washington post, and many more. he is also cofounded the national riders series which is a year-round book festival as well as the french street riders for public high school students. we are very excited to be hosting this novelist today and it is my honor to introduce doug stand. [applause] >> thank you everyone. thank you for the nice introduction. it is an honor to be here. we have some special guests and some special friends who have come to visit. this book has just come out and it has been a labor of love, beginning in 2005 when i was on the helicopter in afghanistan, researching my second book horse soldiers. i was trying to get to the pakistan border to a special forces camp, and there was a gentleman in the helicopter who seem to be a bit older than everyone else, walking around the area and we began to talk and we had a very pleasant conversation and finally the conversation turned to my first book, in harm's way which is about uss indianapolis and the sinking of that ship in 1945. i saw that as a survivor story and the story of young men trying to make right decisions at the hardest moment, and i like to write books about those moments in someone's life, both horse soldiers and in harm's way are books about war but the really about people, their about people trying to overcome something extraordinary, and i like to tell a story that you can slide across the kitchen table and say, in the case of this new book, the apathy of echo company in vietnam, and asked, weren't you there. so, to go back to 2000, the early 2000 in afghanistan, this gentleman, stan parker asked, did you write in harm's way and he read it and enjoyed it and as conversation moved on, we started talking about vietnam. this is 2005. it's a long time ago. we are finding these small settlements and i'm concerned about being in afghanistan in broad daylight in a helicopter but stan parker, special ops command officer was talking about vietnam. he became clear to me that the story was important to him and many of his platoon mates, the reconnaissance platoon of echo company was part of the 101st airborne in vietnam in 1968. we kind of left that meeting thinking maybe i would write about this someday, but i wasn't so sure america was ready for that story just yet. i think vietnam is one of america's unfinished stories. as i've traveled around talking to people, it is first hard to have that conversation and yet here we have a whole generation of men and women because the wives and girlfriends and families who grew up in that are era which was so tumultuous and went off to this conflict and bled and died and then when they came home they quickly learned they couldn't really talk about this. that to me is a national shame. i don't think we can really move forward as a country until we put a period on the end of the sentence which is what happened to you in vietnam. we've talked so much about how we feel about the war, how we felt about the war, in this book, i wanted to talk about how the war made people like stan parker feel. it's kind of flipping the mirror, the telescope a bit in the same way i did within harm's way. i see them as similar books, in some way. of course it's a large battle but with different points of view, including afghan points of view. i went there twice as i was researching. so, that is one of the reasons i wrote this book, the answer this question for myself. this was a generation or two had a me so this was not part of my experience but it certainly was up and down the street where i grew up. i remember doors opening and teenagers running outside, i remember the body count on tv and all those images were flickering and i can never make sense of them. adding this book has been a journey for me, for sure hendon a little bit we have some special guest we will bring up here. i don't want to give it away just yet. what i think i want to do is read something from the book to set the scene and then we will watch a short montage in them will meet our special guest. this is a section of the book that was difficult to write so i can only imagine how difficult it was to experience, when you see someone who is about 70 and you see them at the library or the checkout line, they are thinking about vietnam. the question is, we can talk about world war ii, we can talk about the spanish civil war, we can talk about iraq and afghanistan, but the question is how we talk about vietnam. i think you do it through story. this is not an intellectual book, so to speak. this is not a political book, it's a book about people. when i tried to do is just listen. one of the biggest things vietnam veterans have are being judged for whatever story they have, and believe me, if you scratch the surface , and i urge you to do that. if you're at a dinner party or family reunion and you know uncle george did something in 1968 or 69 but he never talks about it, go ask him. he will have something to say. it may be i don't want to talk to which is fine but at least he knows and some of part of his heart that you've asked. in some ways i feel this book is an active citizenship on my part to be a writer who sat and listened and tried to create a story that i found compelling. it ends with a smile. we don't get closure much only talk about vietnam, but i think in some ways we do in this book because something happens towards the end of it when we go back to vietnam with stan parker and tom souls and we have an amazing meeting. before that happens though, before, this is happening in the middle of the conflict which kicked off january 30, 1968. these guys, the platoon is between 40 and 46 but quickly understrength because of attrition. it really never was squad by squad, full-size. their living out in the bush and their job is to be the eyes and ears of the entire battalion and report back enemy activity. it's dangerous duty. they've all volunteered for this, to be pair treatment troopers. so not only did they enlist willingly but they also volunteered to do this. quickly, being the sons world war ii, growing up around the kitchen table for instance, stan parker listening to his father being a bomber in world war ii which only ended three years earlier, to just stop for a moment. today were 16, 17 years on from 911 in 2001. you can imagine how much 911 still infuses our daily behavio behavior. that is what's happening in 66, 67 when these young guys are enlisting. they're being influenced by world war ii. but of course the war in vietnam is fought differently. it's asymmetrical. the pressure is constant. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and it's tough duty. we'll talk about that a little bit more in the program, but here's one of those moments of tough duty. stan is walking in a gray drizzle and their wrapped mommy style and clear shower curtains. they've torn down from the nearby schoolhouse. the curtains are their only protection from the cold rain. the weapons poked through part of the curtains and they make a strange sight. stan sees a little girl standing in the middle-of-the-road up ahead, watching the groups advance. she looks scared, filthy, and very alone. as he gets closer, he sees she is also very young and streaked with tears. stan takes off his shower curtain and offers it to her. she doesn't move so he wrapped it around her, but it's too long in bunches around her bare feet. he takes his knife and hacks away at the extra length to shorten it. she doesn't say anything. she doesn't ask for anything and she doesn't shy away. she stands there looking at him, mute, and passive, courageous. stan feels the need to do something for her, but he simply stares at her and is confused and sleep deprived and he looks at her and he has we can only describe as an epiphany, and awakening as if his eyes are snapping open after a long nap. he is able to see the whole lousy war through her eyes. the shooting, the killing, images rollback and forth over her face and he watches him pass before her. a movie of who he is, who he's becoming, an animal, a killer, a young man filled with hatred as president johnson predicted all young men would be common war. he has an overwhelming desire to make the girls safe. he doesn't know how. he wants to give her something, clean clothes, food, shelter. he has nothing to give her except his attention. then he remembers he has a can of peaches in the bag on his chest where he stores, he pulls out a can of the fruit and bends down to offer it to her. the can is large and her dirty hand which sags under its weight. it's okay he told her, go away now. he makes issuing gesture with his hand. he would like someone to come and take care of her. he would like to come back to vietnam as another kind of person and be able to offer her some peace and attention and safety. it's quite between the two of them punctuated by the shower curtain wrapped around hirsch shoulders. he stares at the peaches and back at him as if asking him what he she should do. then he realizes he's been left behind. he knows they are in a no man's land where they could run into any number of enemy and he feels exposed. they're calling out him come on we've got to get out of here, we've got to go. he finally turns from the girl, touches her gently on the head and says goodbye. he runs to catch up. he rounds the corner and sees the other guys up ahead. a few seconds after that he hears the gunshots behind him. he thanks not the girl. he wheels around and runs and turns the corner and there she is, a tiny clump no bigger than the pile of rags in the street looking down the road he sees four soldiers fleeing among the building. he levels his weapon and fires but misses and curses, how could he miss when he had killed so many men before. he runs up to the girl, looks at her and drops to his knees crying. why zero why zero why. he knows why, because he's a bad person because he's an american strip soldier. because he's a man filled with madness. he looks down at her still holding the can of peaches, her hand tightened and spasmed around the can. her hands are slender and tiny. why did he give for the can of peaches. he would love more than anything to reach back your time and take them back. she's dead because she accepted the americans peaches. the irony is that he had no compassion for her, if he had ignored her she would still be alive. he might as well have aimed his rifle, pulled the trigger himself. he looks up at the sky with a horse cry and thinning from his stomach, more animal than human. the rest of the guys run back and they stop. they're not sure what they do. they start circling him as he rocks back and forth in the street. riley walks up and says we gotta go. we gotta get outta here. let's call the sin. stan reaches over and picks up the little girl and cradles her. she is warm. he figured she died instantly. he takes her across the street to an empty building that's been bombed and reduced to rubble but the front wall is still standing and he thanks she will be safe away from the street. next door is another building that's been bombed and emptied two. riley and i want to leave the street but stan refuses. he tells them he will not leave the girl alone there. he tells them he wants to go across the street in the safety of another building and wait to see who comes passing by, maybe the soldiers who shot her or some of their friends or maybe her family or someone who knows her either way he can't leave her in an empty building alongside an empty road as twilight falls. through the long night, cold and raining, he thanks he hears footballs in the dark, the steps of the approaching enemy, but nothing materializes as the sun rises. he gets up feeling sore and stretches. he has that feeling of one out, rinsed out after great strain as if the terror of the past days had burned away his nerve endings. across the road, he sees the rats. they are crawling all over the girl. he can hear their scratching and he puts it all together. oh god no. real calm he lives his m-16 against his cheek, takes aim and fires. one of the rats goes flying backward, away from the girl and he aims again, careful to go around the girl and fires a rat from her frame. he thanks they would've scattered, but they are persistent. he starts firing more rapidly, knocking them down and he keeps firing even after the last rat is dead, getting more excited. his nerve endings coming back to life as if sprouting through his skin. he keeps pumping around into the dead rat bodies. he shot them all, everyone, at least several dozen. he says over his shoulder to riley, 19 more bullets. he jams the makeup and the receiver and charges a weapon and fire some more. he fires several more magazines and stops and it's quiet. real quiet. they tell them it's okay, you did good. after a few moments, he gets up, walks across the street to the girl and looks at her. he can barely stand it. looking at her, the ugly thing that happened at his attempt of kindness. she still holding the peaches in her tiny hand. for the second time he has let her down. he screams when i heard stan tell me that story, it was incredibly moving. the entire book is somewhat like this. i think stan partner jan parker and his platoon mates are courageous for two reasons, one for having going there and survive this and to, stan in particular, for talking with me. can you imagine yourself being in a helicopter or sitting down with a stranger such as i was and having the courage to tell the story? this is why i think now is the time to have this conversation about vietnam. i'm hoping it's a national one and i'm hoping before these gentlemen and their families turned 80, now that their 70, it's time. there are many more stories like this in the book which really charge stan parker's beginnings in gary indiana is the son of an ironworker through his childhood, moving around the country, and as my own father pointed out to me which he read it and he enjoyed it and he's a tough reader, he said this book is really about stan's parents. i had had a hunch writing it why i was so fascinated by his boyhood. you will see some scenes in the book where his father and mother love him unconditionally and create a young man in a family that is robust and healthy, and a lot of that is what got people like stan through this war. there's a sense of in thi innocence of the book begins in. it ends back in acceptance and reduction. the journey of the book is from, there's this long dark night of the soul in between. it ends in 2014 when stan parker and tom souls and my photographer friend, tony returned to vietnam and with stan and tom's help, we returned to some key places. one of the things about the vietnam story that so important is all of us being aware that the veterans have many memories, unlike the world war ii veteran who fought a different kind of ward after day, but moving forward, gaining ground. the combat assault by helicopter changed th vietnam and changed warfare and change the minds and memories of young men fighting it because i imagine we are standing here right now, any moment helicopter lands, we get on, we fly 15 miles out, we get off, we do something intense and terrifying and in the end, incredibly meaningful to us in ways we don't understand we get back on helicopter and come back here. six hours later we go off in the other direction. you just do that day after day. going back to vietnam was an important, it is an important process for a lot of veterans to look at the ground and start to connect the dots, i highly recommend that journey for anyone who has the slightest bit of trepidation. it turned out to be quite an amazing experience. i want to play something now about that journey back just one moment. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is me walking up the draw from january 30, about 4:00 a.m. this is outside the village of highline. the north vietnamese were running up this health for these positions. >> we were right over here. they came up that draw. >> who are you i say. [inaudible] they appear nighttime and killed one by one. when you follow them here, you came and you kill them and they had to be killed. you knew the reason why you come here. >> if they hadn't shot him, we would not have known they were here. >> you were wounded and the american soldiers had to burn things. >> it was a little further back from that, maybe only 25 meters and finally i was able to raise up and shoot the wall across this road and there was a bunker there. it was attached to house. it was a thatched hut and the bunker was part of it and it went into the bunker and blew up and i got up and went over there and as a finished off the other soldiers came running and he iran right up beside me. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ this is great. i tell you what. my days made. >> thank you for watching that. i think it gives a sense of the journey that is the latter part of the book. without further ado, i would like to bring up stan parker himself and his good buddy john lucas. they have just reunited after 50 years, just several days ago. it warms my heart so much to have john and his wife sharon and if they wouldn't mind sitting appear on the stools and we can just ask some questions. we've not done this before and so we will take it as it comes. everyone please welcome stan parker and john lucas. [applause] >> is to ensure that. hello. welcome to this experience. thank you for being here. [applause] i'll give you little feedback on what brought us together. when we started doing the book, i had a list of everybody who was in echo company, and i had kept it for 40 some years and i don't know why he kept it, but i just did. i was doing other things and i started writing some of my own memoirs on what was going on over there. when i got hooked up with doug , we were trying to locate some of the other guys. i was in contact with two or three of them, but at one time there were 40 some of us and i know that three had been killed while we were over there and a number had been badly wounded and we've lost contact so doug took the set of orders and was able to track down, through a private detective, a bunch of them, and when he called me up, he would give me these names, i've got so-and-so and so-and-so and i'm going down the list and write these down and here's john lucas. we used to call him ranger john because he was the ranger in our platoon. he was ranger qualified. we look to him for advice and experience because he had the special training we needed. so anyway i said i was a minute call these and i called some of the numbers but they, individuals didn't live there or the number was disconnected and there were 45 that i did make contact with but i called john's number and he answered and i said my name is stan parker and i said you remember who i am. he said i sure do. wow. we got to talking on the phone and we talked for several hours and we decided we'd stay in touch and we did. well, about ten days ago my wife and i came back from florida, we went down there for vacation and we literally got sucked into hurricane irma. i've got this recording on my phone when i came home and it said this is john and my wife and i are gonna come to colorado, you can be around. i'm looking at the date on the phone call and that was a week prior. so i called them and he said we didn't leave yet because no answer but were coming out there. with got family in fort collins and friends marina come see you. i said is that okay and i said if you don't am not very happy camper. they showed up and the reunion with him was just like some of the reunions that i had not seen in 40 years. now it's been almost 50 years since we cite other and he come knock on the door and wow. it was good to see him. we shared some good times and some bad times. he was aware the book and irony had a copy of it, it had been smuggled to me through doug so i was showing it to john and i said you remember this and he said wow and i said is that where they got shot. i said where were you at and there was a map in the book but there's a diagram in their and john said i'm standing right here and the look on sharon's face when she realized these two guys got shot. he was as close to both of them as i was. i was only maybe from here to the lady sitting right there from both of them when they got shot. the first one shot he got shot through both shoulders and he went down and the other got shot through both legs. up until then i had never seen that much blood in my life. what an eye-opener. i didn't know what john was doing and he didn't know what i was doing because it was so scattered and so chaotic. you cannot believe what happens in a situation like that. so john, what were you doing right then. i know what i was doing. >> i was hiding as i remember it when they got shot, i was standing on the dike probably ten or 12 feet away and you could see the bullets hitting on the rice paddy in front of us and there was really no place to go. we were out in the wide open, the vietnamese were all hidden behind trees and you can see anything as to finding the enemy to shoot at cu just started pointing your weapon at anything that looks like a flash from a gun or anything else and find cover under whatever you can find and i ended up laying down behind the dike and thought i've got it made, i'm down here out of the way and the next thing i know they were hitting from behind me. they were on all sides of us but it didn't matter where we went. i will tell you this is probably more than i've ever said about the vietnam war. >> thank you john. >> i was the same way, when doug was telling the story about the little girl. >> well, what's surprising to me is how long have you ensuring the married. >> 45 years and i don't imagine you know much about this so, this is when your first times to hear this okay. >> i gotta tell you, everyone of us that have done together, we've done the same thing. there hasn't been a dry eye anytime with got together. even some of the fun times we had, we still broke down and cried over some of the fun things because he couldn't believe he could have fun in a situation like that, but we did. the hard times, their hard. they're difficult, even now, 50 years later, thinking about that little girl and some of the other things that may lead to later, it's horrible. you have no idea how bad it is , and does it appear and try to talk about, i'm glad that john's here right now. he's given me support over here and he he's shed in a few more tears than i am because i very shed tears so many times that i don't have anything left. we threw up so many times and we're having dry heaves and there is nothing left to throw up at the horrible mess you are looking at. >> thank you buddy. >> thank you both. have a question john, what prompted you to drive out colorado. was meeting stan on your mind. >> i wanted to come see stan. >> was there something that happened in your life. >> when he called and left a message at the house and said who we was and he said he was john parker and he had been in the first platoon and he wanted to know if i was john lucas that had been in that platoon and i thought i do not remember john parker so when i called them back i said this is john lucas but i don't remember john parker i said i remember stan parker. he said lets me so then we started talking back and forth and i knew doug at that point was getting ready to write or was thinking about writing a book on the platoon and i said well, i'm willing to talk to doug if he's got any specifi anything specific he needs answered and when i first talked to them, he asked me a couple questions and i answered and he asked me about a couple different things and i said i don't remember that. when i was talking to stan, over the last three years there are now several of the names in that book that i can now remember those individuals but probably until stan called me, i couldn't tell you three other people that were in our platoon because i just blocked it out of my mind. in some ways i'm hoping i can do that again after tonight. what were not done yet john. this is hard. i just want to say to the two of you, this was my experience writing this book. and then when i realized that these two gentlemen, you know them in your communities and their your uncles and your grandfather, your father, and to carry this heavy load around is not right. it's not their fault, but i don't know whose fault it is, but if a book like that can do anything to peers that bubble and bridge what happened and what we remember happening, then i'm all for it. the only way i can talk about the story, just imagine the conversations, i know stan has had conversations with his son because he went into the military to but all the conversations that never happened around the dinner table because dad or grandpa had blocked out those 365 days of his life when he was 18, 19, 20, and as tim anderson, one of their platoon members told us when we got together with the group, 1968 was the most important year of my life and i don't remember any of it. see you take any citizen, any of us, and let me pick your favorite memory and i'm just in the region and take it away from you. it's not favorite because it was the most fun but it's the memory that perhaps most defined you and just take it away, you can't have that anymore and you as the writer i felt maybe this book can be a bit of glue, something that goes back into that crack and not only the guys i was talking to but international sense. so that leads to the question, john i've talked to stan about this, is there anything, what is it today, do you feel any pressure not to talk about vietnam or what makes it difficult, besides the obvious of the emotion is it something were doing as a society that makes you feel that way no, i don't the good society so much of that's creating a problem anymore. i've had several people like me for my service and so on, they ask what war i was on and i don't have any problems with that. we just did not go into any detail as to what went on. when i come back and 68 and could watch the news at stuff at night and they were talking about the vietnam war, the news was so bias from what was really going on that it's a shame this country is still that way. we do not get a true picture from the news as to what's happening in any of the conflicts or war we are in. in afghanistan, the news shows you what they want you to see and that's not always accurate. very seldom is it a true pictur picture. that's about all i got. >> you felt people didn't understand what it is you live through an experienced and not a lot of interest in finding out what that was. >> i'll add a little bit about that. i have the same experience when i came back. nobody wanted to hear and think and while, the most dramatic year of my life just happened and nobody cares. the only one who cared was my immediate family. my dad. i mother had died about a year end a half earlier and wish she had been around because i know she would've been a great comfort but my brothers and my dad, and my older brother had been in vietnam with me and he understood, but the neighbors, stay away from me. i walk outside and they were like high. your back and they like oh my god, he's talking to me and i want to get in the house before he was sensible to me. was a most of what race, who could get in the house away from me and i thought is there something wrong with me, do i have cooties, do i have leprosy, what's wrong. that continued on and on and it was like okay, not that i'm in a tell them the eminent details of what was going on but just to say hey, welcome home. 18 years later was the first time anybody walked up to me and realized i was a vietnam veteran here in colorado springs, i'm getting gas and the guy walked over and he said hey, are you vietnam vet and i'm thick and oh boy, here we go and i said yes, i've been in many fights, let me tell you i'm not afraid to get enough fights i'm waiting for this to have this start flying and he said can i tell you thank you and can i buy your gas. i was floored. i said you're the first guy that has said thank you to me since i came back home except for relatives and close friends. not a single person on the street anywhere at anytime ever walked up and said thank you, and i was still in uniform for a long time when i came back. like a knife in the back. i wanted to buy the sky tank of gas and buy a brand-new car for what he said to me. the point was, i was so thankful. here's a guy out of the clear blue and he didn't care who i was, he just wanted to tell me thank you. i can ge wait to get home and tell my wife. i said you not to believe what happened to me today. i said yes. i don't know, what paradigm in uniform and she said you jumped today i said no she couldn't guess. i told her and she said you're kidding me i said really, this is what happened. she was just as happy as i was. it may not mean anything to some people, a guy walks up and said thank you, that was a monumental time in my life, and the next monumental time was in that video when we bumped into, we were in this village and had been in a major battle and out of the clear blue is a guy that me and him, we actually tried to kill each other. we both survived and he's telling his story and i'm telling my story and he looked over at me and i was like holy mackerel. doug finally said well, the guy that you're talking about, he said he right now. he looked at me and he said in vietnamese, he was tell me i was one lucky son of a pitch. under certain circumstances, i knew what he was sent to me. he told doc he said we tried to kill him for five times. he went down and he got back up and then he blows the crab out of us. i thought i killed him and he must've thought i was dead and here we are 40 some years later, were both alive and we both remember that incident in detai detail. we were a little apprehensive and the next thing i know were hugging each other and like i said, we were enemies once an hour brothers. when he said that it was like holy cow. that was fantastic. you can't imagine the feeling that came over me. here's a guy that was my enemy. he wanted to be my brother more than the people back home wanted to be my friend. anyway doug. >> as i was witnessing this, john i wished you had been there. drug and go back when it take you with us. >> i don't think so. i thought, if stan and him, this talked this happened, we were having a picnic. it was a small road, very pleasant, he walked up and stan said all the gears fell and place i thought man, if these two guys can do this, where does that leave us as the american public. were in the middle, and why can't we move on. the war is over. we need to separate the war from a soldier. we've done that very well today with iraqi and afghanistan. we have all kinds of differences about both of those words, but not once have those guys had the same experience as stan, coming home. i think we've come a long way, but in my experiences, traveling around the world, that meeting between stan and mr. sin was amazing. the humility in both in the fact that it was completely unplanned, it was just a shock. >> i told doug i said what are the odds, 2.7 men in vietnam, this probably 6 million total we lost 2 million and then we go to spot where hear me in a guy actually tried kill each other and he's there and i'm there. what was interesting was the people there that he was a nobody and he's telling stories and when it came out that what he was telling was the truth, the smile that came on his face because then he was finally being recognized for his service by the people there that he was somebody where all these years he had been a nobody and finally he was something and we in him walked along, it was in the video but were walking along and it was gratifying. were shooting it up. [inaudible] he said you were lucky as ob. i said oh yeah, you were too. by the way, they had a memorial there for the guys that were in the bunker that were killed. the explosion caused a secondary explosion and he was in a hut next to it which was just demand headquarters. it blew up and blew him out before the next explosion happen that would have killed him. that's how he lived out of the deal. of course i didn't know at the time what was going on, shortly after i was wounded and he was wounded and here we are 40 some years later. but to laugh and walk with this guy, i thought something like that would never happen. when doug said let's go back to vietnam, okay, let me think about that. he said we can do this and were in tokyo and he said are you ready for this and i said no. i said i don't take i can do this doug. when we landed, i had had my cowboy hat on my boots and the vietnamese i know there's no north and south but we were there and customs and this guy looked at me and said. [inaudible] he recognized me as a soldier, does he want to shoot me again. i got it. >> the other thing john, the reception to all of us americans by the vietnamese was very warm. if the country were closer, i think all of us would be there a lot more often. i found it to be a very wonderful experience. >> i agree. i would go back. from the fear i had of going there the first time, i would not have that again. it was wonderful. the people were outstanding. they were friendlier going back then the americans were when i came home. you configure the difference in that. >> two guys want to take some questions from the audience. >> does anybody have any questions. >> sharon, you must have one question. you'll save it from home okay. >> have you been watching the ken burns documentary and what you think of it? >> yes i have and i'll hold my comments on that heard the one that i was really interested in, episode six, i watched 12345, have them all recorded, i turn on six, sorry, you lost contact in the whole episode six was nothing. so i watched seven which was after it and i wanted to see what they really say about it, and the build up, everything they were saying about the buildup was correct, but i won't say no more. >> john, do you feel like you will talk more now that you've had this experience. >> have you spoken to your kids at all. >> other than i told them the book was out and after they read the book, if they have some questions all try to answer for them otherwise just go with what the book said. my one daughter has the book and i asked her if she started to read it and she said she looked at it and started to read it. she said there's a picture in here but i can't pick you out and i said that's okay i couldn't pick myself out of that picture either. i'm 50 years old. i look a little different. as far as the kids go, if they have particular questions that i can answer easily i will do my best but i probably won't get into too many details been a long time trying to forget and i'm just not sure i'm ready to go back and revisit every little thing that went on. >> when i interviewed world war ii veterans in harm's way, they started out feeling the same wa way, but over time they opened up and spoke more and they found it to be always painful, but ultimately, it got easier for them and i think what i asked him, and we understand how those veterans of world war ii, how the war change them and change the country and we call it the greatest generation for a number of reasons, but i think in some ways, you guys are part of what i would call the forgotten generation because you came home and everyone tried to get everything that happened. my question is how did the war change you, what did you do for your livelihood when you reached older adult hood. >> after i come back from the service and was discharged, i think it was late march 68, i got out of vietnam a lot earlier than standard, nobody said welcome home other than my mom and dad and i can remember getting on the airplane in saigon to fly home, it was 112 degrees. 48 hours later i got off the airplane in grand rapids michigan, it was 14 below zero and there was not enough close or enough heat in the world to get warm. stan talked about being cold, sitting in mud puddles to stay warm, it's unbelievable that 90 degrees at night and you can lay there and shiver because you're freezing to death because it had been 120, 125 all day long and when it dropped down into the '90s at night you actually felt like you were freezing. that's a 30, 40-degree change and it was out way every day during the monsoon season. >> what did you do that winter when you came home. >> after 30 days, i didn't have any problem. i got activated back in anything above 70 degrees is too dang ho hot. >> what did you do for a living, how did you occupy yourself. >> i had been working for the state parks system in michigan when i was drafted, i got my draft notice on my 21st birthday and i left for the service the first week of april, went through basic training and then when i got out i went back to the park service and spent 38 years working in the state parks in michigan and had a wonderful career and i met my wife while she was working at the concession stand at the park and 68, which was the summer after i got out and in 72 we got married and had a wonderful life ever since. everything's gone great sense. she's been a big help. even tonight other than her supporting me to come down here tonight, we've talked about it beforehand and i said i'd kinda like to go but i don't know and then stand stan asked me when i was at his house if i would stick around because my plan was to head back from michigan today because bo season starts sunday and it will take me three days to get home and if i missed the first day of hunting season means i've only got two months and 30 days to go. they talked me into staying and i'm here tonight and tomorrow morning i'll be leaving colorado and not sure that i'll get back. i loved it out here, it was beautiful. : : : coming out and going every year we do this. it's a family affair. a speech [inaudible] >> thanks for your service. my father-in-law had one that went into vietnam and told stories about having been somewhere near that time. did you see them during your time there? >> also i got to see her and she got to see a picture. before we could even get it built, the bad guys were there. they wanted to destroy what we had, so there were no more. i wish it would have been. >> i want to thank the two of you. john, welcome back. it's nice to see you, and i hope this is the beginning of a longer friendship and conversation not only between us and a lot of people. that meeting, i can't express the load that came off of me that the da day that we got tog. it makes easier to talk about it. i wrote a love of stories down, and i was doing it when i was there. when i got home, all this was there and waiting for me, stuff i brought back with me, anecdotes of this and that and i can look at it and i could expound on it and i carried a notepad with me and i still do. i can think of something, a little flicker of sound and it will bring something back to life and i will stop and make a note of it. even in the bad dreams it would finally come back out again and i will write two or three words and i can remember some of them i can't go back to, but i done that and it's helpful to me. nobody wanted to hear it. these are my relief to sit down and help myself relive and relief for what i went through. thank you for coming. we will be around for further questions. [applause] [inaudible conversations] secretary clinton, in the book what happened, you write the first warning sign was north carolina. walk us through that