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Voices of War: Veterans History Project
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The Library of Congress is preserving the stories of war through the voices of the men and women who served. Interviews, memoirs, letters and photos are being compiled for the Veterans History Project. It follows servicemen from enlistment and service to the trip home.
For Rhona Knox Prescott, her arrival in Vietnam as an Army nurse was a rude awakening.
"Vietnam from the air is gorgeous," she recalls. "It is all green like Ireland, all shades of green. You can see the divisions of the rice paddies separated by handmade dikes. It is very hilly and fertile and of course it has sea all around it...."
But when she landed, things were radically different. "We were told to put on our helmets and to run single file to a site on the tarmac — to go as quickly as possible and not to look back," Prescott says. "When the doors opened the heat just kind of hit us in the face. We were being fired at."
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Paul Alexander Steppe Jr. was a Marine in Korea. On Christmas Eve 1951, he was wounded by a grenade that hit his bunker.
"Our bunk was hit and every officer in there was either killed or injured. The sound of every shot jars you, but you thank God for every one you hear. You don't hear the one that hits you."
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDA1OTI3MjQ5MDEyODUwMTE2MzM1YzNmZA004))
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But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.
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