The Veterans Breakfast Club is all about storytelling—“living history”—but as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we thought we’d reach back to our nation’s founding generation of veterans and see how their stories compared to the ones we hear at our storytelling events.
Our spring 2026 issue of VBC Magazine contains voices from the American Revolution that ring remarkably familiar, even though they come from the age of sailing ships, horse-drawn wagons, and Brown Bess muskets. That’s because these veterans weren’t made of marble. They were ordinary human beings. And their voices are those of eager recruits, scared sailors, exhausted surgeons, hardworking wives and mothers, and old veterans looking back on a time that shaped the rest of their lives.
They all sound very much like the voices we hear at our VBC events.
As a historian, I was trained to think of the past as a “foreign country,” profoundly different from the present. And it is. But my work with the Veterans Breakfast Club has also taught me to see the continuities. Every veteran is unique, and every story is different. But each shares in a common heritage, a brotherhood and sisterhood of service, that stretches back to the beginning, to 1775.
However different the conflicts, there is something universal in military service and in the experience of war. War disrupts lives and forges bonds. It leaves wreckage and open questions in its wake. And it transforms the people who experience it.
That was just as true in 1775 as it is today.
So, I invite you to read the stories in our America 250 issue of VBC Magazine and imagine them being told alongside those we hear every week in our programs.
Here are a few places to start:
- A Selection of Veteran Voices from the American Revolution
Fragments, memories, and firsthand accounts—left rough, on purpose. - If a Revolutionary War Veteran Visited the VBC
What might they recognize—and what would surprise them? - Molly Pitcher: Women in the Revolution
Stories that stretch and challenge what we think we know. - Which Side Freedom?
A reminder that the Revolution meant different things depending on who you were. - One Man’s Quest to Capture the Stories of the Last Revolutionary War Veterans
An early effort to preserve voices before they disappeared. - WWII Cartoonist Lampoons the Continental Army’s Prussian Spirit
A later generation looking back—with humor—at an earlier one. - Saying Goodbye: From Soldier to Citizen
The difficult transition that follows every war.
Or you can explore the full issue here:
Spring 2026 VBC Magazine (America 250 Edition)
https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/SPRING-2026-VBC-MAGAZINE_compressed.pdf
