reviews tim "washington post" and many more. he is cofounded the national writers series which is a book festival as well as a writing workshop. we are excited to be hosting and it is my honor to introduce doug stan. [applause] >> thank you everyone. we have some special guests and friends who have come to visit. this book has just come out and it's been a labor of love beginning in 2005 trying to get to the special forces camp and there was a gentle man an and a helicopter seemed to be older than everyone else walking around. we began to talk and turned to the first conversation about the uss. i saw that as a survival story trying to make grea right deciss about the hardest moment. both soldiers and in harms way and books about the war but they are about people to overcome something extraordinary. and in the case of this new book to go back, this gentleman asked did you write in harms way. since 2005 i'm kind of concerned about being in afghanistan in broad daylight but the command sergeant major was talking about vietnam and it was a story that was important to him and many of the platoon mate in the 101st airborne in the above in 1968. i think that vietnam is one of america's unfinished stories as i've traveled around talking with people it is hard to have this conversation and here we have a whole generation of men and women because it was so tumultuous and america and went off to this conflict and then when they came home they learned they couldn't talk about this. i don't think we can move forward as a country until we put a period at 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 in wanted to talk about how it made people like stan parker view so it is flipping the mirror the same way as harms way. it is a large battle book with different points of view including afghan points of view. so, the one of the reasons i wrote this book. this is a generation or two ahead of me so it's not part of my experience that it was up and down the street when i grew up i remember doors opening and teenagers running outside are doing with their parents, the body count on tv at all those images i never could make sense of them so writing thi this boos been a journey for me for sure i. i don't want to give that away just yet if i want to read something from the book to set the scene this was a section of the book that was difficult to write and experience but when you see someone who is about 70 the question is we can talk about world war ii and the spanish war in iraq and afghanistan but the question is how do we talk about vietnam i don't think this is an intellectual book so to speak. so, what i tried to do is just to listen. one of the biggest thing they fear is being urged to veto judged. in 1968, 69 but they never talk about it, go ask him. he will have something to say. maybe i don't want to talk to you but at least you know in some part that you've asked. they sat and listened and create a story that i found compelling. in some ways in this book something happens towards the end of that when we go back to vietnam with stan parker and one of his platoon buddies and have an amazing meeting. this is happening in the middle of the conflict of the tet offensive which kicked off january 30, 1968. the platoon is between 40 and 46 but quickly understrength because of attrition it never really was a size. their job is to be the eyes and ears of the entire battalion, so they have all volunteered for this to the paratroopers did so not only did they enlisted willingly, they volunteered to do this. stan parker listening in world war ii ended years earlier in figure 16, 17 years on 9/11 in 2001 and you can imagine how much it still infuses our daily behavior politically, socially, creatively so that's what is happening in 66 and 67 when these guys are enlisting they are being influenced by world war ii but it's thought very differently. it's asymmetrical and five days a year, 24 hours a day. here's one of those moments of tough duty. stand is walking craft in mommy's title and shower curtains they've torn down at the nearby schoolhouse. they make a strain. she's very younshe is very yound with tears. stand takes off the shower curtain and offers it to her so he wraps it around her but it bunches around her bare feet. she doesn't say anything or shy away. she stands there looking at him mute ended in passive, courageous. he feels the need to do something for her that in this confused sleep deprived state he looks at her and asked what he can only describe as an epiphany as if his eyes were snapping open after a long nap. he watches them pass the movie of who he is and was and is becoming as president johnson predicted all young men would become. he has an overwhelming desire to make the girl safe but he doesn't know how. he wants to give her something that has nothing in the denver members he has a can of peaches. he pulls out a can of the fruit and vendors don't offer it to her. it's okay he tells her and he makes a shooting gesture with his hand. he would like to come back to vietnam as another kind of person and be able to offer some peace and attention and safety. it's quiet between the two of them punctuated by the rustle of the shower curtain as if asking what she should do with this and then realizes he's been left behind by the rest of the patrol and he feels exposed. now they are already far ahead. he finally touches her gently and says goodbye and runs to catch up. a few seconds after that here's the gunshots behind him. he turns the corner and there she is no bigger than a pile of rags in this looking down the road he sees soldiers fleeing the buildin building and bottles weapon and fires at them but he misses. how could he miss when he killed so many men before. he runs up to the girl and drops to his knees crying. why. he knows why, because he's a bad person, a american soldier, a man filled with badness. he would like more than anything to reac reach back in time and e them back. the irony is that he had no compassion for her and ignored her, she would still be alive and he might as well have pulled the trigger if self. they are unsure what to do and he goes back and forth in the street and walks back and says we've got to go get out of here. he picks up the little girl, cradles for and figures that she died instantly. it's been bombed and reduced to rubble and she thinks that she will be safe away from the street. they want to leav leave the strt stanley says he will not leave her alone. he says he wants to sit across the street and the safety of another building and wait to see who comes passing by. maybe the soldiers have shot her or her family or someone who knows her but either way, he can't leave her like this alongside an empty road as twilight falls down. a long night stand thinks he hears footsteps. he gets up feeling sore and stretches into fuels that strain ends with the terror had burned away his nerve ending across the road he sees the rats crawling all over the girl and he puts it all together. one of the rats goes flying backwards and they aim again around away from the girl and fire another cartwheel from the slight frame he thinks that they are persistent. he starts firing more rapidly knocking them down and fires even after the last one is that getting more excited now. then he says while handing another magazine he fires several more and stops quietly and they tell him it's okay you did good. after a few moments he gets up and walks across the street to the girl and looks at her, the ugly thing he's wrought by his attempt of kindness still holding the can of peaches in her hand. for the second time he let her down and he screamed. when i heard him tell me that story, it was incredibly moving. i think sam parker and his platoon mates are courageous for two reasons, having gone and survived this and number two, stan in particular for talking to 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 this story? now is the time to have this conversation. i'm hoping it is a national one and before these gentlemen and their families turned 80 it's time and there are many stories like this in the buck which really chart is the beginning and gary indiana as the sun of a worker if he enjoyed it he said this book is about his parents and i had a hunch why i was so fascinated. you will see some scenes in the book where his father and mother loved him unconditionally and creates a familcreate a family t and healthy so there is a sense of innocence and then it ends back in acceptance is the journey of the book has a long dark night of the soul in between. it ends in 2014 and my photographer friend who returned to vietnam and we returned to some key places. one of the things about the story is all of us being aware that the veterans has perhaps many memories unlike i would say the world war ii veteran moving forward to gaining ground. the combat assault changed of course to vietnam and the warfare and also changed i think the mayans and agrees. we get on it and fly and do something intense and terrifying and incredibly meaningful in ways we do not quite understand. they do that day after day. i highly recommend that journey for anyone who has the slightest trepidation. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ about 4 a.m. the tet offensive, and outside the village the viet cong and the north vietnamese. we were right over here. ♪ speed to speak they have to be. he knew that. >> we would have not known that they were here. it was like the american soldiers. it was a little further back than that. there was a plethora and it went into the bunker for the other nva soldier he thought i was one of my guys. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ thank you for watching that. it is the journey that is the latter part of the book. i want to now without further ado ring up sam parker himself, and his good buddy, john lucas to just reunited after 50 years just several days ago. it warms my heart so much to have john here. if they wouldn't mind sitting up here we have not done this before so we will just take it as it comes. please welcome sam parker and john lucas. [applause] you can share that. >> welcome to this experience. thank you for being here. >> i will give you a little feedback on what brought us together. we started doing the book and i had a list of everybody for thirtysomething years i don't know why i kept it but i did. i started writing some of my memoirs about what was going on over there and when i got up to locate some of the other guys, i was in contact with two or three of them bu that at some time the were 40 some of us and three of them had been killed. i'm going down the list and i'm writing the down he was the ranger in our platoon. he said i arty called some of the other numbers there was four or five i did not make contact with. long time no hear or see or whatever. we got to talking on the phone and we talked for several hours we decided we would stay in touch and we did. about ten days ago we went down there for vacation with the kids i'm selected to hurricane irma we come back home and i got get this recording on my phone hasty stan this is john lucas. are you going to be around. i call the unit leave yet but were coming out there. we family in fort collins and friends. they shut up it was just like a reunion with some of the other guys i haven't seen. he kept on going. and now it's been right about 50 years since we saw each other. he came up to the house. it was good to see them. we shared some good times some bad times. and he was aware of the book i arty have a copy of it i was showing it to john and i said you remember this, that's where they got shot. where are you were you at when this happened. there is a diagram in there. and john goes i was standing right here. the look on sharon's face when these two guys got shot. he was as close to both of them as i was. both of them when they got shot. he was down. up until that i have never seen them like that in my life. what an eye-opener. it was so scattered and chaotic. you cannot believe what happens in a situation like that. i know what i was doing. i remembered it when they got shot. ten or 12 feet away. and you could see them hitting on the rice paddy in front of us. and there was really no place to go. we were out wide open. the vietnamese were all hidden behind trees and so on and so forth. you could not see anything from finding the enemy to shoot at. you just started pointing your weapon. i wound up laying down behind that. i think i'm done here out of the way. it's hitting behind from behind me. they were on all sides of us. it did not do not make a difference where we went. and i will tell you that this is probably more than i have ever said about the vietnam war. i was the same way my first experience with this. when doug was telling a story about this. and the little girl what is surprising to me is how long had you and sharon been married 45 years i don't imagine that you know much about this. so this is one of your first times to hear this. i have to tell you that when we got together we've done the same thing. there has not been a dry eye any time we got together. even some of the fun times we have we still broke down in court --dash i cried over some of the fun things. the hard times they are hard let me tell you. they are difficult even now. fifty years later some other things that they may allude to it later it's horrible it really is. you've no idea how bad it is and is set up here and try to talk about it. i'm glad john is here right now. i have already shed mine. it's like when we're over there. we cried 70 times and threw up sometimes. there was nothing left inside to throw up. i'm glad you said something john. thank you. i would question what prompted you to drive out to colorado. i definitely wanted to come see stan. was it something that happened in your life he called and left a message at the house. he was john parker. that he has been in the first recon platoon. i thought. i do not remember a john parker. i don't remember that i remember a stan park is parker. they were getting ready to write that. when i first talked to doug he asked me that. and he asked me about a couple of different things and i said i don't remember that. over the last three years. there are several other names that are in that book that i can cannot remember those individuals. but probably until stan called me i couldn't have told you three other people that were in our platoon. i just blocked it out of my mind. and in some ways i hope i can do that again after tonight. i was on to say this is my experience with the book. you know them and mike -- in your communities. to carry the heavy load. to pierce that bubble and open that bridge that chasm between what happened and what we remember happening. i think that just imagine the conversations with his son because they went into the military also. all of the conversations the conversations that never happened around the dinner table because the dad or grandpa had blocked out the 365 days in the life. when we got together. i don't remember any of it. they take any citizen. let me just pick your favorite memory. it was that the favorite because it was the most fun. it but it was the most defining to you in a way. maybe this book can be a bit of glue something that goes back into that. and the national sent. sentence. it leads to the question. do you feel any pressure not to talk about that. the emotion. a society that makes us feel that way. >> i don't think society so much as creating a problem anymore. what were i was in. what actually went on. they can watch the news and step at night. the news was so biased. they did not get true a true picture in the news. the news and it shows you. they show you what they want to see. you felt like people did not understand what you have lived through and experienced. and not a lot of interest in finding out what that was. nobody wanted to hear. the most dramatic year of the entire life. my mother have this. she would've been a great comfort. he understood. i have to get in the house before he starts saying something. what's wrong. that continued on and on. you the first time i have to walk him home. eighteen years were the first time anybody walked up to me and i was a vietnam veteran and i'm getting gas are you a vietnam veteran and i'm thinking oh boy here i go. i'm ready and i been in many fights. i'm not afraid to get in a fight. i'm waiting for this. he said can i tell you thank you for the mai by your gas for you. i was floored. thank you. you are the first guy that has said thank you to me since i came back home except for relatives and close friends. i was still in uniform. people knew that he was. it was unheard of. if you don't think that's like a knife in the back. i wanted to buy it this guy this guy a tank of gas. i cannot wait to get home. i said take a guess. i'm in uniform. i love to jump. she was just as happy as i was. i walked up to thank you. it was a monumental time in my life. and the next monumental time was in that video. i survived and he survived. he is doing that with the story. the guy that you're you are talking about is sitting here right now. he looked at me. what he told me was i was one lucky son of a bench. i knew what he was saying to me. we tried to kill him for five times. we shot him again. he is back up again. and that he blows the crap out of us. i thought it killed him. he must've thought i was dead. here are 47 years later. we both are men spurred were men's bird that incident in detail. i was a little apprehensive. that's why we were standing at odds there. i will wait and see what happens here. we are hugging each other like he said when he said that. it was like holy cow. fantastic. you can't imagine the feeling that came over me. here is a guy that was my enemy he wanted to be my brother better than the people back home wanted to be my friend. as i was witnessing this. we are all going to go back and take you with us. i thought if stan and mister send this moment happened about three or four hour time pack. very pleasant. and he walked up all the gears fell into place and i thought if these two guys can do this is that leave us as the american public. my can we move on. the war is over we need to separate the wart from the soldier. we've done very well today. we've all kinds of differences about both kinds of those wars. i think we have come a long way. in my experiences traveling around the world the meeting between stan and mister send was quite amazing. the humility in both and the fact that was completely unplanned it was just a shock. what are the odds 2.7 million men they called for 6 million of those. they lost 2 million and we lost 500,000 and we go to a spot where we oppose each other. what was interesting was the people there .-dot he was a nobody and he was telling the stories the smile that came on his face. he was finally being recognized for his service to the people there. all these years he had been a nobody. he walked along i'm telling him that. you are lucky. in the tank racket. and by the way it have been eliminated at the time. the explosion called the secondary explosion and they were in their next trip. it blew up and blew him out of the hooch before the next explosion happened which would've killed him. that is how he lived out of the deal. and of course i don't know at the time what was going on. he was going to do. here two. here we are 40 something years later. it was the last walk with this guy. they go back to vietnam okay let me think about that. we are in tokyo i don't think i can do this. when we landed. i was like okay. i have my calgary hat on. as i'm going through customs. i am sitting around there. he is looking. what are you doing. okay i got it. the other thing john is the reception for all of the americans was very warm. and if the country or closer i find a very wonderful experience. the people were just outstanding. they were friendlier if you can figure that out. do you guys want to take some questions from the audience. does anybody had any questions. now that you've heard a little bit here. you must have at least one question. [indiscernible] i will hold my comments on that until after the last show. what i was really interested in. i watched one, two three 45 the whole episode six was nothing. i wanted to watch the one in what we are can say about it. everything we were saying about the build up was correct i want to anymore. are you glad that you will have this experience. have you spoken to your kids at all other than i told them if they have some questions and try to insert for them. and just just go with what the book said. give me the microphone yeah. my one daughter has a book and i asked if she started to read it. and she said she looked at it and started to read it there is a picture in here but i can't pick you out. i said i can pick myself out of that picture either. i look a little bit different. if they have particular questions insulin easily. i will do my best. i probably won't get into too many details. i mention that mentioned that i'm ready to go back and revisit. when i interviewed world war ii. they found it to be always painful. but ultimately you have to do that and it got easier for them. we understand how those veterans and how they changed the country. in some ways you guys are part of what i would recall the forgotten generation. my question is how did the war change you. what did you do for your livelihood when you reached the older adulthood. after i come back from the service and was discharged in late march 68. nobody said welcome home other than my mom and dad. i can remember getting on the airplane. it was 112 degrees. forty-eight hours later it was 14 below zero and there was not enough close or heat in the world to get warm. stan talk about being cold. 90 degrees at night so you can lather and shiver. it had been 120125 all day long. and when it dropped down into the '90s at night you actually felt like you were freezing. it was that way every day during the monsoon season. what did you do for living or 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 of my 21st birthday and i left for the service the first week of april went through my basic training and then when i got out i went back to the parks service and spent 38 years working in the state parks a michigan and have a wonderful career she was working at a concession stand in the park in 1968. it was a summer after i got out. and 72 we got married and had have a wonderful life ever since. she's been a big help. even tonight thank you for supporting me in coming down here tonight. we talked about it beforehand i would can elect to go. and then stan asked me monday if i would stick around my plan was to have back from michigan today because they had have it on sunday. it would take me three days to get home. it means that 31 days to go. come on. i loved it out here. it was beautiful. the first two days it just rained every day since. .. .. i correction, october 19. my two sons are coming out and were going every year and we do this. it's a family affair. whatever we do in the meantime. [laughter] >> first, welcome home. >> thank you very much. >> thank you for your service. my father in law was had his own uso show that went into vietnam and he tells stories about having been somewhere near the tet offensive at that time. did you see any small uso shows during your time there? >> the only us show was bob hope you and we saw bob hope. >> also, raquel welch was there and she gave me a picture. bob hope, some other women and that was the only uso show we got to see. when we went north, it was so primitive up there that they didn't -- we were pulling our own camp. it was that primitive. the bad guys are coming in before we got it built, the bad guys were there. they wanted to destroy what we had so there was no more uso shows. i wish there would have been. >> listen, i want to thank the two of you very, very much for continuing this conversation. john, welcome back. it is great to see you appear. it's nice to meet sharon and i hope this is the beginning of a much longer friendship and conversation not only between us but a lot of people. stan, it's great to travel with you again. >> i'm glad he talked me into going over there. >> that meeting was -- i can't express the load that came off of me that day when we got together. it was a remarkable -- it makes it easier to talk about it. i didn't talk about it, like doug said, i wrote stories down because if they don't want to hear it i could write them down. i wrote the stories down and i did it while i was there. i would write things and send it home. when i got home all of this was waiting on me and i still had stuff that i brought back to me, little anecdotes of this and that and i could look at it and say i remember that so i could expound on it and then i carried a notepad with me for the rest of -- and i still do and i can think of a little flickr or sound or it will trigger something and it will bring something back to light and i will make a note of it. i could wake up my dreams at night and even though they were bedrooms i would go okay, that was coming out again and i don't need to do this but i will write about it. and i would write two or three word sentences and sometimes i can't go back but i've done that and by doing that it has been helpful to me because no one wanted to hear it and if you don't want to hear it, i can help myself by doing it. it has helped me to move forward. because i never got the drugs, i don't need drugs, these were my release to sit down and help myself relive and release for what i went through. >> thank you very much for coming. we will be around for further questions if you want. good night. [applause] [background noises] >> we are in our 22nd year of the tucson book festival, founded in 1995 by then first lady, laura bush and an amazing group of dedicated volunteers who decided that we needed to have a book festival in austin, texas to celebrate texas authors and literacy and to support our texas library. since those early years the book festival has exploded and very quickly became a national premier destination for the biggest books of the year. >> joint book tv for the texas book festival live from austin, saturday and sunday november 4 and 25th on c-span2. >> does anyone else have an experience you would want to share? tyrone asks about his medication again and the conversation turned to drugs and alcohol when i wrote, instead, begins talking about getting arrested for smoking a joint. everyone except the wall bar patient has something to say about the drug. may i say something minor, asks manny during a pause in the discussion. sure, cynthia not. i don't mean to take up everyone valuable time in the group that i know i don't deserve it but thank you for letting me speak. to my frustration you will find, just talk. thank you, thank you. it is just that i struggle with alcohol for so long almost 40 years now and i've been sober since getting locked up and i hope so badly that i can stay clean when i get out. he seems to be more comfortable now and continues talking. he tells us about being whipped against the wall with a seven -year-old when he didn't clean up the mess from his father's party the night before. one morning manny during from the glasses of leftover orange juice not realizing that it was mixed with vodka. when his hung over father found out he whipped manny until blood seeped through the shirt. but, manny said it didn't hurt as much a time because he was to be from the alcohol so from then on he drink as much alcohol as he could get his hands on. thank you for letting me share says manny. i know i'm not worth your time. i wrote these words and i still get tearful. manny, says thomas, leaning forward in his chair so we can see clearly. you are worth it and you have mad courage. you hang on and keep going one day at a time that is all you have to do. jamaal looks like he is about to cry although no one except the psychotic patient named jamal offers and kind words. campbell nods in agreement. yeah, manny, take it one day at a time. think about those days you survived already. a glance at cynthia and her eyes are wide and wet with amazement. we are witnessing a pedal moment for manny, perhaps the group itself. a collective responsibility to care for someone else and no one wanted to end. >> you can watch this and other programs online @booktv .org. >> here is a look at the current best-selling books according to the conservative book club. some of these authors have or will be appearing on tv. you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> now joining us on the tv is author christina sandifer. the book is called cornerstone of liberty, property rights in 21st century america. what was kilo versus new london in 2005? >> the key lopez eviscerated our property rights from the constitution and in that case the united states. court rubberstamp