Most audiences are being attracted to '12 Strong' because of what they might expect to see from a movie like this, which is that the Americans arrive, they march into the camp, they take it over, and take charge. It's like, 'Everything's going to be fine now. We're here.' That's not how these guys operate. They're very different.

Doug Stanton

Categorized in : Like See Everything Strong

Where does a man go when there are no more corners to turn, when he's running out of hope, out of luck, out of time?

Doug Stanton

luck running men

I'm very dogged and patient.

Doug Stanton

dogged very patient

When I first met the survivors of the Indianapolis in 1999 while writing a book about them, their story - the last major action of World War II - was rarely mentioned in high school textbooks. This is despite the fact that, before its torpedoing, the ship had delivered components of the atomic bomb Little Boy to Tinian Island.

Doug Stanton

war book world school

Of all the places I've been while talking to audiences about the U.S. Army's 5th Special Forces Group and their story in Afghanistan, one of the most rewarding was an appearance before the 5th Group soldiers themselves at Ft. Campbell, their home, and the place from which they had launched their historic mission in Afghanistan in 2001.

Doug Stanton

soldiers place army home

I like to tell stories about people trying to make the right, difficult decision at the least opportune moment... People in a crucible of an extraordinary circumstance. And then, how that experience changes their life.

Doug Stanton

moment experience life people

Writing about conflict has provided these dramatic opportunities to talk about really substantial moments in a person's life. I'm not writing about superheroes; I'm writing about ordinary people.

Doug Stanton

conflict moments life people

I don't think it's healthy to have 68-year-old men, 70-year-old men thinking regularly about a traumatic experience that happened to them and thinking that they cannot talk about it with anybody, and no one wants to listen.

Doug Stanton

think experience men thinking

Each summer, as Lake Michigan finally begins to warm, I think of the men of the World War II cruiser Indianapolis and the worst disaster at sea in United States naval history. I go down to the lake, and I wonder: How would I have survived what they experienced?

Doug Stanton

sea men war history

When I look at Lake Michigan each July, I imagine the men of the Indianapolis visible on the horizon; dark heads, struggling arms, a cry and whirl of a world being remade. I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness, accompanied by a desire to yell out that they will be rescued.

Doug Stanton

look sadness men world

Winters are so long in northern Michigan - nearly nine months of gray skies and deep snow - that summer comes as a fresh burst.

Doug Stanton

deep summer snow long

Traverse City sits halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, and our summer days are long. The light seems to take forever to vanish from the sky, and when it does, it goes out like someone folding a white sheet in the dark. A flare on the horizon. Then a rustle: Goodnight.

Doug Stanton

city light sky long

Robert Frost had a house in Bennington, Vermont, and I had a friend, the poet Mary Ruefle, who was the caretaker of it when it was owned by Norman Lear, the TV producer. She got a grant to go to Scotland, and she had to be gone six or nine months, so I moved in, and my job was just to make sure the ravage didn't overtake the place.

Doug Stanton

friend place job house

Instead of large-scale occupations, we should rely on small units of Special Forces who have proved it's infinitely more effective to work with a country's soldiers and citizens at eye level.

Doug Stanton

soldiers eye work country

I'm really interested in how people face existential crises and either overcome them or don't, and in how the human psyche responds.

Doug Stanton

overcome face human people

During the writing of all of my books, I've learned that, most of all, people want to know that someone is listening and - this is the tricky part - remembering.

Doug Stanton

someone know writing people

I wanted to write 'In Harm's Way' from the young men's point of view of being in a raft, or hanging in a life vest with just their nose poking above the water.

Doug Stanton

view water men life

As I traveled around the country on a book tour for 'In Harm's Way,' I began learning how certain Indianapolis survivors had heard these voices - not necessarily the voice of God, but often that of someone who had fostered them and imparted an identity as a person who doesn't quit.

Doug Stanton

learning identity god book

That's the potential power of a single voice - a neighbor's, a teacher's, a parent's, a friend's. It can change you, make you feel as if you have a place in the world.

Doug Stanton

you change power teacher

Simple words of encouragement subsequently saved many of the Indianapolis' sailors during their ordeal in the summer of 1945, and those men took the lesson to heart.

Doug Stanton

words simple heart men

One of the reasons I wrote 'Horse Soldiers' was to understand the world my children would inherit after the events of 2001.

Doug Stanton

understand horse children world