanction of the americans, and she had gone through this life that had been, you know, quite hard, and so i think to make sense of it she really turned to religion and mysticism, and that was the only way that she could make sense of things with kind of biblically ordained. A joan of arc idea crossed, i dont know, with a sort of survivor story. Do you think its the force of her personality gave her the presence she had in the government . The americans thought she was really the problem. Behind the problems that were very clear in the South Vietnamese government, that she was the one pulling the strings, and i think the way that you write about her, you know, shall does come across as someone who had an unbelievable amount of influence over what her brotherinlaw did. Do you think thats just a force of her personality . You write about, for example, when she was taken prisoner of war in 1946 by the communists, by the vietnam army, and that this figure emerges from that, who is so strong, is that your sense of it . Or do you think her role has been somewhat overrated in the government . I think its a bit of both, if thats possible. She had this story of when she was taken by the communists, and shes carrying her infant daughter walshing across this bridge, bullets are flying and she emerges unscathed. For scherr she was like, i got it, all ive got to do is be brave. That message, that sort of, you know, in the face of your enemy just stare him down and stand strong, no matter what you do, that was her motto. I think she tried to pass that on to the brothers. There was one point when the president had been negotiating to open up his government, and madam nhu thought that was awful, that he would dare to share power, so she convinced him to stand firm. So in some ways, yes, she had this power to convince the brothers that they didnt need to open up their government, they needed to lock all the doors, keep it more insular, but i think the other thing was just the appearance that it looked like the men were following what she said. Kennedy said Something Like she looks like shes leading the men around by her apron strings. I think that was just as dangerous as any real power. They sort of emasculated by her, and that was kennedys biggest fear, that it looked like american was following this little lady around, and that was not going to fly. So much of her criticism well, i should put it this way, so much of her reaction to what was taking place in vietnam, the modernization, its neocolonialization if you want to call it that, certainly the westernization that started to appear in South Vietnam in the late 50s that she rallied against was very much a criticism of america, because so much of that was made possible by the influx of Foreign Policy money from the United States which put her very quickly i think on the opposite side of the intentions of the government of the United States. She was happy for the money. I mean, lets be clear, that was how they were funding the fight, but what they wanted was the money, but then, you know, stay out of our business, let us run our government. The United States obviously wanted Strings Attached to that money, and when things werent going the right way, for example, the United States tried to send in Ground Troops a lot earlier, but the brothers said absolutely not, you know, we cant these have to be advisers only. It wasnt until much later that obviously the vietnam war escalated into what it became. There were several coup attempts against the government beginning in 1960, i believe. There was one famous assault where a couple of airmen flew and bombed the palace, and she narrowly survived. Right. There was a direct hit on madam nhus bedroom. Some rogue South Vietnamese air force pilot was tired of this bossy lady, one of the vietnamese i talked to, she talked too big. She was too much. So one of these air force pilots was upset about it, and did a direct hit of her suite, and so there was this gaping hole. Madam nhu fell through. She said three stories. Again this is another one of her survival, if she survived it, she was magical. She hurt her arm, but one of the childrens nannies was killed, but otherwise no one in the family was hurt. Then finally the protests against the government begin to escalate in 62 and 63, and there are for the first time very strong confrontationings with the buddhists in vietnam, when you describe very well. Why dont you tell us about how those protests started, and what i think this is when madam nhu seals her place as a bad figure in history around the buddhist protests. If youll remember, they were the famous pictures of the buddhist mompgs burning themselves at traffic stops. I think there were seven who protested that way. It started with a law that had been on the books since colonial times. No flag was allow to do fly higher than the state flag, but of course nobody really paid attention to that. There had just been a big catholic festival. White and gold flags had been flying all over. So for the buddhas birthday sometime in may, one of the brothers went, so theres ziem, the president , the brother, madam nhus brother, he was head of the secret police, in charge of the politics, the guy who did the dirty deeds. There were a for a other brothers, one of whom was an archbishop. He noticed that buddhas flag was flying too high, so he ordered people to take it down. There was this kind of backlash of why are you enforcing this random law now . Instead of backing down and saying youre right, were making sort of a mess out of this, they cracked down, and suddenly there was a protest by the buddhists. People started firing on them. People were killed, and so then instead of saying were sorry, things got out of hand, the ngo family blamed the communists. So it quickly turned into a mess, and basically the buddhist repression was less repression in the way that we think of now, that is a vehicle for elf grievance. No one had been allowed to say anything against the family, but 90 of the country was buddhist. So everybody jumped on to to bandwagon, and elderly monks were selfemulating, which means they were lighting themselves on fire. When madam nhu saw it, she sounds like ma reantoinette, great, lets have a barbecue. The most cruel response you could have. That just spread like wildfire around the world. People couldnt believe she could be so callous. From her perspective, the buddhists have been intoxicated, which doesnt mean drunk, it meansed poisoned. They were a very loose knit association organization. There were no sort of strict rules coming in, coming out. So madame nhu was sure they had already been infiltrated by communists. Turns out by 1968 the United States even agreed yes, they had been used as a cover by communists. In 1963 there was a shocking thing to say and then to be so like casual about suicide. It was unforgivable. Yeah. Its never, i dont think its ever a good tactic for a leader who depending on foreign aid to castigate Buddhist Monks protesting in the name of religious freedom and whatever else. That is really i think when at that point that the u. S. Government knows that it has a problem on its hands and it supports the coup that will come. Correct. In august president kennedy okays a change in government, and the new ambassador that is sent over to saigon goes with the understanding that he is there to go look for alternatives to diem and this family thats been in power now for nine years. And it takes there are some false starts but some real alternatives have finally been identified. And the brothers are killed november 1, 1963, which as many of you know thats just a few weeks before kennedy himself was assassinated. So madame nhu is a conspiracy figure in some of these who killed kennedy questions. People must think it has to do with madame nhu. I can assure you it doesnt. But it was terrible timing. So kennedy seemed really shocked that the brothers had been killed by all accounts he gets up when he hears and is visibly shaken and cant believe they killed the brothers. He was the one that sort of gave the okay to topple this allied country, this friendly regime and overthrow them. For him to think they could have gotten out any other way is a little naive. At that time she was on a tour of the United States, as she believed that if she came to the United States and convinced people that there was a grave threat, if her government was not supported that communists would topple South Vietnam quickly and she came to the United States on a speaking tour, and quite a spectacular tour. She went to a lot of colleges, did a lot of television. In a day that was probably a lot harder to, a time a lot harder to do that than it probably is today. What was her reception like when she came to the United States . It was very mixed. So as you say she came to the United States because she had been asked to leave vietnam. By now the buddhist thing had really escalated and the United States thought the only thing were going to only way were going to restore order is if madame nhu leaves. So this had been something that diem and his brother had not been willing to do. Finally they say okay, you got to get out of vietnam. Got to shut up, basically. Where does she go, to the United States and goes on this like press relations tour. And she doesnt understand the difference. Shes invited to come speak at harvard, at columbia, at georgetown. And shes invited by you know, meet the press and all of these press organizations. And she doesnt understand why she feels like the government hasnt rolled out the red carpet for her. Wasnt she invited. She doesnt get this separation between the press and the government because in her country, of course like the government the press can only say what the government wants them to say. So for her it was really totally befuddling to the end of her days. I cant understand why they invited me to come and say go home. She goes to new york, she goes to washington, d. C. , she comes to chicago, she stays in the blackstone hotel. And one of my favorite moments of the trip is she goes to dallas and theres a ranch there and she gets invited to go shooting. So her daughter dressed up in like western gear and apparently has her first kind of teenage romance with a texas guy. And her reception that madame nhu gets, her mother was worried about madame nhus visit. She pulls a state department guy aside and has a meeting and says you know, madame nhu really shouldnt come. I warned all of the vietnamese to throw tomatoes at her and if they see her to run her over with her car. This is her mother. She gets tomatoes thrown at her, eggs, but she gets Standing Ovations from fordham, a lot of Catholic Education she mapped out the Catholic College and university itinerary as part of her tour. Was she presented at that point as this her catholicism was you know, it was very important part of her political ideology if you want to call it that. Was she seen in that light in 1963 in the United States . I assume that to the extent that she was hitting you know, places like fordham, georgetown, they were very much self conscious of that. Was that part of her reception as well . I do think so. Part of the political philosophy of the South Vietnamese government was based on personalism, this philosophy that started in france in the 20s and was a catholic philosophy, alternative to pure capitalism and communism. This third way. So that really was a cornerstone of their government. No one could quite understand how that translated to South Vietnam, and so that was really the problem wasnt the marketing. But the regime had bought all of this property outside of rome, and property in postwar rome is pretty inexpensive. They bought up large tracts of land with the idea that then they would send these south veet ma niece functionaries to rome to get indoctrinated in their version of personalism and come back. So that didnt work out so well for them but it was a place that madame nhu after her family was fell from power she could go back to this land which was valuable and sell it off to survive. I was curious about that. In her relationships with kennedy, the fact he disliked her so much and more interested in how the catholicism worked into that. You would almost think there might be some kind of sense of closeness between her and kennedy that was obviously not there. If any one the person who had the fondest thoughts about her would have been lbj. Thats right. Madame nhu was convinced he was flirting with her. He might have flirted with everyone. But the connections between family and the Kennedy Family in washington is really its uncanny. On paper they should have gotten along great. Catholic, both governments run by a lot of family members. And very anticommunist so they should have really gotten along well but as it turned out they didnt. And Jacqueline Kennedy was a real critic of madame nhu. She thought madame nhu was sort of pushy, she called her she called her everything that jack found unattractive. And you know, when sort of pressed, she boasted about her own marriage to president kennedy saying oh, they had this ashy yatic marriage, a direct quote. So what is that. Who knows but sort of submissive and madame nhu was anything but submissive. The worst that jackie could say she was probably a lesbian. Thats interesting. You talk in the book also about the kind of idea of the dragon lady. Its a stereotype that has been applied to any number of powerful women from Asian Countries and particularly in government from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the 20th century. Absolutely. So theres madame chiang kaishek, madame mao and you see her in every kind of hollywood bad guy movie starting starring the powerful sly conniving asian woman. Or shes the very submissive kindof geisha girl. Two ways asian women have been portrayed. When women rise to a certain level of politics they get shoved into one of these two very neat categories. I mean we even had chicagos own tokyo rose. Right. The one when i was trying to kind of reckon with this very complex figure, and you try and present her in her complexity which i think is wonderful, i kept thinking also about Imelda Marcos who doesnt come up in the book. But strikes me as a kind of countermod countermodel. She wasnt a figure like that. She wasnt. I heard there is a play in new york or off broad way play about. Its called kiki boots. The thousand shoes. Its called here lies love and i think madame nhu would be a great character for that guys next musical. Imelda marcos was flashy and flamboyant and did not go quietly either. Has any one been interested in making a film about her life if i may ask . Not that i know of. Any one out there taking offers. Thats right. What was she like when you you portrayed this well in the book but tell us about what she was like when you finally did make contact. She wasnt exactly advertising where she lived in paris. She wasnt really she had avoided paris for some time because she could have been extradit extradited. Correct. Yes. Rented the apartment is that correct . The apartment that they owned in paris . Madame nhu told me it was an anonymous gift. She implied to me it had been given to her by the American Government because they felt bad for knocking off her husband and brotherinlaw. She tried to come to the United States but her visa was denied. They needed her 18 safe place so when she would leave she would went out the apartment and get the extra cash from it. But that was where i found her. So my vietnamese is bad from now and then i go on line and sort of decipher my way through an article. I found this article written in the early 2000s by a guy who claimed to have interviewed madame nhu on the 12th floor of this building. That rung a bell to me so i thought back to my notes and thought oh, yeah, i see here that she wrote a letter to claire booth luce from this address close to the eiffel tower. Ill go there and see if i can find her. So this is when i thought there was no way id ever get her to talk to me. This was around 2005 . Around 2005. So turns out i go to this address, its only eight stories high so i think my vietnamese is really bad. I mistranslated this. And i look, then i sort of look around paris and realize all of the buildings in paris are in fact really low. And if im looking for a 12 Story Building i wont have to go very far. Like washington, d. C. There are limits on how high buildings can be built. So they really stick out if its a tall building. It does. I started Walking Around paris literally knocking on doors of any building that was high enough, and i got to one and he said i said does an older vietnamese woman live here and she said no, she doesnt live here. She lives next door. That was how i found her. I was writing her letters and asking her to let me tell her story trying to pitch it as sort of you know, let me sort of do this in the scholarly way. But what ended up happening was the most unscholarly thing possible. We connected in a way because the day that she called me for the first time, i had written, i dont know, maybe 10 letters at this point. Was the day that i found out that i was preg nanlts. The woman says madame nhu, i just found out im preg plant with our first son. Late my sort of relationship with her going through the birth of my son, was almost maternal sort of grand motherly thing. I think we told our families we were expecting but like before i told many of my friends i told this woman on the phone who immediately changed her attitude toward me. It was suddenly like oh, ive been there, let me tell you my experience. We could connect in a way that was so personal and i think unthreatening for her because suddenly i was this girl who needed help and she had had four children so she could tell me everything there was to know. Then you developed this relationship over a number of years and very much of a game of sort of cat and mouse. How long did it take for her to start to talk to you about the memoir she was hopefully going to tell you about. She started talking about the memoir almost right away. It was clear this was never going to be produced. She had been talking about it in 1963, mentioned it to the saturday evening post, and so then i remember one time were talking and like there are pages everywhere even under my sofa. I thought oh, gosh. Were never going to get this. But they did exist and before she passed away she was ill for a long time. And before she passed away she decided okay, ive got to get this done, this is my last chance to get my side of the story heard so she sent them to me all 400 pages, of why she was the center of the universe. We want to take questions. Your questions. If you have any. I want to ask you a couple before we do that. You are writing about a period thats been receiving owy receding in the american imagination after being so important. How has the book been received . When we were talking earlier you mentioned that you get a lot of feedback i think from vietnam veterans. People who are very interested in the history of South Vietnam and want to know more about that. What has that been like . There has been two different responses. And Veterans Community has been wonderful and curious about my work. And in some sense the harshest critics. Im young and i wasnt there and i dont have that experience and so i really do respect the people who have the firsthand experience there. But they often wonder why would you ever go digging into this woman. She was terrible, and she should just be left as it is, she hurt so many people, and made vietnam which was already a problem so much worse. Why would you go digging around in that. And my answer to that is sim plip because she was a fascinating exploration of what went wrong with our involvement in South Vietnam. And she sort of personalizes the history in a way that people of my generation when i was in eighth grade we koynts even talk about the vietnam war yet in school because it wasnt okay. It was too controversial. So i think now theres more education about it but i think it still is a hard conflict to streamline and get people talking about. So, if this is one way to do that, madame nhu is a polarizing figure and i think needs to be explored, warts and all. Did your personal feelings for her change over time, affect the way you saw her . I dont know if you started the project having a sense of her being sort after black and white figure politically and historically. I dont know how, whether you did begin from that kind of position, but did she become more personalized because you were in the process of working on the book . When i started i thought this is a woman who is stereotyped and i was going to rescue her but she really didnt need to be rescued. She was good and bad. She was complicated so i think that my initial im going to do this world a Great Service was quickly changed when i started learning all of the facts, but i have the utmost respect for her. She was a strong woman in a time and place that it was not okay to be a strong woman. And i really think that she embodied a lot of the conflicts that women face when they are trying to be ambitious 18 place that wont let them express themselves and tries to put them down. So i have a lot of respect for her. And not only her she had not only strong detractors who were women in the early 60s but mostly a couple of people who really thought she was a much more complex person and wanted to write about her and all of that complexity were also women. You talk about margaret higgins. And claire booth luce. They were they were big advocates. Right. Its interesting, i think that were living in a time that we see more interesting biographies written of women, political figures, and particularly from asia, than weve seen. There was a really interesting biography last year of empress sheshe. Written by the woman who wrote wild swans. There is a different generation of women who have come of age after the victories of feminism offering interesting perspectives that would not have been able i think 30, 40 years ago. So thats wonderful. I think its a terrific book. Very happy to have been able to read it. And lets see. Does any one have questions in the audience . I think we have a mic. Yes. Hi. You talked a little bit about how madame nhus recollections might have been colored by the trauma that she experienced. I wondered how you dealt with the unreliability of the source while you were working on this. Thats a great question. So, madame nhu was unreliable. I chose sort of the unorthodox path of putting myself in the book because i wanted to be someone who could see both sides. I did the research in the archives in france, i did the research into the materials in the United States and i think there are no real objective views of madame nhu, that what was written in the 60s was also slanted by the mostly white male reporters who were writing about her. And so from both of these sides i had to kind of navigate, okay, what is true, what is false, and in her memoirs that she wrote where he is the center of the universe that wasnt going to be much help but what was was finding out what kind of shoes she was wearing, sort of the Little Details that were factual that i wasnt going to get any place else. But youre right, that was a really tricky thing and i tried to be as honest as i can in the book about walking that fine line between believing what she says and also making sure its factually correct. The photographs i mean, i mentioned earlier are really quite incredible. And i noticed a couple of them came from her own collection. Yes. She give you those . Those were part of the memoir to be published. Okay. Sir, do you have a question . First off, eric and monique, thanks a lot for a very great program. My question, though, im curious about what you think how the press did, the u. S. Press. You mentioned the vietnamese press under the government. How much better did the American Press do . Because you must have read a lot of articles and watched a lot of news clips. The u. S. Media d they build her up or demonize her or trivialize her or how did the u. S. Press do . Thats a good question. The u. S. Press, when you know, i think if you read the accounts of sheian and Malcolm Brown there in the early days, they tend to have really believed the United States was doing the right thing by being in vietnam. This was a country that needed to be saved, the dominos were real, really falling and so they were really sort of patriotically behind the United States involvement in South Vietnam. But because of that, madame nhu and her family were really a stumbling block. They were screwing things up right and left and these reporters could see it and no one else was talking about it. So they were advocates for i dont want to say for regime change but advocates for getting america more involved in South Vietnam, reporting the facts as they saw them which was hard to do in that context. I dont think that they i dont think they built madame nhu up. I dont think they liked her very much. Should point out too she read them religiously. There is a point in the book where you tell her that david hal verstam has been killed in a car dent. Y was in an accident. And you tell her that, you break that news to her and she seems kind of saddened by it. Yeah. She had been it was a personal friend, someone she had known well. He said something about her like she was the only one in the family who knew how to do a parade. She raised her hand like mussolini. In any other reading would be not compliments but she was sort of like oh, i remember him. He was a good reporter and he always told the truth. On that note i think were about out of time. I want to thank you very much, and please outside the books are for sale. We hope youll pick up a copy. Thank you. Thank everybody for attending. Thanks to mr. Banks and miss demery. Copies are on sale now out in the main auditorium and miss demery will be signing books outside of the auditorium. Thanks. Enjoy lit fest. While congress is on summer recess were showing you American History tv programs normally seen weekends here on cspan 3. We begin with three Army Veterans who talk about life on the front lines during world war ii. Thats followed by author rick add kinson on the significance of the allied invasion of sicily and the Italian Campaign to the liberation of europe in the war. Then sports and history with discussions on the history of the kansas city monarchs, a negro league team and the role of race in athletics. Now stories from three Army Veterans who served on the front lines during world war ii. They reflect on their experience as part of the dday invasion, nazi occupied france. This was one of several events hosted by the dwight d. Eisenhower library and museum to mark the 70th anniversary of dday. Its about an hour 10 minutes. Good afternoon. Welcome to the eisenhower president ial Library Museum for our panel on life on the battlefield. Im tim rives. Id like to start with this dwheet we used last hour that i think puts the war in perspective. Its by the late military historian john keegan who wrote that the Second World War is the largest single event in Human History, fought across six of the world seven continents and its oceans, it killed 50 million human beings left hundreds of millions wounded in mind or body, and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization. And of course that largest single event in Human History affected the lives of the gentlemen we have assembled here today, and ill begin our introductions with my fellow wichita native, mr. Jack ford here on my immediate right. Jack is a retired Police Officer in wichita, he arrived on omaha beach on june 6, 1944, with the 743rd tank battalion. Flex to mr. Ford is mr. Ray lambert. Ray was a Staff Sergeant with the 16th infantry on dday. At the outset it was one of the first mobilized for overseas duty as well see mr. Lamberts experience more than normandy. We had a wonderful moment before the panel. I like showing off the holdings here at the eisenhower president ial Library Museum so i was excited to show mr. Lambert the 16th infantry journal. And asked him if he had read it and he said he read it and lived it. To mr. Lamberts right we have dr. Guy stern, many of us were fortunate to see in programs yesterday. Dr. Stern was born in germany in 1922, was the only member of his family to have escaped and come to the United States in 1937. He was drafted into the u. S. Army and sent to camp rite where he became one of the richie boys, largely European Jewish refugees who returned to europe and worked in psychological warfare and other intelligent aspects during the war and there is a recent documentary which we are also fortunate enoughnwn t exhibit yesterday, that i hope you all have a chance to see at another time and following the war, dr. Stern became a professor of literature i believe recently at Wayne State University in detroit, michigan. Id like to start with the same question that we did a few moments ago with our homefront panel. And thats to start with the key date of december 7th, 1941, where were you b on that date,. Ford . What were you doing . What was your first reaction . I was asking about perhaps your reaction on december 7, 1941, when you learned that the japanese had bombed pearl harbor. The japanese bombing at pearl harbor and where you were on that day and perhaps what your first reaction to that news was. I remember where i learned. Me and three of my friends were out hunting on that day, and we had stopped in at a local golf course north of the city to get something to eat. When we went in, the golf pro was there and he told us that the japanese, he was listening to it on the radio and he told us that the japanese had bombed pearl harbor. I knew then when that happened it wasnt going to be long a lot of us were going to be in the army and i was about pretty quick. Anything else . Well move on to hear mr. Lamberts remembrance of that date as well. Can you hear me there . Good. I was in fort devin, massachusetts, i was in the army, we had been training in louisiana and texas, north carolina, and upstate new york making landings in puerto rico and we knew that we were getting close to the time that we were going to get involved, so thats where we were at the time. And after that there was quarantine until we went overseas. I was in bristol, england and i will remember every moment of that. That moment when we had already been given our orders, our team of six personnel members, were divided into three sections, one of us was to go in with the parachutes, the second one on dplus one, and the third one, dplus three. And i was we had been prepared to fairly well, we had waterproofed our jeeps, and so i went that afternoon to a movie shown in a large tent built outside of headquarters of first army. And so i will remember a movie that doesnt deserve to be remembered. It was called shine on harvest moon and starred unforgettable grace moore, and all of a sudden the lights went on, the following personnel report to your billets immediately to get final preparations, dday has happened. Dr. Stern, how about your memory when you first learned that the United States would enter the war after the japanese bombed pearl harbor. Were you in the army yet at that time . No. I was it was a sunday that pearl harbor happened. And i had i was studying at st. Louis university and sunday and weekend job as a bus boy in south st. Louis. We were hitchhiking with another bus boy to our place of employment in south st. Louis. We arrived there and the owner of the restaurant stood at the door and he said fellows, turn right back, i will not open my restaurant today, something terrible has happened. I kind of like to the we could do a synopsis of your military service, perhaps for all of us, up to the time of the dday invasion. Mr. Ford, if we could start with you, perhaps about your induction in the army and then your training in the tanks. If you take us up to the invasion. From the time you entered the army until about june 6th. Talk about dday too . Yes, sir. Talk about dday as well. When i was drafted . We can start with when you were drafted and take it all the way up through dday if you like. Thats going to take a while. We got time. Well, make this as quick as i can. I dont remember the exact day but i was drafted in october of 1942. Went to Fort Leavenworth kansas for my physical. I got my draft notice, up there two days. Wasnt much of a physical. I was warm and thats about all you had to be. So they sent me home for ten days and to take care of any Unfinished Business i had, which was to tell my employer that i had a government job now. So i wouldnt be working for him. When i got back to the Fort Leavenworth i went to camp benson on the eastern edge of the fort riley reservation. There i took my basic training, but i should back up a little bit and tell you that when we got there, went in on the train, i saw a motor pool full of tanks. And i thought thats pretty good. Didnt have to walk. I went for my placement interview and the officer that interviewed me asked me if i had any preference on where i served in the army. I said, told him i said, i dont know anything about the army but i saw the tanks coming in on the train and wouldnt mind that. Well, when i said tanks he he just started brightening, stamping my paper. I found out later that not very many people, some didnt like serving tanks. They called them death traps. But we went to california then on the maneuvers out at the Desert Training Center. These were light tanks, the m5s. 15 on the tanks i was in at that time. We went to the Mojave Desert for camp ibis. A Desert Training Center for the armored force. While i was there sometime i think in september, i got transferred to 743rd tank battalion which was gearing up to go to africa. And they transferred me down there as a tank driver and i found out when i got there that they had the sherman tank instead of the m5 tank. I never seen a sherman tank. But i remember when they we went by truck, and i remember when we got there the sergeant called out my name and told me to follow him, and he took me to a tent and we walked in, told the tank commander he said heres your driver. That was it. We were there, i cant recall. We left there the first part sometime in november we left. And went to camp shanks, new york. And then we got on the boat and in november. Was on that boat seven days, to scotland. And we got there the day before thanksgiving, the night before thanksgiving. Get back to getting on that boat, i was on that thing seven days and i was sick seven days so i knew i wasnt a sailor. We went down to camp shank, new york. We got there at thanksgiving day. To our surprise our cooks had arrived. And we had a full thanksgiving dinner. After the first of the year, the battalion broke up and each company went a different way for different training. My company, b company, went to a lake in the interior of england, great yarmouth. I got there i found that we was going to train in floating tanks. And i thought i dont know who came up with this, the english said it was going t g too aingit weapon. I wished at the time they had kept the secret to themselves and left us out of it. We trained there and they were had the tanks had a large canvas screen that went up, oh, i cant remember how tall that screen was. Two propellers on the rear of the tank. I was a driver and being the driver had to control all of these controls, when we would drive off into that lake when it got to floating and threat propellers down, put the tank in first gear, and just take off, it had a high parascope where i could see where i was going or wanted to go. I didnt get there all the time. It was where i wanted to go. We were there a while, trained on the valentine tank. Just had a crew of four and the sherman tank has a crew of five. Then we transferred down to the south part of england and got a sherman tanks that called dd tanks. And we trained there till the latter part of may. I dont know the dates. Then we drove up to i think it was plymouth port. When we got there, they loaded us on the lct. Landing craft tank, would accommodate four sherman tanks. We loaded right then. My tank was the first one on so i would be the first one or the last one off. And the Company Commanders tank was the last one off. We was on the Landing Craft with him. And i guess i should tell you that dday was supposed to be the fifth of june. The weather was pretty well controlling when it was going to be. Because of the high water, the rough water in the english channel. But we went out the night of the fourth of june and we got part way out and got orders to turn around and go back. And the process of turning around our lct ran into the battleship arkansas. We got back and i thought that hoping anyhow maybe i guess that theyd take a couple of days to repair it. But the navy went to work on it, ceebees i guess they were. By mid afternoon they packed up and told us that we were ready to go. And channel, the water was still rough. And sloshing up over the lct. It was a flat bottom boat. It was pretty bumpy riding even with four 30ton tanks on it. Usually when you get a bunch of gis together they are laughing and carrying on. That night everybody was pretty well confined to themself. And i know i was because i didnt know what was going to happen. I was just 22 at that time. And i really felt like i was getting ready to live the last day of my life. We had had briefings on omaha beach about it being the easiest of the five beaches. The least defended. And we were told that the navy would take out some of the guns off of the high ground above the beach, the air force would also take out some of the bunkers on there and everything. And we had a general that came down when we were getting briefed and he even told us that he hoped that we didnt just walk in on that beach and not have to fire a shot. Anyhow, the night we sailed i finally i got up, being the driver i got up in the drivers seat and tried to get some sleep, but all i could think of was my family back home wondering if id ever get to see them again, and i dont mind telling you i was just a kid, being 90 now, i was just a kid. 92 now i should say. I just thought about my folks, i couldnt sleep. I was scared. I didnt know what was going to happen. So the next day when it got daylight, we were supposed to land about 15 or 20 minutes ahead of the main force with the elements of the 29th infantry division, regiment and the first infantry. Combat engineers battalion. And they were going to clear out a lot of the obstacles off the beach to make a landing lane for the troops who would come in and get on the beach. We were also briefed about a sandbar in front of about its two or three hundred yards, just guessing now, or feet, off of the main beach or yes, the beach, at high tide were talking about. When we approached the coastline, then the germans opened fire. And that shocked us all because we didnt think they were going to have guns there. We were told they wasnt going to be there. The closer we got, then we got in range they really opened up on us. And when we hit that sandbar, the lct skipper dropped the ramp and our Company Commander went off. He had to know it was on that sand bar but when he went off of the lct the rest of us followed. And my tank being the last one off when we grounded out on the bottom of the water, we were sitting in water, the assistant driver and myself were sitting in water up to our waist. And i tried to raise the tank commander on the radio but i couldnt get anybody. So i told the tank commander or the assistant driver, i said we got to get out of this thing. Its going to be under water before long. The tide coming in. We were both wearing may west jackets but it was the water was too rough. We didnt launch the d tanks. When your screen was down it was a regular tank. So thats what we were in. But i told him we had to get out of there because it was going to be under water and ill never he looked over and said well dog gone luck anyhow. We got out and we inflated our jackets. You could inflate them pulling a cord on each side and punctured a bottle of gas. So we made our way from one tank, the three tanks in front of us we made our way from one to the other till we got to the last one the captains tank. He wanted to get in that one. I said we cant do it. I said its going to be under water too when we reaches the high tide mark. So he looked at me and said what we going to do now . I said well what do you think were going to do, were going to swim. And luckily i had been swimming practically all my life, i just, well not all my life but a lot. I was an excellent swimmer. I never had to swim with all my clothes on, may west jacket strapped to my chest and pair of high boots on to kick with. But we took off. Seemed like id take about four or five strokes forward and go back two or three. Finally i was getting winded out so i hung on to found one of those bunkers, obstacles on the beach. That we called them hedgehogs. They were crisscrossed steel. And i held on to that thing for a while and i looked up and heck, that thing had a mine on top of it. A landmine. Hang on around on that thing so i took off again, and i finally i gotten water shallow enough i could stand up. And i got rid of that orange jacket as quick as i could. Finally got out of the water i ran across there was an old ring on the high ground above and thats where i went. I swallowed so much salt water my stomach felt like it was on fire. It hurt. So winded i couldnt talk. I was there about a minute. And this assistant drivers name is murray and he made it too and thats where we ended up till both of us were so winded and tired we couldnt talk for a few minutes. And when we finally could, he asked me what i thought we were going to do. I said well, im going to stay right here. Nothing i can do. I dont think i can fight any of them with our bare hands. Get out and fist fight or anything. So thats where i spent dday. And i had a panoramic view of the entire how you phrase it. It was a bloody mess. There were troops stacking up against the beach but they couldnt get only two exits on the omaha beach that they could get off on. And the engineers were having a difficult time. We had one of our tanks that had a bulldozer blade on the front we called it a tank dozer it was helping. But ive got some material with me out in the car that i wanted to bring to show it. We received the president ial Unit Citation our battalion did that day. We were on that beach 16 hours before we got off of it. We were, i think, but maybe some of these gentlemen can tell you more about that than i can. Its a good time to go to our next veteran mr. Lambert who was also on that beach that day. Well have mr. Lambert recount his service which extended far beyond before dday. If we could move the microphone over for you. You want me to go back, how far back do you want me to go . Wherever you would like to start. Well, i think we will ill just tell you that i enlisted in the service in 1940. During the depression my parents lost everything that they had, and after high school there was no money for further education. I had a job that i had gotten in the summertime working with a veterinarian in chilton county, alabama. I was the assistant veterinarian. So when i went to enlist in the service, they asked me of course what id been doing. I said that i had been the assistant veterinarian in chilton county, alabama. The guy said good, youre going in medics. Now, you know that sounds kind of funny to say that. But at that time, in 1940, we still had the horse calvary and they had to be treated the same as any other soldier. If a horse got wounded or hurt or sick, we also had to take care of them. I took my basic training in fort benning, georgia, i when i asked to be in a fighting unit but i never knew when i asked that question id be in the fighting first division, the big red one, thats where i ended up in the 16th infantry. I was sent to medical school in denver, colorado, and i ended up there being a surgical technician. And ill skip through some things i dont think is too important for you. We were in the as i told you, after maneuvers in the United States, to quarantine there and i was sent with an advanced detail to england, and i was on a british ship called the bedford of england. The bedford, yeah, bedford. And all we had to eat on there as you know at that time the british was having a very difficult time. And we had mutton and cabbage for breakfast. Ill have to admit that they told us that theyd give us a different menu at night. We only had two meals a day. So they didnt give us mutton and cabbage. They gave us cabbage and mutton. We went to we landed in or liverpool, and we went by train to tidsworth, england. An old barracks that the british had used and the advanced detail was made up of myself of course with the medics and two