Aaron Elson

Aaron Elson attended a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in 1987, seven years after the death of his father, a veteran of the battalion. He was so moved by the stories he heard that he returned with a tape recorder. He's been preserving veterans' stories ever since, with an archive of more than 600 hours of interviews. He has written several books of oral history and produced a unique line of oral history audiobooks in the veterans' own voices. His work has been used as source material in...See more

Aaron Elson attended a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in 1987, seven years after the death of his father, a veteran of the battalion. He was so moved by the stories he heard that he returned with a tape recorder. He's been preserving veterans' stories ever since, with an archive of more than 600 hours of interviews. He has written several books of oral history and produced a unique line of oral history audiobooks in the veterans' own voices. His work has been used as source material in more than two dozen popular books about World War II and a dozen documentaries, including "The Color of War" and "Patton 360," both of which have been shown on the History Channel. He is currently working on a book about the life of Marine Sgt. Mathew Caruso, a chaplain's assistant who sacrificed his life to save the chaplain during the Chosin Reservoir campaign in the Korean War. The Mathew Caruso Memorial Chapel in Camp Pendleton is named in his honor. See less