20 Questions to Ask a Veteran, and Where Not to Start
The reason he says nothing is almost never the reason the family assumes. It is that every question so far has been the one question he cannot answer.
Families tend to arrive at one of two conclusions. Either he does not talk about his service because it was traumatic, or because he is modest. Both are sometimes true. Neither is the usual reason.
The usual reason is that the only question he has ever been asked is a version of what was it like, and that question has no answer. It covers four years, two continents, a hundred people and about six different emotional registers. Faced with it, the reasonable response is a short sentence and a change of subject, which the family then reads as reluctance.
Start with the parts that are easy to talk about
Service is mostly logistics, boredom, weather, food and people. All of that is tellable, none of it is guarded, and it is where the real texture lives.
1. How did you end up in this branch rather than another one?
Why it works. It is a decision question, which is the most answerable kind, and it starts before he ever arrived anywhere difficult.
How to ask it. Ask whether he chose it or it chose him. Both answers are stories.
What it opens up. The draft, a recruiter, a friend who signed up with him, or a family expectation.
2. What was the food like?
Why it works. Universally answerable, frequently funny, and completely unguarded. It is the best opener in this whole list.
How to ask it. Ask what he would still eat now, and what he will not touch.
What it opens up. The routine, the men around him, and the places, all arriving sideways.
3. Where did you sleep?
Why it works. Physical and specific. Everybody remembers the bunk, the tent, the ship, the floor.
How to ask it. Ask what it was like in the summer and in the winter. Two passes at the same place.
What it opens up. Conditions, the men in the next bunk, and how much sleep he actually got.
4. What did you do when there was nothing to do?
Why it works. Most of service is waiting, and the waiting is where friendships were made. Nobody ever asks about it.
How to ask it. Ask what the games were, what people read, what they talked about.
What it opens up. The friendships, which is the door to almost everything else.
5. Who made you laugh?
Why it works. It reaches straight for a person, with a positive frame, and it requires no assessment of the war at all.
How to ask it. Ask for a specific thing they did. The anecdote is the point.
What it opens up. The men. Names, nicknames, and where they were from.
Questions about the work itself
6. What was your actual job, day to day?
Why it works. Most families know a rank and a branch and nothing about the labour. He was a specialist in something and can explain it properly.
How to ask it. Ask him to explain it as if you know nothing, because you do. Explaining is a comfortable role.
What it opens up. Real expertise, and pride that has never had anywhere to go.
7. What were you better at than most people?
Why it works. It asks for competence rather than heroism, which is a claim he can make without discomfort.
How to ask it. If he demurs, ask what people came to him for.
What it opens up. The skill, and often the reason he was moved or promoted.
8. What did you learn that you still use?
Why it works. It connects the service to now, which makes it current rather than historical.
How to ask it. Ask for something small and practical, not a life lesson.
What it opens up. Habits the family has watched for fifty years without knowing where they came from.
9. Who taught you the job?
Why it works. Routes through a person rather than through him. There is nearly always a sergeant or an older hand who mattered.
How to ask it. Ask what that man was like, not just what he taught.
What it opens up. A figure the family has never heard of who shaped him permanently.
10. What did you carry?
Why it works. Objects, again. Weight, kit, the personal item that was not issued.
How to ask it. Ask what he still has and where it is now.
What it opens up. The physical reality of it, and often an object worth photographing.
Questions about the places
11. Where were you, and what did it look like?
Why it works. Geography is safe ground and it gives the family the map they have never had.
How to ask it. Ask about the landscape and the weather before the towns.
What it opens up. The whole itinerary, which most families only know as two or three place names.
12. What surprised you about the country?
Why it works. It asks him to be an observer, which is a comfortable position, and it usually produces genuine warmth about a place.
How to ask it. Ask what people there were like to him personally.
What it opens up. Encounters with civilians, which are frequently the memories he values most and mentions least.
13. What was the trip out like?
Why it works. Journeys have a beginning, middle and end already built in, so they are easy to narrate.
How to ask it. Ask how long it took and what he did for all those hours.
What it opens up. Who he travelled with, and what everyone thought was coming.
Questions about home
14. What did you miss most?
Why it works. It is about home rather than about war, so it is answerable, and the answer is always specific and small.
How to ask it. Ask what he thought about when he could not sleep.
What it opens up. Family, a person, a food, a place, and what he promised himself.
15. What did you write home about, and what did you leave out?
Why it works. The second half is the real question, and framing it this way makes it askable. Everybody left things out and everybody knows it.
How to ask it. Do not press on what was left out if he stops. The acknowledgement alone is a great deal.
What it opens up. What he was protecting the family from, and what that cost him.
16. What was the first thing you did when you got back?
Why it works. Homecoming is a strong, dateable memory and it does not require anything about the service itself.
How to ask it. Ask who met him, and what they said.
What it opens up. The return, which is often harder than the family ever realized and rarely discussed.
17. What was hard about being home?
Why it works. It gives permission for a truth most veterans have never been invited to state, and it does so without asking about anything that happened overseas.
How to ask it. Ask it quietly and do not rush to reassure. Reassurance closes it.
What it opens up. Readjustment, work, sleep, and the distance he felt from people who had not been there.
Questions worth ending on
18. Who from those years would you most like to see again?
Why it works. It names the people who mattered without requiring any account of what they went through together.
How to ask it. Ask what he would say to them. Write it down exactly.
What it opens up. The friendships, and sometimes a man he lost, on his own terms and in his own time.
19. What do people get wrong about it?
Why it works. It positions him as the authority on his own experience, which is the whole point, and it lets him correct a caricature he has lived alongside for decades.
How to ask it. Offer a lazy assumption of your own for him to knock down.
What it opens up. His actual view, which is usually more complicated and more interesting than anything the family assumed.
20. What do you want your grandchildren to understand about those years?
Why it works. It stops being your interview and becomes his statement, aimed at people who will only ever know him as a grandfather.
How to ask it. Ask it at the end of a good conversation, and record it if he will let you.
What it opens up. What he most wants kept, which belongs at the front of whatever you make.
A note on what not to do
Do not thank him repeatedly through the conversation. It is well meant and it functions as a full stop. Do not fill silences. Do not correct his account against something you read. And if he stops, stop, and come back another day rather than pressing. The conversation that gets to the difficult material is almost never the first one.