Every military veteran has a story. And John Southard is there to tell it.
The Aledo resident is a military historian who has so far published four books and has started his own company, Your Veteran’s History, which is the culmination of over two decades of research, archival experience, and historical expertise.
“I think a lot of people hear ‘military historian’ and assume that means knowing every technical detail about a battleship or exactly how many rounds were fired in a particular battle. Those kinds of details can matter, but they are only one part of the field,” Southard said. “The bigger questions are often about change over time and the relationship between the military and the society it serves — how changes in technology, politics, economics, and culture reshape the armed forces, and how military service and war, in turn, reshape the country.
“So, like history in general, military history is not really about memorizing facts. It is about understanding patterns, context, and the larger forces that shape individual experiences.”
Southard, 45, explained a military historian studies the military as part of the broader story of society. That certainly includes wars, battles, strategy, and leadership, but it also includes the day-to-day experiences of service members, how military institutions change over time, and how they are shaped by technology, politics, economics, culture, and social norms.
Southard’s interest in military history started at home. His father served as a Marine in Vietnam, so he grew up with a natural curiosity about military service and war.
As he got older, that interest became much stronger.
“Seeing ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in the 1990s had a huge impact on me and made me want to learn even more about World War II and military history in general,” he said.
Eventually, he realized he did not just want military history to be something he enjoyed reading about. He wanted to make it a career. That ultimately led him to pursue a PhD, which he earned from Texas Tech University.
“I chose Texas Tech because I knew I wanted to focus my doctoral work on the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and Texas Tech has the largest archive devoted to the Vietnam War,” he said. “For what I wanted to study, it was a natural fit.”
Before that, he earned his undergraduate degree in business from TCU, along with a master’s degree in U.S. military history.
Your Veteran’s History began 18 months ago, but Southard said the work behind it goes back much further.
So far, he’s written four full-length books through Your Veteran’s History, and that number should reach 10 by early 2027, he said.
“Right now, I’m in a particularly busy stretch because I’m researching and writing six additional books at the same time,” he said.
People can purchase copies of the books he’s completed on the company’s website: www.yourveteranshistory.com. Or they contact him directly at john@yourveteranshistory.com.
“I genuinely mean it when I say that every veteran’s story becomes my favorite while I’m working on it,” Southard said. “Every story is inherently different.
“Even if I were researching two veterans who served in the same unit, or even the same platoon, their experiences would still be different because each person saw their service through their own circumstances, responsibilities, and experiences.”
Southard said that is one of the things he loves most about his work. Every time he starts researching a new veteran he’s uncovering a story he’s never told before.
“I still get goosebumps thinking about the moment that family is going to see everything come together and finally understand what their veteran experienced,” he said. “The range of stories has been incredible.”
He researched a World War II airman who was shot down over France and became a German prisoner of war, an Army cook, artillerymen, Marines, a Marine who was killed in Vietnam and more. Some of these stories involve extraordinary combat experiences, while others are about the day-to-day service of someone whose role otherwise might never have made a history book.
“It does not matter what their job was. Their experience was uniquely theirs, it was part of our history, and it matters to the family they left behind,” he said. “That is really at the heart of what we do — finding those stories, bringing them to life and making sure they are not lost.”
Southard said he focuses on veterans because he’s now seen more than 40 times what uncovering one of these stories can do for a family.
“Families hire us because they want to know more about their veteran, but I don’t think many of them fully realize how much detail we may be able to uncover,” he said. “When we finally give that story back to them and they see where their veteran was, what their unit was doing, what they experienced and how their service fit into the larger history, the reaction can be incredibly powerful.”
He said there is often a real sense of closure, especially for families who have lived with unanswered questions for decades. But there is also an enormous sense of pride.
“They understand their veteran in a way they never did before, and suddenly something that had been vague or fragmented becomes real and tangible,” he said. “Seeing that immediate impact on a family is why I do this. Every time I watch someone discover a part of their father’s, grandfather’s or loved one’s life that they never knew, it reinforces for me how important it is to preserve these stories before they are lost.”
Southard’s company also handles Service Memorials for veterans. He said the easiest way to describe one is that it is almost like the Cliff Notes version of one of his books.
A Service Memorial is a framed visual timeline that highlights the most important moments of a veteran’s military service.
“We still conduct research in the National Archives and work to reconstruct the veteran’s story, just as we do with the books, but the research is not quite as extensive and the final product is much more condensed,” he said.
Each Service Memorial includes eight entries of about 50 words each, covering the key moments of the veteran’s service.
“The Service Memorial gives a family a clear, visual way to understand the major milestones of their veteran’s service, while the book lets us go much deeper into the details, context and experiences behind each of those moments,” he said.
Aledo resident Amanda Richardson’s grandfather served in the European Campaign during World War II. He passed away about nine years ago, leaving her with many unanswered questions about his time overseas.
“Growing up, I knew my grandfather, but I didn’t have the appreciation for history that I do today,” she said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a deep interest in World War II and often wished I had taken the time to ask him more questions about his experiences.”
Richardson knew Southard through their children, who attended preschool together. Knowing his passion for military history, she reached out to see if he could research her grandfather’s service as a gift for her dad.
“What John uncovered was far beyond anything we could have imagined,” she said. “We now have military morning reports documenting nearly every day my grandfather spent overseas. We can trace his movements throughout Europe and better understand where he was, what he experienced, and the incredible hardships he and so many others endured.
“For our family, this is so much more than a collection of military records. It is a piece of our history that we thought was lost. Most importantly, it is something we can now pass down to his great-grandchildren, who are 15, 11, and 10 years old. They will have the opportunity to know their great-grandfather in a way that I never fully did growing up.”
Josh Plunk of Aledo received two Service Memorials from Southard, one for his grandfather for serving in World War II and another for his great grandfather for his service in World War I. He gave them to his father as a Christmas gift in 2025.
“It can help serve as a connection to them forever. They made contributions to protect this country,” Plunk said. “It’s something this family can look at and always be proud of. We’re now part of that legacy.”
Ironically, Southard did not serve in the military. However, military service has long been part of his family history.
His dad served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and both of his grandfathers served during World War II. One served in the Navy, and the other served in the Army Air Forces.
“That family connection is a big part of why military history has always felt personal to me, not just academic,” he said.
Southard is finishing a book on the World War II B-26 crewman whose aircraft was shot down over France in 1944. He survived the crash and became a German prisoner of war.
“We uncovered some remarkable records that allowed us to reconstruct the loss of the aircraft, his capture and his time as a POW in extraordinary detail,” he said.
He’s also close to finishing a book on a World War II fighter pilot who served with the Burma Banshees in the China-Burma-India Theater against the Japanese.
“That’s what I love about this work — the projects really run the gamut,” he said.
And he’s writing a book about an Army cook in World War II, another about a soldier who worked in logistics and another about an Army infantryman who served in Vietnam.
On the Service Memorial side, he recently completed one for a Navy corpsman who was killed at Iwo Jima in February 1945.
“In that case, we were even able to identify the approximate latitude and longitude of the location where he was buried at sea near Iwo Jima,” he said, adding, “We’re also finishing a service memorial for a World War I veteran who served in the infantry.”
Southard emphasized that what he does is not something you can simply find through Google, AI, or Ancestry. Even if a family has a veteran’s discharge papers, that still does not tell the full story, and in some cases even those documents can contain errors or incomplete information.
“To truly understand what a veteran experienced, you have to go into the National Archives, know where to look and connect records from multiple sources,” he said. At the end of the process, families receive either a full-length book or a framed Service Memorial, along with a digital copy. They also receive their own organized digital archive containing every document uncovered on their veteran.
“Depending on the veteran, that archive can contain a few hundred pages of records. On one recent project, we uncovered more than 1,000 pages of documents on a single veteran,” he said. “We give all of that material to the family so they not only have the finished story, but also the historical record behind it.”
More than anything else, though, he said he wants people to understand that these are family heirlooms. They are meant to be passed from one generation to the next.
“For families who have spent decades wondering what their veteran did, the finished story can bring a real sense of closure, understanding, and pride,” he said. “There is something powerful about having that book sitting on your coffee table or that service memorial hanging in your entryway. It makes the story tangible.
“When your children, grandchildren, or guests see it, they can understand and feel the weight of what that veteran did and what their service meant to the family.”
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