♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Maxine Giannini: My name is Maxine Giannini.

I live in West Orange, New Jersey.

I was married to Ugo Giannini, my husband, for 39 years.

I taught piano my entire life, and Ugo was an art professor, an abstract artist, and a soldier in World War II.

Ugo was the love of my life, absolutely.

Maxine: What struck me the most is how you can be intimate and live with someone for 37 years and not know what the hell is going on in their mind.

Maxine: You don't know the mystery of the other person that you're living with.

You don't know what's contained in that next person.

You just have coffee with them, sleep in the same bed, and talk about taking the kids to school, you know, or what are we gonna eat for supper, but who that person is-- Maxine: I was so naive.

For years, we lived on a couple thousand dollars a year.

We lived on absolutely nothing, but I thought we had everything, enormous love for one another, wonderful food, beautiful music and art.

I thought we had everything that you could possibly want in life.

Two small children.

Mark Giannini: As I was going into school and seeing how the other kids were, I realized, "Hey, I got it pretty good at home.

You know, I'm pretty lucky."

You know, we didn't have money, but I felt so rich.

I had all of this spiritual nutrition.

Really we had it all, you know.

All the important stuff, I thought.

Maxine: By the time he retired, he was ill, starting to suffer from pulmonary fibrosis, which was gonna kill him.

And then when Ugo was in the hospital, Mark was there, and Ugo said, "Mark, get me my bullet."

Mark: We have some daggers here.

So this is the secret drawer.

Not so secret anymore.

Maxine: He said, "Let me die like a man."

He thought the bullet with his name on it didn't get to him.

Mark: And I think the bullet is in here.

Maxine: He took this bullet back with him from World War II and put it in his drawer.

Mark: Yeah, trinkets of war, the bullet with his name on it.

Maxine: And felt as long as he had that bullet, he controlled his destiny.

Mark: He asked me for this bullet when he was in the hospital when the doctors wanted to give him morphine, and he said, "Morphine is for foolish old ladies."

He said, "Bring me my bullet."

I said, "But, dad, we don't have a gun."

He said, "Yeah, Uncle Dick has the gun."

I said, "What are you gonna do?

You want me to bring the gun to the hospital?"

He said, "Don't you worry.

I'll take care of it."

He said, "I'll wrap my head and I shoot right in the temple."

He said, "That's what we used to do to the guys who were mortally wounded when they were begging to be shot and put out of their misery."

So he saw himself as that.

Well, this was the bullet with his name on it, but I never brought it to the hospital, and he didn't take the morphine.

Back it goes into this innocent-looking basket.

Maxine: In the hospital, Ugo had said, "Don't go into the studio until June because you'll be too upset."

He died in January, the last day of the month.

So I waited to enter the studio.

I don't believe in the afterlife.

You know, I think when you're dead that you're dead, but I think I've been proven wrong in some sense because after the funeral I couldn't sleep and I was just sitting in the dining room and I absolutely felt his presence.

I knew he was there.

It sort of gives me the spooks now because it was so real and there was a sense of his warmth and his person and then it disappeared.

It left me, but it left me with a sense that I had to tell a story.

He wasn't willing to leave without the story being told, and I didn't know what the story was until I went into the studio.

On his easel was a beautiful pastel, and it was H-hour.

H-hour is the moment of landing on D-Day.

Maxine: His last work.

He was landing.

For the rest of his days, it never left.

Maxine: I knew that he was still in the war.

The kind of naivete I had and the ignorance I had of his life's experience just absolutely was overturned by that one work.

H-hour is the moment of landing, and this was his moment of landing.

He knew it.

Maxine: So I really discovered him backwards.

I met him after he died where he really lived.

I knew that I had work to do so I became a war historian, and he left enough clues that I could follow it.

And when I found his letters--oh my God, I've never read anything like the letters that he wrote.

Most of the soldiers would say about the landing all hell broke loose.

They had one word.

I had a volume.

Ugo Giannini: Dear Walt, there was that subtle odor, the sweat of anxiety.

Whatever of dread, of honor was linked to other events, other times, other men from Troy to the Argonne.

Was I another victim, an expendable?

Just below the horizon, a long gray strip floated between sea and sky.

Something was out there.

John C. McManus: June 6, 1944 is a momentous date in human history.

It's a pivot point to the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany, not just the invasion but the campaign that will follow 'cause D-Day is only the beginning of this longer campaign.

And if it had failed, you might end up with these two terrible totalitarian empires basically deciding on the future of Europe and Eurasia.

So there's a lot at stake.

Drew Forni: By the spring of 1944, World War II is in its fifth year.

Germany controls Europe as 12 allied nations invade the northern coast of France to establish a foothold and drive the Germans back.

John: Of the five allied invasion beaches, the allied planners knew that the--Omaha was gonna be the toughest nut to crack, and there's a couple of reasons for that.

The terrain, a crescent-shaped beach.

It's 4 1/2 miles long.

So that crescent shape creates devastating flanking fire, what's called enfilade fire.

The Germans are putting in more obstacles, more mines.

They were feverishly fortifying it.

Maxine: There were huge tetrahedron metal obstacles.

There were hundreds of them.

Drew: The invasion is called Operation Neptune.

It involves over 150,000 sailors and soldiers.

H-hour is the moment the landings begin, 6:30 a.m.

Ugo is scheduled to land 70 minutes after H-hour.

Ugo: On route to the invasion beaches of Normandy.

I was a member of the 29th Division's combat Military Police platoon.

I was attached to the 116th Regiment.

We were scheduled to land on Omaha Beach with the first assault troops.

The German batteries were untouched, and they were waiting.

The square nose of our boat steadily pounded against the waves.

Four hundred yards out, the guns of Omaha burst through the silence.

A new fury of artillery shells and mortar fire swept against the boats.

We were moving into this deadly hail.

The beach seemed a dead deserted land.

No one moved upon it, but the body, like an animal, coiled.

One voice clear, "The ramp is coming down.

We can't move.

You got to swim for it."

This fella on the left, "Ah, I've been hit."

This fella on the right, "Ah, I've been hit."

I wasn't hit.

I got plunged into the sea.

When I burst to the surface... Maxine: The last three to jump into the water were Ugo, Drummond, and Rex Potts.

Rex Potts was Ugo's sergeant, and Drummond said, "I've been shot."

Then he said, "I've been shot again."

Mark: There was a half-sunk tank in the water.

They took shelter behind this tank briefly and then they realized they're a target 'cause they were shelling the tanks.

Maxine: He spotted mines, and these men were walking toward them and he yelled at them.

They didn't hear it, so he lied down parallel to the mines to try to get them not to walk on the mines.

But one man didn't hear him.

Mark: And my father looked back, and he saw this guy just disintegrate into just a torso.

You know, no legs, just... He had to keep going.

Maxine: There was nothing that he could do.

Mark: And he made it to the seawall, where they were pinned down for a long time, and eventually somebody came down from one of the bluffs and said they need an MP at the top.

He went up the bluff, and there was nobody there.

Drew: Ugo advances so far so fast that he finds himself alone, trapped between the two armies.

Mark: There was nobody there but a crater, and he jumped into it.

Maxine: And he turned around.

He said he saw the whole invasion coming toward him.

He could see the whole thing.

Maxine: It's then that he began to draw.

Drew: Ugo draws five sketches.

When friendly troops reach him, he grabs his rifle and continues fighting into the night.

Maxine: What impelled Ugo to draw at such a moment of terror?

These guys were all in shock.

He just came out of the water dripping red.

He lost his friend.

Now they're trying to kill him, and he's putting it down.

John: This is what he's seeing in the moment, at that time.

Mark: With the bullets and the mortar shells and people stepping on landmines, and he was busy drawing it all.

He just completely detached from it in order to see it very clearly.

Maxine: In art school, it's called croquis, and they limit your time to 2-minute sketches to see what you could get down in 2 minutes.

And if you look at those sketches, they're just a few lines that indicate the whole scene.

They're fast.

John: Imagine this guy in his hole, wherever he is, watching all this and sort of having the presence of mind to do this.

Maybe that was a stress reliever.

Maybe that's how he's getting through the day.

I've always kind of wondered about that.

Ugo: I, exposed, felt the presence of a strange lure.

It was there that the living and dying all for that terrible hour knew the ugliness of death.

And this note, it was not fear that prevailed but a resigned waiting for the moment that would leave one crushed and limp.

There would not be escape, but there was at least until today.

Drew: A few days after D-Day, Ugo makes this watercolor of him almost drowning during the landing.

In all, Ugo spends 242 days on or near the front lines, during which he makes 27 drawings and sketches.

Maxine: He was gonna have a record, and if he died, that record would be there for posterity.

Here is what he saw when he came in on the boat.

It was one wave after another of soldiers and material that came in, and there was nowhere to hide, nothing to stop the bullets.

Mark: And that's why they were just annihilated when they got out of those boats.

Maxine: And it was a slaughter.

This is the crucifixion.

This is the moment of truth, and Ugo caught it.

Guns down, clothes ripped off by blasts.

In this one moment, you can get the whole thing.

It was bedlam, and he drew the only drawings in the world of those early moments.

Drew: Sergeant Richard Taylor is the only cameraman who filmed on the beach that morning, whose footage survived the battle.

It has become iconic.

John: It speaks to the chaos of the moment.

One really important thing about Omaha Beach, it doesn't really matter who you are and what you've been trained for.

Now you're all in this mess together.

You kind of have to improvise.

It's also communicating the human story, the stress of the moment in some respects as nothing else can.

There's an honesty to it.

These sketches portray what it looked like at the time, but maybe a little bit about what it felt like.

Somehow they communicate that just like the Capa photos do.

Drew: Robert Capa, considered the greatest war photographer of all time, lands around the same time and location as Ugo.

Capa takes 11 photos during the assault that morning.

The photos are soon circulated worldwide and dubbed the Magnificent Eleven.

They are rightly considered sacrosanct.

John: The photos were remarkable, taken by somebody who was right there in the jaws of the beast.

If you didn't know any better, you would think, "Okay.

Well, Ugo must have just seen, like, the Capa images or whatever later on and just sketched it."

No.

This is what he's seeing in the moment at that time.

And how it mirrors the photographic evidence we have, so arresting on some levels.

That is part of why that is an irreplaceable treasure.

Mark: We would sometimes be up late at night eating peanuts watching "Combat!"

speaker: "Combat!"

Mark: And when we would see something like that, it would trigger memories for him and get him talking, and he would tell me things that he had experienced that were maybe similar to what was going on on TV.

Once, he produced this manila envelope.

He said, "This is for you if you want it."

I said, "What is it?"

He said, "It's just some drawings I made during the war."

I said, "Oh."

So I thought it was a special--a very special thing, and I think it was his way of sort of passing on the baton, like, to the next generation.

We never discussed them again after that.

Once he let it go to me, he never mentioned them again.

Maxine: My mother and my father.

Drew: Maxine was raised in Newark, New Jersey.

Her family was Jewish, middle class.

Maxine: My dad, he was a billiard champion in 1929.

My birth announcement is in the sports column of The New York Times.

"I was passing out cigars last night in Madison Square Garden.

So I had the baby," and that was me.

He was a gambler.

He had his own life.

My brother was a P-51 pilot in Iwo Jima.

I was 15 and aware of the war, but I was barely out of playing with dolls.

They were all athletes.

I was a misfit, like a stranger in my own family.

So I really didn't have a life that I understood.

Dad was in his 70s, and I said, "Dad, do you have any philosophy about how to live life?"

And he took a golf swing, say, "Have a good time.

Have a good time."

I thought, "What an idiot."

But the older I got, the more I thought, "What's the point if you don't?"

Drew: Ugo's parents are poor Catholic immigrants from Italy.

His father, Antonio, was a tailor.

Maxine: His father was adorable.

He was illiterate, and he smoked a pipe.

Drew: His mother, Clara, was a soprano opera singer while raising four boys.

Mark: When she would lose her temper, she wouldn't yell.

She'd sing a high C. It could break up any fight, but she could knock them dead with one high C. Drew: Ugo excels at drawing at an early age and attends art school in New Jersey.

Maxine: I think Walter and Ugo were the closest in terms they were both creative artists.

The baby brother, Harold, occupied a very special place in Ugo's life.

Mark: My father was the last of the four brothers to leave, and grandma, Clara, was very attached to him.

Maxine: It was the depression.

They lost their house.

Fifteen times, they were evicted.

Mark: My father was like the translator, and he would do the bills, write the checks.

Drew: In 1942, Ugo and his brother Harold were drafted into the army to fight in World War II.

Maxine: Harold was in another division of the war.

It was a secret division, and Ugo did not know where he was.

Mark: New York Port of Embarkation, Brooklyn, New York.

So this is him leaving America for World War II Europe.

This is where it started.

Maxine: He was such a movie star in his own right, you know.

Mark: And you can see, like--again, that's the before any kind of war trauma.

He was still a happy go-lucky guy in a way.

Drew: Ugo trains in England for 2 years as an infantryman in the 29th Division.

The 29th Division was created by the descendants of northern and southern soldiers from the Civil War.

That is why the 29th is known as the Blue and Gray Division, and their symbol is the blue and gray monad, the Korean symbol for life.

Mark: Most of the guys in the 29th Division had southern drawls, and he had a northern accent.

You know, they called him a Yankee.

They didn't think of him as an Italian, they just--he's a Yankee, you know.

Maxine: They call these troops unblooded troops.

In a bullfight, they make the bull crazy by hitting him until he's bloodied and mad with rage.

Unblooded troops.

You don't think that that's profound?

Ugo was an MP.

That's a military policeman.

It was just by accident that he became an MP.

They had boxing matches, and Ugo's sergeant said to him, "You're boxing tonight."

And Ugo said, "I don't box."

He said, "You're in the army, and you're boxing tonight."

Ugo gave him a left uppercut and knocked him out cold.

So the next morning, Ugo was called into headquarters and Ugo thought, "I'm in deep trouble now."

And they said, "Okay, either you box for the 175th and represent us or we want you to be an MP."

He chose MP.

That one smashing blow put him on Omaha Beach at H-hour.

Mark: And you can see it in that photograph of the company where everybody looks kind of happy and he's got that very grim look like, "Oh-oh, this isn't gonna be good.

What's coming is not gonna be fun."

Ron Miller: Those soldiers from other services that were shanghaied into the Military Police Corps were selected based upon whether or not they conveyed that confidence in themselves.

Maturity played a role in that as well because most of the military police were in their early, mid-20s.

Maxine: He was gonna make a record and nothing was allowed, no pictures, no drawings.

Nothing was allowed, but that didn't matter to him.

What he had was some pencils, Conté crayons, and a tiny watercolor box.

It was in his backpack.

He had determined that he would draw anytime he could get a chance.

Looking out the next morning to Pointe du Hoc with bodies lined up as far as you could see, and he said they were stacked like cordwood one after another.

Ugo: Dear Walt, I retraced my way from the battered remains of Vierville-sur-Mer.

I walked slowly, dragging my unwilling soul with me.

I was alone searching for my comrades, 37 men who were hurled ashore yesterday, or was it years ago?

I walked, stopped, resumed again, always against the invisible signs of war.

I reached the first enemy machine gun emplacement, leaned heavily against its sandbags.

They were vomiting their white, dusty guts.

It was still, very still.

I drew from a smashed wet pack of cigarettes.

The bitter nicotine tasted sweet.

I wanted to forget, to stop thinking or feeling.

I wanted to rest or to die.

male: This map, it's an actual briefing map of the landings.

It was called Operation Neptune.

These are the beach areas, each with a code name.

Now, I knew this.

I'd been briefed on this.

It was folded like this and kept in my pocket and another water fold.

Ugo: Dear Walt, on D-Day +4, I was in a field with the rangers.

Jerry bombed and strafed us.

A few of the boys were replaced by craters approximately 10 feet from me.

I didn't display any heroics until it was absolutely necessary.

The doggies used to be in back of me in those first days.

Florian: Okay.

So I'm Florian living in Saint-Clair-sur Elle in Normandy.

I am member of the mayor staff here on a monument for ten villages around that have been liberated at the same times by the 29th Division.

[speaking foreign language] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [speaking foreign language] ♪♪♪ Mike van den Dobbelsteen: My name is Mike van den Dobbelsteen.

I live in that house just over there across the river Ellé.

My wife and I came here when we bought this property, which was back in 2016.

We learned about the battle for the bridge across the river Ellé.

That house was used by the Germans on June 12th as a defense for the bridge.

This battle here for Le Pont de la Pierre, this one single bridge, simultaneously the Pont Julien bridge, which is about a mile further east from here, there were 540 American casualties.

On that one single day, 540 casualties killed, wounded, missing in action.

And there was nothing here, absolutely no single monument, and we thought, "No, that's wrong.

We should put up something in the fields."

And so we bought this property for the sole purpose of setting up a permanent monument in honor of those -- men of the first battalion 115th Regiment, and it's just absolutely amazing that that one single day in history is just largely overlooked.

Ugo: Dear Walt, I haven't heard from Harold.

Have you?

I'll keep the war here with its sights and smells and sounds, and you keep beauty and faith there.

Preserve it for me.

I will need it.

Yes, it is different where I am.

There is no bed but the ground often, and when it rains, it just rains until the sun shines.

There is a little difference between day and night for we do not undress to sleep, only occasionally removing our shoes.

There are no luxuries or toilets.

The ground suffices.

Do I miss the comforts of home?

No.

Because there is something else here which drowns all minor complaints, the silent question we know is always present.

"Will I see the dawn?"

Drew: Ugo and his commander Vern Johnson are part of a task force, a 600-man group formed to make the final breakthrough into the strategic city of Saint-Lo.

The speed and audacity of the task force takes the enemy by surprise.

Ron: If you're a member of that task force, it doesn't matter if you're infantry, artillery, military police, MPs.

When required, they did fight as infantryman.

Drew: After 12 days of fighting around Saint-Lo, the task force breaks through and secures the city.

Maxine: Ugo grabbed a Nazi's flag from the headquarters of the Nazis in Saint-Lo in the town hall, and he brought it back.

One of his jobs was to round up prisoners, and Ugo gave a cigarette to one prisoner who asked him for a cigarette.

The prisoner said, "Why did you give me a cigarette?"

He said, "I wouldn't have given you a cigarette if you were my prisoner."

And Ugo said to him, "That's why we're winning the war.

That's why we're winning the war."

You know, the wonderful drawing of coming out of the battle, that--and that huge explosion, that Saint-Lo gives you a perspective from up close.

It wasn't just men shooting rifles.

The artillery blasted the hell out of the cities.

That was so violent.

"Memoir of Saint-Lo or memories of Saint-Lo, France, Ugo Giannini."

Ugo: I had a rough 28 days like the first section.

It seemed like the first few days we were out on our tails and that we had made a terrible mistake and that we took too much of a beating.

I had one or two charcoal drawings which I did when we were stationed in various places.

I was appalled at the notion that no matter how carefully we prepare things, things may go wrong and indeed do go wrong.

John: The 29th is one of those divisions that's more or less in combat from D-Day forward to the end of the war.

If you land with the 29th on D-Day and you are still in play 5 weeks later at Saint-Lo, you are a fugitive from the law of averages, but especially, you know, the rifle companies, of course.

But I don't care what your job is.

Even as an MP, you know, it's pretty stark.

Ugo: Dear Walt, I celebrate by myself the thought that I am still alive.

There are indeed few who can say I'm a veteran of the 29th Division.

All who have not been killed but wounded have returned into action, indestructible until they die as indeed only two remain in my old outfit.

I must indeed feel queer like a ghost who does not know.

Since the first hour of D-Day when I dragged myself like a wet rat ashore, I lead a charmed life.

But when will that charm be lost?

Maxine: He made that?

Mark: Of course.

I wanna take it outside.

Oh, you've got some of this moth-proofing cedar.

Keep the moths out of it.

Smart.

Maxine: This is Saint-Lo.

Maxine: Can you imagine he took that down from Saint-Lo?

For God's sakes.

Mark: It's in good condition, you know, for its age.

Maxine: It's unbelievable.

Mark: My father was smart to put that little cedar wood in there so the moths wouldn't eat it.

Nancy Heins-Glaser: And welcome back.

Nancy Heins-Glaser with Maxine Giannini and the story of getting the story published of your husband's work and his document of D-Day.

Maxine: "Drawing D-Day: An Artist's Journey Through War" by Ugo Giannini with Maxine Giannini.

So it's really Ugo's book, his letters, his drawings.

Nancy: I think really the determination you have had to get this published is the story for all of us.

Maxine: After 49 rejections, I got slightly discouraged, so-- Nancy: Well, you've done it.

It's coming out.

Maxine: It's almost a dream.

Yeah.

Nancy: Yeah.

And, you know, I don't know why, but I just appreciated you from the moment I met you because I knew you were gonna get this done.

Maxine: At that 49th rejection, I said, "This is not gonna happen."

So I mortgaged the house, and in 2013 that book was self-published.

I became Ugo's ghost when I wrote that.

Drew: Maxine spent years exhibiting Ugo's drawings at dozens of galleries and events, including the 50th and 60th anniversaries of Normandy.

Maxine: I was on a tour with the 29ers.

We were in Brest.

I had this tracing.

Mark: When my mother showed Joseph Balkoski, who's a war historian, this photo and--he said, "I know that artist."

And my mother said-- Maxine: Joe, you can't know my husband's work.

I have it here.

You know, there's--you know, he said, "Meet me at the armory."

Drew: Joseph Balkoski is an expert on the 29th Division and the custodian of the division's archives, including the after-action reports.

During the war, Ugo drew numerous covers for these monthly reports.

Mark: Balkoski, who's a war historian, didn't know my father's name 'cause my father never signed any of the "After Action Report" covers.

So he only knew by the style that this was the same artist.

Maxine: I had never heard of them or seen them, and Joe had them there at the armory.

Mark: So my mother got to see the original one in color in the armory with the other "After Action Report" covers.

Dorothea de La Houssaye: One day my phone rings, and this very melodious voice says, "Are you Dorothea?"

And I said, "Yes, I am Dorothea."

And she said, "Yes, I heard about you."

And she said, "My name is Maxine Giannini, and I want to tell you about my husband's drawings."

And the rest is history.

I'm Dorothea de La Houssaye, and I am the founder and chairman of the Normandy Institute here in Normandy.

Our mission is really to carry forth the legacy of the valors of the Battle of Normandy, which is very important in the history of mankind to really go forth and tell the story and inspire young people by what happened here.

We are at Chateau de Bernaville, and it served as the headquarters to the German top general who was commanding this whole area on D-Day.

There was a photo taken on the steps of the chateau with General Rommel when he came to visit his general here.

male: Someone you know is here.

Dorothea: Look how lovely you look.

I am so happy.

Maxine: Oh, I'm so happy.

Dorothea: I'm so happy to see you.

Maxine: Oh, thank you.

Dorothea: Good to be here, and you'll be here for a long time.

Dorothea: By the time that I met Maxine, she had already published a book out about the drawings, and we literally struck up a friendship immediately.

I went to visit her at her home in New Jersey and saw the drawings, and I knew in that instant that I was looking at something so exceptional, unique.

She said, "I don't know what to do.

I need to get these drawings in a proper museum or somewhere where they will be appreciated and where they will be safe."

She was already 20 years into that mission.

I was very touched by her amazing perseverance, her eloquence, and also how she put Ugo's work in the broader context of the war and what he fought, and her mission became my mission.

Maxine: "Good night, and write again.

Ugo."

Drew: While writing the book, Maxine discovers Ugo's love letters written during the war to and from his girlfriend at the time, Renee.

Maxine: His expression of love was so enormous and so profound.

So I think that's what kept him alive.

I thought that they were very important as documents of World War II because people were silent about the war.

The men did not speak.

Drew: Following their victory at Saint-Lo, the 29ers are sent to the city of Brest.

What awaits them are 40,000 enemy soldiers hidden behind medieval fortifications and in underground bunkers up to 150 feet deep.

The defenses also include three huge 300-millimeter naval defense guns that are able to fire on the infantry and tanks' inland.

Their effect is devastating.

Maxine: This is Le Conquet outpost, which was outside of Brest.

The American and a dead German helmet, and this was just the beginning.

Ugo: And I must say this.

However awesome D-Day was, and indeed it was, I continued through for another 9, 10 months of combat.

So I have more harrowing experiences after D-Day.

Maxine: Ugo described at some points in the war, especially in Brest, that the war had descended into savagery.

He had a horrifying nightmare every once in a while, and he would scream in an awful voice, "The head, the head."

Ugo went on patrol.

He found the head of his friend who had been on patrol in the morning.

They had shared a cigarette, and it's a personal drawing because Ugo knew the man.

Drew: After 3 weeks of some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Americans suffered 10,000 casualties and Brest suffers destruction on a scale faster than any other French city.

The Americans captured 40,000 prisoners.

Maxine: Ugo was busy rounding up prisoners, and he didn't have any ammunition in his rifle.

One guy spit at him, so Ugo socked him across the face and got him into the truck.

"Don't fool around with me.

You don't know who I am."

Maybe that was the worst time for Ugo, and it's the first time that he ever admitted that he had what he called war nerves.

Ugo: My dear, the Jerries turned their 300-millimeter naval guns at us.

Two landed in my backyard.

A huge chunk of shrapnel tore a window through my tent.

To make matters worse, our own P-47s bombed and strafed our area.

Dear Walt, I try as much as humanly possible every day to outlive the grievous fears.

Only lately I have become inclined to nerves.

Dear Renee, have you forgotten me?

Then why do you not write?

I live in vain for your letters, but they do not come.

Dear Walt, a shell landed 4 yards in back of me, 4 feet to be exact.

I measured it next day.

It was a dud or I wouldn't be writing about it.

My dear, I resent fiercely your implications that I'm having a good time with the mademoiselles.

Little fool.

At the front, there is only death and horror.

Drew: Brest is Ugo's breaking point.

During the battle, he spends 5 days in the hospital for battle fatigue.

John: During World War II, the US Armed Forces do a reasonable job of dealing with whatever we're gonna call it: shell shock, combat fatigue, PTSD, all the above, okay?

They find in the course of the war that this can happen to anybody.

So they're really learning on the go, but they're doing it in the context of having to fight the war and win it and maximize the manpower and send people back.

So there's self-interest to that.

I don't think there's anything unusual about Ugo's struggles, but--whether they really dealt with it the way we think they ought to have or talked about or whatever.

I mean, that's a different era in a different generation, I guess.

Drew: After the war, the army makes a pioneering documentary about veterans suffering from battle fatigue, or what we now call PTSD.

Directed by legendary filmmaker John Huston, the film is viewed as too disturbing for release, and it's suppressed by the government for decades.

Ugo: Need for everything.

They--bombs.

I got killed nearly this morning.

male: You nearly got killed.

Where were you at the time?

Ugo: Saint-Lo, I believe.

Some of--I don't remember.

male: What were you doing when the planes came over?

Ugo: I was in a hole.

Maxine: I think they were ashamed.

I think what they had seen, what they were forced to do--you take a little boy, grow up in a civilian climate, you know, and tell him, "Don't kill the turtle.

Don't hurt an animal.

Be kind to your friends."

And then they train you to be a savage, and that's a huge change.

How do you overcome that?

The immensity of other people shooting at you and killing you and destroying you in any way possible has finally written itself onto these faces.

Ugo: Dear Walt, in the past few days, I have not been familiar with myself, and last night's sleep was wildly haunted.

One face caught in a whirlpool of darkness swam up to my own face and the eyes held such terror.

It is difficult to sleep, and there is no rest from fatigue.

Drew: Ugo and the 29th Division spent 242 days in combat during the war.

The division suffers a casualty rate of over 200%, the second most in the entire armed forces.

That means that the soldiers Ugo landed with on D-Day were all replaced twice.

Maxine: He said that in a letter.

He said he knows fewer and fewer people.

John: It is not an easy thing losing all your friends and wondering, 'cause you don't really have a tour of duty, "When will this ever end?"

Ugo: Dear Walter, as optimistic as everyone in the states is, I have this to say.

The Germans do not give up simply because they have fanatic leaders, and I assure you that the shaded area of the map conceals from your eyes many truths.

I have seen all I ever want to see of war and now I'm tired and desire only, only to come home.

But who knows?

I am only a number on a file.

Mark: Dad and I were down here eating peanuts watching the "Combat!"

episode and some guys were like frozen in terror, and he said, "You know, that actually happens."

He told me the story of when he got isolated.

At one point, he was ahead of the front lines 'cause he was always getting there to set up a road sign or whatever.

He heard some SS troops, the boots coming towards him, and he started to run and he felt his legs turn to lead.

He could not move his leg.

He couldn't run.

He could walk, but he couldn't run.

That kind of terror.

Maxine: In Germany, he was alone in the forest and he spotted two German SS.

There was one house.

He knocked on the door.

He said, "I need to hide in your house."

She hid him.

The SS knocked on the door.

They said, "Have you seen any Americans?"

And she said no.

When they left, he asked her, "Why did you do that?"

And she said, "I have a son in the war, and I hope if this happened to my son, someone would save him."

It was in January.

Ugo went into an empty house in one of the villages that they had captured, and he heard a sound and he knew somebody was upstairs.

He said, "Halt.

Who goes there?"

And from upstairs, his brother said, "Ugo?"

They met in Germany that way.

Ugo: Dear mother, Harold is okay, and I guess that's all you wanna hear.

He told me he sent you a bottle of perfume not to be opened until he returned.

Good night, mother.

And a pipe full of pleasant memories, pop.

P.S.

I'm mailing some packages of art supplies home.

Dear Walt, looks like I am going to survive this thing after all.

Can you help organize my materials and go to the high school and get my records so I can apply to art school when I get back?

Hopefully, I'll be home soon.

Mark: When he came back from the war, his girlfriend wanted to go back to whatever it was they had, but he couldn't do it.

Her letters to him during the war really gave him sustenance.

He was staying alive for her.

It may be just that my father couldn't go back.

You know, he had seen too much.

He and his buddies from the Art Students League went back to Europe on the G.I.

Bill to look up Fernand Léger, and they found him and he opened up his atelier.

And while they were there, they did some traveling to see the sights.

But look how happy my father is there.

You could just feel the wind in his face, you know, and just the freedom sunbathing, trying to pick up girls.

You know, this is just hanging out and having fun in Europe after the war.

Like, now you can go back to being a normal person.

I think he had a Leica--an old Leica camera.

The cool Americans, they fought hard for their freedom so they could enjoy it.

Drew: The G.I.

Bill provided federal aid to help veterans to adjust to civilian life again and making it possible for Ugo and a couple hundred other American veterans to go to Paris to paint under legendary artists.

Jean Du Chatenet: [speaking foreign language] Maxine: When he went to Paris, everyone said, "Don't study with Léger because he'll influence you to the point where your work will be unrecognizable from Léger."

Léger has these monumental works with the heavy black lines, and Ugo did a painting in Léger's class that was influenced by Picasso and Léger said to Ugo, "You gotta kick him in the pants.

You can't be influenced by him."

But when Ugo was painting now with big black lines around everything, Léger is like, "Better."

Drew: In 1914, Léger is drafted into the French army for World War I. He spends 2 years on the front lines.

Jean: [speaking foreign language] Drew: Léger makes sketches during the war of the scenes before him.

Jean: [speaking foreign language] Drew: Some of his paintings that come from the war are some of the most valuable Léger paintings that have been sold to date.

Maxine: Léger was an ex-G.I., and I think he had a lot of empathy for these men.

I think he had a reverence for Léger.

You know, that was like touching a fire, the real source, sort of a hero worship kind of thing.

Maxine: Léger came over for spaghetti.

Ugo made spaghetti dinner for him.

They did go and see a Léger show.

Ugo was with him.

And they stood behind one of Léger's paintings, and two men were in front of them discussing the meaning of Léger's work.

Léger said, "You know, they think they know what they're talking about."

Ugo: We go to Léger's school in the morning to draw from the model and for criticism.

It is a 10-minute walk over the butte past Lautrec's and Picasso's old studios.

The trouble with having a nice studio is that it is always full of visitors.

Of the new road of art, we agree on and decide a few things, but one thing that we all feel is true is that the great creative art of our generation will come out of America.

Jean: The farm of Fernand Léger.

Drew: During World War II, Léger was considered a degenerate artist by the enemy and fled to the US for his own safety.

He hid dozens of his paintings in this attic.

Jean: [speaking foreign language] Dorothea: I'll tell you a story about Fernand Léger.

You know, the town of Saint-Lo was entirely destroyed by that bombardment, which was, of course, also a very big story in the 29th Division, and the Americans felt so bad about that.

I mean, it was war obviously; that they gifted a hospital to that town called the Memorial Hospital, and in the entrance of the Memorial Hospital is a huge mural by Fernand Léger.

Drew: After 2 years of studying in France, Ugo returns to the United States and moves back home to care for his aging parents.

Maxine: All these years, I haven't seen these.

I started out as a painter.

I had my own studio.

It was over a pork store.

So-- Maxine: I was 5 and studied with a piano teacher for a year, and then she said, "You're too good for me.

You have to go to my teacher."

This is Mrs.

Haskil.

I wouldn't be here without her.

She saved me.

She was an extraordinary pianist.

Drew: Clara Haskil studied in Vienna under Theodore Leschetizky.

Leschetizky studied under Carl Czerny, who was a pupil of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Maxine: She took me to an opera, and I was always perfectly dressed.

I got my pocketbook and my shoes, and everything had to be just so.

And I looked at her and I said, "Mrs.

Haskil, your dress is on inside out."

And she looked at me and she said, "It's entirely unimportant, my dear."

Well, that was big news to me.

Maxine: I was accepted to three colleges when I graduated high school, but my father wouldn't pay, and he had plenty of bucks.

He said, "You don't need an education to have babies."

So, I mean, I came out of the Dark Ages.

I was married before.

I married--the night I went on my honeymoon, I thought, "I've made a terrible mistake.

I know."

Mrs.

Haskil really gave me the reason-- the reason to exist, and she taught me how to teach.

She gave me students.

She had been to a lecture of contemporary music by Walter Giannini, Ugo's brother, and Ugo had attended that lecture.

He had just returned from studying with Fernand Léger in Paris, and she said, "I have someone that I'd like you to meet."

So she invited Walter and Ugo to her house and she invited me, and I looked at Walter and I said, "Well, if it's him, I'm not going out with him."

And I looked at Ugo and I said, "If it's him, I'm going to marry him."

I knew it then.

He didn't, but I did.

And we started dating.

For a couple of years in a very passionate relationship and I absolutely adored him, and it was not a simple relationship.

Ugo was extremely damaged by the war and I had no idea.

When he came back, he didn't wanna get a license, he didn't wanna sign a paper, he didn't wanna have Social Security, he didn't wanna be known.

He didn't have a phone, he didn't have a car, and needless to say, he didn't wanna have children.

So I thought a little love could conquer everything.

He would walk with me and he say, "What the hell are you doing with me?"

He said, "I'm not having children."

He said, "I'm not bringing anyone into this world."

So I said, "Listen, I wanna get married and I wanna have children, and I can see where this relationship is going and you're perfectly content with it as it is and I'm not."

So I took a tour for 4 months across Europe.

It was an art tour, and I said, "If you wanna marry me and if you wanna have children and have a family and a life, when we get back to the States, meet me at the boat."

And he was there.

It took him a couple more years to make it to the wedding, but he was committed.

We were married in my house and then we went to my parents' country club and had a reception.

It was a mixed Jewish, Italian country club, and grandma sang "Vissi d'arte," you know, Italian drama.

Mark: She didn't wanna give him up.

He was the last of the four brothers to get married, and that was why at the wedding Clara said to my mother, "How could he do this to me?"

Right.

Maxine: You know, we lived on love.

We lived on nothing.

We had an old Ford, and in order to get our Ford started, he had to roll it down the hill.

So I would watch that there was no traffic.

We really were idiots, -- really.

One day we were in Carnegie Hall and we had great middle seats, and he disappeared.

I couldn't find him.

When I got up just to look, he was at the far end of the theater with his back against the wall.

I said, "What's going on?"

He said, "I can't sit with my back exposed.

I have to know where I am and what's in front of me."

I didn't know that this beautiful man carried all of these things in him.

Ugo: The problem is to create a unique pictorial space where the life of the mind and image could live.

Maxine: He had a studio in Morristown.

I didn't see his work, but he brought home a series of pastels that were absolutely Ugo original.

No more Léger.

Léger was out of it.

But Léger was a great designer, and I think whenever you look at a painting by Ugo, it's not happenstance.

He knows what he wants your eye to see and how to lead it.

Money was always a problem.

I gave a few lessons.

He had a few night classes.

I said, "Listen, why don't you try to sell a few pieces in New York, try to get a gallery, and that might solve our problems."

So he took a portfolio into New York, and he went to the gallery.

She said, "I'm sorry," to him.

"My stable is full."

Didn't sit well with Ugo, who had quite a temper.

He was about to leave.

She said, "Well, wait.

Why don't you let me see what you've got?"

And he looked at her and he said, "Go to hell."

And he came home.

That was the only time he tried to get a gallery.

And so he really worked as a free spirit.

When the children were older and we didn't have insurance, we decided that he should try to teach, and we sent out 100 letters.

Out of those letters, Ugo got three interviews, and out of those three interviews, he got a job with Sister Gerardine at Caldwell College, and that's how we survived.

Sister Gerardine Mueller: I knew that we needed the department, and I had to find the right teachers.

I interviewed Ugo, and he had a wonderful background.

He didn't have the formal education that most professors do, but he had the experience, an invaluable experience.

He ended up with us.

Thank God.

Drew: Ugo was one of the first instructors Sister Gerardine hired as she created the school's new art department.

Gerardine: He was exactly what I would have wanted for the girls.

The male figure was so important because it was all women.

It was like a father figure that we needed.

If you interviewed any of the girls, they're very grateful to him.

To this day, they will talk about him in very glowing terms.

Meg Poltorak Keyes: I had nicknamed him the wizard of Caldwell in the art department just kind of--he almost floated down the hall, which was kind of interesting 'cause you knew he had something he--something was going on, and he was going.

He always wore a jacket and the distinctive black horn-rimmed glasses, wore Ugo.

You could see him from miles away.

There was always something different about Ugo as a continental kind of gentleman who had different experiences in Europe.

So he brought that with him.

And he didn't say much about it, but you could ask him anything.

So he not only taught art, but he taught you about life and things outside and how to see art and how to see the world, and he was kind about it.

That was what was so cool.

He was just a kind professor, and I could see why Sister Gerardine would trust him because you could.

He was just a really cool individual.

Maxine: When he got that job, he went right back to the beginning of Egyptian art and studied the whole history.

I mean, he was profoundly dedicated to making them understand art.

Gerardine: We were totally thrilled, and he was able to have enough time to do his own work.

Mark: In the summer, he would transform and take the tie and jacket off, loosen up a little bit.

And when you'd smell the turpentine, then the pipe, and I thought, "Okay, this is good.

He's painting," you know.

And my mother would be downstairs cooking meatballs or something, you know.

Then I felt like now the house is truly in harmony, you know.

Ugo: Modern art appears as a potent sign of man's sense of isolation, of personal rupture from the long-preserved values and concepts which no longer correspond to his present desires and needs.

Such an interior expression as abstract art could not have come into existence save as the consequence of a most profound need, the need of the artist to secure his identity not to his social environment but to the structure of reality.

Laurie Giannini: My father and I would always go to museums, and he really looked at art.

I mean, he had a slow eye, and that's what he taught me to have when you look at art, a slow eye: to really take your time, look into it, absorb it because it's a language all its own.

It's not something easily understood.

He was an artist for over 40 years after the war and he never thought he had a body of work.

He always thought, "I don't have enough work to show."

But he had several bodies of work, many bodies.

Maxine: He was really a mathematician in terms of what you see visually.

Ugo: It has become my increasing awareness that the creative struggle itself and all its implications received in the final effort is the meaning of the image.

Neil Printz: I was hired to teach art history at Caldwell College, and it was one of the best moments of my life.

This is how I first came to know Ugo, and this is how Ugo and I first came to clash with one another, the arch modernist and the postmodernist.

I'm Neil Printz.

We're at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in Lower Manhattan.

I'm the editor of the catalog raisonné of Andy Warhol's paintings, sculptures, and drawings.

We have very different methodologies, very different approaches to art.

I felt that there was so much more that was acceptable.

I think that Ugo did a very intense and rigorous sense of the discipline, so we didn't exactly get along in a professional way.

I mean, it was nothing personal.

It was quite--it was an intellectual clash.

This is without knowing his work.

It's important to say that Ugo did not make a big display of his own work.

You didn't see it at the school.

I got my car.

I drove out to West Orange and went to their house and was wowed.

Plethora of work all over the house.

The George Nakashima furniture, the pottery by Toshiko Takaezu, Ugo's work.

She was a piano teacher.

Wow, these are really cultured people.

And then I looked at Ugo's work and I was totally floored.

It was beautiful.

It showed everything about his training as an artist, and you could see the finesse.

You could see how thoughtful, how hard-won these paintings were, how elaborated in design they were, and I thought, "He's as good as any artist who's really well-known from this time.

His work can stand with their work."

And it's the best-kept secret there is.

If you're going to paint without reference to recognizable objects, you have to have a very rigorous approach to what you're doing, why you're doing it.

There has to be a sense of urgency.

There has to be a sense of belief.

Belief is a very embattled concept in art these days.

We're ironic, we're referential, but we don't believe in quite the same way.

To look at a Malevich, you have to believe that he's really approaching the void.

To look at a Mondrian, you have to believe in the spirituality of what he's doing.

Ugo was a believer.

Maxine: "May, June, France, 1984, D-Day commemoration with Mitterrand and other leaders of Utah Beach."

Isn't that something?

In 1984, Ugo got a call from Vern Johnson, who was his commanding officer and an MP, and asked him to visit the beach.

Go back with him, and Ugo was torn.

Part of him wanted to go and part of him dreaded going.

He ultimately did not return then, but on the 40th anniversary reawakened his interest in war.

Drew: The 40th anniversary of D-Day becomes a watershed moment for Ugo.

Ugo unleashes a torrent of ideas for paintings based on his war experience.

Maxine: The most important series he ever did started at that time.

It was about the beach, the landing, and the 29ers.

I think that haunted him the last decade of his life.

Obstacle, shrapnel, the helmet.

They ate in their helmet.

The helmet saved their lives.

Oh, no, that's a ramp.

Well, this is the LCA ramp.

Ugo: One was clear, "The ramp is coming down.

We can't move.

You got to swim for it."

I clutched at my rifle.

"Should I let it go?"

We ducked down.

This fella on the left, "Ah, I've been hit."

I ducked down again.

This fella on the right, "Ah, I've been hit."

I wasn't hit, okay?

But those fellows went back, but I kept going.

I had a rough 28 days like the first of section.

Maxine: "Formation battle of the 29th Saint-Lo."

Blown away.

Laurie: The symbolism of the cross was not just a religious icon.

It was a symbol for being there alive or dead.

Six feet up or six feet under.

Maxine: So his most intimate thoughts and his deepest and most profound thoughts are in his work, and that was private.

Maxine: Well, this work is terribly sophisticated visually.

He pushes it back, and he brings it forward all at the same time.

So he plays with your eye.

He's a master at the game, but the work itself is tragic.

He grieves the elegant cross, the nail, the blood.

Maxine: Obstacle.

This was a theme of Ugo for the rest of his life.

The day that Ugo died, he was shouting, "Watch out for the obstacle.

Be careful."

He said, "You know, it's a trap."

I wish I knew my husband better than I knew him because I had no idea all of this was living inside of him.

Maxine: This is a collage, and he used surprisingly junky material.

I remember him sitting in his robe with this painting behind him.

We talked about it.

It's the aftermath of a battle: what happens to the civilians, what happens to their homes, what happens to their cities and their churches and everything that's sacred.

It's just burnt out.

There's nothing left, nothing left, and the battle goes on somewhere else.

Maxine: Bloody Omaha.

There's the blood.

And, again, the symbol of the cross, that's for the guys that died.

The arrow for the landing.

The use of the space is stunning in itself.

It's a technical work.

A requiem is a tribute to the dead brilliantly engineered to create tension in the planes of the work so that they don't jump out and they don't jump back, but they're held visually in the foreground.

But then as an emotional work, it's Ugo's last statement, just a brilliant human statement about war on D-Day.

Neil: He's looking back 45 years at his experience and he's assimilating it through a language that he spent 4 decades developing.

Ugo has his vocabulary--his collage vocabulary, his compositional, tonal and chromatic vocabulary down by this point, and he's freer to deal with the emotions that he's been probably carrying wrapped up for all those years.

Maxine: So here's a man who spent his last years making a life's work happen so that these terrible events would be remembered forever.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Maxine: 1991, we took a trip to Paris.

He wanted to show me the beaches.

We got in to Paris on Friday, and in August it was awfully hot.

Saturday night he ran a fever.

Sunday morning he coughed up blood.

I got him to the hospital, and he had pneumonia.

Drew: The doctors informed them that Ugo has pulmonary fibrosis.

He needs to return to the States and see his doctor immediately.

Maxine: He was in the hospital for a week.

When he got out, he wanted to go to the beaches, and I said, "You're gonna get sick if you--you'll get pneumonia again."

I was too worried.

So he didn't go back.

Drew: Ugo doesn't make it back to Omaha Beach, and his health deteriorates over the next 2 years.

Maxine: He said sometimes the slightest rise in the sidewalk would be like a hill for him, and he retired at Caldwell.

He was on oxygen.

[music in foreign language] Maxine: I remember it was really gorgeous day and I said, "You know, let's go to the beach."

And he said, "I have to work.

I have to work."

Neil: I decided I should do a show of Ugo's work.

With Maxine's help, we made a selection for the gallery.

Lord knows how we did it.

There was so much work.

It was so beautiful, so well-attended, but the poignantly sad thing was Ugo never saw the show.

It broke my heart, and I know it must have broken Maxine's heart that he never got to see it.

Maxine: On his deathbed, he raised his hand and he said, "I'm not finished yet."

It's because he wanted this known, and he wanted to finish works about D-Day and the war.

You know, he raised his hand to call it.

Drew: Ugo died in 1993.

He was 74 years old.

His funeral was at Caldwell College.

Sister Gerardine delivered the eulogy.

"I've known Ugo just about 30 years.

When I met and interviewed him here, it felt as if this was a person we would want our students to learn from both from the wealth of art and the values of life.

When I met Maxine, the first thing she said was, 'My husband is a wonderful artist.'

One of the last things she confided was, 'He's a wonderful man.'

That covers the great expanse that was Ugo."

Maxine: There were two nurses that just fell in love with him.

They came to the funeral.

They said they never saw a kinder or a sweeter patient.

And they said that if you're mean and you're sick, you get meaner; but if you're sweet and you're sick, you get more angelic.

Dorothea: Through extraordinary circumstance just before COVID, I was introduced to Tammy Call, the director of the new National Army Museum in Virginia.

She immediately, immediately understood how important this was, and then 2 years later when I finally was able to travel again to the United States and I went to visit that museum, the penny dropped and I thought, "This is where the drawings need to be."

Dorothea: Oh my goodness, it's so good to see you.

How are you?

Maxine: So happy to see you.

Dorothea: And she sent her chief curator out to come and look at the drawings and he was blown away, and they started working on acquiring the drawings.

Then I happened to bump into the new person in charge of acquisition at the museum, and I literally pulled at his sleeve and I said, "We're not gonna let this go.

These drawings have to be in your museum."

And he made it happen.

So that was amazing.

They found a donor, one donor who did the acquisition for the museum.

Drew: For 30 years, Maxine has tried to preserve Ugo's legacy by selling the drawings to a museum.

She's finally accomplished that goal.

Mark: Love you, mom.

Maxine: I think everyone has a hidden soul.

I do.

You know, unless you're a moron.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Neil: Not only were she and Ugo really in love, that it was a great love for both of them, but she has this incredibly strong sense of the worth of Ugo's work.

She's his greatest advocate and partisan.

Dorothea: I feel Ugo is an undiscovered genius during his lifetime, and I also think Ugo's work is unique because of his wartime experience.

The drawings need to be where they would be appreciated for future generations but also kept safe because they were unique objects of World War II.

Mark: It wasn't easy for him to relive those stories.

Maybe he thought, "Well, maybe I was spared for a reason, and that was to be a witness to war."

All the way to the end, he was telling the story again.

John: There isn't anything more that could ever be asked of any of us than to put our lives on the line and realize that it may not turn out well.

This isn't a movie.

You know, this is real life with real tragedy, real trauma.

Laurie: He was an artist first when he went to war.

He wasn't a war artist, and there's a difference.

One of my father's last words were, "Respect my art."

And I feel that we have.

Maxine: You don't send an artist into war and come out without the history of the war forever in the psyche of that artist.

I don't think you can look at these works without beginning to understand the agony.

I was really a stranger to what really was an integral part of this man.

Here it is.

So I met him backwards.

I met him after he died, where he really lived.

Ugo: I have clear recollections almost like scenarios of moments.

These are really my sensations more or less.

So the reality of the individual rather than the reality of what was taking place all around.

I must admit that it is very difficult to go back and try to recap things, but the D-Day thing was like a fantastic stage phenomenon.

More things happened in the space in a few hours than I think anywheres else.

The sacrifice was enormous.

The sense of sacrifice was unexpected.

But I understand that there's a great deal of, and there should be.

You know, the heroes are the dead soldiers.

And then I say nothing much is being said about the live soldiers, people who have survived.

Whatever of dread, of horror was linked to other events and other times, other men from Troy to the Argonne.

Was I another witness, an expendable?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪