A 96-year-old Cantankerous Writer and Ex-Navy Captain S. Martin Shelton

Grit. Or as he calls himself, just plain old cantankerous. Either way, what he has accomplished in 96 years far exceeds what most of us will experience in our own lives. This one is longer than usual. Out of respect for this man's service to our country and the fact that he reminds us of wars and why we were in them in the first place, I decided to keep our conversation as is. I believe everyone who listens will leave with a sense of wonderment for what men and women have done for us for years, fight and die for our freedom. You will also hear about his newer career as a writer. The career that really started when he was in his seventies. 

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Hello, welcome to the How to Write a Book from A to Z podcast. I am Lisa Greinert, and today I feel like we have a very special treat for you. Have you ever heard the little saying, just do it? Well, how about listening to a 96 year old Naval Captain, who actually did just that, but he did just that at 70 years old. Captain Sylvester Martin Shelton was born in 1929, an era of flappers, bootleg gin, and Al Capone. It was also the beginning of the Great Depression, when so many people barely had enough food for a family. Well, I guess there were a few rich people that were able to afford food, but for many, it was difficult. There's no doubt that growing up during that era taught a lot of people about. determination and grit and you'll see Captain Shelton definitely has that., Captain Shelton, retired from active and reserve naval service. He served us in the Korean and Vietnam wars. You're going to hear a lot about someone who's actually been there, who's been in our wars. It's a little longer than usual because I want my audience to hear from someone who truly understands wars.. Before I go on, I have to mention that after our conversation, we spent another two hours, Donella, Captain Shelton, and I just talking about his life. One of his conversations with us is about being eight years old and walking into his home, and the only thing on his plate for dinner was an apple. So, as you listen to this man and the life that he has built on his own, I ask you to honor him by finishing this episode. To thank him for everything he has done for us and showing us a life of hard work, determination, and just love of country. I do need to mention just a few other items, things that kept him busy and working for so many years prior well, besides just the whole, you know, serving our country thing. Captain Shelton, also earned his Master's of Arts degree. He spent 30 years producing a host of documentary motion media shows. He won over 40 awards in national and international film competitions. He's published extensively in trade magazines, peer reviewed journals, commercial publications. And then I think is when the fun started. It's when he started writing his Roman Eclipse. You'll understand. So, without further ado, let's listen and meet Captain Shelton and his handy sidekick, Donella Looger who you met on a previous episode. Donella is Captain Shelton's publisher for his new and interesting well, you'll hear that at the end. Here we go. Thank you for joining us. We have Captain Sylvester Martin Shelton with us today. He has a lot of experience to share with us, not only in writing, but in his life's journey, how old are you, Captain? I don't think that's true. 96, Lisa 9, 6, 96. Wow. That's fantastic. Well, we are so lucky to have you to tell us about your writing journey. So, that's kind of where I like to start, Captain. If you don't mind, can you kind of start at the beginning, where your love of writing began? Okie doke. I've been thinking about it. And actually it began when I was a little boy in a bathtub, I told myself a story probably wasn't more than four years old and I didn't do anything with it, but I told the story and then as I grew older, I kept telling stories. I would make up stories like you couldn't believe. In fact, I remember in high school, I actually wrote a story for a friend of mine for an English assignment, but I didn't do any writing because I was consumed with many other things. I was a Navy combat cameraman in Korean War, and also a little bit in Vietnam. I was in country three times. In fact, I was in Vietnam when it was still French Indochina, and I did some motion picture work with the Foreign Legion. But anyway, that's off topic. No, I actually, I like that. Let's talk a little bit about that it will lead to where you are now. How did you end up in photography filming? Okay, I took up photography kind of as an amateur and not very good at it, but I enjoyed it, and I fooled around a lot. This was post war, the last one we won. We're talking about 48, 49, 50, in that range. We were having the Cold War with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and we thought pretty sure World War III was going to happen. I think it was 1950, the Soviet Union blocked access to Berlin. By the treaty that ended World War Two all the Allied powers had access to Berlin, but the Soviets destroyed that, and they blocked it off. And Harry Truman, our president, God love him, for this incident, did the Berlin Airlift and where everything was landing at Tempelhof in the Allied sector and bringing coal, food, everything that people need in the Allied sector of Berlin. So we thought World War III was going to pop any day. And so President Truman instituted the draft drafting people into the army. And I was at the time about 23, and I said, I don't want to go into the army. Where can I get three square meals a day in a dry bunk every night? The obvious answer was the Navy. So I signed up as a Naval Reservist, and I got called to active duty during the Korean War. So I went to the Navy Photo School in Pensacola for a year, probably the best school I've ever been to. I learned more about photography than I could possibly have imagined not only the mechanics of it, but the chemistry of it, the mathematics of it, you name it. In fact, I wrote a book about fundamentals of photographic optics. But These stories just kept popping around, I could tell a story, give me a topic and I'll tell you a story about it. I finished my Navy career as a special duty officer intelligence, and I was promoted to captain, thank God. I also had a career as a documentary filmmaker, I have a master's degree at cinema from USC. I made a lot of documentary films, won a ton of awards. So I retired, both from my civilian duties and my military duties. Age. It just was time to quit. I sat down one day and I had a fantasy about Grand Duchess Anastasia. She was part of the Romanov family that the Bolsheviks killed in Ekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks regicide the entire, both the Romanov family, the Tsar, his wife, four daughters, and one son. Outrageous, outrageous act. To this day, we don't know why George V in England didn't offer the Romanovs succor. Because Empress. was Queen Victoria's granddaughter, so the relationship was tight. But the Bolsheviks arrested them, put them in this Dachau out in Siberia, actually, and eventually killed them all not only bullets, but with bayonets, and the bodies were thrown in wells, scattered around. Eventually, Russian and English archaeologists have discovered all the bones. They now sit in St. Petersburg, including Anastasia, and the Russian Orthodox Church has nominated all of them as saints. But back to Grand Duchess Anastasia. The youngest During the 1920s, the 30s, and maybe even to the early 40s, the rumor persisted that Grand Duchess Anastasia survived. We don't know how, but there were at least two movies made, one with Ewell Brenner and the woman was Ingrid Bergman. There were books written, articles written. Radio shows done that Anastasia was alive. She was living in New Zealand. She was living someplace else. Her new name, pardon me, but did they find her with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis? No, they, as I said, the archeologist found bones, and I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was probably around 1990, maybe somewhere in that range. If you go to St. Petersburg into the big museum, you can see the bones. Wow. So this has been bugging me for years that Anastasia was alive. Of course, if you really analyze it, the Bolsheviks could never stand for her to be alive because they could not afford to have another Romanov, direct Romanov, alive. That would be a great threat to the Bolshevik regime. So I wrote this book called St. Catherine's Crown. The story about Anastasia just bubbled out of my mind. Like gangbusters, and it's a huge novel, maybe 300 and some pages, of course, all Russian books are long by definition I'm not going to give you away the plot, but she does survive in my book and has a great adventure. As the Soviet secret police find out that she is alive, and it's the chase that goes on and on. And I'm not going to tell you the ending. Well, we need to read it right? It's St. Catherine's crown. And the reason is the crown. Is the kind of the MacGuffin, you know, the MacGuffin is what Alfred Hitchcock said, it's the thing or a person that the story is built about, but you don't really see it. The crown is the MacGuffin. Actually, in this novel, you do see it, but that's another story. Now I've got one book published, and all of a sudden, I had all these other things to write about. It just kept flowing. I didn't do it on purpose. The mind just functions that way. They pop out stories. I don't write a whole lot. Well, I actually write fiction, but I call it Roman a Plef. That means a novel with a key, and they're different from historical fiction. Roman Aclefs are more historical than they are fiction. But you apply a little bit of fiction to it to keep it palatable. As a matter of fact, one of the books I wrote is called Amelia. It's a little novella. It's a Roman Aclef about Amelia Earhart's last flight. We know for a fact that, she died. So, this book published on Amazon, and I got over a hundred reviews, and one of the reviews, this is actually true, said, I really enjoyed Amelia, but I only gave it a three rating because it sounded too much like history. Darn those boring history books. But you see, whether that person knew it, they paid me a great compliment. Because that's what a Roman a clef is supposed to do. Yeah, so most of my books are Roman a class of I take little known incidents, usually from the early 20th century. One of my other books is called the Panay incident. The Panay Incident just about started World War Two in 1937, we had a gunboat in the Yangtze off the man King, and the Japanese. sank it and killed American sailors and wounded just about everybody on board. Well, that's an act of war. And the Japanese were baiting us to go to war in 1937 so they could win it because they were very powerful at the time. They were fighting in China. They had a very big Navy a great naval air force, we had nothing. We were still pacified from World War I. President Roosevelt, did not take the bait, thank God. He just let it pass and then it was an unfortunate incident. And the Japanese did some reparations and the thing was kind of swept under the As it were, I remember I was just a young lad of eight, I was eight years old, and I remember it very clearly and I thought for sure Roosevelt was going to go to war, but he did not because he knew then that World War two in the Pacific was coming. He moved the fleet from the Atlantic coast to Pearl Harbor and started, we started to build up our armed forces. So that's the Panay Incident. And so they blew up Pearl Harbor instead, is that right? Four years later, four years, the Panay was in July, I think of 37 and Pearl Harbor was December the 7th, 1941. Thank you. I have written an article about December the 7th, and it's quite controversial, it's titled, Hawaii Clipper. This Pan American in the early in the 30s. was flying from Oakland to Hong Kong, and these big giant flight clippers, and they would fly from Oakland to Honolulu, to Midway, to Wake, to Guam, Guam to Manila, Manila to Hong Kong. It was about a three or four day journey. So one of the airplanes It was flying out of Guam, inbound to Manila, and it disappeared. I mean, this is a fact. It just disappeared. Well, there was a gigantic search for it, of course. Nothing was found. No debris, no bodies. No seat cushions, and more importantly, Lisa, there was no oil slick. No oil slick. That's impossible. All airplane crashes in the water leave oil slicks, and they will last for two or three weeks. They didn't find diddly squat. To this day, it's the mystery. So I wrote my Roman a clef, titled Hawaii Clipper, and I solved the problem. And I think I really did actually, we have to read the book to find out what happened to it. Yes, and I think it actually is. I would, I would bet money that it's pretty close to actually what happened. Of course, we'll never know. Sure. Okay, let me ask you this how long does it take you to research 1 of your books. That's a tough question. Some of them I don't do any research at all because I've got it in my idiot brain. I used to read a lot before I got my eye troubles. I was a voracious reader of biographies, autobiographies, history books. I really loved Barbara Tuchman and her books like The Guns of August, Charles II. I grew up through this time. I remember Pearl Harbor very well. I remember that exactly what, what I was doing when my friend Pedro Sanchez Nevado called me and said, turn on the radio. The Japs have struck Pearl Harbor. That's a quote from him. So it's my life history and background. I've traveled all over the world twice, and I've been a lot of time in Asia, particularly the Far East. So I have a cumulative knowledge. Of experience and reading and just plain old orneriness us. That'll keep you going. Yeah. And so I've got about 20 books now on Amazon. Wow. Yeah. Some of them are monographs, like Ghost Towning for Fun and Adventures. And I've mentioned the one about the fundamentals of photographic optics. The other one, Ho Chi Minh. And the Office of Strategic Services, we just published that. It's about how American intelligence and Ho Chi Minh fought together in World War II to fight the Japanese in Indochina and also the Vichy French, the Vichy French. Lord have mercy. So we were comrades in arms with Ho Chi Minh and his cadre of guerrilla fighters. In fact, if we hadn't intervened, he would have been killed and lost. As a matter of fact, in 1943, I think it was in August, he came down deathly ill. He had tuberculosis, diarrhea, and you name it. So the OSS, Office of Strategic Service, which was our intelligence agency in World War II, brought in a medical team with penicillin. Nobody had penicillin, but we did. And we brought Ho Chi Minh back to life. We fought side by side with him we gave them arms and ammunition and training. We took his cadres into China where we trained them how to use radios and you name it. And we made them a real fighting force and they, they were so effective that the Japanese had to pull a division from the Central Pacific into Indochina to fight. And that was a tremendous achievement on our side, because those Japanese weren't fighting the US Marines in the islands. Ho Chi Minh. Thought the Americans were the best thing since sliced bread. We were comrades in arms. So, and President Roosevelt had promised Ho Chi Minh that after the war was over the Americans would keep the French out of Indochina and those people could decide what government they wanted. And actually, Ho Chi Minh at one time said, I will do a constitution just like the Americans. President Roosevelt died in May 1945. The war is still on, but closing down. Harry Truman becomes president. Harry Truman was a good old boy from Missouri. He didn't have the global geopolitical perspective that Roosevelt had. So Ho Chi Minh writes these letters to, to President Truman, please keep the French out. But Truman let the French back in. And that's when Ho Chi Minh got pissed off. And then we started the war with the French again, and then President Johnson, put in main American troops into Vietnam, where they had no business being. In matter of fact, in that book that I wrote, I conclude with the statement, we were on the wrong side, and I mean that, and I was there. And I helped Marty with this book and I wanted to bring this out so you could talk about a little bit more. The OSS, which most of us have never heard of, was the precursor to the CIA. And Ho Chi Minh actually got a CIA badge number. That's right, he did. The other thing is, This is my opinion. The reason, Ho Chi Minh had a reputation of being a communist, which is why I think Truman listened to his advisors and, you know, didn't honor the agreement that we had, but actually he was a nationalist. That's what Ho Chi Minh wanted for Vietnam. That's true. That's, she's right on target. So that's why I say we are on the wrong side. Of course, if we were on the wrong side, there would be no war whatsoever. The French treated those people horribly. Worst in slaves, the death rate was brutal, so I don't blame Ho Chi Minh for fighting the French, but I probably supported him. I didn't know all of this when I was serving in Vietnam, but now I do. What made you decide to write about them? I read a book, I don't remember exactly the author's name, where she discussed the relationship between the OSS and Ho Chi Minh. It was top secret. In fact, this lady wrote, it was the University of Kansas Press. I don't remember the title of the book, and I don't remember her name, but it must have been shortly after it got declassified. She got into the declassified records and wrote a really great book. It's great in a sense of its revelations. It's not very well written, but that's another story. So I read that book, and since I had so much experience in Vietnam, I said, what the hell is going on? So then I really got interested, and I had a researcher get into the National Archives. And I got four letters from Ho Chi Minh to President Truman, I got five letters from Ho Chi Minh to our Secretary of State, James Byrne, and two letters to President Johnson, none of which were ever answered. That is just unconscionable, at least. You say, thanks for your letter, but go to hell at least acknowledge right? They didn't even should have acknowledged President Roosevelt's promise because when Roosevelt makes a promise. He's talking for the United States of America and Truman just didn't have the perspective that we needed at that time. If, if he would have acknowledged and agreed to what Ho Chi Minh wanted, he wanted Vietnam to become part of the United States. He said maybe a commonwealth or a possession like Samoa or a territory. Or just an economic and political affiliation reasonable things, but our politicians didn't do it. So, it's really a crying shame because we lost about 50, 000 American soldiers in Vietnam, and we should have not lost any. We shouldn't have been there to start with, and that's why I say we were on the wrong side. But anyway, your question again, please. Okay, when you decide to write, do you just, like, start writing, or do you have a structure that you follow? Good point, okay. Generally speaking, I don't have a structure of any kind, like with Anastasia. I kind of knew what the ending was, but I didn't know what the middle was. I knew the beginning, of course. Frankly, Lisa, I can't explain it. I write, I get motion pictures in my mind. I see the scene playing out in real time. And so I just type what I'm seeing. Wow. And the story evolves. Naturally, I go back at home and tweak. But the plot just keeps going. And I see these characters. And I see the scene. And I see the little cafe they're in. I see it. So I can't explain how or why, but that's how I write. Either my fiction, the Roman Eccles, or the monographs, or the articles that I write. For example. I just see the Japanese bombing. The battleships at Pearl Harbor, maybe I'm nuts, but that's the way it is. I just find it fascinating because, I, I had interviewed Dave Dupree, who also mentioned the same thing that he sees images. Does he see him in motion? Yes. It's just interesting way of creating a book out of it without a whole lot of structure. It's just like, it's there and you just put it out there. It evolves, and I don't know exactly where it's going, but it gets there correctly eventually. Yeah, all of them, like the disappearance of that Pan American airplane. I could see that just as well as anything. As if I were there, I would, I see it that well. Wow. Do you have, tips that you feel might help a new writer? Yes. The key to a writer, any writer, is to sit down at your computer and start to write. It may be just gobbledygook, it may be junk, it doesn't matter. Get the brain in gear to write. So you wipe out the first six pages, and then you start over. Get the brain in gear to think about what you're writing. And I suspect the images begin to form. I don't know if that is true of all writers, but you've shown, you've mentioned, one of your people did. I do that. I don't do an outline. I don't do a structure of any kind. I just let it happen. And if it's right, it's right. If it's wrong, delete it and start over. So the beginning writer, the first thing to do is sit down and start to write. Then eventually your mind's going to take over and you're going to do something that has coherence. And then you can build on that. Now whether it's fiction, which fiction is easier to write, by the way, than a monograph. I write monographs because I'm smart enough to do it, but fiction is easier to do. Just take up a story, make up a story of something, or take an incident that happened and blow it out, that's probably the easiest way to get started. Some incident that you know about, that has interest to other people. I know a lot of people write biographies about themselves. I forget there's a name for it. Memoirs. Memoirs. Memoirs. Thank you. Who cares? You're writing it for fun, or for historic, that's okay. You can write for fun and not care about anybody reading it. So, there are two reasons to write anything. A, you enjoy doing it, and that's it. Or B, you write for money. That's it. In my defense, I'm writing my memoir and I'm writing it because I feel like what I have to say about what I've been through could be important to other people. Theme of perseverance, strength being, overcoming. I can't argue with that, but I would make a suggestion. Keep it sharp and simple. I haven't done that. It's not short and simple, simple. No, it's long and there's a lot in it. Well, whatever. That's your prerogative, but you know what's interesting. I just the reason I'm writing really is more. It's for me, right? I started writing because it has become like a therapy. It has helped me to release a lot. For me, I think that it's important whether it's a memoir and it's actually something you publish or it's something that you just write for for purpose. That's fine. Purpose. Right. That's what it is. Be my guest. That's a great. It's purpose. Yes. And Lisa, with your story, you have a niche market, which makes your memoir a little bit unique. Yeah, I guess that makes a lot of sense. Okay. So, um, let's move on, I want to go back. Did you like write at all growing up like in journals or is there any spark for writing early? Just out of curiosity. Good question. The answer is yes. When I was professionally engaged, I wrote technical papers or articles in technical magazines, like technical photography. I probably put, over the years, 25 articles in that magazine, and other, other magazines, like audiovisual communications. I remember I did. Articles for that. So that was way back. Unfortunately, I kept a copy of those magazines. Yeah, and I have done peer reviewed articles and professional journals, and those are hard to come by, but yes even back in the 60s, probably, or 70s. Yeah, in the 70s, probably. Yeah. I have done a lot of that. Okay. Okay. 2 drawers full of magazines I saved every copy. As you should. So, okay, I'm going to ask you this. You had quite a life. Have you written your story No, I have not. I'm a firm believer that everybody. Should tell their story, even not even like I am like to try to publish it and I'm not even sure if I will, but it matters you're going to be a hundred years old, maybe you are, you are, you have a lot to share, I always want to push people. Your story is important. And I think you should do that. You mentioned family. May I go into that a little bit? Yes. Our family is the old line, Texas family, the Gregory family my great grandmother was living in Ohio with her husband, a doctor, medical doctor, and in the Civil War, he was. Enrolled in the Union Army, and he was killed, now she's a widow with five children. Texas, was decimated of males. They were killed in the war. In fact, Antietam, if you know anything about that battle, that was all Texan, and it was the one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Matter of fact, I have read That at one point towards the end of the Civil War, there were only about 20 or 25 men of military age still in Texas. And Texas was still fighting the Comanches out in West Texas. So they put out, come to Texas and get a land grant for free. Now, you can't beat that. So this woman, packed up five children in a covered wagon and drove it to Bandera, Texas, in a wagon with five kids. That's right. Now, that's a tough broad. Yes, the bandera and got her land grant and I don't know much of the story beyond that, except the children. My grandfather migrated to San Antonio and married my grandmother, and he was a railroad engineer for Southern Pacific. And in 1916, he died in a railroad crash, so my grandmother was a widow. But that's the Gregory family, and the last, my daughter of the family. She's not married. So the family will die. It's unfortunate, but wow. So one of the originals. Yep, so can you imagine a woman, a middle aged woman with five children driving a covered wagon, and there were Indians still on the warpath, there were bandits and renegades, and I don't know how she did it, but she did it. You know, that's a long way from Central Ohio to Bandera Tech. That's a long way at a car. Exactly. You know, it's stories like that that remind us just how blessed and fortunate we are for modern conveniences. That's a very encouraging story to me as a woman. Yeah, I want you to write. Yes, yes, right about her, it's it's amazing. I have, a number of people have asked me to do it. I resisted, I have a lot of career that I don't discuss, I'm a retired intelligence officer, and a lot of that I don't talk about, and you don't have to, yeah, you can leave out what you want to leave out, that's the beauty of your memoirs, you don't have to like, Tell us everything yes. About research. Let me tell you what I have done. I hire people to do most of my research. I've hired Donella. I'm hiring another lady from the San Gabriel Writers League. She just finished wrapping up a lot of research on another project I'm doing. I find that that's a simpler way for me to function. I'm working on Islam. I've got two or three articles I've got to work on. There's Another book in my mind, which I haven't talked about yet. It just popped called the Zimmerman telegram Zimmerman Telegram. In essence, Germany realized that they couldn't win the war. World War I, Great Britain and France were fighting Germany and Austria, okay? And they were in the trench warfare in Belgium, Passchendaele, for example it was terrible. The war was brutal. As a matter of fact, at the war's end, France had lost about 60 percent of their military aged men. It's that bad. So anyway, the story begins. In Germany, when Field Marshal Hindenburg talks to the Kaiser Wilhelm II, he says we can't win the war. The United States is coming in because they have sunk the Lusitania. And they had Americans on board, and there was a lot of other stuff, but President Wilson was now prepared to declare war on Germany. So, the German intelligence concocted this scheme where they would involved Mexico to invade Texas and California, and that at the end of the war, All of those states would become Mexican again. And the key was the foreign minister Zimmerman, German, who sent a telegram to the Mexican, consulate in Galveston. Fortunately, the British had the best cryptographers in the world. And they cracked the message. The British sent a decoded message to President Wilson, and that was it. Wilson declared war. Zimmerman Telegram was not the incident, but it was probably the last incident. So, it's a great story to be told, and I'm going to do that. It's a roam and a cleft. The basics of the history. All, all my books, my fiction books have a femme fatale, almost all of them, and they do some weird things. Well, you know what? Because they can, because it's fiction. That's right. So I'm going to introduce a femme fatale. I've already got her in mine, in the Zimmerman telegram. Fantastic. All right. Let me ask you this, um, captain, because I'm amazed that at 97 years old, 96. Okay. When's your birthday? 7th, January. Well, happy birthday month. Most people are sitting back relaxing and here you are still going strong. I'm amazed at what you're doing at 97, and then you look at young people six. I'm I And you don't look at, you don't look at day over 90 Just checking. Um, 96, 96. 96, my gosh. All right. Um. What would you tell young people? You do more than most people do on a daily basis and have forever. What, what would you tell young people about life? Good question. The answer is do it. Just do it. Get rid of that damn palm thing where you punch in all the notes. Throw that damn thing away and get a good book from the library. Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. Start there. Start, let me put it this way. You're amazed that I'm doing all the stuff. The answer is if I stop doing it, I die. You know, that's that simple. So I'm going to plug on and maybe I'll make a hundred. Who knows? It's beautiful. Honestly, Captain, because you have a lot to share and you've done a lot and you're still growing. You're still learning. You're refusing to just sit and wait for that day and, and people need to see people like you. Well. The answer is just do it. Get rid of the miscellaneous bullshit, keep the mind engaged. When I was managing a group many years ago, one of my favorite things was keep your brain in gear. Keep that thing working, all the time. I don't care if you read, watch, make notes, draw, whatever you do, do it. And I get so upset when I see these children. It's stupid. That's their whole life. Yeah, I don't I have a cell phone. I don't use it. If somebody wants to talk to me, they have to call me on a landline. I'm not sure if young people know what a landline is. Yeah, well, and if it's a rotary phone, there's no way they could use it. Right? That's a very good point. So, your question really has no answer. Okay. Not a cogent answer. A lot of peripherally stuff, but I think the thing to do is keep the brain in gear and do it. Just do whatever you want to do you gotta start. Nice. I'm really saying you gotta start. And even if you screw up, that's okay. Screw up five times. That's still okay. Keep doing it. Just keep doing it. Nice. Thank you. One last question. Just really quick. In what ways has technology helped and in which way has technology harmed? Well, you really, you really put it to me, didn't you? I want you to use your brain. Well, thank God for a computer and Microsoft Word. I actually used to write by pen and ink on paper. I did a lot of it that way. In fact, I probably didn't start using Microsoft Word until about 1980, 85. Yeah, I bought my first computer and I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I still don't know what the hell I'm doing. That's how it helped me. It defeats me with all the ancillary stuff. Lisa, I don't know what the hell all that means. I mean, if you get a window, it's got 15 different things to do. I have no idea what they mean. All I want to know is rename, copy, or delete. That's it. That's all I need. It's confusing. And every time they update it and do upgrades, it gets more confusing. True. I'm at that point where I ignore it. And I'm just focused on what I can do with Word and the rest of it is superfluous. It's in the way, to give you the truth. It's in the way. Yes, you know, the other thing to Lisa and Marty might talk about this is that. Used to, like, if you were doing a research paper for college or something, you went to the library and you checked out some very good books, and you read them now, if we wanted to Google something about Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, China, Russia, whatever, there's such an information overload that it's like trying to find something in all the oceans of the world at one time. It's just too much. Lisa, I failed to answer one of your questions. You talked about research. Well, I hire researchers to do a lot of work. But the web, I'm there all the time picking out nuggets of information that I need. I use the web all the time for research research. Yes. How do you know what's real? I know BS when it shows up pretty much fact when I'm looking for something I'm looking for a specific normally. Like what date did the seventh crusade? If they say 2017, I know that's not the right answer. It's 1217. Another good point to talk about, Marty, would be staying focused. Because when you and I were working on, Islam, Yes. I had a stack of Paper probably 4 inches high, but we were trying to focus on just a few things to make a specific point. And again, there were oceans of information, so maybe Marty can talk about how he focuses on the premise of what this book or this paper is supposed to. Very good point. This book, this monograph that I'm working on now, Islam, it's an exposé, And as you say, a wake up call America, the West Western civilization is what they're against and Christians and Jews and Hindus, anybody that's not not a believer. Wow. Well, I have no doubt that it is going to be very interesting to read. So before we go It's been just wonderful to hear all of this I do have one last little story that I think our audience might appreciate Maybe our older audiences. tell us about meeting raquel welsh I went on your website and I read some of your things and I read about her. Where shall I start? It was Christmastime 1968, and Bob Hope and the USO show came aboard my ship. I was on board the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier, and I was intelligence ship. In doing targeting. One of my main jobs was to select targets in North Vietnam, put bombs on. So, the routine on the ship was you flew for seven days, you stood down one, and you flew for seven. So Bob Hope and his crew came aboard on our stand down day. But, I had to work. Because I had to get the targets ready for the next day. So I went and I got a couple of shots of Raquel. God rest her soul. You know, she died last year. No, I didn't know that beautiful woman. I watched the show and Raquel she's wearing these short shorts, so I went back to my intelligence spaces. I was not in the air conditioning section of the ship. We were on the edge. And so in Southeast Asia, that's pretty brutal. I was in a vault. We didn't close the vault because we would die of heat. We kept it open with a little curtain and keep out and everybody on board knew to stay out of hell out of Shelton's so, it works, the system worked. So, I went back and you know, you ever get so terribly focused on what you're doing, the world could collapse around you and you wouldn't know it? There I am, looking at this aerial photography. Oh, there's a sand site. And I hear this, this little tap. What? And I turn around and there she is. You're like, did I die and go to heaven? No, that's rare. I was shocked and disbelieved because she had seen the whole Vietnam War classified She had gone through that curtain. Was panicked. I literally should have arrested her, or have her, have her arrested and put in the brig until we could debrief her. I turned around, and I actually stood up, and she said, Could you tell me how to get down to the enlisted mess that is dinner? I'm having dinner with Seaman XYZ. That's almost a quote. So I stood up, and I turned her so that her face was facing the curtain, not my stuff. And I walked her out to the curtain, and I didn't say anything, I was just still crazy. Fortunately, a seaman was coming by, and so I said, Would you take Miss Welch down to the enlisted nurse? He said, Oh yeah. So I got rid of her. And that's the story, but that's not the whole story because I asked you if you reported that and your answer was, oh, hell, no, that's right. And tell her why I did not know. It would cause so much trouble. You couldn't believe and, you know, she was clueless about what she was looking at. But didn't, if I'm not mistaken, you told me that she was supposed to have a marine bodyguard at all times. Yes, she was. That's what's the weird, the weird scenario. She and her husband actually were, were encamped in the admiral's quarters. Very nice, you know, big suite. And every time we have a guest like that on board, they have a marine escort. A ship is many layers. It's a, a catacomb of doors, windows, passageways, hatch, unless it takes a long time to figure out and you've got 100 sailors and Raquel. Well, the Admiral's suite was up. About 200 feet from my office down a passageway. And so she had come down that passageway and made a right turn. Where was the Marine? She had to have a Marine escort for this. We don't know. Maybe she just bolted out. You know, impulsively, but I know I never reported not officially. Oh, God. No, you can't imagine what would have happened. Yes. Well, you have a story to tell about it. How's that? You can tell the story. Now, well, thank you so much. Captain for this, for your service to our country for everything that you have provided is there any last words you'd like to share with our audience? Well, I want to thank you for your professional courtesy today. I'm going to summarize if you want to write do it. I will make sure that we have every way to contact you I do have a website by the way. Tell us what it is. Try this Shelton. C. O. M. M. dash C. O. M. Okay. That's it. Well, thank you both so much for taking time to talk with us. Bye. Bye. All right. Very nice. Very nice.