Photo, above:  From Hour 3, Block A,  Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge.  US Marine Corps photo from Okinawa in World War II.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block A: A Death in San Pietro: The Untold Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley by Tim Brady (1 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block B: A Death in San Pietro: The Untold Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley by Tim Brady (2 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: A Death in San Pietro: The Untold Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley by Tim Brady (3 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 1, Block D: A Death in San Pietro: The Untold Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley by Tim Brady (4 of 4)

Hour Two

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil S. Hylton (1 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil S. Hylton (2 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil S. Hylton (3 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil S. Hylton (4 of 4)

Hour Three

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge (1 of 4)   Maharidge’s recreation of his father’s Marine service in World War II takes him to Okinawa and to points throughout the U.S. as he interviews surviving members of Love Company and tries to discover the source of his father’s anger and his ambiguous role in the death of a friend. A journalist and winner of the 1990 Pulitzer for And Their Children After Them, Maharidge has written a compelling story of war and its aftermath.

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge (2 of 4)

Dale Maharidge is the author of two well-regarded books of nonfiction.  The second, And Their Children After Them,  following James Agee and Walker Evan’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, through the south,  won the Pulitzer prize for nonfiction in 1990. He has now given us a third to match.  Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War (2013) began as a quest after the death of his father, Steve Maharidge,  to unlock the mystery of a photo he had always kept close but would never talk about, and along that, the son hoped, the mystery of his father. The result is a chronicle of a ten year effort to track down those who were in his father in  L, or Love, Company [Third Battalion, 22nd Marines, Sixth Marine division] during the re-taking of Guam from the Japanese in late July, 1944 and the invasion of Okinawa — along with 183,000 other U.S. soldiers  — in March of 1945.  It was the largest amphibious assault of the war. The book has the informality of a buffed up journal, including Maharidge’s accounts of his father’s post-war rages, efforts to find the men of Love Company, historical notes about the tactics of the battles,  recollections of initial phone calls, his concerns about the effect of asking them to remember the war and often the men’s initial reluctance to talk.  Much of the finished book is made up . . .  [more]

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge (3 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War by Dale Maharidge (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First-Century Soldier's Mission to Bring Him Home. by Bryan Bender (1 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First-Century Soldier's Mission to Bring Him Home. by Bryan Bender (2 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First-Century Soldier's Mission to Bring Him Home. by Bryan Bender (3 of 4)

Saturday  21 June 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First-Century Soldier's Mission to Bring Him Home. by Bryan Bender (4 of 4)