look back. he didn't second-guess things. they all have these personality traits that have nothing to do with party and i think some of their experiences are more alike than they're not. >> thank you. >> book tv is on twitter and facebook. we want to hear from you. tweet us him at twitter.com/ book tv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/book tv. >> good evening.

i'm the cold weather of politics and prose along with my wife and on behalf of the entire staff, welcome and thank you very much for coming out. we have a very interesting discussion ahead about the evolution of the roles of women in the u.s. military since the founding of the united states. two military veterans, jerry bell who served in the navy and tracy crow, a former marine have put together and an illuminating anthology about their experiences and more titled it's my country two. the book presents excerpts from diaries, letters, oral historie histories, depositions an unpublished memoirs all documenting the current resourcefulness and resilience with which women have served in the armed forces.

women have been struggling to fight alongside men since the beginning of our country. back during the revolutionary period, women would sometimes follow their husbands into war out of necessity, maybe because they were found that military camps. in the civil war, some function as spies and several hundred women disguised as men served as soldiers in either the union or the confederate side. in world war i, women were allowed to join the military in limited roles and those roles expanded during world war ii although they still did not include combat duty. not until 1976 when the first women were admitted to the service academies and another 15 years passed before congress, in 1991, authorized women to fly in combat missions.

two years later they said women could serve on combat ships. in more recent years, the number of jobs available to women has expanded rapidly and the pentagon has finally opened all ground combat positions to women at the start of last year. clearly, it has taken women a long time to earn a permanent place in the american military and gaining full access to assignment. jerry herself retired from the navy nearly a decade ago after assignments that ranged from machine warfare to duty at the u.s. embassy in moscow. she is managing editor of oligarch 30 which is the literary journal of the writing project. tracy joined the marines out of high school in the late 1970s and served for ten years and served as a public

affairs officer and military journalists. she has a masters degree in creative writing and has taught the subject and written a handful of previous books, one is a memoir and another is a guide to military writing title on point. ladies and gentlemen, please will join me in welcoming jerry and tracy. >> this is jerry, and this is tracy. >> wow. look at all of you. welcome. i'm sorry. [inaudible] >> okay. give us just a second to get set up.

>> i'm going to turn this whole thing over to you. >> nice try. >> what you need to know before we really shared too much about this is that this book would not have been possible had it not been for my partner, jerry bell. jerry and i have known each other, according to facebook three years, and i guess it was about two years ago, after a year of stocking each other on facebook, we knew a lot of the same friends, we were reading a lot of the same books and one day i got either

a facebook message or an e-mail that said hey, if you are coming to d.c. anytime soon, i'd like to talk to about a book idea i have. what jerry did not know was that i had no intention, after having already put together for military books, of working on another military book. and so, as it so happened, my husband was a coach for the washington nationals two years ago and so it had to be in d.c. i contacted jerry and said okay, let's meet for lunch and i'll see what i can do to help you with your book idea. i took another friend, cj, also former marine with me, we have known each other for 36 years and were both in public affairs together out of can't pendleton, and i said cj, your

task is to make sure that i do not say yes to jerry bell. whatever you do, kick man to the table, kick my shins, don't let me say yes to jerry bell, so there we were, a sailor and two marines walking into a bar. two marines are no match for a sailor who is determined. i had chosen tracy as a potential co-author pretty carefully, first due to her memoir which showed she understood something about the ritz and the rewards of writing a military story and second because she had edited and anthology and thirdly because writing abook, i thought might be really,

really hard and they might want to quit and i might need a kick in the butt, and there's just nobody who kicks sailors in the but better than a u.s. marine. tracy was probably a sucker for a good story so that was kind of how i reeled her in, by telling her good story and one of the ones i told her was the story of the first woman to take a leadership role into enemy territory. that person was harriet tubman. that was in 1863, she had gone down to south carolina and was working in efforts for free slaves and she also created a

spy network of former slaves who told her there were torpedoes but they were actually mines in the river. eventually a colonel who had expertise in guerrilla warfare took to gun votes and went up the river with harriet tubman with a regimen of segregated african-american soldiers and they conducted a raid on plantations on the bridge and on railroad. she was deliberate and she was a fantastic storyteller and she gave an interview to to journalists about 30 years apart and they were very similar, almost verbatim in some places and we were able to lay hands on that manuscript which is in a small museum in new york and i would like to share her story.

>> page 27 if you'd like to read along. >> they gave us colonel montgomery to command the x exhibition. three gunboats and all colored soldiers and we found where the torpedoes were. when we went up the river in the morning, it was just about light. the fault was raising and the people was doing the breakfast. i was in the forward vote with a colonel in the captain and the colored men. the vote, a quarter mile apart, one after the other. about a quarter of an hour after he blew the whistle and when the sun got there so people could see the vote, you can look over the rice field and see them coming to the vote from every direction. i've never seen such a site. getting the breakfast, taking the rice right after the fire

and they put a cloth on top of her head and put that on, one hand around the mother's for head the other hand digging into the rice pot. some had light blankets on their head. another had a child in their arms. sometimes one or two holding on to the mother stress, some caring to children, holding on to her for head and her. i've never seen so many twins in my life. some had chickens tied by the legs so big squealing, they all come running through the rice field just like an obsession. these here put me in mind of the children of israel coming out of egypt.

[inaudible] they were afraid the gunboats would go off. at last, captain looked at him. he said moses come here and speak to your people. while he wasn't my people anymore than they were his because i didn't know any more about him than he did. they come from the east and the west among this glorious nation. come alone. the rowboats would pushoff. i kept on singing. we got 800 people that they and we tore up the railroad

and the bridge we wentup to a big house and caught two pigs and name the white pig overgaard and the black pig jack davis. we got back to hilton head there were 900 contraband. he said i ought to be paid for every soldier as much as a recruiting officer, but i never got nothing. so there we were at the bar that day, at lunch over here nationals park and jerry is telling me the story about harriet tubman, and then she's tell me another story and another story and i'm so enthralled, listening to all of these because what she had done was already an entire year's worth of research before she even invited me to

lunch to talk about this book idea. she had already been researching all of these archives and oral histories so i was thinking, jerry where we getting all this information. how we going to build this book or how are you going to build this book. she said well, it's really important that we allow the women to tell their own story, and i heard that it was like a little bell went off. she said they need to be able to tell their own stories in their own words so i want to look at the archive. i want to find diaries and journals and published memoirs, unpublished memoirs, oral histories, newspaper interviews, congressional testimonies, depositions, all of this, and i kept waiting for the kick from cj and it

never came and i think she would probably tell you she was just as excited as i was because as jerry talked, i was at this stage of you don't really need me, i'll just help in any way i possibly can. this is your idea. you've already worked on this and researched this a whole year. you don't need me. i was just trying to open a door and inside i was saying pick me, pick me, you need me, you need me on this front. she really didn't need me. she said she did. tracy only thanks that i had done a lot of research but i thought i had until one of the first things i did was i called the curator at the military service for memorial and when tracy said there are people we can written a book without, it's the staff at the women's memorial. we said we've got about 30 books that we need to come over and read and when we

showed up that morning there were almost 200 books on the table and she said you know all the stories too. it was far from my research. if there are military women that haven't we haven't registered, just go get it done. she shared with me what i had already uncovered. i was thinking of got to be part of this. i want to be part of this, pick me. fortunately, she really did think, for some reason that she needed me on this so i was fortunate enough to play some small role in it. this book would not have been possible without her idea and her conviction and just devotion and dedication mostly to this idea that for so long women's stories, women's military stories have just

been discounted, or appropriated by others. she just felt like the timing was right. it is time to give these women a voice and that really got my attention as a former journalist, and at the time a journalism professor, that's what i was teaching my students, the beauty of journalism is giving a voice to the voiceless and so that's, in a sense, what we both feel that we've been able to do with this book. one story in particular that really captured me that they was the story of a young woman. does that name ring a bell with anyone, cornelia ford? if you've seen one of the many pearl harbor movies, possibly you've seen one version that has a young woman flying a plane by herself when she comes across an entire

squadron of japanese planes. have you seen that version? that woman was cornelia ford. she was one of the first people to actually spot the japanese flying toward pearl harbor. what i would like to do is share a little bit of an excerpt that was published in women's home companion. are you ready? >> give me a minute. >> i'm not quite as coordinated over here. >> this goes to page 122 for those of you who are falling along and i will just read a little bit of her bio. so cornelius ford was born in 1990 and she died in 1943. she was part of the u.s.

women's exhilarating flying squadron. on the morning of december 7, 1941, civilian instructor pilot was airborne with a student pilot and an interstate cadet over pearl harbor. she flew a military aircraft flying directly at her. she took control and pulled up over the oncoming plane, only then did she see the rising sun emblem on its wings. moments later she realized pearl harbor was under attack. japanese zeros. in 1942 she invited ford, just 232 join the squadron with the women's air force service will so here's a little excerpt. it's titled at the twilight's last gleaming.

i knew i was going to join the women's auxiliary firing squadron before the organization was a reality. before it had a name. before it was anything but a radical idea in the minds of a few men who believed women could fly airplanes but i never knew it so surely as i did in honolulu on december 7, 1941. had don that morning, i drove from waikiki to the civilian airport right next to pearl harbor where i was a pilot instructor. shortly after 630, i began landing in practice with my regular students. coming in just before the last landing, i looked casually around and saw military plane come directly to toward me. i jerked the controls away from my students and jammed the throttle wide open to pull above the oncoming plane. he passed so close under us that our windows rattled

violently and i looked down to see what kind of plane it was. the painted red balls on the tops of the wings shone brightly in the sun, i looked at him with complete and utter disbelief. honolulu was familiar with the emblem on the rising sun on passenger ships but not on airplanes. i looked quickly at pearl harbor when i saw billowing black smoke. still i thought it might be some kind of coincidence or maneuvers, it must be for shirley, dear god. then i looked way up and saw the formations, silver bombers were riding in. something detached itself from an airplane and came glistening down. my eyes followed it down, and even with knowledge in my mind, my heart turned when the bomb exploded in the middle of the harbor. i knew the air was not the place for my little baby airplane and i thought about

landing as quickly as ever i could. a few seconds later a shadow passed over me and simultaneously bullets splattered all around me. suddenly, that little wedge of sky above hickam field and pearl harbor was the busiest piece of sky i ever saw. i will skip you forward a little bit. because there were so many disbelievers and women pilots, especially their place in the army, officials wanted the best possible qualifications to go with the first experimental group. all of us realized, we had to deliver the goods or else there wouldn't ever be another chance for women pilots in any part of the service. we have hopes of replacing men pilots, but we can each release a man to combat to faster ships and overseas

work, it may be as important as delivering a bomber to africa if you take the long view. we are beginning to prove that women can be trusted to deliver airplanes safely and in doing so, serve the country which is our country too. i have yet to have a feeling which approaches any satisfaction having signed sealed and delivered an airplane for the united states and our army. the attitude that most non- fires have is distressing and often think acutely embarrassing. they chatter about the glamour of flying. any pilot can tell you how glamorous it is. we get up in the dark in order to get to the airport by daylight. we wear heavy clothes and 30-pound parachutes. you are either cold or hot. if you're a female, your lipstick wears off and your hair gets straighter and straighter. look forward all afternoon to the bath you will have an

mistake. we got the bath but seldom the stake. sometimes we were too tired to eat and felt to bed. none of us can put into word why we fly. it's something different for each of us. i can't say exactly why i find but i know why as i've never known anything in my life, i for one am profoundly grateful that my one talent, my only knowledge, flying, happens to be of used to my country when it is needed. that's all the luck i ever hope to have. isn't that lovely? what really got to me about cornelius ford's story is that this was published posthumously. i will share with you why. on march 21, 1943, cornelia

led a flight of six new mail graduates on a 90 day flight training program burying trainers to dallas. although fairy pilots were forbidden to fly in close formation she began flying close and then pulling up on one path, his landing gear collided with the tip of cornelius left-wing. the wingtip broke away the edge attached. her plane went into a vertical dive and impacted the ground nosedown. when fort became the first woman pilot to die on active duty, she was one of the most accomplished women pilot in the united states. she had logged 1100 hours.

this article was published posthumously in june 1943. initially she went into the project thinking that for each of the wars we needed just a little bit of historical context about women's status in the armed forces, and what we started finding when we started doing the research for some of the scholarly volumes is that we didn't know our own military stories despite 30 years in armed forces. we had been told from the time we were in training that women only served in support and administrative roles and women were allowed to join the armed forces. i object to that word. we were not allowed, we took what we wanted.

a trained physician and surgeon who, at the beginning of the wa war, demanded a spot with the army as a surgeon. she was turned away. she didn't care, she went on to the vienna hospital and made herself one of the two surgeons treating the wounded. then she went down as a volunteer and he did give her a commission in the ohio regimen. she went down to georgia where she was not only treating confederates but she was hoping the union army and was captured by confederate forces and taken to richmond virginia and eventually traded for a

male confederate prisoner of war, however the conditions were so bad that she suffered from malnutrition and she was never able to perform surgery again. she was awarded the medal of honor. 900 medal of honor and. [inaudible] she refused to give it back. they have the right to serve at their fullest capacity. they were turned away from volunteering for different

sorts of jobs, and in 1946 there was discussion about making a regular reserve component because they only wanted women to be reserves subject to indefinite recall and how wonderful that would be. a republican from maine decided that wasn't good enough. carl vinson, a representative from georgia renamed the bill and put it on the consent calendar implying that it had been unanimously approved. she got word of that and she pushes out onto the floor for debate. i would like to just share a little bit of her testimony.

this is from tuesday, april 6, 1948. >> i would describe 1641 as an act to establish the women's army corps. [inaudible] the house will note that the word regular army and regular navy are predominant in the bill. this is misleading as it is reported out on armed services and in no respect establishes women in the regular army or navy. make no mistake about it, it's temporary, one year reserve belt. the senate voted to give women regular status as well as reserve status, but the house armed services committee refuse refused.

the house bill dodges the issue. the issue is simple. either they have an ability to enlist women or they do not. if they do, then the women must be given permanent status. the only possible permanent status is that of regular status. the senate granted the request to give reserve status. this does not give women any security in their military service because it discriminated against women. it does not give women a desirable caliber. i'm convinced this is extremely unwise legislation when there is such a radical difference between the senate version and the house version, it's surprising they are getting this railroaded through. so, in the meantime, while the

debate was continuing, smith found out that some legislative liaison were meeting enclosed executive sessions and with congressman vincent and they were going to amend the bill yet again and she finally went over their heads so far and so fast, she went straight to the secretary of defense and basically wrote a letter and says who'd we believe, who has integrity. is it people making statements on the floor that there will be a full women's regular component or is it the people talking in the back room. he immediately sent letters to the house and the senate supporting the establishment for regular woman's component and harriet truman signed the armed services act in 1948, making women a permanent part

of the regular army. when we were first talking about pulling this book together, it seemed obvious, at first that we would divide the stories into the various sections of war and conflict. there's a section for the revolutionary war and stories from those women who actually cross-dressed as men for the opportunity to serve and then came the civil war when we had women who served as spies and their stories are harrowing in the book. you talk about some gutsy women, wait until you read those stories. they had some really gutsy women. then there is a section on the

famous american war, world war i, world war ii, the korean war, vietnam and then it goes into desert storm and then of course the current wars that we are in the middle of at this moment. what we realize something was still missing. even with all of those sections covered with stories, we were still missing a really important part. we knew we needed to add an entire chapter about the cold war, for example, and we have some fascinating stories in there for you to read about women who served during the cold war. we also knew there was another piece we're missing which is about this gender war so we decided that we would have one separate chapter just for that, and i would like to share part of one of those excerpts with you at this time. i am on page 229 for those of

you who would like to follow along. i'm to read a little section by victoria hudson. let me tell you a little bit first about victoria. she's the author of no red pen, riders writing group and critique and her bachelor of fine arts from st. mary's california in 2008. for poetry and essays have been published in a variety of online print literary journals and she sponsors an annual engine registration scholarship for one writer to attend. she's an urban farmer, reader and photographer, she coaches women's and youth rugby and is a mom and a wife. in 2012 she retired after 33 years of service. >> this section, by victoria, is titled my army wife.

in a way, 911 solidify, helped solidify my relationship. when the towers went down, monica and i had been dating about nine months and the u-haul hadn't been pulled up to the door yet. i was packing and checking my field gear, getting ready to mobilize right after the attack when we had a discussion about being gay in the military and what that might mean for us. i pretty much said, if you can't do this, break up with me now, and no, we can't be friends if we do. three years later, we got married. we had a year engagement and wedding and a congregation in st. louis missouri where i had been stationed on my second recall to active duty after 911. two weeks before our wedding, they decided to allow same-sex marriages and the night before valentine's day in 2004, i

asked her if she wanted to get married the next day. surprise is not the word, given my military status, getting married to someone of the same gender was a specific prohibition in military regulation. two weeks later we had a religious ceremony. i wore civilian suit with my military metal on the lapel and cut the cake with my officers sword. we spoke at the reception about how the very act of wedding, both events were acts of civil disobedience and grounds for my discharge from the service. i will skip ahead, down to the bottom. when our daughter was born, a new issue with the military came up. how to register her as a dependent without outing myself at the same time. i had to register her before she turned a year old. we spent the year trying to find the best way. if i adopted her, monica would be required to renounce her

parental rights. that certainly defeated the point of our marriage intended to secure parental rights. we tried to do a special adoption where monica would not have to just give up her rights, but no judge would assist with that process. in either course, a new birth certificate would've been issued without monica listed as the mother. this would have protected me from the military, but how can i deny her daughter, her own biological mother. skipping ahead. monica was also listed as friend on the dd 93 emergency data form. that is a document that provides direction when a servicemember is killed or wounded in service because i decline to list any related kin and had no spouse, i was required to receive counseling

regarding my unusual choice of beneficiary for my death. i found this particularly insulting and offensive given the ten years we have been together. monica, like every other military spouse, like every other army rights, steadfastly supported me what i deployed to war and otherwise served the nation. she took over and cared for all aspects of my life while i was gone, paid my bills, fed and cared for my pet, took care of our home, raised our child while i was gone. i was gone on duty. it was the support that enabled me to serve without worry about the home front, and she did it all alone. no family support group, no phone calls to check in and see if she needed anything, no lifeline of unofficial information via the family readiness group grapevine, no one to talk with about her

fears and worries when she didn't hear from me for a few days or longer while i was on a war zone. all alone. the dd 93 is a form that tells the service who to notify. i was not allowed to list my spouse will not form as a spouse which would ensure that she would receive the respect, courtesy and dignity of a family notification. i volunteered for the service. she just volunteered to love me. so the other story that we had been told from the beginning of our time in the service was that women increased roles were a social experiment pushed on arms forces by famine nazis. it wasn't famine nazis pushing

anyone on anybody. she joined the air force, she was commissioned directly and served concurrently for eight years while she was a sitting senator. people like vicki hudson were hiding in plain sight, just doing their jobs as well as they could. those were the woman women who pushed open the doors, just by doing a good job. we are not a social experiment. we were soldiers and sailors and we ended up in iraq and afghanistan doing the same jobs, in many cases, as the men, and coming home to a country that did not recognize many of us as veterans, but with the same physical and moral injuries as the men. often times, until late, women in iraq and afghanistan are not even equipped with the proper fitting uniform so that was also a major issue for them.

i'm going to skip ahead to page 309 for anyone who's following. i want to tell you a little bit about brooke king. brooke king was born in 1985 and she was in the u.s. army. she was from tampa florida and served as a vehicle mechanic, machine gunner and recovery specialists. do you know the recovery specialist is? >> a recovery specialist and someone who goes with the team to recover those who suffered from an ied explosion and they are there to pick up bodies and the corpse. she was part of that team. she was the wife of a fellow veteran and mother to twin

boys who were conceived in iraq. who says there's no sex in a war zone. she began writing about her unique experiences as a way to cope with ptsd. this piece is called redeployment packing checklist. pack your army combat uniforms first, military role, cram the backcountry and black under armour sports bras, the lucky convoy socks around the bottom of your green army buckle back. past the laminated photo into the bag, but don't look at it. you don't want to look at it. it's the picture you held after your first recovery mission where you bagged intact three soldiers who were burned alive after their striker rolled over a pressure plate ied. your brother smirk and your

father's grin, your look of disenchantment. these were taken when you are on r&r. all three of you standing in front of the house, each one of you pretending that nothing had changed since you left for iraq. it helped you fall sleep, you can't help yourself, you unpack the photo to look at it once more. the corner edges are falling apart. the girl in the photo used to be you, but that's not the face you see in the mirror anymore. pack your camo covered army bible, the pages have to be rubberbanded shut otherwise it opens to psalm 23. pack your notebook, the name and rank of every soldier you ever put into a black body bag. letters to your father that

you never mailed, packed the marine prayer rug you stole well rating a house. unpack the prayer rug. neil on it while you pack the empty magazines, the pistol holster and desert combat boots. pick up your aviator gloves, the feel of manning the 50 cal machine-gun. pick up the shell casing from your first confirmed kill when a 67.62 bullet that you fired into a 15-year-old chest. he was shooting an ak-47 that you. you shouldn't have the shell casings, you shouldn't have the gloves. women weren't supposed to see combat. pack it all into the duffel. pack the hours spent in a cement bunker waiting for mortar rounds to stop

whistling. pack the hate and anger. pack the fear, packed the shaman disenchantment for a job done too well. pack the back to back months spent going out on convoy without the day off. pack the rest of your dignity, packed the mall next to the army core values and the promise that your government need to protect innocent civilians. pack your copy of hemingway, the sun also rises. the tattered american flag you picked up off the ground outside of the grave. fold over the flaps, shut it up tight, locket, heave it onto your back, carry it all home. now we would like to end with questions from the audience so that everybody can hear, there is a microphone so if you have questions or comments, please

come up select from. [applause] we are not that good. surely there are questions. i have one question. when did margaret join the military? >> i believe it was late 1949 or 1950. she is better known for her declaration of conscience, in addition to joining the air force, she was the first person to challenge the american committees. her speech declaration of

conscious is something everyone needs to read. >> i would like to know from each of you what stories did you grapple with the mouse that had the deepest impact on you that you struggled with the most? >> i think for me, there were two stories that were really hard for me to read. one of them is a narrative and i believe there may be nurses who were interned during world war ii by the japanese, and when i was reading those stories, it made me furious that nobody in naval history class, nobody in my chain of

command ever thought tommy that women have been prisoners of war, not just in world war ii, but all the way back to the american revolution. the other story that was very hard for me to read was linda's memoir, home before morning. she wasn't army nurse in vietna vietnam, and because as a small child, i watched a lot of footage of vietnam, i had a suspicion. [inaudible] those stories were very hard and felt very real to me because i felt like i knew some of those people. >> i would concur with everything jerry said. one of the things that we would do, i had never worked with another author. i had always works so low. part of the challenge was how do we share things and go back

and forth, and when that happened to look back at our facebook messaging and if we were to print that out, i bet it would be over 500 pages of messages because she would write, do you know what i just found, you're not going to believe it. then i would say no, guess what i just read. and then we would send each other e-mails that were marked, i cob, in case of bust. in case one of us was ever struck by that proverbial bus, then the other would have the rest of the story in the mission could carry on. we were exchanging these things all the time, and i used to joke with jerry who is the mother of two beautiful teenage boys, and wife of a handsome, adorable husband who is here. i used to say, you know what, you're going to need therapy after this book because urine house with three men and we are reading all of these

stories about these women who, to a large degree have been dismissed and really discounted and it's painful to read that. i was lucky because my husband was a coach in baseball and he was gone for nine months. he wasn't even in the house when i had to go through all this, but jerry had to go through this experience with three men in the house. i'm sorry. but maybe you understand more now. >> she was always saying how supportive you are. the cornelia fort story, does that not touch your heart? that one really hit me hard. and then, from everything that we were able to do and ascertain from that, that young man's career, he was pretty much saved. he was really trying to show of off, probably trying to get her attention and it ended

up killing her. it was just very heartbreaking to read. that one really, really hurt. i think one of the reasons why linda's memoir about vietnam really touched me was because she was incredibly brave to write that memoir. in fact, i believe she was probably one of the first women to really tell the story about women suffering posttraumatic stress. when the book came out, she was vilified for having shared her story and about what really happened in a war zone over there. she is a nurse and everything she saw, everything she experienced, it was so heartbreaking to realize, and she ended up dying very young from lupus or ms or some

autoimmune disease that was not identified. it really touched me that she had been so brave in telling her story. she was ahead of her time for doing so. she ended up very vilified as a result. that story really got to me as well. thanks for the question. >> it sounds like, with all the research you've done that there will have to be a second book. i was wondering, as you are saying, the women being able to tell their stories, some of the more current women, is

this like they've been waiting for this chance a little bit, are things getting better where they feel? do you feel like this was something that is still so needed and will continue to be or do you see a bright future. >> one of the questions that often comes up at riders conferences when we get the groups together is why are women better and writing fiction. there's been some short published fiction and no women better and out of the conflict in iraq and afghanistan has published a critically acclaimed novel yet. there has been some that has been on a short list. i think one of the reasons that's happening is because

background truth, that memoir, making people believe that the really women there is necessary before we can start writing fiction and going beyond yes, dammit, i was there and did the job to turning it into fiction. the second book that i would love to see is a similar history for african-american women and the other women of color. we thought we couldn't do justice to that, and that story deserves to be told on a separate story by person of color who feels it in way that tracy and i did. i think there are more account. >> one of the exciting things for women right now, and for a lot of our veterans is the g.i. bill. because of the g.i. bill, we do see a lot of young men and women returning and going into writing programs, because what we've discovered and we both teach writing in different places, what we've discovered is that writing, like a lot of

the arts is really a pathway toward a level of healing. veterans are finding that telling their story, whether they're doing it for self reflection or family legacy or whether they hope to publish it, they are finding that writing is very helpful in helping them control the memory. what i believe we're probably going to see, to answer your question is we are seeing a lot of these young men and women coming out of these writing programs at university, and one of those is brooke king. the woman veteran, the last one that i just read, wasn't that mesmerizing? brooke is a product of the g.i. bill, one of the writing programs at a university in the country, and now teaches creative writing herself at

saint leo college down in florida. i believe that we will start to see more and more these, and i believe this book, along with others another memoirs that are out there will actually encourage more women to come forth with their stories. we were disappointed that we couldn't find very many coast guard stories. we need more african-american stories and more coast guard's stories. do we have any here? oh my goodness. we have one. young lady, we want your story. i teach writing. so does terry. we will help you write your story. :

a. >> a right. [inaudible] sydney we were military officers. >> dealing with pregnancy and god help us all for good reasons

that it would be too expensive to have a women's component in the army. this has come for me to anybody this week? it was nonsense then. it's nonsense now. whether it applies to women or whether it applies to our comrades in arms who are transgender. >> one of my personal favorites alfred cashier or jenne ha jars. albert cashier lived 50 years after his service in the civil war as a man. his comrades from this regiment kept it secret that he was biologically female. they encouraged him to live as a man. in a nursing home he was forced into women's clothing and his health deteriorated rapidly which shouldn't surprise anybody and he only lived a couple more years after that. he was buried as alfred cashier,

a man with full military honors. we thank you so much for coming out tonight and taking this trip through her story with us. thank you so much and if you've got any other questions we'd be happy to take them up here. thank you all. [applause] >> thank you very much. copies of their book are available at the checkout desk. they will be at the table here to sign copies. if you would like your copy side please form a line to the right of the table. please help us by folding up your chairs. thank you. [inaudible conversations]