Saving Private Ryan: How to Really Listen to a WWII Veteran

Documentary First, Episode 260. Christian Taylor and Rob of the Movie Rob Minute continue their visit with 101-year-old World War II veteran Ceo Bauer, part two of two. 57 minutes. Released September 11, 2025.

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What happens to a World War II veteran when someone finally listens?

Ceo Bauer was wounded inside German lines near Metz on November 8, 1944. Lying in a cellar full of wounded men, he was found by a sergeant named Burns, from Chicago, who asked if he'd taken his wound tablets. Ceo had lost them. "Well, you can have mine," Burns told him. "You need them more than I do." Later, as artillery from the Metz forts passed overhead, Ceo told the stretcher team carrying him, "I want to get back to the battalion aid. I want to live."

In Episode 260 of Documentary First, the second of two parts, Christian Taylor shares the rest of her visit with Ceo, then 101, for the Movie Rob Minute podcast on Saving Private Ryan. Ceo answers the question Part 1 left hanging, about the sergeant who wouldn't help him, and tells how he forgave Edward Steele the day he came upon Steele's cross in the American cemetery in Luxembourg where General Patton is buried. He describes the lieutenant colonel who came down the line of hospital beds handing out Purple Hearts, and the invasion money that never made it home.

Then Rob asks how Christian and Ceo met. In 2018, Normandy guide and historian Florent Plana invited Christian along to interview Ceo, then 95. Flo came so prepared that he asked questions as if he were part of I Company, and Christian watched Ceo grow happier and happier until he was dancing. "Well, it's therapy," Ceo says. It became the heart of The Girl Who Wore Freedom: as civilians, we can truly show gratitude to our veterans.

Ceo closes by reading the handwritten letter a French woman named Elizabeth read to the 95th Division veterans at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Metz, the first time, he says, they were thanked in a way they could understand. He tears up before the first line.

In this episode, you'll learn

• How Ceo Bauer came to forgive Edward Steele
• What Sergeant Burns did for Ceo in the cellar that night
• How Ceo received his Purple Heart in a field hospital
• What happened to the invasion money soldiers carried in France
• How Christian Taylor met Ceo Bauer in 2018
• What Christian learned about listening to veterans from Florent Plana
• What a French woman's letter to the 95th Division men who liberated Metz said

Questions and answers

How do you get a WWII veteran to tell their story?

Christian Taylor learned it in 2018, watching Normandy guide and historian Florent Plana interview Ceo Bauer. Flo came fully prepared. He knew the 95th Infantry Division, the 377th Infantry Regiment and I Company, and where they had been, so he asked questions as if he were part of the company, starting from Ceo's birth in Carson City, Michigan. Ceo grew happier as the interview went on. "Well, it's therapy," Ceo says of being listened to.

What did the French letter to the 95th Infantry Division veterans say?

At the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Metz, in a small town near the city, a local woman named Elizabeth read a handwritten letter to the 95th Division veterans. Ceo says it was the first time they were thanked in a way they could understand. It reads, in part: "You offered us the most wonderful present in the world, liberty. But at what cost? At what price?" It ends, "God bless America. We love you."

How did Ceo Bauer get his Purple Heart?

The morning after he was wounded near Metz in November 1944, Ceo woke in the field hospital as a lieutenant colonel came down the line of beds awarding Purple Hearts. He was told he couldn't keep the medal with him, so it would go into his effects and reach him later. It did, after Ceo got back to the United States in the first or second week of January 1945.

Did Ceo Bauer forgive the men who didn't help him?

Ceo says he didn't really forgive Tony, the sergeant who refused to help him that night and who later said he didn't remember. But he forgave Ed Steele, the runner who was with Tony and was killed soon after, when he came upon Steele's cross while walking the American cemetery in Luxembourg. On a later trip he went back to Steele's grave on purpose and spoke a little about it. Asked about Tony, he says, "I did it to both of them."

What was World War II invasion money?

Ceo says American soldiers in France carried francs that weren't normal francs, printed in the United States. He never spent his, because there was no place to spend it, and it didn't come back with his effects. In the conversation, Christian explains that French merchants who were paid in invasion money later traded it in for regular francs as the economy was rebuilt.

How did Christian Taylor meet Ceo Bauer?

Christian was working as an actress and voiceover artist when the film that became The Girl Who Wore Freedom fell in her lap. She wanted to interview American veterans but didn't know any. Florent Plana, visiting Wheaton, Illinois, went with her to the Big Red One museum at Cantigny, then invited her to come along when he interviewed Ceo in 2018. Ceo was 95, and the whole crew filmed for about three hours.

Chapters

Times match the YouTube video.

• 0:00 Forgiving Edward Steele
• 5:05 Sergeant Burns's Wound Tablets
• 9:24 "I Want to Live"
• 15:48 His Purple Heart
• 18:28 What Was Invasion Money?
• 20:50 How Christian Met Ceo
• 27:18 Listening to a Veteran
• 35:48 Dear Liberators
• 42:06 French Gratitude, Passed Down
• 47:48 Pearl Harbor and the Camps
• 52:56 Earn This

Watch the film

Ceo Bauer appears in Christian Taylor's award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom, the story of D-Day told through the French civilians who lived it. It's streaming in the US: where to watch.

About the guest

Ceo Bauer is a World War II veteran born in Carson City, Michigan, who served as a private first class rifleman in I Company, 377th Infantry Regiment, 95th Infantry Division, and was 101 when this conversation was recorded. Wounded near Metz on November 8, 1944, he received the Purple Heart and has returned to Europe with his rifle company buddies and his family many times since 1987. He calls telling his story his duty. Read more in his Warrior Legacy profile at the American Battlefield Trust. His host here is Rob of the Movie Rob Minute, an American film lover who has lived in Israel since 1992 and served in the Israeli army.

Related conversations

Start at the beginning with Part 1 with Ceo Bauer. Christian's earlier Movie Rob Minute visit on Saving Private Ryan, with actor Corey Johnson, is in Part 1 and Part 2, collected on the Corey Johnson and Saving Private Ryan page. For more World War II stories, listen to Tim Gray of the WWII Foundation.

About Documentary First

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across nearly 300 conversations. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week.

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Full transcript

Christian: Hey everybody, this podcast is brought to you by Documentary First Productions. And we need your support so that we can keep preserving history. If you could go over and grab some merch or watch our films at documentaryfirst.com, you'll help us keep making awesome documentaries and sharing the stories that matter, and also bring amazing filmmakers and their wonderful films to the world. So, thank you so much for listening, and thank you for visiting documentaryfirst.com.

Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Christian Taylor, and a documentary filmmaker myself, and I'm so glad you're here. Today, we are bringing you part two of a special crossover episode from the Movie Rob Minute podcast. This moving interview features World War II veteran Ceo Bauer, and we're re-airing it here to make sure our Documentary First audience doesn't miss a moment of this incredible story.

In this episode, Ceo opens up about some of his fellow soldiers, Tony, Steele and others, and a powerful journey they took in the 1980s to retrace the steps of Company I. He also reflects on forgiveness, and particularly his decision to forgive Steele. And he shares more details about his wounding and the desperate search for help. You'll hear about Ceo's remarkable memory of Normandy, the story of invasion money and how he was awarded his Purple Heart, and even how he and I first met, which of course led to his being in The Girl Who Wore Freedom. There's so much more packed into this episode. I promise it's one you won't forget. So, come on, let's dive in. Enjoy the episode, everyone.

Rob: Did you forgive him, or did you still call him a son of a...?

Christian: Did you forgive him? Did you forgive him? You talked to him about when you cussed him out, didn't you?

Ceo Bauer: Yeah. And I asked him, "Well, you remember me cussing you out?" "No, I don't remember. No, don't remember a thing," you know. So, and I believe him. Well, I didn't really forgive him, but what I did was forgave Steele. And I didn't know where Steele was buried, but Steele is buried overseas, where General Patton is buried, in...

Rob: Oh, wow.

Christian: In Luxembourg.

Ceo: Luxembourg. He's buried there. I didn't know it. But when we rifle guys started going over... And you didn't hear that, we started in 1987, a carload of us going over to find out where we were and follow where I Company went. In fact, we even went behind the Iron Curtain two or three times, because my foxhole buddy Steve had relatives there.

Rob: Oh, wow.

Ceo: Yeah. So we went there, which was a great experience. I can talk all day and all night about that, behind the Iron Curtain.

Rob: Maybe next time.

Ceo: Yeah, next time. But anyway, we went, of course, naturally, to General Patton's grave to pay respects to him. We did. And we were surprised to find out, you know, that they didn't bury him row on row. So many people came that they buried him separate, where people could come and not tread down the graves. They buried him out away from the regular graves. You probably knew that.

Rob: Maybe.

Ceo: Okay. Yeah. Anyway, randomly we just started walking, you know, looking, and the next thing I knew I was looking at Steele's cross. So I forgave him, you know.

Rob: Okay.

Ceo: And then I repeated it last year. When we were there last November, we went back there, and I deliberately, on purpose, went to Steele's grave once and spoke a little bit about it. I think you weren't there, Christian.

Christian: Christian wasn't there. No.

Ceo: So I did.

Christian: But you forgave him. I don't think we said: when you were coming back, you ran into Steele going in, and he just didn't help you.

Ceo: No, Tony.

Rob: What happened?

Ceo: Tony didn't. Tony was a sergeant.

Christian: And what did...

Ceo: He wouldn't help, but Steele caught part of it. So I did it to both of them.

Christian: To both of them. Okay.

Ceo: Yeah. Naturally. After that, with no help, I had to get down and crawl through that stuff, and I crawled in and I got in the house then. And I'll tell you, if the Germans had wanted to attack right then, they would have blown right through us, just like that, I'd say.

Rob: Good thing they didn't know.

Ceo: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know about the artillery, but our company mortars were, you know, operating and firing, and so they would be discouraged from that. Anyway, I got in the house. Well, again, nobody to help me. The guy or two that was there, you know, they weren't going to help me. They were going to be vigilant. And I just wanted to get down cellar, down the stairs into the basement, because the platoon aid man was there, and he was tending to, you know, eight or 10 wounded guys down there in the basement.

And so I laid on the floor once again and cussed, until finally a heavy weapons platoon officer showed up. They'd been firing, you know, overhead fire. They'd been firing with water-cooled machine guns. They'd fired during the attack, and they weren't firing anymore. And so he helped me down the cellar.

And there, you know, I just laid there hoping for somebody to help me, and a guy named Burns, from Chicago... You're from Chicago. That's one plus. A sergeant. He came over, and I couldn't see that he was very seriously wounded, but he, you know, I couldn't see that he was. He came over and asked me if I'd taken my wound tablets. I said, "No, I lost them." So, we had wound tablets, and he said, "Well, you can have mine. You need them more than I do."

Rob: Oh, wow.

Ceo: Yeah. So I took them. And then, you know, the first aid man... I think maybe he was killed later. I kind of heard that, but I'm not sure. These are things you hear, you know, at reunions. But he came over and, you know, did what bandaging he could on my leg and my arm. I had a bad wound on the arm too, which cut the muscle, and so my hand actually hung down, didn't raise. It was just muscle. And then three of my fingers were down, you know, not straight, not normal. But anyway...

Christian: Well, they all look fine now.

Ceo: But I said they all look fine now, so I guess I'm here.

Rob: That's right.

Ceo: You're seeing them, and I'm seeing you. Yeah. I can put my thumbs up. Yeah.

Christian: And for people that are just listening, just so you know, we are going to put this on the Documentary First YouTube channel. So if you do want to see Ceo and his moving hands, or the photos of I Company, you can go to the Documentary First YouTube channel, and we will put all that there and you can see that.

Ceo: Yeah. Right. So anyway, I had to wait, and the stretcher team, the medics' stretcher team, came down. Things were quieted down now, nothing happening, at least right where we were. And so they put me on a stretcher and started to carry me back to battalion aid, which was probably a half mile back in town, in one of the buildings in town.

And I'll always remember, there was some incoming artillery from the Metz forts coming in, but it was going over us. And I'll always remember telling the stretcher team, "I want to get back to the battalion aid. I want to live." And when it would come over, and it was already over, they were belatedly laying the stretcher down, taking cover. Well, I remember telling them, "Hey, keep going. You know, keep going. It's already passed."

So I did that. I got back there, and once again I had to wait. You know, there were wounded there, till my turn on the stretcher. And when it was my turn, or before my turn, I looked over there, and who was there but Tony. He beat me back there. Tony, the guy I cussed out.

Rob: Yeah.

Ceo: And he was laying on another table. And I don't recall that I talked to him at all, or that he would talk. But anyway, when you get to the doctor... And I even remember his name.

Christian: You have such a good memory.

Ceo: It's a mixture. Well, I remember that. But what you tell me now, I can't remember it.

Rob: What do you mean?

Ceo: You tell me the number of this house...

Christian: Oh, you forgot it.

Ceo: I forgot it. The only way I could remember it is put it on a slip and remind myself every once in a while.

Rob: Okay.

Ceo: See, I'm different from other people.

Christian: You are.

Ceo: That was different. You know, that was a life-shaking experience.

Christian: Yes.

Ceo: To be wounded on line, in the dark, inside the German lines. Who the hell can you talk to that's done that?

Rob: That's true.

Ceo: Nobody.

Rob: No. Nobody. Wow. Thank you very much for sharing that.

Ceo: Anyway, the doctor looked at me, you know, looked at my wounds, and he actually, you know, cleaned them up the first time, cleaned them up from the dirt and everything that was in it. And by the way, the first thing they do is cut your clothes off.

Christian: We're not going to go into detail.

Rob: We're not going to go into detail.

Ceo: Okay.

Rob: No, I don't want to know all the dirty details.

Ceo: And throw them away. Throw them away. So then he said, "Well, you're not hurt bad enough." Well, he said, "You're not hurt very bad." Well, I didn't believe that. I knew I was hurt quite bad. "But we can give you a sedative." So they did. They gave me that.

Then I had to wait to be taken back to the field hospital, which was several miles back of the fighting. And the field hospital, that's where you'd get, you know, good attention, your first real medical attention.

Rob: Mhm.

Ceo: But on the way there, I was on a jeep. And I always tell people, they wondered, you know, about riding a jeep in World War II. I said infantrymen had only two ways to get a ride in a jeep...

Rob: If they were injured.

Ceo: ...to be injured or killed.

Rob: Right.

Ceo: Only two. Maybe it's the same way in the Israeli army. I don't know.

Rob: Thankfully, I haven't experienced either of those, so I couldn't tell you.

Ceo: Well, but you probably talk to people, you know.

Rob: Yeah.

Ceo: Yeah. Well, you get stories about what happens.

Rob: Yeah. That's where you learn things.

Ceo: That is true. Where you learn things about the real war.

Rob: For sure.

Ceo: What happened. So anyway, I was laying on the upper stretcher there. They put two on, one low and one high. Well, I was just laying looking up. But being kind of sedated, kind of halfway, semi dreaming, I thought I was looking down the road. So I was hallucinating that the machine gun fire was going across at stretcher height.

Rob: Oh, wow.

Ceo: Oh yeah. But being sedated, it didn't seem to bother me. I just kind of steeled myself. Well, that's it. And I did that two, three times before I realized, oh, well, that's me. I'm just imagining that, you know.

So the first thing in the hospital, I was sedated enough that I woke up sometime early in the morning, and the first thing that happened to me was that a lieutenant colonel came down the line carrying a Purple Heart. And a couple of beds before me, he awarded the Purple Heart to the guy laying there. And one of them, I'll always remember... You know, you're mad when you're wounded.

I was mad, and this guy was mad.

Rob: You're mad? Why?

Ceo: Because you're wounded.

Rob: Yeah.

Ceo: I even must tell you how mad I was. I was mad that I laid there: goddamn Roosevelt, goddamn Hitler, goddamn everybody. You're mad. And that's a good thing. If you can make it, you're good.

Rob: That's right.

Ceo: You're in good shape. But so I did that. And this guy gave the lieutenant colonel: "What are you doing here? You should be on the front line." You know, he did. Well, I'm, you know, well disciplined enough that that wasn't right to be doing, you know. When he got to me, I didn't do that. You know, I was respectful. And he said, you know, "You're awarded the Purple Heart, and I know that you can't keep it with you, so it'll be put in your effects, and you'll get it later. It'll come to you." Well, I got it later, when I got back to the USA.

Rob: Mhm. Which took how long? How long?

Ceo: Well, I spent time in the hospital, and I didn't get back to the USA till the first or second week of January 1945.

Rob: Yeah.

Ceo: And you know what I got in my stuff? All of my clothes... I even had a camera, but no film. You couldn't buy film back then. All gone to war, you know. And so I got my Purple Heart, minus my clothes, minus my camera, minus almost everything except my pocketbook, which I still have. Maybe Kim has got it. Minus the invasion currency.

Rob: Oh, wow. How much? How much?

Ceo: And the pictures of my family that I had in it. That's all I got back from France.

Christian: So you didn't have your pictures of your family? They weren't in there?

Ceo: They were in there.

Christian: They were in there. And your invasion money was in there?

Ceo: No.

Christian: You said invasion money wasn't there.

Rob: And so how much invasion money did they give you in the beginning? Do you remember?

Ceo: Beats the hell out of me.

Rob: And did you ever spend any of it?

Ceo: No place to spend it.

Rob: Right. That's what I thought.

Christian: Exactly. Out in the woods, or...

Ceo: It's emergency bus fare, you know.

Rob: Yeah.

Ceo: Well, it was francs, of course, and it wasn't normal francs. It was printed here in the USA. And I don't know how they handled that. I imagine the US government was probably literally giving money to the French government.

Christian: I know what happened.

Rob: What's that?

Christian: I know what happened. So, if you were to buy bread, let's say, with the invasion money, okay, you gave it to a baker.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: And so the baker had all this invasion money.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: When the Marshall Plan came in, let's say, and they're starting to get the economy back up and running, the baker would take the invasion money to the, you know, the people that were... What is it called? The sustainment people that were trying to help set up the government. And they would trade that invasion money for the regular francs. Right. So that's how it worked.

Ceo: Oh, wow. Yeah, there you go.

Rob: Very impressive. Yeah, there you go. Wow. Thank you very much for telling that story. So, now what's interesting to me is, how did the two of you meet up? You know, I know Christian's story about Normandy and everything like that, but I don't know how, you know, she found you, or you found her, or whatever it is.

Ceo: Well, Christian found me, because I'm not computer literate, and I don't find much of anybody, you know.

Rob: Okay.

Ceo: Not able to search. But Christian, I think, is a genius at doing computer work and all of that.

Christian: Do you actually know how I found you?

Ceo: I don't, but I'll give my version and you can give yours.

Rob: All right. All right. And then we'll let everyone decide what's the truth.

Ceo: Anyway, Christian called me and let me know she was coming, and would I participate, you know, in being interviewed. And so, okay. Yeah, I'd been interviewed by people before, but I was just overwhelmed when Christian showed up with five people, something like that. A cameraman and a couple other people, and somebody to do the sound, and Christian.

And I had called my local paper, which is a weekly, and said, "Hey, I'm being interviewed. Maybe you want to have a reporter down there." So they did. So here I wound up... I live in a bungalow-style place, and basically I don't go upstairs or downstairs. I live on the first floor all the time. I live in a line from the front door to the back door, and that's okay.

Here I got all these people in the house, and here they've got the cameras, and they've got the lights. They've got all this crazy stuff, the recording stuff and all, in my room, plus the local reporter. So, Jesus. Anyway, and that's my first time to be actually, you know, videoed. My first time.

I'm amazed at how they do it. You know, they have to get the lights right, and they say, "Wait until we're right." And then, as I recall, they did a clap or something like that, that we're going to film now. Yeah. Then they'd film a little while, and then they'd have to move me and set me again.

Christian: We didn't move you. We moved the cameras.

Ceo: They moved the cameras.

Christian: Nobody can move you. You choose to move.

Ceo: So anyway, they kept going and kept going, and I kept thinking, I think they'll be done finally sometime. But about three hours later...

Rob: Three hours.

Ceo: Yeah, they were done. Yeah. Okay, your turn.

Christian: Okay. Well, you were mostly right.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: You were mostly right.

Ceo: See, I remembered.

Christian: Now, do you know how long ago that was? Think about it for one...

Ceo: Oh, four years.

Christian: So, it was...

Ceo: Has to be more.

Christian: It was actually 2018.

Ceo: Is that right?

Christian: Can you believe that?

Ceo: I can't. No.

Rob: Wow.

Christian: 2018.

Ceo: Stunning to me.

Christian: That's what happens when you're 102. You were 95 when I met you. 95.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: I mean, you were a young chick. I thought you were old then.

Ceo: I thought you were old then.

Christian: And you were just a young pup.

Ceo: I know. Yeah.

Christian: So, the way that it happened actually, in the very beginning, was a little bit different, because I had just, you know, this whole movie thing just fell in my lap. I was actually just an actress. That was all I did. I did voiceovers on radio and television, and, you know, that's all I did until Hunter went to Normandy. And then I discovered what they did in Normandy, and I wanted to tell the American people about what they did there.

And so my co-producer, you know who she is...

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: She knew I wanted to interview veterans in the United States, but I really didn't know any. So Flo Plana happened to be coming to Wheaton, Illinois, where I live. And she told me that he was coming to Cantigny. The Big Red One has a museum five minutes from my house.

Rob: I think I've been to Cantigny.

Christian: Have you? Well, I live right by Cantigny.

Rob: I know where it was.

Christian: Yeah. So Flo Plana and I met, and we went to Cantigny together. We got to know each other, and right after that he was coming to interview you, and he asked me if I wanted to come along. And so he was coming with his mother as well. So he, his mother and I and Flo, and then my whole team of cameraman and soundman and lighting people, we all invaded your house. So from there, all the rest...

Ceo: You know, I'd forgotten Flo came. Yeah, he was there.

Christian: And his mother.

Ceo: And his mother. I forgot that.

Christian: Yeah. It was a very special day, because, you know what was so interesting to me is, Flo did the whole interview with you.

Ceo: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. I forgot that.

Rob: Well, you said that you don't remember everything from the last decade, but you remember things from eight decades ago. So that's fine.

Christian: Yeah. Right. So, for those of you who don't know who Flo Plana is, Florent Plana is actually an amazing historian, but he's also a tour guide in Normandy, and he has World War II Veterans Memories. It's a tour company, and all his social media is World War II Veterans Memories. And he is just an amazing, amazing man, and I highly respect him.

But that was the first interview I had ever watched him do, and it was just magnificent. He came fully prepared. He understood all about not only the 95th Infantry Division, not only the 377th Infantry Regiment, but he understood about I Company, and he understood about, you know, their whole movements. And he began to ask Ceo questions as if he was part of I Company. He knew where they had been and what they had done. And so Ceo began to talk to him, and they really formed this camaraderie during the interview, right? And he talked to him from the beginning, when he was born in Carson City, Michigan, and, you know, we got all the way to the end of the story, and it was masterful. And so I learned so much at that time.

And what was interesting to me was that as Flo, a Frenchman, was talking to him, I realized that was the key moment for me in my whole experience of this film, The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Because I watched you in that moment change, from the moment that we got there to when we left. And you probably don't remember this either, but you got happier and happier and happier.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: And by the time we left, you were dancing. You were dancing.

Ceo: I danced the pump handle.

Christian: No, it wasn't even the pump handle. You were just dancing, and you were marching for us, and you were so happy. And I thought, you know...

Ceo: Well, I like to put out the word. I'm motivated by putting out the word. In fact, you know, I wind up saying to people, it's my duty.

Christian: You do?

Ceo: Yeah. I've got the, you know, the military... I don't exactly know quite the words to say, but, you know, I got the discipline of the military, and I still got it.

Christian: Yeah, he still does marches daily.

Rob: Oh, wow. Well, they drill it into you. So there's no reason that you should lose that. Yeah.

Christian: But what I saw was that as somebody cared about your story, and somebody listened to you, just like Rob is doing...

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: It made you feel cared about, and it made you feel happy.

Ceo: Well, it's therapy.

Christian: Yeah. It's therapy. And that is how I learned that, as Americans and civilians, we can truly show gratitude to our veterans. And that's the message of my film. And it's what the French told me, and it's what I really think is important. And it's not just for veterans. Actually, what I've learned is that we need to do that not only to older citizens, but I mean, it's true for anyone.

Ceo: It's true.

Christian: It's true for anyone.

Rob: For sure.

Ceo: Yeah. You need to put it out, you know, and hope people will listen. You need to do the same thing.

Christian: Yes. Do you tell your story, Rob, about your service?

Rob: Have I told it, or will I tell it now?

Christian: Have you told it?

Rob: Yeah, sure. There isn't that much to talk about, but yeah.

Ceo: Your military service was compulsory?

Rob: No, actually I volunteered.

Ceo: You did? What years did you serve?

Rob: I started serving in 1993. I was in the regular army for one year, and then I did reserve duty for another 14 years after that.

Ceo: Oh, wow. Okay.

Rob: And reserve duty is basically one month a year.

Ceo: Okay. You know, I've been to Israel.

Rob: Really?

Ceo: Yeah. I took a... I imagine I did the pump handle there.

Rob: Very possible.

Christian: Well, you probably did it at the edge of the Red Sea, my guess is.

Rob: The Dead Sea.

Ceo: Where's the Globus? I took the Globus tour. They've got that brochure there. Yeah, I did this tour, Globus, in 1995.

Rob: Okay. I was here.

Ceo: You're here?

Rob: I came in '92. I've been here since.

Ceo: I actually did Israel and Egypt.

Rob: Oh, very nice.

Ceo: Yeah. And it was a good tour. Really liked it. I swam in the Dead Sea.

Rob: You can't really swim in it. You float in it.

Ceo: I floated. Yeah. Hard to get your feet down.

Rob: Correct. Yeah, that's the idea.

Ceo: Yeah. You know, I floated in there, and surprisingly there wasn't anybody else in there but me.

Rob: It depends on what time of year you went.

Ceo: The tour group went, but I don't know, they were on shore doing something. So I'm going to swim. So I had my swim trunks, and I got in there. I'd like to swim and see how it is. So I got in there, and they told me, don't put your head underwater, that doesn't work. So I floated. But I'll always remember, I kept thinking, maybe I'm getting too far out, you know, floating out. Maybe I'll put my feet down. And I'll always remember, Jesus, it's an effort to put your feet down.

Rob: That's right.

Ceo: But I went to the River Jordan, and I'm a trout fisherman, headwater trout fisherman, brook trout. So I really, really like to be on the headwaters, and I looked at the Jordan. I said, "Geez, I believe this is a trout stream."

Rob: Yeah, probably is.

Ceo: I imagine they stock it. But I wasn't smart enough. I'm a guy that wings it. I just took the tour. I'll see what happens, you know, take what happens. So, we got to the Jordan River. I could have been baptized, but I didn't know. I hadn't arranged to be baptized, because, well, I just didn't pay attention. But there were four ladies from Pennsylvania that paid attention. So they disappeared right away and went, you know, to have the showers and put on a robe to be baptized. All I could do was watch, because I didn't do it. All I could do is watch, and I could stick my feet in the Jordan River. So, yeah, I did that.

Christian: Well, I think the Lord probably knows in your heart that you wanted to.

Ceo: Oh, I did. Yeah.

Rob: You come back and do it. Do it now. Never too late.

Ceo: Yeah.

Christian: You know, Ceo, last night... I don't want us to get away from this podcast without him sharing one last thing. Last night, Ceo and I were talking, and he was telling me about a time that he went back to Europe, and there was a woman who had written a speech and read it to the liberators. And he read it to me, and it was particularly meaningful to him and the other guys that were there. Would you share this with him?

Ceo: Yeah. Can he see it?

Christian: He can.

Rob: Yeah, I can see it. I can see it, but I want to hear it.

Christian: I want to hear it. Yeah. And we'll put it up on YouTube. We'll put a picture.

Ceo: I don't think Christian realized this until I really told her last night, that on our... He just went to the restroom or something.

Christian: He's back.

Rob: No, I went to close the door. My son came into the room, opened the door, and forgot to close it when he left. Sorry.

Ceo: Yes. I don't think Christian realized the significance of this until I read it last night. We were discussing the movies of World War II, and the fact that for you it was a thing that you did, to study them. But in fact I was saying, you know, that they are a story, you know, and that they have to be enhanced somewhat in order to be sold to the public, for the public to show up to them.

But anyway, I said that at the 50th anniversary, we veterans at Metz, we 95th, were finally thanked. And it was an unusual thing, that we were thanked. This lady, Elizabeth, at one of the surrounding small towns around Metz... The small towns around Metz, they like to get into the act, kind of. They like to have you come there, and the mayor will be there, and they'll hold the ceremony and maybe bring you in for some mirabelle, you know, some of the local spirit, into the hôtel de ville.

Anyway, Elizabeth, and I didn't know her at the time, got up... And we probably had, at the 50th anniversary, the most 95th Division veterans that ever showed up. We probably had 50 or so. So, we're down to one now. That's me.

Rob: Right.

Ceo: But Elizabeth got up, and off of a handwritten copy read this. And I start to tear up when I start to talk about it, because she finally thanked us in a way that we could understand. Just a local citizen. I'd been to a lot of ceremonies before, and heard authorities and mayors talk and all that, but Elizabeth did it. So, I'll read it for you.

"Dear liberators, dear American friends, we want to give expression to our deepest gratitude to you for what you did for us in 1944." I got to put on my glasses. I'm teared up and can't read. "...what you did for us in 1944. We know the terrible cost of our freedom. After a few years spent under the cruel Nazi boot, France was bloodless. French people daily lived the humiliation, the fear, the denunciations, the threat of torture and the concentration camp. It was a nightmare.

"And then you came, in an irresistible impulse. You appeared like a fabulous sunbeam after a terrible four-years-long night, like a blessing from God. All those young Americans sacrificed... You wrote a page in our history, and without any doubt it is the most beautiful. You offered us the most wonderful present in the world, liberty. But at what cost? At what price? All these young Americans sacrificed in the spring of their life. All these inhuman sufferings which wounded your bodies and your souls. All that you endured rends our hearts and pains us.

"We are so much indebted to you. We have for you the highest respect. You are our heroes who defeated the barbarism and who saved us. You are our dear liberators. We'll never forget you, and our gratefulness for you is deep and endless. You are graven in our hearts. Thank you wholeheartedly. Thanks, GIs. God bless you all. God bless America. We love you."

I never heard it better.

Rob: Wow. Wow. That is amazing.

Ceo: It's typical French. You know, the French there, they've just got it. They've just got it, to express themselves. I guess it's because of the Roman influence in France. I guess it is, but I don't know.

I've talked to Elizabeth after that. She showed up, and, you know, she's had a stroke. I talked to her this last November. Not long, because I was under control of circumstances, going from place to place, bang, bang, and I couldn't talk long. But Elizabeth, you know, was a great person. She came to the USA, even, to one reunion, she and her daughter did.

Rob: Oh, wow.

Christian: You know, I think too, what I've learned is that it really is not just the French, honestly. I've also seen this spirit in the people that live in Luxembourg, and the people that live in the Netherlands. And it's really, when you've been oppressed, like she said, I mean, after a few years spent under the cruel Nazi boot, you know, they lived in humiliation and fear and denunciations and tortures and the concentration camps, and they lived in a nightmare. And when you live like that, and someone comes to your rescue, I think that grateful spirit, they can't help but feel that way about you.

Ceo: Oh, I know it. See, the French have passed that on. They're teaching it to their kids. Their kids know it. They want to touch us veterans, and they wanted our signature, and then they would like to talk to you, if you've got time, if you can talk to them.

Kim is sitting over there. My niece is sitting across from me, listening and smiling. When I hit 80, I said, "Somebody better go with me." You know, I was going with the crew... "Somebody better go." So Kim and Carl, she and her husband, volunteered to go. That's the first time Kim really understood what happened. And when she went to the cemeteries, you know, like St. Avold, and went to the World War I cemeteries, then she really understood what had occurred, you know, literally in my lifetime. And so she just came home and said, "Well, we got to take more next time." So every five years we've taken the family, you know.

Rob: Wow.

Ceo: Whoever will go. We've taken 12 to 15 people for every... since the 50th. And we were in Normandy with about 18 or 19 in our family last year.

That term that Elizabeth used up there, you'll hear that at Metz. You'll hear the French come up to you and say it. They just say, "All those young Americans." They're referring really to the military cemetery, the eight or 10,000 markers that are there.

Rob: Right.

Ceo: And you know, out of my rifle company, I'm not sure how many men in my rifle company are buried there. But my first time there, with my buddy Steve, we didn't look up any names. We just started walking, aimlessly, and we'd come across somebody out of our rifle company. And that was a moving experience. Most of them, we knew they were killed, but we didn't necessarily know they were buried there.

Rob: Yeah. Right. Wow. This has been such an amazing experience for me, to be able to talk to you about all this stuff. I really do appreciate you being willing to take the time to tell your story, so that I can know it, and all of my listeners can know the story, and that Christian can have this also for her uses on her website, and also for posterity, so that we now have a record of this, which is great. So, thank you very much for taking the time today.

Ceo: There's something else I should tell you. Communication was such before World War II that, you know, we just had radio, and a lot of times we didn't have that. And so I did not know about Pearl Harbor being bombed, because I was out on a farm and my parents were away, and I did not know about it for a full day, until the newspaper came the next afternoon. Can you imagine that happening today? We don't have the television instant-by-instant coverage that we have today. And that's hard to explain to a current generation of people. They don't understand that we didn't.

But in my instance, and most of our instance, I will tell you that I did not believe the atrocities that were being committed by our enemy, because it just didn't seem reasonable. And I think a good share of the Americans, and a good share of the Allied military troops, it's pretty well documented, were amazed, surprised, when they uncovered the concentration camps. Certainly our political people, our national leaders, certainly knew that, but it didn't get to the general public. It probably may have in Europe, but here it didn't. And so I just thought I should put that out.

Rob: Okay.

Ceo: Let you know it, because it is important. You know, I did hear on tours, I did hear the words, "Well, you know, we didn't do anything." Well, in my view, we just didn't realize it. But the other thing, we didn't really have a military of consequence at all in World War II. We had to start out from scratch. I guess we had quite a lot of navy, but we didn't have an army.

Rob: Right.

Ceo: The guys were training with wooden rifles, you know.

Christian: Speaking of... I want to show you his army picture while we're at it. Look at this handsome guy.

Rob: Oh, wow.

Christian: And if you're just listening, again, you can go to YouTube and see his picture. We'll put it up. But yeah, pretty awesome, huh?

Rob: Yeah.

Christian: You handsome devil.

Ceo: Yeah. Well, there's a goddamn few of us left.

Christian: Rob, we appreciate you having us on. Thank you so much for listening. I know we've taken up so much of your time today.

Rob: Every minute was worth it. No question about that.

Ceo: Yeah. Well, good luck. Well, you're a veteran, too. So, yeah.

Rob: Thank you. Thank you.

Ceo: You know, good luck to the Israeli army.

Rob: Thank you.

Ceo: You know, the Allies established Israel, really.

Rob: Correct.

Ceo: Because Palestine was a protectorate of the British.

Rob: Correct.

Ceo: And I kind of remember being surprised by that, by what I got on the movies and the news. But I really understand that we need to continue to support Israel, you know, because they're not in a good situation where they are. I do, though, kind of feel that we need to stop the fighting if we can find some reasonable basis to do it, and we need to do that everywhere in the world.

Rob: That is true. Very true.

Ceo: We do, because...

Rob: Everyone wants peace. We want peace everywhere.

Ceo: We have to remember that people are dying, and a lot of times they're innocent people. And so whatever effort we can do, we need to do, and God needs to show us the way.

Rob: It's true. Yeah.

Christian: Very true. Very true.

Rob: Well, thank you, sir. Christian, do you want to just tell people, you know, what your website is, so that they can get in touch if they want?

Christian: I would love that. So, the film is called The Girl Who Wore Freedom. You can find out more about that and watch the trailer at thegirlwhoworefreedom.com. If you're in America, you can see the film on Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu [now Fandango at Home], Google, YouTube. Unfortunately, if you're in Israel or anywhere outside of the United States, it's very difficult. I don't know that you can see the film yet. But if you're a distributor anywhere else, we'd love to talk to you.

My email is christian@documentaryfirst.com. Our production company is documentaryfirst.com. And our social media is all Documentary First, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all of those things. And yeah, we'd love to hear from anyone that wants to talk to us. So if people want to write Ceo emails or letters, you can send them to me, christian@documentaryfirst.com, and I will make sure that he gets them. I like to send him things from people that want to communicate with him. So, I'll be happy to do that.

Rob: All right. Excellent. And finding me is very simple. Just do a quick search for Movie Rob Minute. You can find me on Facebook, find me on Twitter, you can find me on Instagram, you can find me on my website. So, once again, thank you both for joining me today. I will be back tomorrow with another interview, but until then, earn this.

Ceo: Yep.

Christian: Earn this.

Ceo: What did he say?

Christian: Earn this. Earn it. Like, you've got to earn it.

Ceo: Oh, okay. I'm going to wind up with what I always say over in France. Vive la France. Long live the United States of America and our free world allies.

Rob: Amen.

Christian: Amen. Thank you. And I always say on my podcast, which is Documentary First, you can find that wherever you get your podcasts: Bye everybody.

I hope that you guys were as moved as I was by this episode, especially hearing that Rob was also in the military. And listening to that heartfelt letter of thanks from the French citizen named Elizabeth, it just gives me chills. It's even more meaningful because, of course, I've been over there, and I've seen in person how thankful the French people are. Ceo also reflected on what it meant to bring his family back to France and to walk the beaches of Normandy, where he witnessed firsthand that deep gratitude of the French people for their liberation. It really is nothing like it.

He could have gone on for hours, as can I. And honestly, we would have listened to him. You would have too, if you were in person sitting around with him. He is passionate, and he has a heart full of stories, and we are honored just to share a few of them with you today. And thanks for joining us. We really, really appreciate you listening and spending your time. Please share this episode with anyone you think will enjoy it. Thank you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it. Bye everybody.

Follow Documentary First on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. This podcast was produced by Documentary First, edited and mixed by Jason Hoban.