Encouraging stories that none of us have heard about. His hymnbook, escape from paris, the true story of love and resistance which is based on official american documents history and interviews with several others. Its a thrilling adventure story of american aviators. [applause] i like to thank you all for coming. I appreciate when people show up and i hope not to bore you. I want to give you a quick background on myself, people tend to wonder how you find military history. I was born and raised in socal a long time ago. My father and my uncles fought world war ii in the pacific. Grew up hearing their stories fighting the japanese and the ocean and everything. When i was 19, i enlisted in the u. S. Army in 1971. It was the best decision i ever made because six months later, i got run over by a personal carrier as a result, i am a disabled veteran. They are very heavy. They dont give much. I spent just over a year in hospitals in germany and the u. S. And this was way before the internet. There wasnt a whole lot else to do but big. I also couldnt sit up. Every couple of days, we come from the library that the hospital was attached to. Most of what they had was military fiction or military history. It kind of reawakened my interest in military history. I eventually got out of the hospital but wearing several times of braces. I still dont understand even as a journalist. I spent the last year of my time in the army during television and print journalism. In the late went to school after getting out. I like to serve. I have two recent history. I immediately went to work. As a historian. It was interesting, i was doing historical studies of Indian Tribes which i knew nothing about because i was not in military history. It was a wonderful place to work. Staff historian for the air force in the army. This in the army i was working at the u. S. Army history in d. C. That i heard this story that became the last battle. The story the only time in world war ii were americans and germans joined forces and fought together. They didnt to defend the castle in austria that was filled with irritating french vips who were about to be murdered by the ss. Its the only time in american you would military history u. S. Soldiers defended a medieval castle. Other books followed and bring us up to escape from paris, when i finished the last book, my agent said whats your next book . I said im not really sure i want to write another. Do you have suggestions . He said yes, i have three suggestions. Second terrorists, world war ii and americans. I said it was fascinating but there were not any americans occupied in france. He said im sure you will find some. [laughter] so 18 months later, i did find out there were americans. There were once shot down and they managed to come under the wing of resistance. They were generally moved to large cities. Young americans who did not speak french would stand out like a sore thumb. At that time, 3 Million People had People Places to hide. The story i first found was on a particular day, 1943, july 14. There was a bombing by the 94th bomb group in london. They were just one group, there were several involved. Over 100 airplanes bombing different targets around paris. It was the old aerodrome and airfield. From the 94th bomb group was shot down in about 20 minutes. Thats actually not true. Three were shot dead. Ill tell you what happened to the fourth in a minute. I found that right and i had wanted to do a story about the air force but i also wanted to do a story about the French Resistance and i always wanted to write something that told world war ii. Its an overlooked concept. It just so happened that came together that this book sort of brings all this together. So i found the story about that pump group and i said i still dont have it yet. He was shot down, whats that about . I managed to find the one guy who became the focus of my story. He was a waist gunner. The aircraft, they generally carried a group of ten men. On his plate, there were 11 people that day. They have a guy named jefferso Jefferson Jeff dixon. He was a fascinating guy. I thought about writing the book around him. Jeff had been in world war i and served in france and he had been photographic unit. After world war i, he and other Young Americans have never been to france but once they experienced it, they stayed in france and in the. , managed to become emulator. Bicycle races, he owns a hippodrome in paris. He happened to be in new york city when pearl harbor happened and he immediately turned his back on his business, which was a little bit of germans. He enlisted in the u. S. Army, specifically army air forces. Seventeen and a bunch of others shoot Aerial Combat sequences for training purposes, documentary films, tell them it ended up in the original film, some ended up in clark gables film which most people have never seen. If you Google Clark Gable and b17, you can watch it online. Its a brilliant documentary he made. He is a gunner on several missions. So i thought okay, hes an interesting guy. Let me track down him, hes not in his late 70s and nate idolizes and truly loves his stepfather and when i contacted him california, if you have anything to show me, i would love to see it. I said i have a whole footlocker full of stuff. He said i am that. So i flew out there and sure enough, he had this all out on the table to his garage and it was photographs and metals and uniforms and letters and friends and relatives and all that. What really caught my on was a simple black leather bullet in one joe had been carrying on the day he died in 1978. I sent you mind if i look through this . I said sure, go ahead. His Social Security card and va health credits from it on the side on a very hard to see inside pocket, i saw a crinkled paper but pulled it out and opened it and there was a letter in french, written a couple of weeks after joe got out of occupied france and went back to europe, or england. Okay, this just got a lot more interesting. So nate had never seen a letter, i showed him that he was not particularly interested in it. Then i started digging into who this was. That took another five or six months. Ninetynine years old, she lives in a small town, which i wont attempt to pronounce. I speak german, my wife speaks french. Its not a language you want to use your with resistance fighters. So we went to france we researched paris and we were able to talk to her for the entire day. So that all came together and how this book jelled. I will tell you all about it because i hope you will read the book. To me its an interesting story that combines the also concentrated camps. So its a very involved book covers a lot of ground. The only negative review ive had so far was a gentleman who got a copy i dont know what you what a stupid love story in this great world war two. I think he missed the point. So if they are the key personnel in this book, hes a leading character. Im sure youre familiar, a huge campus just south of the river, it, among other things, museums and a hospital for veterans houses napoleons, too. So when joe and several of his friends were taking to paris and he and one other guy were given over to a family, i apologize for the annunciation. The father was george and their daughter was event. Usually in that situation, there would be on the ground occupied france for two weeks. Just as long as it took for the French Resistance to organize a way out. That was generally walking over to the mountains and trying to get from there back to england. Spouse called a homerun if you made it back to england. In joes case, there was some involving the stucco. They were there for several months living with them in their small apartment and they developed a deep relationship. They went to the local priest to get officially engaged and planned to be married after the war. When joes time came, he went in a different way. The story continues from there. I will tell you that not long after he left, the family was arrested. Thats sorting sort of the later part of the book. Him i cross reference with one or two things about that i realized it was the same train same journey. That was the way i was able to describe something that yvette did not want to describe. In doing this history especially when people are still alive you have to be really aware of the sensitivities. One of which was a very deep and important relationship that this now very elderly woman have. She was 22 years old and she remembered that all of her life. When i realized that joe cornwell had carried that letter for 50 some years and he had been happily married after the war for reasons i had not gone to he cannot marry yvette. Realized that i had hit on something when my wife mara and i were flying to california. I turned over and she was sobbing. I mustve told the story in an understandable way. Really without getting into too many things. This book i suffer from a very rare abactually not that rare, a lot of writers have is called research rapture. It means that you are so into fighting things out that its very difficult to actually put it aside and start writing. It happened on this book too. There was a lot to be found out my wife with her french was incredibly help. We also i hired an American Woman whod been living in france the last 30 years he used to be Associated Press journalist. Now very good friends of ours. Who did a lot of the Archival Research because even though i have research rapture, a heat archives. Especially any archive you have to put in an order in the morning and 80 hours until it comes. And dont you get it right before youre supposed to turn it back into the boat the archive. I tend to hire people to do that for me. But also i do a lot of my own and having worked at the u. S. Army military history for a while as a staff historian and pretty good with army records. Im pretty good with air force records. A lot of this was nonmilitary documentation. Letters between people, one of the ways i flushed out the romance between joe and yvette was because several other american aviators and british aviators who had been hidden there briefly in the same time describe the relationship. They thought it was such an amazing thing. Thats how you flushed out, thats always flush out a story when some of the principles are either no longer with us or not necessarily Little Orange all that forthcoming about it. I sent a copy to yvette and her daughter also named in east after her mother. Unfortunately none of them read english. I think they are having somebody painstakingly read it to them. I think they will find it surprising in a lot of ways because yvette and joe sort of lost touch and this will fill in a lot for her. I also sent a copy to nate gagnon. And his wife has told me that hes fascinated by it and it makes him sad in a good way. Because thats a part he literally never knew about joan cornwells wartime experience other than that he got shot down over france. Ultimately thats how this book came together. Apparently theres a chance it might be a movie although my experience so far with books being optioned is sort of ab is a term in the industry called development hell where they will option your book and write a script and start looking for actors and for some reason it takes years to do that. I dont know why. Im hoping this will go a little bit more quickly because i think its a great story. Obviously i have a certain prejudice involved. I just really enjoy it. To me being able to write honestly and concisely and yet in an entertaining way about people who never met mess and do not alive were doing what they were doing can be very satisfying if you do it right. And i hope ive done it right. At this point i would like to open it up for questions. I have spoken a little less than i might have because when i do radio and tv interviews they always tell a story. [laughter] my point is always, dont tell the complete story because we want to have people read the book. I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have on this for my other books for life in general. I can make the assumption that you know the canada World War Ii History pretty well. Pretty well. In your perspective, how does this story and your telling of it give a different angle or add to whats already in existence. One of the things i didnt know when i started doing this book, theres a lot of books about the French Resistance. Several books about aviators shut down and being helped by the resistance not only in france but belgium, the netherlands, italy. I had not realized the european resistance movements between the british part of world war ii between 1939 and 1945 and for the u. S. Between roughly 1942 and 1945 because 1942 is when the allied resistance movements or those working on behalf of the allies helped 6000 aviators evade capture by the germans and returned to allied territories. If you think about that to give an example between 1942 and 1945 talking about the u. S. Air force which was the primary american Aviation Unit operating out of britain this was bombers, fighter planes, transport between 1942 in 1945 18,000 aircraft went down. Some of those were excellent smokes were shot down or went down for reasons we still dont know. If you think about the b17 as i said earlier, a 10 man crew for airplanes in one rate thats 40 people. Most of whom are not going to make it back either because they are dead and i can tell you about doing without giving too much away that the Little People on jordan joe cornwells plane only three got out. Which is about what happened. The film that we see these days from Memphis Belle to wherever were you see the planes cascading out of control and b17 will only fly up to a certain point with a certain amount of damage and that it just becomes a big hunk of metal and its going to fall no matter what. We saw this a few weeks ago with the b17 carrying ab crashed in connecticut and killed seven people. I had ridden on that plane 20 years ago. I sat in the plexiglas nose because by far its the vestibule you will ever get flying. But i remember thinking, if we lose an engine or god forbid two engines, i dont want to be sitting here. Unfortunately the people who were killed several weeks ago, most of them were in the front of the airplane. In combat, the people who generally tend to get out the b17s and be 24s going down where the people in the half and of the aircraft, the way scanners, tailgunner, radioman because the people in the front office were trying to get the plane studies of the rest to get out. That was what happened in this case. So that was a longwinded answer but the ability to tell not only larger story about the French Resistance but the majority of the resistance workers who were not carrying guns out in the countryside the majority of people working to help allied aviators were women. That was primarily because even by 1943 the majority of french men between 18 and 40 were either still in german pow camps or working as forced labor in germany or in hospitals. Things naturally fell to the women. And they were very good at it. Even though paris had 3 Million People in it in 1943 there had been a mass exodus from the city when the germans rolled in in 1940. So there were a lot of empty apartments and warehouses there were a lot of places to hide people. It was the women primarily who moved them from place to place. Once it was time to go they would give them the actual guides which mustve been a grueling trip even in good weather. Fortunately joe didnt have to go that way. Im sorry i went on and on. Anything else from anyone . I was curious about the back of your book abhow does that work . Generally all the people who provided those snippets are not necessarily people i know. Alan first the novelists. One of my favorite. I love his books. Fortunately been able to get friends with be friends with them over the last several years. He is a novelist who writes about the interwar period in paris is very film noir and lots of skulking around. Great meals and wine and stuff like that. I had read several of his books which is why part of the reason i wanted to write about paris. When you have the manuscript done your publisher will generally say, who would you like us to send this to . And they will send it to a lot of other people, reviewers, but who are the core people that you want in the book. In my line of work as a military historian and magazine author ive been able to meet a wide range of what writers and i picked these folks and i got mass copies of the book. And i do this for other writers. Donald miller, the guy who wrote masters of the air, which is allegedly on its way to being a hbo miniseries for the last 15 years. He wrote this preeminent book about the eighth air force and hes also a fairly good friend of mine. I wrote him asking otto allen, abwas a british author i did not know but she had read one of my earlier books and was very happy to do it. In the business they are called blurbs. So you ask people you admire and also your friends to tell you honestly. I fortunately never had one go, ill pass. So thats how that comes about. Think you. I love to hear about your initial contact with yvette and how you want her over . That was quite an event. I started off with a belief that she was dead. Joe had died in the 1970s and i figured abbut Allen Hampton this now friend of ours i had her initially going to the french archives which can be a mindnumbing experience because of the bureaucracy in france. She had been handling it as a journalist for years so she knew people, she went to the right people and i said, it would be really great if yvette was still alive because i look for her online and 90yearold french women apparently dont spend a lot of time online. [laughter] one day i get this email from alan and she said, i found her shes alive. It literally just blew me away. I thought okay, can you go talk to her initially. Heres some questions because allen was fluent in french, with a delightful southern accent as i remember. So she did she was able to find her. At that point she was living in this town so we set up a trip to go to paris because i needed to see the ground of the hotel ai had been to napoleons tomb several times i spent five years in germany. I had been to france several times. I was fortunate to be offered, we were offered the chance to go up on top of napoleons tomb. I dont know how abpolians tomb is covered by a good gigantic golden dome which you can see from everywhere in paris. Its connected to the cathedral that was built for th