>> like us on facebook.com. >> this week on "q&a," our guest is robert timberg, journalist and author of "blue eyed boy." in 1965, he was a marine 13 days away from coming home when his vehicle struck a landmine and changed his life forever. he talks about the impact of the experience, the 35 surgeries he has had, his thoughts on the vietnam war and how he

physically and emotionally rebuilt himself and his career following the explosion. >> bob timberg, in your acknowledgments, you said my son bullied me into writing it. if not for him, it would not exist. we are talking about this book "blue eyed boy." >> that is true. i had never really had a desire to write this book. people had asked me over the years, why don't you write it? i said, i do not need to get into it. i think they felt i was concerned about after flash. this being, you know, too hard,

dredging up the emotions would be too heavy. i did not think at that time years ago that i had anything to say that was in any way -- there were a lot of books written by veterans who were wounded. craig kept pushing. craig, as you may know -- since he was a little kid, if he started wanting to do something, he just trove you nuts onto you say, ok, do it. i said, craig, i do not want to do it. we started talking about, if you are ever going to do it, this is the time. we look at the country, everything has come back around. we have these deep divisions over 2 wars. troops coming back,

terribly wounded. you know, it is -- maybe you have something to say about that that. i said, maybe i don't. he said, try. and so, i did. i thought about it and he was absolutely right. i was hoping with this book to write something that would number one, show people what to the cost of combat really is. but number two, aimed at men and women coming back in seriously bad shape. loss of limbs, all sorts of things. maybe this book will give them something to hang on to.

a sense that with a little luck, some grit, some people that care about you. you can really put you life back together. not the way it was going to be, but in a way -- authentically your owner. >> let me show you some video when we talked about your book "the nightingale's song," 19 years ago. here you are on the program. [video clip] >> what i did to a large extent, i felt anger and hostility that many of my peers and comrades felt. my sense was, i do not think it is good for me. it is not mentally and psychologically good for me to be part of it. to a certain extent, i unplugged

from and networks. -- old networks. and i went off. i became a reporter and up until a few months ago, i became an editor. i was a reporter for a quarter century. that is how i view myself. and going and working on in this book was -- i plugged back into the old networks and there became a fascinating journey of rediscovery. as far as -- i do not -- up until, i was off to work on this book, i did not talk about vietnam. >> we will get back to that. we do not talk much about the book. i want to continue with your acknowledgment.

the other essential person was my wife, many of the events i described happened five decades ago. she allowed me to interview her more than 10 times. your ex-wife, jane. how did that happen and what was it like? >> i took her to lunch. [laughter] janie has always had -- we have always been friends. there was probably a period shortly after we separated that things were rough. we came back together. we have three kids together. where been friends ever since and plus, she lives not far for me. she remarried. she is just a truly good person. she and her husband, lee, who is a lawyer here, when they vote -- invite me over for dinner and holidays and stuff like that, they are not that far away. sometimes you just run into good people.

it was my great, good fortune to stumble into janie one day. it was at the naval academy. and you know, she did it. without her, i could not have made it through. >> what did you learn from the 10 interviews that made the biggest impact on you? >> there were certain things i did not know, probably the thing that was the hardest for me to deal with was the fact that people thought because of my disfigurement that janie had effectively threw me out and just could not take it anymore.

and that -- as a consequence of that, people thinking that, people started cutting her off. thinking that,d, you know, you did this to bob. nothing could be further from the truth and for a long time, it was only a few years later, she just realized, she just noticed old friends weren't calling anymore or they seemed to be busy when she called them. it was only 5, 6, maybe 10 years later that someone said what happened is we thought you had thrown bob out. >> what were the years you were married? >> 1965 and we were divorced in 1971. >> let me read one more from the acknowledgments.

kelly andrews, my second wife and sadly, my second ex-wife, was another blessing. a fine editor, she read and critiqued much of the book. what happened to kelly? are you still in touch with her? >> i am. [laughter] i am and kelly, she worked in the federal government for 30 years or whatever and she was a senior official in the department of labor and department of transportation. she was a senator's assistant. kelly knew washington. we met at harvard. i knew nothing about it except every time i came here, i wound up in some kind of circle and i was spun off in space.

i was lost. kelly just said, you know -- she didn't just know the freeway, she knew people. she knew how the city worked. she was -- she was also just beautiful. people probably thought i had something on her. [laughter] but, i didn't. >> when did you get married and

how long and when did you get divorced? >> we got married around 1973 and we were divorced, i think, last year or the year before. it has been dragged out. we were separated and it finally got to the point that we decided to do it. >> you had how many children with her? >> just one. >> how old is he? >> sam is 29. he is my fourth kid. i had three with jane. the kids with jane were all brainy. i do not want to diminish sam, because he is pretty brainy, but he was the jock in the family. he was fun. i mean, he was a terrific baseball player, captain of the baseball team. played hockey. and sam is to this day, is the sunniest person i have ever known. you are just happy to be with him. >> i want to show a before and after.

here's a picture of you. what year did you graduate from the naval academy and when was this picture taken? >> i graduated from the naval academy in 1964. you may be surprised that very shortly i will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of my class graduation and we are having our reunion later this month. that picture was probably taken in 1966. >> here is a picture of you after your accident. >> can i say one thing? it is easy to fall into. it was not an accident. those guys were trying to kill me. it was not like i wandered into something. >> how long did you think about putting this picture in? >> i did not think about it at all. >> the one of you after your

disfigurement? >> oh, i thought about it a while and my editor out about it for a while. i came to the conclusion and i think we mutually agreed that you cannot hold off. you are writing about those, and i have a million pictures like that and some worse. it just seemed to me if i was a reader, i would feel like the author was holding back on me by not showing something central to the story, which is what happened to him. >> go back to the beginning. what was the date and where were you? >> the date i was wounded? january 18, 1967. i was southwest of a city in south vietnam. donating. -- danang.

>> what service were you in? >> marines. >> no such thing as an ex-marine. what was your job? >> an executive of a company which was an odd unit since we did not have any tanks. we did a lot of convoy duty, combat support. a lot of close contact support. but at any rate, that was my job. i try to get out of it. and you know, they get orders and i got orders to camp pendleton and i got out there. they said, you go into the first tank battalion. and i said, no, no.

i am an infantry officer and i do not know tanks. and they said, go. i said, sir, i am from new york city. only learned how to drive a car a year ago. i do not know anything about vehicles or tanks. i did not even check the oil in my car. i did not even know where the dipstick is. he said, you are sent here for a reason, but i do not know what the hell it is. you are going to stay. i was just out a basic school. >> how many days did you have left before you were coming home? >> 13 days. >> when you think back to the moment, explain what the situation was and what you remember. >> i remember, the reason i was out there was the marine corps, they want the troops to be paid every 2 weeks.

that are in the barracks and you -- if they are in the barracks, you go and pay them and the barracks. if they are out in the boonies, you go into the boonies and pay them, unless they are under fire.

five officers, which was me and three platoon leaders, and we took turns, everybody except the captain, we took turns paying. i was pay officer that today, it was not my turn. i was so close to the end of my tour, i was going to go to r&r and price or buy stereo equipment and look for pearls for my wife. it turned out the lieutenant, who was supposed to be pay officer, there was something going on. i could not argue. i cannot say, stop fighting. i want to go and look at -- whether [indiscernible] he did what he had to do. i had the job of pay officer that day. that is what i was doing. i was riding on a vehicle with a little brown canvas bag filled with military certificates, which is what passed for money out there. riding on a vehicle and we were heading out -- me and a few other guys heading to this platoon position.

we hit a landmine. everything just blew. >> what do you remember after that? >> the immediate aftermath, i remember, i remember the blast and i remember feeling and seeing flames. i conked out. i do not think i was out that long. i was blown off the vehicle and i was lying on the ground and there was someone shaking me and saying, lieutenant, lieutenant, are you ok? i was or at least i thought i was. he said, "we hit a mine. you have it pretty bad, but it will be ok." i said, fine. my sergeant came over and said, how are you doing?

i said, hold it sargeant. we need a perimeter defense out here. in army tactics, when you have an obstacle like a landmine and someone hits it and everybody is running off, that's when you cut them all down. it is called cover and an obstacle. i said, get a permit and we do not want to be sitting here like sitting ducks. like any good sergeant, he said, i have already done that. never underestimate the enlisted marines. >> what happened next? >> i was still lying here. the corpsman, he said, are you in pain? i said, some, not horrible. he said, i cannot give you any

pain medication. you have such a head wound, we just cannot do it. he said, the chopper will be here very shortly. a helicopter came in, they put me on. i was -- the chopper took me back to this field hospital, not that far away, it was near monkey mountain. as i was being -- they had, when the chopper landed, people grabbed the stretcher i was on and started running with it and running into the hospital. and there was a doctor there, two or three doctors and they said, lieutenant, you know -- we think you either swallowed some

fumes, or you swallowed some flames. we have to open your throat. we probably can i do with much anesthesia. but we will try. but it is probably not going to work that way. we have to make sure you can breathe. we are going to have to put in an airway, which means we have to cut into your throat and, ummm, we probably cannot do it with much anesthesia and we will try. and they started this cut, the next thing i knew, a knife was going across my throat. like any good at marine, i passed out. >> for how long? >> who knows? when i woke up i had a tube in my throat. it was done. it was over with. i had the tube for a month.

it was horrible but cause it kept getting filled with gunk. they had to run a tube down the tube to suction out to the gunk. which kept me from drowning in my own gunk. >> where did you spend the month? >> you know in danang. it was a city. we were never in the city. we were out somewhere and they said, where are you? we always said near danang. that is where we were. we were out in the boonies. that hospital, they had set up was pretty formidable. i was probably there three weeks. i am not sure now. >> where did you go next? >> i went briefly to clark air

force base. i was basically from vietnam up to japan, where they did some more surgery. i was not really aware of this, but i was probably a potentially going to die. they were not ready to send me home. i think they needed to stabilize my condition. and up in japan at an army hospital, it was a really good one, they did some skin grafting. they did some stuff to avoid infection. and i was there three weeks. >> what is the story of your

wife, jane, at the time, coming to japan? >> janie got notified. she was teaching. some officers came to her school and told her i had been wounded. and they did not have any details and only said there had been some burns. they said do not call us, we will keep you informed. they didn't keep her informed. and, you know, she tried to run me down. she called people. someone would say, i think he is [indiscernible] japan.

i was lost, for all intents and purposes. the people who needed to know where i was, the marine hierarchy, my wife, my father. the way it got straightened out was my father. he is like, well, he's passed on. he had lots of quirks. he was a jewish vaudevillian and wonderful composer. he was also a christian scientist. but not exactly a great christian scientist, but he wanted to be one. the way he dealt with the idea of medicine and doctors is he would take doctors out to dinner or at christmas, give them gifts. when i was sent to vietnam, he tried something similar.

he was living in scranton, pennsylvania. there was a marine there. there were like four or five marines. my father became friends with them and took them out to lunch and stuff like that. i am sure he was probably devastated when he found out i was wounded and all of those lunches had gone to waste. but actually, no one could find me. he went there, and said to those guys, "please, find my son." and they found me the next day. >> there was a pay issue in a the middle of all of that. >> the pay issue was -- >> you are not getting paid. >> i was in san diego.

i was not getting paid. i was not aware. it was something that was not on my radar. >> lynn, what impact did he have on your life? >> other than janie, my first wife, he was probably the person most responsible for my return to the real world. lynn was a plastic surgeon. a relatively young guy. when i first met him, he was a doctor and lieutenant commander at a naval hospital. he operated on me several times. years later, when he was out of the service, he operated on me

again in kansas city. he was -- he was just remarkable. >> how many operations? >> lynn and i came up with a number of about 35. >> how many times were you under anesthesia? >> we did not count the stuff which was not that much. mostly under general anesthesia. >> what was he doing mostly? >> a lot of it was skin grafts but a lot was loosening up my -- my mouth was swollen to the size of a straw. he did some cutting and pulling and reshaped my mouth.

and managed to pull some of the stuff inside of your mouth, the red stuff out and formed lips. that was one of the kinds of things he did. that was sort of amazing. the scarring that took place had pulled my nostrils up really, really sharply. a kind of horsey look and he managed to release that. and bring them down. he would work on my eyes, my ears, my cheeks. and you know, i do not know what i would have done without him. >> how long did it take, being in a position where you could go out and look for a job? >> lynn took me out of the

hospital. i was -- at a certain point after i been there over a year at the san diego naval hospital, he said, i am going to discharge you because we have done all we can do right now. your skin has to go through several stages. it is going to get tight, hard, but it has to soften. so, no reason for you to stay in the hospital. but, the hospital for me had become a safe haven. i do now want to come out on the streets and how people see me. i was panicked. the idea that i was going to have to leave the hospital. and so it became, what do i do? i did not want to not do nothing.

i realized i had to do something to sort of give my life some meaning. but i had no idea what it was going to be. i mentioned it in the book whenever i thought about this, i had visions of me standing before a big status board with a texaco star on top. and i had a pointer and in the audience were all of these tank truck drivers and i was telling them where to go. and the only reason it is ever made sense to me was texaco, when i was in the naval academy, they sent me my first credit card. texaco is gone, but i still remember my number.

7194484083. [laughter] >> after a while, you ended up at stanford. what year and what did you do? >> when lynn told me i had to leave the hospital, i had to come up with something to do. you know, i decided i had to go to graduate school because what i knew -- i had to leave the marines, the platoon. i knew how to make sure that marines looked good. but i did not know how that would carry over into civilian life. it became, what to do i do? history sounded good. sociology, international affairs, all interesting. nothing really hit. and one point, she said, what about journalism?

i said, janie, excuse me for saying this, that is like the dumbest idea you ever had. i am afraid to go outside and you are coming up with a job where i have to go out and confront people with my little notebook and pen and get them to talk to me. it would be an utter disaster. she dropped it for the time being, but then we got closer, and we still had not come up with anything that works. she said, why don't you consider journalism again? all of the things we looked at and did not want to do, you could write about them, as a journalist and reporter. you know, it would be -- what do you think?

i thought i would try that. i had nothing else. i took a dart to and through it. it landed on journalism. i went to graduate school. >> how many jobs have you had in journalism? >> well, i guess three. i had my first job at the "annapolis evening capital." and then -- then i went to the "baltimore evening sun," where i was a local reporter. then i went to the "baltimore sun," or "the morning sun," in washington. i wanted to go. i wanted to be a washington correspondent anyway.

i was a reporter for years and years and then i became an editor. my friend said i crossed over to the dark side. i agree with him. >> how many years with the baltimore papers? >> wow -- 30. yeah, i was in newspapers for 35 years. >> i want to ask you about a sentence in your book. this is on page 104. fairly early.

"i was beginning to feel that someone somebody i did not believe in was screwing with us." who is this someone? >> was it god? >> what is your relationship with god? >> for the most part, we have given each other -- [indiscernible] >> do you believe at all? and what impact -- >> i do not think -- i think what i would say is, i do not not believe which is different from saying i do believe. like many people, who knows? >> were you ever at a point when you totally did not believe in him? >> probably not.

but i never -- i think i said something in here in of the early part of the book that it was never clear to me if there was a god, was he a good god or indifferent? it would be just as easy for him to squash me or let me live through this. years before, i had been a pretty strong catholic. >> your mom was catholic? >> yes. my mom was catholic. at a certain point, i lost it. too many questions i could not resolve. >> how long did this book take you to write?

>> five years. >> at what point in this book, was the pain the most intense? not writing but did the actual pain of going through 35 operations and how do you describe the pain? >> the worst pain was when -- when a doctor was operating -- trying to do something on my eyes. they would try -- they needed to put a graft in, but they needed me awake. for some reason, the local anesthetic there were going to be using would not take. it kept washing out and the doctor said, we probably have to do this anyway. he operated on the lower part of my eye with no anesthesia. and i just screamed and screamed for i do not know how long.

that was, that was probably the most painful. and it was just sort of regular -- and the rest was just sort of regular post-op pain. >> you talk about scars intimidating people. when was the worst example of this and how has it been in recent years? >> probably the worst example was when -- there are lots of examples. the one that comes mostly to mind was when i was working for "the evening sun" and i was a reporter and i was leaving a city council and i saw 2 guys on the corner, who i recognize as

officials of the administration of then-mayor donald schaeffer. we said, hello. we were just talking, shooting the breeze. this woman, obviously, a homeless woman, essentially in rags, comes up to us and steps in the midst and starts looking around at us, like she was an officer inspecting the troops. then she says, she started screaming, "look at his face, look at his face." it was -- that was a really bad -- it was a bad time. i'd never talked to people about it. i never said, i was wounded. i played like -- and i still do, frankly, like i am 26 years old.

and it helps me to relate to people. when something like that happens, it is like this whole mirror or mask i have been using is it just shattered and people can see what i have really been hiding. even though i have not been hiding anything, but i have been tricking myself. and you know, if she had done that and i had been alone, i would have let it go. but there were people there. they could observe my humiliation and my pain. >> you are single today and live in annapolis? >> yeah. >> are you still working? >> no, i am not. no, i am not a retired though.

i am unemployed. >> in the book, you tell a story about your mother being in church and hearing a sermon. explain that one. in the middle of your being in the hospital. >> it was in the early days when i was wounded and people did not know how badly i was wounded. one day, my sister, pat, and my mother went to our parish on a sunday. one of the priests was a visiting priest and he started talking about -- i was over in japan and i saw a young man from this parish, who was terribly wounded. and he sort of went on about it. all my parents knew was that i had been wounded.

it was not clear that it was all that serious, a little serious, but not going to be horrible. and this priest was basically suggesting it was really, really bad. of course, he was right. but my sister, pat, who is a force of nature, she got up and went back to wherever the priest came out of their garments. she said, who was that boy? she said, do you know who it is? he said, no, i do not know. she said, it may be my brother. pat just -- i think pat in her way leveled him.

she said, how can you come here and stand up in front of all of these people and start talking like this and not even know what you are talking about, with no advance warning or nothing? and my mother, of course, realized when he was talking that it was probably me. she was crying and everything in the pew. do not mess with pat. do not mess with an listed marines, and do not mess with pat. -- enlisted marines and do not mess with pat. >> how hard was it for you and why did you decide to tell the story about your affair that led to the end of your marriage with janie?

>> it seemed like if i was going to tell the story, which i did not want to, and part of the reason i did not want to do it was because [indiscernible] i was not like, this great person. i had my flaws and this was probably the most serious. when i decided to tell the story, it did not seem like i was being fair to the reader if i said, janie and i got divorced. i have never known exactly why everything happened. sometimes i think that i acted the way i did because some sort of ptsd. and sometimes, i think i did because i was not that great a person. i do not want to just blame everything on injuries. >> how did she find out? >> i do not know.

she just put a few things together. yeah, it was -- yeah, it was a very hard time. >> i want to show you some video. you write about a lot of people in this book. here is somebody you wrote about and i want to ask you why. >> it is the most important, most rewarding and most honorable seeing an adult can do is give us the stories that help us understand our own world. if i did not think the press was doing god's work, i would not be so tough on them. >> he died in 2013 of cancer. richard kramer.

>> richard was -- a very good friend, but he was -- he was the first person i ever encountered that as a journalist i had to admit, he was better than me. he was really better than me. there was a time when i was a kid where i wanted to be a great running back of football. and that was his guy over at another school, he was so good that not even on my best day would i be able to stay with lenny rochester. richard was my journalistic lenny rochester.

he was, he was, i learned a lot from him. i learned -- richard and i were competing reporters. he was with "the morning sun" and i was with "the evening sun" and it was a bloody year. in fairness, i think richard got the best of it. i got a few shots in, but richard pretty steadily beat me. >> here is a brother of a couple of friends of yours. karl on this show talking about his experiences with war. >> it was a local group of psychologists doing stress. they said come to a free workshop and i went and they said you should go because you have a lot of stress and i talked about my symptoms, jumping up in the middle of the night and running without knowing what was going on. attacking a car behind me and he

said, have you ever been in a war? and that hit me so hard, i was in a room with 80 people and i started bawling and snot coming out of my nose. he said, have you ever been in the war? it was that simple. he said, you have ptsd. you ever heard of it? >> can you relate to him? >> well, karl is, he along with jim, are two of the finest novelists of the vietnam war. karl took, one of the things i write about in a this book and i touched on others, so many men of my generation managed to avoid the war using money, connections, so they do not have to go.

karl did not have to go. karl graduated from yale. he was selected for a rhodes scholarship. and he had done a marine program at yale. he could've put that on hold and gone and done his time at oxford with a rhodes scholarship. and he did not. he went to vietnam. and he went as an infantry officer. and -- and, he won a navy cross. it is the second highest medal the military gives only second to the congressional medal of honor.

and i have met karl a couple of times at the dinners, this club that kind of made us members. a nice club called the brook up in new york. karl is also the brother-in-law of a classmate of mine back at stanford, who was my version of daisy buchanan. >> you write, i'm unsparing of able-bodied men of my generation would employed subterfuge to avoid the vietnam war and. here is a clip of a man that wrote a book that was very important to you. let's watch this. >> in 1967, i went back and we

had 500,000 men there. men, not so much women. i was struck with an enormous melancholy because i do not think we could win. i thought it was a stalemate which meant we would lose because in the phrase of my coworker, we walking in the footsteps of the french, although dreaming different dreams. i spent 1968 covering the fallout of the war. in that conflicted year, and then when it was over, i started doing [indiscernible] i thought it could be a book. >> the thing i want to -- david halberstam. he is viewed as someone antiwar from the beginning, but people -- why did you admire his "best and the brightest" book? what did you think of the

vietnam war? after all of these years, as an event, after what it did to you? >> as far as david is concerned, what he did was whether for the war or against the war, he wrote about it that told more about how everything happened than anything else i ever encountered before or since. my own feelings about the war were when i was a marine, you know was, i'm a marine. if there is a war, if my country is at war, this is what i do. i did not really think all that deeply about it. but i did not -- there were not any answers before or since.

i tend to think the war was a mistake, but i think in many ways it was a mistake because of the way my generation reacted to it. >> how did they react? >> some went and some didn't. those that didn't, there was a friend of mine i'm not seen in a while, who is an army guy, said there is a wall. he was in vietnam and was badly wounded. he said, there is a wall five miles wide and 60 miles high between those of us who went in those who did not and that the wall is never going to come down. i think, i think that is true.

but i think most of us have figured out ways around it. it is not something we think about. you know when you meet someone and find out that he served in vietnam, you spot them a little more than you would have ordinarily. i do not think -- this is the thing i found the hardest to deal with. how do you come up some coool way to not be inducted into the service? you have a smart lawyer or smart doctor or the money. and the kid a next-door that does not have this marches off to war. what do you do? how do you live with yourself?

i do not think i could have lived with myself. unless i did something like david harris did, david harris who said, this is a terrible war and i am not going and throw me in jail if you want to. and they did. but, david did not do any tricks. david just said, if i have to go to jail, i will go to jail because i think of this war is a terrible mistake. i could buy that. i do not have any problems with a david harris or men like him, who -- it is the ones who gamed the system and realized, there were a lot of people of their age, who did not have the connections or the money, or

whatever to get out of service. >> you said, the word i wrote in the margins was angry. are you still angry and if you are not, when did you stop being angry? >> i think i was angry when i started writing. i do not think about it a lot. john mccain is like my -- my -- my what? not hero, but the person i felt dealt with this the best. of those of us i knew really had a bad time. he just sits it to the side. he had it worse than anyone, anyone that i knew. they beat him. they put him in isolation for a year. they did terrible stuff was he came back and said, just as i

did not enjoy my time -- my year at the naval academy, i did not enjoy my time in hanoi, but it is over. wow. >> you wrote "a nightingale's song," which was about john mccain. you have written this book now called "blue-eyed boy: a memoir." our guest has been robert timberg. thank you very much. >> thank you. it is always my pleasure. ♪ >> for free transcripts or