>> at the end of may. new details have been released about former secretary of state hillary clinton's forthcoming book. she's signed with publisher simon and schuster to write a book about foreign policy touching on her experiences during the killing of osama bin laden and the libya conflict. the book is set to hit shelfs in 2014. stay up-to-date by liking us on facebook at facebook.com/booktv. or follow us on twitter @booktv. you can also visit our web site, it's booktv.org and click on news about books.

>> retired major general john borling is next on booktv. he shares husband experiences and the poetry he mentally composed and memory rised during his six-and-a-half year imprison ment at the hanoi hilton. this is about an hour, 15 minutes. >> john borling is a highly decorated retired air force major general who has served in high-level staff positions. fighter pilot, he graduated from the naval academy and was a white house fellow. during the vietnam war, he was shot down by ground fire, seriously injured. he was captured while trying to evade and spent over six-and-a-half years as a p.o.w. in hanoi. after a long career in the air force, he now occupies leadership positions in business organizations including symphonics and assent explo nation. he's also been the president and

ceo of chicago's united way and is also the founder of sos america, service over self, advocating military service for america's young men. a motivational, political, business and philosophy speaker, he is in demand. we're lucky of to have him with us to speak on his latest book, "taps on the wall." please offer up a warm welcome to major general john borling. [applause] >> well, thanks. that was a pretty good introduction. you squirming on your chairs yet, wondering is this guy going to be any damn good or not, right? [laughter] we're going to do something a little different cranking up, and thank you all so much for coming. you had a flight line as you with walked in, and those were the patriot writers of washington who make sure that we don't forget.

and so in a a new tradition for town hall, my honor to -- it's my honor to ask you to stand as we present the colors. post the colors. and if you'll join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands. one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. retire the colors. and thank you very much. please sit down.

i was, i was commenting upon the introduction gracious enough to offer when people start doing the recitation of credentials, it tends to, all those verbal thunder bolts tend to leave me speechless. almost. [laughter] so tonight we're going to explore together some subjects that i think are riveting to me, and we'll find out if they are of any importance at all to you. i think i'll begin with a washington story. we've got some former white house fellows in the crowd, nelson, steve hill, others that i may have missed. i've also got some guys i flew with in the crowd, shoney from the 91st, a classmate from the academy from 1963, mike foley, i haven't seen mike for a while,

and others who may have stories that they want to tell, but i'm not going to let them. [laughter] including some people from high school back on the south side of chicago, parr and ron mays -- barb and ron mays. so it's fun to be back in the crowd of some folks of who have known you a little bit. also a bit intimidating, actually. i much prefer strangers. but starting with a washington story, it's attributed to bob dole. and he had had a falling out with his speech writer and had a major speech shortly thereafter. so he walked to the podium, and there's the folder, as it always is, and he starts to open it up. he told the crowd that tonight he was going to be pleased to offer solutions to the staggering economy. he was going to be offering, as well, considerations as to how we can really have affordable

and effective and even universal health care. he was going to talk about refurbishing the military's equipment and to create an operational context that could be affordable and would be able to protect our interests on a worldwide basis indefinitely. he was going to talk about how he was going to cure the endemic problem of racism in the united states and bring us together truly in terms of shared values and one people. and at this point he kept turning these pages. on every page he would say that, and for those of you familiar with the story, he turned it and it says, okay, you s.o.b., you're on your own. [laughter] the nice thing about tonight, i am not on my own given the recitation of people who knew me. but i'm trying to divide you up because in the end this is going to be an interactive kind of thing. is that fair enough? so i think we'll do it air force wise, and we'll cut you down the

middle. there'll be a flight over here, okay? many you're always the rowdy bunch, okay? b flight, you're cerebral, okay? no, shoney's over -- all right, he's veer ball. [laughter] so we've got a flight and b flight. over here we're going to split you down here, and this will be -- what do you think we're going to call you guys? charlie flight. you've got to be a little quicker on that. maybe because, maybe you're all press by teaches on this side, i don't know. or is it unitarians? only unitarians are such bad singers, that's pause they're always d bash because they're always -- that's because they're always singing a stanza ahead to see if they agree. [laughter] free association can be abusive, and you're going to have to ride with me on these mental

excursions as we go down tributaries of the mind that may or may not have anything to do with the book that we're here to discuss. by the way, my wife verna of 50 years this june, she's hung in there all in this time. [applause] well, i'm glad you recognize my contributions to that. [laughter] the -- oh, it wasn't for me? all right. you're absolutely right, it shouldn't be for me. anyway, i talked to her, she's down in phoenix. we live outside of chicago up in rockford now, but in, you know, kind of paradise. you know, eat your hearts out. if you like naked trees and, you know, frozen ground, perfect. charlie flight. she said, remember, talk about the damn book. you know, but -- so we'll get there. all right. this is charlie flight over here. and if those guys were rowdy and these guys were cerebral, you are intensely feeling, okay? so you have to come up with questions later that are kind of reflected of this. and delta flight or dog flight,

i look at the characters who i know, most of them are over here, is there something about, you know, hard right, or is this stage heft? you know, i'm not sure there's political circumstances here, but in any event, dog flight is going to be the ones, the delta flight, the ones you really count on when charlie, bravo and alpha let you down. so you guys are up more that. when i, when i thought about the things i'd really like the talk about tonight, i stumbled because doing this book, "taps on the walls," was not something we ever thought we'd do. and i'm talking aboutmy that and me. ing the genesis of it and all after that we're -- all of that we're going to go into. but the difficulty, of course, is that i have to go back to a

time that was, frankly, an unhappy time. and i built huge walls over the years to make sure that i didn't have to go back and to be, quote, a professional p.a.w.. i do a lot of speaking around the country, but i rare lidell f down into the subject as i should. in fact, the vice president of the senior class of hersh high school is here. judy, how are you, dear? i haven't seen you forever. be you notice, she's war wounded here. she was so taken up with the fact that i came to town that she ran down for a triple decaffeinated or caffeinated la today or whatever they sell right here in the coffee capital of the world and managed to take a tumble and went down. so she's injured on my behalf, i'm sure.

but she sent her husband to the beginner last night which i thought was -- and he got away with it. anyway, we'll see afterwards. so having to go back and having to delve down has been a chore that has not been please santa. on the other hand, we've had some tremendous conversations with people whose sense is that that period or the periods of the nation's conflict continue to be important to us pause they're pivotal -- because they're pivotal in many how the nation continues to advance or decline. now, i would suggest to you that that's really bad shorthand. have any of you read thomas cahill's stuff? why the greeks matter, how the irish saved civilization? and his suggestion that we really hinge history on something more than economic pluses and minuses and something more than warfare occurrences, and it's the individual who

springs to the fore at a particular time in history that has created the pathway of the human condition. in truth it's trouble a meld of the two -- it's probably a meld of the two. again, thinking it's only the human critter that's willing to fight and die for an idea. and one of the things that you come down to is that plato is right, that only the dead, unfortunately, have seen the end of war. i was at nelson dong's house last night, and we were talking on that various, on that very subject. just thinking about the nature of war for a second, it was patton who suggested that consider how every other human endeavor shrinks to insignificance before it. and, god, how i love it, was the finishing line.

it would be dishonest of any person who had been in combat not to, not to at least own up a little bit that the thrill of combat and the gore of combat somehow intermix in an unlikely stew that has both a repellant factor to it and an attractive factor to it. but as i mention in the book, once you've been there, you really never leave it. a lifelong thing. and so i'll be coming back to that theme. but to finish up just a general characterization on warfare itself, mr. john keegan died recently. probably the military historian of the last 75 years who has been the most effective, the most insightful british sand

hearst fellow. keegan was quick to suggest anyone who has had to have their hair specially done for the evening and stands up on the stage and purports to talk about such things probably falls into the category of being a bull frog. so i'm going to try to avoid being a bull frog and being pedantic or any of those other words that come from trying to achieve lofty circumstance and lofty construct with respect to thinking that we're going to advance tonight and get it down at the operational level, get it down just as honest and as genuine as i can with your help. and in the end if i don't leave a piece of my soul up here tonight, i will not have done my job. and if your questions don't provoke that, then you will not have done yours. but the last thought before we turn to "taps in the walls" is the central theme of the evening, and that is why, why,

in fact, people, states, nations go to war. and it's meant to be instructional, especially for some of the younger people in the crowd. and i would suggest that we do so because of interests first, perceived or real, we do so because of fear. of fear is a powerful motivator. and we do so because of hate. and the stark political reality is you really have to meet all three if you're going to put the nation into an extended period of conflict and hope to have any, any public support. and yet it is those tough words that make it very tough for nations to, in fact, do what i

think constitutionally is required, and that's to declare. if it's important enough to risk blood and treasure, then one should do so in accordance with our laws. other than the war powers act which i think is important enough to be able to respond on a presidential level. so with that kind of a macro consideration of the invention of warfare, let me talk to the invention of "taps on the walls." as a number of you know, i had flown 97 combat missions. actually, i'd flown a few more. i quit counting in order to be able to volunteer for a second tour. that sounds awfully brave, i know. actually, myrna, we had orders to england. i called her back in the statements and said i've got a chance to fly another hundred missions. and she said, well, you've got to do that. and this goes back to the

lieutenant wanting to stay in it and why young men are so untrustworthy when it comes to the prosecution of conflict. you need a much longer lens and a few gray hairs, i think. but you do thrust your young men and now young women into the maw, and they go there for this conflicting series of reasons. i was a first lieutenant to upgrade in the f-4 in the air force. i was very proud of that, and i flew swing seats, front seat and backseat in the f-4 in that first tour and then had the prospect of more to come. so on the 1st of june, 1966, i left the state. in december of '65 i had a three month old baby, and they went to ground on the south side of chicago. that girl was 7 and a half when i walked back through the door. and she's more like me today. and the daughter we had after

the war is more like her mother, so go figure the genes. anyway, on this mission deep into vietnam north of hanoi, no -- and we knew it, no rescue possible if you went down -- and, in fact, we got hit by ground fire and got out for the pilots in the crowd upside down, about like that, going through a thousand feet at 480 knots which means you're dead in the cockpit. got out and got what they -- the chute pops and didn't get a swing. if we'd gotten a swing, i think we would have been dead, but rolled down a very steep, long, furrowed hill and rolled up in the bottom in a mess with a broken back and ribs and sprains and stuff. when you roll down a hill at a couple hundred miles an hour bouncing like some kind of mexican jumping bean, you tend to sustain some injury.

it's surprising that i wasn't worse, injured in a worse condition. over at the edge of this room for one metric and go another double that young and trees, and if i'd hit not on this very steep hill i, again, never would have made it. so they were all around shooting almost immediately. i got out of the kit and rolled into a log and did something very brave, which was i passed out. out of fear and shock. and then after waking up after a period of time, they had moved on up this long hill, probably a half mile hill it was that extensive an agricultural circumstance. and i had highway 1 out almost to the back of the auditorium here, the room, and trucks were running up and down. so i got a staff and managed to -- because i couldn't walk, and i kind of crawled and got

this staff to get me along and got my six gun out. they said i'd break my leg if i ever got out. i didn't, i just sprained the hell out of it. showed them. and got into the middle of the road to make a short story of this all, and my plan was to hijack a truck and make them take me to the coast at which point i would steal a boat and go south and be in the crap game in a couple of days. [laughter] well, what was the option? i mean, the option was to surrender, and that's not a -- you had to give it a shot, so you had to break all the rules. first truck passed me by, didn't see me. so i got out in the middle of the road, and this is in the book, and jacked a truck. stared the guy down, little staff. and i've done it. i've hijacked a truck full of north vietnamese troops. [laughter] a management decision i have

reviewed a time or two. [laughter] i think john wayne could have pulled it off, you know? that old crummy movie about john wayne running down the arroyo, and the guy says -- everyone knows that john wayne story? nobody knows that john wayne story? shoney and i went to a movie, and john wayne was going to ride down this arroyo, and i said, shoney, john wayne's going to get hammered. the indians are going to get him, and there's going to be all kinds of arrows and guns. and he said, no, not going to happen, not john wayne. and i said, i'll bet you a buck. sure enough, john wayne went down there, and he got hammer ld, and he comes riding out and just barely makes it. after the movie i reach into my pocket, and i say, here. shoney, here's the buck i owe you. he says, no, i can't take it. he said, i'd seen the movie before. [laughter] and i said, well, i said, well, you know, actually, so had i. i just couldn't believe john was

going to do it that way again. [laughter] and i'm not sure i would have done anything different. i would have done it that way again. so much -- i'm not good at parables i've decided all of a sudden, but we'll try. they stripped me nude. i had a ring on my dog tags, and can that ring was a ring that my uncle had given me, and he wore it in world war ii. and it was called his get me home ring. because only the four guys who had this metal from world war ii and one of the officers on the crew was a dentist, and today made this wolf's head ring. and only the four guys with the wolf's head ring got out of the airplane. everyone else was killed on a seventh mission in b-24s. all four guys were captured, and all four guys spent 22 months in prison camp and came home.

so dick borling who is the kid brother to my dad gave me this ring. it was kind of impetus for me to go to the air force academy anyway. there i am laying nude in the world road, can everyone see that? does anyone want to see that? [laughter] clear the beach. and i still have my boots on, so it's not total, you know? i do that just to be accurate. but that last thing happened, they ripped these dog tags off with the ring on it, and i said that is not a get me home ring, that's a get me shot down ring. i never saw it again. after the war i asked dick to give me this ring that was made by the navigator, and it has the officer's crest on it, and there were four of these in the world. i don't know where the other three are, but i've got his. when dick died, he gave it to me. there was a time going back to the motif "taps on the walls" that i was tapping on the walls

communicating. we were, in the early years, alone or in isolation much of the time. later after four years or so passed, conditions changed, and you were in larger, slightly larger groups, then really large groups, and then -- it ebbed and flowed. the yes geneva conventions were never really respected. and joe, you'll have to bear this out too, that you could make a general case that conditions up there kind of after late '69, maybe late '70, the raid where they hit the camp trying to liberate some of us, and it was an intelligence failure, the camp was empty. but brave men went in there and put themselves at risk for us. but i think the conditions started to generally improve. now, that's a cross statement and certainly for certain guys it never, never did right up until the end. but that would be my assessment.

joe, would you agree? where are you? kind of an upward slope? >> yeah. i thought things got a little bit better after ho chi minh. >> '69, exactly. in fact, that's where i got really ill and if they hadn't had a better diet, probably wouldn't be standing here on the stage tonight. but in any event, the point that i want to make is that i'm tapping on the wall in the early days, and this tap code, which is also in the book and it's done in a number of books, but it's still fascinating to read about it and how to do it, a guy move inside next door -- don't know who he was -- so tapped on the wall, you know, hi, john borling, who are you? and he came back and said dick kern. or actually used his nickname, pop kern. because this guy was really old, like 57, 58 even? yeah, i know, hard to believe. and he came back, and he tapped, hello, dick. i said, no, no, it's john.

he said, no, dick borling. i was with you in south camp in world war ii. this guy had lived with my uncle in world war ii and was a two-time loser. pop's dead now. and a number of the guys are passing at a rate -- our last, i think, big reunion, in fact, the only big reunion that we've ever had is going to be this may in newport where the reprise of the nixon party, wlce home party is going to take place. and we're all going to go out there. you know, there's going to be an accounting, and the accounting is, you know, what have we done to pay back over time the gratitude of the nation, the gratitude we feel to the nation? because we all kind of took a vow that we would continue to march. we'd try to do something with our lives that would enable

better days ahead. now, there was no uberorganization, there's no reports, it was just an individual circumstance, and i think we'll look forward to hearing how, how people have -- just having them share their beuse we all felt that kind of commitment. i should comment that after that party back in 1973 where nixon opened up the whole white house, i mean, even the residential portion of the white house was open, opened up the doors. oh, fruit of the loom. you know, keep going around, the lincoln bedroom with the little private bathroom thing where churchill used to stay. the interesting thing was six months -- not six months, nine months after that party at the white house, about 50 children were born, one of whom was my daughter. [laughter] and the specific details we will leave to your imagination. however, the other aspect of that party years later when i was there as a white house fellow, rex who is the usher

said it was a wonderful party, he said, because nobody stole anything. and they have a problem with the various official function at the white house to this day where the aides out there are very diplomatically insuring that no one's making off with the dolly madison silver or something. in our case, it was just a great time, and we're going to do that again. well, this is all kind of precursor stuff leading up to, leading up to this book. in the end, the early years were really hard. very tough. brutal times. but something that never did go away was that you had to make time an ally. you were running an uncertain race. you had a, you had a concept that there was no bridge across forever, and you just had to keep going forever. and so we had this drive to

return with honor, to take care of our buddies even though you maybe had never seen 'em, but you'd talk to them through the wall. and in my case, having had the benefit of a classical education from the university of chicago, um, although i got it on a drive-by basis as many of you -- that's supposed to be a very funny story. [laughter] actually, i'd had a couple, i'd had about a year and a half of college, and i did like liberal arts, and i do believe liberal arts are more important for the nation, frankly, than this math and science binge we seem to be on. the math and science people will finds on a briggs, but a functioning republic needs to have people schooled in the great thought patterns emerged over generations. and i think you get that from a liberal arts thing. and i also was fascinated with literature and poetry, and i was

already dating and writing schoolboy verse to her, so i had some appreciation for that and found that that was one of the ways that i could make time an ally, that i could fill that unforgiving minute that kipling talks to with the essence of the human condition. i could create. i could create. the greeks said that there were four wonderful things that make up a good man; city, state, nation. and that was a sense of justice, temperance, restraint, a quest for wisdom and courage. and it's not so much the battlefield courage they were talking about as i think just the courage to do the right thing in life. well, i think the greeks were well short of the mark. so we added, i added, you know, the fact that you ought to have a really developed sense of humor and try to find something funny in everything, try to, in

fact, have a faith-based circumstance in your life. it may be a quest that goes on forever, but i think you need to have some appreciation of things that are bigger or greater than you. however you may choose to define it or follow it. the third thing goes back to this essence of the human creation. i wanted to be a jazz pianist before i went to the academy. i was playing "jesus loved me," do you know the song? all of you? [laughter] then the bass and drums kicked in and big chords, you know? this blond in the front row heckled me so badly that, you know, chicago raspberry really. i never played publicly again, became a fighter pilot. [laughter] married the blond. [laughter] and still like to tinkle a little bit on the tinker --

tinker, not tinkle, tinker on the piano. [laughter] that's what she'd suggest. anyway, that was perithat, of course. and then, of course, the other thing is the last and the eighth great element, i would suggest, is the ability to love. i don't know how to -- i've had great fortune to lead some small units and some large units or be a part of them and have done so 'em perfectly, but i always tried to impart genuine love for the organization and what we were trying to do. and when you do that, i think that you get a lot of leeway. and the mistakes that you will inevitably make, the failures that will come your way of your own construct or those that just happen to you, the guys -- now the guys and the gals -- will give you some leeway if they think you really care about them, if you really have a sense of what they're about. well, the sense of what i was about is what i've described

here. i needed to create to stay alive. we had this return with honor fixation. we didn't care if we died up there. we really didn't. but we really cared about returning with our heads held high. and when we got beaten to the point where we had to bend, then we bent, and we tried to give them as little as we could that would be useful, and we'd come back, and we'd cry about it. and we would tap on the walls and tell our fellows, gee, i had to say that i regretted if i did anything that would hurt the vietnamese people or some other pap that, frankly, in the greater scheme of things meant nothing, but in our scheme of things meant everything. that somehow we weren't as strong and as tough as we had to be. and so when we had to bend and our own words were do the best you can. make 'em hurt you, but don't give 'em anything for nothing. then we would make sure we

shared that. well, and we shared the stuff that we created. people we talked language through the walls. i speak enough words and enough languages to get in trouble in six or seven bars in different languages, i suspect, but not much more. and, actually, a hot more. we were very serious about learning languages through the walls. people were building houses, other people were composing things in their mind or passing things that they knew. but in my case with all these words, i just wanted to have a legacy for myrna in case i didn't make it. so i tapped it through the walls. it's a heavy knewing section called strapping on a tailpipe, and then there's a section which is the dark and birth stuff, the p.o.w. stuff, and then there's the holidays, christmas things. if you'd tap something through that would be particularly poignant, the guys would say

thank you very much, we're arranging the suicide pact on our side now, you know, kind of thing. and then you'd have, and a long, epic poem going for 50 or 60 pages that tries to deal with all of the societal stuff that i was talking to at the front end and offer, offer observation of that. and a lot of it is, by the way, an e lit beith an -- elizabethan sonnet. besides that immediate level, just like you'd look at a photograph or picture and you'd know whether you like it or not, and then if you look a little bit more, you get source of light and what's the artist trying to do. so it would be in here, and you would find that. so the yoke is easy. the burden is very light. but if you're a hard worker, there's more to see in here than just what's on level one. i can't see the clock back there.

who's got a watch on? i don't have a watch on. >> 8:08. >> okay. well, i'm going to read a couple things out of here, and then i'm going to open up to questions, is that okay? fair enough? talking to is one thing, talking with is much more important. so let me take just one excerpt from each section, and that'll whet your whistle, hopefully, and i don't do it in any special order other than -- and there's a lot that's new in this book, by the way. the guts of it are all those poems memorized and kept memorized over all those years. but there is new introduction, and john mccain, of course, favored me with overly generous words on the introduction. and i wrote the standard, you know, my wife, and then i didn't think that it was worth a darn. so i changed it. i remember in the process of

bringing forth this book over the last nine months, and i have a great team in washington and the pritzker military library backed the hand bigtime. the prittser kill mare library's in the business of telling the stories and sharing the experiences of the citizen soldier. and colonel prittser has invest ed an enormous amount of his own resources into that, and this is the first imprint of the military library under master wing's publishing. so i'm very honored that they would do that, and we have a bunch of corporate sponsors who have helped us as well. but this was the thing that when the muse inspired me, and i said first and always to my wife myrna and then these words: a sunset lover wedded to your dawn, i too shine and depend upon your light and love to carry on. thanks, honey. and then thanks to our daughters, lauren and reagan, who serve their country in potential growing-up ways -- in

special growing-up ways, and dad says thanks for that. so i wanted to share that with you. the tap code's in here, so when you all get thrown in the slamerer, you can talk to the guy next door, right? [laughter] i think there's precious little worry of that. in the first part, the strapping on the tailpipe, i write a sonnet consistent with the formation of it, and it talks about a dawn flight, and i'll just give you can guts -- give you the gut cans of it, and then you guys can make your own judgments. pale golden talons stir the eastern sky, another fledgling day deparking lots the hill -- departs the hill. it takes the air as thermal falcons -- [inaudible] as carefree first flight

thrills. and who attends this noble soaring birth from mountain crag or gentle rolling plain may marvel from the vantage point on earth but missed so much not of the sky's domain. but i not of the earth at altitude, i greet the infant day with engine song. my con trails etched on endless morning blue and rare abandon urging me along. it's here unfettered brother man enthrall to first light flight, the one judged best of all. so for you dawn lovers out there, get thee to altitude, all right? [laughter] i'm going to use another sonnet, and this is the dark and bitter stuff. i'm just going to read a portion

of it. it's called sonnet for 4543, and in the tap code that would come out sonnet for us. sonnet for us. and it starts out that the world without -- within our weathered walls remote like useless windows tall and barred, here months and years run quickly down dim halls but days, the days, the empty days come hard. and it gets more intense from there until you get to the rhyming couplet at the end where it says i'm told that steel formed and forged by heavy blokes. if only men were steel, but then who knows? so that's part of the dark and bitter stuff that comes from the p.o.w. section of it.

the christmas -- everyone expected a christmas poem of one kind or another, and as i say, some of them were designed, you know, that we all rip our hearts out and feel terrible which is kind of a normal christmas feeling anyway or holiday feeling at one point in time. [laughter] but i thought we'd have more fun with it if we did something to start out light. so it's called a part of christmas. when jack frost starts warming hearts and old man smith ain't mean, when reindeer fly and you can buy a purple evergreen, then something's up, and you know what? it's all a part of christmas. snow tires crunch, the window shopping -- [inaudible] friendly rush through town town wonderland where bells are rung and carols sung. it's all a part of christmas. and it goes on and talks about

family enjoying, basically, christmas in chicago, going to church with the folks, having dinner, going home. and then it starts talking about being alone and having a closet full of presents and a husband who's missing and not knowing even if he's alive. and she talks to me in those kinds of veins. the moments drag, old memories nag, it's -- if only he were here. the need to write this christmas night and feel a little near a lonely wife, a half a life and this a part of christmas. and so she writes the letter that you can read in here, and i come out at the end and say it's the crying part of christmas. somewhere there's snow, a beacon glow, it's just a window light.

a little spark that braves the dark, it calls us home tonight. a world away, return someday and be a part of christmas. i tell people that you can cry in this book if you dive in and dive out of it. you really should read the front part and read the back part and read a poem i wrote just for you called "taps on the walls." i wrote it for you and for all of us, kind of a universal thing. but in the end you can laugh, too, in here. and there's lots to laugh about. in fact, much like al gore invented the internet -- [laughter] i invented rap. [laughter] well, way down south in the texas flat where a pickled pair and jackrabbit -- [inaudible] lived two woodpeckers a looking all the day for something to thump. now, i knowed one --

[inaudible] talks about two woodpeckerrers going out to peck on some california redwoods, and it's called this one's for the birds, and it has that kind of sink payings and rhyme scheme. or if to put it back in shoney's world, he wore fighter pilot boots, he was liquored, heft leathered -- he was leathered -- [inaudible] drank, gambled, chased the toots. he was outbound now, all gauges green, and it tells about this adventuresome flight going back home where everything happens to the airplane. i mean, it starts falling apart, and he keeps promising the good lord that he'll give up things like smoking and drinking -- [laughter] and gambling. and rubbing thigh. and that's a vernacular way of putting it, i suspect. anyway, the airplane keeps coming back, you know? and finally he's over home station, and the clouds go away, and he hits the brake which is, pitches out to land, and it's

just wonderfulwet all the way to the moon -- weather all the way to the moon, and he punches the mic, and he says you can cancel out that clearance, lord, i'm downwind. [laughter] well, i think we're down wind with respect to the remarks that i want today make tonight. the week's a piece of -- the book's a piece of my soul. imperfect though it may be and imperfect as most certainly it is, it's an honest statement and something that helped not only me, but my fellows who were in contact get through some tough times. and so now is it's appropriate all these years later to stiffen spine and let you go roaming around inside the brain box and inside the heart of john and myrna borling. and that cohort of men who not only were there in the north and in other areas in southeast

asia, but with the cohort of men who had and have both the memory and the reality of experiencing the only perfect place, as richard brock calls it, and that's the sky. there's another poem if here where a guy grows old, and it talks about how he grows old, but he was a pilot, and he said but til last storm he'll wait the banshee cry, run quick to look, his heart still in the sky. well, it's time for the banshee now to cry so, a, b, c and d flight -- [laughter] you guys should go up to the microphones and pulse me with whatever questions you are brave enough to ask. and it's easy if you don't have any because then i'll just ask you questions, and it'll be fine. okay? so thank you very much for your attention. you're most gracious. [applause]

mod enthusiasm. i guess it'll get a c. if you want to do that again later on, you can work on it. [laughter] you know, i did have some high-kicking cheerleaders that t were going to come in about mow, but i guess town hall has put the censor on that. do go up to the mic, because we're filming this. and i'm sure it'll be a documentary that will captivate the 2:00 in the morning audience. yes, ma'am. that's all right, just shut it out. >> hi. >> hi. >> i was a nurse in the army -- >> thank you. >> -- during vietnam, stationed at a temporary hospital where they brought all the burn victims we dropped napalm on our own guys -- >> tough duty. >> had to patch 'em up. and i have a question about resilience. i saw some guys who were just

going to be dead. that was it. i just thought they'd never walk again, that they would go home, and their wives or girlfriends would leave them be they got there. and then i saw others that nothing could kill them, the spirit was so strong. and i wonder how can we build resilience into our children, into our young men and into ourselves? how do we build resilience and courage? >> well, it's a great question. i spent the afternoon at fort lewis not on the mccord side, but over on the lewis side. and if i come away with an impression from the afternoon, i was signing books there, it was the number of men that came in with halting steps on canes and vacant looks in eyes, and the nature of our medical treatment now is so adept at saving people

that we find ourselves living with poor souls, frankly, who are with severely billionly or mentally -- physically or mentally injured where in previous conflicts they would have died. and when you talk about the resilience factor and that demand factor, it's a very individual thing. but it comes down, in my judgment, to three principal characteristics. if you had a pretty good growing-up experience -- families, churches, schools, friends -- that's kind of step one. the standards are your own, and you exact higher standards within than any organization would impretties upon you -- impress upon you save one, save

one. and that is that small unit organization you belong to. doesn't have to be in the military, it can be in the civil wan world. it can be your office pool. you know, it's us against the world. but in the military it's taking care of your buddy when your buddy's in the next cell or the squadron or in the flight. really important. and you get allegiance there. and men will walk into a -- and women -- will walk into a hell arabs firearm and arm because they don't want to be cowards. they'd rather die than somehow be wanting in supporting their buddy on in the face of stupid bloody orders which are bound in warfare. so that's a big reason. third reason in terms of resilience, noble goals. if somehow you're allied with things that are bigger than yourself, you have commitment outside of self, you use that as

a staff to lean on. you use that as a standard to raise high. it's a beacon in the night to walk to. service to the country is a big thing, big deal. so if you put all that together, that gets resilience, but i still think we're missing something. i think we've gotten so comfortable as a society that we need to have a resurgence, a rebirth, if you will, of the citizen soldier that we talked to in the pritzker military library context. if you want to take note of a web site, it's called sos america.org, www.sosamerica.org. sos, obviously, save or help, it argues that every young man sometime between 17 and 26 and young women who might choose to volunteer, but the young men would have to pick a year, and they would be in the military. but they'd be in platoons of 30, defined companies of 100, and

they would augment all of the services and have a bunch left over for civilian tasks. mike foley knows that they still mobilize fort carson to go fight forest fires, armored divisions every year. what a stupid thing to do with an armored division. but wouldn't it be nice if you had a couple hundred thousand people that you could move almost overnight into natural disasters? you want to guard your borders? you've got the person power to do it, and it's affordable. so look at sosamerica.org. we've had legislation in the congress three times. and now we're out to build, just starting this year again, kind of the last gasp. we had a bill so we can march back and say, look, this is something that would be good for the nation. it will make better husbands, fathers, citizens, and the national polling is just so incredibly supportive. anybody over 50 thinks we've got about an 85% correlation. for the people who are in the child-bearing years, especially those with sons, it's about a

50% correlation. it's interesting when you get down to the cohort itself. do you want to hear what the cohort itself thinks? i'm talking about the young men who are 17-26 and the young women, we're not going the draft them. they have to volunteer or conscript, actually, and you want to hear what they have to say? all right, we'll do the test. you guys ready over here? what do the young, the women -- no, what do the young men think? 17-20, about this program? all you guys here in a flight, you tell me. are they for it or against it? just shout it out. >> against. >> for. >> the young men, for it or against it. >> for. >> for. they're against it. the young men in that age group want to do four things. i don't think i need to spell them out. they want to get drunk, play sport, make money. a flight, you're wanting. [laughter] all right, here we go. now let's take the men who are 20-26. b flight, what do they do? do today think this is a good

program? are they for it or against it? >> too busy. >> pardon me? too busy. >> what a focus group you wouldn't be. no, they're for it. they say, gee, this would be something that would make me a little better. they have a little longer lens now. and because we're mixing age groups, we're mixing geography, we're mixing socioeconomic, and we're mixing educational levels, and races, certainly, but geography. someone from seattle meets someone from chicago meets someone from memphis, and they all are in this platoon with a couple real sergeants, the older boys -- by the way, the younger boys could really use this -- 17-year-old, 18-year-old a lot different than a guy who's 20 or 23 in terms of maturity factor. okay. charlie flight, you ready? all right. now we're going to talk about the girls. what do the young ladies think who are 17, 18, 19, 20 about

sending the men or giving the pen -- they make the choice -- away? are they for it or against it? for it? how many fors? let me see hands. how many against? i'm really glad you guys are not the focus group. [laughter] imagine a little girl with popes in her nose -- bones in her nose, tattoos, ander quote was take those sons of bitches yesterday and go make men out of 'em. [laughter] exact quote. that was down in hyde park in chicago. we went up to the northwestern campus and had both college women, and we had people in off the street, and the question we asked them nelson, diane, no fair answering. i think we talked this a little bit last night. but we asked them what did the woman 20-plus think about this program? were they for it or against it? >> for it. >> be all right, let's see the fors. let's see the against. the reality is they said don't you dare take any of this horse flesh off the ranch.

[laughter] we are -- so what we see is biology talking. but in the end, the bigger the macro program, i think, goes back to resilience. now, you asked a short question, and i gave a germanic answer, and i'm sorry i went too long. we've still got a couple minutes, you can turn off the tape. are we having fun? mike, go. >> [inaudible] >> one, the men are the problem in society, two, the -- >> sir, sorry, just real quick, can we repeat the question for the microphone? >> come to the microphone. >> thank you. >> i'll get you, mike. the question is why not draft the women too? conscript, actually. the men are the problem in the society, the young men. everybody knows that, right? yeah, sure. the cohort would go from 1.5 million a year to 3 million a year, and the affordability of

the program all of a sudden is suspect. i can make a case at $20 billion which is the cost of the program that you're going to get about a $40 or $50 billion return. but i can't, i just don't have the absorption capacity in the country to absorb three million, and there are different medical concerns. young women have a much higher index of medical needs. the ama has said they would be willing to do sit call pro bono, and if they need to, they go into the campus or military system. and the other reason is the conditions under which they would live -- this is kind of a weak argument because women can take pri vegas as much as men can -- but they're going to be out there living in rougher conditions. and when you mix the sexes which would be a requirement, we couldn't keep them segregated, then what happens is you mix sexes. [laughter]

okay. so that's then reason. -- that's the reason. but i'll tell you what, if the program could sell, if we had to do it, i think it would be so good for the resiliency of the nation to have a program like this. any nations have it, by the way? shout out a nation that has it. >> south africa. >>. south africa? another one? >> israel, i heard israel. switzerland? any others? >> norway. >> who? >> nor norway. [speaking in native tongue] no? all right. norway's got a denmark, sweden, italy, germany just did away with it. britain wants it back. france doesn't want it back. the french don't care what they do as long as they pronounce it correctly -- [laughter] if you've ever seen that, no, they've got that show on grammar and pronunciation, it's really wild. and then a bunch of eastern european countries still have that, and the germans argued

that this was for the civilization, we do this for, you know, the deutscheland. my mother, me sainted irish mother was vivian, i can get away with that ethnically, all right? half irish. you know conrad term the germans? you know what he called them? after this is -- before, as they were coming into nato, he said they are a nation of -- we are a nation of carnivorous sheep. [laughter] which means they needed to have some kind of structure, military structure for the civilization of the germans. okay. so that gives you some stuff. other questions? anybody want something? i'm going to hang and here tonight, by the way. the books have arrived, i understand, and before you raise -- it's a marketing ploy, we're chaining the doors now. but it's just a marketing technique. so, you know, you're in. yes, sir.

>> first of all, general, i agree with your concepts about that service. a couple of quick questions for you. did they allow you to write at all, or was there -- were you allowed to talk to your mates around the corner? is that why you had to do the tapping, because they wouldn't allow it? ..

then we got into larger groups. in fact, had some things that approximated more humane treatment. we got a few books. then they would take them away. or we got something for diversion of time. but it never again approximated the geneva convention. letterwriting, my wife wrote religiously and i never got a letter for like five years. she didn't know i was alive for about three. a couple other guys, a few of the guys who had public persona exploited, or just pictures taken, no hit on those guys, were able to write letters. in my case one of the guys was a letter writer took, ma had six lines, six lines, and he wrote in one of his letters, tell my aunt in chicago i miss her and i love her. this guy was in california.

the military, by god, it only took them about six months to figure that out. [laughter] so short answer, then toward the end we all got to write six blind letters but that was probably the last 18 months or two years. they fatten us up, anticipatory of the war in thing. that doesn't -- what i'm trying to do is just be factual and not make any judgments. i've been back, in 2002 went back with a delegation to in the book you will see i say we lost the war, but we won the war, too. i sat down at the end of the delegation, spoke in french, and he said he knew me well. he took my hand and in we walked into this briefing room where about an hour's worth of questions went back and forth. he was holding veterans from the photo op, it was the anniversary. at the end when the question that he would just pick up my

hand and pat my hand and i put a line in the book. i said you never really leave combat but you feel differently. about the enemy. and in vietnam to find out we won the war, too. they love americans. how many have been back to vietnam? isn't it an amazing country? it's an amazing country. the people are beautiful. the kids are more literate in english some suggest that her own kids. the american culture has swept through. it's still a communist country. still centrally controlled but it, the taste of freedom is there. once you get a taste, boy, it's hard to get that out of the palette. at my about out of time? one more question. i will hang around. anybody who wants to chat about things we can do that. besides, the bar is going to be open, isn't it? okay, go ahead. ask your question, please.

>> i would like to say thanks for your time tonight and also for creating what you did under the circumstances and coming and sharing that with us. [applause] >> thank you. >> i am one of many, so i wish the lights were not so very. because it should shine on so many. >> at the beginning of the night you asked us to think of the question why do we go to war? you listed -- fear and hate. but you spoke so much of love tonight. and am wondering, is there a place for love in motivating a country or people to go to war? >> probably love any idea or over fixation of the idea, but love is such an empowering emotion, and it's, it's not all sweetness. it can be rough around the edges but i have a hard time creating

the constructs public because i'm just not intellectually sharp enough. i'm not the brightest light on the porch. i can figur forget what the couy would love somebody else so much that they want to go kill them. in the end, kirk lemay probably summed up the essence of warfare as much as anybody, and it's something that as we as a people wish to be failed over time and beat history about going to some extended decline, notwithstanding all our resources and a great neighbors, the pacific and atlantic ocean to remember, and that is that when you go to war, the purpose is to kill people. you kill enough of them and they quit fighting. in fact, i can make a case we're neglecting our air power. i see no sense in having an 18 year-old kid go into kandahar and kick down doors with a rival when we take a squadron of b-52's with conventional weapons and they can't our a bunch of bricks. then send the 18 year-old kid

into do. the question is, are we as a people willing, willing, absent the factors i mentioned, absent constitutional declaration to stand for the level of carnage that would be required. i will further state that if we were, surprise, surprise, the level of damage to both supplies -- both sides would be less than his long, extended conflicts and it would cost a hell of a lot less. we can argue about that. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> you know, i used to plan the nuclear war plan of the country and then after all those years and fighters i went with the general. i had execution responsibilities. what worries me about nuclear weapons is that we are approaching levels, we can be if policies are carried out where you could make an operational

case where the use of nuclear force makes sense. that level is -- it still classified but as you drive down the certain levels you make the world safe for nuclear war. i do not think that nuclear war is as horrible and dangerous as, it's the end of the world. it's not. it would really be a take a knee ass -- a kick in the ass i will tell you. barren, desolate wasteland. there was never any construct use nuclear weapons. there was a plan, i wrote in the book, in 1966 to use force to such a level, air force force in such a level round-the-clock, hit everything worked hitting in north vietnam and basically back to the stone age with respect to the total infrastructure. they were targets we couldn't get i understand even as late as 1972 that we finally had of it in linebacker that caused the

peace accords that were concluded and which resulted in my release and 73 and the release of my colleagues. that was a christmas bombing of 1971972 where they took b-52's d took them downtown. took them down to hanoi with some predictable losses associated with it but that's what broke the will and we could've done that and we can do that if we have robust air power. the first thing you need is need to hear superiority. no american soldier has ever been killed by enemy air since world war ii your we are perilously thin with core structured and i would about that in future. yes, sir. , in the back step we actually need to finish up the question. if you want to take one more question. >> you guys can cut off the tape and we can just go. anybody who needs to leave, just get out of here. i don't want to disappoint anybody.

>> if you want to take questions when you are signing at might be easier spent she has the hook. [laughter] >> thank you for taking my question. you mentioned that we could end were faster, more effectively by changing the strategy and superiority to air power spent i will go further to that. we can win wars and we have with just air power. >> what are your thoughts on the military-industrial complex influence on postponing wars or prolonging wars? >> hell, i don't know. it's a -- you can make case either side. if you do the thing that they are after so here are the paranoid rafters over there, you can go back to eisenhower, and sure there's this ebb and flow. i'll do what i do favor, and national security policy and we have an expert in the realm in

nelson. national security policy or health care policy or any of those policies we were talking about, if we demanded, demanded that the public policy constructs of our nation would be three or four things. they would be understandable. they would be affordable. they would be executable in terms of that the desired outcomes have a fair shot of happening. and lastly, that everyone that had significant spending associated with it would have a sunset clause but i think would be money ahead in all domains, not just in the military-industrial world. if we could do one thing in the military-industrial world to address your problem, or that you post or i think you post, it would be to do away with the farmers. you know what a far is? it's a federal acquisition regulation. they are so screwed up that

that's what you get your 10,000-dollar toilet seat. you really don't, but to deal with it, we have created come because of the age of our country we just have keep procedure and process on top of the thing until it's opec nobody understands it. i used to be able to order things at the air force supply system. if i need a pencil or a bottle of water i could go down and i could order and make a requisition and sure enough, we would get a bottle of water or some pencil. he will remember this in 94. i cannot one morning and the other two squadrons were facing us. it was a 27 and the 71st. the original squadron of world war i. the two squadrons commanders were standing out there scratching their heads because they have three pallets worth of heavy eight by eight season to a -- seasoned oak, timmers, and you're looking at it, and i said i walked over, smart ass, your

would arrived. and the problem was that you couldn't turn it back in without, and you know this. without having your account debited. so you have to pay for and if have to pay for and if you turned it in you have to pay for it again. which is the way to supply system was working in those days. i have no doubt it is working to put the didn't order and couldn't turn it in and a separate so you know what happened to it. it disappeared. there was a lot of sawdust around but it disappeared. anyway, look, you guys have been great. the idea is to have a little fun with these things. i'll leave you with one little piece of humor. i'll leave you with both serious and a not so serious thing. after the 30 days when i was drug around there, they took me to a place where i could sit

against the wall and let water dribble me to the first time i had water on me, and this was in the summer, a place where they dumped the buckets, which were the toilets. and i'm laying there and the water, i can still feel the water today. i looked up and it was a been about at this level and it had to be where i was. i struggle up and was writing on the beam. so rhetorically asked, what is it what you do know. but it was in red pencil and in english. you know, feeling pretty bad, i'vi've got to give them lookinp there and it said, smile, you're on candid camera. [laughter] listed events, and to think that maybe i hope i've been a little candid with wry remarks and you guys can be equally and more candid as we continue to pursue the evening here. thanks again so very much. [applause]

>> we would like to from the. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.