Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s team hosted a veterans project Friday at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum.

The Veterans History Project tracks first-hand accounts of American military veterans from World War I to the present. Veterans from the Quad-City region shared their stories.

Shane Sawyer, IowaWORKS veteran career planner, said sharing the stories will help veterans connect with each other.

“Maybe it will encourage others to share their story with each other as well,” he said. “Because often I say when you get out of the military, you felt like you’ve lost your tribe. You felt like you’ve lost your purpose. In doing so you felt like you lost your identity.”

“My goal in the veteran communities is to just help us find our tribe again,” he said.

Students from St. Ambrose University and Eastern Iowa Community College worked on the project.

More than 70 veterans from Iowa shared their stories for the project over the years.