The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to present Operation Homecoming, writing the wartime experience. This unique literary program is aimed at preserving the stories and reflections of American troops who have served our nation, both on the frontlines in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stateside, defending the homeland. The Arts Endowment is sponsoring a … Listen…
War and military service have been major literary subjects as long as there has been literature. The earliest masterpiece of the Western tradition. Homer’s Iliad, portrays the heroism and human cost of the Trojan War, while its companion poem, The Odyssey recounts one veteran’s long and difficult homecoming. The great national epics, from the Aeneid … Listen…
Throughout history, the sailors life has always involved risk and peril. In World War one. A terrible new danger was introduced. The submarine attack. In the following letter, a young Navy sailor from Texas, Hugh Alexandra Leslie, tells his family about the sinking of the USS President Lincoln. Actor Edward Giraud reads a selection from … Listen…
Hazel Jane Raines perfected her piloting skills as a barnstormer in Georgia air shows during World War Two. Raines first served the Allied cause as an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot for the RAF in England. When the U.S. military finally accepted women pilots. Raines returned to the states and joined the Wasps, pulling targets for … Listen…
Whether sent by email from a Navy carrier today or by a letter courier in the American Revolution. Love letters home are a constant across the centuries. Writing his wife in June 1863, Samuel Campbell of the Massachusetts 55th Volunteer Infantry expresses his love for his family and his determination to end slavery here. Ed … Listen…
Major Sullivan Ballou was in his early 30s when he joined the Union Army’s Rhode Island Volunteers. At the outbreak of the Civil War. Actor Edward Jarrow reads from Major Blue’s now famous letter to his wife. July 14th, 1861. Washington, D.C. my very dear Sarah, the indications are very strong that we shall move … Listen…
Shelby Foote served in the U.S. Army in the Marine Corps during World War Two. In this selection from his Civil War novel Shiloh, he follows one Confederate soldier into battle. When we were halfway up the rise. I began to see black shapes against the rim where it sloped off shore. At first I … Listen…
Bobby Ann Mason’s famous first novel, In Country, explored the public reaction to the Vietnam War and its veterans in the mid 1980s. The novel’s protagonist, Sam, is a 15 year old girl whose father was killed in the war. In this excerpt from the end of the novel, Sam makes a pilgrimage to Washington, … Listen…
Barry Hanna is recognized as one of our nation’s finest contemporary writers. Here, Hannah reads an excerpt from his story Testimony of Pilot. Who had Barry escorted B-52s on bombing missions in North Vietnam. He was catapulted off the bottom. Richard in his suit at 100 degrees temperature, often at night, and put the F-4 … Listen…
Award winning novelist James Salter. From fighter jets in World War Two and the Korean War. In this selection, from his memoir Burning the Days. Salter describes a dogfight with a MiG in Korea. The first good weather in a week. The fighter bombers are going north again in strength. To someplace up near the … Listen…
Vietnam War veteran Tobias Wolff translated his military experiences into an acclaimed memoir, In Pharaoh’s Army. I was sent off to language school to learn Vietnamese. I was gone for over a year, 13 months, and I was in civilian status that whole time. I never went to a base. That was how I spent … Listen…
In World War II, two young American men who had never traveled a hundred miles from their homes suddenly found themselves thousands of miles from their own nation. Private Will Campbell was one such soldier, known today as a courageous minister in the civil rights movement and award winning author. Campbell enlisted in the army … Listen…
Will Campbell also had the unique experience of seeing the return of the Enola Gay after its fateful bombing run over Hiroshima. So I was on side panel know when the war ended. In fact, I saw the Enola Gay land. I didn’t we didn’t know what had happened, but we knew something big had … Listen…
Classics professor and military historian Victor Davis. Hanson has written extensively about ancient Greek and modern warfare. His uncle, who was also his namesake, fought and died in World War II, two intent on uncovering the last moments of his uncle’s life. Hanson was surprised to find several living members of the 29th Marines in … Listen…
Former US Poet laureate Richard Wilbur saw ferocious combat in both Italy and France as an infantryman during World War Two. Here is Wilbur describing the genesis of one wartime poem. After we had done the Southern France invasion. We worked our way up through France to Alsace, where we experienced an unusually bitter winter. … Listen…
Poet Marilyn Nelson was raised on military bases and developed a unique literary perspective as a daughter of a Tuskegee Airman. Here, Nelson reads from the fields of praise. Star fix for Melvin M Nelson, captain, United States Air Force, retired 1917 to 1966 at his cramped desk under the Astrodome. The navigator looks thousands … Listen…
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Louis Simpson served in the 101st Airborne Division in World War Two, and has written memorably about his experience in one of the war’s bloodiest. Battles in the battle of the Bulge at Bastogne. I remember it vividly as though someone were putting on an enormous panorama for me. I’m grateful … Listen…
On the ledge. I can see the coast coming near one of our planes. A thunderbolt. Plunging down and up again. Seconds later we heard the rattle of machine guns. That night we lay among hedgerows. The night was black. There was thrashing in a hedgerow. A burst of firing in the morning. A dead … Listen…
Here, Tobias Wolff discusses his literary influences and his youthful attraction to military service. This wasn’t a new idea. The Army I’d always known I would wear the uniform. It was essential to my idea of legitimacy. The men I I’d respected when I was growing up had all served, and most of the writers … Listen…
Shelby Foote learned his craft from past masters of European and American literature. Well, the writers have influenced me as a writer, never mind the war. Anything else, of course, influenced me most. Proust and Faulkner, French are two big influences in my life, and they influence the way I write about war. But the … Listen…
Here again is Richard Wilbur. Well, I think that if you’re a soldier existing under combat conditions or threatened with combat conditions, you are going to feel rather disrupted. you’ll be disrupted by, fear and uncertainty. And this simply the strange ness of fighting a war and writing poems is a way, a small way … Listen…
Here again is Louise Simpson speaking about military experience. Most of the hard and dangerous work of the world is done by such men. During the war, I learned to respect them and have done so ever since. I have earned my living by teaching in universities. The people around me, with a few exceptions, … Listen…
Here again. James Salter. In 1939. The war had broken out, and by 1941, we were in at. I ended up at West Point. The old life vanished. The new one had little use for poetry. I did read and as an upperclassman wrote a few short stories. I had seen some in the Academy … Listen…
[Piano Music] Operation homecoming is presented by the National Endowment for the Arts in conjunction with the Southern Arts Federation. This historic program would not have been possible without the generous support of the Boeing Company. The musical personnel includes Dan Sherrod on accordion, Richard Dorsey and Philip Brunelle on piano, and Vietnam veteran Saul … Listen…
