Bill Douglas, Sr. months before going to war. (Click to enlarge)
	Bill Douglas, Sr. months after returning from war. (Click to enlarge)

Prodigal Sons screenplay written by Bill Douglas, Jr. -- A True Story

Bill Douglas, Jr. leads World Healing Day -- 2003 (The year the Iraq War began)

27 years old

20 Years old

7 years old

Bill Douglas, Sr. months before going to war.	Bill Douglas, Sr. months after returning from war.
Bill with wife, Evelyn (Billie).
Bill Douglas, Sr. served in a Tank Destroyer Battalion, in Patton's Army. He served as a citizen soldier in the 45th Infantry Reserve Division, made up of boys and young men serving as citizen soldiers mainly from Oklahoma and Kansas. His Division was personally recognized for their courage and endurance for taking the brunt of the Nazi Panzer Division's attack in Italy. Bill was lost in the paperwork, and served during the entire 4 years of the war beginning in North Africa, where he was wounded, and then continuing on through campaigns in Italy, France, Germany, and ending his war by liberating the Dachau Concentration Camps. His Division was the first one to enter Dachau, and it was reported that many of these battle hardened warriors broke down and wept as they entered the camps. Many said they carried the images with them for the rest of their lives.	Bill Douglas, Sr.'s Great-Grandfather, Issiac Douglas, served in the Civil War. He died at age 30, after contracting Tuberculosis during the war. His widow struggled with the Veterans offices for his survivor benefits.
Italy, 1942 -- 2nd Platoon 645 T.D.B. Bill Douglas, Sr. served in Patton's Army, and fought many major battles as an armoured division infantryman, including the beach head landings at Sicily and Anzio. These major battles were fought by Bill Sr. after his being wounded in North Africa after the below photo was taken. His war had barely begun in 1942 . Bill, Sr. still faced being wounded and then nearly 4 years of more war.	At 21 years of age, Bill Sr. (right) was made a Sergeant and put in charge of a platoon, because he was older than the other boys. He wrote on this photo: "taken here in Italy. The boy is one in my platoon." It is unclear whether this boy survived the war, as this was early on. Many bloody battles were fought by the 45th after this photo was taken.

Bill Douglas, Sr.'s childhood
Bill Douglas, Sr. was born in Oklahoma to his American-Scottish father and his American-Swiss/German mother. The men Bill, Sr. would kill in North Africa and Europe spoke the same language as his grandparents and mother. This haunted him terribly.	Bill, Sr. was a good student, well liked by his teachers. 8th grade report card, 1934
"Between 2001 and 2004, divorces among active-duty Army officers and enlisted personnel nearly doubled . . ."         -- Associated Press, June 29th, 2005
Evelyn (Billie) Douglas. Bill Douglas, Sr.'s wife's photo below was before the war.	Bill Jr.'s Mom's photo below was after the war. Evelyn and her mother had alternated shifts at Tinker Airfield in Oklahoma City during the war, working as "rosie-the-riviters" constructing aircraft for the war effort. Evelyn worked the night shift so that she could be home with Barbara and Eddie in the day time when her mother (their grandmother) went to work. Hard as that experience was, the real struggle in her life had barely begun, as Bill returned to her from war a near stranger.
After returning from the war, Bill, Sr. worked the rest of his life for Standard Oil. Decades after Bill, Sr.'s death, Bill, Jr. discovered that Standard Oil had been instrumental in supporting the Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) and Navy with oil which supported the heavy Panzer Divisions that had killed so many of his Daddy's compatriots during the war. " . . . without the explicit help of Standard Oil, the Nazi air force would never have gotten off the ground in the first place. The planes that made up the Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gasoline in order to fly. " -- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/3/oil.html
Bill, Sr. and Evelyn (Billie) a few years before their death. Bill died six months after Billie.

Screenwriter of Prodigal Son's, Bill Douglas, Jr., (center in photo to right) His family (scroll down):
Michael Tak-Yan Douglas & Andrea Mei-Wah Douglas Years later, Michael would write the below poem. When Michael's aunts (Bill Sr.'s daughters), heard it . . . they wept. Their nephew had opened their hearts to their own father, and what he'd lived through. It was chosen to be published in his school district newspaper. It is the only poem Michael has ever written. War War is black. It sounds like machines rolling and crushing. It tastes like rotten foods and gasoline. And smells like people suffering and dying. It looks like destruction and money burning. It makes you feel . . . hated.
	Bill, Jr. with Isaac Tak-Wah Douglas a year before Isaac's death. Isaac died not long after Bill, Jr.'s mother and father had died.

How did this screenplay come about? Do you believe in Miracles? In order to understand it, you must have space in your mind for miracles. If you don't now, it's okay, because Bill didn't either until it happened to him. When Bill Douglas, Jr. was around 7 years old, an angel came to him and gave him "breathing lessons" and explained how this would affect his life and the world when he grew up. Two decades later this nebulous esoteric lesson would all make sense. When Bill was an adult and had his own children, the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome symptoms his father had had around him and his siblings growing up, began to appear in Bill's relationship with his children. Bill began dedicating himself to mind/body meditative techniques for stress, and this plus intense prayer led to a series of spiritual experiences . . . experiences with the same Angel he'd encountered as a young boy. These experiences left Bill, Jr. with a head full of ideas, and in fact the night of the first Angelic encounter as an adult, Bill got out of bed and spent the whole night writing down ideas. Although Bill now has an internationally best selling Tai Chi book in many languages that has changed the life of people worldwide, at this time he'd never been a writer. So in the following weeks and months the fire of his obsession with writing began to go out. Bill wondered why he should write, since at the time he was a shipping clerk. It made no sense. When he was about to give up . . . his sister, Peggy, called from Kansas. She blurted out, "Mom came to me in a dream last night. She took me to a white room with a stack of white pages, and she showed me what you'd been writing. Mom told me, 'Look what Jr.'s been doing.'" Their mother had passed away many months before, and Peggy had no idea Bill, Jr. had even been writing, let alone "what" he'd been writing. The experience left Bill, Jr. in tears. And as you know he did continue writing. His articles and books have been published in many languages worldwide, and were heralded as "visionary" by top experts in the field. His writing is always centered on truth, authenticity, and human compassion. "Prodigal Sons" is Bill Douglas, Jr.'s first screenplay. For years, author and screenwriter, Bill Douglas,Jr. believed that one of the issues his mother so urgently begged his sister to prod Bill to keep writing (when she returned from death in a dream) . . . was the story of their family, and how war affected not only their family, but affects all families in ways most are never even aware of. The very first thing Bill wrote the night of his second Angelic experience, the first one of his adult life follows. Remember Bill was a shipping clerk with no previous interest in poetry or writing, prior to the night of this Angelic visitation. This first person he shared it with over the phone the next morning, after hearing the poem said, "I don't know where this will all lead, but keep writing and be SURE that you keep everything that you write from now on." She had echoed what his mother told his other sister Peggy in a dream, "keep writing." This conspiracy of family, both earthly and spiritual, has been the fuel that has kept Bill writing over the years. On the Light of the World I have come to heal this world. To show men what they already know. To make the obvious apparent, and drive common sense home. Until the anvil of consciousness splinters beneath the hammer of that sense. And from that shattered anvil, a simple steely truth shall be forged . . . . . . that when one of us suffers . . . . . . so do we all.

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