Tango Alpha Lima focuses on war letters

Andrew Carroll is the founding director of the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University, the creator of the virtual Museum of American War Letters, and the co-host, with the Emmy-winning journalist Barbara Harrison, of the “Behind the Lines” podcast.

Carroll is this week’s special guest on The American Legion Tango Alpha Lima podcast. In the new episode, he discusses how his passion developed after a tragedy three decades ago.

Admitting he “grew up hating history,” he was a sophomore in college when the family home burned down. All the letters, family photos and more memorabilia were gone.

Soon afterward, as fate would have it, a distant cousin named Jim told Carroll he recently rediscovered some letters from his time in service during World War II. Jim sent him a letter from 1945 detailing his eyewitness account of a Nazi concentration camp.

“I’ll never forget, after I read this letter, I told Jim I would send it back,” Carroll recalled. “He said, ‘No keep it. I probably would have just thrown it out.’ And that was the spark that got me interested in this.”

Carroll started collecting war letters and then caught a big break in 1998. Dear Abby published an article about the project, which lead to Carroll “being inundated” with more letters.

That led to the virtual museum, his podcast and more. The center now has letters composed from troops, from the Revolutionary War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Learn more about the evolution of Carroll’s letters project, how you can participate and more in the new episode on YouTube or listen here.

It is one of more than 100 Tango Alpha Lima podcasts available at this web page. You can also download them on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcast-hosting sites. You can also view all of the episodes on the Legion’s YouTube channel.