Preserving Veterans' Stories

By: Helen Armstrong, Age 12

I want you to take a moment right now – stop everything you’re doing and just think – about how your life has been changed by freedom. Think about how your life would be without freedom. It’s really different, huh? This is because freedom is very important, and something we, as Americans, are fortunate to have. And who are we to thank? Our neighbors? Dentists? Co-workers? Bosses? Friends? You’d be surprised that the answer to this could be yes. If any of these people were in the military, that is. Last summer, when I was eleven, I learned how everyone who served in the military, whether in war or in peacetime, played a part in the shaping of our free nation.

Every veteran has tons of stories to tell about their military service. And so, my family, being history-oriented, thought that we should find and preserve those stories before it was too late. You can, too! Unearth interesting stories, help preserve history and have fun.  Start now, in time for Veterans Day 2008!

I’ll be describing how we did it, working through our church, but you could work with any group, for example, a retirement home or community group.  Our first step was to meet with the pastor of our church and get his support.  Our goal was to interview as many veterans as possible from the congregation, write their stories and put them into a book in time for Veterans Day.  On that Sunday, we would hand out the books to each family in the congregation.  Anyone who has served in the military has stories to tell.  We weren’t looking for the best war stories, we just wanted to record the experiences of those who served.  This would be our way of honoring and thanking our veterans.

The Library of Congress is conducting a Veterans History Project, and we used their veterans’ biographical data and release forms.  Visit www.LOC.gov/vets/.  While the Library of Congress project is only looking for the stories of war veterans, we wanted to include all veterans in our church.

Once you’ve identified a group to work with, the first thing you need to do is to send a letter to all the possible veterans inviting them to share their stories. Give them your phone number and e-mail address. (We set up a separate e-mail account especially for the project.) Explain what you are looking to do and ask them if they would like to be part of the project, but don’t demand that they participate. Some veterans may decline because they do not like to reflect on some painful memories, others may say that they don’t have a story to tell because they served in peacetime.  Be sure to tell them that everyone has something to share, whether their service was in war or peace.

Once a veteran has responded to your letter, what do you do? Set up an interview with him or her at a place convenient for both of you. We often met at the church or in the veteran’s home.  Allow plenty of time, many of our interviews were two hours long.

So what do you bring to the interview?  We took the following:  A laptop, digital recorder, small folding table (TV tray), notepad and pencil, digital camera and a list of questions we wanted to ask.  It’s also a good idea to take extra batteries and an extension cord for the computer.  The idea is to be prepared for everything.

It’s okay if you don’t have all of the equipment we had– just take careful notes, and maybe have more than one person take notes, just to be sure that you catch it all correctly.

Either my brother or I would type a transcript of the interview as it went along while my Dad asked the questions and took hand-written notes.  The digital recorder would catch everything in case there were parts we needed to listen to again.  We would also take pictures of the veteran and any memorabilia they brought along to the interview.

What should you ask about during the interview? Start with what they were doing before they were drafted or enlisted, then go from there to basic training, where they were after that, and so on. Just try to keep the interview going, and keep it interesting. You’ll be surprised at how the questions just flow and one thing leads to another.

For the end of the interview, we came up with a list of questions my dad asked each veteran, stuff like, “What did you most look forward to doing when you got home?” and “Did you ever wish you hadn’t joined/been drafted into the service?” This was to unearth more stories that might have been overlooked. You can come up with your own list of questions.

After the interview, we would go home and read the notes we’d taken and re-write the typed manuscript into story form. This is why the recorder was helpful, because we could double-check all of our information.

Okay, you’ve finished your interviews and wrote up the stories. Now what? Well, before you make it into a book, you’ll want to make up a cover, include a note in the front explaining what you did, how you did it, etc. and then a table of contents with the veterans’ names, the pages their story is on.

By the end of the three and a half months of interviews, we had the stories of 35 veterans.  Each story and photos took up two to four pages - 120 pages by the time it was done.  You might have to do some fund raising to produce a book this size. We bought pre-hole punched copier paper and binder.  These added up to a considerable expense, but we were lucky to have a group at the church who agreed to pay for these supplies.  The toner the copier used was also considerable. 

We made enough copies of the book so each family in the congregation could have one. Make sure you have extras. You’ll want as many people as possible to read this, right?

Wow! Putting 120 pages into 110 binders is a lot of work! We set up an assembly line and asked volunteers to help us gather everything together into the binders.

After you’ve done this, hand out your books, and exhale. Give yourself a pat on the back – you’re done! Congratulations!

Helen Armstrong is a 6^th grader and aspiring writer.  To see the book she described in this article, go to www.ParentsSource.com/veterans.asp