Serving: Our Voices

Serving in the military is an experience unique to each veteran. Our mission at the Veterans History Project (VHP) is to collect, preserve, and make accessible these stories of service for future generations. Whether these narratives take the form of oral history interviews or original manuscript and photograph materials, they are a treasure trove of individual feelings, personal recollections, and primary source materials representing the voices of those who took an oath to serve our nation.

Serving: Our Voices is a series of online presentations designed to highlight VHP collections centered on a particular theme. Since 2003, we have curated these exhibits to illuminate the broad spectrum of experiences, topics, and materials contained within the archive. Organized by topic and conflict, Serving: Our Voices offers a glimpse into the infinite research possibilities that our collections contain. Here, we serve collections that open our eyes and our hearts, that surprise and confound us, and that complicate and expand typical narratives of service.

Use the navigation menu to the left to dive into the dozens of online presentations that we currently offer. Return frequently, as this list is ever growing. Other resources for discovery are available via the Explore the Collections section of our website.

Please join our effort by contributing a veteran’s collection to the Veterans History Project. Each contribution makes our collection all the richer for researchers and future generations. Learn how you can participate in the Veterans History Project.

Featured Theme

Forged by the Sea: the U.S. Navy

Happy birthday to the U.S. Navy! Established in 1775, the U.S. Navy celebrates a monumental birthday in October 2025, turning 250 years old. To recognize this milestone, the Veterans History Project (VHP) presents 20 narratives from Sailors who served in a variety of conflicts, conditions, and contexts. This small sampling represents VHP’s larger Navy holdings—over 25,000 narratives from individual veterans who served in the Navy from World War I through the present day. Through oral histories and original memoirs, correspondence, and photographs, these veterans relate how they were forged by the sea.