page, facebook.com/booktv. >> october 21, 1967, 100,000 people marched in washington to protest the vietnam war. from the booktv archives. pulitzer prize winning journalist david maraniss, who in 2002 allowed booktv to accompany him to vietnam and madison, wisconsin for his research in the war abroad and protests at home. >> this is a rubber plantation north of saigon in vietnam. members of the army's regiment known as the black lions were ambushed here. 61 were killed, many were injured. this is the university of wisconsin in madison. 35 years ago antiwar students try to keep dow chemical from recruiting on campus. the demonstration turned violent. these stories from different parts of the world come together in a new book titled "they marched into sunlight". the author is david maraniss. >> great to be here. >> host: you write connections fascinate you more than ideology. what does that mean? >> guest: it means i'm a journalist and a historian. i'm not trying to make a specific point when i start my reporting. over the course of years, history is looks at in different ways, and in 1967 at that point in time, as deeply as i could and strip away the stereotypes, that make it hard to see from the perspective of today. >> host: who is this book for? >> guest: i hope it is for everybody. it starts with the author. you write about something you are interested in. my previous book whether it was about bill clinton or vince lombardi, i am a product of that generation born in 1949, i was 18 years old in 1967. everyone in my generation, shaped who i am today. vietnam vets -- it is also younger people of today who are fascinated by vietnam and want to learn more about it but also the older generation. i am not writing it for the left or the right, i'm trying to write it for everybody to understand. >> host: you meld these stories, why did you choose to meld these stories? >> guest: that was the concept of the book. i had read a lot about vietnam in preparing for this book. it is wonderful literature about the war itself, there are some excellent books that are not as much good literature about that and a lot of great books analyzing the johnson administration and nixon administration. i have not seen a book that tried to bring those different worlds together. they are dealing with the same thing which was this war so i start by saying, in 1967, i think everything was up in the air, before the tet offensive of 1968 which changed public perception of the war, right after the summer of love, the counterculture was emerging, i wanted to capture that very moment. i'm not a character in the book until the end but that moment stuck in my mind, i started with a demonstration which i observed. i went to the library, i found this incredible idea that started to form. >> guest: these two things started to happen. october 17th and 18th. >> host: let's start with the vietnam side. you spend your time talking about an area of vietnam called like a. we can point to it if you like. >> 30 to 40 miles north of saigon. a little northwest, the first infantry division moving its headquarters. the entire brigade i write about was headquartered, a small village and large american military base at the same time and that is where everything starts. >> host: who are these gentlemen? >> guest: the division, the black division in the first infantry division. it is composed of four companies. >> host: what does it mean to be a black lion? >> guest: you are part of a long tradition of soldiers back to mcmi in world war i, the black lions, a major battle in world war i gets things started. >> host: at this time putting this in perspective, the time of this battle had it not yet happened? >> guest: no and the american military was focusing on a policy of search and destroy. general westmoreland, the commanding general of forces in vietnam believed the war was being won and could be won through a battle of attrition like general grant in the civil war, find the enemy, kill enough of them and win. he was happening at that point so sending out these battalions, and kill them and think you can win the war the way. >> host: what happened? >> guest: an incredible story where there was a regiment of the people's army of vietnam, the first regiment. there were other nicknames as well, that had been in vietnam since 1961. the original fighters to come from the south and at this point they were starving, and that whole swath of vietnam, they were moving from one camp to another in search of rice to feed the men, on their way to another city where they were supposed to take part in an attack on the city the attacks of the tet offensive but they couldn't find any food so they came into this area in search of rice, found the american battalion looking for vietcong and set up an ambush. >> guest: this is the secret zone you mentioned. >> guest: it goes back to the fight against the french. it is not the densest jungle but fairly dense, triple canopy in some places and farms around their and water buffalo and typical geography at that point, hard to maneuver. >> why did you move that day? >> guest: so many reasons for that answer. we can start with the specific americans were terribly outnumbered, less than 140 who walked with the battlefield that day, 1200 at least members of the first regiment of vietnamese fighting against them, watching the americans for two days, set up ahead of time, they had men in trees looking out for them, had headquarters, reports on where americans were coming from. the commander of the first regiment said they were watching them from the moment they left their base camp. there are other reasons the battle took place the way it did. another one is a company commander named clark welch who has been described as the hero of this book and in many ways he is, had been very leery of marching straight back the way his superiors wanted him to do, tried to talk his commander out of that. he was overruled and that is another reason the battle happened at an awful time. >> host: he was 27. >> guest: he was 27 years old and special forces. he was made an officer in the field, came up through the ranks, a great soldier and that is how he got his own company as a first lieutenant. the only first lieutenant in the first division who commanded his own company, they were mostly captains. >> guest: >> host: 61 of the 140 men died that day. >> guest: either that day or from that battle. another 50 or 60 were wounded in various ways out of 135. many were surprised anyone survived. >> host: why were their subsequent different stories? >> guest: because it was not a time when general westmoreland or the johnson administration or anybody pushing the war at that point wanted to acknowledge the infantry division could walk into an ambush and get wiped out. the theory they would win every battle if they could get them to stand and fight. in the book as i did my research, i discovered documents proved beyond a doubt they concocted a rosier version of what took place and the men who fought in the battle were angrier about the depiction of the battle than anyone else because it almost stripped them of their owner to lie about what happens. >> host: we will learn about the young men who were there that day. i want to grab one so people can get a feel of it. danny sikorsky. >> guest: the quintessential milwaukee working-class kid. he went to milwaukee, wisconsin, much of my book takes place in wisconsin. to make part of that connection, he signed up as a volunteer for the draft, went to vietnam at age 19 and was killed in the battle. from the south side of milwaukee. his nickname in vietnam, they couldn't give him the nickname -- everyone's name was ski. >> host: just before he left for vietnam, his sister diane, he gave her advice how to deal with boyfriends and what to do about their father and new stepmother and they remembered the smell of their mother's homemade soup. when danny was born his father was planning a pine tree by the side of the house. when the young soldier took a trip to the old neighborhood he noticed the new owner had cut the pine tree down. wife that level of detail? >> guest: that is the way i write. i'm always looking for, you can call it poetic connections but those are the points in life you remember. i had several long conversations with danny's sister, who was over the course of a year became more and more willing to remember things about the family and danny. by going back again and again, she started writing letters and notes remembering more. you get that level of detail which makes people remember and connect in a human way with all these characters and that above all is what i try to do. >> host: willie johnson. >> guest: one of the platoon leaders, the lead company in this battle. his platoon got wiped out. he was considered a great platoon sergeant and his men trusted him. he had a habit of sitting on the way out into the field every day which was knock on wood, that was the symbol of good luck and in this case turned into an incredibly ironic point because the signal for the attack, vietcong commander, 3 knocks down the block. >> host: a connection. >> guest: let's move to the american side of the story, what is going on at the university of wisconsin in madison. why did you choose -- except for the timing was this important? >> it was somewhat important personally in the wisconsin camp at that point, the first protest i had ever seen, i had to interview myself for this book, remembering that event, i was on the edge of the crowd, big memories of a couple people coming out, not many great specific memories. the evolution of how i thought about the war in life was happening been. >> host: why we can devastating? >> guest: manufactured napalm which was a weapon that burns 200 ° fahrenheit a jelly gas, had become the symbol of the war machine, dow chemical company travel around the country with recruiters going to campuses trying to sign up to work for their chemical company. starting in 1966, in detroit and berkeley, the whole wave of demonstrations, dow chemical company began. october 1967 going on for several months, the decision is made in wisconsin to obstruct the interviews and that is happening. >> host: why would a company like tao go into a campus where they know there is an antiwar feeling? >> one part of the reporting in this book, a couple chapters of dow chemical companies to get inside the man see what they were thinking, i went to michigan with my nephew dan who helps research that part of the book and spent the day up there. in part this is the way life as a historian and journalist works, they read my vince lombardi book, a fair and thorough writer and journalist and let the me into their archives. and inside the company, one of their publicists, the merchants of death. in an earlier war they said should we stop making napalm? we are not making much money off of it, not one of our bigger enterprises, they would keep doing it. >> host: how did the demonstration turn violent? >> guest: why did the demonstration turn violent? some of the students, 300 students inside the commerce building had narrow halls, like being in a submarine and obstructed the entire hallway. most were there because they opposed the war in vietnam, thought they were taking an act of civil disobedience but at most were dragged out by the police and arrested. most of the police had never built a constructive demonstration before, never been trained in riot training except a few of them who were trained by the chicago police force in riot training, might not have been the best place to train but in any case there was little training in that part. administration of the university of wisconsin essentially lost control of the event by that point. the chancellor of the university who i will talk about later, was a tragic figure in this book, quintessential liberal. in any case the police came in to move the students, there was so little room in their it was almost inevitable pushing and shoving. one of the policeman fell against a window and jagged edges of the window started making it dangerous. students thought there would be pushback. them came in wanting -- they needed these students who they thought were spoiled brats, from the east side of madison, working-class who had nothing in common with students so there was some of that. there were some students who were prepared to be violent in return. just a few had taken off their belts and using them as weapons and everything unfolded in as ugly as possible way for a brief time. the police officers plowed through. >> host: later we will talk about what impact there was nationally. >> guest: i want to make another point that comes up a little bit since the book came out. people said what is the moral equivalent between a battle where 60 people die and a protest where some kids get their head bashed? the term moral equivalent is loaded, i don't like to use it. i don't know what moral is in these cases. there are enormous differences. i'm not trying to say they are equal, a soldier facing life or death situation is equal to a protester, might get hit but get on with their lives, trying to bring together the reader can see as the book unfolds the differences they are not meant to be equal weight in terms of what happened. >> host: you bridge the two events by what is going on in washington. >> guest: lbj is between them. at that point he was feeling enormous pressure about how the war was going and how the antiwar was developing. every day he was consumed by those events. he had a situation on every battle in vietnam, a daily count of how many enemies were killed, body counts. how many battles had taken place and whether they were winning the war and to retrieve from the north vietnamese or the vietcong and getting reports from domestic policy advisers on what protests were taking place and how that would feel and unknown to the public at that point lbj essentially in these very days decided he wasn't going to run for president again. there is a moment in the book he turns to the secretary of state, robert mcnamara, secretary of defense and other members of the war council and says he decided not to do it and they tried to cross him out and that is unfolding. it is clear he has no clue how to get out of the situation. as events are about to happen, his advisers -- >> host: this book opens with a list of the cast of characters. why do you do that? >> guest: there are so many people in this book. i knew that the reader, i don't want the reader to feel overwhelmed. as the book unfolds you get to know which characters you are going to be following through the book, which ones serve a role for a specific point to be made along the way. but whenever you are reading a book, it has been a few chapters until that name came up, you go to the front and look at the cast of characters and refresh. i think, this book has 200 characters. i didn't do it to intimidate people but to help. >> host: your style is to go back and forth. somebody in one chapter, you don't see them again for a while. >> guest: characters in early chapters come back in chapter 27. >> host: you started this book when? >> guest: i started the book in the year 2000 as i was looking at the washington post, writing about how gore, biographical stories for the washington post, came up with the concept, started doing some interviews in 2000, many of the key characters i met for the first time then. of the 19 booktv cameras did not catch up with you until your final trip to vietnam, your only trip to vietnam, january of 2002. >> host: that was near the end of the reporting. my general style as i reported until i have written the final word but i had done the bulk of my first year reporting in january of 2002. >> host: we are catching up with you and many viewers in the last part of your work but you haven't started writing it yet. >> guest: i started writing it today i got home. a lot of my work as a historian sitting at the national archives, eight nine other archives. which is exciting for me but not anybody to watch. >> host: our cameras followed you when you went to vietnam for your research trip. why did you take people with you who were important to the story or characters in the book? >> guest: that is a good question. as it was unfolding, i realize the fortuitous this of something as it is happening or after-the-fact. i read clark welch a lot because i knew he was a central character in the book, as we had been talking over the course of that year and a half, it was clear to me he was ready to go back. he wanted to go back. i was first going to go in october of 2001. september 11th happened, i was covering that for the washington post, waited until january. he wanted to go with me and i knew that would be invaluable. alan came along, the daughter of terry allen junior who was another major character in the book, battalion character, went with his men that day into that battle and was killed. consuelo was the oldest of three daughters. she knew her dad, her younger sisters didn't as much. that moment of his death shaped her life. she wanted to find the place where her dad was killed. incredibly powerful idea. i wanted both those people to go with me. one of the fascinating things about that is clark welch had difficult hard feelings about the leadership including terry allen forgot to that path. >> host: before we meet consuelo allen, tell me about her grandparents, terry's father. >> guest: one of the fascinating things, terry allen junior who was killed in the battle was the son of terry allen senior who was the commanding general of the first division in world war ii and another division, the timberwolves, later. he was the soldier's general in every way, going about -- terry allen was the general he liked to hang out with because he was that type. terry allen junior was funneled into the army through his love and affection for his father and his father's love and affection for. terry allen senior never made it to be a four stared general and thought his son would. >> host: his daughter went with you in january 2002. what role did she play in the overall writing of the book? and research of the book? >> guest: i went to el paso where she was living at the time and she helped me find documents of her father and mother, also a key character in the book. there was a review by bob carey called alan was a hero which i thought was incredibly understanding to do that but in any case consuelo helped me and the things she did in el paso, the best mexican food in america, she became invaluable throughout the process. she was an avenue to a lot of places and people for me and listed her trust in me and persuaded her mother. very important. >> host: let's take a look at consuelo allen, she talked to us during the time you were in vietnam and reminiscing a little bit about what it was like last time. >> i was very scared. i asked him not to go. i said i was afraid he was going to be killed. and he didn't say anything. he said i need you to take care of the girls. i was with my sister bb. we had both been hiding when he came to say goodbye. >> host: where were you hiding? >> under a big mahogany table my mother had. if i got very small he wouldn't find me and he wouldn't go. >> host: back to the writing part of this, how do you trust a 5-year-old's memory? >> guest: it would not hold up in a court of law but consuelo allen had a deep memory about that specific event. other people in the family told me about that particular moment when terry allen came back on emergency leave. there was troubling his marriage. he came back and dealing with the girls every day. consuelo allen's stories, one thing you do as a journalist is you grow to have intuition about people who have an agenda or don't, people who have good memories or not. some people have better memories. then you find people have specific memories about finite things, they might forget everything else that happened in an entire year but remember one thing. who could forget that particular moment? >> guest: let's look at welch today. talk about what happened prior to his time in vietnam in 1967? >> guest: mike welch grew up in new hampshire, the son of a kernel and enlisted in the military right out of high school and had a very active career in special forces in many places before he got to vietnam. he arrived in vietnam thinking he would be in special forces. the army needed people like clark welch more than anything. there was constant transferring of officers. they were moved around all the time. he got there and discovered he was going to the first infantry division and was so good, so obviously better than any other officer on that level, as italians in vietnam were getting delta company, he got that. >> the next segment clark welch talks about what it was like when he found out he was going to vietnam. >> wanted to go to vietnam. i saved that piece of paper, how stupid we were. i wanted to go to vietnam, my wife supported. it was not surprising at all when i wasn't ordered to vietnam. it was as if my prayers were answered. i wanted to go to vietnam. i belonged to special forces and the crust of the special forces and the motto as i understand it means to liberate the oppressed. i fell for that special forces sent me to south america i thought i was going, working for the president of the united states to liberate oppressed people and when we do all discovered there were people in vietnam being oppressed and there was a chance to liberate the oppressed i fell for that, i believed it, i believed in everything and i wanted to go to vietnam and the answer came back, approved that i could go to vietnam and of course -- to liberate the oppressed. >> host: a difficult character. how did you get to the detail you were talking about? was it difficult to get to that level? >> guest: it was our first meeting. he describes in more detail than i do but it took a while to get his trust and i believe deeply in trying to gain people's trust without in any way promising anything that i might not be able to live up to. and after many months of dealing with, he gave me all of the letters he sent back to his wife, lacey, from vietnam and those letters, the energy of a lot of the book because they are in so much detail -- lived all that was invaluable, only through clark welch's trust, starting to feel what it was like. >> host: did you ask about the first time he met you and what he thought about it when you were in vietnam. >> got a cup of coffee and a hotel where i could watch, it came in on time, sat down, looked like the right kind of person. i could hear jim saying -- i looked at him and thought i could trust him. and sat down. i asked him, introduced myself, jim shelton said it is all right. david maraniss got a little offended. i asked him very early, i will talk to you but want you to treat my men well, treat them fairly. david looked at me and said i will tell the truth. that is not what i asked you. try to find the truth. and that is not what i asked you. i decided to trust david and he has never told me he would treat them fairly or makes look good. he never said that was all he ever said the beginning, which find the truth, i asked after that before the interview part that he had come for. i asked him in this research if he found anything different from what i was going to tell him what he let me go? for 32 years my mind would say everything i read says this happened, i this happened. it is possible i am wrong. it is possible none of this happened so i asked and whenever i see him including recently, i don't have to ask. it is different than you remember. >> host: why is it important to find the truth of this? >> guest: everything that follows from clark welch in his life, he was a great soldier believing in what he was doing, most of all in his men, he had a wonderful -- getting his men out alive from 1967 until the time i met him and your mind can play tricks on you. he was thinking did i screw up more than i think? did something happen i don't remember? it was incredibly important for him and still is. >> host: he talked about his level of anger against a lot of people during his time there. i want to show our viewers the level of anger he talked about and mentioned there is strong language so they know in advance. >> my anger is that the people who allowed us to be there. still there. the president of the united states on down. i had that anger. anchor has driven me to do what i did in the army where other people say the army, i am going to get out. i would say the army is beyond anything you can believe, in life and death matters. that is why i will stay in. i have terrible anchor at the people, the system that allowed that to happen. after saying that, i couldn't say to my soldiers this is screwed up, the president of the united states is -- on the morning of the 17th, the 16th, the 15th, the 14th i told my soldiers we are doing our job. even when i talked to my best friend, my first thought, alive and well today, through other people's efforts. we never talked about how screwed up it was. i would think i would wake up at night and think this is crazy but the instant i woke up i had my job to do, 150 guys. i never said the politicians are screwed up, never said my boss is screwed up. even on that last day when i believe the plan for the 17th was the wrong thing to do. on the evening of the 16th, when i believe myself what we are planning to do tomorrow is wrong, i thought that when i heard the order, other people said that is screwed up. i was a lieutenant, my boss was the battalion commander. i said something like jesus christ or oh. it was clear to a number of people talking to me later about it, it is up to them to say but i did not approve of what we were going to do the 17th. i asked to talk to the colonel in the privacy of his tent, talked to him quietly and calmly, and it was in failing to prevent it from happening. >> host: what do you think when you see that? >> guest: gives me chills. he said that to me the first interview in more detail, the third interview, and it is the same reaction and that helps explain, he should have talked to terry allen out of it. terry allen was under enormous pressure, the commanding general of the first division was about to be too synod -- timid pursuing the vietcong so pushing the general to push stronger and he was pushing down the dangers to alan. when clark welch questions them going after the first regiment the way they were going to. it is in no way clark welch's fault. in some situations leaders don't here because they don't want to hear. >> host: we have seen his anger and on the other side you write about the softer side of clark welch. when he was in saigon he was an endearing figure in the area around the hotel. >> clark welch is one of the sweetest men i ever met in my life. people are complicated. he has a different side to him but he is a gentleman, he is intelligence. he has a sophisticated grasp of things. he is a very conservative man but he is not locked into proving everything his way. the way of understanding of people including the vietcong. he went over there and we went, two young women who worked on the streets of vietnam selling books and other things, head over heels for clark welch and they took him around, looked after him, got him coffee and directing him to the right places, punctured his stomach, chewed him out when he got his wallet stolen. and clark welch, my friend, everybody immediately is drawn to this. >> host: he told you the story of how he felt during an incident prior to 1967, october, when he was part of a group that killed a young girl. he told us that story and we caught it on videotape. how did you describe that in the book? >> he was the leader of the reconnaissance platoon for the black lions. he was setting up a night ambush in an area in the base camp. he knew it was a place the vietnam were transporting munitions and other things and set up this ambush and described to me how it unfolded. >> host: it came up after he saw a young vietnamese woman give instructions and this is what it looked like. >> sweet little voice, of what he should have been 35 years ago, sweet little girl. what a mess. and ambush. we did what we were supposed to do, in the morning, the enemy came down the trail, ambushed them, knocked them all down. pushing bicycles, wouldn't shoot back. it was over there and when i came out on the road to see if we could take a prisoner and make sure they were dead, get the identification. the little bicycle in front, the bicycle that knocked over -- a little person -- to see if they were still alive, taken prisoner, see if they had any identification, it was a girl. a girl like that. i didn't think i would do that. i am sorry. where are we supposed to go? >> host: who was the woman who hugged him at the end? >> guest: my wife. >> host: what is her role in terms of writing the book? >> guest: everything, she took pictures, came to vietnam with me. just made it possible for us to do these things. >> host: does she read your book? >> guest: the first editor, and read something, and say she doesn't understand, and i wouldn't say they are two -- too something to get it. and that has always been the case. >> guest: >> host: another character, who was, is this? when did you first meet him? >> guest: the acting commander of the first regiment of the people's army of vietnam, the vietcong, far on the other side of the battle, the leader of the enemy troops that day. i went to vietnam hoping someone -- not really thinking that i would but i hope i do. one was american intelligence reports, names of the people they thought were commanders of that regiment. also, later documents compiled by the army looking for aids in vietnam this battle ended up with two mias, they were never -- and those investigations have lists of vietnamese to talk to. on a couple of those documents, we gave those -- i should also say i went to vietnam with wonderful interpreter, incredibly intelligent person who was essential, so fluent, and foreign ministry, and the names of people two days later, said we found the entry point. and 14, going to meet you. and the leader of the other side. do you want me to talk about that? >> guest: you met with him and got him to agree to come with you the next day. >> guest: in the foreign ministry, clark welch was there with me and another someone who -- for the vietnamese, and i was afraid he wouldn't remember the battle. i had the sensation, i spent 3 hours interviewing him about everything else in his life, how he became involved in the war. the whole story of coming back down south after the geneva court sent him to hanoi, what became the first regiment and kyle was beautifully translating, clark welch politely sitting there. after all of that, in a moment i will never forget, kyle translated, we weren't supposed to be there, let me tell you how it happened. then he told the story and at the end, in the battlefield the next day, clark and everybody else. >> host: why did you decide to do that? why go there? >> guest: i believe in every book i write, go there. the first law i have, go to green bay to find out where vince lombardi is coaching, find out what it was like for bill clinton. i didn't fight in the war in vietnam. i was a freshman in wisconsin then. then later i received an induction notice, marietta kid, i was not in the war, i have never been to vietnam before. how could i write about it? i had to go. and that was the first mission i had. of collected come with me. >> host: the characters people will see in the search for the battlefield include clark welch. >> guest: my wife was there, rob keefe, an actor in new york who provided great relief among other things. and c-span obviously. >> host: let's show our viewers what the day looks like and reaction to some of these. >> executing a few turns at intersections that were not apparent on every map, made it to an unmarked part of the battlefield. >> none of this is populated like this. there were no houses. >> no buildings. if they sympathized with the vc they couldn't live here because the americans would kill them. if you sympathized with the americans the vc would kill them. >> we went on the road until i got impassable, then got out and walked. >> we should go straight ahead here. we want to keep the creek bed to our right, go another two kilometers. this is where i spent a year. >> you were out here. >> i am sorry. >> you were out here before. >> yes. when i was here before about two miles down in their where it gets real rough is a streambed. two miles down that streambed we landed in the helicopters on the eighth. walked up along of a streambed, i didn't come over here on the side of the stream. my job was to be on the other side and every day we would go into the woods and find logistics units. didn't find him. he was five kilometers ahead of us but we would find his logistics unit, some rice and uniforms. they had small fights. he was five kilometers coming this way and i was here coming this way. none of us had gps. we both had compasses. >> our destination was the bamboo house, another local farmer. he had served as company commander and thought in the october 17th battle. he immediately recognized even though they had only been together a few days. they hugged and sat down in the opening of the house. .. >> you were moving this way? >> on the 16th, i was moving that way. >> that way. >> yeah, we walked very slow and stopped every hundred yards or so and send out people to the left and to the right to see if there were folks near us, and, of course, now we know that they were all over us but we didn't see any like the monkeys in the trees. we should have seen them but we didn't see them. on the 16th, over there, my guys were up in front heard the enemy and we smelled them, smelled the fires, didn't smell anything on this day. but on the 16th, we heard them and spot them. on this day, we just heard nothing. we were talking almost exactly line. another 200 meters maybe. >> as we moved closer to battlefield seemed like they were in their own world again, two proficient soldiers rebuilding the battle, describing the line of march of the american company and the positioning of battalion. >> where was -- [inaudible] >> we would have been -- i think we have to go another 10 yards to get to the point where the battle is. that would have put company from there to there. it would have put delta company and headquarters, battalion command right there. 150 yards. but it was -- it wasn't like this. >> no. >> pretty rugged. and he didn't go away, he didn't take a step back. two battalions on the west that wouldn't have had to attack. >> they were just waiting. >> the positions an we walked right in front of them and what alpha saw to the right is one of the battalions, the battalion right there fought the delta company and these guys came from the side. they fought from positions that had been working on for three days and we were standing there with our t-shirts. >> 100 meters further clark checked gps and said we were nearing a ground of battle. >> my machine says that we are here. not there. >> i'm sorry, where? >> right here. >> okay. >> that's where i believe we were. >> remember i thought we came to that road. i thought we fought -- that's where we are. >> yeah. >> that's the right -- we are now right there. >> right. >> we had to move to our right or east a few hundred meters, he said, so we turned and walked that direction. in 1967 this had been dense jungle. now it was a government rubber plantation, grove of medium-high trees planted in neat roads. >> in the midst of rubber trees where the sun filtering through and the leaves soft underway, to get into the middle of the field where we thought that terry allen, jr., might have been killed and defined right -- to find an ant hill and he died hiding behind ant hill, it was really moving for me to be there at that point and to be with con suelo. >> the ant hill was for consuelo. it was important to consuelo. we were within 50 or 60 yards, it could have been an ant hill. [inaudible conversations] >> so we'll just have some silence. >> this poem is entitled a prayer for the journey to the battlefield. through this pilgrimage may your moment in battle grace, the nobodile face of those who fought, food steps where blood was found turn the ground to white forgiveness and heal and free those left behind, deep peace find that passes understanding. blessed the peace makers. gene ponder. who is the author? [inaudible conversations] >> she told me that she sent a prayer and i just hadn't thought about it, david said, your mother sent a prayer. the last line sticks with me, you know. blessed are the peacemakers and that's what i felt was happening there. whatever had taken place almost 35 years ago almost suddenly wasn't as important as those men being there. for me to feel that sense of peace. >> the parts of history had nothing to do with my book. it was just for consuelo, it was her life. it was to show that there is a connection between doing a book and living a life and i did it for everybody there and i thought it was the right thing to do. >> i guess what it did was solidify my feelings about the fact that loss is that, it will never be anything but that. you know, mr. lamb and the colonels both understood that. i can't imagine the loss that they felt. people that they've lost and when it's all said and done, that's all that's left. [speaking in native tongue] >> the connection between writing a book and reading a life, expand on that? >> well, you know, to be honest, it did become part of the epilog because i didn't have any conception of how the trip would play into the book except to gather information and at the end, i made the trip, large part of the epilog in the book including the poem and all of that and all i meant by that is that i don't -- i don't try to separate who i am from the people i'm dealing with from my book. i'm a human being. i have feelings, i have ideas, i have flaws, i have my own conceptions on life and -- and i'm not going to just be the gathering information. that's why it was so important with me in that first interview with clark welch to say i'm going to tell the truth because i wanted to understand him as well, but i didn't want to sucker him into it, i wanted the human connection but on a real level where i could be honest with him and have the human connection and that's what i tried to do with any subject i'm dealing with. >> do some journal itself have trouble with that? >> i don't want to talk about other journalists. let me talk about what i try to do. >> jane ponder was mentioned again, the author of the poem, she was terry alan's wife in 1968. >> back in el paso with three daughters under the age of six, somewhat depressed, turning against the war herself. she had her own television show in el paso and meeting people and culture was changing and she thought the world was awful by the end of that summer and by october, she was living with another man in el paso, people there knew it, terry allen came home to try to save his marriage, it was falling apart. probably on the way to divorce, so when he was killed, it was -- imagine her position where the husband she's divorcing is killed and living with another guy who sends off and never wants to see him again, the whole town hates her, thinks she's scarlet letter woman of el paso, she was seeing things in a pretty vivid way that she had never seen before because of her unusual position, but it was something no one would want oh -- no position anyone would want to be in. eventually when terry allen's mother died, she and alan had been married by then and gone on with her life in its own way. she went back and went through the effects and found a lot of the letters of terry allen and his mother and she said that that was a moment where anything just sort of washed over her and she realized terry's humanity too and has really spent much of her life since then trying to come to grips with that moment and what's happened since. >> this is a complicated story, but i want to make sure that our viewers know that they are going to have a chance to talk to you also during our segment and so we would tell you that phone lines are open f you would like either about content of the book or writing and research of the book, 202-626-1980. let's move to the united states side of this, where were we again in the war and where were we in the antiwar movement? in the fall of 1967 antiwar movement was changing. and even before that, there had been antiwar movement but had become increasingly been growing, people have been been in the movement for a couple of years, were getting frustrated, nothing that they were doing was having effect, there was a slogan, sort of a more radical aspect part of the peace movement from protest resistance and carrying a sign wasn't going to do it anymore, we had to take action to do that, -- >> placed at the university of wisconsin at that time. >> that's when many senators and congressmen were starting to question the war, the senate foreign relations committee had been holding hearings and a lot of movement was widening and getting more radicalized than others. >> what was going on at the university of wisconsin? >> it was in 1967, that fall there was a party on rain on campus. the hippy aspect was just coming to madison, most of the kids were hearing slacks or skirts and dresses and-duh there was a very committed group about 300 antiwar activists and a lot of kids who were feeling the effects to have war because there was a draft. every young man in some way had to deal with the war because of the possibility that they'd fight in it or decide not to fight in it. >> who is paul? >> paul is another major complete and accurater in the book. he was a history graduate student at the time and arrived at wisconsin in 1963 from the chicago area. a very articulate, politically savvy person who was already thinking about possible career in local politics, very committed against the war, not a leader of the movement yet, there was some older graduate students where the leaders of the movement and people a little bit to the left of him who were more urgent, but he was part of a group that was planning this protest against chemical company. >> october, had there been protests prior to that? >> there had been series of protests then and several arrests. not any violence or not what you would call real violence and that fall suglang described sitting in the terrace and described sitting out there in the ball day with a bunch of antiwar activists looking through placement services to see who was coming and they saw the days that was coming and marked those. a series of meetings over the course of that early october of what they would do, they finally settled on a plan to have peaceful protest on the 17th, picketing, 18th tried to stop interviews by having obstruct obstructivists sit in. >> why did you wanting to through the route again? >> i had already move today madison for the whole summer to do interview for people who don't know paul suglang stayed and tried to run against last year but they defeated which thought he was too conservative which is the way life works. i wanted to be inside the commerce building with him and just feel it again and that's why we decide today recreate the roots to recreate the flavor for that. >> let's watch it. >> but on that morning, yeah, there was -- you know, the friendly reminders, no pointed objects, women remove your earrings, and, you know, i really believe that 99% of the people who headed up the hill didn't have a blue what was going to happen, couldn't conceive of that, mostly scenario was that we were going to be told to leave, we would refuse and then they would start carrying us off. >> classic civil rights. >> yeah, civil rights disobedience, people that weren't ready to be arrested but there were -- there was two identifiable roles for them which was one to be outside the building in support and secondly assume that they have the opportunity to remove themselves, get out of the building, before anything happened. there were a couple of people from the mime troop who were out front sort of leading and giving a festival -- creating a festival atmosphere to walk up the hill. >> i think i sort of had this naive belief that everything was going to be all right even with arrests. seemed to me that people who had been arrested in the south in civil disobedience hadn't had any ill effects, felt any ill effects. and i remember i don't think it was at this point, but some point of that era, i know i made the observation that when our generation came of age, that we would use an arrest in an antiwar or civil rights demonstration as credential for public office the way our fathers used world war ii military service. so i really wasn't that concerned. so if you got arrested -- it wouldn't be an event anyway? >> yeah, just -- >> on the way up, where were you? were you in the front? >> i was -- no, i was not in the front. i know that. in fact, it seems to me that by that time i had already started my habit, my habit of trying to stay near the edges. number one, you get trapped in the middle, which is exactly what happened that day. >> i have another picture of you standing there. >> that was about the second day, i think. yeah, yeah. yeah. [inaudible] >> all the kids climbing out of the windows. >> so we went in here. so people started sitting in this area and we filled this entire corridor. we filled this entire corridor. after the third or fourth hour and we get the word that something is going to happen, we are all sitting in and sitting down here and all i know is that everybody in the front gets up and they do one of two things, they either head down the corridor to the right or they come back this way and go out these stairs down to the bottom to the exterior so that at that point, like i said, everybody in front of disappeared. >> you about here? >> about right here and suddenly i'm in front and there's the five officers and what they were doing -- and before they got to me, there were groups of three to five officers working people over who, as they came upon them -- >> you could hear it and see it. i mean -- >> what did it sound like? >> whack. i mean, the sound of a stick occasionally they would miss and hit the floor, but -- >> was there screaming? >> there was a tremendous amount of yelling but most of it was actually outside, there's not a lot of noise in here. somewhere around here is where they made contact with me. >> right. and you were sitting down still or -- >> no, i was at this point a group of us and a group of us were doing, i don't know if you've seen the picture where there's about five or six of us and what we are doing is we are going back very slowly so that there's not a stampede. >> you're right here? >> yeah, yeah. but we are going back very slowly so that there's no -- right. i got it up like this, i think. and we are going slowly so there isn't a stampede and those who were in front of us who were rushing out or going along the side here, and we were just very slowly going backwards as the hallway empties out but obviously not fast enough. >> how did you get caught? >> five of them just came right at me. they just -- they sort of like, someone said look at that one next and they grabbed me and started beeting me and i ended up right in the floor here and i don't know how long it lasted. i really don't. but i was holding my own and i know they were getting frustrated because the jacket was doing its job. the jacket was doing its job in protecting my head and my back pretty much and then one of them -- one of them hit my right on the base of the spine and when we hit me on the base of the spine -- >> where would you have been? >> somewhere, on my side like this. but then one of them hit me on the base of the spine and all i know is that i just instinctively, my arms went out and my legs went out. i just -- when he hit the base of my spine, my limbs just shout-out. >> like hitting you funny bone. >> exactly. a response to it and at that point everything is exposed and then they started working on my legs and on my head and finally one of them said, have you had enough? as though it had been asked several times before and they just moved on. they picked me up, threw me forward, and i'm now on my own on my feet and they are moving onto whoever is behind me, where you are and they're now just escorting me out, it's sort of like running a gauntlet because there's more officers and they've got no real interest in me except getting me out of the building which is what was a surprise. >> they didn't try to arrest you. >> no, because as i made my way up here -- there's a broken glass and the officers are in a ring here around the front of the building and there's a mammoth crowd out here and i come out and another officer just throws me by the collar beyond the ring of officers into the crowd. >> well, there certainly was. after the leaders of the demonstration, several of them were put on trial by the city as well. the faculty was just totally torn apart and driven by this event as was the chancellor and the president and everyone else. you know, this is our jewel of academia in wisconsin and all of a sudden the police and students fighting and it just was so -- it was scary times for a lot of people and unfortunate one. >> if you would like to call in and call david, 202-626-1980, you could also e-mail questions to him at book tv at c-span.org. you're on the air. >> hello, david. >> yes. i just published a book on the gi movement and i used -- had a couple of questions for you. one in your research of the events of wisconsin, did you use any underground newspapers? >> yes, i did. and thank you for asking because that state historical of wisconsin has the best collection of undergrounder newspapers of the country and they were useful to me. the first underground paper in madison was published that year and it's called connection. >> historical society, i want to get back to that, did you find a lot there? >> oh, it was invaluable to me. they have a collection on the 60's as well, they have a lot of oral interviews, film. when we moved to madison for the summer of 2001 to do to research, i spent many, many days doing archival research. >> your second question, philadelphia. >> in my research -- >> are you there? >> yes, i'm here. >> we lost him. west virginia. >> i was wondering do you guys brought the general of the colonel of the vietnamese army with you and i was wondering if he had any input of the book and his view was on what you guys were doing there and how he felt about it? >> that's a good question. i hadn't thought about it in that sense before. in order to get permission to do what i wanted to do in vietnam, my interpreter and guide and i had to go through the hoops of the bureaucracy of the people's republic of vietnam, so they knew it was an official visit in that sense. and when they talked to him and told him that i wanted to interview him, he knew that i was an author writing a book about october 1967 and then in the course of my interview with him, it became more apparent to him what i was interested in. he had no other influence in me. >> next call is west hartford, connecticut. >> i have a question for the author, a couple of things, where was robert kennedy at this time? and did it impact decision to get into the political arena? and how does the protest compare to the kent state that happened four years later? >> robert kennedy was a senator from new york state then. gene mccarthy was just about to announce for president shortly and then within five months lbj would announce that he wasn't running for reelection. robert kennedy was turning against the war in the epilog of my book you see uncredible day where all of the political characters are in the cities of the book. humphrey is in el paso, kennedy was campaigning for nelson who was running for reelection in wisconsin then but he was also on the verge of thinking about running for president himself. as to how this compared with kent state, madison was one of the first major protests. there were protests almost every semester almost then on for four years in madison and within a year of that, the national guard was called to the campus, the national guard was not there for this protest and as we all know the national guard was at kent state and that unfolded in a more tragic way where a student was killed. at wisconsin, it was the other bookend of that, a horrible incident that happened in 1970, august of 1970 where people blew up a building that housed the army math research center and office cysts, a young man who was working in the middle of night was killed in that event which was one of the other strategies of that period. >> glen from kentucky. >> i wanted to inquire about general terry allen, the greatest general in world war ii and who was cheated out of destiny by omar bradley, do you know -- could you comment on what he did after the war and when he passed away and has there ever been an autobiography or biography print pped about general allen, thank you very much? >> thank you very much. terry allen senior did have some run-ins with omar bradley and eisenhower, they thought he was too much of a soldiers general and they sort of sent him back to the states and have him lead the first division and started the timber wolves and they came back to europe and were part of the march from france to germany. after the war, he eventually got out of the military and went into the insurance business. he was suffering from early stages of dementia by the time his son reached veit natch or -- vietnam. he was living in el paso then. consuelo would tell me that they would mistake her for terry. called her sunny. my great friend rick atkinson has terry allen senior as major character in the first of his trilogy where allen is a central figure. >> october 1967 published by seem on just now in bookstores, next call jacksonville, floyd. >> yes, i need to letterry know -- let terry know that i was one of the survivors of the battle and i would like to find out how many men survived that particular battle that day. >> well, 136 marched in and 61 eventually died, so there were -- a little more than half survived. many of them were wounded. the exact count on the other side i was never able to obtain but was able to substantiate that it was far fewer than the american military said. >> are you still there, caller? >> i am. >> can you tell us who you are and your reaction to that day was? >> yes, my name is ed and i was with the second and 28th -- >> which company delta? >> we all went out on that particular day and, of course, the only thing i could remember is the ambush itself, horseshoe type ambush that leveled all of us and i was one of the wounded and backed out of there after battle was over and lost contact but literally everybody. >> i'm sure if you're interested, the other guys who survived would love to hear from you and they have reunions now, clark welsh comes to them, there's a whole group of veterans from that particular battle who have come together and grown very close, mostly over the last few years and every years i was doing this book, more of them would start to reach out, there's even an a man who i didn't get to interview for the book and said he came out of a hole, black hole after 37 years when he read this book and wanted to talk about it. >> can you -- he said it was a horseshoe ambush, can you show from one of your maps here a little bit about how it happened? >> well, i'm blind -- >> hard for you to see upside down also. >> they marched -- this was where the mvp was, a night defensive position, where the american field camp had been the night before. they marched through into the jungle and got to a point several hundred -- several hundred yards in and commander of first regiment saw that the trap was sit. he had machine guns on this side, he had men in trees, he had another whole regiment that could come over to draw from this side, two regiments on this side, the trap was set, they got -- alpha company was in the lead, the first platoon, a team from the first platoon of alpha, saw a few enemy soldiers running down a path and they had seen nothing else that whole time. they didn't know what was being set up against them. so they -- it was one of those great military ironies, the alpha company, the black lions were setting up ambush waiting for some more vietnam soldiers to come by and they gave signal and all hell broke loose. >> i was in vietnam, combat veteran from different '67 to '68 and i -- it's ironic because i was with the alpha company 128th, not at that battle but many others and i was a platoon leader and then in september of '68, i took over a company alpha company as company combhander and i'm enjoying the show very much and wanted to read your book. >> thank you. two battalions weren't fight together at all, they were assigned different brigades. >> this is peter, in 1967 i was a graduate student at wisconsin and also happened upon the demonstration and its aftermath behind bascom hall there and i'm curious what similarities and differences you find in the american military intervention in vietnam and our situation in iraq today starting perhaps with the dubious intelligence that we use today justify both interventions? >> well, i think there are many differences and many similarities. if you start with the similarities and the questions raised about iraq, in in vietnam the premise of intervention was the attack, whether -- how and whether that happened was a question that many people raised afterwards, whether it was a false premise and in iraq you have the weapons of mass destruction and whether they existed still the question. for the soldiers in the two places you have the similarities of not knowing who is friend and who is enemy. in vietnam, certainly that was true everywhere, in iraq it can be true as well. you have the questions of not knowing the language and not knowing the culture and when in the world they are going to get out there. there's one difference that in vietnam the soldiers did know that if they survived a year they were out, that individual soldier and that's not true in iraq where a lot of the divisions are getting told that they're going to be saying longer. but how the united states will resolve its situation in vietnam or iraq is also a similarity in question. now, the huge differences are that in vietnam, in that era you had communist china and soviet union, factors in how the united states dealt with the situation. the united states could not go bomb into on -- attack without bringing those two forces into play in what could have been a world war, so there's huge differences as well but also there's similarities. >> from your hometown madison, wisconsin, you're next. >> i had a question, you mentioned earlier about police training and i was a student as well as worked on research projects for the building across the street and i witnessed from that distance by the lawn what was going on there and i couldn't figure out most of the time, my greatest impression was that all of ad season tear goosed -- gas started going over our heads and i wonder what precipitated or what peoples opinions of what happened, from my perspective a police riot. >> well that was the perspective of a lot of people, even some of the administrators, lower-level administrators who analyzed the situation afterwards thought at some point the police lost their heads. police in madison had never used tear gas were, they didn't know the effects and dropped tear gas, across the street to professors who were watching it over by the carolyn towers as you mentioned and they were -- the police officials ralph hanson was the chief of university police, bill emery, they were both on hand and they had differences of opinion, no one was really in charge at that point and it was a mess and police were acting spontaneously and individually and in some cases foolishly. >> we just showed a picture of ralph hanson, how big of a character is he in your book? >> he's actually a sympathetic character ralph hanson, he was -- student protestors almost to a person like him, it was right at the time of the movie elfie came out and they would sing what is it all about ralphy. one of the things in reporting the book, his widow, he had seven boxes of materials in the garage of their house and she let me look through them and i got to understand him in a deeper level through that that he was sort of secretly going back to school and studying sociology at the time. he was a painter who loved to paint portraits. and he wanted to study how the students reacted. he certainly didn't want the city cops, police to go in there. they're the ones who did most of the confrontation or dealing with the con frantation with the students. >> we have some video of what commerce hall looks like today. it's not even the same name anymore. >> ingraham hall. >> that's right, proximity to bakin hall. >> with abe lincoln right next to it. >> on top of hall is an american flag. >> a transferred student from michigan whose uncle was executive at the dow chemical company and jonathan was against the war at that point, he sort of arrived in madison and was feeling all -- that time and place and radical movement and was inside the building and saw what happened, came outside and looked at the flag above bakin and thought, why is the flag flying over this and he went out in bicycle, road home to his house, got clippers, drove back, climbed back hall to the top and cut the landier. a photographer happened to be up on another part of hall and saw this taking place and got picture which ran in the paper and a manhunt began to find jonathan. turns out he had a twin brother, they looked exactly alike except one had some beard started to grow and the other didn't. the chase for him was both very serious in terms of the american leg own offering rewards to find him and somewhat comic in the way that police try today figure out which brother really did this. >> detroit? >> hello, david, fred. i was a weapon's platoon that day -- >> yes. >> one thing you mentioned in your books the order not to fire the mortars and i read that. i wonder if you care to elaborate. seven people died trying to charge a machine gun and i could have taken that sucker out if they wouldn't let me, i have written emails, i don't think i want to repate it here, but i am extremely bitter about that. >> yes. he was back at the defensive position. the delta company had its own mortar platoon which would stay back and clark welsh, the commander of delta u liked to use mortar fire, both to mark where they were going and if a battle started to use it. and he was calling in mortar protection and he was overruled by the brass who said they weren't going to allow mortar fire in the battle because of the jungle and incidents that had happened i think involving another battalions elsewhere where there were, quote, friendly fire casualties because of mortar fire. welsh and his artillery observer who was killed in battle was a heroic figure, won medal of honor for what he did in the battle, they were pros, they knew how to do it but weren't allowed to and fred's bitterness is because of the fact that felt they could have saved lives and weren't allowed to. >> kentucky, are you there? let me try one more time. >> yes, i am. >> go ahead. >> this is for mr. maraniss. >> yes. >> you have done research, i would like to know if billings got wounded there? if this is the same allen that was in charge of third platoon bravo company because i was with him on that same battle in billings. >> terry allen, jr. had been with the battalion before. he was the s-3, operations officer when he -- for the first few months when he got to vietnam. i don't think he would have been a platoon leader in bravo company, but he would have been with the -- with the battalion in july and august and earlier. >> where does the title of the book come from? >> well, the march to the sunlight is taken from a great poem by bruce, a vietnam vet from ohio, has written a lot of powerful poetry about vietnam. he wrote a couple of books that had the poem in it and then archaeology who circles the other. the poemology is about a unit in the military in vietnam marching toward sunlight into an ambush. that was going to be the title of the book except people kept tripping over it. it's beautiful poem but harder to say the title. i apologize to the great poet. >> you say in preface that you actually mean it for both sides of the story? >> i mean it for all sides of america in 1967. people sort of blinded by what they didn't know and what they thought they knew was wrong moving into various ambushes whether it was students or the soldiers or the administration of lyndon johnson. >> here is the poem. >> they marched with unknowing how the air would be sucked from their lungs and how lungs would collapse and the world would twist itself into angles, into the black understanding they marched until the angels came calling their names, until they rose one by one from the blood, the light blasted down on them, the bullets slice so not even time to speak, the words would not let themselves be spoken. some of them died, some of them were not allowed to. >> who was the last picture that we saw? >> last picture was tom who is now a great friend of mine and he was a medic in that battle, survived it, was with alpha company, the first company moving into the battle. he -- as soon as he heard gunfire started, the gunfire started, he ran toward the front, try today save as many people as he could and came back into the battlefield two or three or four times over the course of the next several hours helping out. at one point he was part of a small group that was going back into the battle to bring out wounded with donald, a major from the brigade and was with him when he was killed. >> what happened with him that night, you talk about that -- >> tom, after the battle u late at night, back at the night defensive position couldn't sleep, of course, he -- imagine anybody going through what those men through that day and there was blood all over the uniform and he felt that he failed. the last lines at the poem, some of them died and some not allowed to and that's how tom felt in the middle of that night and he was in -- he was in a bunker and took out a gun and thought of, you know, that he shouldn't live if those other guys lived. that thought passed, sense of guilt and remorse, incomprehensible to me and anyone else who hasn't gone through it. but try today describe it to me. >> atlanta. >> yes, i have two questions, if that's okay. the first is were any of the policemen in wisconsin, did they have brothers that were in the war at the time? and secondly, there had been american drivers coming to vietnam to research battle sites or things, how do the vietnamese feel about these people coming over to write about the american war and just coming over to visit these -- this whole battle thing? >> the first question about the police, many of the police officers themselves were veterans of warld -- world war ii, police chief was a marine in world war ii, some of the younger officers were veterans of korea. i don't think there were any veterans who had come back from vietnam who were part of the force yet in '67. as to any had brothers in vietnam, probably. none of the officers that i interviewed didn't have officers there. i didn't interview them all but i interviewed a lot. second question how do vietnamese feel about americans coming back specifically authors, my generally feeling about vietnamese was that they were totally welcoming to this aspect of it. and to all american tourists. there's certainly a different bureaucracies in vietnam that can make things difficult but none of that was the case with this mission. we got what we wanted and sometimes more and felt no hostility whatsoever. that's a whole another story about the relationship between the vietnamese today and america. >> kansas city. >> yes, i have a question for mr. maraniss. we are about the same age. i was in college '65 to '69 so i saw the antiwar movement and i was drafted in august '69 and went to school for boys, i'm so conflicted like a lot of people my nature mid-50's because when i see these people, liberal journalists and when i see my friends' names on the wall, tears me up. can you comment on that. thank you. >> yes, thank you for raising that issue again. i think that everybody in different ways conflicted about vietnam and as i said early in the show, there's no -- there's no equivalent weight between someone protesting the war and someone who faced a life or death situation in the war. that doesn't mean that the war was right or that the protestors being against that war were wrong but the events themselves are so different in what happened. and so i think for that reason there are millions of american men of that age group who didn't fight, most of them didn't, but a vast majority who had conflicted feelings and that's going to be how it is from now until we are all gone. but this book is in a sense an effort to say that you can honor soldiers and it's part of the american fabric, as hard of that notion is, particularly as hard as it is to hold in this modern american culture which tries to turn things in black and white and stereotype everything, but i believe in that and so conflict and unresolved conflict is not necessarily bad. that's what life is about. >> one of our goals in all of this was to get a feel for writing process. on february 7th of this year at 7:05 p.m. you wrote the last words and on that day you invited tv cameras in take a look to where you write and how you write. we will take a look at that next >> did you do this complete book in this room? >> yes, i did. from beginning to end. and these book shelves once had books on them and now they are entirely archival documents and interviews for this book that i wrote. >> how did you organize them? >> good question. i have no idea. [laughter] >> no. generally by subject matter and they're not organized alphabetically. they are a total mess because i'm done with the book. for instance, this is -- these documents are jewels that i got at the center for military history which are transcripts of interviews with men who were in the battle that i'm writing about and the interviews were conducted by a military historian who spent a week of the battle. so i collected 25 of these and they were just incredibly helpful as i pieced together the chapters that were about the battle. >> i see some of these are about people. >> yeah. >> specifically people in groups. >> sure, jim shelton was a great help to me on the book, a general who had been a major and operations officer who wasn't in the battle but became obsessed by it. durham was a radio artillery liaison who was killed and won medal of honor for his auctions did you have any bad experiences with your computer in the writing of this book is? >> of course. [laughter] in the lombardi book i actually lost a disk that had my book on it but someone saved in the train up to new york. this time, there was one moment when i was transferring several chapters and just lost them and disappeared into thin air. i thought. but then i went down to the washington post with work and the computer there figured out to sort of save shall have them so i pieced everything together back again. it was about three day of complete trauma. but i keep telling myself i have a million backups and then i somehow don't do it. but i think now i'm through it and i have enough versions of the book and enough places that i'm not going to lose it. >> turn arranged and let's attack a look at the cards. what do you use cards for? >> well, i take the many of the interview it is that i've done, and i break them down by subject matter and by crinology they're all a mess right now. but at one point there were organized total by crinology of the book or subject matter, and for instance, like say the funeral of tear are rei alan one of the characters in the book and so when i would have interviews with a lot of people about an distinct, i would go through those, and find everything that had to do request that one episodes and put them on cards so that i'm writing that section, rather than going through million different interviews i just look through cards and refresh my memory on everything. so it's sort of a -- help and a backup system disease and everything is redundant in y i write but it seems to work in my brain. >> you have crinology -- >> yeah, it's -- an imperfect thing but another tool that i use where -- at some point before i start writing the the book, i go through all of my material. try to break it down so i can go back to this once in a while and wondering what i can do next this the book. so this one starts way before the battle. or events of 1967 and then gets up as it gets closer to october. there are more thing and then finally by days of the event october 17th and 18th you see i've got just about -- everything every little reminder that i need of what was going on at one point because many chapters of my book are built arpgd few hours until it gets incredibly detailed. >> does that include both what was going on many wisconsin or vietnam or separate once for each one? >> it's both, and it was also important because there's a -- 12-13 hour time difference between vietnam and washington 12 hours. madison, wisconsin 13 hours. so i have to keep that mathematically in my mind as i'm figuring out what's going where, and it turned out conveniently for me one group was sleeping other group was acting so i can just go naturally. and then a few times in the book where it is exact same moment and two different powerful thing are happening. for instance, it's at one point 1:40 in the morning in vietnam. battles are over. one of my characters value you mean who was a medic in the battle who survived it. and done heroic work that day but felt awful like he had had lets everybody down or for so many of his had been kilted. and he was is sitting in a bunker, shaking -- feeling terrible, everyone thought about killing himself because he was depleted and depressed and it's a very powerful moment it's 1:40 and lbj is working in a counsel saying it is bad. and he's talking about the battle what he just got a report on, and that antiwar movement that is exploding in front of him so when you get a point where two worlds come together at same moment it makes the book cohere. >> do you remember the point in which you discovered that all of that was happening statement? >> well, i knew it but it wasn't until i actually wrote that scene -- which is a little over halfway through the book tonight that it just washed over me in overwhelming way that the gamble that i had taken putting together these two, three diverse worlds so vietnam, white house, and antiwar -- and would they connect? in my mind when i got to that moment i saw how they did, and for me at least it would cohere. >> now i noticed if we go way back over here into the corner -- there are some books. >> yeah. one i've got 100 books here. but -- >> what's the importance of books about -- that you keep in the room while you're writing? >> williams was a -- professor in wisconsin in 1967 and earlier and a very major influence on the sort of the new left thinking of that time about american imperialism. a very smart man. his -- his theories are, you know, fascinating yopght agree with them all but i find them interesting to read. and i try to -- portray in the book that intellectual ferment of those times so he was a part that have from mads son. >> from someone who is not well known and to anybody who writes about vietnam -- >> this is one of the bibles of -- most coherent in one volume that you can get. the real bible is for reporters, though, are -- this one. that's the u.s. government of the vietnam war which is -- this is just from july 65 to january 68 but it's an incredible amount of government documents some top secret at the time. some of which were in the public record but all of them invaluable about meeting of the johnson administration. during that period, and it's, it really you can't write a book about that period about having a copy of this, and if you there's one other that's like that that just came out this year. i've been waiting for or it since my book began. it's called formulation of the united states, vietnam 1967. and this too is an incredible compilation of cia memos. and a lot of this material i got at the lbj library when i went down there to do research buts there's some things in here that i didn't even find there. whofntle publishes there? >> by the u.s. government. department of state just now get thing arranged to 1967 now? >> controversy over some of the documents in this that took years and years to release so that all of the other -- volumes released by '67 and i just got this there's or four months ago. and of course there's, you know, the best in the brightest which -- i just read it twice since i did the book and it's just holds up u so wonderfully as an account of the johnson administration. really fewer topnotch books about the antiwar movement tom the war within is a -- is an excellent account of those years and details of it. so i've used that one quite a bit. >> i notice you was about bob terry book here. >> yeah when i was a young man. it really has no -- [laughter] >> well there are a lot of books that don't relate directly to my book. but -- but there's always something in any book about the thinking about -- about that period. and this book there are no events really comparable to the -- to the controversy involving what happened with kerry's unit in vietnam and the possible killing civilians but there were two or three incidents in my book including one involving clark welch that just raised questions about -- about who's who. [laughter] when you're in the jungle, and how you make moral decisions and -- military decisions at the spur of the moment so this was a help in that regard. >> you've talked a lot about importance of letters and i happen to notice that i don't know which letters you are -- pay to show. but -- >> these are all letters from clark welch to his wife lacey. everyone in the room there's sort of a little bit disorganized because i'm done. but used them all. u just used one letter here -- in my epilogue with the last letter that i've used from clark welch. he wrote them from may of '67 through -- october after the battle when he was in the hospital. >> why were his letters important in the research for this book? >> well, letters are -- because they convey what someone is is thinking at the time not 5 years later. and of course, aside from clark welch's letters there are particularly point yengt he was a soldier and building his own company and all of the letters about how he was going to built the best dame company in vietnam and he describeses are great detail with his quite a few shares with her -- all of his inner thoughts about why he was there and what he was doing and how he was trying to instill -- serve as chronological markers i know where to place it there's an important part of my group where the whole group of soldiers arrive in vietnam as part of what is called cpac they take a ship over from -- from american and clark welch picks them up and they're all infused into his company. and he describes it in his letters and i've got letter it is from many of the men diaries on the ship -- and everything so i get it from all of these different perspectives it would be a different book but i've got the letters of the private in this company who have a completely different perspective on the military and life and everything else from an officer. so -- try to collect things from many places as you can to get the fullness of the experience. but i've said -- have letters from probably -- four officers and ten of them private involved in this. what are you going to do with all of that and including your recordings of these interviews? [laughter] i'm still trying to figure out what to do with the cloin ton and i have a -- storage facility i think someday they'll go this the university of wisconsin wants this i would be delighted to give it to the historical society there. >> there are several people mentioned in your book people know very well now lynn and dick cheney. >> they were graduate studentses at wisconsin came owe characters in my book. dick cheney was a graduates student and political science -- he didn't want anything to do with the were and he wasn't for it and didn't want to fight many it or pose it he wanted to go away. and he represents a large segment of the population and felt that way, of course, the big irony about dick cheney easier to fig mother the war when it was going on and for the rest of the career. >> the daughter of suzanne mcgovernor newly married to jim roland who was the journalist and graduate student in english then. and they were both in the demonstration and steven witnessed the whole thing. one of the things weapon learned while following you on this book is that, your editors are your parents. >> my parents -- elliot and mary -- my dad was a lifelong newspaper man my mom a book editor as i say in the acknowledgements one of the great thrill tops sepgd it out to them and listen on the phone as they argue over grammar and forget i'm there. >> your mother is looking pup your father is telling you something about -- whether it is something should be call advil lag or a town. and your mother is has the dictionary in her lap giving you what the -- definition is. >> so the final at the very end was epilogue takes us to the area that you just mentioned in your -- in the interview -- right where is it again and why is it important? >> it is -- in east of saigon and it is where the troops many of the troops who died in the battle fought in the battle arrived in vietnam where the book starts, and where it ends. >> we're going to take you on a little video tour of you actually fear the end of the book, and show you what it looked like. on february 7th or last full day in vietnam, we wrote a russian built hoy do foil down the river, the resort town on the sea. a cabby drove us across peninsula and it was line swd restaurants and resort hotels, and if you didn't look at the vietnamese lettering you would thought you remember along texas coats and we stopped in a parking lot and clark walked to me to the beach and stood with make shift delta company flag waiting for their new soldiers. [inaudible conversations] looking for delta company. they know that -- they thought they were sea pack they didn't know they were going to come to the company and i thought cpac -- >> done to the beach asking people -- where are my people? oh, yeah. anybody i saw they have like -- beach masks, and it took a while and i was going back through it and what's that? by the groups of people, you delta company. nobody was delta company. >> what about first division? >> it may have been all first division. i don't know. and finally a man completely a class pick -- you know had a little jeep and clipboard on the qhiet sand and none of this it was here. it was white sand leading up to the flat. plain -- finally said here's cpac and right over there. and i went over there and there was like a navy guy standing there saying i was able to confirm this is cpac and he had a clipboard and he said good. cpac et that's what we were called i don't know. but this group of men, the men that are going to become delta -- >> what i saw was a beautiful formation. a beautiful captain. with just -- just beautiful. >> uh-huh. i remember there being more -- there would have been more beach. we wrnght near the water we could see the water and they wrnght wrnght wet and didn't look like anybody waded to shore. but they were beautiful and they were standing in formation. they have theiring baas next to them. they didn't have guns. and may have had guns but they weren't carrying them. they were beautiful. this -- but they were beautiful. big boat was behind them. and then all of the other stuff faded away. to my left and confusion to the right and what it was all very clear. so you see them and what do you say? >> that's what i said after confirming and so i don't remember talking to the soldiers. i remember talking to the navy guy beach master out in front, and once he told me and i rocked i know they came to attention. and i know they were standing there and it was beautiful. it was heavy, they were, they were beautiful. it was -- and to have to work out the -- >> that's what i want to say welcome to vietnam. i'm the welch commander of delta company who are you or something like that. and i have my first with me and we were relieved to find -- and then if it was captain george i believe it was. he may have even saluted i know it was one of them. it was beautiful. if i felt like -- i'm captain george chief cpac, well we have one coming -- and then we put it over -- to the mountain to climb to the top. it was lined with benches -- each one donated by a catholic pair niche the state. there were hundreds more on the mountain top more than could ever with be used. they were meant or for mind more than the body. remindingers connections, from are past to present will to here. that's to each bench was name of an american city from atlanta to westchester. all of the places where vietnamese refugees fled after the war. rising above benches a giant statue of christ sat encircled by a halo arms outstretched facing the sea. this old mountain with police at the entry way to a communist land. it was such a soothing afternoon with a refreshing breeze. in a hang glider stored looped violently like a angel above our heads i sat on the bench statue rising behind me and looked down past two old french cannon to the ark of white sand and blue-green sea far below and thought about the pus ns probe, and how once long ago it came to a stop right at that spot. and the young soldiers of cpac george, graddy landon, sawyer, farrell, cold burn, krone, meg gee garcia, with reese, mcneel. warren talent taig, and down to jacobs lads per rolled on landing craft. made their way ashore and marched into sunlight. a look now at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. next weekend is the 9th annual boston bookfelt and louisiana book festival in bathen riewng. in early november will be a two state capitols look for us at the wisconsin book festival in mads son. and live at the texas book festival in austin. and later next month we'll also be live if from miami-dade college for the miami book fair. featuring smart al franken, best selling biographer walter isakson and katy among many other authors. for or more information about book pair and festivals to watch previous are festival coverage the bock fair tab on our website booktv.org.

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