Castle Rock – Before clicking on her tape recorder, Barbara Belt brushed a hand against Willis “Bill” Bradford’s arm, looked lovingly into the old man’s eyes and flashed a reassuring smile.
“You nervous about this?” Belt asked the 81-year-old, reaching for the recorder.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t worry,” Belt said. “I’ll help you through it.”
In a stuffy, unassuming box of an office in the Douglas County Human Services Building, war veterans tell their tales.
They bring their photos and their letters, memories of friendships made and lost on battlefields, recollections of training camps and ships strewn around the world.
And they bring their stories – 90 minutes at a time – men and women remembering their military lives before they fade away.
Douglas County is just one of dozens of places actively gathering stories that will be forever preserved at the Library of Congress as part of the national Veterans History Project.
So far, roughly 50 oral histories have been collected in the county since 2003, most of them detailing service in World War II and Korea.
More than 450,000 veterans live in Colorado. About 23,000 of them are in Douglas County.
Listen to the voices:
“All those sights never bothered me, but I’ve thought about them a lot,” said Jeanne Wells, 86, from Parker, who served in World War II as an Army nurse in Europe and Africa. “It was adventurous, rewarding work, to take care of all those wounded men, to see the good and the bad of it.”
“We lived in foxholes and never left,” said Anthony Mora, 73, of Parker, who was wounded during combat in the Korean War. “I was scared, real scared. I’ll never forget that.”
And this, from Bradford, a Sedalia-area resident who served in the Navy during World War II and maintained and repaired watercraft during the siege on Utah Beach in 1944:
“We changed into clothes that would fight poison gas,” he said. “I found a German Mauser on the beach and fired it toward the front, just on general principle.”
The recordings are bundled with the photographs, letters and military documents and shipped to Washington, D.C., to be cataloged and stored.
The histories – thousands nationally – are available to anyone at the Library of Congress or online at www.loc.gov/vets.
For Bradford, the idea of keeping his voice alive for his family was enough to bring him in.
On a recent weekday, he sat in a chair across from Belt and began his story. His rigid shoulders relaxed. He swept a hand across his slicked silver hair.
Bradford’s wife, Liselotte, sat in a corner and listened.
He remembered dates and places, enlisting in Montana as a teenager in 1943 before training as a metalsmith and eventually getting sent to Europe.
He showed photographs of boot camp and named the men standing beside him.
He pulled out letters he sent home: “I got your Easter card the other day and it was very welcome even though it was late,” Bradford wrote April 29, 1944. “On Easter, I was in the middle of the ocean somewhere.”
After making his recording and getting congratulations from Belt and his wife, Bradford exhaled loudly. He remained in his chair, smiling.
“Only my wife and kids have heard that stuff, and it’s usually over a bourbon and soda,” Bradford said later. “I asked for one before I talked, but my wife said no.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
To participate
If you’re a Douglas County veteran and want to tell your story, contact the county’s Veterans Service Office at 303-688-4825.
