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Jonathan Sandler joins us to discuss his graphic novel The English GI: World War II Graphic Memoir of A Yorkshire Schoolboy's Adventures in the United States based on the memoir of his grandfather Bernard Sandler.

In September 1939, Britain declares war on Germany. Bernard Sandler, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Yorkshire, is on a school trip to the United States and consequently finds himself unable to return home, separated from his close-knit Jewish family in Britain.

Stranded in cosmopolitan New York for an unknown duration, he must grow up quickly. He discovers the pleasures and excitement of Broadway theatre and jazz while developing his own social circle at New York University. But just as he finds his independence, the United States declares war in December 1941, which changes his life once again. Bernard is drafted into the United States Army, joining the 26th Infantry “Yankee” Division. Eventually, he returns to Europe, serving on the front lines alongside General Patton’s Third Army during the brutal Lorraine Campaign in Northern France in the fall of 1944.

The book also follows the remarkable story of Bernard's family in England, and the fate of his wider family in Latvia (whom he visited in an epic journey in 1937, also as a schoolboy), during this period.

John Raschke, author of A Tour in Chuong Thien Province: A U.S. Army Lieutenant with MACV Advisory Team 73 in the Mekong Delta, 1969-1970, in conversation with Harvey Weiner.

In the summer of 1969, as the Vietnam War was being turned over to the South Vietnamese, Lieutenant John Raschke arrived in Chuong Thien Province deep in the Mekong Delta, eager to have a positive impact. Recounting his assignment to a provincial advisory team of military and civilian personnel, this memoir depicts the ordinary and the extraordinary of life both inside and outside the wire--mortar attacks, firefights and snipers, hot showers, good meals and comradery, the life and death struggles of the Vietnamese people and the bonds he formed with them.

Harvey Weiner was Raschke's hoochmate in Vietnam, and his first exposure to someone of the Jewish faith. Weiner was the Phoenix program advisor to the province. Weiner and Rascke became life-long friends.