‘The Army’s story is America’s story’

Army 250’s Dan Vallone looks at the many ways the oldest service branch has shaped our national identity.

The Army’s 250th birthday is a milestone Dan Vallone wants every American to appreciate.

The former infantry officer is a professional uniter, working with companies and institutions to overcome polarization and bring people together for a common purpose. In a time of growing disconnect, he’s especially keen to build bridges between the military and civilian society.

Throughout the Army’s 250th anniversary year, Vallone is trying to do just that, by shining fresh light on just how much the oldest service branch has shaped our national identity. Launched in 2024, his Army 250 site is a growing repository of articles, interviews, reflections and resources meant to show communities nationwide how the Army’s story is their story, too.

From coffee to baseball, from skiing to literature, from the Army’s role in Juneteenth to the rise of professionalism, Vallone’s weekly posts offer an educational and entertaining take on how the Army has influenced American life and culture.

Vallone recently spoke with The American Legion about his time as a soldier, what inspired his Army 250 project and how people can help elevate the Army’s story.

To celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday, The American Legion is asking veterans to share why they chose that branch of service. What’s your story? Why did you choose the Army?

I grew up in Epping, N.H., and when I was a sophomore in high school I started to think about the military. That was early 2001. I remember kind of searching online and thinking, what would be exciting? My grandfather served in the Navy during World War II, but outside that, ours was not a military family. It wasn't something I had a personal connection to, although I grew up in a small town with lots of veterans and knew folks in the local American Legion post.

In any case, we scheduled a visit to West Point for early October. And then 9/11 happened. I showed up for my first visit, and just being at the academy and feeling the incredible sense of purpose that every cadet exuded -- not that they knew exactly what the country was going do or what was happening, a lot of uncertainty was present, but everybody was like, whatever's coming, we're going to face it together. That just felt so powerful, and for me, it was like, “This is what I want to do.” Fortunately, I got into West Point and started in 2003. 


Tell us about your time in uniform.

I served six years active duty as an infantry officer. I was stationed at Fort Benning, then Fort Drum, and did one tour to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. I also did one year in Singapore, then went back to Benning for the career course, and closed out at Fort Hood -- now Fort Cavazos -- in Texas.

I feel fortunate to have been able to serve in the Army and to serve alongside so many amazing people. My first platoon sergeant was an incredible warrior who joined the Army relatively late in life. He was probably in his early 30s when he came in, and I think when we deployed to Afghanistan it was his fourth deployment. He taught me how to be a small unit leader, how to grow in terms of leading soldiers more generally. And when I was a company commander, I worked with a phenomenal first sergeant who taught me what mentorship really looks like. He showed me how to create a system and sit with the NCOs to figure out, what school are you going to next? What skills do you need to be cultivating? What experiences should we be thinking about to ensure that you're helping your soldiers right now but also growing you as a leader?


You do a lot of things: consulting, public speaking, team building. How did the Army prepare you for all these?

I do have an unusual kind of professional trajectory. My little niche I work a lot on is, how do we help people find common ground? There's a bit of conflict resolution baked in there. How do we think about the experiences that forge teams across different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, and what are the stories that help us understand a collective effort in a way that binds us together? That started for me in the Army, where you go through basic training or different formative experiences that allow the Army to much more heavily shape a shared identity than any company or anything comparable in civilian life, outside of maybe the ministry. Beyond that, how do you take people from all across the country, all walks of life, different ranks, different backgrounds, etc., and build the team? How do you get that cohesive unit where they're able to work together to build something greater than the sum of its individual parts? A lot of what I do now is help organizations apply those sorts of lessons the Army taught me.

You’ve called Army 250 a passion project. How did the idea develop?

Even when I was in, I loved the Army, I loved the institution. I thought it had such an incredible set of goals, its value system was so strong, its ethics … I love the way in which the Army has continuously tried to figure out how to build a force that can serve the nation, embody the best values we believe in and reflect who we are as people. As I transitioned out and spent more time digging into the Army’s history, I’ve seen how central the Army has been to the American story, both in the military capacity -- which most people know about -- but more broadly, how the Army's influence has rippled across everything from the physical infrastructure in America to new technologies we've invented to major civil society innovations. 

About three years ago, I was leading this research nonprofit called More in Common US, and we started to see data points suggesting a growing gap between much of American society and the military. Fewer and fewer Americans have a grandfather or a grandmother who served, a parent or an uncle or an aunt or a cousin or whoever. The second thing we saw was that veterans were increasingly feeling less rooted outside their experiences in the military. They had a veteran community, but they didn't have that strong sense of belonging with society at large. 

Meanwhile, I started to get involved in a couple of projects focused on the nation’s 250th birthday. This is an opportunity to lift up a shared history, a shared story. Early on, I noticed that the military was not a big part of those conversations. That might be because people are focused on things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and civics education, and less on things like the Navy and the Marine Corps and the Army. Seeing these gaps, I thought I would try and lift up some of what the Army's presence in America has looked like over the past 250 years.

Describe how you’re doing that through your Army 250 site and newsletter.

It has been a huge experiment. I've written a piece almost every week for over a year. Hopefully the readership grows to the extent that it's useful and generates more ideas for others to run with it.

At first I thought I’d take a kind of this-week-in-history approach. A lot of people like that -- this happened then, this is happening today, make the connection. Then two things changed how I approached the storytelling. First, I connected with Huck Scarry.

Richard Scarry -- one of the best known, most prolific, most popular children's authors in history -- was an Army veteran. I reached out to his son and said, “This is a cool story not many people probably know about.” Many of the authors we regularly consume who are not writing about military history or war are, in fact, veterans of the Army. And Scarry’s son graciously wrote a piece talking about how much the Army meant to his dad and how important it was to his storytelling.

That was the first piece that wasn’t about a specific event or anything. Probably everybody’s read a Richard Scarry book, and within that book, you're reading an Army story to an extent. Personally, I found that very interesting. The Army's living in these materials on our bookshelves and we just don't know it. 

The second thing was the Global War on Terrorism Memorial moving into the design stage. When that happened, I wrote a more personal piece about how since I left the Army, I've become a father, and at some point I'm going to take my son to that memorial. What's that going to be like? What questions is he going to ask? What am I going to be thinking about? Writing that was very fulfilling, and it garnered good feedback from readers. So in 2025 I’ve more frequently done those kinds of articles.

Which of your posts have been the most popular? 


The personal narratives have gotten good response. I did one not long ago about World War II and how veterans of the war on terrorism experience those stories. The war was obviously much more complex, but still is this incredibly profound story of right and wrong, victory over evil, and we just don't have that sort of clarity. We have to sit with that, wrestle with that a little bit. 

A piece that had some of the most engagement was about how the Army helped fuel the National Cemetery System and the funeral industry in America. A lot of it was built off Drew Gilpin Faust’s book “This Republic of Suffering,” about death in the Civil War -- how the magnitude of casualties just overwhelmed the Army.
You had units going into battle without ambulance forces and no meaningful way to try and bury bodies. The National Cemetery System was a product of that, post-Civil War -- the need to memorialize and commemorate, but also figure out physically what we do. That has continued to play an enormous role in the military's conception of how we respect and honor and leave no soldier behind. It also was the catalyst to move burials from being primarily family affairs to the modern funeral industry and collective plots. 

With 250 years of Army history, there's no shortage of stories to explore. Do you have a framework or method for selecting topics? 


Like I said, I did a lot of historiography at first. When was the National Guard really created? When was the Medical Corps created? What happened here, over there? But at some point, I started to also ask, "What's interesting?" Ray-Bans are still a big part of our culture. Look back in history, and obviously they're aviators. People associate them with pilots. Who was probably the most well-known American who wore them in World War II? Douglas MacArthur. A lot of it is just finding things I think are interesting and trying to go off the beaten path. I'm not going to talk a lot about battles or other things that are well covered.

Ultimately, I have four categories I think about. First, the idea of America, and how we think about what it means to be American. The Army Chaplain Corps is a great example. World War I was the first time you had Jewish chaplains, and this process of trying to figure out how we recognize this shared identity in a new way. Then there's the physical place. A lot of our physical infrastructure -- history departments and universities, research centers and different places -- came out of the Army. The Army Corps of Engineers obviously has built a ton of this country.
The third category I write about is music, art, culture -- what America sounded like, smelled like, tasted like over the past 250 years, and how much of that can be traced to the Army. And then there’s the future -- how the Army has been a catalyst to innovate and generate research, in part because it has to think about the future.

What's your ultimate goal with Army 250? What do you want to do with what you've put together?

I started with not a lot of goals in a long-term sense. I thought, this is something interesting I want to go do and build out to understand for myself. What does it look like to do storytelling that is a little unusual? At this point now, I hope I can figure out a way to continue Army 250. I’ll probably change the delivery format or maybe the timing. Certainly once we’re past 250, that name might need changed, but I think the thread of helping Americans understand the military and the military understand Americans is something I'm going to work on for the rest of my life. 

Second, we're seeing signs of renewed interest in civics education, and I’d love for more of that to integrate the military from an Army 250 kind of standpoint -- not necessarily military history, but the military as an integral part of America. It is an institution, and it's within the executive of the three branches of government, but it is a unique thing that has existed for the entirety of our national history. It preceded the Declaration of Independence, and it has shaped so much of who we are, yet most people don't know much about it. 

How can people support the Army 250 effort? 


There are a few things everybody can do. They can write pieces in their local paper, or letters to the editor, about the Army’s 250th anniversary. Maybe you're a veteran, maybe you’re not. Maybe you're somebody who just finds it interesting. Put it out there. This is an important part of our history, and as we get into the 250 experience a little bit more, a lot of people will be tuning into that. 

I believe this is already happening, but I really encourage veterans organizations and the military-connected community to get behind the Army, Marine Corps and Navy 250 efforts. All the branches are doing interesting things. What's the programming to lift up those stories and emphasize that this is part of who we are as Americans? It doesn't matter whether or not you served. You're swimming in water deeply influenced by the military.

The last piece is folks in the academic space or who have historical societies. I think that’s key. The organizations that are going to have U.S. 250 programming because they are historical entities should have a military line of effort -- something that is squarely focused on trying to lift up these stories.

Matt Grills is managing editor of The American Legion Magazine.