Six Questions with John Davis: Author of Around the Corner: Reflections on American War, Violence, Terrorism, and Hope

Memorial Day is a time for us to remember those who generously, heroically, and valiantly served our country. John Davis’ books, Rainy Street Stories, and his most recent book, Around the Corner, urges us to do the same, and more, all year round. From a perspective of a past counterintelligence officer and linguist of the US Army, John’s collection of stories invites readers to open their hearts and minds to a world often unseen, unknown, forgotten, or disregarded.

In his new book, John skillfully guides us around corners, and challenges us to think about the many important issues affecting our lives today. Some are formidable and stirring, but he offers hope to those traveling with him. What is around the corner cannot be ignored. For if we don’t turn the corner, acknowledge what is there, and try to learn from it, the consequences of slinking away will only come around to us.

Learn more about this journey of going around the corner in the following Six Questions! Explore with him as he shares compelling accounts and real-life experiences. Enjoy!

Six Questions with John:

• 1Q) Congratulations on the incredible success of your first book, Rainy Street Stories. It’s been appreciated by many and can be found in numerous stores across the country, as well as online. I find it interesting that the phrase Around the Corner is mentioned in Rainy Street Stories; as if this second book was in mind. Was it, or what inspired Around the Corner? And then I must also ask if you feel there might be a third? (I hope so, as I am loving your compelling and thought-provoking stories.)

One winter’s night some time ago, my sons were over for a visit. We were catching up and came upon the subject of fear. After a while, we concluded that the greatest fear was fear of the unknown. When we thought back about our own lives and ‘adventures’, we discovered a number of actual events which confirmed this. I’d mentioned a couple times my life was endangered. My sons remembered when, as boys, they checked for bombs under our cars in Europe after we’d lost friends that way. I suggested that we as a family we’d never let fear rule our lives, or paralyze our actions.Rather we prepared as best we could, and determined to never, ever let fear conquer us. In fact, we helped each other face what scared us.

As our discussion went on into the night, we realized that facing fears of the unknown, or other people, or of other cultures, could be a concrete good. We’d all reached out into the void. We’d gone to Europe under circumstances that cut us off from family for decades. My job required learning languages and working with diverse nationalities and organizations. I, an American, together with our Allies, dealt directly with secret enemies. Not openly, as in combat, but in a secret war of betrayal, intrigue, and plots. My wife Jane faced death twice with dread cancers.

And yet, going around the metaphorical corner opened a whole new world of good, too. Our oldest son Marty learned fluent German in a Mannheim Kindergarten, and French at NATO’s French-Canadian elementary school. He’s never been afraid to meet anyone in an open, welcoming way. Our middle son Will overcame fear of the water with swimming help from a Dutch commando we knew. I can only imagine such care as was shown Will influenced his own compassion, good spirited firmness, and hearty kindness he shows his own students today. Our youngest son Kenny has become a moderating influence on everyone he meets. He never gives voice to anger. He is never judgmental. His many friends, from all walks of life, remark how he’s fun to be around. Everyone notices how he displays an uncannily good attitude, despite the many homes, in different countries, with no extended family in his life he’s experienced.

Our family served on a front forgotten to other Americans. These disadvantages characterized our sons’ early life. Jane, whose dad was in the military all her life, married me and continued living around the world. Only in this decade has she lived in America more than abroad. She taught in national and international, public and private school districts.

Looking around the corner, not being afraid, seeing what else is out there beyond the known, the standardized, and the traditional is what characterized our family. I mentioned as we talked that night away how looking around the corner as a kid onto bright and active Grand Avenue in St. Louis stuck in my mind. There were all the theater lights, the Grand Water Tower, the street cars, stores, and Sportsman’s Park where the Cardinals played. Had I not gone around the corner, life would never be the same; it symbolized our lives. Hearing this, Marty created the cover of my book.

I hope to make a trilogy of these experiences. Once I awoke to what life had offered me, I became different. Reflections on the meaning of the past through the stories which happened to me, make life worth living, and in turn, sharing.

• 2Q) The collection of stories within your new book shines light on many things ‘around the corner’. Some of those items seem even pushed around the corner, so to be ignored or put out of mind. But for those daring to venture forth, like yourself, stories about them can be told; allowing others to become aware. Of the numerous experiences and accounts shared in your book, which touches you most personally? Or which message do you feel is most vital? Can you even choose?

I’m smiling because choosing is impossible. I wrote the Influences chapter to explain what compelled later actions in my life. I remembered my remarkable sadness, which wouldn’t go away, once I realized what had happened to ‘George’. My old friend ‘Billy’s’ joy of life was infectious. The Grey Fox, Brother Paul Schneider’s stories of adventures in the Andes and Amazon jungles, fired my rainy St. Louis day’s imagination. He’s the one who told me, “If you stick with foreign languages, it will change your life.’ It did. Jane’s dad, a genuine hero of our nation, said he was only an average man who, because given a chance, was able to do his best in extraordinary circumstances.

I realized that real stories about sadness, joy, a love of adventure, the value of hard language training, the good that comes of giving everyone a fair chance, all inspired me. As a result, I’ve been drawn to help when I see that same enthusiasm in others. I see a genuine thirst of our world’s young people for elementary freedoms: of the press, of travel, of open, fair, and equal government. I’ve seen this over and over among the dozens of foreign visitors, scholars, and every profession we’ve met through Global Ties.

Young people today are alive with the possibilities of a cooperative world without fear of the other. In particular, those I’ve met from the former Communist bloc dictatorships are like Rip Van Winkle emerging from the darkness of one party rule and authoritarian regimes. They now seek an open, just world. That’s why I wrote this book. We all seek justice, openness, and cooperation. My stories show it can happen, in real life, in stories that happen to you and me. But I’m also clear that there are consequences when justice fails, and fear triumphs.

• 3Q) You ask many stimulating questions within your book. Questions which challenge us to think what is right or wrong? Good or bad? Often your narrative shares perspectives which reveal how blurry those ideals can become. In one section you bring up the action of compromise. Why do you feel compromise is found to be so difficult? In what ways do you think governments or society can benefit by trying to compromise more?

More and more I find myself returning to Edmund Burke, an 18th Century British Parliamentarian whose work I learned about in high school. Burke said, without compromise you have no democracy. I realized what he meant by this cold assessment. If you see politics as warfare, as tribal, as fighting evil itself, then there is no compromise with evil. This is a recurring Puritanical, fanatical view. In this worldview your side, of course, is always on the side of sweet goodness! But if, as Burke did, you see politics as a contest of different approaches toward common goals, not a battle against Satan, then compromise makes such a country work. That’s democracy.

We Americans have tended to agree in our common goals. We strive for open, fair, and equal justice. We as a nation help those who need it. We trust and defend our Constitution and Bill of Rights. And though we might differ as to how these goals are achieved, we can’t dispute these are what make us who we are. We might differ about how to get a common goal accomplished; but we must come to agreement through fact based, testable discussion. After all, this is what the Enlightenment brought about. When all this failed, we had the Civil War.

Many of my stories deal with this world view. I tell real stories because that is how abstract ideas in practice affect real people. This also explains why I’m no ideologue. After all, we used to joke in the Army that no plan survives its first encounter with the enemy! I remember hearing how the British High Command couldn’t imagine why their Somme Offensive plan to sweep away the Germans on the Western Front in World War I failed. Why did not thousands of British soldiers triumph against outnumbered, entrenched Germans?

The British General Staff never visited the front! Had they done so, they’d see their plan to advance across draws and ravines was factually and fatally flawed. The area they planned for their soldier’s advance was literally an entire valley floor filled in with millions of rolls of barbed wire, laced by German machine guns. The Tommies advanced only forty yards in some cases, then to be gunned down as they twisted to escape the spider’s coils laid for them.

Abstract versus actual. This is why I write about abstract planners who don’t experience the pains of those they send to fight, or don’t value diplomacy, which could avoid conflicts altogether. All our common actions, votes, and decisions effect real people. Hopefully, we’ll come to see that all people are valuable, and not mere markers on a board.

• 4Q) In the story ‘Guardian of the Gate’ you mention how your father-in-law, Duane L. Tedrick of World War II’s, Delta Company/2/506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, while traveling through Belgium, had slept within a barn secretly filled with stolen treasures. They were hidden in a hay bin, unknown by those sleeping near. It’s known thousands of great works and treasured items went missing during the war. Do you know if those treasures mentioned made their way back to rightful owners? Do you feel other treasures lay hidden still and can be found? From your own workings in the secret world, had you come by any lost treasures yourself?

Yes, the treasures found where Jane’s dad slept, and all over Europe, were itemized by the ‘Monuments Men’. These were scholars brought into the Army just to find and catalogue these stolen masterpieces. We actually met the niece of one of these Monuments Men. We all regretted Jane’s dad and her uncle never met. Sad to say, the owners of thousands of the recovered works were never found. Many artwork owners were killed, while some fled and never returned.

In other cases authorities could not establish clear provenance. Also, thousands of such paintings, jewelry, and statues were destroyed in the maelstrom of war. One warehouse in Hamburg, incinerated in a bombing raid, held thousands of such works. Of course, thousands of other such treasures have gone missing, were never recovered, but appear from time to time. Remember the house in Munich where some thousands of artworks, illicitly transferred to a collector in the 1930s, were discovered last year?

One Western American family returned a ducal jeweled booklet to Germany, which had been apparently snatched by a relative during the war. Such things are quite literally everywhere. After all, we are finding swords, pendants, and helmets from Viking times even today! The world is a cabinet of curiosities, just waiting for us to discover. And yes, we’ve found treasures. Some don’t fit the category of wealth showering wonder, however. Yet I think you’ll agree this story tells of a true treasure indeed.

After one presentation on Rainy Street Stories, Jane and I were approached by one of the guests in the audience. Could we help identify some photos her dad brought back from the Second World War, she asked? We agreed to meet again. At a library she showed us numerous photographs. Each was clearly from Dachau concentration camp, taken upon its liberation. Numerous photos of the prisoners were offset by two utterly different pictures. These showed a line of uniformed German soldiers, apparently shot standing against a wall. An apparent war crime. “Can you find out how this happened?” she asked, clearly concerned at what she’d hear. So, consulting a friend, and some time in research, we discovered an answer for her. When we met again, I was able to tell her our results.

Her father belonged to an American unit which was carefully studied . All of the members of the unit benefited because the writer of their unit history was himself an historian who’d served with them. We told our inquirer,

“Your father was never near the scene of this incident, because he was never in Germany. Only one man in your unit was in Germany, and he was taken prisoner by the Germans after a sharp skirmish with your dad’s unit in France. We gave her his name. He was held at an enlisted POW camp outside Munich. Upon liberation, he was told to find his unit. Clearly, the nearest Americans were near Dachau, where someone gave him these pictures of recent events. He clearly showed and shared them with his comrades when he rejoined the unit. One of those who received pictures from this former POW was your dad. He was never, ever near Dachau where this incident occurred.”

It appeared as if a stone had fallen from this lady’s heart. She smiled with a genuine joy. She was happy beyond words to know, after some 70 years, her father had no role whatsoever in such an atrocity. In fact, he had not even been there. That, for me, is a treasure still to be found. Oh, and the pictures were requested, and are now at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

• 5Q) Even in a world of continuous unknowns and of troubled times, there is hope to become better. One way you suggest is to reach out, learn, and appreciate others as they are. From your travels, and meeting others, do you feel those of other countries would welcome such actions? Do you think they feel much the same?

I know they do. When my wife and I returned to Eastern Europe several times since the fall of the Iron Curtain, we remarked on how happy the liberated people were. They quite simply loved Americans. In fact, almost everyone under the age of 35 these days speaks fantastic English!

This is not anecdotal. Another friend, from the Ukraine, said that upon the fall of the Communist government, everyone signed up for English classes. That was a clear sign of liberation…because for years they’d been forced to learn Russian. Why this outpouring of affection for the West and for us? We represent what they’ve been denied. For all the years since World War II they’ve had a grey, Puritanical Communist dictatorship sitting on their imaginations, lives, and hopes. What the West represents, the Bill of Rights paramount among them, not to mention freedom from Fear, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom of Speech, is what these captive nations had dreamed of.

Now they finally had a chance to get such civil rights for themselves. I wish you could meet the Fulbright Scholars, the exchange guests, and others we meet from virtually every country overseas through Global Ties. They are thoughtful, open minded, practical and hopeful. They see a bright future in working together; they are the hope for the future. They don’t want to hide from the past, but work together to make things better for our children and grandchildren.

They have in their way gone around the corner and liked what they see in an open, engaging, and free Western liberal democratic way of life. We need to preserve this. To do so requires patience, listening to others, and joining all together to achieve our common goals.

• 6Q) Your wife, Jane, and you have such giving hearts. Although you’ve been acknowledged and awarded with the Lorinne Emery National Award for Volunteerism, among other honors, it is clear your charitable actions come from the heart, and not for the recognition.

At the end of this Six Questions is a GiveAway for a Free Signed copy of your book, Around the Corner. One of the options to enter is to give to a charity: specifically, to visit Global Ties and donate. Will you share a bit more about this organization and why it is important to you?

Global Ties, a non profit with 90 offices around the country, has the mission to implement four State Department exchange programs. This mission includes our volunteer guiding of foreign guests to American institutions and companies to study medicine, agriculture, commerce, business, law, combating violent extremism, and a host of other skills. The mission’s overall goal is quite simple, though, and can be understood in a simple way. Let me explain.

Early in our history, American Presidents gave native chieftains the so-called Indian Peace Medal. On these medallions, meant to be worn around the neck, were hands clasped in friendship underneath crossed peace pipes. Common signs of a handshake and peace pipes made the hope of friendship clear. Global Ties has a motto to make friends one handshake at a time. In the end, our country is built upon trust, trust in ourselves, the law, and with others. It means our word is our bond. It all happens one person at a time. You might be the only American some people will ever meet. We lived with this knowledge ever since our family set foot overseas.

When we meet others, who in many cases are present or future leaders of their own countries, we aren’t engaged in grand diplomatic ventures. We are meeting as average people who want peace and friendship. How this begins is usually by telling stories. I heard a wise woman recently who said, “To have a memory is to have an obligation.” That obligation is to share the fruits of that memory. For better or worse, we must tell our stories, and listen to those of others. We must be honest. This is how trust happens; this is how wars are avoided, and peace comes about. One handshake at a time.

Thanks again for, yet again, another collection of excellent answers, John! Always inspiring, enlightening, and bolstering. The work your wife, Jane, and you do helps bring the needed awareness of important issues to many. It is reassuring to know there are people striving hard for justice and overall peace. It makes us truly believe the world you envision is possible; with like you say, one handshake at a time. How awesome and exciting to know it is in our power to make it happen.

Thanks for serving, and setting a remarkable example for our country.

Enter your chance to win a FREE SIGNED copy of John’s book ‘Around the Corner’.  Entries will be received until June 10th, 1PM.  Winner of a random drawing from all entries will be announced soon after!

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