How to Interview a Veteran in Your Family (Without Asking the Wrong Questions)
Here's what most families know about their veteran: the branch, maybe the war, and one photograph. A young man in a uniform, looking like a stranger who will someday become your grandfather.
Here's what the veteran knows: nobody ever asks.
These two facts sit in the same living room for decades. The family assumes he doesn't want to talk about it. He assumes nobody's interested. Both are usually wrong, and the misunderstanding outlives him.
This is a guide to breaking that standoff. It's written for the son, daughter, or grandchild who wants the stories and is afraid of stepping on a landmine to get them. The short version: there's a right 95 percent to ask about, a wrong 5 percent to leave alone unless invited, and a handful of techniques that make the difference between "it was a long time ago" and an hour you'll keep forever.
Why Veterans Don't Talk (It's Not Always What You Think)
The assumption is trauma. Sometimes it is, and that deserves respect. But just as often the silence has quieter roots.
Some veterans don't talk because of humility. "I just did my job" is not deflection; it's how a generation was taught to carry things. Bragging about service, in their code, is what the guys who did the least always did the most of.
Some don't talk because they're protecting you. They decided in 1969 or 1991 or 2005 that the family didn't need certain pictures in their heads, and they've held that line so long it covers everything, including the funny stories.
And some don't talk for the simplest reason: nobody ever asked about the parts they'd love to tell. The buddy from Alabama. The sergeant with the impossible standards. The three-day pass in a foreign city at nineteen years old. Ask a veteran about combat and the door closes. Ask what the food was like and you may be there a while.
The 95 Percent Rule
Military service is mostly not combat. It's training, waiting, working, eating, complaining, laughing, and being twenty years old very far from home with a group of people you'd die for and also can't stand. That's the 95 percent, and it's almost always open for conversation.
So structure the interview around ordinary life, in roughly this order:
Joining and Training
- How old were you when you went in? Did you enlist or were you drafted?
- What did your mother say? What did your father say?
- What do you remember about the day you left home?
- What was the first thing they did to you at basic training?
- What was the hardest thing to get used to?
Daily Life
- Where were you stationed, and what did the place look like?
- What was your job, hour to hour? What were you actually good at?
- How was the food, honestly?
- What did you do on your time off?
- What did you miss most from home? What showed up in packages?
The People
- Who was your best friend in the service? Where was he from?
- Who was the funniest guy in your unit? What did he do?
- Was there an officer or sergeant you'd still salute today? Why?
- What's the best prank anyone pulled?
- Did you ever see any of them again afterward?
Coming Home
- What do you remember about the day you got out?
- What was the first meal you ate as a civilian?
- What was hard about coming home that nobody warned you about?
- What did the service change about you, for better or worse?
- What should this family know about those years that we've never asked?
That last question is the one to save for the end. By then, an hour of easy questions has told him you can be trusted with the answer, whatever size it is.
The Questions to Leave Alone
Never lead with combat. Never ask "did you ever kill anyone" (this needs saying, because children ask it and adults think it). Never ask "what's the worst thing you saw." These questions demand the most painful material as the price of admission, and the door closes politely and permanently.
If combat stories exist and he wants to tell them, the everyday questions will get him there on his own terms. Veterans steer toward the hard parts when they're ready, often sideways, in the middle of a story about something else. When that happens, your job is silence. Don't fill pauses. Don't say "that must have been terrible." Let the pause sit there until he decides what's on the other side of it, and if the answer is a changed subject, follow him to the new subject without a backward glance.
"I'd rather not get into that" is a complete answer. Take it the first time, and don't circle back next month. He remembers what he already declined to answer, and re-asking tells him you weren't listening.
Ways to Record It
Do it yourself. A phone with a voice memo app, face-down on the table, and one hour. Side by side beats face to face; the porch, the car, or the workbench beats an interview across a table. Say "I want the grandkids to have this in your voice" and press record before the first question.
The Veterans History Project. The Library of Congress collects recorded interviews with U.S. veterans, conducted by ordinary family members and volunteers, and archives them in the American Folklife Center as part of the national record. Their free field kit includes the release forms, interview guidelines, and submission instructions. It's a genuinely moving thing to be able to tell a veteran: your story is in the Library of Congress now.
Stories of You. Our service calls your veteran on his own phone at scheduled times, asks a question you've chosen (any of the twenty above), and records the answer. Each story becomes a short video with his voice, watercolor illustrations, captions, and music, delivered to the family by email. The phone format fits this subject unusually well: no eye contact, no one watching him talk, full control to stop whenever he wants. Some stories are easier to tell a friendly voice on the phone than a son across the table. And if he's one of the veterans who "doesn't talk," a question about the food at Fort Benning arriving on a Tuesday afternoon call is about the lowest-pressure invitation there is.
Stories of You calls your loved ones on the phone, records their stories, and turns them into watercolor-illustrated videos. No apps, no passwords — they just answer the phone.
Learn More →Don't Wait for Veterans Day
Veterans Day (November 11) is a natural moment for this, and if a date on the calendar is what finally gets the recorder rolling, use it. But the veterans of World War II are nearly gone, the Korea generation is in its nineties, and Vietnam veterans are in their seventies and eighties. The interview you're planning for November is available this weekend.
One question is enough to start. Ask about the day he left home. Then be quiet and let a nineteen-year-old you never met tell you what happened next.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if the veteran in my family never talks about the war?
Don't ask about the war. Ask about the service: boot camp, the food, the friends, the pranks, the homesickness, coming home. Most veterans who won't discuss combat will talk freely about the other 95 percent of their service, and many have simply never been asked about it. If the harder stories exist, they surface on the veteran's schedule, not yours.
Is it disrespectful to ask a veteran about their service?
Asked the right way, it's the opposite. Many veterans quietly carry the sense that nobody in the family is interested. Asking about their day-to-day service, where they were stationed, and who they served with signals that their years in uniform matter to the people they love. What's disrespectful is prying for combat details or pressing past a "I'd rather not get into that."
How do I record a veteran's stories for the Library of Congress?
The Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress accepts recorded interviews with U.S. veterans conducted by family members and volunteers. They publish a free field kit with the required release forms, interview guidelines, and submission instructions. The interview becomes part of the Library's permanent collection.
What about veterans with PTSD?
Let them steer. Stay on everyday-service territory unless they choose to go further, never press on a pause, and treat "I don't want to talk about that" as a complete answer that doesn't need to be revisited. If a conversation becomes distressing, close it gently and return another day to lighter ground. You're a family member recording stories, not a therapist, and staying inside that role is the kindest thing you can do.
My grandmother served too. Do these questions work for her?
Yes, and ask her sooner rather than later. Women who served in earlier generations were asked about their service even less often than the men were. The same everyday questions work, plus one more: what did people assume about you that was wrong?
