Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for an open and wide-ranging virtual conversation about the military experience, past and present. We believe every veteran has a story to tell and wisdom to share.

This event is a chance to listen, learn, and connect with others who understand the unique bonds and challenges of military service. If you have something on your mind—whether a personal memory, a question, or a topic you think deserves attention—we encourage you to bring it to the conversation. Veterans are also invited to email Shaun Hall at shaun@veteransbreakfastclub.org with any specific topics or issues they’d like to discuss.

The Veterans Breakfast Club’s mission is to create communities of listening around veterans and their stories, and our Open Conversations are one of the most dynamic ways we do that. These sessions are often wide-ranging, emotional, funny, and thought-provoking, providing a welcoming space where everyone’s voice is valued.

This event is free and open to all. To join the conversation live on Zoom, please use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6402618738.

Or tune in on Facebook or YouTube at 7:00pm ET. Whether you have something to share or simply want to listen and learn, we welcome you to be part of the conversation!

For Women’s History Month, we talk with author and historian Brooke Kroeger, whose recent article, “The Go-Between,” shines new light on one of World War II’s most fascinating and least understood correspondents: Helen Kirkpatrick. Brooke will also discuss WWII reporter Ann Stringer, whose story Brooke captured in A Journalist at War.

Helen Kirkpatrick was everywhere the war burned hottest: London during the Blitz, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, and Paris. She broke major stories, moved with unusual ease among political, military, and diplomatic circles, and became the only woman among 1,600 accredited American correspondents to receive the U.S. Medal of Freedom for her wartime service. How did she gain such access? And why do some of her accomplishments still sit in the shadows of classified files and unanswered questions?

Kroeger also draws attention to a troubling ambiguity: her younger brother, Lyman B. Kirkpatrick Jr., became a high-ranking figure in U.S. intelligence after WWII, and the degree to which his and her careers overlapped raises unanswered questions about whether journalism and espionage sometimes blurred.

Brooke Kroeger will walk us through the life and service of this remarkable reporter who straddled the worlds of journalism, intelligence, and wartime diplomacy. It’s a story of courage, connection, and mystery told by the scholar who knows it best.

Helen Kirkpatrick broke barriers at the eve of World War II when the Chicago Daily News hired her for its London bureau.

As war unfolded, Kirkpatrick reported across Europe. Her dispatches appeared sometimes several times a day, and she was credited with breaking sensitive news based on high-level, confidential sources.

When asked later why she merited awards such as the U.S. Medal of Freedom and France’s Légion d’Honneur, Kirkpatrick often replied with humility — sometimes claiming she didn’t even know. Her wartime papers, now archived, remain thin on direct explanation.

Ann Stringer (1918–1990) was a trail-blazing American reporter whose career with United Press took her from covering domestic beats with her husband to the battlefields of World War II after his death in Normandy. Determined to carry on both his work and her own ambition, she crossed into war-torn Europe in late 1944, even when military restrictions tried to keep her from the front lines. Colleagues like Walter Cronkite and Harrison Salisbury praised her as one of the finest reporters of her generation, and she won lasting distinction for filing the first dispatch on the historic link-up of American and Soviet forces at Torgau on the Elbe. After reporting through the end of the war and covering the Nuremberg trials, she left United Press in 1949, married, and continued to write for major news outlets from her home in Manhattan.

We welcome Major Cyla Srna of the Texas State Guard, who will tell us about her Marine Corps service as an Aviation Structural Mechanic and her decision to join Texas’s State Defense Force, where she’s served for the past 12 years. Cyla is also an advocate for women veterans. In 2020, she agreed to enter the Ms. Veteran America competition in order to call attention to the problem of women veterans’ homelessness.

Cyla has a deep understanding of the problem, as she’s experienced it herself. We’ll talk about that and about her unique posts in the Texas State Guard, including Emergency Operations during Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19.

Cyla will educate us about the Texas State Guard, one of twenty examples of a little-known part of America’s military system: the State Defense Forces (SDFs). Authorized under Title 32 of the U.S. Code and grounded in states’ constitutional authority to maintain militias, SDFs exist alongside the National Guard but cannot be federalized. Their mission is strictly state-focused—responding to natural disasters, public health emergencies, border and infrastructure security, logistics, communications, and community support when governors call.

These units are volunteer, uniformed, and trained, often composed of prior-service veterans as well as civilians who want to serve close to home.