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GREENSBORO — For his most recent assignment for the Greensboro Historical Museum, Roger Weigold  has found himself thinking like a detective.

His mission: Find veterans willing to tell their stories.

It used to be easy to find World War II vets. Now, not so much. But Weigold, a veteran himself, is nothing if not crafty and persistent.

He’s making himself visible at the places they hang out, taking phone numbers, tracking down leads — all to get the stories before they’re gone.

“One contact leads to another,” he said. “A little detective work.”

Weigold has taken to cruising around retirement homes, a strategy that’s paying off.

“Well Spring , for one, is a veritable fount of World War II and Korean War veterans,” he said.

The work, ultimately, will go on display at the museum’s hall of military history.

The idea, said Jon Zachman, the museum’s curator of collections , is to build a searchable, interactive database of area soldiers for visitors to dig through.

So far, the museum has collected stories from a few dozen soldiers. Most are from World War II, some are from conflicts in Korea and Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

The entries will include some biographical information, but the heart of the database will be first-person recollections from the soldiers themselves.

Veterans can add to the exhibit even after it opens next year.

The database is a way of dealing with one of the fundamental problems of creating a museum exhibit.

“You end up leaving people out. You just don’t have the space,” Zachman said. “That’s hard. Who do you decide to include? And who doesn’t make it?”

Weigold got involved when it became clear that tracking down the stories would take some time.

“There was nobody ... who could spend full time trying to find these folks,” he said. “So I raised my hand and volunteered.”

For his time, he’s getting nothing in return.

Except for the stories.

Take the one from the truck driver.

“He said, 'I don’t understand why you want to talk to me because all I did was drive a truck,’” Weigold said.

Weigold’s philosophy is that all of the stories are important. Medals are won by twists of fate.

Driving a truck is as much a part of the military as firing a rifle.

So Weigold pursued the story further. Tell me more, he said.

It turned out that the soldier, a black man in the days before President Harry Truman integrated the Army, wound up being sent to England. Weigold’s curiosity grew. Then what, he asked.

Well, in June of that year, the soldier went to St. Lo.

June 1944? D-Day. St. Lo? Omaha Beach.

It turned out he drove a truck under artillery fire between the beachhead and the town of St. Lo, an area that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Normandy Invasion.

Finally, the soldier wound up following Gen. George Patton across the continent as part of the famed “Red Ball Express” — the immense supply line that kept the U.S. Army churning forward to Berlin.

“Absolutely amazing story,” Weigold said.

And that’s what makes the shoe-leather detective work worth it.

The stories are the reward.

“It’s the millions of untold stories that future generations should know about,” Weigold said. “Future generations have to know what their ancestors did. What they did. Who they were. These guys paid the price. We all did.”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com