e-books. we are converting several of our older publications into e-books which are available or will be available free of charge on the delaware heritage commission web site. we are trying to find as many ways as possible to reach out to people their history to them. it's a nonpaying job. we have 17 members of the commission who don't get paid anything and i think they'll do it kind of out of love for the state of delaware. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to dover delaware and that many other cities visited their local content vehicles go to c-span.org/local content. mr. rubin presents a collection of interviews he conducted with men who served in the american expeditionary forces in world war i. this is a little over an hour.

[applause] >> thank you. that was a wonderful introduction. i started this book back in 2003 so it's been a a ten-year odyssey but the seed for this book was actually planted many years earlier. it was back in the mid-1970s when i was seven or eight years old. there was a day -- till i grew up in westchester county new york a suburb just west of the city and the son of a history buff but unlike a lot of people who make that claim the history buff in my family is not my father. it's my mother and of her four children i seem to be the only one she passed the gene onto. she took advantage of that one day we were driving into the city from westchester and she pointed at a big building up on a hill. she told me that was the bronx va hospital and then she said something i have never forgotten.

she said that there were still men in that hospital who had never recovered from being gassed in the first world war. this made quite an impression on the seven or 8-year-old even though i was a small child. i know enough about world war i to know it happened a really really long time ago. 60 years at that point and it really struck me that there were men who had lived entire lifetimes since then still frail from what they had endured in that war. i didn't know really very much about the war at all. i didn't know what it was about and pretty much all i knew was that snoopy with senate and had battled with the red baron to an inconclusive result. but that stayed with me and it nestled in the back of my mind. one day in early 2003, i was

supposed to be working on another book and i was doing what writers do very well which is procrastinate. and i had heard a gentleman interviewed on the radio and he was talking about the world war ii generation and he said that world war ii veterans were dying off at the rate of 1000 a day and that we needed to get their stories now while we still could that also made a very strong impression on me but not the way that the speaker had intended. for some reason that day i thought well what about the world war i veterans? i knew a lot of world war ii veterans personally. i have heard a lot of their stories but i couldn't recall having spoken to the veteran of the first world war and i wondered if it were too late already. i did the math, 2003 was 85 years after the armistice that ended the war. i figured somebody that was 20 years old in 1918 with the 105

in 2003. i don't know about you but the first section i read in the paper every day as the obituaries. so i knew that people did occasionally lifted the battle than i thought well maybe i could find two or three and interview them and get an article out of it and go back to this book i'm supposed to be working on. that is the way it would have played out except for the fact that i couldn't find it. the first place i call this the department of veterans affairs in washington d.c. and i naïvely believed they would have a printout for me waiting with the veterans names and their ages agents and their addresses and phone numbers that they would let me share with me. this proved not to be the case. i was told that they didn't have any such database and even if they had they couldn't share it with me. in fact several years later when i was a few years into the search i started getting calls from people at the va asking me to share my list with them.

so, i moved on and i started calling local va hospitals vfw posts nursing homes and anyplace i could think of. always the result was the same. we haven't seen a world war i veteran and 10, 15, 20 years. they always signed off with let us know if you find any. after a few months of this i got very frustrated but i didn't do what perhaps a more reasonable person would do which is to give up and move onto something else. instead i got angry and i decided that since i couldn't find any living american veterans of world war i would find them all. which was quite bravado at the time since i haven't found any yet but shortly thereafter my stubbornness was rewarded with the first big break i got in the case.

that came from a most unexpected source. in 1998, so five years before he started searching for living american veterans of world war i the government of france undertook a program wherein they would award france's highest military decoration, the legion of honor, to living veterans who had served on french soil in world war i, living american veterans. this was more than just pr. they really wanted to give this away so they undertook an intensive search. they ran ads in the vfw magazine and american legion at the scene and national newspaper magazine and by and by they ended up getting out 550 legions of honor to american men and women who have served on french soil in world war i. i should note that they didn't just put it in the mail. they had an elaborate ceremony where they dispatched somebody from the french embassy to

travel to wherever the veteran in question lives. they put on a ceremony and in a few cases french president jacques chirac himself presented the medal to a veteran. there was also a very big certificate and i don't know if you have ever seen it but it's a very beautiful metal. i didn't go to any of the ceremonies and in fact the vast majority of them took place in 1998 and 1999 so by the time i started this that have been for five years since most of these legions of honor had been awarded. i think maybe 10% of the people on that list were still living. but i needed the list and i was fortunate that i became acquainted with the adjutant of the french embassy in washington d.c. ,-com,-com ma half french half vietnamese who was really moved by my quest and on his own free time he xeroxed all 550 or so applications and fedex them

to me. he wouldn't take a dime from me. i should point out this was right around the same time that the congressional commissary in washington started calling french fries freedom fries. this was the spring and early summer of 2003 when there was a lot of tension between americans and france. while this was going on i got my first big break in finding american world war i veterans from the government of france. so, i have a list to work off of. it was awkward at first because there's a set of ports of 90% of the people on the list had passed away and if you have ever called the house looking for someone who is almost certainly deceased you know it's very awkward conversations. finally one day i called the house of a gentleman named jay lawrence moffatt. this -- who he lived in orleans massachusetts at the elbow of cape cod and i will never forget

this because i called up and a woman answered the phone. i had already had maybe upwards of 40 conversations that someone ending the conversation with the person had passed away. i told her who i was and said is there any chance for mr. moffat is still looking into my great surprise she said he is and then while i was still kind of gasping for breath she said would you like to speak to him? i did speak to him and he told me a little bit about his service for a little bit and we made plans for me to come up and i met him soon after that. in between the time when i learned his of its existence and when i first interviewed him i became very nervous. the source of this was my worry that was i kidding myself? could somebody really remember in vivid detail things that they had seen and done and felt years

earlier? i had never met anybody who was over 100 years old. mr. moffatt have been born march 6, 1987. i was really worried about this so i got to the house and i set up my video camera. we sat down and talked. it was interesting actually. he lived in a small house in the woods on cape cod. the only chair in the house was a comfortable armchair that he offered to me that knowing that he was 106 years old i insisted that he take it. i sat in the only other chair in the house which was his wheelchair. i started the interview with the way i would eventually start all interviews which was with this name. i started with easy questions and try to move onto more detail. i asked him his name and where he was born and when he had been born and his parents names and his siblings names. things were going okay but i was still anxious about whether or not he would be able to talk to me about the war in great

detail. then i asked him a question that seemed very simple at the time. i asked him where he had gone to high school and i want to read to you this answer in full and unedited. i went to high school from lebanon, lebanon connecticut in the northeast corner of the state where he grew up. that high school was two miles from home. then i was directed to an insurance company in hartford for a position and accepted. i spent my life in insurance. i was hired by two to two companies have won and then another and then i went to world war i. i graduated from high school in 1914. i went into the army in 1917, april of 1917 just before the war was declared. i was in the army for two years. 18 months in france. the division was the 26th division made up of the national guard of the sixth as date. therefore a change of infantry

regiments and artillery batteries for which i am not acquainted. the 100 1st infantry richmond was made up of the massachusetts national guard. the 102nd was made up of connecticut national guard where i was in the 100 2nd infantry. the 130 mature regiment was from maine in the 104th from new hampshire and vermont and artillery mostly from rhode island. i would just like to remind you at this point this man is 106 years old. in connecticut we were assembled in new haven. all the different national guard companies of connecticut were assembled in new haven in 1917 in july and from there it was so early in the war there were no transports. we went to my company and i don't know how many others, went by train to montréal and embarked and sailed down the st. lawrence to halifax where we joined several national guard companies that were ready to go across and went across to liverpool.

a nine-day trip it was and then across the channel to france and then across france to a certain area and the regiment trained for four months there and in february we were sent to the front. at that time the allies britain and france and belgium and others have been in the war since 1914. we joined them in 1917 went to the front in february of 1918. so the first sector was the allies at that time were defending themselves against the attacks of germany. we were just a defensive action. i was in in the headquarters company of infantry regiment and the staff of the current along with others. i had the rank of the corporal. i escape the frontline trench warfare but i was subject to constant artillery fire. i spend my 21st birthday in the frontline march 6 of 1918. i went out on patrol with the patrol group that night and we spent two months in that sector. that was their first set there. two months later we were moved to another sector of the tool sector and then came shipped out

to lee and the closing war and the war was over as you know on november 111918. president wilson pater company visit while we were there and talk to us and i don't remember, don't recall now just when that wasn't what the occasion was that it was maybe a holiday. that was his answer to the question where did you go to high school? [laughter] so, from that moment on i never really worry too much about how well somebody might be able to recall things that they had seen and done 85 years earlier and something i learned very quickly in interviewing sectarians h. 101 to 113 is that at that age memory is very much a matter of first and last out. most of these people could recall at least to some extent details of things they had done

80, 90 or 100 years earlier. there was a gentleman about named fred hale from new sharon in december 2003 and 1 of the things we talked about was new year's day 1900. i am not sure fred hale could've told me what he had for breakfast that morning but he could recall very vividly what he had for breakfast on new year's day 1900. i soon learned though that interviews really would only get me part of the story and the rest i would have to fill in from contemporary books and pamphlets, propaganda and an awful lot of sheet music and sometimes artifacts. i discovered along the way that sometimes the whole story wouldn't reveal itself to me for many years and that i would have to be patient and to illustrate that point i want to tell you the story of a gentleman named eugene lee.

eugene lee had been a marine. i first learned about him not from the french list but in fact from a newspaper article published in a small upstate new york newspaper shortly before veterans day of 2003 in the article is mostly about local world war ii veterans but of the very end there was a short little paragraph and it said eugene levy only world war i veteran in the area still living with 104-year-old eugene lee of syracuse and it added and i quote here he was cote no longer able to give interviews which i took as a personal challenge. i called up the reporter who was very gracious and told me that the source of that information was a gentleman named jim casey. eugene lee was a former marine and so was jim casey. he served in the late 1950s. mr. lee was a widower and had no children and his closest family

was a niece who lived out west. jim casey was sort of an adopted son. he took him out to be sometimes and was a gatekeeper. i told mr. casey what i wanted to do and he said that mr. lee in fact could be spoken to but his memory is kind of spotty. some days it was good and some days not so good and when it wasn't so good he got frustrated with himself but he told me to come up anyway if i were willing to risk it which i certainly was. on december 3, 2003 walks in the long-term care wing of the va hospital and met 104-year-old eugene lee. born on march 24, 1889 in salina new york a small town that is part of syracuse and so he turned 18 just a couple of weeks before the united states entered world war i. as soon as the united states did enter world war i he dropped out

of high school. he only had a couple of months left to go and enlisted in the marine corps. for those of you who are advocates of education and feel badly about that i can assure you mr. lee did eventually get his high school diploma in effect he was awarded his diploma on his birthday. it was his 104th birthday. he had it there proudly on display in his room when i visited him that day. he was sent to boot camp in philadelphia and assigned to the 51st company of the marine regiment. they were shipped over to france so a couple of months after america entered the war ended as he arrived in france about a week or so after john jay pershing the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary forces arrived in france. now general pershing was very reluctant to commit untrained american troops to the fight and this was to the consternation of

the british and french allies who wanted fresh manpower in the ranks right away. they wanted to use the americans as they would use their own colonial troops which was essentially as replacement troops often given the most dangerous duty of distracting the enemy to protect british and french troops. general pershing wanted none of this so eugene lee spent his first year in france entirely in training. but then in the spring of 1918 the germans launched a tremendously successful offensive that was the most successful offensive that anyone had launched in four years and i got to within 40 miles from paris. the allies were in a panic. the french made plans to evacuate the capitol and move the state government to bordeaux secretly french and british commanders were telling each other that they thought perhaps the war was lost and at this point the french reached out to general pershing and begged him

to commit a couple of american divisions to the fight. general pershing who had a great fondness for the french agreed and he made at it to second and 3rd infantry division's to the battle. they were sent to château tell me which is so close to paris as i said only about 40 miles, that today people regularly commute every day. the two marine regiments they were in france at the time, privately was in the fifth marines were part of the second division so they arrived at the very end of may 1918 and beat the germans back. the germans fell back to well fortified positions that they had set up previously at a place called bella would which was only a few miles away. there they had set up concrete fortifications and lots of machine guns.

the french asked general pershing if he would send the division to ferret the germans out so general pershing sent the second u.s. infantry up there which included those two marine regiments. and accounts of the marines and the entire second division marching a few miles to bellow wood are really wonderful. this was still very early and america's war. american hadn't been bloodied yet and they have been in france training for a year. contemporcontempor ary accounts have them walking up really strutting with their chest thrust out laughing and clowning around and joking with each other talking about what they were going to do once they got there and the entire way they are encountering french troops, ragged tired scared french troops coming the other way telling them to turn back.

there's a famous story about a marine corps officer named captain lloyd williams who is from virginia. a french officer came up to him and said beaucoup bausch. you must retreat and captain williams now a legendary response was retrieved? hell, we just got here. it seemed to sum up the american attitude at that point in the war. the americans got up there and dug into positions across a mile wide field from belleau wood and right away that germans went down in america's push them back. this happened several times and then on june 6, 1918, 26 ears to the day before the invasion of normandy the marines decided to go on the attack. and it was a --

the commander of the second division general james c. harvard did not care very much for artillery support of the infantry attack so what this meant was that the marines had to launch their initial attack against entrenched german positions and belleau wood across a mile wide open wheatfield. if you can just imagine crossing a mile wide open wheatfield against machine guns hidden in the woods you know what they were afghans. eugene lee described it to me 85 years later. they would go forward and wave so one wave would run forward and make flatten themselves on the ground and then another wave would follow and flatten themselves, on and on and on. even so it was a deadly business. on the first day jim six, 1918 the marines lost 1100 men. it was their worst day in history to that point. they did make it to belleau wood

by the end of the day on that first day that the germans who were notorious for counterattack , i counterattack shortly thereafter drove them out. for the next three weeks this pattern repeated itself. the americans would take all or part of the woods and the germans would take it back. the americans would take a back from the germans and on and on and on until finally on june 26, 1918 the americans took the woods and held them for good. this was the first major military encounter between american and german troops in the war and it was the first major victory for american troops in the war. it was such a victory that general pershing, i don't know how much you know about the man, but you could accurately call him stone face. he was not given to making bold pronouncements or frankly even smiling very much. he issued a jubilant statement that the deadliest weapon in the

world is a marine and his rifle. as a result of her sense of belleau wood has been tremendously important to marines. general amos the commandant of the marine corps told me it was a burden of the modern marine corps but it was a very costly burden. in fact the bill was just a little bit under 10,000 casualties in the course of three weeks. one of those casualties on june 12, 1918, with captain lloyd williams the gentleman who said retrieved? hell, we just got here. he was killed by fire on june 12, 1918 another casualty on that day was private eugene lee, 19 years old shot through the wrist but before he was evacuated he helped evacuate more seriously wounded marines and for that he was eventually awarded the silver star which is the second highest decoration

that a marine can get answered by one of the highest decoration supported to anybody interviewed. he was very modest about it too. he said i don't know why they gave it to me. i said well i think they gave it to you for evacuating wounded marines even though you were wended yourself and he said well he didn't think about that and he meant it. he was eventually evacuated himself and sent to a hospital and while in that hospital he made the acquaintance of another marine who had been wounded the day before. this was a gentleman named joe, and i regretted it for many years after that interview that i didn't ask mr. lee how he spelled it. i tried to find any information i could and i could never find anything. i tried every spelling i could think of.

on and on and on and i could never find any information other than what eugene lee had told me. fortunately eugene lee had told me a great deal about him. those were some of the sharpest memories about his friend joe. they met playing baseball in the hospital and they soon progressed at throwing dice together. joe was quite good at it and made enough money to take it to paris which saved pretty good place to spend money and they talked about what they would do once they got sent back to the front and what they would do after the war. joe was from pennsylvania so they didn't live too far apart from each other. they were sent back to the front pretty much at the same time. joseph bunny tramp -- as for a transfer so they could serve together. it turned out to be a really good thing for both of them that they did serve together because they arrived back at the front just in time for the start of the battle which was the last

great battle of the war. started on september 26, 1918 and it didn't end until november 11, 1918 when the armistice ended the entire war. in that time more than 26,000 americans were killed. it remains to this day the deadliest battle that american troops have ever participated in so this was what they faced together with makeup at the front. now i want to move ahead a little bit back to 2003. i'm in syracuse and intervening eugene lee and casey is there an agreement after the interview was done in a packed up my equipment and jim casey was walking out he pulled something out as a file folder and showed it to me. it was a picture of a mess kit covering carbon a mess kit cover was eugene lee's name and his company so it was his mess kit cover. it didn't look too good but that

was because it had been buried for 80 years. he dropped it on june 12, 1918 the day he was shot through the wrist and eight years later a french world war i and busiest collector dug it up. part of the belleau wood battlefield and he did a little research and discovered to his astonishment that the owner of this mess kit cover buried in the earth for 80 years was still alive, and in a feel-good movement he would have sent it back to eugene lee who would have left it to his knees or maybe museum or maybe even at the smithsonian but in a reminder that life is not a feel-good movie, i was told that what actually happened was the

collector who founded having discovered its owner was incredibly still alive and realizing this made it much more valuable sold it on ebay instead. i asked jim casey would have bought it and he said he didn't know. but he said if i ever made to france i should look up a gentleman and that he might be able to tell me something about it. five and a half years later he did make it to france and i did look him up. he's a very interesting fellow. he lives in a small town which is very close to belleau wood and grew up hearing stories about belleau wood. and he started scavenging and collection -- collecting from a very young age. everything he had was housed in a bar next to his house in his little fillets, a very old house and a very old barn. the entire upstairs of the barn was essentially a museum but it wasn't what you think of when you hear the words french museum.

..

he smiled and said it wasn't easy. it made an impression. the museum is popular with marines. bell wood is important to them. they find the way to the museum. it seeped p seems -- seems like every one gives a gift of a t-shirt. he was wearing one on the day i visited. he pointed out a framed certificate on the wall making him an honorary marine. it was something. so after awhile of him showing me around, i asked him about this cover, and all of a sudden this man who had been so friendly and so delighted to show me around. he's a big guy in the book. i describe him being built like

a shipping crate. all the sudden he got very nervous and said he'd heard about that. didn't know who it. who sold it, and who bought it. i came to understand there have a community of world war i caf -- scavagers and collectors in france. it's a shadowy league. they don't like each other very much. they don't like to speak of each other. that could be in part because the kind of digging that others have cone around bellawood and has been doing for many decades has been illegal for some several decades. france banned the use of metal detect detectors in vaf aging world war i battle field. it may be part of it. it may be the competition. i don't know what it is. he got very nervous and told me

he didn't know anything about it in a way that left me unsure whether or not he was telling the truth. i was certain i wasn't going to learn anything more about it from him. i left his pois disappointed, frankly. the next day, i was in the village, which is very close to the bella wood facility field. i noticed the museum which was any thing happened to be open. they were in the area for a week already. the people who were telling me that time that i needed to see it. so i was delighted when i saw it was open this day and went in there and -- they had quite of few -- it was all immaculate.

it looked like activity brand new. it meat an impression. there was a card next to one of the display cases saying these things had come from the collection of gentlemen. i asked the museum cure rate cure rate the french not being concerned privacy she gave it to me right away. i called him up. he sounded nervous. i told him who i was and why i was there. i said i had seen part of his collection at the museum. i would like to see it. his response was -- which i didn't take as a yes. so i decided to play the best card i had in my hand right away. i told him i met eugene lee. i this is going to be meaningful. i was right. his response was come on over.

he lived in a modern house. a very nice house on the edge. very different from the other place which was quite old. the first thing i noticed when he welcomed me inside he had a state-of-the-art security system which was unusual in small town france. he seemed very nervous by my presence. he invited me up stair. i tried everything i could think of to get him to be more ease. he's george bailey. and i asked him how thing were going at the savings and loan. [laughter] he didn't respond adds you all did. or even at all.

he got a little more comfortable and lead me up stair. the collection was housed in one enormous room which was the entire upstairs of his house. it was something to see. he had mannequins with complete german uniforms on them. they were impeccable. on one wall he had a iraq with 0 or so pickle -- those are the spiked german helmets. each and every one looked like they were brand new. he showed me them. he showed me every single one was somehow suddenly different than every other one. this was from a different regimen. he could go on and on about them. the bulk of his collection was housed in serious of massive cabinets on another wall. with a large draw he opened up.

one was full of identification disks. that's all it was. it must have represented hundred of men. german, american, french. one was full of pieces of uniform. another full of bullets and cart ranch -- cartridges and forks and knives and spoons. on another wall of the large room, he had a series of file cabinets in each one was full of index cards and each index cards represented a single clek. thousand and thousands and thousands of items. each one detailed on the own index card. meticulously organized. he knew where everything was. and he got so excited talking about all of this that he let it slip not only when he was a collector but also a dealer.

which in certain circles in france is fighting words. but i recognized this as sort of the moment he finally let his guard down. so i jumped in, i told him about the cover. i asked him who had it. and he said, yes, i heard about that. somebody else bought it. i said, who? he went -- which really didn't tell me very much except that he wasn't going tell me. whether he knew or not i don't know. then he turned the table on me and asked me a question. he said did you meet eugene lee? i said. i interviewed him on december 3rd, 2003. mr. lee had died a day after his 105th birthday on march 25th, 2004. i told him about the interview and the stories he told me about enlisting in bella wood and then

bailey got a smile over his face and it was very mysterious smile and he said do you know the name joe? [laughter] i looked at him and said yes, i do. he told me a lot about him. but mr. bailey, how do you know the name? he didn't say anything he just smiled and went -- and he scurried over to a file cabinet, opened a drawer, and flipped through the index cards for a couple of minutes until he found the one he was looking for. he took it out, held it up, read it, walked across the room to one of the big cabinets, opened up a drawer, i saw it was a drawer full of cutlery, forks,

knives, spoons, he dug around for a couple of minutes, and pulled out a fork. held the fork up, inspected it for a minute and crossed the room with a try yum faint look on the face and handed to me. i took a looked at the fork. it was in perfect condition. it had a six-digit serial number on it and four letters. wnuk. and he showed me the index card, and it said joseph f, fork found november 5th, 1993. he had a tremendous amount of information on joe. he had the date of less enlistment which was april 27th, philadelphia pa. he had the citation. he won a sill territorial-type star. he had the state he was wounded june 11th, 1918.

the location he was wounded. on and on an on. he found the fork in 1993. so he found all of this information well before google. it was really, really impressive. but there was one piece of the story that he didn't have. i did have this piece of the story. i had met eugene lee. that's this; after they got sent back, they worked hard to keep each other's spirits up. they talked a lot about what they had done in the hospital. what they would do once they got home. and the fight was often terrible. but there were quite periods too relatively quite periods. even during the quite periods the germans wanted to let the americans know they were still out there. so every once awhile, they would send up a shell from a mile or two away just to let the americans know they were still out there. the american would respond in kind. one night 51 tion company was

crossing the river and the germans threw up a shell and it landed behind them in the river. it killed joe. the night in question was november 10th, 1918. it was the last night of the war. like i said, i only knew that part of the story because i met eugene lee. he shared with me at the last possible moment his memory of world war i and the 55th first company at and his friend. and you know, eugene lee told he me at some point recounting something he was telling me a story he hadn't told anybody in fifty, sixty years. a lot of people said that to

me. i asked him why not? he told me something that a bunch of people told me as well which was that nobody asked. and if i hadn't found him almost accidentally through an article, a little paragraph at the end of the article in a small town newspaper in upstate new york and gone up to interview him, that story would have been lost too. and so i just want to leave you with the thought that ask. if you know somebody who knows has an interesting story to tell. ask them. otherwise that story may be lost. and now even throw the -- though the last of the dow boys are gone we have the art fact. we have the story and memory connected to them. i tried to set some down in the book, and i hope you enjoyed

it. thank you for coming. [applause] i would be happy to take questions. there was another book that was published in the last two years by an englishman. you probably know it. it consistencies mainly of an interview or interview format of people who experienced the horror of world war i including millions. does your book also follow a similar format? >> well, my book is -- no, it doesn't. those books those come out of interview in the archive of the imperial war museum in london. that's pretty much straight oral history. what i wanted when i set out was a narrative. a narrative that would em come pass the story of world war i.

the important part was who were the people still around to talk about it ail, 86, 87 years after ward? and so i tell the story as if i'm inviting the reader along on a journey to meet the people. there's more than straight oral history. that was really more than just high minded goal. it was really important. when you are dealing with people that old or calling things that that long ago. even though as you know from where he went to high school, not everybody's memory of so vivid. there were big holes in just about every story i heard. you have go around them to fill the holes in. i felt it was important to make sure those holes were filled in. because this was really the last opportunity to tell these stories.

thank you. >> decline -- [inaudible] no. i did not encounter any veterans who declined to speak with me. but i did encounter veteran's families who were not interested in having me speak to their father or grandfather or uncle for fear -- it's a reasonable fear, that this would be dredging up unpleasant memories, and as i said, that's reasonable. but the good part of the story is that not only were the few dozen men and women i interviewed -- not only were they willing to speak to me. they were egger to speak to me. age lot of them recognized that time was short. they didn't want these stories to die with them. they really wanted to pass them on to somebody else. so a funny story that i tell sometimes is that there was one

gentleman i interviewed. he was 103 years old when i met him. he was happy to talk to me, but his wife, who was 101 wasn't so keen on it. in fact, their god daughter, they only had one son, he died young. their closest family was a god daughter told me when i called her up to set up a time to visit she said i'm going to have to keep mom distracted so she's not there. i said that's okay, i like to have family members in the room. that helps, you know, i find it helps jar memories. she said, no. you don't want her there. and she was there anyway. she was not able to distract her godmother, so his 101-year-old wife was there. i should point out at the time i interviewed him, i believe it was september 18, 2014 -- 2004. they were married for 83 years. i found out very quickly that

her objection to my interviewing her husband wasn't that it might dredge up unpleasant memories. it wasn't there to interview her. i haven't posted video. i have a website, the last of the dough boy.com. you'll see he's on camera. you can clearly hear her voice off camera answering questions that have been posed to him. i might add in a thick kajun accent. the cell cell phone -- veteran were perfectly happy to speak with me. that was probably the greatest lucky break i got in the whole process. >> i'm not familiar with dough boys where it comes from. maybe it's common knowledge. >> no, it's not. it's actually disputed.

the term dow boy refers to an american infantry men world war i. it's a specific term. it doesn't even refer to a say slor. there was a different piece of slang that was used to describe the sailor in world war i it was gob. which has sphered from our lexicon. dough boy are disputed. there are a lot of theories. the two leading ones, as far as i know. the first dates back to the heck -- mexican war. they were spotted marching through the cease -- desert covered in dust. looked like they were rolled in flour. the other leading theory was that salvation army volunteers went up to france and set up canteening serving hot coffee and doughnut. it was the first time that great many americans encountered dot nut. before that it was a regional treat.

after that the doughnut came through. i like that theory better even though i think t probably the first one. >> johnny doughboy. ♪ my father was one of the people who left school at age 16, and joined the army from portland high school, and very proud to do that. he came back and finished. he went to france, and i have some letters he wrote to my mother from france, and for art facts i have his purple heart, which -- [inaudible] and also a bullet shell. on it is carved 1918. >> that's very common, actually. there's a whole field. -- [inaudible]

[laughter] i wonder if anybody tried to call him. [laughter] that's called trench art. soldiers had a lot of down time in the trerchls. they would often carve things. like sailors did their thing a century earlier. that's interesting. but, you know, i heard from a lot of people since the book was published who tell me that nay never realized they had somebody in their family in world world war i until they opened an old chest and found a bunch of papers or opened an old book and found a letter home from france or something like that. and, you know, it's an interesting thing. i talk about bella wood and how they dug art fact up. in other part of france, you don't have to dig. every time a field is plowed, to this day, things pop up. every time. i was walking through a field in the town of are roman, france.

a couple minutes in i found five bullets sitting on the surface. and nearby five cartridges. and over here a cone. over there a button from a uniform. just as i was about to leave, i looked down there was a shell this big sitting on the dirt. just been plowed up that morning. and my guy, probably saved me from myself. my first impulse was to fibbing up. every years in france people are killed or maimed by unexploded world war i. experts say this kind of stuff is going to continue to pop up for 2 or 300 years. i like to think things like letters and purple hearts and things like that will also don't pop up. you know, keep reminding us we were in world war i too. sir, you have a question?

did you have your hand raised? >> actually, i have a question. i would assume you were -- [inaudible] you didn't get much in to actual conditions in the trenches lifing in the mud, diseased -- how long people lasted. how they put up with it. [inaudible] ♪ >> yeah. the difficulty was that the men i interviewed for the most part were very stoic, and so they were disinclined to remember conditions as being very bad. that jebt lman i told you about. the one i read the long quote from. he served in france longer than just about any american. his division was the first division to go over in full, and i asked him at one point what were the trenches like?

he said, they were fine. you know, you had wooden boards on the bottom and kind of described the actual assembly of a trench. but he didn't talk about what you often read about when you read about the trenches. they were terrible places to be. they were muddy and filthy and full of rats and lice. but that just wasn't the way he saw things. he said once nothing had really been hard for him in his life. i know, that is not true. i knew what he went through in the war. i asked him, in fact, i said did you get gassed? he said, yeah, practically all the shells had gas in them. i was stunned because, you know, if you know anything about world war i you know about gas. it did terrible, terrible things to people. it could kill you. it can blind you, it could blister your skin. it could take years and years to kill you. like my mother said sixty years on people never recovered.

i asked what it was like. he said it wasn't too bad. i lost my voice for a few cays. it came back eventually. and so -- that was really i think set the stage for what i was going to hear from most of the people i interviewed. they were stoic people. may be that's a function of the generation or the fact they were on average 107 years old and you have to be stoic if you want to be that old. i don't know. [inaudible conversations] were so grizzly they repressed them. >> it could be. we talked about conditions, but like i said, that was one of the area which i had to work around the memory. it was another veteran a gentleman named moses. he was in a pioneer infantry. they worked very close to the front. when i asked, you know, did you ever -- were you ever in danger he said

no. later i found a history of the regimen the 805 pioneer infranty and read account of the service which was written right after. it turned out he was in danger almost every day since he arrived in france. so, you know, that's -- it could be memory. it koa stoicism. i don't know. i certainly did ask about it. ma'am? [inaudible] i did. i interviewed flee women. two of them served -- they were women on the french list who was awarded the the allee genes of honor. i didn't get to interview them. i interviewed three women. two of them were what was known as -- well, they were among the very first women ever to serve in uniform in any branch of the military. they served in thebnavy.

there was a forgotten episode of world war i. there was a navel act passed in 1916. very long in detail and went to great detail about everything you had to do being qualified to served in the navy. it forgot to mention you had to be male. somebody mentioned this to secretary of the navy in 1917, and his credit he said i let it stand. and before the war was over 11,000 women enlisted in the navy. and served in uniform. they were known as -- [inaudible] which was a name that sounds rather quaint. perhaps a bit archaic. they did mostly clerical work in washington. all but five of them served state side. they were all dangered immediately after whether they wanted out or not. they became very active. they found an american legion

posted. they set the stage for women to serve in much, much greater numbers and world war ii that wouldn't have been possible without the program. and the third woman i interviewed was a civilian who had been, as she told it, drafted to work for the war department in washington. she had been an 18-year-old girl in the bronx daughter of swedish immigrants and she was a secretary and one day her boss told her to take a civil service exam. she did. a few week later she got a telegram in the home at 1:00 in the morning telling her to report to washington on december 17, 1917. she told me she called up the war department and asked if she could come after christmas. they said no. and she went down and worked for the war department. she took a cut in pay. she had to pay her own room and board. she loved it. she continued to work for the government for years after the war. those are the three women i was fortunate enough to interview.

sir, do you have another question? >> yes. i see your book is subtitled the forgotten generation and forgotten world war. why did you and/or your publisher decide to call it forgotten? well. i don't think of it as forgotten. well -- well oob i'm glad you do. go to any big box bookstore and the history department and see case and cases of books about the civil war and cases and cases of books about world war or two and maybe a shelf books of world war i between them. i almost didn't notice it as chris said when he was introducing me. there are more mown --

almost every town will have one. even if they don't have civil war or world war ii monument. if you want to know what extend america has forgotten. you need to drive a little bit up north and go to canada. t huge. world war i is tremendously important in canada. go across the ocean to england or france or i don't know about germany. i can tell you in england and france when they say the war. they mean the first world war. it's quite striking. to what extent we have forgotten about it here. yes? >> i just was looking up something in a fashion your folks didn't. but -- i can't remember she worked fore and worked on finding housing for refugee and a french legion of honor award. >> she wrote a book about it too. you are correct. none of the interviewees had

smartphone. [laughter] this was one moment. there was a question i like to ask everybody, which was something you live to see you never could have imagined? and the first time i interviewed frank who ended up being america's last living world war i veteran. he died in february of 2011 at the age of 110. i asked him, what was -- i asked him that question. something you have lived to see you never could have imagined when you were younger. he said that thing in your pocket that rack while we were talking. [laughter] which immediately embarrassed me. in a good way. so, you know, it's a pretty fascinating thing when you consider these were men and women who grew up without so much as electricity or automobiles to make it in to the age of broadband internet and cell phone. in fact lawrence, the gentleman

in massachusetts who i interviewed. at one point he asked me how i learned about him. i told him about the french list and that i had done research on the internet. this was in july of 2003. he said, i keep hearing about the internet. can you tell me about that? i started telling him about it. he said is it something you join? [laughter] and which makes perfect sense. it was a man who spent his life his adult life in insurance. he lived in connecticut but often worked in new york. he was a member of a couple clubs. i kind of explained it to him. i said, you know, i think you would like it. he was quiet for a second and looked at me and said do i need it? [laughter] and i laughed and i said no, no, you don't. so -- thank you all for coming. [applause] thank you. [applause]

let me add, i think i mentioned it earlier. if you want more information and see video clip of the veteran you can go to the website thelastof thedough boyworldwari.com. >> [inaudible] >> i live up the coast. i had to come maine to write. [laughter] a lot of people do. >> it's a good place to write. so thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] for more visit the author's website.

richardrubinonline.com. his book "hearts away; bombs away" details the career of his father. the love story between his parents throughout the war. >> i will start with you and analyze my father's military background. he like a lot of world world war ii veterans went overseas, served in the war, came home and never thought much about the war. i knew very little about his accomplishments or his crew's accomplishments. he passed away in 2003. at which time some of the early original crewmembers began to share with me some of the excitement that occurred in the sky over germany and occupied europe. i began to research my dad's missions and their missions. i was very interested to find out more about it.

i remember as a youngster my parents received -- it was tucked away in my sister's attic. i retrieved them and read to every single one. thinking it would add to the story. he couldn't write about mission. that would have been a security breach. he wrote about life in general in the military. for example, the train. my mom would write about event os curing home during the war. the most compelling thing in the letter i found something i wasn't even looking for. the beautiful love story pour offed the pages. i sent out to write a war story, which i accomplished. the love story grabbed me in a way i couldn't ignore it. i miss you hon now. please try to come home soon. if i don't see you pretty soon i don't know what i'm going do. there are a lot of times i think i'll go crazy. then i get your letters out and start to read them all over

again. the story of my parent and how they met and fell in love centered around employment at the telephone company in baltimore. she was an operator going to war. he was right out of high school. legend has it they met in an elevator and said the rest was history. he proposed by april of '42. they would have been married that summer. the man who raised him wouldn't give the 19-year-old permission to marry. at that time you apparently needed written permission. it was enlist or be drafted. he enlisted in the army corp. in june of '42, if wasn't all -- wasn't called to duty until november '42. they were engaged he went off to basic training in nashville as a young cadet, they were still engaged. some seven months later,

perhaps, he's on the way to santa anna, california. on the way to texas. my mom followed him to texas they were married a week later. they said their goodbye in nebraska, and he was shipped overseas after staging area in new england. he and his crew went to ire throned deliver the new aircraft and on to england. my dad would write a letter from abroad or my mom would send one to england. sometimes it would take five weeks to arrive. when i was born in may of '44 two months after he departed. he didn't know i was born for like roughly twelve or fourteen days. then he didn't know the detail of the birth for almost three weeks following my birth. that's different from today where you have e-mails, and cell phones, and international

calling and so easy. skype, servicemember deploy can keep connected to the family. it was a different time another illustration is his first thanksgiving away he was out in california, i believe, and my dad stood five hours in a line waiting to call home on a pay phone. can you imagine waiting five hours for your turn then you call home and there's no answer machine. there's no guarantee your fianée at the time will be home. no -- so the five hours you invested in calling home might have been for not if knob answered the phone. how much different is that today when you simply dial a cell phone and leave a voice message or text a message. it was a very different time. i talked to so many -- people as i go around who have the letter from their husband or

the boyfriend to the wife or girlfriend. they don't have the return to the wife, spouse, et. and keep in mind that if a guy run around europe fox hole to fox hole. he doesn't have the wherewithal to carry the sach l of letter. my dad had a different situation. he stayed in a spot for the most part overseas in a barracks here. he could save the letter. to his credit he saved every one and brought them all back. so i have the complete story from the letter from my mom to him and his responses to her and vice versa. she -- he was on the inside of the fence, and she was on the outside of the fence. but these are the little snippets that appear in the letters i can tell you having read 1100. every night was a new surprise a

new little twist. we were dwifn a talk by captain. he has seen plenty. i want to pass on some of the things. through him my outlook on the war has changed. after listening to him, we were far from winning the war. i hate to say that but facts are facts. the american people don't realize what our soldiers are up against and what our boys are going through. they enjoyed sharing sharing with one another the movie of the day and which they enjoyed. like bing crosby. my mom would say make sure you see that. he would write it was great. then he would recommend some to her. he also met some interesting people along the way. i was out in santa anna he met mickey roon any sat and talked to him until his wife pulled him away from the bar. that was an interesting time for my dad. he heard the andrew sisters sing live.

he heard glen miller play at the u.s. function at his base in august of '44. the very week that glen miller was promoted from captain to major. but tragically four months later glen miller's plane went missing presumably over the english never to be found. he got to see joe dimag g.i. o which was head of regular -- recreation and training. there was tidbits of life in the '40s. my mom would write about putting the wash out in the backyard and it would rain. they didn't have a drier. the wash would stay out on the line. because it was going get wet anyway it would have to dry all over again. again, these are kind of interesting things. you take the reader back to a different era in our nation's history prip i saw how much they were deeply in love and how much

they wanted a family. my mom predicted they would have five children. sure enough. they had five children. she wrote on one letter, for example, it's in the book. her prediction of three boys and two girls. she had -- she had them in reverse order. they went on to have three boys and two girls. they were very -- [inaudible] they made two promises in nebraska and at the station when he first went in to write and pray off. they certainly wrote often. that's proven by the volume of letters. when you read the letters cover to cover which i had the opportunity to do. you see how much faith they in the good lord praying to them that my dad and his crew would make it back safely. and with some tragedy occurring in the sky over germany and europe on that campaign it's evident that the prayers brought him back safely because while

there were some injuries along the way, every one of those original crewmembers made it back to the state. after having read the letter, i think i became more humble and certainly more appreciative of the sacrifices that this generation knead world war ii. and the sacrifices are made every day. because when a young man or woman in uniform is deployed, they don't have to say where they go. they don't necessarily know the political agenda where they are there. they go and defend our country and obey and honor and serve with great distinction. it gave me the greater appreciation. keep in mind i was born may 26, '44. this was on my six month bitter day. my dad writes, my dearest little kids which was all of us had. happy birr day, son. sorry i can't be there in person.

you're too little to understand. there's a war and i have to be here and you there. it won't be long though you, mommy, and i will be together again. mommy tells me you are growing to a big boy. it won't be long before you'll be walking and talking. i hope you wait until i'm around before you codo either. things like that can't wait. take good care of mommy and tell her i love her. happy birthday. your devoted daddy. i don't know if i saw that letter when i was youngster or toddler. or read it as a young boy. but to find that some sixty plus later open it up and see devoted your dad was to you and wanting to be there. it was an emotional thing for me. ..