Bestsellers including war letters, letters of a nation and behind the lines. Andrew carroll edited on a pro bono basis operation homecoming, iraq, afghanistan and the homefront, the words of us troops and their families which inspired the Emmy Awardwinning film of the same name. In 1998 Andrew Carroll founded a legacy project, all volunteer initiative that honors veterans and activeduty troops by preserving their wartime correspondence. Andrew carroll has traveled 1250 states and more than 40 countries including iraq and afghanistan and he has collected an estimated 100,000 previously unpublished letters and emails. Andrew carroll donated his massive collection to Chapman University which is where rogers and my son went to school. The legacy project has been renamed the center for american war letters and is part of Chapman University. Andrew served as the centers director. Andrew is embarking on the Million Letters Campaign to seek out and preserve at least 1 million war related correspondences from every conflict in us history. Andrew will talk about the Million Letters Campaign tonight as well as his book my fellow soldiers general John Pershing and the americans who helped win the great war. Andrew carroll is also featured in the new Television Film on world war i the great war, broadcast throughout the country this spring and summer on pbs. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Carroll. Thank you so much. Good evening. Thank you all so much for coming out on this beautiful night, i appreciate it. I am so grateful to Vivien Jennings, one of the great independent bookstores in the country, and laura for her participation in setting this up. Coming to this museum many times as a sightseer and visitor, researcher and i always loved coming back here and it is an honor to come back in this role. I want to give you some behind the scenes story about my fellow soldiers general John Pershing and the americans who helped win the great war. I want to talk about the overall war Letters Campaign because it is integral to the creation of the book and i want to show you some extremely rare and i think in some cases breathtaking original war letters. I love the discussion part of these events. Feel free to ask questions and if anyone would like to talk more personally, if you are considering sharing i would love to discuss that with you. As Vivien Jennings noted i had the opportunity to travel the United States and go to countries around the world in search of wartime correspondences. One of the most surreal and meaningful conversations i ever had was in baghdad. I was waiting for military escort to take me to the airport and i saw these four young iraqi men standing 15 feet away from me. They were in their 20s, i knew they spoke english, i really wanted to talk to them. I had been to iraq and spent my time in the us military with an incredible experience but wanted to talk to actual iraqis about the war and their culture and history and so forth but i was hesitant about walking up to this group of iraqis. I tentatively won over, introduced myself, said i was a writer traveling the world looking for war letters and curious to talk to them. They looked at me and each other and silence. One of the young men whose name i later found out was a mark looked like he was about to Say Something and then held back. I said please ask me anything you want. He looked at me, breaks out in a big smile and says who are your favorite british authors . There is a war going on around us and this is the question he wanted to know. So i thought you are a writer. This is a slamdunk. I started thinking and not one name came to mind. Little beads of sweat started forming on my 4 head because i felt i was representing the American Education system. I finally got to the point where forget favorite british authors just name any british author and i stood there and was still thunderstruck by the question, i could not think of a single name. The iraqis to be helpful gently started throwing out suggestions, wordsworth, dickens, longfellow. After a painfully long time i came up with a name all by myself which was shakespeare. And as awkward as the moment was it helped break the ice and we had a really fascinating conversation about our two nations, what had been going on. Amar said one last question. Why do you focus on letters . I was halfway around the world and no one had asked me that question. We all took for granted sentimental value and historical importance but i had never really been asked what is it about these correspondences. Amar told me he was in the first gulf war and he wrote home and he hated Saddam Hussein but he couldnt say that in his letters which i asked did you save the correspondence . He said no. We burned them all. That stayed with me, that question of what is it about correspondences, one of the ironies is i have no military connections, to be perfectly blunt, i didnt even like history growing up. To me it was a tedious memorization of dates, names, places and so forth and then something extraordinary happened. Our house in washington dc burned to the ground. Nobody was hurt which is the most important thing but everything we had went up in smoke and back then when you lost your letters and photographs they were gone forever. Soon after the fire we got a call from a distant cousin who had he was a world war ii veteran, his book was dedicated with another extraordinary veteran, he wanted to check in and see how we were doing, all of our memorabilia, irreplaceable family items are gone and he said makes me think, i was going through my old world war ii box and came across a letter i wrote to my wife, and he sent me a copy of it and i will never forget, it said april 24, 1945, i saw something today that makes you realize why we are fighting this war. He goes into graphic detail about walking through the nazi concentration camp at buchenwald which had just been liberated. It is very graphic. I will never forget holding this thin, onion skin paper correspondence in my hand and thinking how fragile it was and how significant the weight of the words and what he was writing about and i called and said this is unbelievable. I will return it to you. He said just keep it. I was going to throw it out anyway. Soon after that experience i was talking with a young woman who has become a dear friend and telling her this story and she said my grandfather just wrote a letter, his 50th wedding anniversary he had written during world war ii, he became he wrote this letter before they were surrounded by germans, world war i world war ii, they were saved by the japanese regiment of combat team, a story i knew nothing about. This is how it began, word of mouth, talking with veterans, families and eventually i reached out to dear abby because she continues to write a lot about veterans and military support of our military community. I said i want to encourage americans to go to attics, basements, closets, see what they havent preserve them. People are throwing these things away and losing them to neglect. I wrote out a po box and wrote her a letter saying can we start this project . She went back and said lets do this. On veterans day in 1998 this column appeared in newspapers across the country and the floodgates opened, thousands and thousands of letters were coming in and i didnt know this, the post office, they said you need to get down here now and pick up your mail. This is four days i will jump on my bike and be there in 30 seconds. He said you might bring a car or a van. There were bins and bins of letters from all over the country and these were the people the very first day, just the tip of the iceberg. I will never forget sitting in my car going through these letters and what first struck me were the cover letters which i wasnt expecting that. Messages from veterans saying why they were sending in the letters. One woman wrote, she sent the original letters from the amount her brother had written and explained my brother is gone, missing. Then she put not a pow. He came back from the war but he was so traumatized by what he had seen and experienced the one day he just walked out the front door of the house and we have not been able to find him since. She ended with a sense i would hear time and again which is i just want someone to remember who he was. What was also important about the cover letters is the context of the letters that were not immediately apparent and this is not the original too fragile to travel, it begins dear mom and dad, here i am in, from the philippines, november 1944, the whole part of the loader is gone and at the bottom it says i hope so too. Love, bill. Ps, they might censor this letter. I had seen letters where the name of a ship was cut out, some little detail, this is like he gave away the whole pacific campaign. From his brother ernie who sent it in, what i learned is they would take a piece of paper, time and time again, right the last lane. He would cut out the middle, blame the sensors, because he hated writing letters home and this was just easier. For the service members, the history they were witness to was extraordinary. This is one of the letters we received, it is sunday morning, we have been bombed for over an hour, our antiaircraft guns are yammering away, he is trapped in the forward engine room of the ship he says i can hear men screaming over the intercom of people are rushing for gas masks, look at the upper righthand corner, december 7, 1941, uss new orleans, pearl harbor. He is right there in the eye of the storm describing what it is like it because he is trapped in the forward engine room there was nowhere for him to go, he wrote a 50 page letter which he cannot send originally, he held onto it and thankfully he survived which is how we have the letter. We get emails from different generations, we see echoes overtime, similar experiences. One of the most powerful letters we received, 14 pages hand written by a young woman, anna miller, who was also witness to one of the most terrific days in American History and she writes he is off to safety, not writing it the way it was in world war ii but soon after it happened, ready letter to her parents, and we hear this massive boom outside and everybody stops, talking among ourselves, scaffolding, walked in, we start to hear sirens and they are getting louder and louder. We hear people screaming, someone in the audience stands up and says sorry to interrupt you, can we look outside to see what is going on, walked to the large bay windows and, wednesday look up they see the second plane hit the world trade center. In the marriott next door. Anna goes on to describe in detail about rushing toward the exits because they are told to evacuate the building, marriott security guards blocking the way, like he has seen a ghost. We got to get out, we were told to evacuate, you cant go out there, you cannot see what is out there. They were told by the police to get out of the building and he says to them i want you to run as fast as you can and do not look in the streets which was impossible for them not to do and goes into detail about what they saw and how she was caught up in smoke and debris, almost died and theres one little comment i want to add, this is hard to see but we are meticulous with the letters we received to make sure they are kept in pristine condition and i noticed these little blurs, i hope we didnt do anything to this. I called and said i have to be up front, i noticed these two water stains. Were those there before . She said yes, those are my tears because i was crying when i wrote this. People assume going back to the first and Second World War because of censorship, letters cant or dont say anything as the pearl harbor letter demonstrate, they got around censorship but in some letters there is an unsuspecting message. This is a letter written on april 29, 1945, camp lejeune. He begins my beloved, another sunday, we are still a part. Wondering how many more days will be like this. Mainly i am worried about you and aunt ruth. Pretty common expression of affection. Then we got the code sheet. When i start a letter my beloved, as he does here, look for codename of and or uncle. There were no its or uncles. On this site are the more fictitious names, aunt ruth, saipan, bud, philippines, he goes down the list. In a way the letter was saying much more than it let on especially to the sensors. What was so extraordinary about the letter is the paper itself reveals something about the life and circumstances under which these troops were living. We have letters from desert storm and Operation Iraqi freedom that are coded in the stand, we have letters from the civil war with splotches of mud and blood, letters from korea that the ink is stained because it was written during a snowstorm but the most dynamic letter we have shows this, from world war ii, by a soldier writing to a friend about a close call where a shell dropped next to him and didnt explode so he is telling his friend about the close call he had, put the letter in his rough stack, gets shot through the back, survived but this is the bullet hole right through the letter, the singe marks. He did survive. One of the things about letters is in many ways letter writing is the most egalitarian artform there is. You need a pencil and piece of paper. One of the most powerful letters was by a slave who escaped freedom, joined the union army and found out his regiment, bearing down, held as a slave and where his daughter was cold held in bondage. On september 30, 1964, he wrote this letter to his former master. I received a letter from caroline telling me you say i tried to steal my child away from you. I want you to understand mary is my child and godgiven right to my own. We are making about 1000 black troops and when we come, we will be to the slaveholding rebels, we dont expect to leave neither route nor branch. I often offered to pay 40 for my own child but im glad that was not accepted. You hold on as long as you can and it will be power and authority to execute vengeance on those who hold my child. You will then know how to speak to me. Not all of the correspondences we get our serious. There is a lot of levity through these correspondences. One of my favorites is by an Army Sergeant named sharon allen who was serving in iraq and she wrote home and email about a campfire singalong with a group of kurdish soldiers, slightly misinterpreted a famous beatles song the we think has to do with finding peace and serenity in the world and they thought was about a little green vegetable. Im not going to sing this but i will give you a sense of what happened. This is sharon writing home to her family. July 2004, especially kurds, kurds love us. One of our guys brought a guitar to the guard shacks and played some music for them. Sometimes they try to join in. You havent lived until you have seen a bunch of kurdish soldiers complete with ak47s sitting around singing with gusto as they mangle the beatless let it be. When i find myself in times of trouble, mother mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, little p little t. They really got into it. Whisper words of wisdom, little p. That was a good day. Not all the letters are combat situated or written in a war zone, one of the most powerful letters was by a young kid, 19 years old, finally realized he was on his way back home and wrote this to his family. I am coming home, it is official as of this morning, it will be a few days before i crash on your door, a few weeks maybe but i am coming home. Im looking forward to seeing you again but i cant wait to see your expressions when you see me. I spent 12 months over here, the longest 30 years of my life. There were times i would have traded my soul for a drink of cold water or a drink of hot coffee but i am coming home now. It is almost funny to see a guy in a wheelchair, guy on crutches, one arm, hooks for hands and we break our backs trying to help them but what about the wounds you cant see . The phantoms, the nightmares, put those in your head. You will need a lot of patience with me, patience and understanding. We all will. See you soon, see you soon, see you soon. Then we see how war affects not just those who served but those on the home front. One of the most poignant correspondences we came about was a woman whose son charles was caught in the ambush in iraq, lost his leg, very athletic young man, and this was a grave injury. She lived near Walter Reed Hospital when walter reed was open and she sent this email journal, i brought charless home from walter reed, everything had gone to the wash and dry cycle, dropped freshly laundered clothes onto the bed to fold them. It was late and i was weary so i wanted to try for a better nights sleep than i had been having before. I found one sock, just one. I pulled the rest of the clothes and just the one sock. Without thinking back to the laundry room, i looked between the washer and dryer and all around the floor to the other stock, unloading process. My tired and preoccupied mind didnt get it. As i walked to the bedroom with one sock in hand it hit me like a punch. There was no other stock. There was no other foot, lower leg. I pushed that one clean sock to my breast in an involuntary moment, came from my throat, originated in my heart. I really could i will Say Something dynamic and important about handwritten letter. When i was in iraq i saw a young soldier who was standing in front of a video camera. I asked dont mean to interrupt you, this is not the original. I am burning a dvd letter to my mom. This dvd, probably obsolete. And vietnam troops, this letter is from the american revolution. One of the oldest war letters, it is as pristine as the day it was written in 177mdcclxxv. Moving on the general pershing and world war i. Like many americans, survey after survey has shown. I was not interested in the conflict, after the war letters project. After we moved out of the house had burned down, we moved into another part of washington dc called Spring Valley by American University and as it turned out, a you working during world war i to create the most lethal gas ever constructed by man. Dumped the munitions in the ground, and a rural area back then, after we moved in there. The army corps of engineers said we have to evacuate the area, discovered poisonous gas around the area. This is wha