Veterans History Project
1714 items
- Notes:
- Jerry Gore was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War in 1969. Having gone through Advanced Infantry Training, he served as a machine gunner and tunnel rat until he became too ill to fight. He states that he was in combat all the time, but chooses not to talk about it.
- Date Created:
- 2009-11-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Carl King was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1924 and served in the Navy during World War II. He was drafted into the Navy upon his request, and attended training at Great Lakes Naval Station. He joined the PT corps and worked as a machinist throughout his time in the service. He spent most of his time in the service in the Pacific theatre, serving in the New Hebrides, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, and Okinawa.
- Date Created:
- 2009-01-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Richard Millard Jr. was strongly influenced by his father at an early age to join the service. After graduating high school, he enlisted into the Air Force where he became a part of the Security Police, and, eventually, a dog-handler. He was stationed at Cam Ranh Bay in 1971-72, and then sent to England for a year.
- Date Created:
- 2006-12-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- John Mulder was born in 1925 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His family moved to Montana, but moved back to Grand Rapids after World War II broke out. John was drafted into the US Army when he was 18 years old. After completing basic training in Fort Stewart, Georgia, he also completed anti-aircraft school, in which he learned how to operate mobile anti-aircraft units. After training, he spent the remainder of the war in Hawaii, guarding Pearl Harbor.
- Date Created:
- 2009-09-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Richard Pitsch volunteered for the draft in the summer of 1972. He expected to go to Vietnam, but had hopes that he would not due to the troop draw down. He completed his basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and completed his advanced training at Fort Bliss, Texas. He was assigned to air defense artillery missile system and was a fire control crewman. He spent 20 months of active duty in central Germany, near the Dutch border. He returned to the United States in August, 1974, and was on inactive duty for the next two years.
- Date Created:
- 2011-04-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Dave Pugh was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1961. Dave was in college during the aftermath of Vietnam, studying music and teaching. He enlisted into the military to be a part of the National Guard Band. He went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training. After AIT training he went to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana where he played alongside a National Guard Band. During his time in the band he played at veterans' funerals, at the 40th anniversary of NATO in London, England, at the Michigan inaugurations, mental health facilities, Trinidad and Tobago, and Italy.
- Date Created:
- 2011-03-29T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Ann Petrovic was born in Aurora, Indiana, in 1928. She grew up playing ball with her brothers and played on different girls' teams in school. When she was fifteen, she heard about tryouts for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League being held in Illinois, tried out and was assigned to a team in Minneapolis which soon moved to Kenosha. After playing in the league's first season, she signed with a professional softball team in Chicago, where she played until 1950.
- Date Created:
- 2010-08-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- George Kuiper was born in February 1926 in Holland, Michigan. He grew up in Holland and in February 1944 he received his draft notice. In June 1944 he reported for duty at the draft board in Holland, was processed at Fort Sheridan, Illinois and was sent to Camp Roberts, California for basic training and field artillery training. After sixteen weeks of training he was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland for an additional week of training and then left the United States out of Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts. He sailed over, stopping in England, and arriving in Le Havre, France. He was sent to Paris where he was assigned to the 191st Field Artillery Battalion attached to the 4th Armored Division. He joined the battalion in Belgium in mid/late December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge and was assigned to #1 Gun in A Battery and also laid down field telephone wire for the gun batteries. After the Battle of the Bulge they advanced into Germany, crossing the Rhine River at Worms, going south and seeing the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, and entering Czechoslovakia on April 29, 1945. After the war ended on May 8, 1945 he was reassigned to the 405th Infantry Regiment and then 4th Armored Division before being sent home in early 1946 and getting discharged at Camp Atterbury, Indiana.
- Date Created:
- 2015-05-27T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Ken Vanlier was born in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1948. He served in the Air Force during the time of the Vietnam War, achieving up to the rank of Staff Sargent. Before turning 18 Ken joined the military with an interest in flying in the Air Force. During basic training he stayed at Lackland Air Force base and joined the drum and bugle corps. Eventually he would be stationed out of Beale Air Force base and sent to Okinawa for tours as necessary. Part of his duties consisted of structural repair mechanic work on the SR-71 planes. Ken left the military in March of 1971.
- Date Created:
- 2015-05-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Pia White was born in 1926 in Rome, Italy, to a Japanese father and an American mother. Due to her father's job with the Japanese government, the family traveled all over the world, and she lived in the United States, Japan, and various other countries. In the late 1930s, Pia, her mother, and her siblings returned to Japan. She lived in Tokyo and attended school there. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, she and her family moved to a summer cottage in a mountain village near Tokyo. In 1942 her father, who had been in Washington, DC, at the time of Pearl Harbor, returned to Japan as part of an exchange of diplomats and he lived in Tokyo until he joined the family at the cottage. During the war she helped gather food and worked at the village's police station as a translator. In 1945, her older brother, a pilot, was killed in action during a bombing raid on Tokyo. After the war ended, she worked closely with the American Army of Occupation by helping manage the village as an R&R location for American troops. She befriended one Lieutenant Ken White and they eventually married, returning to the United States in December (1947 or 1948). They started a family and lived in Ohio and various cities in Michigan before settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
- Date Created:
- 2016-05-19T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Paul Wilt was born in West Virginia on June 30, 1942. He enlisted in the Marines in 1960 and after basic training received assignments in the United States. He was stationed at Marine Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia carrying out guard duties, and received infantry training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He also went on temporary duty to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
- Date Created:
- 2015-04-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Handwritten V-Mail letter and envelope with transcript by Joe Olexa to Agnes Van Der Weide, dated November 13, 1943. The envelope is sent from Co. L, 26th Infantry A.P.O.-1, c/o Postmaster New York, New York, dated December 5, 1943. In the V-Mail letter, Joe writes to Agnes to let her know he hasn't received the package she sent and wonders if she received the three small packages he sent to her with love.
- Date Created:
- 1943-11-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Eugene Borek was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1925. He enlisted in the Army shortly after turning eighteen, and trained with the 78th Division at Camp Butner, North Carolina, until his unit was broken up and he was assigned to the 83rd Division. He sailed to England in April, 1944, and landed in Normandy in late June. He fought in the battles near St. Lo until he was wounded and sent to England. He was then sent as a replacement to the 104th Division in September, and fought near Aachen, in the Hurtgen Forest and western Germany until he was wounded again in early 1945. After that, he was assigned to a military police unit based in Strasbourg until he was sent home late in 1945.
- Date Created:
- 2011-05-11T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Robert Kuhn, born in 1934 in Grand Rapids Michigan, served in the U.S. Air Force between 1954 and 1974. He trained as a pilot and did two tours in Korea. He was later sent to Vietnam, where he flew AC-47 ground support aircraft, and was shot down once. After returning from Vietnam in 1969, he completed his 20 years at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
- Date Created:
- 2011-05-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Glenn Marks, born July 27th 1925 served in the U.S. Army in the medical field from 1944-1946 in Europe during World War II. While in training at Camp Grant, Illinois, Glenn was sent to clerical school where he was trained to be a typist. However, due to demand, Glenn was assigned to be a field medic recovering fallen casualties. Glenn traveled across Europe following units that were expected to have high casualty counts. At the end of the war, he stayed in Germany caring for German casualties until he was sent home.
- Date Created:
- 2005-06-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Leo Zimmerman of Grand Rapids, Michigan, waited to be drafted before joining the Army in 1943 during World War II. Leo received his training in wheeled vehicle maintenance and repair in Camp Worth, Texas. His first deployment was to Italy in 1944 where he served with a replacement depot until the war ended in May 1945, driving with supply convoys between Naples and the Po Valley and performing other duties. After the war ended in Europe, Leo was transferred to the 109th Ordnance Company and shipped out to the Philippines to start servicing vehicles. He was stationed in the Philippines during the bombing of Hiroshima, and was sent to Japan shortly after to perform maintenance duties and gained further experience in welding. Leo left the military in April 1946.
- Date Created:
- 2011-10-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Jay Shook served in the US Navy in World War II and the Korean War. He served in the Pacific Theater in World War II on the USS Bailey, a destroyer, and escorted LSI's and LSG's in to landing zones. During the Korean War, Jay served on the USS Bryce Canyon, a Destroyer class maintenance ship.
- Date Created:
- 2005-06-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- Buzz Sodeman served in the U.S. Navy from 1967 to 1970. After serving for several months as ground crew on a Naval Air Station in California, he was sent to Memphis, Tennessee, to train on ejection seats. From there, he went to San Diego, where he maintained aircraft and trained other personnel on ejection seats. He was sent to Vietnam in 1969, and served his tour at the Naval base at Binh Thuy in the Mekong Delta, where he worked as a parachute rigger. He describes daily life there in some detail, and also discusses some of the physical and psychological issues that he had after his return.
- Date Created:
- 2011-12-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- James Pittman was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1943. He grew up in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park and graduated from high school there in 1961. He went to work and got married, but lost his marriage deferment when he divorced in 1966 and was drafted in March 1967. He received basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky and advanced infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana leading to him specializing as a mortar crewman. In August 1967 he was deployed to Vietnam where he joined Charlie Company of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade stationed in the area around Long Binh. For two months he worked as a mortar crewman in Charlie Company until he was reassigned to be a rifleman carrying out search and destroy missions as well as patrols in the Dong Nai River area with Charlie Company. After four months of being a rifleman he was severely wounded and was evacuated back to the United States. Despite being a paraplegic, he went back to work as a draftsman in the Detroit area, and eventually bought a farm near Saranac, Michigan.
- Date Created:
- 2014-06-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)
- Notes:
- James Tibbe is a World War Two veteran who was born in Moddersville, Michigan in 1924. After completing the ninth grade he left school and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and worked around Michigan doing public works projects. On August 19, 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and received training at Shepherd Field, Texas and at Buckley Field, Colorado to become an armorer for bombers. He was stationed at Wheeler Field, Hawaii, at Fiji, and and at Hickam Field, Hawaii over the course of the war. Just before the end of the war he was sent back to the continental United States where he served at Hamilton Field, California, Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base, and Lowry Field, Colorado. He was discharged in December 1945.
- Date Created:
- 2010-03-18T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Collection:
- Veterans History Project (U.S.)