Behind the Lines

In this episode we hear the letters and emails written by the next Greatest Generation, the men and women serving in  Iraq and Afghanistan and on the home front. Voiced by actors like Army Veteran Donn Nemchick, Frederick Weller and Many Siegfried, this powerful collection of first hand person experiences covers the Gulf War on Terror with gripping immediacy and intimate expressions of hope, fear, loneliness and resolve. This episode, which includes correspondences by U.S. troops who served in Afghanistan, was recorded before Taliban forces seized Kabul on 8/16/2021.

From the American Revolution to present day women have fought for our democracy from the battlefields to the home front. Women in Service tells their story through letters voiced by actresses such as Julianna Margulies, Martha Plimpton and Joan Allen. Interviews with Sandy Mitten the "Granny Gunner" in the Gulf War and Major General Donna Barbisch, one of America's first female Major Generals add fascinating personal detail to this episode.

BEHIND THE LINES (BTL) is a 30-minute monthly podcast that features readings (by famous actors and other prominent people) of the greatest war letters ever written.The podcast is hosted by Emmy-winning journalist Barbara Harrison who explores centuries of fascinating letters with New York Times bestselling author Andrew Carroll, who has made tracking down and tracing the history of our nation’s war letters his life’s work. The project is ongoing, so new correspondences continue to come in.

This episode highlights the greatest love letters written in times of war, from impassioned expressions of affection to “Dear John” (and even “Dear June”) letters that troops receive—male and female—from a sweetheart, spouse, or fiancé(e), informing the recipient that the relationship is over. Most of the letters in this podcast are upbeat, amusing, and detail incredible relationships that were formed entirely by mail.

This episode features letters written during and about the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and 1919, especially as it affected World War I. (More American troops were killed in WWI by the disease than in combat.) The podcast ends with a powerful letter by a New York doctor from the current (2020) pandemic to show the parallels with the one that occurred a century ago.

This episode introduces the BEHIND THE LINES podcast and focuses on the historian Andrew Carroll’s overall mission to seek out and preserve America’s wars letters. This episode also covers a variety of themes and spotlights some of the best, never-before-published letters that Andrew has found, including one written (and read) by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.