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Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
00:00:06:01 - 00:00:37:01
Speaker 1
Hey, it's Matthew Cudmore and welcome to Story Behind the Stone. Today we're joined by New York Times bestselling author and U.S. Army veteran Stephen Harding. In this episode, we'll explore the gripping, true story behind his book The Last Battle. The incredible story of the unlikeliest battle of the Second World War. When a small group of American soldiers join forces with German soldiers to fight off the SS troops, but also discusses upcoming book, Gig Men The Untold Story of the FBI's search for America's Traitors, Collaborators, and Spies in World War Two Europe.
00:00:37:03 - 00:00:40:21
Speaker 1
Stephen, it was great to have you join us on the show. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in.
00:00:46:22 - 00:00:56:05
Speaker 1
Well, welcome to story behind the star on the show where we talk service, sacrifice and story. We're joined today by New York Times best selling author Stephen Harding. Stephen, welcome to the show.
00:00:56:06 - 00:00:57:07
Speaker 2
Well, thank you for having me.
00:00:57:08 - 00:01:11:19
Speaker 1
This is a huge honor to have you on the show, to chat about your body of work and your background. Let's start there. Let's talk a little bit about your service as a veteran and what's inspired. I think a lot of your work over the following decades.
00:01:11:20 - 00:01:36:12
Speaker 2
I enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1971. I'm still not clear why I did that at that particular time. I was trained as an infantryman in October of 1971. I was in Germany, to take part in a gigantic maneuver during that operation. I was in an armored vehicle rollover accident that put me in various army hospitals in Germany and the United States for about a year.
00:01:36:13 - 00:01:55:09
Speaker 2
As you can imagine, that that gave me an insight into what it's like to be an Army casualty. I had and not served in Vietnam and never did. But I ended up, being in hospitals with Vietnam casualties, being in a military hospital in wartime. And I was I spent most of my time in the hospital before dawn.
00:01:55:09 - 00:02:14:04
Speaker 2
California, which was a receiving hospital for Vietnam casualties. It was horrific. I mean, being on the ward I was on, it was sort of like a waiting room to hell. But unlike most of the other guys there, I was able to eventually to get up and and walk out with, you know, back brace and crutches and whatever.
00:02:14:05 - 00:02:35:08
Speaker 2
The army, in its wisdom, decided to make me into an Army journalist. So I was trained as a radio, television and print journalist, which I did for about another almost two years. When I got out, I went, back to college at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which, I have to shout out, is the best place for a young disabled veteran to go to college.
00:02:35:10 - 00:02:59:22
Speaker 2
It's right on the ocean. And I ended up doing two degrees in history with a specialization in modern military history. I swore that I would never be around the military personally. But I ended up working as an Army civilian journalist for 32 more years. When I stopped doing that, I became the editor of Military History magazine, here in the United States.
00:03:00:00 - 00:03:28:17
Speaker 2
So I've always had an interest in the military. And because of my own. I'm an 80% disabled veteran, according to the Veterans Administration. I've always been interested in how nations deal with their veterans and and also, quite honestly, how they deal with their combat dead. Because, you know, the United States has only been out of the longest war in its history for a couple of years, a war in which Canada participated in Australia, New Zealand and Germany and all kinds of other countries.
00:03:28:19 - 00:03:49:02
Speaker 2
And there were dead among all of those forces. How did they deal with that? Well, when I was in Iraq in 2005, along with riding in Humvees down routes lined with IEDs, which was an experience for that 50, somehow five year old man, I saw how all of these nations dealt with their wounded. The big combat evacuation hospital in Kuwait City.
00:03:49:02 - 00:04:11:11
Speaker 2
I wrote a medevac flight which was a little re-energizing for me, but I think it's important that any time a nation sends its young people and it's almost always young people, men and women who get sent to war, inevitably they get injured or killed. And and what does the nation do for them when they're injured and afterwards? And how does a nation deal with them?
00:04:11:13 - 00:04:35:16
Speaker 2
You know, when they've been killed. So as an Army civilian journalist, I did a lot of writing about the military hospital system, which had changed considerably since I went through it and talked to a lot of injured veterans. I tracked how how the Army handled the notification of families when when people were killed and I visited a lot of the cemeteries run by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
00:04:35:18 - 00:05:04:10
Speaker 2
And in fact, I interviewed several officials of that organization and I was really impressed with the what they were trying to do to memorialize American military dead. I did have an interesting experience. I was in Normandy, and I'd been given a tour of the cemetery, and my wife and I were dining in a small restaurant in Bayou and the man sitting next to me, although he was speaking French, I, because I speak German, I knew that he was German, so he was probably 50 or 60 by my age.
00:05:04:10 - 00:05:32:23
Speaker 2
And I leaned over and we started talking and I said, so why are you here? And he said, well, I've come to visit the German military cemetery. There's a huge German military cemetery, kind of off the beaten path in Normandy, because all nations want to memorialize their dead. I went out to coagulant as part of a recovery effort in 2002, when they were looking for the remains of the crew of Louis Zamperini, B-24.
00:05:33:00 - 00:06:09:17
Speaker 2
He was a man that Angelina Jolie later made a very good film about because he survived the incident only to end up in Japanese captivity. And it was it was an eye opener for me. I'd been to the big laboratory in Honolulu, where they do a lot of the identification. I've been behind the scenes. I've been able to see very closely how much effort the United States, both through its own, the official organization and all of the civilian organizations, that go out and try and find and help identify American in age as a disabled veteran and as somebody who's done a certain amount of writing about this.
00:06:09:17 - 00:06:22:15
Speaker 2
That's the core of my interest. I put them in a couple of my books. I've also dealt with the idea of, you know, what happens to people who survive wars and what happens to those who don't.
00:06:22:16 - 00:06:37:04
Speaker 1
Let's talk about your books. If we could. You do have one that's in preview right now that has just like all of your books, very interesting, untold or lesser known kind of topics and subjects. What is Gman all about?
00:06:37:04 - 00:07:01:11
Speaker 2
So GI G-Men is the story of a group of, FBI special agents who were sort of seconded to the U.S. Army. They were working for the FBI, but they worked under Army cover. They were Army uniforms. They had courtesy Army ranks. And they were sent to Europe during the last year of World War two. So the first ones arrived just after the liberation of Paris.
00:07:01:11 - 00:07:25:11
Speaker 2
And they're depending on how you count them. There were 16 or 18 of them, and they ended up working in France, Germany, Italy, with detours to Holland and Belgium and places like that. And there primary duty was to hunt down American citizens who were believed to have committed treason by working with the Nazis or the Italian fascists.
00:07:25:13 - 00:07:52:20
Speaker 2
And this ran the gamut from, you know, people like the poet Ezra Pound, who did radio broadcasts and, newspaper articles to other journalists, but also people who just happened to be, for example, in France when it was occupied by the Germans, and initially because Americans were neutral until after Pearl Harbor, they could get away with working for the Germans because it wasn't illegal for Americans at that point.
00:07:52:22 - 00:08:22:19
Speaker 2
But then I was kind of shocked by the number of Americans who kept working for the Germans or the Italian fascists. And these FBI agents worked primarily to locate and then interrogate these people. Some of these people had connections that went all the way to the white House. Others were very, very wealthy and still well-known postwar anthropos. And, I was able to look into it in the same way that I had done my other books in the last 5 or 6 books I've done.
00:08:22:21 - 00:08:56:11
Speaker 2
My goal has been to find a story that generally involves a small group of people whose story tells a larger tale of World War Two through their actions, through their relationships. So here are these 16 FBI guys I over several years of for the requests, the FBI and the National Archives. I came, came up with interrogation records and the names of the people they they, interrogated those that were ultimately charged and those that were charged for various reasons.
00:08:56:12 - 00:09:21:17
Speaker 2
Some of the ones who were charged were charged because of their connections to politicians and and other people. It's a really fascinating story because these FBI guys, it's kind of a combination of your typical police procedural with a World War Two story, because they were operating in, newly liberated parts of France where there was, you know, still enemy activity.
00:09:21:19 - 00:09:51:08
Speaker 2
They got shelled. They got shot at, they had to learn to use weapons that most FBI guys would not use. They don't. Not only in tracking down traitors who worked with the Monuments Men, for example, to track people, Americans who had helped facilitate the theft of, you know, European artworks. They investigated the disappearance of probably the most important American machine of World War two, and it just disappeared.
00:09:51:08 - 00:10:10:18
Speaker 2
And people were panic stricken, and the FBI helped figure out what happened to it. So it was an interesting story. And it was, as with my other, earlier books, I think it tells us something we didn't know about World War Two, but it also is familiar enough that most people will understand most of the touchstones through it.
00:10:10:19 - 00:10:25:03
Speaker 2
You know, if I talk about Pearl Harbor, most of the people who read military history are going to know what Pearl Harbor was or the deeper raid or whatever it was. So you can engage in a certain amount of editorial shorthand when you're telling the story.
00:10:25:08 - 00:10:36:20
Speaker 1
You have another book called, The Last Battle. I'm looking forward to reading this book. I know a little bit about the event. Why don't you tell us a little bit about this book and what you were trying to capture in that writing?
00:10:36:20 - 00:11:12:23
Speaker 2
After I got out of graduate school and one of my first jobs, I was a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in DC. And there was a great professor, a gentleman named Ed Beck. He had this story that he'd been looking into. It's a terribly obscure story happened in the last two days of World War Two in Europe, when American soldiers joined forces with some German soldiers to defend a medieval castle in Austria that held a bunch of really garrulous and not very nice French VIPs who were about to be murdered by the SS.
00:11:12:23 - 00:11:32:05
Speaker 2
Just a quick correction. His name was Fred Beck. Sorry. So Fred Beck had been researching the story, and one day he came in and said, I'm not ever going to write the story. Are you interested? And I said, I said, sure. So he gave me a whole box of stuff, and I promptly put it in the closet for 20 years because life happened.
00:11:32:05 - 00:12:08:00
Speaker 2
I got married, had children, lived in Europe, did a whole bunch of things. So I finally pulled it out and I was able to find two of the surviving American soldiers who had actually taken part in this battle. And I found the son of the lead Vermont officer who had joined forces with the Americans. So not only is it just an outrageously cool story, because the number of Germans and Americans never total more than about 22, holding off essentially a regiment of the SS defending a castle, you know, shooting from the parapets.
00:12:08:00 - 00:12:28:07
Speaker 2
And there's a drawbridge and just it was a it was a cool story to begin with, but to be able to talk to some of the people involved and with Fred Beck's help and then on my own, I tracked down all these great records, both in English and a German and in French, which I don't speak, but fortunately my wife does fluently.
00:12:28:07 - 00:12:45:12
Speaker 2
And then we went to Austria. I had been trying to get in touch with the man who now owns the castle. He doesn't want to talk about the story at all. He doesn't allow access to the castle. So we're wandering around in this little beautiful Austrian village, and I just happened to run into this gentleman who turns out to be the mayor of the town.
00:12:45:14 - 00:13:06:06
Speaker 2
And he. He is. I said, oh, I can show you whatever you want, but he takes me to the right house, shows me all of the blueprints for this castle, which really originated in the 12th century, but became what it is now in the 18th and 19th centuries. Beautiful. You know, it had been a hotel at one time.
00:13:06:06 - 00:13:28:03
Speaker 2
It was the headquarters for the Nazi anti-smoking campaign. And then it was made into the special prison. So by the end of the war, there were several very high level French VIPs Paul Renault, Edward Daladier, you know, people who had been senior members of the preoccupation French government. The real story behind this, is they all hated each other.
00:13:28:05 - 00:13:56:01
Speaker 2
So the Nazis, in their cruelty, made them all live together. That had to eat their meals together. They had to exercise together. Now, there were, you know, although Castle Itter was part of the concentration camp system, these people had wine every day. They had cigarettes. They could go outside to get their hair done. It was not Auschwitz. But by the time the war was ended, Himmler said, go and kill them all, including any German guards that are still there.
00:13:56:01 - 00:14:18:06
Speaker 2
Which was interesting. The German guards not being stupid people realized what was happening and they left. So the French prisoners sent one of their own. I got an example of a very famous pre-war French tennis player who literally jumped over the wall and ran until we found Americans, and they also said a Czech handyman was a prisoner also.
00:14:18:06 - 00:14:45:02
Speaker 2
But they put him on a bicycle and sent him the other way, and they both eventually ran into American forces. John Barrow ran into an element of the 23rd Tank Battalion. He convinced the officer in charge that he should come and protect these French people, but at the same time, the Czech guy on a bike ran to friendly Germans, and by this time in the war, the Vermaak, they wanted to be over with the war.
00:14:45:02 - 00:15:13:10
Speaker 2
The German commander, a guy named Sepp Gangl, said, okay, we'll come. But he went and found the Americans. They John joined forces and they defend the castle against an ultimate attack by the SS and oddly enough, the the only defender to die in the battle was Sepp Gangl. The German officer was killed by German sniper. And he's considered a, Austrian resistance hero.
00:15:13:12 - 00:15:36:13
Speaker 2
Because even before defending the castle, he had refused to execute some French or some Austrian resistance people that the SS had caught. So it was a it's a great story. It's also been a development hell for 15 or 16 years. Even before I wrote the book, I read in a magazine article, and that sort of led into the optioning of it.
00:15:36:15 - 00:16:01:07
Speaker 2
It's it's been optioned a couple of times by a couple of very well-known people, but for various reasons hasn't happened. Now, I grew up in Southern California. A lot of my friends parents run the movie business. My son is a fairly well-known actor, so I know how the whole thing works. But waiting around for this to happen, you know, I'm not getting any younger, and I would really like to see this thing.
00:16:01:09 - 00:16:14:11
Speaker 2
Happen. And I have another book called The Castaways were optioned by, an American company, and it's still in development now. So I would I would very much like to see these, these books made.
00:16:14:12 - 00:16:34:12
Speaker 1
As you're talking about that story, you you find yourself drawn into it, that narrative around what the difference between some of these German soldiers were and the SS soldiers. I love how you're telling that, you know, small story. It can humanize some of the different people who were caught up in in the conflict. There's a bit of a story there, isn't it?
00:16:34:12 - 00:16:59:14
Speaker 2
Sepp Gangl is is a fascinating character because he he had been a soldier since before the Nazi period. He joined the Weimar Army after the end of World War One. Started as an enlisted guy, which is always close to my heart. As a former enlisted person, and ultimately became an officer in the German. He, he commanded Nebelwerfer for, you know, and he fought the Russians and then he fought in Normandy.
00:16:59:14 - 00:17:26:21
Speaker 2
So the American leader is this tanker guy named Jack Lee. This this guy is a walking caricature. He he was from upstate New York. His father was a doctor. He was a football player. But he went into the to military. He became a tanker. And he was the quintessential armored vehicle guy. You know, he chewed cigars. He was very good at what he did.
00:17:26:21 - 00:17:57:08
Speaker 2
The people, he commanded really followed him, because being an armored vehicle commander was the only thing he'd ever really done. And he he, like a lot of people, you know, found a niche doing it. And he was very good at it. And so when literally, you know, Hitler was already dead, he and his unit are in a small Austrian town, and he sees this Kubelwagen driving towards him, with Sepp Gangl and a white flag.
00:17:57:10 - 00:18:19:10
Speaker 2
And his men are thinking, captain, sir, the war is over, Hitler is dead. And he says, no, we got to go help this guys. Because, you know, he knew. I mean, he was not a stupid man. He knew that idea. And Renault and people like that were going to be the foundation of postwar France. So he throws in his lot mainly because in secondly, he found a kindred spirit.
00:18:19:12 - 00:18:37:15
Speaker 2
You know, it wasn't politics for either one of them. It's what they did for a living. And they were both very good at it. They knew they could trust each other, and they did. And when when Gangl was killed during the fight for the castle, it really affected Jack Lee. And then, of course, you had the men on both sides were like, oh, sure, we're going to follow the captain.
00:18:37:15 - 00:18:55:13
Speaker 2
But oh yeah, we don't want to be the last guy killed in World War two, or at least. So it was interesting interactions and being able to talk to two of the soldiers who later helped, relieve the castle and got involved in the fight. And it was an interesting, fascinating story and especially to be able to walk the ground.
00:18:55:14 - 00:18:59:10
Speaker 2
I learned early on that if you're going to write about military actions, you have to walk the ground.
00:18:59:10 - 00:19:09:02
Speaker 1
What are you feeling when you walk the ground and say, a military cemetery? You mentioned earlier about visiting Normandy, for example. What are you feeling when you see those names as you walk.
00:19:09:02 - 00:19:47:19
Speaker 2
Past military cemeteries? They are remembrances as as any cemetery is. It's a way of honoring that person or at least remembering them. In military cemeteries, it tends to be, at least in my opinion, to walk through a military cemetery is far more effective. Civilian cemeteries are personal remembrances, you know, grandpa, grandma, whomever. But when you see 20 acres of white crosses or stars of David, it reminds you that all of these people got killed in a fairly short period of time for a very specific purpose.
00:19:47:19 - 00:20:06:06
Speaker 2
No, they didn't die of old age. They didn't die of, you know, whatever. They got killed in combat or died of injuries. As somebody who spent time in military hospitals, it there's a personal connection to me when people would come and visit me when I was living in Germany, somehow I always ended up touring one of the cemetery.
00:20:06:06 - 00:20:13:12
Speaker 2
It's a very affecting. And, you know, my father and all my uncles fought in World War two, all of them in the Pacific. But you know, it's close to when it.
00:20:13:12 - 00:20:22:16
Speaker 1
Comes to all of these experiences and your life's work. What is that message that you're hoping people take away from your experiences? And what you share?
00:20:22:16 - 00:20:50:00
Speaker 2
Primarily, the message would be when you see all of those crosses in a military cemetery, understand that not everybody wanted to be there. You know, they were just answering a call, either willingly or unwillingly, depending on which war you're talking about. But they still paid the same price. And I have to tell you, there's, there's a phrase that I, I try never to use, and I'm perfectly happy that other people do it.
00:20:50:00 - 00:21:17:19
Speaker 2
I try not to talk about the fallen because they weren't clumsy, they didn't fall down. They got killed. So, I mean, when we talk about the, you know, our honored dead. Yes, they are honored dead. And we should honor it in memory, in history books. And all I've tried to do, I think, is look at that and and put their stories out in a way that people will read.
00:21:17:20 - 00:21:43:22
Speaker 2
The reason I don't write the large history books. It's all, you know, red, red arrows and white arrows and massive maps and stuff. It's because that doesn't really mean anything to most people. When you talk about individual people, men and women and what happened to them, what they had to do or what ultimately became of them. It makes it very personal and it makes it easier to relate to individuals.
00:21:44:00 - 00:22:05:04
Speaker 2
Just as an example, a few days ago I posted a picture on LinkedIn of Anthony Martial, this young man who was the last man killed, and it got an amazing and overwhelming response. One man here's this guy who was the last American killed in combat in World War two. And I made it very personal. And that I think that's ultimately my goal.
00:22:05:05 - 00:22:27:04
Speaker 1
Each of these names on these headstones have a story. And, you know, these were people was families and aspirations. You really do so well with your books. Is going into that story that humanizing, even as you're talking about, the Ten Commandments, hearing that and humanizing that individual. And it just speaks to a greater story.
00:22:27:04 - 00:22:50:14
Speaker 2
And unfortunately, Jack Lee, The Ten Commandments is also representative of a lot of people that we never really think of as wartime casualties. When the war ended, he went back up to upstate New York, had a couple of failed marriages, couldn't find a job. So he ended up running a bar, which was a bad thing because he turned into an alcoholic and he died when he was in his 50s.
00:22:50:16 - 00:23:11:16
Speaker 2
And that is a pattern that so many World War two vets, Korea vets, Vietnam vets. And now in our time Iraq and Afghanistan vets War does something to you. Whether you're a grunt on the ground or somebody working on it in a evac hospital, it affects you for the rest of your life. And that's another thing that I want to point out, though.
00:23:11:16 - 00:23:21:17
Speaker 2
I'm writing about World War Two. This is not something that ended after the 60s. People my age and I'm old who are still trying to get past what what happened 50 years ago.
00:23:21:17 - 00:23:43:21
Speaker 1
There's a terrible burden that those who may not have been what we call typical battlefield casualties, all those moral injuries and post-traumatic stress. And it's a burden that is unseen. And many of these soldiers and yourself, you know, having to process some of the experiences, even opening a mass grave, that's something that will stick with you for your whole life.
00:23:43:21 - 00:23:44:16
Speaker 1
I imagine that's.
00:23:44:16 - 00:23:54:23
Speaker 2
Really my reason for doing what I do. Plus, I've only had two professions in my life. I was a soldier and then I was a writer. So you got to find a way to make those things work together.
00:23:54:23 - 00:24:05:12
Speaker 1
When I think about your time as Soldiers Magazine, are there any commonalities with the service members that you kind of were embedded with, or you did stories on across those different campaigns and regions?
00:24:05:12 - 00:24:24:04
Speaker 2
When I worked for soldiers, it wasn't the army I was in, and that was one of the biggest, continuing revelations to me to be talking to young soldiers who were of a completely different frame of mind than the soldier that I was, but they all were dedicated to doing the best job they could under some challenging conditions.
00:24:24:04 - 00:24:45:15
Speaker 2
Same gripes and grunts and complaints that soldiers always have. But, you know, the army that I wrote about for soldiers magazine was so vastly different in so many key ways from the Army I was in. It was an interesting thing for me. I went to New Zealand to cover the Army's contribution to Operation Deep Freeze. You know, I ended up in Iraq.
00:24:45:15 - 00:25:09:01
Speaker 2
I was in Kuwait twice. I was in Northern Ireland because, believe it or not, the US Army had a small presence in Belfast. And I got to see the troubles fairly closely, much, much more closely than I had anticipated. But it gave me a real appreciation. And not just American soldiers. I interactive with Canadian soldiers and German soldiers and, New Zealand soldiers.
00:25:09:03 - 00:25:30:08
Speaker 2
I ran into a Maori lieutenant coming back from an overnight raid into occupied Iraq, and he was wearing full facial tattoos, and he wiped them off as he walked up. And I said, why do you do that? And he said, because it scares the hell out of the Iraqis. So, you know, soldiers, I mean, soldiers are soldiers or soldiers.
00:25:30:10 - 00:25:34:15
Speaker 2
But I am proud that I was able to tell some stories.
00:25:34:15 - 00:25:43:09
Speaker 1
What's next? You have a book release, you have a film release. Why don't you tell our audience a little bit about what's coming for you? And if they want to learn more, where they can go?
00:25:43:11 - 00:26:19:12
Speaker 2
I'm mainly focused now on the release of Gig Man, which is supposed to happen in February. I will will happen in February. I'm also focused on hopefully the beginning of production of the film version of, The Last Battle, which is supposed to start under February March filming in northern Italy, very close to the actual location. I am primarily working to support the release of the new book, but, the last battle just came out in the last few months in its 14th language, in Spanish, and finally is doing quite, quite well in Spain.
00:26:19:12 - 00:26:41:11
Speaker 2
I'm mainly focused on not writing another book right now because I've written five books in the last nine years. While also for a lot of that time, still being a working magazine editor, you know, and I tell people a lot of times that writing isn't really my favorite thing to do. It's just what I've done for a living.
00:26:41:13 - 00:27:02:18
Speaker 2
And once you've done something for a living, it's hard to let it go. So I may be writing some magazine articles and stuff. I have a couple more appearances, media appearances to do, and that will increase when the book comes out and it's the movie comes out. I would expect some of that, but anybody who is interested in my books can just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
00:27:02:18 - 00:27:17:00
Speaker 2
They're all up there and I would be pleased as punch that people would be willing to read because I, I enjoyed even though writing stuff. My favorite thing to do, I enjoyed doing it while I'm doing it. It's just kind of a lonely way to make a living.
00:27:17:00 - 00:27:29:18
Speaker 1
We so appreciate you coming on the show today. And I know, our sales and listening audience are instant fans of your work, and we're really looking forward to the release of the game. And thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a real pleasure to chat with you today.
00:27:29:23 - 00:27:33:05
Speaker 2
Well, thanks for having me and thanks for what you guys do too. It's important.
00:27:39:03 - 00:27:58:13
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for tuning in. Story. Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Rise Across America Radio Network on iHeartRadio. Audacity and tune in to search for wreath. We air every Thursday at 10 a.m. eastern on the Red Cross Radio Network. Thank you for tuning in.