Transcript:

[00:00] Hello, this is Melissa Hale-Spencer the editor at The Altamont Enterprise here this morning with William Frake, the third. We have just come from Cindy Pollard's home from cafe where there was another warm hearted gathering of veterans. What are the guest of honor? Today was Frances Curry, the medal of honor winner, who was there with his wife about to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. Cindy looked beautiful, red lipstick, blue scarf, white coat, very patriotic as always, and we have a man who has captured the spirit of the Home Front cafe. I've been writing for years about these same people, sir. Bill from Boris, advil, Millard Orsini and his flag, the guys that were at [inaudible] Gima and meet for breakfast, but he has captured them not just in words, but in drawings. He tells stories with drawings. Welcome. Welcome

[01:12] for the wonderful time up here this morning with breakfast and ultimately New York. I'd I love this town. It's wonderful. Wonderful. A town that I enjoy coming back and forth to the visit, the friends and veterans here in the town.

[01:25] Well, the thing I'd like to talk to you about, start with, it's just a little about your life. This book serves in the beginning, is kind of an autobiography. His latest book is called a moment and a memory and it's the second in a series. And I borrowed this copy from Cindy, Cindy Pollard, and I thought, you know, I just flipped through it and get a few ideas. I read every single page. It is riveting and it starts out saying I draw stories and that is exactly what you do and it gives a little bit of your biography and your life growing up. But if you could just tell us in words a little bit about, um, your father and grandfather and the taxis and western, just a little about your life growing up. Well,

[02:17] when I was a small child, my father was a veteran in, in, uh, in Dda and the Pacific, uh, after d day. And they never really didn't talk too much about the war. They just kind of put it behind him. And as I talked to my grandfather and my father and brother, his brothers, my uncles, uh, they started to tell me a little bit stories that were of great interest to me, but they would never tell me the complete stories. So, and because it didn't have the knowledge of reading on the subject of World War Two, uh, I didn't know what to ask them. So it's like a computer, if you don't know what buttons to push, you don't know what information you're going to get. So my uncle who ran the taxi service in Fort Dix in the 19 forties, hired my, um, my dad when he was about 14 or 15 and they would ride around before for textures even built in muddy streets and wooden buildings and they would deliver telegrams.

[03:17] And during the whole time as a started to stock up for ticks for the, for the, for the war, um, my grandfather would have a taxi service to take people to Philadelphia and my father would, would, uh, get to visit all the new units that came in. And eventually he joined up in 1942, a right after December seventh, it happened in January, I think it was, and I'm 42 and right after Pearl Harbor right after Pearl Harbor. And all the brothers signed up for there was about four or made five brothers. So, um, because they all live far away, I didn't get a chance to ask a lot of questions and every time I'd asked the veteran the same kind of stories, they wouldn't talk about it. They just said let's go to the barbecue and have a good time. And I was so curious. And then as they got older they started to talk a little bit about these stories and to enrich everybody with what they had seen in her lifetime and the great deeds and amazing moments of this period of history.

[04:18] And I was just amazed at the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. And I kept doing sketches, uh, which I'd done it earlier. It started at Walt Disney studios and I started drawing with all my training. Uh, it was a shorthand note. I didn't have to write words. I could draw a picture to express a paragraph so I could draw faster than they could write and with all of the work and stuff that I did, it was my wife that basically said, you really have to share this work with the veterans. I know you give them away when you go see them, but the rest of the world would love to see these. So, um, my daughter helped me with the designing of the book a Cassandra, and it was kind of a family affair, you know, my wife helped me prove it and uh, it's very much like a sketchbook notebook of all my travels with the World War Two veterans throughout my lifetime.

[05:08] And it has that feeling of a sketchbook. Is your daughter Cassandra, she the one you were talking about that was studying in Florence, that's another daughter. They're all very artistic. Isn't that great? Well, um, what I wonder too, you mentioned drawing for Disney, but if you could just back up and tell us about yourself as an artist too. In the book. It has little vignettes from what seemed like an, a delicate childhood where, um, you would go and pick up a comic book and that was what interested you and yet you talk about hanging out in your father's shop, I guess where you and your friends would build go karts and you rate that they've now become a movie producer, said all kinds of things. But just tell us a little about yourself as a kid and how you became

[05:58] an artist. Uh, I grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. I was born there and my mother was a nurse for the American Red Cross and she came there in 1938 and 39 and she started to work with the American Red Cross in the town that my dad again at Fort Dix had, had met. Um, a metaphor, uh, another radio guy there. And he brought him home and that's where my mom was. They met together at this dinner and she eventually was renting a place in Montclair, New Jersey. So my father would come back on leave from the war and come to visit. And that became our family home. They eventually purchased it and I lived there all my life, so my entire history was also mixed in with her history and my mom came from Pennsylvania, a Gettysburg area, so it was a history of civil war and my, um, my dad came from Mount Holly, New Jersey by Fort Dix.

[06:57] So as a little child I went around this idyllic kind of Rockwellian, norman rockwell kind of town. We're a little drug stores, little comic book stores in different, in different locations that were so kind of Americana Romanticized. I'm almost like, it's a wonderful life with Jimmy Stewart. I love that film, but it's something where all of my first experiences when I first saw a comic, it was because they were so bright and so colorful and my father is a very interesting moment there because I went to pick up and artists, which I became to admire. His name is Joe Kubert and I looked at the artwork is just absolutely amazing artwork. And to this day still one of the best guys out there. I worked with the people from marvel studios in the past to who done all the, the, the feature films recently, but the, uh, my dad would say, tip, put the comic down and mind your mother wants you to read classic stories and that's kind of a rag mag. And I'm like, what's a rag man? So, well it's not worth reading. It's just junk. And at the time and the thirties, they were really. Nobody had an interest in comics and they were so cheap. They're like ten cents, twelve cents. But my dad would buy a pack of cigarettes, Lucky's at the same place, lucky strike, which he learned to smoke during the war. And

[08:19] yes, lucky strike went to war and ended up with a different colored package. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

[08:27] He would literally give me, if I was lucky, a quarter, which would give me one comic and maybe a small candy bar. And I started to read inadvertently, which I didn't realize it was going to be my future. And the gentleman there was saying, why behind the stand? Why don't you, uh, you buy cigarettes, why don't you get your kid a comic? And he says, I don't, I don't like war. Then he said, oh, it was during the early parts of Vietnam. And he said, that war is not good and all. And I didn't understand the argument between these two guys. He said, Oh, you're one of those guys are against the war. And he said, yeah, I guess a war. But it was an opinion. I didn't know politically things. So this occurred quite a few times as you walked in. And finally the guy says, I want.

[09:12] He said, just give the kid a comedy. You get cigarettes, give him a comic. And he said, I'll give them a call and give I want. And basically you said, well, were you in the war to my dad? And he said, yeah, I was in d dot a and o canal and he would, Gemma. And the gentleman stopped and stared at him and said, I am so sorry sir. I didn't know. He said, yeah, that's the reason why I don't like war. What I saw I don't like. And he said, I don't want him to read about that. There's enough time to read about happy stuff. And he said, why don't you pick a superman? And so I picked up as superman and it was painted on his ship. He said he painted on the ship going in at the Normandy and he was a 20 millimeter gun or going into the beaches, Omaha beach, and for June, the early part of June, June sixth and all of the stuff that started to come out that story.

[10:00] And then he stopped again for a long time. It didn't talk. It brought back, I guess memories, but in the evenings when he came home from work, he to relax you go out to our garage and had little wood shop and he would teach us how to work a wood and tie knots and everything. He learned pretty much during the war I think, and he taught us how to build things. So we started building tree houses and a little go carts and all the kids started to come over and all the kids came over. Very, very creative. And some of the guys, one guy's a photographer at raceway park now in New Jersey, another one is just finished the movie, the grinch as an art director, I'm working on a film now with will Smith. It's a and disguise that everybody really ended up, um, going into their passions and that little garage and the woodshop really started us to be creative and I can't thank my dad and the rest of the people from World War Two of 'em. How to live your life and how short life is and enjoy every moment and talk to your friends and be close to your friends. Have meals with them. This holiday time is really a good time to experience that kind of closeness. Try do that all throughout the year. And you too, I think can get your own little stories and, and try and draw them up.

[11:17] Remarkable about that is how these boyhood friends of yours, you've clearly stayed friends with them for a lifetime in this kind of mobile, modern American world. That's, that's rare. Very much so. One of the things you say in your book about learning to draw, and I forgive me, I'm going to mispronounce this man's name. You said Steven Casca. CIOCCA. CIOCCA. Okay. I did mispronounce it. He was a world war one. Ostrow Hungarian soldier. Tell us about him and how he influenced drawing

[11:55] left high school. It goes back just a little bit more to set it up. I played lacrosse. We've been clear across the state champs and you know, we're managing and playing and stuff and summer leagues and we had um, uh, the coach there really taught the young men in that group had to be a team and how to follow your passions. And he made, he would tell one of the captains, uh, you know, you'd be a really good stock trader. You'd be really good truck driver or something funny. And he said to me, he said, you, you got talent and cartooning. I said cartooning because I used to do little sketches of the Lacrosse team. That was my first sketches. So I did those and put them aside and went to a fine arts, a little bit of medicine down in Virginia at the end of high school. And then they told me all the jobs are in New York.

[12:45] I'm like, why are you down here? And I thought, oh boy. So I went to New York, back to York and um, I ended up meeting a, going into fine arts again there because that was my passion and I'm thinking medicine was interesting to work on cadavers. I mean I was really into. So ended up going to this college called Fashion Institute and it was advertising and fashion. So I worked with all the magazines, kind of mad men with a Madison Avenue. And uh, when I was there, one of my teachers was astounding. Uh, his name is Steven Ciocca. He was an Austro-hungarian first world war veteran and basically he had been captured as a prisoner of war in 1914, 15. And, uh, throughout the war he basically lived his life and saved his life by doing drawings of the guards that would probably shoot him. He said, I'll do a drawing.

[13:39] Don't shoot us, and he came and he left Europe in 1933 before World War Two started. He said, I can't, another war is brewing. He told me, and basically you said that if I don't leave, I do not want to see the second one. So he came to America and just painted walls. You painted houses and. But he could paint from the national gallery. He is now working the Mat and the Brooklyn Museum. And he was classically trained by the turn of the century by many, many famous famous artist. And he used to buy and sell 'em Monet's and Cezanne's to the rural families in, in uh, Hungary, which used to be a huge estates. So they would purchase all these paintings at the time that weren't that valuable. Nineteen, 12, 13. Nobody wanted abstract. They thought it was kind of Junky. And it was really hard to understand.

[14:29] So realism was for centuries was the artwork. So the realistic artists felt that, you know, these new guys coming in, it's almost like a sketch artist or computer artists like these guys are taking over my career. So they kind of tried to ban the impressionist and Steven used to talk to me about impressionist and how he would end up in Europe. He'd have to paint with the governments wanted. So he told me, you said he, he wanted to paint what an artist wants to and he came to America to be free and paint what he wanted. So he taught me all of these tricks of the trade of like if you want to go and get like draw like Dick Guy, you go and get some CPO from Italy and break up the stone and make it into your chalks, add oil and you know, vest, uh, you know, and, and take tissues and butcher paper and color them with leftover oil paints in the matte paint paintings when you're doing portraits and make your own paper because there was no art supply store. So they taught me

[15:25] how do you start with the actual same material, same material. Masters used. Oh my gosh. So he taught me really from the ground up. So when I learned

[15:33] and all of those years later I went to, was called up to work at Walt Disney studios and the, the old timers, they're the nine old men that it taught me a quite a few had already retired, but they show back up and work with us. But um, they were amazed at my ability in life drawing in my ability of sketching and the draftsmanship I had, he said, you know, you're in your early twenties but you draw like you've been around for like 18 years

[16:00] years training the training

[16:04] such as classical training. And that has, has grounded me throughout my entire career for all the movies that I've worked on. So I can't again, it's okay.

[16:12] Where were one vet to taught me and what were too big that was going to ask about Harlan Nancy, if I can do his name better. Wimble. Okay. And you said in your book, along with the drawing, you said that he taught you to never give up and never quit. So tell us about that. When I met him,

[16:32] somebody mentioned in the movie jaws, Quinn, and he said Harland, I think reference state used the guy shooting the USS Indianapolis. I think Harlem was a guy that I'm pretty sure that they used for reference for Quinn and jaws and that's where he talks about the tattoo and the ship going down into five days and the shark infested waters,

[16:53] the shorts. He experienced that himself during the war. And they said when the boat went down, the district where I

[16:58] went down, it was sunk by a Japanese submarine that went down in 12 minutes. Uh, he was ordered to abandon ship and as a 1300 sailors went into the water after five days, there was only 300 left to sharks had eaten all of them. So when they finally got, it was so top secret, they didn't even know they were there. And the movie jaws, they talk, I'm Quinn talks about the ship and this tattoo and where his scar came from, the white hate sharks. And all of a sudden I realized, wow, jaws film was tied to this guy that I visited. And we started to talk about it and he told me about how when they were alone at sea, no hope, no nothing. How spiritually God and how he never gave up. And the ones that gave up didn't survive and you could achieve anything if your mind says, don't give, be persistent and no matter what you think you can achieve, you can achieve it.

[17:54] So I applied that in my career that uh, here comes a deadline, here comes, you know, I've got to do something and incredibly crazy time. I may not be able to do it all myself, but can I get people to help me? Can I do this and use it as a team and you can achieve anything in your life at a very, very grounding, positive feelings of this. Uh, the Harlan had, um, had talked to me about and he brought out a watch that he had his, which is in the book and it was stopped at 12. Oh, three. He said when he hit the water, it stopped the salt water. The Pacific stopped. Just wanted 12. Oh, three. When the ship went down and he showed it, he said, this is a watch I was wearing in the ocean with the sharks are attacking us.

[18:34] And it was such a, almost like a whole holistic moment of touching. It was like energy feelings. I'm like, wow. And He's told his son, this has got to be in the national archives. Why is it still in my jewelry box? And so went over to the archives, but it's something where over the years, all these amazing stories of these individuals that went through so much struggle of the great depression and just surviving a destruction all over from, from North Africa to Italy to, to, um, to Europe and France and Japan and all the islands. Um, you can learn so much about how to a stroke, how to understand, struggle, um, uh, in survival of anything you do in your life that you can, you can achieve and become anything. And you realized what they went through. The toughest thing that you think you've gone through, it's not tough and you come very relaxed when you realize, well maybe maybe when I'm going through today is not that hard to take and I think about the new guys like Afghanistan and stuff.

[19:41] When I'm driving in a cold car, I'm driving in the morning this morning I left at around 5:36 drive up here and it took about two and a half hours and yeah, I'm, I'm thinking and realize, wait a second, I'm in a car with heated seats. I'm driving, it's cold, but there's guys in the trenches now that have been fighting for 20 years that don't have what I have and stop thinking. You're having a rough time this morning. So when I get here I realized, you know, every time you realize life's not that hard. Just be persistent and if something is tough, you can always get through it.

[20:18] So it's a matter of perspective as well. One of the things that eat you do that's so remarkable is you. You take these really serious situations, but you find humor like isn't there a picture in this book of someone watching TV years later and seeing that very boat you were talking about with the shark infested waters being raised up and discovered and it makes it like a comic picture the way even render it, but yet there's this layer of seriousness and pat those, I mean the book goes back and forth between you said, I think somewhere in maybe the introduction you wanted to make veterans smile or even have a belly laugh and there are pictures that do that. I was laughing out loud, but there are also moments where you, I mean, you get teared up and you get, um, there's one where there's a veteran waiting for a visitor to come and it looks like the visitor isn't coming.

[21:25] And what I'd like to try to do is I was going through his. I'd like to try to look at the pictures before I read your words because the pictures tell you so much that then the words after you've sort of thought of your own interpretation kind of form, like a gloss on that and I wondered if you could just tell us about the process, like when you're doing this as an artist, do you, you say you tell stories with pictures, but do you like how does it come to you? Does it come as an image and then the words are. I'm such a word person. I just wonder about your process.

[22:08] It's a vision. I have a very photographic memory. It's a vision. Going back to the first things you were requesting with a Harland Tubal. I was sitting in New York and on the television was like Jim James Ballard who discovered the titanic has just gone down into the Pacific, into South South West Philippine sea and they located the USS Indianapolis and I'm like, that's Harland ship. Oh my gosh. And I said, that's the ship that went down that these guys had not seen and understood how it, what happened to it, and there was only about 22 guys left if that, and they're riveted to the TV on national geographic and they're literally studying the ship that they have not seen it went down at that time. It, it's on the bottom of the ocean. And I said, oh my gosh. So I immediately did a drawing of Harlan watching TV as that's been discovered. What his name.

[23:04] So the image came to you first, like how would he feel seeing this? Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful. But it got a little note to humor at the same time. I don't know how you make those two. I went online to look at some of your like, guessing, wondering what was famous characters. This grant is that the squirrel? And like I tried to think of the same man creating that which has this very. You're sympathetic with this little squirrel because he can't get the nut in the ground and he ends up cracking this whole layer of ice that then pursues him. So it has that same kind of funniness, but yet the same sense of, Oh my God, what's going to happen so

[23:45] well, most, most of the ideas are, um, to, to see a situation and get a read on it that, that I will take the character performance and basically go ahead and um, once I've done a drawing, it's really hard to put words to it because the drawings describe the words. So it's basically something to where I have really enjoyed, um, I learned from the great guys at Disney's how to do very quick gesture sketchers, sketches that you capture in time, a moment of action and a frame of time that basically you can feel like you've lived in that

[24:30] well. What do you call this style? Is it, it's like a sketch, but then it, it has an overlay of how do you, how do you physically make that? That usually goes into. I'm sorry, that's fire department stuff because you're a volunteer firefighter too.

[24:48] Yeah. Which means it's like, well, I guess I can't help anybody here.

[24:54] Not to amaze me. I read that somewhere and it just seemed like a, you know, I, we write about volunteer firefighters all the time, but you think of a Disney artist is someone not part of that on the ground world.

[25:09] What's amazing is I love to help people. I love to understand to take away people's pain and I'd love to understand what, uh, what feelings that people have that I can kind of, um, make them store as a, um, make them store as a, um, maybe a book or a sketch that take him forever, capture the moment of time that, that happened. So it's like a life photographer in the forties that they're able to capture a picture of this moment of history that is just framed picture and everybody can look at it and feel they were there.

[25:46] Those all over her cafe, the kiss in Times Square after vj day. And there's those moments, they become iconic and like we all relate to them even though we weren't there yet.

[25:58] Where are you are at the time of that moment. You could be in that moment can be far away and it doesn't fit your mind. Takes you right to that spot, so the idea of like the kiss in Times Square, somebody was right there, close enough to take it and then they framed it to to make you really feel the ability to understand that you were there and and you were there during 1945, the Vj day and even somebody could see 100 years later and you feel like you're there. That's the power of photography which has sketches or a very quick way of. You don't have a camera.

[26:32] You say you were going to tell me about the technique. How, what, what is that?

[26:36] The technique on these. I'm actually using this antique which is a computer

[26:41] that surprises me because they so spontaneous and the opposite of what I can fix it or like some are sketches from sketchbooks, but yeah,

[26:49] it's antique is I can now do the line work. I can put tone down, I can do all those tools. Are that markers? There was no mess. Yeah. So I can literally, if I don't like to tell and I can pull it back, I can change it so I can draw these a lot quicker. Uh, and I draw a small quick sketches on. I'll go in the evening when I fall asleep. I have a little office, state drawings or drawing almost as I'm following the street and a little sketches of falling asleep, little sketches and those sketches. I'll bring him in the morning and I can draw a drawing that almost guarantees we've picked by the directors because it's a very deep state of mind and it's so deep in the vision that when the directors look at that, I liked that one that's really feel like I'm in the movie on that one and it's because I was in my dreams.

[27:38] So when, so early morning you've just woken up and you like tap into your dream state brain,

[27:44] fall asleep. I'll tap into it. That's the office state. And as I wake up I'll have to immediately put no time because it's very abstract. It's stripes is lines. It's very picassoesque and I believe that all the, the, the, the artist of the past had these visions of simplicity that you see, you solve your problems as you fall asleep, you all these thoughts and all these problems and as you fall asleep, you start to dream in and do the rest of your body leaves and you basically are going towards these problems and you solve them. And if you in the morning you will remember, Oh, I need to pick this keys up at the front door. That's where at, you may not know where your keys are, but in the dream you'll find them that your office. Did you realize

[28:26] all my dreams were? So these visions

[28:32] put down and sketches. And when I talked to people, I feel like I can transfer their thoughts and visions that they have onto my thoughts.

[28:41] That's what amazed me because I've written about these same men for years and you do almost like a little formal frame around them when you're telling a biography of them. And it captures them in ways that with thousands of words, I'm embarrassed to say I haven't captured. And um, it's, it's just remarkable we run through our time so fast and there was so much more I wanted to ask you, but one of the ones that was most powerful for me, I guess we'll end with a discussion of this, um, it, what you wrote on this picture was we just see after four years of war when we arrived at the camps, we knew why war was fought. We never forgot their eyes and that is just that drawing. And I'd have to look up the page number, but that drawing, even when you don't, even when you don't read the words, you just, there's some deep realization there. So just tell us how you came up with that one.

[29:47] I, anybody that talks about the concentration camps and camps can't even put words to it. They just said you wouldn't believe it. Said you cannot believe what it was. And it's the amazing stare into distance. The audience becomes the objective viewer and you become the camp. People looking at them like

[30:12] saved. They're looking at me, they're my saviors. And basically, uh, you realize, um, that they are totally have been, that image has been burned in, are much for, for the rest of eternity in her thought. So the power of that stair, which I had a thousand yard stairs and more to that, when they were transformed into a vision, they never forgot those moments. And all you have to do is you are the energy in front of these soldiers had you or the event that they're staring at. So you, everything you know about that event, you know, they're looking at you and everything, you know, there, it's, it's going back and forth in the eyes and the storage.

[30:55] Right? And you do that because the barbed wire gates are open and you, the viewer are standing on the other side of the wire gates as these liberator's holding their guns and looking at, ah, I can't put a word to it. It's not just that they're tired. They look,

[31:16] see geishas are they look like they'd seen some hard to put words. I know. It's so powerful. That picture struck me as one of the most powerful. And the other one that I wanted to ask you about, um, I, I wrote the word poetic because I download poetry, but the picture did the poem more, um, their lines of battle ram like trenches in their faces as they got older. I hear others find the page 3:49, but you talk about in the book throughout it and it's got a humorous streak about how this is the hard battle, you know, the old age battle, what these veterans who suffered all those years ago. I should've brought my glasses so I could find the page numbers.

[32:03] I remember the cartoon that I haven't memorized.

[32:05] Okay. Um, so tell us about coming up with that drawing.

[32:12] Well, when I went to the battlefields of Europe, it was like wrinkles on the earth, mother earth that the age and the history of all of these wrinkles to the mountains and trenches and all these things that are marked into the earth that have so many stories that people never really as you walked through them, you don't see them when you're upon them. You have to project yourself, which I do. You have to project yourself up into the sky and look down. Um, so when you project yourself and look down and you realize the earth has wrinkles and so did we were tied to the earth. And the idea these veterans had been hard living in the sun. They've any person that like Grapes of Wrath or has a hard story on their face. You can tell by somebody's face how they lived their stories. And that's where when I see these gentlemen, I look at how somebody is, has been stern all their life, or somebody smiled the wrinkle lines and it tells you the story of all of these veterans.

[33:12] When I see them, I can see their stories on their, on their faces, by how their faces have moved like the earth. And it's things that I'm. All of these little moments. It's my observations that I learned from, from the great artists that work with in my lifetime, how to look at something beyond the viewing of it. But getting into the spirit of it. And that's the thing that I've learned over the years is go out and learn how to understand that spirit drawing will come to you. You can't learn it. All your even to have to learn how to understand how to view life. And that's kind of where I see when I see their faces, I view their stories. It's wonderful. Thank you so much. And there was, there was a gentleman, the curry who came the middle box, I got a call from marketing and he said, guess what, there's a surprise.

[34:11] You're going to have a medal of honor guy come to your book signing. And I thought, wow, this is great. I hadn't really met. Medal of honors are always at a distance to be able to. I mean, I'm always busy doing things. So, um, I always, uh, uh, he described some of the story, so I looked it up on the internet and I studied some of the understanding of the story at 8:00 I get home at six, 7:00. So for about two hours, um, I sat down and started to begin to sketch of what the market told me. And then I studied who he was, what it was before I met John, and so I did this drawing of the most traumatic part of his life, one of the many, but where he won the medal of honor. And I had traveled the battlefields where he was when I was in Europe.

[35:01] I traveled in Malmo, the, I traveled a little bridges, the actual bridge and he had gone across, are protected. Uh, I've traveled the roads and I talked to some of the German soldiers that fought against them and they talk to the soldiers, have fought with the Americans, fought with Francis. And so by my ability understand how they talked about both sides and the weather, what the weather was like. It was. I'd walked those fields almost with the veterans. I did. But I'm almost as if I was a veteran too. Like I transcended my time into this period. So I ended up knowing when he told me the story, Mark had told me and I started to read how to draw so much. Psycho didn't have book. I spent two hours to do a sketch, which I gave him to, gave him a time,

[35:55] tell us the story and describe the sketch,

[35:59] what it was was uh, he had mentioned, Francis had mentioned that they were sent to a bridge to protect it, not expecting a light resistance and it got to the bridge and they set up the trenches which are little, small foxholes and he was on the side of the bridge. I'm protecting a little road with the bridge and they're figuring that's going to be troops. Well, very shortly after all of these, the battle of the bulge had started was December 20, first in Belgium and they are dense that he had been at this, the, that he was right in front of the spirit to spirit tip of the German invasion coming across a little bridge and it was tank after tank after tank. Many tanks coming and it was almost overwhelming. And he basically is a tank rolled up right next to him. The German soldier looked down at Francis and reactive like, oh my gosh.

[36:56] And then a Francis who had been trained as an officer in many different types of weapons, uh, had fired his bar weapon at the, uh, at the German officer that was out of the top of the Turret. He dropped down and then the tax code is veer off knowing that they had hit the, the American lines and the battle began. So he just fought from there, uh, and saved five, destroyed three tanks by using bazookas grenades and save five soldiers that were basically surrounded. And then he fought house to house for days and the battle wasn't over until mid January. So from December 20, first two, middle of January, it was almost three and a half weeks of 24 hours fighting at night when there's no light, it's not knowing where, where people are, the lines are changing. And I've walked these battlefields of all the different units to 101st band of brothers guys and all the different things that you walked a battlefield. So I understood the feeling of where that was. So I had that kind of spiritual connection to Frank Kerry this morning that I did last night in two hours.

[38:10] Wow. So this is a sketch where the tanks dominate and there they're huge and look impeditive impenetrable. And then the bridge looks so very small and there's a man who I'm assuming must be Francis in the lower corner who is watchful and waving. Wow.

[38:38] So bridges. I've been across a very, very small. There was no such thing as tanks where they made this little bridges. We've only for carts and cows and traveling did a little villages. So when these big tanks, which are the 21st century, couldn't make it across the bridges so that a lot of the bridges are destroyed. They had to go across a little streams. So I've walked the strange. I walked the bridge and that's why I can draw what this is because I've lived in the spot when he talks about certain things. I've been there. So I said a little bridge, you know, that little rock that was on the other side.

[39:10] And he's staring at me like, how would I know where that visionary to pass in the future? Do you have any closing thoughts?

[39:20] Well, let me, I can plug the book.

[39:22] Sure. Let's do that. Where can people get the book? You can order the book through.

[39:26] I'm called a moment and a memory at Po box 1550. I'm Carmel, C A R M e l a New York one, zero five. One, two, m and m you can ship. I'll ship them out. Um, and I can, I can, uh, they're 30, $30 or you can pick them up on Amazon. So it's the price a little bit below. But um, it's a 39, 99 for the first edition and $59 95 for the second edition. And I'm sure an Amazon will start getting cheaper as it goes. But it's something to where I'm. The first book has 255 stories. The second books is 3:55. So it's almost a total of four, almost 600 stories or these little veterans. And that's probably a nickel a piece

[40:17] that's cheaper than your superman. Comics are riveting and I just thank you so much for sharing, not just your art,

[40:25] but you're. You're

[40:27] soul. I feel like you've shared your soul. Thank you.

[40:30] Thank you. I appreciate it. I love this town I live with. You have offered up to to speak about these men that have admired all my life and to have a wonderful town that honors. He's mad. You can't do better than that. It's a great holiday gift.

[40:45] Well, thank you.