- When Mark Pedri of Rock Springs learned about his grandfather Silvio's World War II history, he didn't understand why Silvio had never talked to him about it.

Now Mark and his wife, Carrie McCarthy, have made a documentary about Silvio called "Dear Sirs," and the acclaimed film is an emotional touchstone for virtually everyone who sees it.

"Dear Sirs" answered some of the couple's questions about the old hero, but not all of them.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(flourishing music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

Thinkwhy.org.

And by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- [Steve] During a Thanksgiving weekend in Rock Springs, Mark Pedri and his wife, Carrie McCarthy, found some World War II artifacts they had never seen before.

They belonged to Mark's late grandfather, a man Mark thought he had known well.

That was in 2017.

As the trail of history deepened, they spent half a decade making a documentary about what they had found and where it led them, an unforgettable journey across 75 years and 5,000 miles.

(curious orchestral music) The film's title is "Dear Sirs."

Here's a sample.

(soft melancholic music) - [Speaker] Ladies and gentlemen, you who have not seen it, do not know what hell looks like from the top.

The trail of the Third Army in the 19th Tactical Air Command in the Eighth Air Force is marked by more than 40,000 white crosses.

40,000 dead Americans.

- [Mark] To spend every day together and base so much of who you are on this person, and then you realize you know nothing, that's totally crazy.

(accordion begins) - It started when we were staying here.

I found that knife in your grandpa's bed.

What is this place where we're staying?

(chuckles) - [Mark] He never talked about what happened.

And to see a version of him that I never met, then it becomes real.

After finding something like this, you can't just go back to your normal life.

You don't need to go overboard, but you would wanna know, right?

- [Carrie] We both decided we're gonna stop what we're doing, we're gonna stop the trail we're on, and we're gonna do this project.

- [Mark] In June, we moved into his house, and then in January we went to Germany to retrace his route and tell his story.

(inspiring music) - [Interviewee 1] There weren't many that came back to the States with us.

- [Interviewee 2] We wanna know a little bit about you.

You have to know everything about me every minute, where I'm at and what I'm doing.

I don't know anything about you.

- [Mark] Car!

- There was a saying about you don't talk about that stuff.

- [Mark] These are the stories we don't learn about.

We're fed history, we're told that these are the heroes, therefore that's what's important.

But really, what's important are these stories that are so close to us.

Those are the stories that often get forgotten.

So that's what I'm trying to do, save one story.

(music fades) - [Steve] Since its completion, "Dear Sirs" has led Mark and Carrie on another odyssey from place to place in the US and Europe, screening the movie for curious, enthusiastic, and inevitably emotional audiences.

Critics have taken notice as well.

"Dear Sirs" has been praised by historians, film festival judges, and movie reviewers.

Recently, following a screening of "Dear Sirs" in Dubois, Mark Pedri and Carrie McCarthy sat for a question and answer session moderated by Wyoming PBS and recorded for "Wyoming Chronicle."

What was the year that you found the knife in the bed, and later that night, found the first container that had the artifacts in it?

What year was that?

- [Mark] Well, the knife was 2018.

- '17.

- 2017.

Wow.

Time flies.

- November.

- November, 2017.

- November, 2017, yeah.

- [Steve] And the film was screened first for an audience in what year?

- We finished the film completely in September of 2021, and we screened it that month.

So it's been screening for about nine months now.

- So it's a process of years to... - Yeah.

- Get the idea, see it through to completion, and a remarkable commitment that has to be made, and as you say, focusing on the north star the whole time through some unforeseen and untoward difficulties, I'm sure.

- Within a year, we were able to put together a 60-minute version that we showed in Metz.

And that film stopped as soon as he became a prisoner of war.

And it took another three years to make the rest of the film, and that's...

It's because we didn't know what the rest of the film was.

The point leading up to his capture was well documented.

We were able to source a lot of research, and it was not discounting the research, but everything was there.

And once he was captured, that's when the letters went dark.

That was the intention of going to Europe and being able to put that together.

But also from a personal perspective, that was the moment of really starting to uncover who this man was, and it really took that entire time.

- The logistics of this just sort of boggled my mind.

When I look at it again today, and I see you horsing that big bike box onto a bus and off and into an airport, that's where I would've quit right then.

And it just is a tiny part of what you had to go through.

So Carrie, this is what... A lot of this fell to you, I think.

How are we getting... What an idea we've got.

Now, how do we do it?

Just give us a sense of some of what goes into something of this scale.

- Yeah, so as Mark is the director, he imagines these things he wants to see, and then he says, "Okay, we've gotta make this happen," and then we have to make it happen.

So producing this film when we were in Silvio's house was very nice 'cause it was very contained.

We had only what we had there, so we set up a studio there.

We had all our cameras and lights and everything in the house, and we just documented everything there.

But when we started planning the Europe part, we had the idea that we could plan it, and that was the first mistake.

So we set six weeks, and we had a very, a nice route we all planned and days.

We're good cyclists.

We've cycled before this and we, we were like, "We could do 50 miles a day, no problem."

So we had this plan, and so I set out the... We knew how much gear we had.

We knew how much the bikes would weigh.

And I think the story that tells this best is on the first day, we were biking in a rainstorm, and the laptop fell off the back of the bike and just starts tumbling down the road.

And I think there may have been some tears.

And at that point, we just realized we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to take this day by day.

So you saw us, well, you saw Mark carrying that bike up four flights of stairs.

That was the first night.

Watch your head.

It's very close.

- Welcome to the beds.

(feet clabbering) - [Carrie] Second bike, here we go.

And from then on, I scrapped everything and started finding a place to stay day by day and always on the first floor.

But that... (laughs) Yeah, that's a good picture of what it was like when...

It was like producing day by day.

And so I would call a town that I thought we could make it to the next day based on the weather, based on how much filming we had.

Because when it's cold, it's very hard to stop and film because that's when you get freezing cold.

You bike faster to warm up.

So it's kind of a give and take between how much you wanna film and how long you can stay out there.

(gentle music) It's so freaking cold.

You take your hands outta your mittens for one second, and they're frozen.

- All right.

- And my face is frozen, so my speech is a little slow.

It's so cold.

- Early on we thought of, let's bring a crew.

Let's have a sound guy, let's have a cinematographer, let's have a van with hot chocolate.

And as Carrie mentioned, everything kind of fell apart, but it was not because we couldn't handle the logistics of it.

We decided that if we wanted to go about telling this story in the way that we did, having a crew following us, having these expectations of getting to here by this day, and not being able to take a detour to meet a guy that picked us up on the side of the road in his van because he had an incredible World War II collection in a barn.

We had to make the decision to just do it on our own.

And I think that's what made the film what it is, is because, I mentioned there, when you go to a place, and you move through it at such a slow pace and such deliberately, you can't avoid contemplating why you're there.

When you're driving, you're gonna go from landmark to point of interest to rest stop.

And then, well, if we go a little faster, we'll probably get to dinner by the time it closes.

We missed a lot of dinners on bikes because our purpose for being there wasn't to make it easy on ourselves.

It was to tell this story in a way that we thought would be compelling and a way that we thought would be communicable to people that aren't already interested in World War II.

Because those aren't the people that need to see this story.

The people that need to see this story are the ones that are going to need an extra point of interest.

And we thought by making this a personal journey to tell Silvio's story, we'd be able to combine those two things and preserve this part of history in a way that is non-traditional.

- [Steve] So there's a real intimacy to it because it's just the two of you, and you see those moments throughout.

But you had to come up with some shortcuts then.

So the picture of you shot from, what, you hired a helicopter?

- Yeah, so I guess to get into the nitty gritty, we learned to ride a bike- - Just a little of it.

- We learned to ride a bike and fly a drone at the same time.

I learned to ride fast, set up a camera, ride back, ride to the camera.

- [Steve] Stop, get off, get the camera, keep going.

- Yeah.

Tell us about what gear you had there.

- Yeah, so we, on the total ride, we had two primary cameras, three lenses for the camera, laptop with two hard drives, the drone, the tripod.

My dad helped me fabricate a gimbal that we mounted to the front of the bike.

So we were able to, to get those shots where it really feels like you're moving through the space with us.

But we had a lot of guide points, and we weren't just going over there sitting on a corner, waiting for someone to cross the street.

We knew that, well, Silvio traveled this part by train.

How does a train move through a place?

It's very that iconic train moving on the horizon.

So that's why some of the shots mirror that feeling of a train moving.

The aerial shots were, all of the strategy and the way that they would map out an area was from the sky looking down.

So when we wanted to communicate any kind of spatial awareness, we looked to the drone for that.

So we had, like I said, coming back to Silvio's experience dictated a lot of the creative choices.

- This is the fourth time I've seen it, and I was struck again that it's an example, both in a good way and a terrible way, of what people are capable of doing to each other and what they can endure and survive.

And did you get a sense heading in that, what you would find?

Were you worried about it?

Were you apprehensive about it?

Was there a sense of foreboding or foreshadowing that, what are we gonna see when we open this door?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that makes it difficult is, for one, it's a hugely personal story.

So you're not just dealing with making the story about somebody that you don't know, but you have this added weight of who this person was to you for your whole life, and what this story may reveal, especially when it's something that that person chose not to talk about or was not able to talk about.

And I think you have to ask your question then.

Is it my place to go on and tell this story?

And if it is, why are you telling this story?

Are you telling it because you want to honor it?

Are you telling it because you believe that the historical record is lacking in this place?

Or are you telling it for selfish reasons?

And I think those are all very difficult questions to ask.

And obviously, if it's the selfish reasons one, you should probably figure out a different story to tell.

- [Steve] How do you answer it?

- Well- - [Steve] Four years later.

- I feel that there is a lack of the historical record when it comes to the prisoner's experience.

And in talking to a number of veterans who have gone through that experience, it's difficult to talk about.

Most people could never possibly relate.

And even from prisoner to prisoner, the experience is so nuanced and complicated that, in our busy lives, we let it go.

And this film for me was literally stopping, getting hit in the face with this story and saying, "Your busy life is gonna go on forever if you don't do something."

So at the time, Carrie and I were both living and working in Los Angeles, and that's the part we cut out in the film.

But we quit our jobs and moved back into Silvio's house to listen for the first time in 31 years, actually listen to what may have been in that silence.

And I think when you're willing to do that, you have to hear whatever comes out of that.

And some of the stories are very troubling, and you decide what to include and what not to include.

But the main point is be there and listening because that's the reason why people don't tell the stories, because they don't, they don't think that the world feels that it's important.

And a simple philosophy, work, family, and accordions.

- It's a grim story, but it's a hopeful story, an inspirational story, and it's got elements of humor in it too.

And one of those is what is the deal with these accordions?

♪ She calls me honey.

- I wanted to play guitar.

And my mom, and well him too, they're, "Ah, you just wanna be like Elvis Presley."

And we were from this Italian family, so he played accordion.

(jaunty music) (soft music) - I presume that this was an instrument that he played himself.

- You know, that's an interesting thing.

He actually didn't play the accordion himself.

But it was a huge priority in the family that somebody did.

- [Steve] Why is that?

Do you have any idea?

- No, I think it's one of those things, it's just so important you don't take the time to ask.

- [Steve] Because you're too busy practicing.

- Imagine asking him, being like, "Grandpa, why do I have to play the accordion anyway?"

- Carrie, you grew up in Rock Springs as well.

Am I right about that?

Did you know Silvio?

- Yeah, I did know Silvio actually.

I got to know the Pedri family working with Silvio in the mobile home park.

And it was, I would come to Silvio's house every morning and I would get in the truck with him, and we would ride around the mobile home parks.

And he would say, "Oh, that deck needs painted."

And then we would get out, and I would paint the deck, and he would kind of help, but kind of just- - [Steve] Supervise.

- Tell me, yeah, tell me if I missed a spot or something.

But I did a lot of hours just driving around with him, and he'd always have his polka music, the accordion playing in the car.

And I would sneak it to turn it down a little bit 'cause he liked it a lot.

- [Silvio] That's that old truck of mine there.

Can't tell what color it is now.

So dirty.

- [Steve] Who is James Craft?

- James Craft is one of the key people in making this film what it is.

He's the composer.

He wrote all of the music, other than the final song, which was Billy Bragg.

But James came on because there is so much in this film that is about deciphering those moments of silence and the things that weren't said.

And how do we pull meaning away from that, things that are so hard that you can't talk about?

And music was a central part of our life as a family.

My grandfather placed a lot of importance on it.

So we brought James on, and he actually composed most of the music before we shot a single frame.

So we had the music with us in Germany going to the camps, riding on the roads.

And we would video chat with him at night, and he would check in and he, he wanted to get every bit of that experience.

And he would come up with a new composition and send it back to us.

It was just an incredible creative collaboration.

(low depressing music) I learned about the Holocaust in school.

Silvio learned about it in Sandbostel.

(dogs barking) And then his wife is a concert violinist, and she performed the pieces live, and that was one of the things that I told him.

I said, "This film is about being able to touch a piece of history and read these letters, and I don't wanna hear the best grand piano in the world.

I wanna hear the piano that Silvio would've listened to, the hammers still knocking 'cause the felt needs changed, the movement of finger on the strings and things like that."

So if you listen very closely, the score is very organic and stays true to the way we made the film.

- Who is Drew Christie?

- Yeah, Drew Christie, he's the one that did the animation.

And the origination of that was similar to the music.

There's parts of the stories that even the most... Archival footage, photos from the exact moment, they can only take you so far.

And in particular, in an experience that somebody has a hard time articulating, how do you even begin to communicate that?

And what we found in our research was a lot of drawings from prisoners.

(feet marching) Silvio and Trapani became prisoners of war to the German army.

(engines whirring) (people yelling) The prisoners were stripped of whatever valuable equipment they still had, leaving Silvio with only one boot.

(gravel crunching) They would be very basic hand drawn charcoal, pencil, whatever it is, whatever they had.

And these drawings to me just evoked such an experience that was far beyond the archival footage or an interview or even a firsthand account.

I had to work on the railroad laying tracks that were bombed with only one shoe.

(engine whirring) (low depressing music) it was a direct connection to that moment in time.

So we brought Drew on to adapt those drawings and to fill in some of the spots in the story that we didn't have footage for.

And so he took original prisoner of war drawings and was able to then take the footage from when we were at Heppenheim, and photos that people had shared with us and recreate some of those scenes based on the testimonies that we had.

- [Steve] That's a very striking part of it.

And to think that here these people, in their dire, dire conditions, were expressing themselves in art.

We all have, I think most of us as, as people have artifacts from our families.

I'm a generation older than you.

My father was a World War II veteran, got lots of stuff in the house I look at, and I can't... One of the logistical problems, realistic things to deal with, he's written notes and things, and I can't read it.

And it's just a small thing perhaps.

But Silvio had this beautiful handwriting, didn't he?

Even in terrible circumstances, when you think about it.

What a day, what a happy day.

He had a pencil and paper and his penmanship was just outstanding.

I mean, there's one little break that you got.

(bouncy music) - [Silvio] Carrie.

- Huh?

- [Silvio] Look over here.

- No, I don't like them things.

- [Silvio] Brooker.

- What?

I'm in the middle playing a game.

- [Silvio] Okay then, don't look.

I'll take a picture of that deer.

- You didn't inherit your videography skills from him based on, let me get a picture of that deer there.

But he did have, and maybe your grandmother too, had something of the documentarian in them in that he recorded where he was and the dates and what he did.

And somebody saved all this stuff, and you didn't know it was there.

But it was organized in a way, and it suddenly...

It began to open up a world to you, and you must be thankful for that part of it.

- Yeah, I mean, as documentarians, that's what we rely on.

Without the source material, we'd have nothing to build it around.

And that was the quintessential thing that allowed this story to be told.

And that was the foundation of it, pulling up these things, seeing his handwriting.

I mean, someone's handwriting, that's like second to looking them in the eye.

It's such a connection to who they are.

The fact that he took so much care to write those letters, to me that was, he just, he wanted his fiance back home to read every word.

And so he took the time.

And I'm not saying your father didn't in his way.

But that's just one thing that we had to go on, that he wanted the story to be told, whether it was my grandma reading those letters.

But also he had the opportunity to throw all this stuff away and he kept it.

So going back to whether or not you should be telling someone else's story, that's one of the things we leaned on is, maybe it wasn't that he didn't want it to be told or he didn't want us to know about it, but maybe just the conversations at the time, we weren't ready for it, and it was too complicated.

So by leaving that, it's hard to say if he would've ever opened up about it, or if I would've ever been able to talk to him about it.

But we do know that he easily could have thrown it away.

- Yes, sir.

- [Audience] This question is for both of you independently.

I'm wondering, knowing what you know now, if you could go back and ask Silvio about his experiences, if you would.

And if so, how you might breach that topic.

- When I started this journey, it was purely about the facts.

How cold was it, how many people were there, how many people didn't make it home, how many miles was between each place?

And I think this is what we gravitate towards.

And these are questions he probably would've had no idea.

I don't know how cold it was.

It was very cold.

But how did it feel?

That's something that really causes you to connect with somebody.

How many people died?

I have no idea, but one particular person that I really remember.

That's what I would want to try to get into.

That being said, I don't know if we would've ever been able to have that conversation, because these are hard questions to ask, and you need something to, to catalyze that conversation.

But even taking one step further, I think the thing that maybe I'm most curious about still to this day is after going through this experience, the trauma of it, the adventure of it, the meeting the friends of a lifetime, and then really not connecting with them for the rest of your life, and just how complicated that is, and to see, as Steve mentioned, on the front line of war, the things that are capable when we dehumanize fellow humans, and to be able to come home and have a life with his family- - [Steve] Be human again.

- To be human again, to reintegrate into society and give us something that maybe he never had, maybe he never truly left these experiences behind.

We talk about holding it in and being able to work through it, and work was really a big part of how he did deal with that.

But at the end of the day, it was still somewhere there, and he was able to give us something that I'm grateful for.

But also, he didn't hold anything against anybody.

And I think going through an experience like that, you could develop a calloused attitude towards the world that no longer gives people the benefit of the doubt.

And he didn't do that.

(inspirational music) (upbeat music)