Im bill harris, the director here at the fdr president ial library. And were so happy to see many Friendly Faces and familiar faces. And if we have new ones out there to please, welcome to the library and welcome to one of my favorite events of the year, which is the reading festival. Its our 19th annual. Its hard to believe its been going on for 19 years. It is wonderful to believe ive had the Good Opportunity to work with so many of these people here at this library, first in washington and then here at the library over those 19 years and longer. So he wanted the president wanted this library to be a place of study and of community and thats what we can say like this. Certainly evidence. I dont want to talk too long for you. So let me go over the format real quickly. Therell be a 30 minute talk, 30 minutes, and then well have a brief question and answer period. And then the author will go into the library to sign books. If you want to purchase them in our new deal store. And let me introduce our speaker, david kissinger. Youre not spelled kissinger as i was told, chris, in your show. Okay. You see, just never, never, never try to explain it. It gets bad. Thats what happens when you become management. Right . You inevitably get it wrong. So, chris center David Chrisinger is executive director of the Public Policy writing workshop at the university of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. No relation to me or know his name, write and director of writing seminars for the war house, an Award Winning nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on the human impact of military service is the author of several books, including the soldiers truth ernie pyle and the story of over two and stories are what saved two survivors. God to writing about trauma. And hes won the George Orwell award. So wed really like to welcome him today as he speaks about ernie pyle and his work. Welcome, david. A guitar. That that was my fault because people always ask me, how do you pronounce your name . And. I sometimes say, you know, call me whatever you want. Just dont call me late for dinner. But. I told him its like kissinger. But its chris. And thats probably just put it in there is india is mine. So apologies for that. Thank you all for being here today, especially on a rainy saturday. Im sure you could think of other things to do, but you chose to be here and im very appreciative of that. I do plan to read you a little bit from the very beginning of the book. Dont worry, its not going to be a 30 minute reading, i promise. But i want to tell you a little story first. So back in 2016, a very good friend of mine who became who has become my writing mentor. His name is brian castner. He invited me to come along on a trip with him that he was taking to the Mckenzie River up in the far northern reaches of canada. And he was familiar with the Mckenzie River. Okay. I wasnt either. But this is one of the biggest rivers in north america at its widest point, about two miles across, which is just mind boggling when youre there and youre youre very near to the arctic circle. We went about this time back in 2017 and and we canoe that river. I can use about 350 miles with him. The river is about 1100 miles long. So after i had done ten days with him in the canoe, another one of his friends came and did ten days, and another friend came and did ten days. And another, because none of us could take 40 days off of work like he was doing. So what . Why was he doing this . Why was he trying to recreate . Why was he trying to canoe across this river or down this river . Well, the river had been discovered by well, lets say it was traversed by a european explorer for the first time, and that explorers name was alexander mackenzie. And thats why the rivers named the Mackenzie River. But what he wanted to call the river was disappointment. River, because he had thought that river was going to take him to china. They were looking for the northwest passage. Now, heres whats really interesting about the Mackenzie River. It goes straight west towards china right . So youre like, okay, this makes sense. But then it hits the Rocky Mountains and it flows north into the arctic. Its one of the only rivers that flows north. So when you hit the Rocky Mountains and started going north, he knew he was in trouble. And then he hit the arctic, which was full of ice, and had to turn around and come back. So my friend was recreating this journey to try to tell the story of of how this trip was done, but also to tell this story of how he was basically 250 years too early because now the Mackenzie River is a passage to china. It is used to bring materials in and out because the arctic is melting and the the icebergs that were there in his day, in the 1700s are not there today. So i went along on this trip with him, which was an absolutely Incredible Opportunity to be stuck in a canoe for 16 hours a day with an author who you want to be like someday. So i basically got to pick his brain. 16 hours a day. Once the trip was over and he wrote the book, he was doing some events just like this. And before he went up on stage for one of the events that i went to, he told me this little piece of wisdom. He said, if you ever go to a reading and the author doesnt read from the first page, it means they started the book in the wrong place. Now, i dont know if thats true for every single writer, but i have noticed, like if i go to a reading and they flip to page 60 and they start reading, its like, oh, you might just wanted to start with that. If that was the, if that was the thing that was going to really, you know, pull the reader in. So if you dont mind, id like to read you the first few pages. These are the pages i decided would be the ones to start. Excuse me. A warm summer rain soaked the men as they mounted muddy tanks and stuffed themselves into half tracks or jeeps pointed east the smell of soggy gear and idling engines overpowered the sweet scent of the honeysuckle that claimed the gray siding of a nearby three story in in a darkened shed out behind them in a 43 year old pipe cleaner of a man sat hunched over his portable typewriter, ankle deep in straw, his back curved like a cashew. This morning, we are sort of stymied as far as moving is concerned. He picked out with his index fingers to his wife back home in new mexico. So in order not to waste the day, i dug up a white medal table out of a nearby garden. After nearly three months of hellish fighting through the hedgerow country of france, the americans and their allies were 30 miles from the center of nazi occupied paris. Capturing paris had never been part of the allies plan, which involved a strike through to the low countries across the industrial heartland of germany and straight to the heart of berlin, the Supreme Commander of the allied forces in europe, general dwight d eisenhower, had grave concerns that if he marched his men into paris, they would likely bogged themselves down in brutal street by street combat with seasoned enemy troops and reduce one of the worlds most magnificent cities to a charred graveyard, not even an impassioned plea from the french commander, general general Charles De Gaulle had been able to dissuade him. Then on august 22nd, 1944, the french resistance, his chief of staff, roger goga, slipped through german lines on the outskirts of paris and found his way to general george s patents headquarters. The situation on the ground was not what the americans thought. Kawhi told general Omar Bradleys chief intelligence officer. The Resistance Movement in the capital city had infiltrated the police force, and the week before, 15,000 parisian policemen had gone on strike. More than that, the tens of thousands of resistance fighters had risen up to attack and harass their nazi occupiers, even though they were armed with not much more than anticrime rifles and molotov cocktails. In the days following the police strike, many more parisians of all ages and abilities dug up paving stones collected piles of furniture and other odds and ends, and felled trees to construct an elaborate network of more than 400 street blockades, even though they were outnumbered and now outmaneuvered, the germans were nowhere near outgunned and would eventually crush the insurrection and inflict untold amounts of suffering and destruction as they retreated east. Unless the allies came to the rescue. This new intelligence quickly reached eisenhower, who dispatched the Free French Forces under his command to liberate their capital with american and british backup, while the rest of his forces pushed east and north toward the belgian border. On august 25th, 1944, liberation day in paris after a brilliant sun burned away, the morning mist Ernest Taylor pile, better known as ernie to his millions of readers back home in america, stuffed his typewriter into his case, slung his musette bag over his shoulder, and hopped into a jeep with a couple of fellow combat newspapermen. Through most of the early part of the day, they felt their way through garden like country toward the outskirts of paris, far behind the lead tanks and the more daring allied correspondents such as robert cappa, Ernest Hemingway and don whitehead. The outer rings of the city hadnt been bombed much. Ernie was heartened to find and most of the bridges were still safe to cross, not at all desperate to be the first to secure that coveted liberated paris dateline. Under their bylines, ernie and his companions entered the city from the south along the route, doling where they discovered a pandemonium of surely the greatest mass joy that has ever happened. Women in brightly colored blouses and skirts lined the wide city streets in a carnival like frenzy, leaving only a narrow corridor of pavement pavement for the hulking military vehicles to navigate aging veterans of the francoprussian war stood at attention, saluting their liberators, excited children, bounced and waved. Some ran along jeeps with their hands extended, hoping for a shake, but settling for slaps on the back or pats on the shoulder. The demented choir of shrieking shells and zipping machine gun tracers. The allies had expected to encounter that day, had mostly been replaced by cheers of viva la france and viva la america. Even as pockets of german resistance in the city remained, they tossed flowers and friendly tomatoes into a jeep. Ernie later reported one little girl even threw a bottle of cider into ours. Once, when the jeep was simply swamped in human traffic and had to stop, he wrote, we were swarmed over and hugged and kissed and torn at everybody, even beautiful girls insisted on kissing you on both cheeks. At least one ecstatic woman with full pompadour and flashy earrings reached out to grab ernie by the slack in his collar. Before he could protest, she pulled his gray, bearded face, smudged with dust and lipstick to her wine colored lips. Thank you. Oh, thank you, she squealed between kisses. Thank you for coming. We all got kissed until we were literally red in the face. He later recalled, and we must say we enjoyed it. And at long last, ernies ability to relish in the beauty of the world at war, something he feared might have atrophied inside his chest, suddenly flickered back to life after inching so after inching through so much gratitude and joy for about an hour, ernie had the driver pull over in front of a hotel near the luxembourg palace, across the river from the louvre. Theyd heard scuttlebutt that there were any number of desperate germans holed up in the palace, firing indiscreet minnelli at anything wearing green, while others fought ernie and two United Press Corps spaniards wrote their first dispatches from paris in a room overlooking the street below. I had thought for me there could never again be any elation in war, ernie wrote of that joyous day. But i had reckoned without the liberation of paris, i had reckoned without remembering that i might be part of this richly historic day, the day after the city was liberated. Ernie and crew puttered over the sand and passed the place. De la concord in the gardens of the champselysees air. From there they meandered their way to the gilt edged grand hotel across the street from the allied press camp, taking shape inside the hotel screen. Like mary and joseph, when ernie and his companions arrived at the scribe, they were told there was no room at the inn. Not long after the nazi propaganda officers who had occupied the hotel had fled. Some 200 allied correspondents were under an emotional tension, a pent up semi delirious theme moved in and set up shop through the gilded lobby of the grand hotel, up a set of marble stairs and down the carpeted hallway all the way to the corner. Ernie found a room with clean sheets, but no electricity. From the balcony, three floors above the street, he grinned down in the afternoon sun at the joyous abandon below. After so much darkness, grateful parisians had found the light. Standing there with several correspondents in as genteel, away as his tongue could muster, ernie quipped and nengi, who doesnt get laid tonight, is a sissy. In fact, as one military study later showed, eight out of ten unmarried americans soldiers had liaisons at some point during the war in europe. About half of married soldiers did, too. But not ernie. As the sun began to set, ernie and his buddies made their way back across to the street and claimed a table near the bar on the far side of the room. The booze did what ernie wanted it to. It dissolved him. Soon, a couple of dozen war correspondents had him encircled, eager to hear a tailor too. From the little man everyone loved so much. At one point. The other famous ernie. This is hemingway, bellied up to the opposite end of the bar with a swagger of a lonely warlord, seemingly resentful of pyles command of his hangers on, slap. Hemingway stung the air with a heavy hand on the bar top, a grenade he carried with him just in case. Pulled on the inside pocket of his field jacket. Lets have a drink here. He spat from the corner of his bearded mouth. The bartender, baby sitting ernie and his buddies turned hemingway in motion for him. Im ernest hemorrhoid. He roared across the room. The rich mans ernie pyle. He was such a jerk. Was around 11 00 in between rounds of cocktails. Air raid sirens wailed, snapping everyone back to reality. In a raid, a vicious retaliation in german bombers flew low over the rejoicing city, dropping their payloads and strafing anything that moved back. Suddenly was the little note of fear in ernies stomach. Back was the animal like alertness for the meaning of every distance bound back was the perpetual wait on his spirit that comes with death and dirt and noise and anguish. Gin saddened. Ernie pyle realized he had reached his limit, which should have felt like a gigantic relief. Celebrating the beginning of the end for nazi germany had become another opportunity to die. The german air raid killed as many as 200 people who probably thought their war was over. Another 900 were wounded. The next morning, ernie sent a telegram to his longtime editor, dear friend and amateur businessman major League Miller about dunlop. He started physically everything was fine, but dogged, clear down inside and can barely keep columns going. That final german raid had brought home the truth. Ernie was wrung out. There was nothing left to give. It was time to come home. So theres the first few pages. Now you might say so. This is a biography of ernie pyle. And it takes place during World War Two. But it starts with the liberation of paris. Now, this is a technique again, my writer friend brian taught me. He calls it the four one, two, three, five. So if you imagine the order of your story. One is the beginning. Five is the ending. If you take the fourth piece, write the piece where some sort of crisis or climate x takes place, and you start there. Then all of a sudden, the reader hopefully will go, wait a minute, how did how did we get to this place . And suddenly theyre asking questions and theyre a little bit more curious about about the the story itself. Now, i didnt grow up reading ernie pyle. I dont remember hearing that name. And in fact, the first time that i remember coming across the name ernie pyle was back in 2016 when i was on the island of okinawa doing research for a different project. I was researching my grandfathers battlefield experiences during the war. He was a tank driver during the battle of okinawa and i hired this guide. I had all of his unit records, his company records. I knew where the tanks had been. I knew what battles they fought in. And so this historian was taking me to all the different places around the island. It was an incredible trip. And one of the last places he took me was to a memorial called the cornerstone of peace in okinawa. Now, if anyones ever been to the Vietnam Memorial in d. C. , just imagine about six of those, because thats how many people were killed during the battle of okinawa, about 240,000 people between americans, okinawa and civilians in the japanese defenders. And they have these black granite walls that look like waves coming off the shore, that have all the names inscribed of everyone, not just not just soldiers. And so the the battlefield guide, he said, well, do you know any names of people that your grandfather knew that that were killed . And i must have looked a little panicked because i didnt. My grandfather didnt talk very much about his experiences, which is very common. And he said, oh, dont worry, ill show you a name. I think youll recognize. And so he took me over to the panel and he showed me Ernest Taylor pile. And my first thought was, oh, is this the guy that they based gomer pyle off of . Now, that might sound like a dumb question, but did you know there is a john rambo whos on the vietnam wall . And thats where they got the name john rambo for the rambo movie. So this is not a crazy question to ask. If someone found pyle and came up with gomer pyle. But the guy was so flabbergasted that i did not know who ernie pyle was that he gave me a homework assignment and said, you need to go home and you need to Read Everyth