Encouraging stories that none of us have heard about. His hymnbook, escape from paris, the true story of love and resistance which is based on official american documents history and interviews with several others. Its a thrilling adventure story of american aviators. [applause] i like to thank you all for coming. I appreciate when people show up and i hope not to bore you. I want to give you a quick background on myself, people tend to wonder how you find military history. I was born and raised in socal a long time ago. My father and my uncles fought world war ii in the pacific. Grew up hearing their stories fighting the japanese and the ocean and everything. When i was 19, i enlisted in the u. S. Army in 1971. It was the best decision i ever made because six months later, i got run over by a personal carrier as a result, i am a disabled veteran. They are very heavy. They dont give much. I spent just over a year in hospitals in germany and the u. S. And this was way before the interne
Democracy is over, the world is coming to an end, the germans are going to win, and we in the United States better adopt fascism and get rid of democracy if you want to survive. He said this publicly in a news paper so he wasnt going to get elected and he knew it. Had they ever considered using a different plane for a very explosive mission, it seemed like it was a very not well constructed for what they were wanting to do. What was the rationale for using the plane that they did . The air force, they did something that was even riskier, they used war were warriors, that means planes that have been through a lot of combats but were not combat worthy anymore. They loaded them with explosives. The pd for why one, that the the navy used was pretty much brandnew, the reason it was used, both of these at aircrafts quite sturdy, but the real reason was it was the biggest thing they had. You could just pilot full of explosives. One of the problems they had was that these planes werent intende
Fascinating story as are many other books. You have to be in love with whatever youre going to write about because it takes long hours of research and unfortunately havent yet figured out how to write with a partner. Its just something i do by myself with my wife support and seriously without her support this would not have happened at all. Anything else . Great. Okay, sure. [inaudible] was there discussion when two of them broke down and go home because now you send two planes out and they can protect each other and they cant cover each other. Did that come in your research at all . It came up. I first started although i didnt start writing the book for 30 years i was fortunate enough to interview participants 25 years ago when all of these guys my age now, which is sad. I did long hours of personal interviews with the pilots, the gunners that the guy who held Tony Marchione while he bled to death. I was able to find out theres quite a a lively discussion from the Mission Commander an
Stephen harding targets an american soldier and the final flight through japan in the book last to die. Publishers weekly calls the book a meticulously researched tale. While harding expresses a commitment as a journalist and historian to remaining objective and not emotionally attached to the individual stories to be told, he admits to his personal connection with tony from his service in the vietnam war to his detailed journalism of American Military affairs, harding is very well suited to share tonys legacy of patriotism. Stephen harding is the author of eight previous books including the New York Times bestseller the last battle, he is a longtime journalist, for nearly two decades, he was on the staff of u. S. Soldiers, the initial newspaper of the u. S. Army. Currently, he is the editor this chief of military history magazine. His contributions on defense topics in aviation, military and maritime history, have appeared in the San Francisco chronicle, air and space smithsonian, wor
Next military historian Stephen Harding recalls the death of the last american killed in combat in world war ii. [inaudible conversations] hello everybody, welcome tonight. This is politics and prose at busboys and poets. I am here hosting the event with Stephen Harding and his book last to die. I want to make a short note. Tonight we have cspan live here filming the event so we will have them here. Also just to make you aware we have politics and prose are sponsoring this event. We are in three new busboys locations. We host events here and we are here at the tacoma location and also at the birkeland location so you can see us there as well. One of the great benefit to being here you can order food throughout the event and love to have you do that. You can purchase the book at the front of the store. As i mentioned tonight we have Stephen Harding here. World war ii in japan officially ended in ceasefire but there were a few final moments the americans Stephen Harding chronicles tony m