When Bernard Snyder and his brother were overseas, serving in the Pacific Theater of World War II, they made a promise to each other for when they returned home to Austin.
"There was a lot of discrimination," Snyder said. "And we said, when we get back to Austin, we're going to change that."
They had been raised Jewish and were all too familiar with prejudice. So after the war, they kept their promise and returned to the Texas capital city and led lives filled with civic duty.
It was just one anecdote Snyder shared at the Gathering of World War II Heroes event, organized by The War Remembered oral history project and hosted at the Texas Military Forces Museum on Camp Mabry in Austin.
About a dozen veterans of WWII, not one of them under 100 years old, took part, sharing stories of their lives and experiences of the war with hundreds of attendees at the Sunday event.
Patrick Reed, a historian who founded The War Remembered, said he hoped to bring the feelings he's experienced interviewing veterans to a wider audience.
"Looking into their eyes, it's really as close as you can get to being there yourself," Reed said. "It's just a really captivating experience to sit down with them and hear their story, hear about things that happened, at this point, 80 years ago, what it would have felt like to be there. It's just a lot easier to connect with than just reading it out of a book."
According to the National World War II Museum, less than 0.2% of the 16.4 million Americans who served during the war are still here, as of 2026, with the youngest being in their 90s. Just under 2,000 WWII veterans live in Texas.
Those statistics make a gathering of so many WWII veterans in one place a rare opportunity for those who want to hear their stories.
It was an opportunity that prompted Victoria Lamb to bring her daughter, Violet, from College Station for the event.
The two are involved in historical reenactment and were particularly keen to meet Georgetown resident Rose Dern, who was among the very first women allowed to serve outside the continental U.S. during wartime as part of the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).
"So just getting Violet to meet some World War II veterans since she's 10 and a lot of them are starting to get on up in age," Lamb said. "We saw Miss Rose and we thought it would be amazing to come meet her because a lot ladies did a lot things to help with the war effort."
Memories of conflict
Chester "Buck" Sloan grew up in the small Texas town of Kerens, in Navarro County. He said the Depression brought hardship, but he still carried fond memories of his mother making biscuits and gravy.
But when the war broke out, the draft took him from rural Texas to the shores of Omaha Beach, not long after the Normandy landings in 1944.
"They got me in there, and they said, 'what do you do?' I said, 'I'm a farmer and drive a truck,'" Sloan said. "And a captain comes out, says, 'water-proof that truck.'"
It was a 6×6 truck, one Sloan says he drove onto the beach as water reached up to the windshield.
"Made it to the top," Sloan said. "When I got to the top, the B.A.R. [Browning automatic rifle] man had been killed, and they gave me a B.A.R. I kept it all the way to the Battle of the Bulge."
Joe Cucinotta was living on his family's farm in New Jersey when he joined up with the Army. He traveled to Europe on a ship called the Empress of Scotland, which he described as "terrible."
"For eight days, I didn't eat anything on that place, and what I did was I bought candy bars at the stores," Cucinotta said.
After a few stops in Casablanca and other locations in Africa, they made their way to Italy, where Cucinotta's regiment took part in the Battle of the Rapido River.
"It was all kind of firing. All the Germans were firing, we were firing. Finally, we all ran out of ammunition," Cucinotta said. "The Germans just got out and corralled us. We couldn't go back to it. I don't know if they blew the pontoon bridge up or not, but, oh, it was terrible."
Cucinotta was captured and spent 15 months as a prisoner of war. He said one of the most vivid memories he had was when he realized how different his conditions as a POW were with those back home.
"The German in charge of our camp, he had a son in Kansas as a POW, and one day he comes in there with a box of chocolates and says 'look what my son gave me,'" Cucinotta said, laughing.
Zachary Wilson, a historian and reenactor with the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, said such details are why it's important to talk to veterans while it's still possible.
"The most primary of primary sources are the people who were there," Wilson said. "There's a lot of small things that don't make it into the books, don't make it into diaries, and then the only people who can tell you about them are the people that were there."
Returning home
For many who came back from the front, reacclimating into civilian life could be difficult.
Jose Mendez grew up in Benavides in Duval County. The size of the town made the lasting impact of the war all the more pronounced.
"It was just a small town with no industry, and all our boys wanted to go. So everybody entered it," Mendez said. "They killed 16 of my schoolmates."
Mendez returned from the war to a Texas where discrimination against Latinos and other minorities was still rampant. And much like Snyder and his brother, Mendez entered civic duty with a commitment to change things.
Others found artistic outlets to help them ease back into postwar Texas.
Buck Sloan returned to his lifelong love of music. Over the years, he played guitar and fiddle in his own group or even joining in with legendary musicians like Bob Wills.
"There was a fiddler's contest going on down in Galveston. And Bob and his daddy had been playing half a day and they seen me backing up on fiddle," Sloan said. "And I backed him and his daddy up."
Even at 101, Sloan still plays fiddle and guitar and sings at the Buckshot Jamboree, a weekly dance he hosts Saturday nights in Houston.
Karl Schmitt returned to college when he came back from the war.
"I was discharged. I called the university and said, 'can I still get in?' They said, 'well, you are a little late, but we think you can catch up.' So I went right back and continued my college education," Schmitt said.
He eventually made his way to Texas, taking a position at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is professor emeritus.
Schmitt described his time serving in Europe as one of uncertainty and "somewhat scary." He participated in the Liberation of Rome and several other confrontations, including the advance into Germany, eventually receiving two Purple Hearts.
Still, he expressed reluctance toward his own designation as a hero — and offered caution on how the war should be remembered.
"War is hell. It's not glorious. It's not romantic, despite all the stuff in novels and stories that we get," Schmitt said. "It is dirty. It is physically dirty. I went from August '44 to December '44 — never had a bath or a shower."
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