Some stories are best read. Others are best heard, the way they were told before anyone wrote them down.
I write and produce the Memory and Valour podcast. I also make episodes on commission for families who want their veteran’s service researched properly and told as a story, not a summary.
Hear the work before you commission it:
Episode 34 — Escape from Siam: Burma Bombers of 358 Squadron
Harry V. Smith was a bomber pilot in the Second World War. He was also my cousin.
His episode is the clearest example of what a commissioned episode can be: service records, unit records, and the history around them, drawn together into one narrative that carries you from enlistment to the end of the story.
I would be glad to craft the same for your family, shaped by what your own ancestor’s record reveals.
How it works:
1. Bring me a name. Tell me who they were and whatever you already know: a photograph, a medal, a regimental number, a story handed down. Nothing is too little to start with.
2. I find out what survives. Two hours of research to establish what records exist and what kind of story they can honestly support. You receive a written assessment. This is the discovery review, and every commission begins here.
3. You decide. If the records are rich, I’ll tell you. If they are thin, I’ll tell you that too, and what could still be made of them. No one should pay for a story the evidence cannot carry.
4. I research, write, and record. Archival research, interviews with your family, an original script, and a finished episode published on the podcast, or delivered privately to you alone.
What it costs:
Discovery Review — $150
Two hours of preliminary research and a written assessment of what your ancestor’s records can support. Credited in full toward any commission that follows.
Commissioned Episode — from $1,200
Published on the Memory and Valour podcast.
Eight hours of archival, service record and unit war diary research · two hours of recorded family interviews with transcripts · an original script, narrated and produced · your family receives the finished audio and the final script.
Private Audio Tribute — from $1,800
Made for your family alone, and not published.
Everything above, delivered privately as a finished recording; for a memorial service, a reunion, or simply (and importantly) your family’s own archive.
Additions:
Companion printed booklet of the script, from $250 · additional interview hours at $75 · extended research at $75 per hour · multi-part series quoted individually · reduced rate when commissioned alongside a Tribute or Legacy Book.
A note on accuracy:
My work rests on telling the truth about a life.
Service files sometimes hold difficult things: disciplinary records, courts martial, medical entries, circumstances a family has never heard. I will always tell you what I have found before anything is recorded. You may decide not to proceed. You may decide an episode should not be published.
You cannot ask me to alter what the record says. That standard is what gives this work its worth, and it is the same one I hold myself to in every episode I have made.
Samantha L.G. McCrea
Founder of Memory and Valour. I have worked in genealogy since 1988; I am the author of six volumes in The Great War Series, and I study Heritage Resource Management at Athabasca University.
My great-grandfather, Spr. A.R. Milburn, was killed in France in 1917. His remains were never recovered. That absence is why this work exists.
Bring me a name. I’ll tell you honestly what’s there.
Before you write:
It helps to know your ancestor’s name, along with whatever else identifies them: a service number, a birth year, where they were born. And which war, or roughly which years.
Then tell me what you already know, and what you’d most like to find out. The second matters more.
Photographs, letters, medals, or nothing beyond a name: either is fine. And if you know whether you’d want a published episode or a private recording, say so. If you’re not sure, we’ll work it out together.
A name and a question are enough to begin.
