Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

  • Home
  • Mike Scott Thrillers
    • Held Hostage: Search for the Juncal
    • Water Crisis: Day Zero
    • Turks and Chaos: Hostile Waters
    • The 3rd Key: Sharks in the Water
    • Oil and Water: Crash in Curacao
    • Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage
    • Heart of the Maya: Murder for the Gods
    • Wreck of the Huron: Cuban Secrets
    • Guardians’ Keep: Mystery below the Adriatic
    • Flooding Hollywood: Fanatics at the Dam
    • Cayman Cowboys: Reefs Under Pressure
  • Withrow Key
    • Lyin’ Fish
    • Tales from Withrow Key
  • Agent AJ West
  • About the Author
    • Publicity and Interviews
  • Nonfiction
    • For Cheap Lobster
    • Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery
    • Oral History
      • Batter Up!
      • Memories of the Valley
      • WV Voices of War / Common Valor
      • Capturing Memories: How to Record Oral Histories
    • Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story
    • Keep on, Keepin’ On: A Breast Cancer Story
    • WV Voices of War / Common Valor
    • Russia: The New Age
    • Scuba Diving Safety
  • Free Short Fiction
  • Other Fiction
    • Sea Turtle Rescue and Other Stories
    • River Town
You are here: Home / Archives for Documentary

Veterans Speak for Themselves

May 28, 2012 By Eric Douglas

For the last several months, I’ve been working on a project to record oral histories from West Virginia war veterans. It has been a touching, eye opening and inspiring project so far and I am sure it will continue to be.

 

So far, I have interviewed 37 veterans and collected their stories. It has been a lot less about “war stories” and more about experiences and the lasting costs of those wars for the men and their families.

Later this summer I will begin the process of editing all of these memories into a single documentary project. It will include a multimedia presentation along with a printed book.

 

I have about 10 more veterans on my list that I plan to interview when I return to it in mid-June. But I am still looking to interview women who served during any conflict and any veteran from Afghanistan. If you know of anyone from West Virginia in either of these categories, please send me an email with their contact information.

On this Memorial Day, I wanted to draw your attention to previous posts on this subject. Take a listen to some of the short clips and thank someone for their service, or take a moment to remember those who aren’t with us anymore.

 
  • Talking to Veterans
  • The Power of Monuments
  • Voices of War Update
  • Soldiers After War
  • Arlington National Cemetery

.

Filed Under: Documentary

Arlington National Cemetery

May 27, 2012 By Eric Douglas

changingguard.jpgA couple months ago, I had the opportunity to visit Arlington National Cemetery. I had been there before, but each time I visit I am struck by the power of the place.

Over the years, I’ve visited many different churches including some cathedrals churches in Europe that have been in continuous use for 500 or more years. When you walk into places like that, you feel the power of it. You feel the presence of all those emotions, the energy that has been poured into the place. You feel the presence of God. I believe even the staunchest non-believer (if he were being honest) could feel it.

IMG_3335.jpgA place like Arlington is exactly the same. Thousands of men and women have been buried there. Some died in battle, others years after their service. That doesn’t matter. Arlington, and the other cemeteries like it, are fortified and imbued with the energy that comes honor and service. And it is lovingly cared and looked after by people who revere the place and their own duty. And it is visited daily by family members and friends who remember as well.

Arlington is a national symbol, and it is a graveyard, but it is even more than that. And it has become that powerful “thing” because of the belief that the men and women interred there died for something greater than themselves. They died for duty, honor and country. They died for their brothers in arms, a bond that can actually be stronger than blood.

I’ve been conducting a series of interviews of veterans about their experiences during times of war. Nearly every one of them, no matter how much they wanted to get home and away from the war zone, has said they felt guilty for leaving their brothers behind when they left. Facing death and terror seems to draw them closer together, in spite of their fear. I spoke to a veteran of the Korean war, and his son a veteran of the Vietnam war last weekend. Both said, if it weren’t for their age they would return to service today and fight alongside our soldiers in Afghanistan. They said, simply, it was just what they felt the need to do.

IMG_3422.jpgEven though Arlington is a cemetery, I never get the feeling that it is about death. Just the opposite. It is about the lives of the men and women who served. I always find myself quiet when I walk through the gate as if feeling the weight of those lives. But when I leave, I always feel inspired and my steps are lighter. The strength of Arlington buoys me up.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. It was created as a day to remember the lives of those who died in service to this nation…originally specific to the Civil War. Today, it has evolved to remembering everyone who has passed on whether they served or not. I don’t have an opinion on that but do believe we need to do what we can to remember those who served, every day..

Filed Under: Adventure, Documentary, Photography

Soldiers after war

April 20, 2012 By Eric Douglas

A few weeks ago, I posted an update on my Voices of War project. You can read it here. If you don’t know about this project, it is my effort to record the voices of the men and women from West Virginia who have served their country in time of war, signing a blank check that if their life was needed in defense of freedom, they were willing to let it be cashed in.  When I began this project, I explained it here.

A couple days ago, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to two more veterans—my 18th and 19th interviews respectively. Every one of these discussions is fascinating. I see men who are normally boisterous and strong, get quiet when they talk about their experiences. Even for the ones who hold their emotions in check, you can see a slight hand shake when they talk or their eyes go unfocused, staring off into the distance when they remember the things they have seen. 

I had a lot of fun talking to Jeff Ellis this week. He’s been deployed overseas twice, once to Kuwait and once to Iraq. Currently a Staff Sergeant, he plans to remain in the Army Reserves; he is working toward his 20 year retirement. He expects to be deployed to Afghanistan eventually even as the United States Army works on a drawdown of forces. In his civilian job, Jeff works to support veterans who have run afoul of the legal system. He will graduate from Marshall University with a degree in Psychology in a week or so and he plans to use that degree to help veterans as they transition back to the civilian world.

This made me think of another veteran I interviewed who had nearly completed his own 20 years of service in the army before he was deployed to a war zone. Prior to heading off to war, the enlisted soldier progressed to Sergeant and then, in the Army Reserves, went to Officer Candidate School. Went he went to war, it was as a First Lieutenant. Since then, the man’s rise through the ranks has been short-circuited and he left the Army. He was working on his college degree before he went to war, but now he has no plans to go back. Alcoholism and legal problems derailed his career. Talking to him, I couldn’t help but think about the hidden costs of these wars. 

Aside from Jeff’s contributions out of uniform, though, is his other passion in life—music. Jeff is a talented singer/songwriter. The release of his first CD was actually delayed by his first deployment. He ended up promoting it when he came home from Kuwait on a two-week leave, playing nearly every day. His second CD, called “The Line”, is based heavily on his experiences overseas. While in Iraq last year, he was working at many of the Forward Operating Bases, helping to decommission them. These smaller bases rarely got the attention of the larger music acts who visited troops. Jeff got pressed into service, playing at these smaller bases. He said he played a lot of covers during those concerts, rather than his original music, no doubt to remind the soldiers of home.

Jeff was also invited to make two appearances on the Armed Forces Network, both of which were recorded. He explained that the show’s producers edited his performance into the individual songs and continued playing them over the radio. From time to time, he said, he would be sitting beside someone who would hear the song and say “Ellis. That ain’t you, is it?” mostly jokingly. Until he would say, “Yeah, that’s me.”

There are several Youtube videos of Jeff performing in Iraq. Give him a listen on the Youtube page for his recording label.

And here is one from Iraq.

.

Filed Under: Documentary

CCTV on Lobster Divers in Honduras

April 16, 2012 By Eric Douglas

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about being “made up” for international television. I had been invited to Washington DC for an interview on China Central Television (CCTV). They were doing a story on the lobster divers of Honduras for their broadcast on an English-language show Americas Now. The network broadcasts all over the world to English and Asian audiences.

The story aired last night on the network. Technically, it aired at 9:30 am Beijing time on Monday the 16th, but with the International Dateline, that made it Sunday night at 9:30 pm.

The network and the reporter, Michelle Begue, did a great job with the story. From the looks of it, they weren’t able to go out on one of the lobster boats to dive with the divers, mainly relying on stock footage and live footage and interviews with the divers who have suffered the results of diving for lobster.

As I have written about this issue and given interviews about what I’ve seen there, many people understand the issue, but others have questioned why we should care. I find it somewhat ironic that China television is telling a story about people laboring under terrible conditions when just a few weeks ago, stories broke about Chinese workers laboring under unfair conditions in China at an Apple factory building iPads and iPhones.

I see no difference in the lobster divers and men and women toiling in sweat shops. Groups have attempted to teach the divers safer diving techniques, but they get paid piecework. If you cut their diving in half, they can only make half as much money on a dive trip. They very quickly realize they can’t feed their families and their only option is to sacrifice their bodies. Apple is changing their work rules, hiring more people and still paying the men and women in the factory the same amount of money. Until that sort of thing happens for the lobster divers, there won’t be a significant change.

The story is called “Dangerous Prize” from the April 16, 2012 show. It is the first segment in the broadcast. My interview comes in around 14:09. All of the video clips and still images that show during my segment are mine.

If you want to see other stories on this subject, visit the page on my website for more links and images. You can also scan back through this blog. There are many posts from four trips to Honduras and trips to Brazil and Isla Natividad Mexico where divers harvest the sea and sacrifice their bodies..

Filed Under: Diving, Documentary, Photography

History in a cemetery

April 3, 2012 By Eric Douglas

I’ve always been fascinated with old cemeteries. Obviously, they are places of sorrow and grief along-side honor and remembrance. But they are also incredibly historical. I still remember a photograph I took 20 years ago in Buffalo, West Virginia. It was a small family cemetery with a light covering of snow on the ground. There were two headstones together; one of a mother and one of an infant. The mother died “aged 23 years, 10 months and 11 days.” She probably died in childbirth with her baby.

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp “history”…especially things that happened 200 years ago in places you’ve never been. At that point, it’s about words on a page rather than people and lives and human events. But when you visit a cemetery and see a grave from someone who lived through an event, or even died during that event, it seems to become more real. Since my daughters are hanging out with me this week for spring break, I thought I would show them what they could learn.
There is a small family cemetery just up the road from where I live. I’d never stopped there, but I was sure just from the look of it that we would find something interesting. A man was cutting the grass when we arrived. He said his father had cut the grass for years and when he got too old to keep it up, the man took over the job himself. His grandparents were buried there, along with his great, great grandfather who fought with the 4thWest Virginia regiment in the Civil War. And there was the connection I was looking for.
I showed the girls how to make rubbings of the headstones to possibly find details that you couldn’t see clearly. We ended up making a rubbing of the headstone for the man’s ancestor and we gave it to him to take home with him. He showed us the oldest grave in the cemetery, too. SG Jarrett was born in 1782 and died in 1860. Think about those years. That was the formation of our nation between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
Our friend also told us that there were some slaves buried near the front of the cemetery. He wasn’t sure of it, but that was local history. That got a “cool” from one of the girls. Not a “cool” for slavery, obviously, but a cool that that sort of history existed right there. They stopped to look at the small, un-etched grave markers. At each spot, there was only a small block of stone to record a life. They seemed to realize that it wasn’t “just” or “fair” that some people got large, family markers while slaves got little more than a rock indicating where their head would lie for eternity.
History isn’t always huge monuments in the nation’s capitol. But there is history in our very own backyards as well. In this one cemetery, in about a half an hour, we found a man who fought in the Civil War, graves of slaves, and someone who lived even before that, when the very first settlers came to this part of the world.  It never hurts when you can make a connection through a person as well.

.

Filed Under: Documentary

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • …
  • 25
  • Next Page »

Real Thugs: A Cult of Murder — Small groups of travelers have disappeared all over the mid-Atlantic without a trace. When bodies turn up with what appear to be ritual markings, FBI Agent AJ West is on the hunt for what might be a serial killer. Or something even more sinister. It’s a race against […]

View Book

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Substack
  • Threads
  • YouTube
Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 ·