♪♪ In partnership with the UNH library.

This is the New Hampshire Authors series from the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.

♪♪ Mike Pride ran the newsroom at the Concord Monitor for 30 years.

An award winning writer and editor.

He served for nearly a decade on the board for the Pulitzer Prize.

His book, My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross and the Fighting Fifth, tells the story of the Civil War through the lens of one group of New Hampshire volunteers.

His other books include Abraham Lincoln in New Hampshire, We Went to War, a collection of oral histories from World War Two, and Too Dead to Die, about the Bataan Death March, co-written with Steve Raymond, a survivor.

His most recent book is Our War: Days and Events in the Fight for the Union.

His stated mission is to free eloquent voices from the archives and find lost and little known stories.

Welcome historian, journalist, editor emeritus, and enthusiastic blogger, Mike Pride.

Thank you very much Becca, thank you.

[Applause] We have a lot to talk about.

Yes.

And we've already been talking for an hour before you even showed up.

But you just, you have your range is huge.

You have- You're doing so many things.

But I thought we might start with the World War Two book that you wrote with Meg Heckman.

Yes.

We Went to War, interviews with New Hampshire people who served or knew people who served in World War Two.

Extensive interviews, extensive research.

And having read through it, each one powerful in its own way.

And I asked you to pick out 1 or 2 to read.

So you want to begin with that?

Sure.

Glad to do that.

Thank you.

I'm going to read from the oral history.

These were, interviews that long interviews that we did Meg Heckman and I did at the Concord Monitor, with World War Two veterans and other people who lived through World War two from New Hampshire, hoping to show a wide variety of experience that happened during those times.

I wanted to say briefly that the book, came from, my own experience.

My dad was a World War Two veteran.

And I went down to Florida where he lived out his life, several times, intending to interview him about his World War Two experience, which he never spoke of.

But I never really got around to finishing it.

The one time I started, the equipment broke down.

I never got the story.

So that's one reason we started this project in my last year at the monitor, and it was wonderful to do it with Meg Heckman.

But the, the- Who's now a professor at, at UNH.

The story that I'm going to read a brief piece of, was told by a man named George Hollis, who was an infantryman fighting in the Philippines late in the war.

And I'm just going to read a little excerpt from what happened to him.

And I will tell you a little bit about it afterwards, because it has a bit of a backstory.

So this is George Hollis, fighting on the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines.

The one that sticks out with me happened on Mindanao.

It was like a small mountain, but it was rough terrain.

We couldn't seem to get the Japs off the top of it.

So we radioed back for the planes to come over and drop fire bombs on them.

We told them, we'll drop mortar shells, smoke shells on them so they'd have something to line up on.

But the Japanese were smart, too.

They dropped smoke shells on us.

So the first planes that came through saw the smoke and let the bombs go.

They hit us.

Didn't hit the Japanese.

Somebody said there's a guy up there who's badly burned.

I went up there and I thought, who is it?

I don't recognize him.

I mean, he was burned everywhere.

I asked the two medics there, and they couldn't even touch him.

He'd scream his head off.

So I said, who is this?

My friend spoke right up and he said, It's Smitty.

Is that you, Hollis?

He was so badly burnt, the medic said he should be dead now.

He shouldn't be talking.

And when he said, is that you, Hollis?

I said, yes, and he said, would you put a bullet in my head?

I can't take it any longer.

To get back to the aid station would have been at least 2 or 3 miles over rough terrain.

And you couldn't even touch him.

He'd scream his head off.

You could reach down and take part of his jacket, and you'd take flesh with it.

His face, it was black and burned, and his teeth were all sticking out.

So I knew he wouldn't make it.

I felt terrible.

I didn't know what to do.

But then I thought if it was me, I would want the same thing.

And he would do it for me.

So I did as he asked me.

So the, the little backstory that goes with that is that, you know, that that's a very, very rough story, but it it really conveys through the experience of one person what can happen in a war, the kinds of things that can happen in a war.

And so, but I thought when I'd done the interview and I'd send it back to, put it in an oral history form, send it back to George Hollis.

I thought, this is such a tough story, that I should really make sure that he wants this to be on the record in the newspaper, in the book.

And so I went back and I did a second interview with him just about this experience.

And then I had this conversation with him about, whether or not he wanted it in the book.

And, Mr. Hollis said, I really have thought about it.

I've talked it over with my wife, and I really want to be this, this to be part of the record, because of all the things I told you.

This is the one that really shows the war and my experience in the war best.

And it's the one I've thought about my entire life since the war.

Wow.

And what a gift to him for you to hear that story and to, and to preserve it for him.

I bet you find that a lot that people are really happy to have their stories, continued to have them solid for other people.

Well, I knew from growing up with my father that because he didn't talk about the war and a lot of his friends didn't talk about the war and what had happened, that a lot of these men had kind of bottled this up when they got back during the war.

So I think, you know, we I interviewed many people during this project who had spoken about the war.

But I also interviewed a lot who had never spoken about it.

And sometimes their families would come and set up, a camera in the living room while we did the interview so the family would be able to keep the entire interview on tape, which was a wonderful aspect of it as well.

I think it's hardest to do it with your own family.

Right.

That your experience with your dad is not unusual, but that when the outsider comes in and says, we want- I value your story.

I want to hear it.

Well, then I'll tell it and the family is so pleased to be part of that project.

Right.

Would you talk about Olga Courier?

Oh, sure.

Olga Currier was the very first person that we interviewed for this project for, for We Went to War and she, she actually ties together my work, I think, in an interesting way.

But Olga, was 84 years old.

She'd been a marine during World War two.

And I have to tell you, frankly, I didn't know that there were female Marines during World War two until we did this interview.

When we interviewed her, she was 84 years old.

She lives in Weare, New Hampshire.

The local high school was interested in participating in our project.

We allowed them to.

And they, the kids, the students wanted to set up a camera and shoot the interview with her.

So we set up the interview at, John Stark High School in, in Weare and Olga came to the interview, in her dress whites.

And they fit her just as well as they had in the 1940s.

And she was a delightful interview.

One of the things that she said that stuck with us, and it got into the story.

Meg actually, Meg Heckman actually wrote this, this interview, but, she said they had a slogan in trying to recruit women for the Marines, and the slogan was free a marine to fight So the women were basically hired to do secretarial and support work so that more of the male Marines who volunteered could be sent off to war.

And as she talked about this and how she thought about it during the war, it had come to dawn on her, especially, later in the war when men that she had worked with had gone off to fight and been killed at Iwo Jima or wherever.

That really the motto, she never said this, but, but the really the motto should be free a marine to die So she lived with that her entire life.

It's one thing to know about the Civil War or World War two, in terms of the battles and in terms of the statistics and the politics, but it's entirely different to know about it from the personal stories.

I think that's what really draws me in.

This book with Meg, you did during your last year at the monitor?

Is that what you said?

Yes.

So can you talk about all your years as an editor, as a journalist?

How that connects to the work you're doing now as a historian?

Well, it's very you know, I had, opportunities in my journalism career to go to big papers, and to be an editor at those papers.

But I decided that, every time that I went off and did an interview at some larger paper, I would sort of compare it to what I was doing.

And I would say, I really love the job I have now.

And what I loved about it was that it was about the community, and it was about knowing the people in the community.

So that was certainly one aspect that really is a big part of the way I view.

And they view you.

They knew me too, yeah, well, that's wasn't always the best part of it.

But, but but, you know, that sense of community, I think, really carries over into the way I view history.

I mean, I'm not really interested in writing, another book about how the Battle of Gettysburg unfolded.

But I was really interested in following three men from New Hampshire and what happened to them at the Battle of Gettysburg.

So I was able to write my chapter in the new book about July 2nd, 1863, by following those those three men through that the style that I've adopted as a, as a historian is very much, derivative of the work that I did as a journalist.

Well, I'm in awe of your organizational skills.

In, in Our War and in My Brave Boys, so many stories coming together and trying to, you know, get the reader to be able to follow through as you kind of weave one story into another.

It's it's amazing, tremendous amount of research, tremendous amount of research.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, the research is, addictive.

And there is, I mean, particularly with what's happening with the web.

You can find out- Let’s talk about your addiction, Mike.

My real addiction.

The blog, oh!

He’s addicted to the blog.

[Unintelligible] and it is our-war.com, and it's all lowercase.

I, you know, this is, something I started in November of 2012, right about the time that the book came out, and I've continued it.

I write, 2 or 3 times a week.

I've posted 185 posts since, I started blogging.

I did one this morning when I got up.

[Laughing] But he doesn't have to do it every day.

I don't have to, but I have to know what's coming next.

And it's a it's a it's funny because it's a little like a newspaper career.

You're sort of driven on by the days and each day, but but it's not so not quite like a newspaper, because you don't have to publish it every day.

Right.

But it has that sort of continuing feeling, and I always know and I'm always planning, as I was when I worked at the newspaper 2 or 3 days out or 2 or 3 blog posts out.

And it's a, it's a way of continuing the kind of work that I've done in these books, it is a way of telling people stories in 2000 words or 800 words or whatever they're worth.

And sort of giving observations about, the Civil War.

And sometimes if I really don't feel like writing about the Civil War and something else is on my mind, I write about that.

I mean, it's it's, but I can't, I say I can't stop, but I think I can, you know, I think there's going to come a time, [Laughing] there's going to come a time when I say, well, I've accumulated this, I have another book in mind.

And I think when I really get on that, I may really slow down on the blog, but I'm, I'm loving it right now.

And that also ties in with, I know you were recently in Exeter at the Historical Society.

You visit lots of historical societies and speak to groups, and they speak to you, so that must help you feed the blog.

Oh it's fantastic.

It's fantastic because they, you know, there's always someone.

And what I do is I, when I speak at a- in a town, I do my best to find out about that town’s Civil War history.

So at least part of my talk will be very direct and talking very much about the soldiers in that town, or some militia company in that town that went into one particular regiment, and here's what happened to them, or whatever it happens to be.

But inevitably, someone will come up m- after the meeting and have some- something from the Civil War that a family member left behind, or something about a New Hampshire person from that town, or just something else, you know, like I was.

I gave a talk in Temple this winter, and a fellow walked up afterwards and he said, you know, I was down in this, shop in, in Gettysburg that sells Civil War stuff.

And I, I saw this board there with this guy's name written on it.

And it's a temporary grave marker for this guy from New Hampshire.

And I said wow, can I see it?

And he, of course, he pulls out his iPhone or whatever it is, and it's right there.

So he sent it to me.

And pretty soon I'm doing this blog post on this guy from New Hampshire and what happened to him, why he would have a temporary grave, marker.

And then what would happen to him afterwards?

So, it is, and, you know, I've gotten so, I've read so muc original material about the Civil War that I can pretty much pick up a letter or an item or know somebody's company or somebody's regiment.

And right away, I already have some grasp of how that fits into the larger story of the Civil War, so- That personal angle is what gets me the New Hampshire angle.

First thing I did when I got a copy of your book was look in the index to see if I recognized any of the names.

There's someone in there, a jou- a journalist, I think, from Boscawen?

Yes.

My hometown.

Yes.

Like, I'm very excited to see that.

I also noticed that despite the darkness of so much of what's in these books, I think you look particularly for the little moments of humor.

Did you find that important to do, to look for the little bit of Yeah, I mean, yes, of course.

lightness that we can find?

You know, I think anything that humanizes the people in the stories and the stories themselves and, you know, I don't think there are a lot of ha ha falling down jokes in there, but what you find is, and maybe this wouldn't be funny to everyone, but like when the ninth New Hampshire Regiment marched up South Mountain.

First of all, when they arrived in Washington, they didn't have any ammunition.

And there were battles.

There was a battle going on, and two more about to begin.

And they were called out on their first night and they all fixed their bayonets because they thought they were going to do a bayonet charge in the middle of the night, and without having any, ammunition for their weapons.

But then, a couple of days later, they were going up South Mountain, and their colonel realized that they hadn't, that they didn't know how to load their weapons, and they didn't know how to shoot.

And so he stopped them on the way up South Mountain and gave them a quick lesson in how to load and shoot their weapons.

And after they had finished loading them, a lot of them were unsure that they had actually done it properly.

So they pulled the triggers.

And so you had all these guys firing their weapons in the, in the, on the way up South Mountain.

And the colonel, of course, got very angry with these men and said, stop shooting, stop shooting!

So, you know, there's certainly a lot of incidents like that.

Even just the letters.

I know you've, you know, you searched the world over for these letters, but just a letter that says, were growing dainty on, on spoiled pork.

Right, right.

Or I probably won't be home by haying time, but maybe in time for sugaring.

Right.

But just, that's such a touch of home.

Those of us who are in New Hampshire know what haying time is, and sugaring time.

Right.

I hope papa could be home by the time the birds come back.

Yes, absolutely.

Those just break your heart.

They really do, they really do.

Colonel Cross, would you talk a little bit about Colonel Cross?

One of the most, I look for the little things as I go through little things stick with me.

One is the little dog that got its jaw blown off.

It's something about the little dogs.

You read about all these horrific things happening to people, and then somehow that image of that little dog that somebody writes home about and Colonel Cross and his black bandana Right.

Could you talk about him?

And also, he was a kind of a controversial, even now because of his attitudes toward, of of his political because of his political attitudes, his politics.

So talk about him, My Brave Boys.

Yeah.

And he's there in the picture.

There he is.

Yes.

This is, by the way, the the picture if you if you have a look at it, it's a, it's an oil painting done by Charlotte Tybalt who is the for many years the the artist of the Concord Monitor and still is.

But this is Colonel Cross at Antietam.

Colonel Cross was, a, an adventurer before the war.

He left home.

He was a he was a printer.

Started out as a printer, but always wanted to be a writer.

So he was writing these stories about really writing New Hampshire historical fiction.

And these stories would run in his newspaper or in any newspaper that he could get to publish them.

But he worked for the paper in Lancaster, which was known as the Democrat, of course, county Democrat.

And then he went out west, as a young man.

He first he went to Cincinnati, he he hooked up with a, silver mining company, brought the first printing press across the, Rockies to Arizona, worked in the Arizona Territory as an editor and, and also fought Apaches and did all kinds of things out there.

And then when the Civil War began, he wrote a letter to his best friend back in New Hampshire and said, I am ready for the wars.

And so when he came back because of this military experience that he’d had, they made him the colonel of the fifth New Hampshire, which was just forming, he was, at the Battle of Fair Oaks, which is the battle that, James Larkin wrote about.

He was about to enter the next day.

Colonel Cross was, hit by nine balls.

One of them went through his thigh.

He came back north and, recovered from that.

Went back at Antietam.

The battle on the cover of the book, a shell, burst in front of him.

And he got, a lot of, little fragments in his forehead.

So he bled, and he had on his red bandanna in that battle.

He came, came back in the battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862.

He had just gone out on the battlefield when a shell exploded right in his face, and his men thought he was dead.

He was knocked to the ground.

He lost several teeth.

He couldn't get up.

He lay on the battlefield.

He was hit by a ball when he was on the ground there.

He wrote a letter to his father shortly after this saying it's not as bad as it sounds.

And he was back in harness by the Battle of Chancellorsville.

At the battle of, Gettysburg, he was in the wheat field.

He took his troops down into the wheat field.

He was leading a brigade by that time.

He went over to where the fifth New Hampshire, his regiment, to order a charge, and he was shot by a sharpshooter from who was hiding behind a rock shot in the, belly button.

Basically, it was a mortal wound.

He died that night at Gettysburg.

But he was extremely- He never made general.

He wanted to be a general very badly.

He went to see Lincoln and tried to get- to become a general.

But he was, he was a Democrat who, couldn't keep his mouth shut.

And so he had sort of what you'd call Copperhead leanings.

He was a friend of Franklin Pierce and would write letters to Pierce and talk about all the maligners in the army and the abolitionists and the, n-words and all that stuff.

So, he at some point, the Republican administration had no, reason to, promote Democrats, to, generals to give them their star.

And so Cross never got his star.

There have been some efforts in the legislature in New Hampshire to make him a general.

I have opposed those whenever I've had the opportunity because, I love the alliteration of Colonel Cross.

And I think I think he would hate to get his star, posthumously.

I might be wrong, but I think that he didn't get it when he was in life.

He was a colonel.

And I'm glad he's still a colonel.

He is.

He'll always be a colonel to me.

Even if they give him the star.

Well, he really comes to life in My Brave Boys.

And then he makes appearances in Our War as well.

There's an overlap between those two books.

One of the reasons that I, that I wrote Our War was that I had found considerably more material about Cross and the fifth.

After the fifth book came out, a lot of people wrote me and sent me things and said, I've got all these letters from my soldiers.

So I got I found out a lot of things that way.

One guy out in Idaho, I have to tell you, this, a guy out in Idaho wrote me after My Brave Boys came out and said, I have some material from my, relative who fought in the fifth New Hampshire this guy in, Nampa, Idaho.

And I said, well, that's great, but I mean, the book's already written.

What am I going to do with it?

I didn't say that to him, but I, I thought that, and so, then when I started on this new book, I sort of remembered this conversation, which had occurred eight years or nine years before.

And fortunately, I don't kill off my emails.

So I sort of half remembered what his soldier’s name was.

And I put that in the search thing.

And up came- comes his email.

So I said, oh God, I hope he has the same email.

So I emailed him, and within two days I had the man's diary.

I had all the letters that he had written home.

I had the shirt he had worn at Antietam, where he was, where he had been shot in the through the lung.

And so it had a hole in the shirt.

I had a picture, a picture of the photograph of that.

Just an astonishing trove of material detail, that one chapter story.

It’s treasure, it's treasure and you you're in charge of preserving that treasure.

Right.

It's a big responsibility.

Well, I don't really feel the responsibility so much.

-Oh well you should.

I just love it so much.

[Both laugh] Your enthusiasm really shows.

And I also noticed that recursive-ness.

One of the things I learned when I was reading your piece about how to do interviews is don't be afraid to go back to return to something that came before and explore it a little more, rather than letting the interview just move forward as the interviewee, you know, speaks on and on.

So it's an eight year, it's an eight year recursive-ness, but there it is.

Right.

There it is.

That is really important to do.

And it, you know, particularly doing the oral histories after you've done a few of those with the World War Two veterans, you would kind of know what it was you wanted to focus on, and that's then what you would want to go and ask more questions about.

And, and- To go back, the re interviews that's how you get those great stories like the one we started with.

Right.

That wonderful story doesn't come easily does it?

No it doesn't.

You have to you have to dig for it.

Right.

Well, our time together is just about up.

I want to thank you so much for the important work you're doing.

I love the way you say the word story.

As if it's something sacred.

Oh, it is something sacred.

Well, there have been an awful lot of books written about World War two and about the Civil War, but, you can't go wrong with a book by Mike Pride.

So thank you for sharing some stories from those books with us.

And go out and read them and keep writing Mike Pride.

Well thank you, thank you so much.

You've got a lot more work to do.

It's been great.

It's been terrific.

Thank you.

[Applause] ♪♪