The Pomp Podcast - #1162 Chloe Melas | Escaping A German POW Camp: Frank Murphy's WWII Story

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Chloe Melas is an entertainment reporter at CNN. She recently rewrote the foreword to her grandfathers book, "Luck Of The Draw by Frank Murphy." In the book, Frank unpacks his experience in World War 2 as a bomber who got shot down, spent months in a German POW camp, and eventually got back home safely. The book is an incredible tale of what so many people in the greatest generation went through. I really enjoyed talking to Chloe about the book, why they are republishing it, how her & her mother rewrote the foreword, and what they hope people take away from reading it.  ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th in Miami Beach hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of bold discussions, covering topics from investing, emerging tech, longevity, space exploration, entertainment and more.The speaker lineup includes names such as investing legend Cathie Wood, NYT bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy, billionaire Christian Angermayer, master of Contrarian Thinking Codie Sanchez, Modern Wisdom host Chris Williamson plus many more. Listeners will receive an exclusive 40% discount on VIP and Insider Pass tickets with code POMP40.  General Admission tickets are free of charge. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Chloe Meles is an entertainment reporter at CNN.

She recently rewrote the foreword to her grandfather's book, Luck of the Draw, by Frank Murphy. In the book, Frank unpacks his experience in World War II as a bomber who got shot down, spent months in a German POW camp, and eventually got back home safely. The book is an incredible tale of what so many people in the greatest generation went through, including not only the run-up to the war, their experience in the war, but also the POW experience. I really enjoyed talking to Chloe about the book, why they're republishing it, how her and her mother rewrote the foreword, and what they hope people take away after reading it. If you're so inclined, go check it out, Luck of the Draw by Frank Murphy.

Here is my conversation with Chloe Miles. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. At Desjardins Insurance, we put the care in taking care of business. Your business to be exact. Our agents take the time to understand your company so you get the right coverage at the right price. Whether you rent out your building, represent a condo corporation, or own a cleaning company, we make insurance easy to understand so you can focus on the big stuff. Like your small business.

Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Chloe here with me. Chloe, you wrote The New Ford for a book that had been published years ago called Luck of the Draw by Frank Murphy, who's actually your grandfather. And Frank Murphy is not only someone who many people would consider a war hero, but during World War Two, he was shot down. He spent months in a German POW camp.

He was awarded everything from the Prison of War medal, the Purple Heart, and eventually the Air medal as well. Why is it that his story has resonated with so many people? And you guys have taken the time and energy and kind of attention to detail to republish the book with the new forward and kind of other improvements to it and really retell this story to an entirely new generation. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm a big fan of the show, so really excited to be here. I mean, first of all, I thought that publishing a book was going to be no big deal. I see people on Instagram publishing books left and right, and I thought to myself, well, this is a book my grandfather already wrote 20 years ago.

How hard could it be to republish it? Well, it's been really difficult, and now I'm a bit of a World War II expert, I must say. Look, I mean, my grandfather's story is resonating with people because it is about these young guys. They were barely 18 years old, getting up in these tin cans, almost these B-17s with little experience flying over Nazi occupied Europe. And this was in the middle of the day. We had just started in the United States doing these daylight bombing raids. And essentially they were suicide missions. You know, so many people died and lost their lives, but it really

comes down to luck and that's what my grandfather talks about that you know it's the will to live it's perseverance staying strong and I think that you know we've all been through a lot in the past couple years with the pandemic you know job cuts I lost my home in a fire in 2020 we all have different things going on in our life right but I think that when you read a book like this it really puts life into perspective and so I am just so proud of my grandfather because also, you know, a lot of people had relatives that were in World War II. My grandfather isn't any special than anybody else, but he wrote about it. That's why it's important. And as a journalist, I want to give him that platform. I want to amplify this because just because he's my

grandfather doesn't mean he's a good writer. But guess what? It's a damn good book. And it's you feel like you're right there in the prisoner of war camp. If you ever wanted to know what it was like my grandfather takes you there. And it's wild. It's totally crazy. And I didn't know about this when I was a little girl. I'm sort of just learning about what he went through. What is fascinating to me, if we put some numbers around this, during this period of World War Two, there was 4,300 B-17 and B-24s that failed to return. There was 21,000 men who were taken prisoner in other countries. And there was a further 17,650 men who are deemed to have died on the battlefield or in air combat. And so when you think about that, I think death is associated

with war. People say, hey, look, you know, what are those casualty numbers? But this tale and kind of this book is really about the prisoner of war experience, right? It covers other parts of his life. But I think that's one of the things that people just don't think about. They don't, you know, even in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, there wasn't that many Americans who went through that experience. And so as you reread the book and then worked on it to publish it again, like what are some of the takeaways from that specific experience that really resonated with you? So when I was growing up, my grandfather, so my grandfather didn't talk about his experiences

to my mom and to his four kids. So when he finished the war, he finished his college education at Emory University, went on to become a lawyer, got married, had four kids and sort of tucked it away. It wasn't until his retirement that he sat down and started writing the book on a typewriter. This is like back before we were speeding away on our laptops and things like that. So that was really hard to digitize the book and find all those original photos. And it's been a scavenger hunt for the past few years for myself and my family. But when grandpa would tell me and my cousins about being in World War two and jumping out of this airplane that was on fire. It was like romanticized to us. It wasn't

until I read the book where I realized that it was near starvation. You know, they had bare, they didn't have blankets. They didn't have, uh, there was dysentery, constantly sick. He had pneumonia. He lost so much weight. Uh, these marches in the freezing cold, uh, roll call standing all hours of the night, especially when the great escape happened. If anybody knows about the Great Escape, right? Explain what that is. No, most people won't know what that is. So explain what the Great Escape is. There was a prison camp, a really famous one called Stalag Luft 3. And my grandfather was a prisoner of war there. And it was divided up into quadrants. But the British POWs were on one side and the American POWs were on the other. And they were separated by just some

barbed wire. Well, there were about, I would say about 100 men who tunneled out successfully out of this prison camp, but they were captured. And many of them, when they were captured, they were taken up on a hill and they were shot and they were killed. And so later that would, you know, it later would ensue, you know, basically like rules of war and the Geneva Convention and what you can and you can't do to prisoners of war. But it turned into a, you know, international emergency and travesty and so my grandfather and his men they were actually trying to tunnel out as well but as soon as they saw what happened to them obviously they stopped and my grandfather writes about that in the book and so all night long they had the prisoners standing

out there for days on end where they would be interrogating these men you know making them do roll call while they searched for the men that had escaped and they captured nearly all of them so and killed them. So this was a movie that was made by Steve McQueen called The Great Escape. And, you know, my grandfather was there and he takes you there. And so there aren't that many books written by people that were there. There are a lot of historians, a lot of great books out there. But this is one of those books where you don't even realize, you know, when you think of boxcars, you think of the Holocaust, right? My grandfather was thrown in a boxcar for several days and nights with no food, no water, obviously a happy ending for him. He survived. He wasn't

sent to a concentration camp or something terrible like that. But, you know, he marched in the freezing snow and men were dying all around him, you know, not wanting to continue as the Germans moved them from one prison camp to another. And it was a death march. And so my grandfather, I still have one of the shoes that he wore on that march. It was a wooden clog. He traded his leather soles with another prisoner of war's wooden clogs. I mean, they look like boats. I don't even know how he walked in them. So I think that what I didn't realize is that my grandfather went through pure, torturous hell. And, you know, he ended up being a really kind, soft-spoken, incredible human being. And you would never know what he went through. But I think that it opens

up a conversation about post-traumatic stress. And he definitely had, I'm sure, demons and unresolved trauma from the war that we're just now trying, you know, just now wrapping our heads around what that really means. But no wonder he didn't talk about this for decades and with his own children, with his own wife, my grandmother to this day. She didn't even know he was a prisoner of war when they got married. She didn't find out until his parents told her, you know? So I think that there's just so much to unpack here. But the fact that he wrote this, my grandfather wrote this book just for the kids, just for the grandkids, just for the family. I don't think he ever would have imagined that he would be immortalized by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in this series

that's coming out this fall, where someone's really going to be playing my grandfather with Tom Hanks's quote, and he loved Tom Hanks. He loved Band of Brothers. So the fact that this book has Tom Hanks's quote about my grandfather on the front cover, I mean, mind blown. Enough. mic drop. When you think of his experience, one of the things that immediately jumps to mind for me is there's an entire generation of mostly men who went to war. And it just seems like they went through these experiences and it created a mental toughness or resilience. Just all of these qualities that I think people today, especially young people, will aspire to have. How much of it that you ended up knowing your grandfather and kind of those qualities that he carried

was because he had to go through these tough experiences to acquire them versus do you try to impart maybe some of these qualities on your own kids but obviously want them to get them without having to go to a prisoner of war camp or go through these kind of hardships like how much of it is a product of the experience versus you think that they actually can be passed down without having to subject people to it oh man i mean look first of all i am not even half the human that my grandfather was and that's why this has been such a great project to work on because he was a good person. So I'm just happy to share his story and shout from the rooftops what a great book this is and what just a good man he was, which is why I'm so passionate about this. So I think

that inherently he was just born a calm, even-tempered type of a person who was really able to handle these situations. That's why he was perfect for his role as a navigator. You have to be a calm human being before the days of GPS to be able to be up there in essentially a tin can. it's so loud in a B-17. I've been in an original B-17 and with all of the flack is what they call it. All of the, you know, the bullets coming at them. It sounds like it's a tin can being hit with a bunch of rocks all at once. And he has to keep the course, stay the course, be calm and steady and get them to their target to bomb it and then safely home. I would say that, you know, my my children are five and three. I have two little boys and they talk about grandpa Frank as if they

met him. It's so sweet. We were just unboxing the books the other night and it was my, my little son, Leo kept saying, and Frank Murphy was in a box train. I mean, I think that the fact that, you know, not it's a boxcar, but you know, the fact that I'm talking about it and I'm sharing these stories, I hope that maybe when they get older, maybe they'll be inspired to enlist. Maybe they'll be inspired to serve for their country. Maybe it will help them put things into perspective when they're old enough to read the book. I think that, like I said before, we all are going through our different struggles. And everybody's own personal experience is their own true reality, right?

I can't sit here and say that your struggle is easier or tougher than mine. But I think that when you look at Frank Murphy and you look at the men, these young guys who went up in the air every day, coming back and the bunk next to them is being cleared out because either they are a prisoner of war now, missing in action or killed in action, right? It really just puts it all into perspective.

I think that along with this book and when people watch the series, Masters of the Air on Apple in the fall, I think that we're gonna just be like, holy crap, how did this happen? And we need to be talking about this, right? And talking about this, this is real courage. This is real evil, like the face of evil, what they experienced.

Yeah, what's always surprised me, I think, as you learn more and more about World War I and World War II, is just the barbaric nature of it, right? There's a number of film series or TV series. One of the ones that I really enjoy watching was this entire kind of compilation of all of the Medal of Honor stories. And as you watch this, you see kind of the reenactment or the dramatization of what many of these men went through. And part of having been someone who was in a war zone, understood kind of the technologies, the equipment, the training, et cetera, that we had. I mean, we were the most luxurious, you know, kind of privileged people in the world compared to World War I or World War II. And you mentioned these tin cans, but also, I mean, just the idea of not having GPS, literally not knowing, are we going the right direction, right? Are we actually where we're supposed to be?

And then you add in the fact of being shot down. And whenever you start getting tens of thousands of men who are taken as prisoner of war, that is a logistics challenge on its own for the enemy. But then what ends up happening, and I think part of the psychological component from things that I've read or people that I've heard speak about it, is that like you are a prisoner of war, but you are doing it alongside other soldiers or airmen, et cetera, from the United States. And there is still this sense of pride. There's still this sense of ego, right, that goes into, hey, I may be here, but I don't want to be treated any differently. I don't want to necessarily see my fellow colleagues or kind of brother in arms see me subjected to this, but we are in it together. And so it ends up being this like very weird, complex, psychological thing that people are subjected to. As a kid growing up, like when did you realize that these stories existed, that your grandfather had been through it?

Did he ever talk about kind of the psychological impact or the things that he changed after these types of experiences? or was it not until you actually read the book and kind of wrapped your head around it as an adult that you got some of that information? Well... Hey guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second

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Come hang out with me, many of the popular guests from the podcast, and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. All right, let's get back into this conversation. You know, it's a shame because my grandfather died when I was a sophomore at Auburn University when I was in college. So we didn't have some of the deeper,

introspective conversations that I would have loved to have now and ask him, do you think you had PTSD? You know, how did you, all I have now is the book, which I'm so grateful that he took the time to do that, to, you know, memorialize all of that in writing on paper. Um, but again, you know, he really pocketed all of this away and it really wasn't, he did speak to my high school and speak about different things and jumping out of his airplane and being a POW, but it was in broad strokes.

It wasn't really until I delved into the book and then I started joining these organizations. I became a board member of the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum. I started speaking at events. I started going to events and listening, meeting veterans and their family members and last surviving World War II vets. I became friends with a man named John Lucky Luckadoo, who's still alive. He's 101. He's one of the last surviving World War II 8th Air Force pilots.

And it really wasn't until I started hearing these stories collectively and rereading my grandfather's book that I was like, it's just unbelievable that he came back and had what appeared to be a normal, stable life. Because so many people go and see war and experience what they did. I don't think that I would be able to come back and be whole and get married and have kids. And, you know, when I tell you a really calm, great person who never raised his voice, he was the person that everybody in the family, even our extended families, you always went

to Frank to help you with your problems. Maybe, maybe being a POW is what made him realize that like life short and nothing's a big deal compared to what I went through. So getting a C on your homework. My mom said that she, you know, when she and her siblings didn't make good grades, grandpa just said, just do your best. Right. So I think that it probably put a lot of things into perspective for him. But it's really insurmountable odds what they went through. And, you know, they were right up close with the enemy. And my grandfather jumping out of a plane that was on fire using a parachute for the first time. I mean, you hear about parachutes not working. He packed his own parachute and it worked. Thank God. And he landed in a German farmer's field. Decades later, Anthony, he went back to that German farmer's field, became friends with the people who own the farm, who actually turned him over to the German police. They had to. They would have gotten in trouble. My grandfather, his parents didn't know that he was alive or dead. And his dad would call the White House every day demanding that they say what

happened to his son. And finally, they were told that he had been captured and was a POW. The idea that he spent 18 months there, I mean, when he was out of the war, he had pneumonia. he had you know weighed maybe 130 pounds I mean this is like a big guy if you see pictures of my grandfather um lice uh and obviously a lot of emotional trauma um but I think that writing this book probably really helped him process a lot of those emotions I also just want to point out back to the title of the book which I really never fully understood two men died the day that my grandfather's plane went down. That's generations of people that do not exist now because of what happened on that day on October 10th. And imagine I wouldn't be here talking to

you today if my grandfather was one of the two men that were killed. I mean, it all comes down to luck. Life is short. Your life changes in an instant. And I think it's all about your mental clarity and, and how I think it all is mental. So you did this, uh, kind of rewriting of the forward and the republishing of the book. Um, you also worked with, uh, I believe it's his daughter, Elizabeth Murphy. And it sounds like there was okay. Your mom. Okay. And, uh, on top of that, uh, it sounds like you guys really spent a lot of time kind of as a family looking for other artifacts, looking for photos, things like that. Talk a little bit about that process and kind of some of the things you learned there. So my grandfather had self-published this book

with a man who had served in the 8th Air Force that he became friends with after the war, who had a small publishing company. He was like, look, I'm writing this book for my family. Can you help me make it look nice? And I don't think that grandpa ever would have imagined that one of his grandchildren would then take on the mighty task of republishing his books. I went to my mom and I said, this masters of the air is going to be coming out on Apple in a couple of years. We need, well, at the time we thought it was HBO. And I said, we really need to publish grandpa's book. So I took it to St. Martin's press with the help of my agents. And I know that sounds bougie, but when you're in news, you have an agent. And so I went to St. Martin's and we pitched them

on the idea. They read the book, they loved it. And they said, well, why don't you and your mom write a foreword. And we sort of looked at each other and we were like, how do you do that? So I flew down to Atlanta. We tried to write it together. It was so hard. So we ended up, she wrote her section. I wrote my section. And then I had to go through my grandmother's house and I was looking through storage units and through the basement and through boxes to try to find all of the original photographs that were in the book. Because again, it wasn't something that was on a computer or even a floppy disk. And if it was on a floppy disk, I don't know where that floppy disk was and then all of a sudden it was like the clouds parted the angels were singing

and light rays were shining down and my grandma literally who's 93 looks at me and goes why don't you check the guest room and like the guest room it's been 20 years since this book was published on a desk in the guest room was a white box and on it it said photos for luck of the draw and we opened it and all the pictures were in there. That is incredible. What did your grandmother think as you guys were doing this? Oh, I was like, I just spent all this time looking for the pictures and they're literally in the back room. You guys like, what are you, what is going on here? Um, and then it was a big deal because then I had to take them out of the home and I had to get permission. Everybody thought I was going to lose everything and we had to scan them. And then

it was a whole process of, um, also going through the book and like fact checking with historians. And I spent over a year working with World War II historians to try to make sure that everything was perfect. And in the back of the book, for those that love data and love numbers, there are these incredible appendices that these really incredible historians put together and updated what my grandfather had, where you can go and look up an airplane. If you have a family member that flew in the war, you can try to find them in the back of the book.

There's airplanes and numbers and all of this information that was very arduous. And you should have seen me in these spreadsheets. You would have laughed like I'm like the last person you think. What is your grandmother? What is your grandmother think as you guys were doing this? Was it kind of like a trip back down memory lane and she was excited by it? Was she nervous? Like, what was her reaction?

I mean, I was just with her the other weekend because we actually all went to CNN together where we did this interview for Jake Tapper and it's going to air in a few weeks. And I just think that everybody is sort of like wide eyed and shocked that it's happened sort of perfect timing with the series. And I think that we all can't believe that Tom Hanks gave a quote. We can't believe that former governor of Texas, Rick Perry, gave a quote. General Petraeus gave a quote that there's all this support, all this love. Um, I think that everybody's just thrilled, you know, because this is exactly what my

grandfather probably deep down would have wanted, but didn't know how to do it. And I think he would be shocked. I wish that I could tell him right now that this is happening. Maybe he knows. When you start to think about your job today, you are a reporter at CNN. You cover the entertainment industry. You're kind of very well versed in terms of the pulse of what people are like, what they don't like. How did that change the way you looked at his writing, the story, kind of how the book

was received when it first got published? What was kind of your day-to-day job and how that changed maybe the way you looked at all of this? Well, I would say that I think that being a part of this process, people are looking at me differently. I think that people, when they look at entertainment journalism, sometimes they see it as like a bit fluffy, maybe not so serious. And I think that the fact that, you know, I have taken on this mission for no other reason than to champion this great work, not written by me, written by my grandfather, with all of the profits going to two different World War II organizations. I think that people are impressed and surprised and excited. So I think I've piqued people's interest when it comes to my connection to it. I also just think

that, look, like you don't have to be interested in World War II to enjoy this. If you just like a good story that's a page turner, I think that you're going to love this. It's riveting. It's emotional. I had someone at work who got an advanced copy, somebody that, again, wouldn't be the obvious clientele for this. And she was like, I was crying by the end of the book. I mean, you know, it's hard to explain, but it's just like looking at these 18, 19 year olds now who are enlisting in the military. And it's like these guys just wanting to fight for their country. And And I think that, sadly, look, different people have different opinions on the state of America right now.

But I think that what we're missing is sort of that patriotism, that, you know, willingness to kind of like that feeling that we all had after 9-11, right? It's like the feeling I had when I walked out of Top Gun this summer. You know, it's that feeling of just like, I am proud to be an American. And I think that when you read this book, that's how you feel. You feel heroism, you feel pride, it's courage, it's looking at these guys decades before you who put their lives on the line and many of them died for the freedoms that we have today.

And that might sound cheesy, but it's honestly the truth. And it's what I've come to realize that these guys were heroes and we need to talk about it. And talking about the present and the future is great, but we also have to remember the past. And so that is why history and this is so important to me. And that's why I care so much about sharing the story. And yeah, it's a good book.

I mean, you know, again, you're not going to be bogged down with data the whole time. I think that, you know, I think it's a book for anybody. I think that if someone picks it up, I think they're going to be surprised. Yeah, look, I think there's a ton of media, whether it is movies, whether books, podcasts now, you know, all these different formats that definitely drive the importance of American identity. They drive the kind of aspiration of people wanting to follow in the footsteps of people who came before them. But there's also this element of respect. And if you listen to a story like this or read this book and you understand what people went through to have

the freedoms that we enjoy on a daily basis, I think that it's really hard to kind of understand those sacrifices and kind of those experiences and then be flippant about kind of the day to day life and all the things that make America kind of what it has become. And so it's this. And also, I will say, like, again, these are not my words, but something that my 93 year old grandmother, who's from the deep south, loves to say is that if it wasn't for men like Frank, we would all here in this country be speaking German today. Right.

So that's their mindset. And that's how they feel that really that these men changed the course and they are the reasons why we have the freedoms that we have today. Right. And so I think that there is a lot of pride, especially for that generation, what Tom Brokaw called the greatest generation. But I think that there's really something to it. And I think it's something that we are lacking now in terms of our pride for our country and especially for our servicemen and our veterans, the men who are still going out there every single day and fighting for this country. I think that we need to pay more attention to our veterans. We need to talk to them. We need to ask them how they're doing. We need to take more of an interest. And we really need to be talking about post-traumatic stress as well. And I'm actually writing a piece right now for CNN.com that's going to come out soon

about that with a lot of voices and Bob Woodruff and other people who are really vocal about this subject. But I think that that's really important here too. You know, we need to. Where is that welcoming as a country for our veterans? It doesn't matter what side of the party you're on. Right. It's a bipartisan thing. We need to be really have pride and love and care from the government all the way down for our veterans and our servicemen and women. One of the things it appears is that the problem is becoming better understood. At least there's more people talking about whether it is veteran suicide.

I think it's 22 veterans per day commit suicide or other types of data points. And so, you know, the first step to solving that problem is at least people being aware of it. But I think your point about, you know, should we be embracing these individuals in a different way is very valid. But also, you know, what are the solutions? And one of the hard parts about this is it's not necessarily solutions that just money solves or, you know, it's not kind of a physical challenge where we can say, hey, just go and work out and you'll be OK or anything like that. A lot of times they are these kind of mental injuries, mental challenges that we frankly don't even really understand that well. Right. I think if you were to look at the literature at the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was very little understanding. We've definitely improved. But still, at this point, I think that people are trying to spend time and understand PTSD, understand different kind of psychological impact that war and these different experiences have.

And so we're doing that still in 2023. You know, you can imagine back in the 40s and 50s, they basically were flying completely blind. They knew nothing about this stuff. And it speaks even more, I think, to the resilience of that entire generation of men who went and had these experiences. And when they came back, you know, they just kind of were left on their own to to kind of figure it out. Yeah. And I mean, a big part of my piece, Anthony, that you'll read soon is about psychedelics. And I spoke to, like I said, governor, former governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who's big, a big champion of that. An organization called Vets to Bob Woodruff, you know, the ABC journalist who was hit by an IED and he suffered. He barely survived, and now he has the Bob Woodruff Foundation for Veterans. You know, I explore all different types of things, right?

It's not just one solution. It's not just, you know, the VA, or it's not just, you know, trying micro-dosing of, you know, ketamine or psilocybin or MDMA that's going to fix the problem here. But it's just looking at it as a whole, having that conversation, that conversation that still needs to happen. Um, and it's a conversation that definitely wasn't happening when our men came home after World War II and Vietnam and the Korean War, right? So it's really important that we, you know, I think that, look, not everybody wants to

talk. Not all veterans want to sit and talk. One of my best friends, her husband did a few tours in Iraq, and he has a lot of emotional trauma from that. And it's not so simple. I can't just go sit down on the couch and be like, so tell me about what happened, you know, open up to me. It's not that simple. And I think that it really comes down to health care options, the government and things that really need to be set in place for veterans when they come home. But I think that when you read this book, Luck of the Draw, you will say to yourself, wow, there's a lot to unpack here. When you read the epilogue, you're like, how did he go on, Frank Murphy, my grandfather, to have a semblance of a normal life?

You know, what trauma, what demons? And, you know, in the book, he says that he spent he looked back with pride, but he spent the rest of his life walking with ghosts. It's a pretty powerful statement. I think my grandfather had a lot of guilt that he survived, survivor's guilt, and that a lot of people he knew didn't. Yeah. It's a pretty powerful kind of view of the world is that you have that survivor's guilt, but also you've got to keep living your life. And, you know, frankly, there's a lot of folks who were in these experiences. They just never talked about it.

And so something like this book gives us the best understanding that we can have of someone who was there. I love the quote from Tom Hanks. He said, in the pursuit of authenticity, of accurate history, and undeniable courage, no words matter more than I was there. And I thought that was just a great way to kind of just say, look, there's a lot of people who write about this stuff. There's a lot of people who try to understand it. They read about it in books. They watch movies. They do all this stuff.

But there's a couple tens of thousands of men who were there who went through it. and uh thankfully your grandfather wrote it down um and and that story will live on when somebody meets you thank goodness he wrote it down that's the whole point is that so many of these men and women who i speak to at my grandfather was in the 100th uh bomb group so just to explain maybe late in the episode to explain now but there's the eighth air force there's different squadrons and then there's different bomb groups so my grandfather was in something that was nicknamed the Bloody Hundredth. We don't exactly know why it got that nickname, but that is what Masters of the Air is going to be based on, the 100th Bomb Group that my grandfather was in.

And when I go to the 100th Bomb Group reunions, they have one a year. And I speak to these different people. I mean, they're almost like Star Wars conventions in the sense that it's like, so many people go, you're meeting so many people. There's all these displays of memorabilia and A2 bomber jackets and medals and cool stations where you learn about different people. And every time I go I make new friends I find new people that become like family to me and it's just it's like the family I never knew I needed and I'm so happy to have but nobody wrote it down you know they're like I have letters I have telegrams or I have this but like that's why this book is such a treasure because it's it's there and my grandfather my grandmother said this last weekend grandpa

didn't write this book for himself. He wrote it for his fellow men. That is why he wrote the book. It was for them. And it was to put this down. And if you also look, my grandfather, wow, so much methodical research. I mean, if you look at the footnotes of this book, it's wild. The research and the data that he, the lengths that he went through. I mean, I remember when he was in the basement in his office and he had papers. My grandmother used to get so mad. It was so messy. I mean, it was like a dungeon. He was down there writing for like seven years. He wrote this book, you know? So again, it's also not, it's filled with numbers and facts and you know, you're going to get a lot of information, but in a, in a very like eloquent, well-written way,

it's really great. I wish I could just tell him now as a grown woman and as a journalist, like you did it this is fabulous stuff this isn't just like a grandpa's book i mean you did a great job the journals are writing about them kirk is publishers weekly the library journal i mean the reviews are rave reviews um it's so neat which is why i'm excited to and also my grandfather used to say that all the time so neat um but you know i just wish he was here and i could tell him that you know you deserve this and we're gonna shout this from the rooftops because people need to know what you and your fellow men went through. I love it. If if you meet somebody on the street and they say, hey, what's the book about? What's like the one or two sentence overview?

Luck of the Draw is about the young men who took to the skies over Nazi occupied Europe, and they did it day after day in the most perilous and torturous conditions. And they did it for us. And if you read this book, you're going to feel like what it was like to actually be there. And I think that you'll walk away with a little bit more pride for your country. Chloe, thank you so much for taking the time to put all the effort into finding all the information, republishing it, rewriting the foreword, kind of this Herculean effort of taking a book that you didn't write, but obviously putting this spotlight on it. If people want to connect with you, where can we send them on the Internet to find you? Well, I read every one of my DMs. I don't get that many, but you guys can DM me at ChloeMalas on Instagram.

You can also find me, same thing, at ChloeMalas on Twitter. And also, if you want to learn more about Frank and the book and you want to order it, you can also go to luckofthedraw.us. Awesome. Chloe, listen, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And we'll definitely do it again in the future. Thank you. You're the best.

Thank you.