General questions get general answers: *what was your childhood like* produces *we were poor but we were happy*, and then a silence. These 34 questions about war and service are specific enough to open your grandfather up. Service questions need patience and permission. Some of this has never been said aloud, and some of it will not be — both of those are acceptable outcomes. Grandfathers frequently give you the work and the war before they give you the feeling. Take the work first; the rest arrives later, sideways.

Questions to ask

34 questions to ask about war and service

Before you start

34 questions in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten; do not try to get through them all.

  • Ask if you can record. Almost everyone says yes, and almost everyone forgets the recorder is there within ten minutes.
  • Sit beside them rather than opposite. It is easier to remember something difficult when nobody is watching your face.
  • Have a photograph to hand. A picture unlocks more than a question does.
  • Let silences run. The useful answer usually arrives about four seconds after you would normally rescue the pause.
  • Do not correct dates. Being wrong about the year is not the same as being wrong about the memory.
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Before you start

Most people ask your grandfather about the war and service once, get three sentences, and never ask again. Not because there is nothing to say — because the question was too big. "What was it like?" is impossible to answer. The questions below are small on purpose: they ask for one thing at a time, and they ask for detail rather than summary, because detail is what memory actually stores.

There are 34 here, in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten. You will not get through them all in one sitting and you should not try.

The questions work the same whether you are asking grandfather, father and grandparent. What changes is not the question but how much they will say to you, so start with the group you think they will enjoy rather than the first one here.

Before

  • What did you know before you went?
  • How did you end up there — chosen, called up, or volunteered?
  • What did your family say?
  • What did you take with you?
  • What did you expect?

Getting there

  • Where did you go first, and how long did it take?
  • What was the training like?
  • Who did you meet in the first week?
  • What was the food?
  • When did it stop feeling like an adventure?

The days

  • What did an ordinary day look like?
  • What was the waiting like?
  • What did you do to pass the time?
  • What did you write home, and what did you leave out?
  • What made you laugh?

The people

  • Who did you rely on?
  • Who looked after you?
  • Who didn't come back?
  • Is there someone you've thought about ever since?
  • Did you keep in touch with anyone?

The hard things

  • Is there anything you're willing to tell me about that you've not said before?
  • What frightened you most?
  • What did you see that you've never described?
  • What did you have to do?
  • What do you still think about?

Coming home

  • What was the journey back like?
  • Who met you?
  • What was different about home?
  • Did anyone ask you about it?
  • How long did it take to feel normal?

Since

  • What do you think about it now?
  • What do people get wrong about it?
  • Did it change what you believed?
  • What would you want remembered?

When they stop talking

Stop. Say that was hard, and mean it. Offer tea, change the subject, and come back another day — the recording will still be there. A conversation that ends kindly can be continued; one that ends badly usually cannot.

What Your Book Pro does here

Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.

These question sets are free to use and free to download, with no account. They are here because the recording is the part that cannot be done later, and it should not sit behind anything. When you have the recordings, Transcription turns them into clean verbatim and Themes from Bulk Audio finds what the material is actually about.

A professional oral historian at £150–£400 a day brings judgement about what to follow that a question list does not. What a list gives you is the courage to start, which is usually the actual obstacle.

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