Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Andrew Carroll

Aired June 23, 2002 - 11:44   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know if you can relate to this or not, but when I was a child, I remember running to the mailbox to see if I got a letter, a letter from grandpa, dad or someone special that I had developed correspondence with.

Letters are remarkable when it comes to preserving memories in history. The written word can be so inspiring and comforting, and yes, even heartbreaking.

Andrew Carroll understands this, too. He spent years of his life collecting old letters, letters of extraordinary correspondence from American wars and members of the armed forces. Andrew joins us live from Washington this morning to talk about this book.

Andrew, great to see you.

ANDREW CARROLL, EDITOR, "WAR LETTERS": Thank you. Good morning.

PHILLIPS: Well, I don't even want to waste any time, I want to get right to some of these letters. I picked a few, and then I know you have a favorite we're going to have you read. So, are you ready to talk about some of these?

CARROLL: Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: All right. Let's do it. This first one -- Sergeant Major James Black, writing from Lonesome Camp. He vows to Patience that his love for her will burn forever. Now, this is a Civil War letter. Here we go: "Patience, what shall I write you? Shall it be more word of friendship? Oh no, my heart prompts my pen to the most wedded love. If I had never known you, that flame would have been unkindled in this bosom, but once that's burning, it will burn forever. You are associated with every thought and every action of my existence." Andrew, men just don't write letters like this anymore.

CARROLL: Well, I'm glad you picked that letter, because I think there's an impression that we only want combat letters or war letters from the battlefield. And some of the best war letters are love letters. And what they do is humanize the soldiers, the service men and women who fight. And it's very important to recognize that we're looking for those sorts of letters as well, and that the book "War Letters" has all different kinds of letters in it.

PHILLIPS: Indeed. OK, this one, also a Civil War letter. Samuel Cabbil, an African-American private in the Union Army promises his wife that slavery, the, quote, "curse of this land" will be crushed. Here's what he says: "Dear wife, I would like to know if you're still in slavery. If you are, it will not be long before we have crushed the system that now oppresses you or in the course of three months you shall be at liberty. Great is the outpouring of the colored people that is now rallying with the hearts of lions against that very curse that has separated you and me. Yet we shall meet again, and oh what a happy time this will be when this ungodly rebellion shall be put down and the curse of our land is trampled under our feet." Wow.

CARROLL: That's a favorite of mine, too. That's a letter by a slave, obviously writing to his wife. And one thing I want to emphasize is all the letters in the book, all the letters that people have sent to us, are previously unpublished. These are the letters that are still in people's attics and basements and closets. It's amazing the history that's still out there.

PHILLIPS: OK. This one, Private First Class Charles McCallister, we wanted definitely get one of heroism in there. We hear a lot of amazing stories from the war, but this one really moved me.

"My dearest aunt. So we stayed right there and fired until his gun was red-hot. Then they got zeroed in on him and landed a mortar shell right on top of him. He died instantly, but his hand was still clutching the trigger. As a result of his continued fire, the platoon was able to advance on their objective. On the way back to my outfit, I let myself go and cried like a baby, but I wasn't ashamed of it. When his son gets old enough to tell him how his father died, and his son's son, for our family must never forget him. Let's try to replace grief with pride in the way that he died, and the things he died for, as that's the way Jim would want it."

And this was Charles McCallister from 101st Airborne, writing his aunt about Jim, his cousin, in his heroic last moments of the war.

CARROLL: And those are -- that letter is more typical of what we've gotten from people, a letter from a combat experience. And that's really what we want to show, what these young men and women have gone through, what they've experienced. And the book is really a tribute to them through their own words. This is what they saw, what they went through. And what better way to pay tribute than what they wrote?

PHILLIPS: And there was a lot of censorships at periods of times, so it's pretty amazing to read some of these letters. And they're so detailed, and in depth, when it comes to a lot of actions in the war.

CARROLL: Yeah, the letters go from the Civil War all the way up to 9/11. We have e-mails by a young Marine named Roy Barcott (ph), who is writing to a friend of his about the war on terrorism. And you really only have censorship in World War I and II, and then recently -- Vietnam, Korea. The letters from the Civil War, they were not censored. They tend to be a little more graphic, but even in World War I and World War II, they figured out very ingenious ways of getting the word back home -- whether they wrote in code or whether they smuggled letters -- and they got the message back about what it was really like to be in that war.

PHILLIPS: You mentioned World War II. Here's one that I picked, and this is from Staff Sergeant Horace Evers. He's in Adolf Hitler's Munich apartment. This just amazed me, and you actually had the actual letter in your book, and it uses Hitler's personal stationery, crosses out Hitler's name, puts his name down, to describe to his family just the horrors of Dachau.

Here's what he says: "Dearest mom and Lou. Nothing has ever stirred me as much as this. I can't shrug off the feeling of utter hate I now hold for these people. I've shot at Germans with intent to kill before, but only because I had to, or else it was me. Now I hold no hesitancy whatsoever. The first boxed car I came to had about 30 what were once humans in it. All were just bone with a layer of skin over them. Most of the eyes were open and had this indescribable look about them. They had that beaten, "what did I do to deserve this?" look."

CARROLL: That's one of the first letters I opened when we did this appeal for people to send us in letters. And that's when I knew we were on to something. That letter -- and it has, as you said, Hitler's sort of mark at the top which he crossed out. And it was about Dachau. And here he is writing from Hitler's apartment about the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp. And that letter was sitting in Horace Evers' mobile home in Florida. He sent us a copy of it. He's alive and well today. And it's just the kind of history that's still out there.

PHILLIPS: Well, you see the compassion in his soul. It's awesome. OK, now, your favorite. I know you picked a letter. Describe it and read it to us, please.

CARROLL: Yeah, I shouldn't play favorites because I love them all for different reasons. But there's one I thought about recently in light of what's going on. It's by a young major named Thomas Sullivan, writing from Bosnia to his son on his 7th birthday.

And he writes: "Dear Connor, I'm very sorry I cannot be home for your 7th birthday, but I will soon be finished with my time here in Bosnia and return to be with you again. You know how much I love you, and that's what counts the most. I remember the day you were born and how happy I was. It was the happiest I've ever been in my life and I'll never forget that day. You were very little and had white hair. And I didn't let anyone else hold you because I wanted to hold you all the time. There aren't any stores here in Bosnia, so I couldn't buy you any toys or souvenirs for your birthday.

What I'm sending you is something very special, though. It's a flag. This flag represents America and makes me proud every time I see it. When the people here in Bosnia see it on our uniforms, our vehicles or flying above our camps, they know it represents freedom and for them peace after many years of war. This flag was flown over the pole of the headquarters of Task Force 467 Armor Camp Colt in the Posavina Corridor of northern Bosnia-Herzegovina on September 16. It was flown in honor of you, on your 7th birthday. Keep it and honor always. Love, dad."

PHILLIPS: Did you just get tears in your eyes when you came across these letters?

CARROLL: Oh, when I first came across that letter in particular, that's how we ended the original version of the book. We've since added some more letters that are in there now. And I can't emphasize enough that we are still looking for letters and e-mails from Afghanistan. Anyone can go to our Web site, WarLetters.com for information on how to reach us. It's in the book as well.

There's a much larger mission here, is to preserve these letters and e-mails before they're lost. And I can't express how grateful I am to the families and the soldiers and veterans who have contributed letters. That's what makes our job possible.

PHILLIPS: And you have so many letters. I even remember one from Helen Keller when she was writing to the reverend saying, "I'm not a Communist." I mean, you've really got a wide spread of people and...

CARROLL: We focus on the common servicemen and women who often don't get the attention they deserve. But we do have some famous people in the book, everyone from a young George Herbert Walker Bush writing after he was shot down in World War II, to Colin Powell, Schwarzkopf, we have Teddy Roosevelt. One of my favorites is Julia Childs, who served in the O.S.S., which is the precursor to the CIA. And these are all previously unpublished letters. They've never been seen before, and either these people or their families were so generous in sharing with us these letters. And we don't need the originals, just photocopies, and that's what we go off of.

PHILLIPS: Tell us about the literacy project before we go, Andrew.

CARROLL: Well, the overall project is to encourage Americans -- even if they don't want to send us letters, just to preserve them, to save them. And on our Web site, we have information on how you can keep your letters safe. And so there is an overall spirit to the project of really letting future and present generations know the realities of warfare through the letters of those who were there. These are the eyewitness accounts from trenches, from foxholes. This is what they experienced; this is what they saw.

PHILLIPS: By the way, how's little Connor now?

CARROLL: He's great. I mean, he's just straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He's just the cutest kid. He's going to be embarrassed when I say that, but I know the family very well, and they know that I admire them greatly and all the other servicemen and women who are doing the job for this country.

PHILLIPS: Well, we want to thank Thomas Sullivan, too, for those wonderful pictures they sent us. I mean, what a wonderful dad and a true soldier, and what honor and courage he has.

CARROLL: Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: Andrew Carroll, this book is just fabulous. "American Wars: War Letters." Extraordinary correspondence. Pick it up, if you haven't read it. Tom Brokaw said it perfectly, "it's a priceless treasure." Andrew, thank you.

CARROLL: Thank you so much.

PHILLIPS: You bet.

CARROLL: My pleasure.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com