James Rollins stands at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington on Veterans’ Day this year. Rollins said that he has found the names of many of the soldiers he served with on the memorial. (Tonya Dorsey)
WASHINGTON — Just before entering the Army, 19-year-old James N. Rollins asked his high school girlfriend to marry him. His mom paid for the ring.
More boy than man, Rollins was drafted in 1967, leaving his Maryland home for the first time for training at Fort Bragg, N.C. (now Fort Liberty), and Fort Gordon, Ga. (now Fort Eisenhower). In 1968 he boarded a plane for Vietnam, serving with the 1st Infantry Division as a military police officer at Quan Loi, north of Saigon.
As time in Vietnam was drawing to a close, Rollins said he was asked to extend in return for shortening his two-year military obligation. He kept the promise he had made to his future bride. She wanted him back home in Odenton, Md.
The decision saved his life. After he left Vietnam, the enemy “overran the camp and killed most everybody,” including his friends, Rollins said in in an oral history recorded for the Veterans History Project. “I survived, and others didn’t. There is a piece of me that will always identify with that time.”
Rollins’ 45-minute narrative of his war experience is part of the project’s growing collection of nearly 120,000 firsthand accounts. Created by Congress nearly a quarter-century ago, the Veterans History Project has a mission to collect and preserve firsthand accounts of former armed service members. The project runs an online platform filled with personal stories of military service in conflicts and peacekeeping missions.
With 100 to 125 histories submitted each month, the project bears testament to the enduring interest by veterans, their families and the public to chronicle, share and keep forever the personal stories of soldiers since World War I.
Individual histories of military service are revealed in diaries, letters home, photos, artwork and spoken accounts such as the videotaped narrative by Rollins.
“One of the things that kept me going was getting engaged before I left,” Rollins said. “I had to have a finish line with hope waiting at the end of it. I did my 12 months in Vietnam.”
James Rollins stands with his bride, Varle Celestine Sewell, on their wedding day on July 5, 1969. Rollins, at 19, proposed to Sewell after receiving his draft notice. They married a month after his official discharge from the military in June 1969. (The James Rollins family)
He and Varle Celestine Sewell were married on July 5, 1969. They are still married 54 years later.
The memories of his buddies who never made it home still haunt him.
“I think about it to this day and still wish they were here, and we could talk about what we went through together,” Rollins, a retired Maryland Corrections system officer, told Stars and Stripes. “I have reflected on that time, and it brings up all these feelings. I still deal with some anxiety and struggle from time to time. But I learned to develop ways to cope with it.”
Rollins’ recollections for the Veterans History Project have had a profound impact on his family members, including his two adult children and five grandchildren.
“Until he made the oral history, I had not connected his service to who he was as a teen who got a draft notice, or to my parents as a dating couple who sat down and processed it, or to what my grandmother must have felt watching her son leave the state of Maryland for the first time,” daughter Tonya Dorsey said. “My dad has the opportunity today to watch his grandson play football at the same high school he attended because of the decisions he made at 21.”
The Veterans History Project also welcomes Gold Star families — spouses and other immediate family members of those who died in service. They offer the histories of armed service members whose lives were taken as the result of their military service.
All submissions are considered personal accounts that tell a larger story but are not meant to be an official record of the federal government or U.S. military. The veterans as a group represent a valuable resource for researchers studying the U.S. military and conflicts.
For Rollins, the project presented an opportunity to share his insights. Rollins said in the video that the unrecognized sacrifices of American troops still trouble him.
“I made it back. But 55,000 others did not,” he said. “But the country wasn’t celebrating Vietnam veterans. No one acknowledged you. “
Travis Bickford (pictured far right) is an Iraq War veteran who heads program coordination and communications for the Veterans History Project. Bickford is shown with fellow service members in Baghdad in 2005. (Travis Bickford)
Travis Bickford is another veteran who contributed the story of his war experience. An Iraq War veteran who served in the Army from 1999 to 2006, Bickford submitted his personal history to the collection in 2016.
Today Bickford heads program coordination and communications at the Veterans History Project. He said the project fascinated him for the opportunity it offered for veterans to share their stories, in their own words.
Technology advances are making it easier for veterans and their families to interact with the website, he noted.
Each of the digitized histories has a web page with the veteran’s name, military service, conflict and where the veteran served. Highlights from the Veterans History Project are shared on social media, reaching a larger audience with links to the stories online.
“Digitization has changed the landscape of collection preservation and access,” Bickford said. “For participants, there’s more access to digital recording devices than ever before. Smartphones and tablets have lowered the barrier to user participation, as have remotely conducted interviews enabled through video conference software.”
Bickford said he understands firsthand the project’s value to veterans, enabling them to have greater control over war narratives, even as conflicts and missions are dissected in the media.
“Our goal isn’t to get every living veteran’s firsthand remembrance into our collections,” Bickford said. “But we want every veteran to know it’s an option and that they have the opportunity to contribute.”
