Speaker 1: Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Tom Young, a veteran of the Maryland
Speaker 1: and West Virginia Air National Guard. He served as a
Speaker 1: flight engineer aboard the C one, thirty Hercules and C
Speaker 1: five Galaxy transport planes. He's a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: He's also the author of nine military themed novels. The
Speaker 1: latest is The Map Maker, which centers on the French
Speaker 1: resistance in World War Two. Tom Young was born on
Speaker 1: his family's farm in North Carolina, and there was also
Speaker 1: a history of military service in his lineage.
Speaker 2: My grandfather served in World War II. He was a
Speaker 2: B seventeen mechanic with the legendary eighth Air Force. So
Speaker 2: I grew up hearing his stories from World War Two.
Speaker 1: And what interested you in joining the Air National Guard
Speaker 1: and why specifically the Guard as opposed to another branch
Speaker 1: of the service.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd always had an interest in flying, but I've
Speaker 2: had an unlikely dual career in aviation and in writing
Speaker 2: in journalism. As I mentioned, my grandfather was a World
Speaker 2: War Two veteran, an eight Air Force veteran, and his
Speaker 2: stories were part of what sparked my interest in flying.
Speaker 2: But I also had an interest in journalism and writing,
Speaker 2: and when I started college at the University of North
Speaker 2: Carolina at Chapel Hill, I seriously considered going through Air
Speaker 2: Force ROTC and pursuing a full time active duty Air
Speaker 2: Force career. But I also had this interest in journalism,
Speaker 2: and in my youthful ignorance, I thought I had to
Speaker 2: choose one or the other and never look back. So
Speaker 2: for a long time I pursued journalism pretty single mindedly.
Speaker 2: I worked with the broadcast division of the Associated Press
Speaker 2: in Washington. But during that time I also began taking
Speaker 2: private pilot flying lessons, and that was like throwing gas
Speaker 2: on a fire. I found out I loved flying. I
Speaker 2: had a passion for it. I dare say I had
Speaker 2: an attitude for it, and I wanted to experience more
Speaker 2: of it, so I joined the Air National Guard. By
Speaker 2: the time I joined the Guard, I got a late start.
Speaker 2: I was above the age limit for pilot training, but
Speaker 2: there was no age limit for flight engineer training as
Speaker 2: long as you enlisted by age thirty five. So I
Speaker 2: became a flight engineer, initially on the sea one thirty
Speaker 2: Hercules just loved it. It really enjoyed flying as a
Speaker 2: flight engineer. And then when the one sixty seventh Airlift
Speaker 2: Wing converted to the C five Galaxy, I spent the
Speaker 2: last eight years of my career on the C five.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the planes. First of all, the
Speaker 1: Sea one thirty Hercules. He said just a minute ago
Speaker 1: that that she loved it. What did you love about it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I just loved that aircraft.
Speaker 2: It's it can do anything. It always brought me home safely,
Speaker 2: beautifully designed aircraft. They're still making C one thirties. Of course,
Speaker 2: the J models they make now are quite different from
Speaker 2: the A models that first began flying, I believe in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four. But it's such a tough, versatile aircraft.
Speaker 2: It's why it's still around. It's why it's still being made.
Speaker 1: And then the C five, I know, it's a lot bigger,
Speaker 1: So talk about what that plane was like to deal with.
Speaker 2: The C five was very different. And when our unit
Speaker 2: first began to convert from the C one thirty to
Speaker 2: the C five, silly me I thought, well, it's another
Speaker 2: Lockheed aircraft and it's still an airlift mission. How different
Speaker 2: could it be? Oh? I didn't know anything. It was
Speaker 2: a very different aircraft with a different mission. We were
Speaker 2: going from tactical airlift to strategic airlift, and it was
Speaker 2: just a different lifestyle. A tactical airlift involves essentially moving
Speaker 2: cargo around within a theater of operation. Strategic airlift is
Speaker 2: taking very large loads of cargo all the way from
Speaker 2: the US to the theater of operation and then flying
Speaker 2: all the way back to the US. So it involves long,
Speaker 2: long legs of flying very long days. Often your days
Speaker 2: are overnight. So it was quite a culture change.
Speaker 1: And so if you're going all the way to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: or Iraq, how many times would you have to stop
Speaker 1: and refuel to get from one place to the other.
Speaker 2: It would depend on how the mission was planned. Most
Speaker 2: often what we would do was we take off from
Speaker 2: an East coast base wherever we picked up cargo, and
Speaker 2: that could be Dover, that could be Charleston, it could
Speaker 2: be Maguire, any number of bases on the East coast,
Speaker 2: and then you fly overnight, usually to stay overnight either
Speaker 2: at Roda Naval Air Station in Spain or Ramstein Air
Speaker 2: Base in Germany, and then after crew rest, you would
Speaker 2: continue the leg either to bag Dad perhaps if you're
Speaker 2: going to Iraq, or to Bogram Air Base if you're
Speaker 2: going to Afghanistan. We had an aerial refueling capability, but
Speaker 2: we didn't use that all the time because that's the
Speaker 2: most expensive way to refuel. We would use it when
Speaker 2: we had to, but it's not something you always planned
Speaker 2: on doing. To give you a good example of a
Speaker 2: time when it was necessary involves my last deployment. It
Speaker 2: was in two thousand and twelve and the one hundred
Speaker 2: and first Aviation Brigade was swapping out helicopters with the
Speaker 2: eighty second. We were involved in something called a multi
Speaker 2: mode operation to swap those helicopters in and out, and
Speaker 2: it was intricately planned like clockwork. The inbound helicopters came
Speaker 2: to Rota on ships, then they were loaded on our
Speaker 2: C fives with the rotors folded up. Of course, we
Speaker 2: would fly them into Afghanistan, offload the inbound helicopters, onload
Speaker 2: the outbound helicopters. You couldn't take off during the day
Speaker 2: with a load that heavy and have enough fuel to
Speaker 2: do much of anything, so the mission was cut so
Speaker 2: that we would take off at night when it was
Speaker 2: cooler aircraft performance would be better, but even then you
Speaker 2: couldn't put on enough fuel to fly from Bogram all
Speaker 2: the way back to Roda. So we would take off
Speaker 2: from Afghanistan, refuel in the air, and then fly back
Speaker 2: to Rota.
Speaker 1: Walk us through your duties as a flight engineer.
Speaker 2: The flight engineer does not steer the aircraft, but he
Speaker 2: or she monitors and operates all the systems such as hydraulics, electrics, pressurization,
Speaker 2: all of that sort of thing. To give you a
Speaker 2: mental picture if you've ever seen any photos or videos
Speaker 2: of some of the larger, older transport aircraft. Of course
Speaker 2: you see the pilot and co pilots sitting in the
Speaker 2: front two seats, but then there's a third seat with
Speaker 2: someone sitting facing to the right at a great big
Speaker 2: panel of switches and instruments. That's the flight engineer on
Speaker 2: some and that's on the C five and other aircraft
Speaker 2: like the seven forty seven in the Sea one thirty,
Speaker 2: and for that matter, in other aircraft like the P
Speaker 2: three oryon the engineer is not sitting facing to the right,
Speaker 2: but he's sitting between and slightly after the pilots, and
Speaker 2: his panel is overhit. But generally speaking, flight engineer positions
Speaker 2: have this position where you're facing to the right, so
Speaker 2: you're monitoring all the systems, but you're also the crew mathematician.
Speaker 2: It's the engineer's responsibility to calculate things like takeoff speed,
Speaker 2: clomb rate, fuel consumption, take off distance, fuel burn, landing distance,
Speaker 2: anything to do with aircraft performance.
Speaker 1: Did you ever come under fire?
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, yes, a lot of Sea one thirty crews
Speaker 2: came under fire. Nothing ever hit an aircraft that I
Speaker 2: was in. In fact, to my knowledge, I don't think
Speaker 2: anything ever hit any of the one sixty sevenths aircraft,
Speaker 2: but there were one sixty seven, or rather there were
Speaker 2: UH Sea one thirties that were struck by fire in
Speaker 2: UH I know in Iraq and probably in Afghanistan as well.
Speaker 2: I credit luck for part of that, but also I
Speaker 2: credit the one sixty seventh high standards of training and readiness.
Speaker 1: At that time.
Speaker 2: We had an excellent wing commander, a Colonel Jesse Thomas,
Speaker 2: and he made sure that by the time we got there,
Speaker 2: we were very familiar with things like flying on night
Speaker 2: vision goggles, running those combat entry entrants and and exit checklists.
Speaker 2: He made sure his unit was ready before we got there.
Speaker 1: What's that like the first time people are shooting at you.
Speaker 2: It happened so fast you don't have time to get scared.
Speaker 2: And of course I realized coming under fire is very
Speaker 2: different depending on where you are and what your situation is.
Speaker 2: It's very different. I'm sure probably a lot worse for
Speaker 2: troops on the ground. But if you're in a C
Speaker 2: one thirty flying over Iraq at night, it just happens
Speaker 2: so quickly. You hear the missile warning system go off,
Speaker 2: the defensive flares launch, and it's over in an instant.
Speaker 2: And as I say, you don't have time to get scared.
Speaker 2: If you get scared, it's later when you look back
Speaker 2: on it and you think what could have happened.
Speaker 1: Thinking about those particular planes, they're not known for their elusiveness,
Speaker 1: So is there any sort of evasive action taken?
Speaker 2: There are maneuvers you can take, and you would be
Speaker 2: surprised how effective it can be in a C one thirty.
Speaker 2: It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly what's
Speaker 2: classified and what's not, so I won't get into details.
Speaker 2: But see one thirty is with their defensive systems and
Speaker 2: with their defensive tactics are more then you might think.
Speaker 1: Is there any particular incident that stays with you as
Speaker 1: perhaps being the most intense enemy fire or the.
Speaker 2: Most intense happened in May of three. We had just
Speaker 2: taken off from Baghdad, and this was about eleven o'clock
Speaker 2: at night, and I suppose some of the insurgents decided
Speaker 2: that night they wanted to take out an airlifter, and
Speaker 2: they were waiting some distance off the end of the
Speaker 2: runway for the next aircraft to come along. And as
Speaker 2: we're climbing out, and this is still at fairly low altitude,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, in much less time than it
Speaker 2: takes to tell it, we hear the warning system tones
Speaker 2: go off, the defensive flares launched automatically. The flares are
Speaker 2: hotter than the heat signature of your engines, and they
Speaker 2: help defeat a heat seeking missile. So you hear these
Speaker 2: gosh off warning tones, the flares punch, and the flight
Speaker 2: deck lights up like the sun because of those flares.
Speaker 2: And then instantly, because we have had a very alert,
Speaker 2: very good aircraft commander, he racks the aircraft into a
Speaker 2: hard turn, and people were making the call outs they're
Speaker 2: supposed to make to do the things you're supposed to
Speaker 2: do in that situation, and just like that, it's over.
Speaker 2: And then the flight day gets really quiet, and we
Speaker 2: climb up to altitude and we flew the rest of
Speaker 2: the way back to Massira Island. And since then we've
Speaker 2: often discussed about how quiet the rest of that flight was.
Speaker 2: There wasn't much more conversation except for what was required
Speaker 2: to do checklists, and I think it was because everybody
Speaker 2: was reflecting on what could have happened.
Speaker 1: That's Tom Young, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as
Speaker 1: a flight engineer with the Air National Guard. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll focus on the French resistance and Young's
Speaker 1: new book, The Map Maker. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is Tom Young, a veteran of the Maryland
Speaker 1: and West Virginia Air National Guard. He served in Iraq
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan as a flight engineer aboard C one thirty
Speaker 1: Hercules and C five Galaxy transport planes. He's also the
Speaker 1: author of nine novels. The latest is The Map Maker,
Speaker 1: about the French resistance in World War Two. One of
Speaker 1: the fascinating aspects of the novel is that Young's main
Speaker 1: characters are fictional, but he has them carrying out missions
Speaker 1: that really happened. So I asked him how he weaved
Speaker 1: fact and fiction for this novel.
Speaker 2: That required some research, but it was fascinating research and
Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun looking into it. And
Speaker 2: the reason I picked that subject matter is now we're
Speaker 2: in the eightieth year since the end of World War Two,
Speaker 2: so World War Two is pretty well tilled ground for
Speaker 2: fiction by now. So I try to look for some
Speaker 2: of the lesser known corners of World War II history,
Speaker 2: and for me, one of those corners was the French
Speaker 2: resistance and the air operations that supported it. So when
Speaker 2: I began looking into that, I found that fascinating and
Speaker 2: thought that would be a good corner to explore.
Speaker 1: So the way I set up.
Speaker 2: The initial conflict in The Map Makers, I have two
Speaker 2: main characters. One is a French American woman named Charlotte Denoux.
Speaker 2: She's a resistance agent and she used to be an
Speaker 2: art student, so she has turned her talents to drawing
Speaker 2: maps and charts and diagrams on German positions and capabilities
Speaker 2: to give targeting information to the resistance and to the Allies.
Speaker 2: The problem is she's a little too good, and the
Speaker 2: Gestapo knows about her. So she's on the run as
Speaker 2: the novel opens, on the run across occupied France, trying
Speaker 2: to stay a step ahead of the Gestapo and keep
Speaker 2: them from dragging her into an interrogation chamber. And what
Speaker 2: she really needs is a ride. She needs a flight
Speaker 2: out because she needs to stay away from the Gestapo
Speaker 2: and she still has important information to get to the Allies.
Speaker 2: My other main character is a French pilot, Phelipe Gerard.
Speaker 2: He is entirely fictional, but the things he does are
Speaker 2: historically based. He was a pilot for the French Air Force.
Speaker 2: After the fall of France, he got out of France
Speaker 2: and made his way to Britain where he joined the
Speaker 2: British Royal Air Force, and there were a lot of
Speaker 2: pilots from Nazi occupied countries who did that. So as
Speaker 2: the novel opens, he's flying for the RAF in what
Speaker 2: the RAF called a Special Duties Squadron nowadays we'd call
Speaker 2: it Special Operations and his unit flies light single engine aircraft,
Speaker 2: the Westland Lysander, in and out of occupied France by night,
Speaker 2: navigating by moonlight to land in clandestine airfields like a
Speaker 2: farmer's pasture and deliver supplies and ammunition to the resistance,
Speaker 2: or to pick up agents sometimes to bring them to
Speaker 2: Britain for consultations, and then to fly them back in
Speaker 2: and go right back into the fray. It's a hell
Speaker 2: of a way to commute to and from work. They
Speaker 2: actually did this, and Philippe gets task with the job
Speaker 2: of finding Charlotte and flying her out. But that's harder
Speaker 2: than it sounds, because she's on the run and she
Speaker 2: can't stay in one place for any length of time. Plus,
Speaker 2: even if Philippe does get information on her whereabouts, does
Speaker 2: he trust that information or is it a Nazi trap?
Speaker 2: So that's the opening setup for the map maker.
Speaker 1: Well exactly, because I believe the very first sequence in
Speaker 1: the book is that he lands in a place where
Speaker 1: it basically was a trap. It'll be too many spoilers here,
Speaker 1: but in terms of how this was arranged, because obviously,
Speaker 1: when people think of the formal French military, obviously the
Speaker 1: Nazis swept through France in about a month and a half.
Speaker 1: The miracle at Dunkirk saves a lot of lives. Obviously,
Speaker 1: how did they connect and organize with these figures still
Speaker 1: in France to set up these networks focusing on different
Speaker 1: things and having these codes arranged where you could identify, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the right person I'm supposed to meet. It
Speaker 1: seems very intricate and elaborate, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: had to have been done on the fly pretty much.
Speaker 2: It was very intricate, and it was done on the fly.
Speaker 2: And that's part of what makes the French resistance so amazing,
Speaker 2: because you know, after the French military has been taken down,
Speaker 2: who's going to serve in the resistance but volunteers. Whoever volunteers.
Speaker 2: One of the books I read for research made a
Speaker 2: fascinating point. It said, for the most part, the French
Speaker 2: resistance was amateurs going up against the best trained police
Speaker 2: force in the world, the Gestapo.
Speaker 1: But they did have.
Speaker 2: Some help in getting organized, initially from the British, from
Speaker 2: the British Special Operations Executive, and they would parachute in
Speaker 2: an agent to help the resistance organize into various cells.
Speaker 2: They call them circuits, and there was sometimes not a
Speaker 2: lot of communication between the various circuits, and that was
Speaker 2: by design, so that if one circuit got taken down,
Speaker 2: or if a number of people from one circuit got arrested,
Speaker 2: there would be a limit to how much information you
Speaker 2: could get out of them. And then later when the
Speaker 2: US was involved in the war, the forerunner of the CIA,
Speaker 2: the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, also got involved
Speaker 2: in coordinating with the resistance. But that was one of
Speaker 2: the biggest challenges, was to how to coordinate and organize
Speaker 2: these cells, how to herd these cats, but at the
Speaker 2: same time not have them too linked, because you wanted
Speaker 2: plausible deniability and you know, that sort of thing for
Speaker 2: security purposes. So it was really quite a challenge. And
Speaker 2: the trade craft that they used, you know, the coded
Speaker 2: transmissions and things on the radio, was just absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: Tom Young is a veteran of the Maryland and West
Speaker 1: Virginia Air National Guard, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: as a flight engineer aboard C one thirty Hercules and
Speaker 1: C five Galaxy transport planes. His latest novel is The
Speaker 1: Map Maker, focusing on the French resistance during World War Two.
Speaker 1: When We Come Back. Young's expertise and love of flying
Speaker 1: comes through in the novel. We'll also discuss just how
Speaker 1: important the French resistance was to the overall success of
Speaker 1: the Allies and just how vicious the Nazi, Gestapo and
Speaker 1: SS forces were towards French civilians. I'm Greg Corumbus and
Speaker 1: this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
Speaker 1: Our guest is Tom Young, and we're talking about his
Speaker 1: new novel, The Map Maker, and we pick up the
Speaker 1: conversation with Young explaining how he incorporated aviation extensively into
Speaker 1: the novel.
Speaker 2: Well, history dictated that the Special Duty Squadron that I
Speaker 2: assigned Felipe to in the novel really existed, and they
Speaker 2: flew the Westland Lysander, so that was an easy choice.
Speaker 2: The light aircraft he flies from France when he steals it,
Speaker 2: that was a commonly used light aircraft in France. And
Speaker 2: then when his French Air Force unit is reconstituted in
Speaker 2: North Africa, that real world unit was assigned the photo
Speaker 2: reconvariant of the P thirty eight Lightning. So all of
Speaker 2: that was dictated by real world history and as far
Speaker 2: as researching how those aircraft were flown. Oddly enough, I
Speaker 2: found YouTube to be a very valuable resource because someone,
Speaker 2: probably several someones, has done US authors and historians a
Speaker 2: great favor by uploading the YouTube a lot of World
Speaker 2: War Two era training films, and those films are excellent.
Speaker 2: Back then, the War Department enlisted a lot of a
Speaker 2: list Hollywood talent to make those films, and they're fantastic.
Speaker 2: They're as good as anything any training film I ever
Speaker 2: saw in the military, except what I saw was in color,
Speaker 2: and they were in black and white. And you can
Speaker 2: find on YouTube a training film from World War II
Speaker 2: on anything. You can imagine how to feel strip an
Speaker 2: M one rifle, how they packed parachutes back then, how
Speaker 2: they use those great big backpack radios, and how they
Speaker 2: operated most of the aircraft of that era. You can
Speaker 2: find a training film that walks you through the checklist
Speaker 2: from pre flight to shutdown, and if you're an aviation
Speaker 2: geek like I am, you can get lost in that stuff.
Speaker 2: And then one of the challenges becomes not overloading the
Speaker 2: reader with too much of that detail.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting the time frame in the war that
Speaker 1: you chose here, because the fall of France to the Nazis,
Speaker 1: of course, came in nineteen forty, and so Philip has
Speaker 1: been doing what he's been doing pretty much ever since then.
Speaker 1: We pick it up in the summer in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three in your novel, and it's feeling pretty bleak, pretty hopeless.
Speaker 1: He's not even sure why he's still doing this. There's
Speaker 1: a backstory to something he feels guilt over. How does
Speaker 1: that kind of help us understand what the mood the
Speaker 1: outlook was at that point in the war, kind of
Speaker 1: between forty and forty three, where not a lot was
Speaker 1: going really well.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty three, things really did look bleak for
Speaker 2: the French resistance. The Germans had pretty much rolled up
Speaker 2: one of the most effective circuits or cells. One of
Speaker 2: the high ranking French resistance agents, Jean Moulon, who had
Speaker 2: been sent into France to try to organize these various
Speaker 2: circuits to the extent possible, and he had been captured.
Speaker 2: So things looked very bad for the resistance at that time,
Speaker 2: but they pressed on despite the odds and eventually prevailed.
Speaker 1: There's also kind of an interesting amalgamation of groups that
Speaker 1: are part of the resistance, but they're very different from
Speaker 1: one another. So for example, when Charlotte's on the run,
Speaker 1: she runs into one group that's not one that she's
Speaker 1: real familiar with. Then they end up with a bunch
Speaker 1: of Spaniards for a while, and then they've got a
Speaker 1: trust communists to get them to different points. So talk
Speaker 1: about how the resistance was kind of this.
Speaker 2: Hodgepides, Yes, when I referred to herding the cats early,
Speaker 2: I was not being entirely facetious. There were really very
Speaker 2: widely disparate groups participating in the resistance, and sometimes they
Speaker 2: were across purposes. And part of the challenge that Jean
Speaker 2: Mulan had before he was captured, and part of the
Speaker 2: challenge that for example, Charles de Gaulle had trying to
Speaker 2: influence events from where he was in Britain at the time,
Speaker 2: was organizing these groups and it was quite a challenge.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I tried to do in
Speaker 2: The Map Maker was to give the reader something of
Speaker 2: a tour of some of the things the French resistance
Speaker 2: was doing. And Charlotte being on the run across France
Speaker 2: was a good excuse to do that. So I chose
Speaker 2: a handful of real world things that the resistance got
Speaker 2: involved in and had Charlotte give a look at those
Speaker 2: events from her point of view, and sometimes from Philippe's
Speaker 2: point of view. For example, there is a part in
Speaker 2: the novel where she takes shelter with the resistance cell
Speaker 2: that is participating in this absolutely brilliant effort to break
Speaker 2: prisoners out of a prison in Amnion, France. The Germans
Speaker 2: were using that prison to house resistance prisoners. The British
Speaker 2: Special Operations Executive received intelligence that the Germans were about
Speaker 2: to execute all or most of the prisoners in that prison,
Speaker 2: so they came up with this brilliant operation to use
Speaker 2: light bombers to come in at low level and bomb
Speaker 2: the walls of the prison, to breach the walls to
Speaker 2: give the prisoners a chance to escape. It was just
Speaker 2: an absolutely daring, brilliant mission and it would be challenging now,
Speaker 2: I imagine with laser guided bombs. And they pulled this off
Speaker 2: with nineteen forties technology, you know, a chart and a
Speaker 2: stopwatch and a vector bomb site. But they really did this.
Speaker 2: These mosquito bombers came in solo. You read the accounts
Speaker 2: says their propa wash was kicking up, snow bombed very
Speaker 2: accurately for that day. Don't hold me to the numbers,
Speaker 2: but roughly I believe there were about eight hundred prisoners
Speaker 2: in the prison. Of course, some died from collateral damage
Speaker 2: from the bombing about one hundred, which made it controversial.
Speaker 2: About two hundred and fifty. Some got out, Many of
Speaker 2: them were recaptured, but some got out and stayed gone.
Speaker 2: And even though a number of them were lost in
Speaker 2: the mission, one could argue that having any of them
Speaker 2: escape is better than having all of them executed. Just
Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating real world history. And so that's one of
Speaker 2: the things that Charlotte participates in in the course of
Speaker 2: The Map Maker. And it's funny. Back in May, my
Speaker 2: wife and I were doing a tour of World War
Speaker 2: II sites in Europe and we stopped for lunch in
Speaker 2: amy On, France. The prison was not on the tour,
Speaker 2: but the bus just happened to drive right by that prison.
Speaker 2: And if you look at contemporary photos from the war,
Speaker 2: it's it's out in the country where prisons are usually built.
Speaker 2: Since then, the suburbs have kind of encircled it, so
Speaker 2: it's it's not in the country anymore. But it really
Speaker 2: surprised me to drive right by it.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know the focal point of the
Speaker 1: title of The Map Maker. That's that's the very valuable
Speaker 1: thing that Charlotte's got with her for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the novel, the value of the drawings, the intel
Speaker 1: that then got back to England and US and British planners.
Speaker 1: Just how critical was that intelligence to D Day, Operation
Speaker 1: Dragoon and everything else that followed thereafter.
Speaker 2: It was very critical. And one of the things I
Speaker 2: learned as I researched the Resistance for this novel is
Speaker 2: how so much of what the Resistance did was aimed
Speaker 2: specifically toward tripping up and impeding the German forces during
Speaker 2: an after D Day. They weren't just looking to pop
Speaker 2: in a German soldier wherever they could find them. They
Speaker 2: weren't just looking to carry out random acts of sabotage.
Speaker 2: They did carry out a lot of sabotage, but there
Speaker 2: was there was more of a purpose behind it than
Speaker 2: just doing whatever damage they could anywhere. The main thrust
Speaker 2: was to impede the Germans once the Allies came ashore UH.
Speaker 2: To give you an example, there was a h notorious
Speaker 2: Panzer division that was UH located in south central France.
Speaker 2: They responded to D Day. They were told to move forward,
Speaker 2: and had they not been impeded by the Resistance, if
Speaker 2: my memory serves, they could have traveled from their base
Speaker 2: to Normandy in about three days, but because of the
Speaker 2: harassment and u impeding operations of the resistance, it took
Speaker 2: them two weeks.
Speaker 1: That made a significant difference. Then in the battle Normandy,
Speaker 1: it was hard anyway, but just little delays here and
Speaker 1: there was a big advantage exactly.
Speaker 2: In fact, there was a broadcast that went out on
Speaker 2: or immediately after D Day, a broadcast in French to
Speaker 2: French citizens that basically said, anything you can do to
Speaker 2: slow down the Germans for any amount of time is
Speaker 2: going to be helpful. You know, if your car breaks
Speaker 2: down in an intersection, if you do anything to delay
Speaker 2: them any way anywhere, it helps. So everyone was asked
Speaker 2: to do their part for you, whatever they could do.
Speaker 1: And at that point they weren't even broadcasting cryptically, they
Speaker 1: were literally just saying get in their way. Exactly.
Speaker 2: It was by the n it was in the clear.
Speaker 2: But speaking of broadcasting and tradecraft, another fascinating thing is
Speaker 2: how the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, would help send
Speaker 2: coded messages to the resistance. There was a program in
Speaker 2: French that they broadcast. I believe the title in English
Speaker 2: would be the French Talk to France or something like that,
Speaker 2: ostensibly UNUS and information program for the French, but they'd
Speaker 2: get to the end of the program and they would
Speaker 2: have what were presented as personal messages, something like Marie
Speaker 2: sends greetings for her grandmother's birthday. Well, that might be
Speaker 2: a coded message that means blow that bridge tonight. Just
Speaker 2: fascinating stuff that they did.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I think comes through very
Speaker 1: well in your novel is the cruelty, just the vicious
Speaker 1: cruelty of whether we're talking about the SS or the Gestapo.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we know very well the unspeakable atrocities
Speaker 1: committed to the East, and the concentration camps and the
Speaker 1: death camps and that sort of thing, but the way
Speaker 1: they also treated everyday citizens, especially if they were suspected
Speaker 1: of being subversives. Talk about that with the s S
Speaker 1: and the Gestapo, and just the terror that they inflicted
Speaker 1: wherever they happened.
Speaker 2: To be exactly they tried to rule by terror. A
Speaker 2: moment ago I was discussing the Panzer division, it was
Speaker 2: slowed down by the resistance. They took vengeance for that.
Speaker 2: They essentially wiped out the village of Orodor. Sir Glenn
Speaker 2: in France. I think they killed six hundred and some people.
Speaker 2: After the war, Charles de Gaull made the decision to
Speaker 2: maintain the ruins of Orodor as a memorial to what happened,
Speaker 2: So to this day you can see the rusted cars
Speaker 2: of that era, the burned out buildings, all of that
Speaker 2: remained as a memorial to the sacrifice of the people there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the SS pretty much wiped out a village
Speaker 2: full of civilians to take revenge.
Speaker 1: We also, at various points have fictionalized bulletins from Klaus Sparby,
Speaker 1: the butcher of Leon. Why'd you decide to bring him
Speaker 1: in as a real life character in this novel?
Speaker 2: Well, I will fess up to borrowing that technique from
Speaker 2: one of my literary heroes. Hermann Wooke, the author of
Speaker 2: The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, and some other
Speaker 2: Great World War Two novels. He intersperses The Winds of
Speaker 2: War and War in Remembrance with memoirs from a fictitious
Speaker 2: German general, General Armand von Run, and that way he
Speaker 2: gives the German perspective as the story advances. So similarly,
Speaker 2: I use memoranda from Klaus Barbie to give the German
Speaker 2: perspective as the story advances and as the Gestapo is
Speaker 2: pursuing Charlotte pursuing other members of the resistance. Those memos
Speaker 2: are completely fictional. I just made those up. But sadly
Speaker 2: I did not make up Klaus Barbie. He is all
Speaker 2: too real. As you mentioned, he's known as the Butcher
Speaker 2: of Leone. He was known to have personally tortured resistance
Speaker 2: agents and for a long time he evaded justice. He
Speaker 2: got out of Europe at the end of the war
Speaker 2: and made his way to South America, where he lived
Speaker 2: for decades under the alias Klaus Altman, and then in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, the Nazi hunters Serge and Beata Clarsfeld
Speaker 2: identified him as living in South America. After a lengthy process,
Speaker 2: he was eventually extradited to France, tried for war crimes,
Speaker 2: and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven. He didn't live long after that.
Speaker 2: He died of cancer, I believe in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: And just a funny story from the other part of
Speaker 2: my life. When I first started working with the broadcast
Speaker 2: division of the Associated Press, that was in eighty seven
Speaker 2: when Barbie was on trial. I was not a foreign correspondent.
Speaker 2: I did not go to France to cover the trial,
Speaker 2: but I do remember writing brief items for the broadcast
Speaker 2: wire on that trial, and now all these years later,
Speaker 2: I put him on a novel.
Speaker 1: It's also some real life people that you weave in.
Speaker 1: Besides Klaus Barbie. One is a female resistance figure who
Speaker 1: is briefly on the boat at one point with Charlotte,
Speaker 1: and another one is a pilot that Felipe interacts with
Speaker 1: quite a bit, So tell us a little bit about them.
Speaker 2: Yes, Virginia Hall makes a cameo appearance in The Map Maker.
Speaker 2: She was an American woman who worked with resistance, initially
Speaker 2: with the British SOE, and then she eventually began working
Speaker 2: through the American OSS, and she's a legend in American
Speaker 2: intelligence circles. In fact, to this day, the OSS Society
Speaker 2: presents an annual award called the Virginia Hall Award, to
Speaker 2: people who've made significant contributions to American intelligence and special operations.
Speaker 2: Another real world figure who makes a cameo appearance is
Speaker 2: another literary hero of mine, the French author and aviator
Speaker 2: Antoine de Sonic superre and he was a photo recon
Speaker 2: pilot for the French Air Force and then he spent
Speaker 2: part of the war in the US, and then when
Speaker 2: his unit got reconstituted in North Africa, he went back
Speaker 2: into the fight and continued flying photo recon missions in
Speaker 2: this modified version of the P thirty eight, and sadly
Speaker 2: he was lost during the war. He disappeared on a
Speaker 2: photo recon mission in nineteen forty four. And his writing
Speaker 2: was part of what got be fascinated both with World
Speaker 2: War II and with flying. I can remember when I
Speaker 2: was a kid in the seventies in rural North Carolina
Speaker 2: going into our public library and going to the card
Speaker 2: catalog and looking for anything to do with flying. And
Speaker 2: they had a number of his books, and one of
Speaker 2: them was a book called Flight to Aras, which was
Speaker 2: his memoir of flying photo recon missions for the French
Speaker 2: Air Force during the Battle of France in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: That's Tom Young. The novel is The Map Maker. When
Speaker 1: we come back more reflections on the French Resistance. I'm
Speaker 1: Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans' Chronicles.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Tom Young.
Speaker 1: He's a veteran of the Maryland and West Virginia Air
Speaker 1: National Guard. He served as a flight engineer aboard the
Speaker 1: C one, thirty Hercules and C five Galaxy transport planes.
Speaker 1: Earlier in our conversation, he described the duties of the
Speaker 1: flight engineer and even described coming under enemy fire while
Speaker 1: flying into and out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Those deployments
Speaker 1: are also where he first got ideas for his early novels,
Speaker 1: and he started writing his first one when he and
Speaker 1: his crew were in South Korea for a few days
Speaker 1: waiting for parts to come to repair their plane. Young
Speaker 1: has now released his ninth novel. It's called The Map Maker.
Speaker 1: It focuses on the French Resistance during World War Two
Speaker 1: and how it collaborated with the Allies to pass along
Speaker 1: critical intelligence to benefit the war. Effort that required high
Speaker 1: stakes efforts by resistance members to find Allies and avoid
Speaker 1: the Germans, and you could never be too sure whom
Speaker 1: you could trust. Young says, it took immense courage and resolve.
Speaker 2: It's hard to convey just how dangerous it was and
Speaker 2: just how brave those people were, because, as you say,
Speaker 2: there was danger at every intersection, and even the people
Speaker 2: that they should have been able to trust. You know,
Speaker 2: if they're captured and turned you know, someone's going to
Speaker 2: stand up under torture only for so long. So even
Speaker 2: if there's somebody that you know to be loyal, you
Speaker 2: know you can trust them, Okay, if they get captured
Speaker 2: and interrogated, how long are they going to hold out?
Speaker 2: In fact, one of the things I learned during my
Speaker 2: research was that resistance agents were asked to try to
Speaker 2: hold out for twenty four hours if they were captured
Speaker 2: and interrogated. Recognized that nobody was going to stand up
Speaker 2: under torture forever, but they set a goal of trying
Speaker 2: to hold out for just twenty four hours because that
Speaker 2: would give the other people with whom they'd been working
Speaker 2: time to go to ground, maybe time to get out
Speaker 2: of the region, time to do whatever they could do
Speaker 2: to protect themselves. But that was a goal that they set,
Speaker 2: just try not to talk for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: There's a couple more questions here time on this fascinating book,
Speaker 1: The Map Maker. In addition to enjoying a fantastic story,
Speaker 1: which I highly endorse folks picking up and reading, what
Speaker 1: do you want folks to learn about the French resistance,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it's one of those corners of the
Speaker 1: war that a lot of people don't understand. With a
Speaker 1: lot of death.
Speaker 2: There are so many stories about people who endured so
Speaker 2: much and sacrifice so much in World War II that
Speaker 2: we just don't hear. And I think people should know
Speaker 2: what that generation did for us to fight Nazism and
Speaker 2: fascism and to preserve the freedoms that we have. So
Speaker 2: much of it is not taught in schools. You know,
Speaker 2: when you're in high school, there's so much history to learn.
Speaker 2: You can't spend a whole semester just on World War Two,
Speaker 2: but you know, you at least learn that it's there,
Speaker 2: and you learn that there's more history to learn as
Speaker 2: you have time. But there's just so many fascinating stories,
Speaker 2: and so much happened in World War Two over so
Speaker 2: much of the world, and such a what now seems
Speaker 2: like a fairly brief period of time that historians are
Speaker 2: still learning about it. So, you know, unless you already
Speaker 2: have a degree in history, there's always plenty more to
Speaker 2: learn about World War Two, and even the professionals are
Speaker 2: still learning more about it.
Speaker 1: So It's just an.
Speaker 2: Absolutely fascinating part of history and it shaped the world
Speaker 2: that we live in today. Another thing I hope people
Speaker 2: get from the French Resistance is or get from the
Speaker 2: storylories of the French resistance and the French in World
Speaker 2: War Two is a lot of people have this mistaken
Speaker 2: idea that the French just dropped their rifles and gave up,
Speaker 2: And it wasn't like that at all. They were overmatched
Speaker 2: by the German military, there were some bad political decisions
Speaker 2: made prior to the war and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But the individual French, many of them, were so brave
Speaker 2: and they were pretty tough in World War One as well,
Speaker 2: and we tend to forget that, and then people tend
Speaker 2: to forget that they were America's first ally and we
Speaker 2: may not have won at Yorktown had it not been
Speaker 2: for French assistance. So a sharp salute to the French.
Speaker 1: Lastly, what are you most proud of your own service?
Speaker 2: That would be hard to say, I would I guess
Speaker 2: I would say I'm proud to have served with such
Speaker 2: good people and in such good units. Both the one
Speaker 2: thirty fifth Airlift Wing the one sixty seventh Airlift Wing
Speaker 2: were fantastic units with high standards, wonderful people, very effective
Speaker 2: at their missions, and I was just honored to get
Speaker 2: to be a part of all that.
Speaker 1: That's Tom Young, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who
Speaker 1: served as a flight engineer aboard the C one thirty
Speaker 1: Hercules and the C five Galaxy transport planes. His latest
Speaker 1: novel is The Map Maker, which focuses on the French
Speaker 1: resistance in World War Two. I'm Greg Corumbus and this
Speaker 1: is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American
Speaker 1: Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org.
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