Nina Subin

Much of the pleasure and challenge of writing history for a general reader stems from the fact that a good history book wants all the elements of fiction — compelling characters, vivid action, strong voices, nuanced details that transport the reader to another time and place — with the added requirement that it all must be, you know, well, true.

If something isn’t factual, it can’t be included. If you can’t locate or corroborate a thing, you, the historian, cannot use it. When starting a project, I lie awake excited about the research discoveries ahead. But also anxious: What if this time, I come up empty? Embarking on “Code Girls” — my book about the more than 10,000 American women who broke enemy codes during World War II — I was further haunted by the ponderous declaration of one editor who passed on the book proposal, telling my agent he thought the women codebreakers made for a great story but suspected the historical record would be scanty and the result, as he put it, “thin beer.” I set out to prove him wrong.

Luckily, I had an ally — an army of allies, you could say: the volunteers and staff of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, a lush repository of first-person interviews that includes many recorded accounts from veterans who did the work I was describing.

What began as a bipartisan legislative idea has grown into a chorus of voices, telling an evolving national story of service. I was so grateful for the collection, especially its accounts of Navy WAVES. World War II was an inflection point for women in the military. These veterans describe girlhood during the Great Depression; the shock of Pearl Harbor; the desire to serve, as their brothers were doing; the brainwork they performed and the setting in which they performed it.

The collection is curated and user-friendly, beyond an author’s wildest dreams. I will never forget walking into the project’s reading room, where reference specialist Megan Harris, after searching the project’s internal database, had found even more people than I had, and prepared my very own carrel, complete with spreadsheet, headphones, digital files, transcripts. This is characteristic of the Library of Congress; even as it’s overwhelmingly extensive, the staff almost magically makes the holdings understandable and navigable.

The collection was created 25 years ago from bipartisan legislation. That’s important. Military service is bipartisan. History is bipartisan. What was most surprising for me, after “Code Girls” was published, were the readers who wrote to say their mothers and grandmothers did this work. “I have her letters, I have this or that, what can I do with it,” they often added. I could direct them to the project, which is growing by the day. In 2019, the Veterans History Project held a ceremony to honor the women and the families and to collect their materials for all to study and enjoy.

And people are. Students working on National History Day projects can hear, literally hear, the voices of veterans, describing why they signed up and what life was like and what they feared and hoped and did. To those veterans, and to the Veterans History Project, this author would like to say thank you for making my work better — for making it possible — just as you did, and do, for our country and our world.