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Ackton Ackton, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk USA with me, James Holland, and with John Mannes.

And John, I had an interesting week last week because I was ganging around the battlefields of Sicily.

And one of the guys who has been on an earlier tour that I've done and was there last week was called Kevin Milan.

And Kevin is an American and his dad was in the 82nd Airborne and actually we read his father's story out.

Out on family stories a little while ago.

By the way, we were going from A to B from one of the places we were looking at in Sicily and he said to me,

why don't you talk about have a discussion on the influence of the Civil War and particularly

Gullesys Grant on those West pointers who kind of went through and ended up being senior generals in the Second World War.

And I said, that's a really good idea. Let me put that to John right now.

So I then, what's up to you?

You came back and said, yeah, all over that like a rash.

And I went back to Kevin and said, yeah, John's up for that.

So here we are. So I mean, what a great subject and not one that I've given a huge amount of thought to.

I have to say, but I mean, I know that sort of pattern, for example,

I have to obsess with the Civil War, not least because he had a grandfather who fought in it.

But the long tentacles of the American Civil War and, and I guess,

...