Maryland Public Television marks Veteran's Day
with extraordinary documentary
American Experience: "War Letters"

OWINGS MILLS, MD: On Veteran's Day, Sunday, November 11, at 9:00 p.m. Maryland Public Television airs a war documentary which transcends the subject of war by exploring the love, passion, pain, horror and hope of the men and women who fought and those who waited at home. American Experience: "War Letters" is a collection of newly-uncovered personal correspondence that brings to life the deepest, most human side of war, from the American Revolution to the Gulf War. Based on Andrew Carroll's recent New York Times bestseller, War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, the one-hour program is the centerpiece of MPT's Salute to Courage, a special airing of programs which pay tribute to those courageous, everyday people who have defended our country from harm for over 200 years.

With no narrator, no star subjects and a timeline that spans three centuries, "War Letters" is less a traditional documentary than a tone poem, written in the collective voice of ordinary men and women: soldiers, sweethearts, sons, brothers, fathers, wives, cousins and friends. Read by a cast of celebrity actors (Joan Allen, Jordan Bridges, Chris Gehrman, Mike Hagiwara, Esai Morales, Gerald McRaney, Edward Norton, Bill Paxton, David Hyde Pierce, Giovanni Ribisi, Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Spacey, Eric Stoltz, Lawrence Turner and Courtney B. Vance), the letters are illustrated with dramatic archival footage and photographs, evocative re-creations and images of those who wrote and received letters from battlefronts.

Many accounts of battle are stunningly brutal. "Suddenly I heard the ball go crash! and I knew by the sound that it had burst a human skull... and then I saw Sergt. Chauncy Goldsmith quivering and dying," writes one Civil War soldier. "It was forty days of unremitting hell. In fact, the comparison is hardly fair to hell," says a letter from World
War I.

Nurse June Wandrey wrote home: "Dearest Family, A few days ago, I was giving medications before lights out. As I finished with this one very young soldier and was tucking his blankets around him, he said, 'My mother always kissed me goodnight when she tucked me in bed.' So I kissed him on the forehead. He blushed, covered his head with the blanket, and everyone else called, 'Mommy, Mommy.'"

Some of the letters explore soldiers' transformation after experiencing combat: "Dear Reverend: Here I sit, thinking of the little church back home, wondering how you are getting along. Don't think I am down-hearted but ever since I volunteered I've felt like a cog in a huge wheel. The cog may get smashed up, but the machine goes on. And I can't feel God is in it. How can there be fairness in one man being maimed for life, suffering agonies, another killed instantaneously, while I get out of it safe? Does God really love us individually or does He love His purpose more?"

The book War Letters sprang from Andrew Carroll's Legacy Project, the archivist's attempt to gather war letters from attics and dresser drawers across America for preservation. A mention in the "Dear Abby" column unleashed a flood of more than 50,000 letters to his post office box in Washington, DC.

Carroll, 31, recognized that younger generations may not understand the sacrifices made by war veterans. "It's important to remember the graphic nature of war, and I think nothing strips away the glamour and the romance more than these letters," he says.

Underwriters: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Liberty Mutual, The Scotts Company, Public Television Viewers, PBS and Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Producer: WGBH Boston. Executive producer: Margaret Drain. Senior producer: Mark Samels. Producer/director: Robert Kenner. Writers: Paul Taylor and Robert Kenner. Editor:
Leonard Feinstein. Co-producer: Melissa Adelson. Cinematographer: Neil Reichline. Composer: Mark Adler. Format:

Maryland Public Television is a not-for-profit, state-licensed public television station which serves the citizens and communities of Maryland and beyond through a variety of broadcast and nonbroadcast activities.

For more information on this and other MPT on- and off-air programs, please visit
mpt.org.

###

© 2009 Maryland Public Television
Privacy Policy