George: A Voice To Be Heard

Not long after the "My Life, My Story" project launched in 2013, it was decided that Veterans' stories should be written in the first-person. The reason is that we wanted a veteran's voice to shine through. After all, beyond knowing the facts of a person's life, knowing how they narrate their own story can be just as enlightening.

Here's an example: Instead of saying "Mr. Smith has always valued hard work", we once quoted a veteran who described himself this way: “Always been a worker, always will be a worker. The day I die I’ll take the shovel and dig my own grave with it.”

Isn't that way better?

Or, in this case, a veteran describes how his family often didn't have enough to eat when he was growing up.

“We hunted for our food. In the winter we would go hunting for squirrels. I still like squirrels today. We also hunted for rabbits. In the spring we'd get up in the morning and go down to the creek. We'd fish all day for half a dozen black suckers. Oh god! When I think back about that time. Those were bony fish. My parents would cook them with onions and water. I'd go out and get a gallon of buttermilk from the creamery and they'd add that in and call it fish soup. We were so hungry we'd end up eating the heads and tails we cut off. I remember coughing up the bones.”

That's waaaaay more descriptive than just saying "When Mr. X was young, his family often had to hunt for food."

But sometimes, even writing the stories in the Veteran's own words can't quite capture how that veteran sounds. Some people just need to be heard, either because they have the gift of gab or because their sonorous voice grabs you by the guts.

This episode features one of those Veterans. George Arnold regularly does public-speaking events for large audiences, and after about 10 seconds of hearing him, you'll know why. We're so glad that he agreed to read his own story for us on this episode. And afterwards, he also agreed to let us record him giving a speech that you've probably heard before but that's worth another listen.