thank you everybody welcome to new peters township public library my name is sue miller the assistant director here and we are thrilled that you can all be with us this evening as we have a special guest here to discuss  book and a very very intriguing story there's a couple things that i would like to announce before we get started was we're done with the presentation i'm going to announce we have the wonderful exhibits here and there's some have audio books you can download for he will use it for free lots of different resources and so if you haven't done so yet i urge you to get a library card because everything that we have here is is available through  our first ever that we're doing that we're inviting we have twenty one local authors who are going to be coming to the library and showing their books and you get a chance to meet with them talk with them get folks from them  signed and we're also going to have three food trucks out of the parking lot so we can all get something to eat as well which will be fun so if someone like norad here who is one of our local authors we're going  more so we hope that you can come out for that so that's not all going to introduce the president of our peter township library foundation and she will have more to tell you and her name is more  tally i everyone i want to thank you for turning out and i need you have a lot of choices for what you could do and i think it's great that we have a full house once again it shows a lot about our community as community that will make the time for a program license tonight we do want to sing margaret die sir in the back one of our reference librarian who organized today's program along with the help of the of the staff she's probably embarrassed that i'm calling her out grand now but she did ask me to tell you that we want you to come to more program so after tonight's program if you will see margaret or another member of the library staff we get your is so we can get you out to our online newsletter sometimes we have lots of moving our programs in the local papers and magazines and sometimes you know we have a lot of other events that can be with us so we try really this tim o'brien is going to be coming wednesday november seventh and the foundation is joined him this is a huge deal if you're not familiar with his work he wrote this book i believe is hundred ninety nine and it was nominated for a pulitzer he sees all over the nation so he's called the poet laureate of vietnam is on our high school reading list as well as many other high schools all across the country and many universities so we do have the books or sale my props for ten dollars that you would like to pick on us and tickets for this event will go on sale in june  do the foundation sponsors it but we do charge for the program because we have to cover the expenses for that so the tickets will be twenty dollars fertile is thousand dollars for veterans and five dollars for students and like i said those is one of the experts on this p b s series and we will be having a program later in october talk more about vietnam but i can't remember the day off or maybe it's august i remember the day off to help my head deepest you know a is story and executive director of veterans breakfast will be here to share some slides and memories from groups that he took for this on a fifty year anniversary i never had misquoted i was a teacher by i had to tell you something that she did when i was a senior has delivered me today and has made a difference in me as a teacher without its bad this well it may not even remember the story believe kids in our high school who used to go around my car i remember one day he had a crisis in the hallway he said his car broke but he couldn't move and here comes three year teaching career is only because i could not think of a better person to write a book or a horror story she was found only living relative and she accepted the responsibility and there's a responsibility  you will agree carl is my only sibling his older brother and carl was killed that's number sixteen nineteen eighteen in the battle of the  the eastern portion of france all the way through northern france and into belgium and it was a long line of german often in the north and they in the middle of this area was the little town of mole that and last i was there at the base of the mound almost looks like the indian burial mount it was from the top of which you could see three hundred sixty degrees around the plateau that was a german stronghold they could observe people coming from all directions from there side of the capital current which is over here somewhere down through and into the fighting area so the germans had defended this area numerous times of against the french and the english they or war which was april nineteenth seventeen united states army numbers not quite one hundred thousand men when the call went out for the and then eventually for the conscription there were one point five million members to the united states on wilson's objective was really to call he wanted a major american presence in in europe you want to force them victory and he wanted a victory that was exclusively style of america because he felt that that would be sure the americans a prominent place at the peace table which would call the name general strong persian its name was jack to be that a manner of the  supposed to allow the americans to do this by themselves but she did succeed as he shows the area i'm saying he'll see this is was unity to be able to fight the way he wanted but this was not going to be trench warfare this was going to be what he referred to for the first time as a surge we commandeered the division and they were two over on this side and it was a little token kind of armed force mostly french because the french were not to fight but they were to hold that segment over there to make sure that when they drove the german army through and out that was the direction of the s definitely in a new time of fighting for an american also wilson ordered urging to have the best of the american military involved so then colonel george c marshall whose name we know very well from world war two and who was responsible for the marshall plan the following world war two marshall actually play in the logistics of the he said macarthur doctor first was instant and according to the battle plan we have to remember this was the surge and according to the battle plan the move while moved on very quickly so the troops were as i remember her come just in the hall and frail my father said that she was sick all her life and i do know that she never went out of the house literally she never went out of the house and she did go page and so i thought about this later and got the was probably about ten years old when carl was born and carl was the first grandchild and he was the first nephew and i think th enforce them where girl dragged himself painfully with his room like to the back porch is father was sitting at the kitchen table girl seeing him there through the window father rose knew him across the room and sat on the kitchen with his face inches from his father's who told me so much about him about my family my mother my father my brothers they're all gone karl was i confess i almost forgot and in november two thousand and eight i felt my mind and genealogists from oregon told me through a series of questions that i was called next of kin her job she said was just fine with me and i pressed her a little bit as to what it is about she's in the army i'm in the employ of the army and they will contact you and i said will what are they primary resource for life and it was built with hundreds and hundreds of loose graphs there were a few albums everything three or four five years four years and more than that after this picture are all listed in the service when he enlisted going over that everything was interesting place and they wrote to everybody to try to find it was very clear that when writing to all those ten years and beyond for the sixty six congress we are now in the one hundred sixteenth and all the replies that they received from these letters were polite everyone tried very hard to accommodate their requests the simple fact carl was lost are they couldn't find him they were doing what henry wanted them to do so what was the they look for anything they can find and there was nothing it's days or six months and there's still all or nothing karl is gone what you see in red is what they actually found that's what they actually found and it verifies if you can see the top eyewitness said he was head from behind and his head and his back and gave carl his final salute high ground which they control wholesale now today instead of german strongholds stand absolutely magnificent on him on the top of that hill this is the farmhouse and here is where we are you will see and like that we are in the car we're driving it was very hard to imagine in the battle over three million rounds of ammunition fire and seven thousand americans die and then suddenly we stop rope i said you mean this road the one we're on now yes yes yes she thought she knew they were on the left side then on the sixteenth escalation that's were you what so matter of fact and so the germans could hardly overtake it will be careful to avoid the september sixteenth dawn in the erie style they wait they must lose the order comes as company h scrambled up the bank and crosses the road shells explode all around them i walk to the other side of the world looking out over this wide broken field i imagine coral in the mud so to skin from days of rain comrades return round after round then as evening approaches suddenly the enemy fire seasons journalists have been ordered to retreat as karl's company think we have been able to name unsung group halfway across the world thanks g r i z its mission is to honor our american of the scholars like jake whose discoveries move us forward every day of our lives carlton list and today or down the line to his home now that was four years after the war and i have pictures of the family of the german my grandmother grandfather  well i thank you very much i just wanted to let you know what we have for the rest of the evening here if you can stick around we have some exhibits and i'm going to introduce the gentleman who have provided them for us we have  and