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

This We’ll Defend: the U.S. Army

Happy birthday to the U.S. Army! Established in June 1775 as the Continental Army, the United States Army celebrates its 250th birthday in 2025. In honor of the occasion, the Veterans History Project (VHP) presents this array of narratives from the U.S. military’s largest and oldest service branch. Army veterans comprise the majority of VHP participants, having donated over 55,000 individual narratives to date, with more arriving every day. In this online presentation, we feature a handful of these—25 narratives from veterans of the U.S. Army (including the Army Nurse Corps and the Women’s Army Corps). In their own words, through personal letters, diaries, photographs, and oral history interviews, these veterans relate and reflect on their Army experience.