Ron personally but with your nonsense familiar with him, he reads like one of the more interesting novels. Serving has senior military Intelligence Officer and the combat veteran of afghanistan for 25 years three and retired as the private and the senate colonel and a service of the Foreign Service serving in rwanda because of the zero have a and iraq and twice awarded the of bronze medal for his service in it afghanistan his policy writing has appeared almost everywhere there is to mention and the founder and director of the writing project a Nonprofit Program that has no cost writing workshops for veterans and family members. A amazing fellow and the wonderful writer were thrilled to welcome him here. Ron capps. [applause] spanish faq i cannot tell you a house thrilled by m. This is the hard lines of the book a big defense. I did press today and some of you heard that a and thank you for coming it means a lot to me. Some of you i have known too long to mention. We have cspan2 booktv heres sell so i will talk for a while and michael and james will move with the microphone. There is two stories in this book if you have the chance if you have read it at the very beginning i tell the story of driving off into the desert with a couple of beers in my truck and a pistol when i was getting ready to kill myself. Obviously something happened and i did not get to do that. That is the essential point of the story were everything changes. So the first half of the story is how i got there in the second half is what happened after words. The second half for most of us is the most interesting and the more hopeful story but it does not make sense without telling the first half so what i will do is read and of little bit from a couple of sections and we will talk after words. I served as a soldier for 25 years have of that time i was in the regular army half of that time in the army reserve. During the time i was in the reserve my civilian job was as a Foreign Service officer and i was sent to a lot of interesting places. The first half of my career i tell people i was very dull i never got shots at just a Peacetime Army job than the door to Foreign Service then they go to places where they shoot at people vegas of the and the things got interesting this began 1996 running through 2006. The ted years of my deployed this takes place is close of 2008. As part of the tea loved diplomatic observers have for Foreign Service officers have word military and we had to drive around the province to stop the fighting to get the rebels to stop killing each other and civilians. We arrived in the village one day too late the infantry had come through the day before it can this is the story of what we had found. It is part of the nsa that i rode to called yellow now it is the chapter in the book. Yellow. The skin was yellow they had during under their fingernails and their feet were dirty there were six of them all women and some had lived long enough to have wound bandaged before they died this of were killed instantly as shrapnel had entered their bodies. They were dead about 24 hours. We knew this because we had come to witness their funeral of the type of card eppley were present they would not shoot at them members as they buried their dead. The first of might have seen ward said there was surprise the skin was yellow. The experience was to funerals, and older brother of a friend, a grandmother but none of them were yellow. I was surprised this is the first time i had seen what dead people looked like with no embalming or make up for close they were just dead. Flying in the tangle of close on the trailer that had only carried peppers and corn only parts of the body were visible i could not see all of their faces one headed are resting across the forehead one had a bandage and 18 month old child resawed dogs on the way up the trail. The refugee field officer who led us to the scene said the dogs probably got the body. She was right but nobody wanted to say it we sawdust mother resting in a house and she had a bullet in her upper arm passed through her baby them through her breast lodging in her arm the father said the baby was killed instantly and tore the child in half. He tried to the mother away to safety but a doctor from the red cross was treating her wounds there were 10 women and a 72 yearold man in one room of the house all were wounded in the attack they sat silently on the floor lost in their pain and thoughts waiting. Way did this pretty much every day for two years driving around kosovo trying to stop the fighting almost always one day late. To date to stop the fighting but just in time to conduct investigation of the war crime against humanity. Murder. And i would write reports in the afternoon incident the computer to write crisp reports of cruelty. But i knew this was not enough but i needed touche document more i would go to my tent to sit down and write what would happen. Those sessions grew into this book so what i wrote about that event i sat down one night and tied dash out the skin typed out the words yellow. That day up bin us small valley in the serbian infantry had swept through firing mortars directly in front of themselves what they were shooting at was women and children and old men who were driven out of the town a couple of kilometers away just the day prior moving into this Little Valley to be safe then the serbian infantry came through. We drove back into the town and this is what happened. The villagers wanted to bury their dead in plain sight of the ridge line where we could see the snipers the land was taken from them in the forties and reclaim the seven days a belong to twostep people there would be sure that they understood that the women they were bored burying were boarded the valley and raise crops giving birth to their children in this small houses we parked vehicles and in plain view as a deterrent to certainly they would not shoot at the u. S. Observers or the vehicle. Nonetheless i was shaky standing around at the base. The crowd was targeted took time to bury the dead a of the men worked with shovels for about an hour. Afterwards we stopped on the way out and use satellite telephone to call washington to tell the state department what we had seen it seemed far away from that hillside but the officer on the other and was the friend and colleague had it been someone else i may have been more animated but it doesnt understood what was happening. E. Levin said unman seven dead and six women and one child. Yes i counted them myself. Yes. Were sure they were dead i verified it personally. Ive left out the part about the dogs. Wave made one more stop off the hill as the man fled best down in told our interpreter he wanted to show was something i glanced to his house said women were sitting on the floor comfort each other surrounding the body of another woman that was laid out on her back wrapped in a blanket parts of her head and face were missing. Of the men said the mortar round exploded near her head though women wailed in unison he was the father intended decrying and the smells and the fly as we listen to. Having safe in your house to stay there rather than moving up with the other she decided to take food to her neighbors. And she was at the base when the attack started the mortar shells probably came in groups of three. As they left the tubes than the 5,462nd wait while they flew then landing and at the wing off bubbles above the canyon as they exploded there were probably set to go off 1 meter off the ground i cannot wait to get out away from the small and the crying and the death i felt horrified they would fire at women and children and i had to look the way i concentrated on her scarf and watched the other women slowly and i looked at the womens father and my partner photographed her body when we left eight dead down the hill at the intersection of a crowd of women and men have gathered some boys were sitting at the edge of rhode they sad to expressionless as the crowd stormed the vehicle was pinned against the truck and my a translator echoed staccato pleas for help one held her baby at arms length and was facetoface with the child the mother spoke deliberately. Take her son now appear so the serbs will not kill him. Ive looked at the woman and said the sure she knows we cannot do this we are observers we cannot relocate if we do the government will order all of us out of the country. For the first time we understood the folly to be in the war only to observe it was hot with the sun beating down i felt cowardly and yellow hiding behind why sunglasses is. I waved my notebook get the truck to say that is a vehicle to take them to safety i could not muster the courage there was little hope she would get out that day i found out later was wrong. Several officers arrived late in the day and some evacuated the children to a safer village. Runback to the village and had to tell the mother we did not find her baby. It would have served no purpose what we thought happened but i could not find those words anyway. That evening i drafted my report that was three pages long what was reported to us i said it appears the infantry came to the valet preceded by a barrage of mortar fire seven win in one incident were killed vehicles and clothes and supplies were burn to receive no evidence of insurgent activity i did not mention a funeral or a dog or a woman begging me to take action. Or the look on the mans face i carefully said what was told like reported the intelligent the. I carefully made the people the center of the report never started your own report. Ill let my teammates read the report so we all agreed then turned it to our editor in in doing so i documented a war crime. So the war went on a number of months. We stayed until the Obama Campaign began then we went out to macedonia to spend the three months interviewing refugees or people that were driven out of kosovo voted onto trains and shipped across the border. In europe at the end of the 20th century, when the Obama Campaign ended up was one of the first aircraft to fly back to close a volume said we are back. Then went back out to macedonia. What was now an independent nation in what we did but as the special place in hell for people like ken. And then to spend another year there with a couple of years prior during the end of the war as an extension of genocide we documented war crimes in kong golf to go through fighting with of rwanda of military. And then back to military duty. I arrived in afghanistan not quite one year and to augment the regular army unit to show the reservist not knowing what to expect and i was in charge of the a couple of hundred people and i was tasked to send her off but for a period of time i came to understand i was suffering from katy sdi had images of the dead coming to visit the night i would break up and see dead people standing around my cot then i understood i was troubled when it happened during the day and this is what that was like. In the cold predawn i hear generators moving on the other side of the base but it is quiet none of the soldiers assure retention rather even snoring. I stay in my sleeping bag fighting the urge to run away. The taliban launched rockets so we were on edge that is not what was keeping me up i was in my sleeping bag controlling my racing harder than trembling because the dead have come to talk to me. Every night for a couple of weeks beckoning to me to pull the from a warm and comforting sleep to u. S. Series of tormenting dreams tonight is the dead from afar burned and twisted into contorted shapes that pools along the dirty floor. Word to you remember us . Most assuredly. The 94 the dead from the village 45 shot in the back of the head and left to die on a frozen january morning 1989. Why did it you do more to save us . Indeed. Night after night they appear on the big screen of my mind rising and each time i ascared and ashamed theyre not real and only images but they terrify me for what they remind me of the allies side did not say if. They terrifyingly for what i represent i cannot stop them for taking control of my mind with the eyes wide open to see the dead in front of me. Trouble begins slowly by the time i am fully aware i have graphic tree mr. Penny and i awake with heart racing and crying always ready to go back to sleep. I am losing control of my brain. In time i see the images and i am awake i cannot concentrate i said my desk to plan meetings and shake until i have to leave. And i fear i had lost my mind but ive afraid to ask for help end a if that are of a culture asking for help and as the sign of weakness. Nothing will matter but when i can no longer control the images in my head when i am forced to head a hide shaking and crying again some noise in damages and realize to continue to deny would endanger the soldiers i was sent to afghanistan i ask for help. That day i stopped the divisions surgeon and said i am having some problems. He listened intently and put his hand on my arm and said are you a danger to yourself or others . Which is a question youre asking a lot when people thank you are crazy they look at you in think will he start shooting . I was not a danger to anyone else and i said that. Not to myself at that time. That came later. But i knew i needed help so well when it to save the psychiatrist. I walked in and i sat down they have the big tv to keep the new ways from the back as people crying so there is a big tv on the shelf and larry king is on of course, cnn. He is interviewing someone i have no idea who she was but i looked down under the television were straitjackets so i am convinced i have gone around the bend they will take me away. Slicer to cry and i am rocking back and forth in that is when the psychiatrist walks out so i am sure i made his day with that. Great. Field grade officers broke in and crying and shaking on the floor. I got the treatment i needed to get me home and abroad my soldiers home i was home for about four months been deployed to iraq. I spent time there and came home then i got a phone call from a friend that said you are about to be mobilized again and sent to iraq which i thought was irony being a rack with the state department when the army called. I began arguing so they said you will volunteer to come back so we dont have to mobilize you can have your choice of assignments. That means Different Things to different people that did it in the democratic republic of congo or sudan. I was a foreign officer for subsaharan of officer i chose a day and i volunteered and was sent there just after colin powell announced what was happening in darfur was genocide. There were 300,000 dead, 2. 5 million displaced and dissent in as the representative tuesday after kidd union Ceasefire Commission to stop the fighting. We had a 1700 people in the area larger than iraq to stop fighting among those who dont want to stop fighting. I spent nine months there and got a phone call from mumbai fan the doctor says come home i spent one month is sitting by my mom while she died. That was a tuesday was eric drove home and thursday i had lunch at the white house and friday reburied my mom monday i went back to the stateoftheart and ordered back to door for. Door for a and i was working on a mission. And the capital it is the capital of darfur where we are at. I was there in support of the mission to organize and run a trade the exercise for the peacekeeping staff and a scenario writer the humanitarian emergency develops into a security crisis. Deal with it. That develops into a humanitarian catastrophe. Deal with it. The kitchen sink problems arise dealing with all of them. Things get harder. In intend to help with the scenario and it gave them to colleagues they were utterly unprepared for the mission. I was feeling i was falling apart in some ways worse than afghanistan bad in to the ptsd episode drinking myself into a stupor every night in where alcohol was banned and carrying on a clandestine line affair with a u. N. Official but what i saw around me was 300,000 dead 2. 5 million displaced. I had no safety net touche catch the or nothing to hold the together in a few responsibilities i was mostly along for the ride but despite this i was managing well and tell one bad day. The woman that i was having an affair ask me what happened after work had ended the racket at a few weeks having fun is a nice hotels and in guesthouses and drinking and playing but when she started to make noises about next steps that set off alarm bells that i had a life outside that bubble and i would have to go back to that life and reckoning. I was not rational. But i was functioning at the high level to write interactive scenarios is in the midst of a complex emergency collecting information of rebel forces the government of sudans response to write reports for the of the sea of what i have learned to at the same time carrying on the illicit affair but i was convinced that my life was fucked up her to people i stopped hurting people and take darfur my riding stopped when mom had died and was a failure of my marriage was a failure everything brought pain and i was getting worse. Said dark stuff in my head try not to so i decided to kill myself. I did so quite rationally i thought about it scripted missteps and timing to locate the tools i would need to sort out the acquisition and the aftermath. Of lunchtime i have a plan and acquired all the tools in that afternoon i began work i grabbed a couple of beers wraps them in a tshirt to put them on the seats of the three yoda earlier i had borrowed up pistol from the teams argentine loan. To be no questions asked because we had worked together six months and he had no reason to suspect other than i was a competent career officer. I drove out of town and dramatically in to the setting sun. I pulled off the main road to small villages and stopped the truck on the low prices and i opened one of the beers provide started to cry but i dont know why and filled with a sense of failure. Nothing i touched ever succeeded or was never could i have been through five wars in 10 years with rwanda, a close above darfur i felt as if i had reached a logical place i opened the second year i picked up the pistol and a felt good in my hand and i pointed it out the of windshield in curls my finger around the trigger i imagined pulling the trigger in the sound it would make nothing to shoot out swell would just blow the windshield but if there was i was holding in my right hand and i was lefthanded. I remember a momentary flash of clarity. Who else would i hurt . My wife, mr. I thought when i was getting ready to do even someone have been in to nucleate up the truck after words and leave less of the mess but it passed and i was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness in because of my failures and the jews were brushing at me the mayor and with the red eyes and the mutilated family. Picked up the pistol and charged loading a bullet into the chamber my hands were shaking it took the pistol offer of safe. Was sobbing and talking to myself. The pistol was ready to i put it in my left hand pointed down i took a deep breath to call myself and i was rea