Happy 250th birthday to the United States Army!
Today, the Veterans History Project (VHP) debuts the newest installment of our online exhibit, Serving: Our Voices. This feature launches the celebration of the Army’s 250th birthday, which will officially be observed on June 14, 2025.
The modern U.S. Army is rooted in the establishment of the Continental Army, which predates even the creation of the United States. Commanded by George Washington, the Continental Army was created to defend the original 13 colonies from the British and eventually to fight against them in the War for Independence. Fast forward 250 years, and the Army is now the largest branch of the United States military, with more than 7 million surviving veterans.
Previous VHP blog posts (found here and here) have marked the Army’s previous birthdays, but for the 250th, we decided to pull out all the stops and create a new online exhibit focused on the entire branch. In the spirit of this momentous occasion, we have assembled one of our largest online exhibits, pulling 25 collections from the nearly 55,000 total collections relating to Army veterans currently in the VHP archive.
Serving in all major American conflicts since World War I, the profiled Army veterans’ stories illustrate the wide array of roles, locations, and historical contexts that American soldiers have served in over the last 100+ years. The breadth of these experiences is breathtaking: included in the new exhibit are such disparate stories as those belonging to Robert Cassidy, who worked in a graves registration unit during the Korean War; to Shannon Morningstar, who served in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in Kuwait in 2006; and to Bernard Weisberger, who translated decoded Japanese military communications in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
From those who entered the military “to see the world” to those who were drafted or called up from the Reserves, from soldiers who served abroad to those who never left the continental United States, from military police to MASH medics and machine gunners—the history of the modern United States Army, and the new online exhibit, includes all these individuals.
The featured collections also illustrate these soldiers’ dedication to their mission and country. While serving in the Army, many of these veterans endured brutal combat conditions, imprisonment, or serious injuries. Their Army service demanded intense sacrifices, from long separation from their families to years spent in grueling situations—or even the ultimate sacrifice, in the case of Denton Winslow Crocker, Jr., killed in action during Vietnam. In their courage and dedication, these profiled veterans epitomize the Army’s motto of “This We’ll Defend.”
While today’s Army veterans served in circumstances unimaginable to the soldiers of the Continental Army, their bravery and commitment remain the same. We celebrate their service and their stories and wish the Army a very happy birthday.
Know an Army veteran? You can help preserve their legacy by submitting an oral history interview or original manuscript or photograph materials to the Veterans History Project, to be preserved in the permanent archives of the Library of Congress. See loc.gov/vets for more information.