“All the cumulative policies” Trump has promoted, including tax cuts and deregulation, “can’t be upended by a temporary Middle East skirmish,” Hassett said on Fox News. “This is really an economy that can’t be slowed down” added Hassett, director of the National Economic Council.

Hasset spoke as air raid sirens once again sounded in Israel and across the Gulf States to guard against another round of drone and missile strikes from Iran but before reports from the region said that a U.S. warplane had been shot down over Iran and the fate of the crew was unknown.

Later reports from several outlets said that one of the members of the two-member crew had been rescued by U.S. forces and a search was continuing for the second.

Hassett’s rosy analysis was prompted by the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that U.S. employers added 178,000 jobs in March, blowing past estimates that about 60,000 jobs would be added to payrolls.

In a post on X, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “The March jobs report blew out expectations with strong construction job growth and a surge in manufacturing job creation as trillions of dollars in investments begin to materialize.”

However, the March jobs report was based on BLS data collected by mid-March, which was before the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war, and did not gauge the impact of $4 gasoline, $104 crude or wild swings in the stock market indexes. The markets were closed Friday, and so the impact of the BLS report on the markets would have to wait for them to re-open Monday.

The jobs report also showed that the national unemployment rate ticked down from 4.4% in February to 4.3% in March, while the jobless rate for all veterans came down from 4.1% in February to 3.9% in March.

The closely-watched unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans also came down from 4.8% in February to 4.5% in March.

Health care added 76,000 jobs in March, construction added 26,000 and manufacturing added 15,000, while federal government employment continued to decline in March, losing 18,000 jobs, the BLS said. Since October 2024, the number of jobs in federal government has declined by 355,000, or 11.8%.

A Department of Defense suicide report found that 471 service members died by suicide in calendar year 2024, down from 531 in 2023, according to the report released Tuesday.

In the Department of Defense’s seventh-annual report on suicide in the military, the department found that even though the total force suicide rate decreased by around 11% for 2024’s calendar year, suicide rates have gradually increased in the active component from 2011 to 2024.

The department began collecting data on service members’ suicides in 2011 when the Defense Suicide Prevention Office was established. After accounting for age and sex, the increase in active component suicide rates from 2011 to 2024 reflects the increase in U.S. population suicide rates, the report says.

“Overall military suicide rates have not differed meaningfully from those of the U.S. population for most years since 2011,” the report states.

“This result indicates that the military suicide rates resemble trends in the country as a whole,” the report continues.

Like previous years, the majority of the active-duty service members who died by suicide in 2024 were enlisted males under the age of 30 — making up 64% of the service members who died by suicide during that year, according to the report.

Even as the active component’s suicides have steadily increased since 2011, the rate has decreased by around 16% from 2023 to 2024, the department found.

While the Reserve suicide rate decreased by approximately 14%, the National Guard suicide rate increased by around 13%. Suicide rates for the Reserve component, including the National Guard, have remained stable from 2011 to 2024.

Divorces or separated service members had a higher suicide rate compared to the overall active component between 2022 and 2024, while female service members who were 30 or older or a warrant or commissioned officer had a lower suicide rate.

The report states that firearm usage was the most common death by suicide method in the active component, Reserve and National Guard in 2024 and in the U.S. population in 2023. Poisoning was the leading method for attempted suicides, the report says.

“Recognizing that every death by suicide is a tragedy, the Department will continue to take action to support our men and women in uniform and their families, promote the wellbeing and resilience of the force, and take steps to prevent suicide in our military community,” the Tuesday statement announcing the report’s results reads.

To help service members in need of support, the Department of Defense has expanded the availability of clinical services, like telehealth, and service members can also self-refer for mental health evaluations as part of the Brandon Act, the report says.

In its 2025 suicide prevention campaign, the department focused on building connections across the military and reducing stigma, while the Defense Suicide Prevention Office uses social media as a way to reach service members.

The Defense Department has paired with the Department of Veterans Affairs, among other federal agencies, to increase publicly accessible mobile app usage that supports mental health, like Virtual Hope Box and Breathe2Relax.

For veterans, there has been a downward trend in suicides since 2018, shown by the February release of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ suicide prevention report for 2023. Over 6,000 veterans died by suicide in 2023, with roughly 17.5 veterans’ deaths per day, last month’s VA report found.

Unlike their forefathers, who were met with lethal sprays of machine guns and shells on the shores of the Pacific and Europe during World War II, these Marines were, almost comically, met by the mayor of Da Nang with girls placing wreaths around the Marines’ necks. Four American soldiers met them with a large sign stating: “Welcome, Gallant Marines.”

“Garlanded like ancient heroes, they then marched off to seize Hill 327, which turned out to be occupied only by rock apes — gorillas instead of guerrillas, as the joke went — who did not contest the intrusion of their upright and heavily armed cousins,” writes the Council on Foreign Relations.

While the U.S. had been involved in Vietnam for over a decade, with the U. S. Military Assistance Advisory Group existing in Vietnam as early as 1950, the arrival of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade historically marks the Americanization of the Vietnam War.

Many in the upper echelons of American policymaking welcomed the landings. However, Maxwell Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam at the time and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed strong reservations. He predicted that it would be difficult to “hold the line” on further force commitments.

His fears would prove accurate.

By the end of 1965, 185,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam. Less than three years later, the city that welcomed the Americans with handshakes and leis had become the host to high-level U.S. and South Vietnamese operations, including the headquarters of I Corps, the military zone encompassing South Vietnam’s northern provinces.

March of Folly

From the moment he was sworn into the presidency on Nov. 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson was hardened to the notion that he was not going to be the first American president to lose a war, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman in her book “The March of Folly”.

“Johnson’s idea was to fight and negotiate simultaneously,” she wrote. “The difficulty was that the limited war aim … was unachievable by limited war. The North had no intention of ever conceding a non-Communist South, and since such a concession could have been forced upon them only by military victory, and since such a victory was unattainable by the United States short of total war and invasion, which it was unwilling to undertake, the American war aim was therefore foreclosed.

“If this was recognized by some, it was not acted upon because no one was prepared to admit American failure. Activists could believe the bombing might succeed; doubters could vaguely hope some solution would turn up.”

As Johnson chose to fight and negotiate simultaneously, Operation Rolling Thunder began in earnest. The soon-to-be frequently interrupted bombing campaign had begun just prior to the sustained American ground campaign. The operation, which began on Feb. 24, 1965, had initially begun as a diplomatic signal to impress the North Vietnamese of America’s determination and serve as a warning that the violence would continue to escalate unless Ho Chi Minh “blinked.”

According to the Air Force Historical Division, Gen. Curtis LeMay argued that “military targets, rather than the enemy’s resolve, should be attacked and that the blows should be rapid and sharp.” When that outcome failed to arise after the first several weeks in March 1965, “the purpose of the campaign began to change.”

Throughout the next decade, more than 2.6 million U.S. servicemen and women eventually rotated through Vietnam. More than 58,000 of them died there, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now, with President Donald Trump weighing his next steps in the war against Iran and thousands of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division arriving in the Middle East, certain parallels have begun to emerge between the opening days of the wars with Vietnam and Iran.

Operation Epic Fury

Since Operation Epic Fury, a joint undertaking by U.S. and Israeli militaries against the Islamic Republic that began on Feb. 28, over 11,000 targets have been struck.

“Targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy,” Gen. Jim Mattis, who served as Trump’s first defense secretary, cautioned in a recent interview. “By that I mean 15,000 targets have been hit. There have been significant military successes. But they are not matched by strategic outcomes”

Now, according to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is putting together plans for weeks of ground operations in Iran as U.S. forces amass in the region.

Citing multiple U.S. officials, the Post report suggested ground operations could involve both conventional infantry and special operations elements, but would not yet rise to the level of a full-scale invasion.

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander in chief maximum optionality,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement provided to Military Times. “It does not mean the president has made a decision.”

The Post’s report comes as U.S. military assets continue to flood the region. On Friday, U.S. Marines and sailors assigned to the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group arrived in U.S. Central Command waters.

The Pentagon has also confirmed elements from the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters and a brigade combat team are deploying to the Middle East. Based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 82nd acts as the Army’s rapid-response force and is often among the first units sent to respond to emerging crises.

The report also comes on the heels of an Iranian missile and drone attack on Friday that injured a dozen U.S. service members at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia. Two of the 12 injuries are considered to be serious.

Thirteen service members have been killed in action and nearly 300 wounded during Operation Epic Fury, a joint undertaking by U.S. and Israeli militaries against the Islamic Republic that began on Feb. 28.

The majority of the wounded have since returned to duty, according to U.S. Central Command.

Jon Simkins contributed to this report.

But amid the festivities is a tradition, now in its third year, that intersects America’s favorite pastime and military service.

Ahead of Opening Day, Arlington National Cemetery placed official MLB baseballs — courtesy of the Nationals — on the gravesites of six men, all former baseball players turned citizen soldiers.

The baseballs were placed at the gravesites of:

• Luzerne “Lu” Blue: Blue, a D.C. native who rose to prominence under Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers. The first baseman had his career briefly interrupted in 1918 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving at Camp Lee in Virginia until war’s end.
• Abner Doubleday: This Union general was among those who defended Fort Sumter during the 1861 bombardment, rose to fame for his gallantry at Gettysburg and — supposedly — invented baseball, writes Colleen Cheslak-Poulton for the American Battlefield Trust. While the claim is pure fabrication, it does make for an entertaining tale.
• William Eckert: Lt. Gen. Eckert, who at the time of his commission was the youngest three-star in the United States Armed Forces, became baseball’s commissioner following the recommendation of Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay.
• Elmer Gedeon: Gedeon was a player for the Washington Senators before his time in the league was cut short when he was drafted in 1941. Gedeon was shot down and killed on a mission over France in 1944. He and Harry O’Neill are the only two MLB players to have been killed during World War II.
• Spottswood “Spot” Poles: Poles, a Negro Leagues outfielder known for his speed and batting average — think .487 — served in the 369th Infantry Regiment, aka the Harlem Hellfighters, one of the most renowned Black combat units of World War I. The all-Black unit would go on to spend 191 days in continuous combat, more than any other American unit of its size. During that time, about 1,400 soldiers were killed or wounded, suffering more losses than any other American regiment during the war. In his own right, Poles earned five battle stars and a Purple Heart for his heroism.
• Ernest Judson “Jud” Wilson: Wilson, who grew up in Foggy Bottom, D.C., played for the Negro Leagues Homestead Grays in D.C. between 1931-32 and 1940-45. The third baseman served in World War I as a corporal in Company D, 417th Service Battalion and was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. He is a member of the Ring of Honor at Nationals Park.

Here are seven foreigners who freely joined the fight for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

1. Baron von Steuben: Fraud Turned Hero

The Prussian’s resume was impressive. America’s diplomats in Paris, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, claimed he was once the major general and quartermaster general in the Prussian army, as well as a one-time aide-de-camp to the legendary warrior-king Frederick the Great. But Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, or Frederick William Augustus, Baron de Steuben, was a fraud. He had been none of those things.

And yet in America, he became a hero.

“[M]ore than any other individual,” writes historian Paul Lockhart, Baron von Steuben “was responsible for transmitting European military thought and practice to the army of the fledgling United States. He gave form to America’s first true army — and to those that followed.”

Despite his bolstered resume, the 47-year-old was a career soldier and did in fact have a keen military eye. He brought to the Continental Army a wealth of European military experience to rally an ill-clothed, starving and poorly trained army at Valley Forge into a professional force.

There, von Steuben introduced discipline, putting Washington’s entire army through Prussian-style drills. He noted to Washington that short enlistments meant constant turnover at the expense of order. There was no codified regiment size and different officers throughout the Continental Army used different military drill manuals meant chaos if other units attempted to work with one another.

“[It was] Steuben’s ability to bring this army the kind of training and understanding of tactics that made them able to stand toe to toe with the British,” historian Larrie Ferreiro told the Smithsonian.

Appointed inspector general of the Continental Army in May 1778, von Steuben’s methods categorically transformed the fledgling patriots before going on to write “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States,” the first military manual for the American army.

2. Casimir Pułaski: No English, all courage

“In the 13 months since the United States had declared its independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress had been unable to develop an effective mounted force or find men who could organize, lead and train one,” writes Ethan S. Rafuse. Yet in December 1776, after numerous defeats and retreats, Gen. George Washington called on the Continental Congress to change that.

“I am convinced there is no carrying on the War without them,” he wrote to John Hancock, “and I would therefore recommend the Establishment of one or more Corps…in Addition to those already raised in Virginia.”

Enter Casimir Pułaski.

Born into Polish nobility, Pułaski had made a name for himself under the Knights of the Holy Cross — the military arm of the Confederation of the Bar that opposed Russian rule.

As a cavalry commander, Pułaski earned widespread acclaim for his 1771 defense of the hallowed monastery of Częstochowa against 3,000 Russians.

However, the Pole was soon forced to flee and found himself in dire financial straits in France. He was soon offered a lifeline by Benjamin Franklin, who agreed to pay for Pułaski’s trip to America in June of 1777.

According to Rafuse, Franklin wrote to Washington lauding Pułaski as “an officer famous throughout Europe for his bravery and conduct in defense of the liberties of his country against the three great invading powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia” and suggesting that he might “be highly useful to our service.”

First an aide to Washington, Pułaski was soon made brigadier general in the Continental cavalry — where, despite not speaking a word of English, soon proved his mettle.

By 1778, Pułaski was awarded command of the “Pulaski Legion,” an independent cavalry unit composed of American and foreign recruits. The following spring Pułaski and his Legion made their way south to defend the besieged city of Charleston. In October that year, Pułaski was mortally wounded by a grapeshop while leading a cavalry charge during the Siege of Savannah. The 34-year-old’s heroic death established him among the American Revolution’s most famous foreign volunteers and earned him the moniker as the “Father of American Cavalry.”

3. Michael Kováts: Hungry for battle

While Pułaski might be known as the Father of American Cavalry, Michael Kováts de Fabricy shouldn’t be overlooked.

He arrived in America four months prior to Pułaski after declaring to Benjamin Franklin, “I am a free man and a Hungarian. I was trained in the Royal Prussian Army and raised from the lowest rank to the dignity of a Captain of the Hussars.”

“Kováts had an even more impressive military record than Pułaski,” according to Rafuse. “Born in Karcag, Hungary, in 1724, Kováts belonged to a noble family whose history of service to the Hungarian crown went back centuries. In Hungary as in Poland, cavalry was the most important element of the army, and for the same reasons: the country’s open plains and acquisitive neighbors — in Hungary’s case, Habsburg Austria and the Ottoman Turks.”

Kováts forged a fiercesome reputation as a brave and effective officer, declaring that he rose through the ranks, “not so much by luck and the mercy of chance than by the most diligent self-discipline and the virtue of my arms.”

As a mercenary soldier, Kováts found himself training participants in Poland’s nascent patriot movement, which included members of the Pułaski family. Like Pułaski, Kováts soon found himself in France and then on a ship to the fledgling nation of America to offer his services to the revolution.

Despite struggling to gain a commission, Kováts eagerly began training men within the Pułaski Legion in April 1778. In his new unit, writes Rafuse, Kováts “particularly emphasized the ‘free corps’ concept popular in Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. To preserve the strength of their rigorously drilled and tightly disciplined battalions of infantry, Eastern European military leaders began accepting into their service units of light forces to operate around the fringes of their armies.” It was here that, under Pułaski, Kováts was able to organize and train one of the first hussar regiments in the American army.

Kováts was mortally wounded by a rifle shot during a clash with the British on May 11, 1779, in defense of Charleston.

4. Tadeusz Kościuszko: Loser in love, winner in war

Commissioned a colonel by the Continental Congress in 1777, the 30-year-old Kościuszko soon established himself as one of the Continental Army’s most brilliant, and much needed, combat engineers — all thanks to an unsuccessful attempt to elope with a lord’s daughter back in Poland.

After discovering his brother had spent all the family’s inheritence, Kościuszko was hired to tutor Louise Sosnowska, a wealthy lord’s daughter. The pair fell in love and attempted to elope in the fall of 1775 after Lord Sosnowski refused Kosciuszko’s request. According to the Smithsonian, “Kosciuszko told various friends, Sosnowski’s guards overtook their carriage on horseback, dragged it to a stop, knocked Kosciuszko unconscious, and took Louise home by force.”

Broke, heartbroken, and perhaps fearing repercussions for his actions, Kościuszko set sail across the Atlantic in June 1776. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, John Hancock appointed him a colonel in the Continental Army that October, and Benjamin Franklin hired him to design and build forts on the Delaware River to help defend Philadelphia from the British navy, writes the Smithsonian.

The Pole oversaw the damming of rivers and flooded fields to stem a British pursuit following their victory at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777. This action bought time for the patriots to regroup and prepare for their first major victory of the war — Saratoga. Fortifying Bemis Heights overlooking the Hudson, Kościuszko’s design contributed to the surrender of General John Burgoyne and precipitated the French’s entry into the war.

From there, Kościuszko’s oversaw the defense of West Point, with his fortifications so thorough that the British never deigned to attempt an assault.

At war’s end he was promoted to brigadier general with Thomas Jefferson praising the Pole, “As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

5. Johann de Kalb: Died doing what he loved — fighting Brits

Who hated the British most during this time period? The French yes, but Germans were a close second.

Born outside the Prussian city of Nuremberg, Baron Johann de Kalb entered the service of France and fought in the Seven Years’ War against the British. He eventually rose to officer rank and was made a Knight of the Royal Order of Merit, according to the American Battlefield Trust.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, the veteran soldier saw a chance not only to fight for the ideals of the Enlightenment but to strike a blow to his old foe the British.

Initially denied a commission, a furious de Kalb was making his way back to France when he learned that the Marquis de Lafayette had influenced Congress to appoint him as major general. De Kalb survived the infamous winter at Valley Forge with George Washington and Lafayette, before taking command of 1,200 Maryland and Delaware troops in the war’s Southern theater in 1780.

His command would, alas, be short.

On the morning of August 16, 1780, Gen. Horatio Gates deployed to meet Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis in the now famous Battle of Camden. When Gates and his inexperienced militia broke ranks and began to run only de Kalb was left to defend against Cornwallis.

De Kalb and his infantry refused to retreat. Yet somewhere in the midst of melee, de Kalb fell — downed by some 11 wounds, the majority from a bayonet. Taken as prisoner by the British, de Kalb survived for three more days before supposedly telling a British officer: “I die the death I always prayed for: the death of a soldier fighting for the rights of man.”

6. Bernardo de Gálvez: Our Spaniard in Louisiana

A best friend is one with deep pockets — especially when you’re trying to win a war. And although Bernardo de Gálvez was never a soldier in the Continental Army, he certainly had the means to help supply the revolution.

As governor of the Spanish province of Louisiana, Gálvez, according to American Battlefield Trust, “began to smuggle supplies to the American Rebels — shipping gunpowder, muskets, uniforms, medicine, and other supplies through the British blockade to Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia by way of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.”

When Spain joined in the war effort against the British, Gálvez didn’t miss a beat and began planning a military campaign against the British where he eventually captured Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi and Natchez — all four formerly British ports.

However, Gálvez is best remembered for his role “in denying the British the ability to encircle the American rebels from the south by pressing British forces in West Florida and for keeping a vital flow of supplies to Patriot troops across the colonies,” during the rocky beginnings of the war.

Gálvez was officially recognized by George Washington and the United States Congress for his aid to the colonies during the American Revolution and remains one of eight people in history to receive honorary citizenship.

7. The Marquis de Lafayette: You know this guy

Last but certainly not least, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette. The skinny, red-haired 19-year-old had a family tradition of fighting against the English.

Three hundred years before he was born, writes James Smart, “a Gilbert Motier had ridden beside Joan of Arc as a marshal of France. In 1759, when Lafayette was two, his father had been cut in half by a cannonball at the Battle of Minden during the Seven Years’ War. In the newly declared and still embattled United States of America, Lafayette probably hoped to run across William Phillips, the officer who commanded the artillery that killed his father.”

Despite a growing feeling of irritation among the Continental Congress due to the high number of French officers applying for commission, the wealthy Lafayette was willing to serve without a salary and pay for his own expenses.

Wounded while commanding a fighting retreat at the Battle of Brandywine on Sept. 11, 1777, Lafayette soon earned the trust and admiration of George Washington.

In November of that year, Congress voted Lafayette command of a division, where the boy general served with distinction at the battles of Gloucester, Barren Hill and Monmouth.

Lafayette was instrumental in rallying crucial support in France for the patriot cause. By 1781, the then 24-year-old had grown out of his moniker as “boy general” and took command of an army in Virginia, playing a pivotal role in the entrapment of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, that eventually led to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.

The general remains beloved in America to this day, with numerous streets, statues, and buildings erected and named throughout the United States in his honor.

John Windom, who served as a program manager on the Defense Department’s adoption of the Cerner electronic health records platform before moving to the VA to manage its health records modernization program, was indicted for allegedly failing to report more than $16,000 worth of gifts.

According to a grand jury indictment filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Windom allegedly accepted cash and other items from at least seven people and companies supporting the VA’s Cerner Oracle health records contract. He met them regularly at a Maryland casino resort to mentor as part of a self-developed mentorship program on building government contracting businesses, the indictment said.

Court records say Windom allegedly accepted an $8,200 Louis Vuitton gift card, $2,000 in cash, $1,800 worth of casino chips, a $1,000 gift card, $2,000 in cash or casino chips and a $631 high-efficiency particulate air filter.

“As alleged, the defendant exploited his senior position for personal gain and concealed gifts and financial relationships that created serious conflicts of interest in the health care of our nation’s veterans,” U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said in a statement Wednesday.

“Such conduct is not only a betrayal of the public trust—it undermines confidence in the institutions dedicated to serving those who have sacrificed for this country,” Pirro added.

The VA’s health records modernization program began in 2017 under President Donald Trump’s first term, a sole-source $10 billion contract that followed the DOD’s award to Cerner for a new electronic medical records system.

The project was originally scheduled to take 10 years and cost $16 billion. But nearly nine years later, just six of the VA’s 170-plus medical sites use the program, which was paused in April 2023 following issues regarding safety and usability.

The VA plans to resume adoption this year, announcing last March that it would roll it out to 13 additional sites.

Windom served as executive director of the Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, he was reassigned to the position of deputy director of the Federal Electronic Health Management Office. He is a retired Navy captain with acquisition experience.

He allegedly accepted the gifts between June 2020 and November 2020, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Windom allegedly concealed from his leadership and ethics officials that he was “accepting, and sometimes demanding, extravagant gifts” from contractors and subcontractors working on the electronic health records system project.

Windom is charged with concealment of material facts, false statements and falsification of a record or document in relation to his failure to report his receipt of gifts, which he was legally obligated to do.

If found guilty of all charges, he faces more than 20 years in prison, as well as financial penalties.

The Justice Department noted that Windom is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty by the court.

A message left with Windom from Military Times was not answered by publication.

In a 50-48 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, to reinstate VA coverage of abortions.

Blumenthal said the ban, which went into effect last year, was the most restrictive in the federal health care system, noting that it bans the procedure in cases of rape or incest and prohibits physicians from advising veteran patients of their options.

“Many of them suffer from service-connected disabilities that increase the risks associated with pregnancy, and many have experienced military sexual trauma during their time of service. To betray them and take away this kind of health care — their ability to receive an abortion in the most harrowing situation — is unconscionable,” Blumenthal said during a press conference prior to the vote.

The VA finalized a rule Dec. 31 that prohibits the procedure at VA medical centers unless the veteran’s life is at risk. The new policy overturned a policy implemented in September 2022 that allowed the VA to provide the procedure or cover the cost in cases of rape, incest or endangerment of the life or health of the mother.

That policy, implemented by then VA Secretary Denis McDonough, was made in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, removing constitutional protections for abortions.

In overturning the 2022 decision, VA Secretary Doug Collins said veterans will continue to have access to the procedure in medical emergencies. He added that the change represents a return to VA regulations under administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

A federal law known as the Hyde Amendment bans the use of federal funds for abortion with exceptions for rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.

Democratic lawmakers say the VA change represents the most restrictive limitations on the procedure in the federal government. The Defense Department and other federal health agencies follow the Hyde Amendment, providing abortion services or covers the cost of the procedure in cases of rape, incest or threat to the mother.

“A female service member who was raped prior to transitioning out of the military … is no longer covered by the VA to have an abortion. If she was still on active duty, DoD would pay or perform the abortion. Even if she was serving in federal prison, she would be covered,” Disabled American Veterans Deputy National Legislative Director Naomi Mathis said during the press conference Wednesday.

Between September 2022 and August 2025, the VA had covered or provided abortions to roughly 100 veterans and 40 CHAMPVA patients, according to data provided by the VA.

Blumenthal’s proposal would have opened debate on whether to repeal the VA’s ban. The vote fell nearly unanimously along party lines, with 50 Republicans voting no and two Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joining 46 Democrats voting yes.

The motion failed.

“Republicans just voted to uphold an abortion ban for 462,000 women veterans — even in cases of rape, incest, or if their health is endangered. Shamefully, they are denying women veterans who have been raped or whose health is at risk the essential health care they need,” Blumenthal said in a statement after the vote.

Upon entering Guam’s harbor on June 20, 1898, instead of experiencing the expected whizz of bullets and the booms of a cannonade, U.S. Navy Capt. Henry Glass and his crew aboard the re-commissioned cruiser USS Charleston were greeted on the beaches by curious residents who mistook Charleston’s warning shoots as a salute.

No one had bothered to tell the residents on the island that they were at war.

The small, neglected island under Spanish rule hadn’t received a message from Spain since April 14, 1898 — a full month before hostilities broke out between their protectorate and the United States.

That did not stop the Americans from attempting to seize the far-flung Spanish holding.

MISSION TO GUAM

Earlier that month, upon receiving orders from Secretary of the Navy John D. Long “to stop at the Spanish Island of Guam … [and] use such force as may be necessary to capture the port,” the Charleston, with Glass at the helm, steamed toward the Spanish-held island.

One sailor recalled, “When the news of our destination and object was learned aboard the Australia there was considerable excitement, of course, and the cause of many pow-wows as ‘What about Guam and where is it anyway, and what do we want of it?’”

A POLITE DISCUSSION ABOUT WAR

Once they arrived in Guam, the Americans were hankering for a fight — Manifest Destiny on their minds — and soon began bombarding the fort at Santa Cruz.

Ironically, however, their act of violence was mistaken for a salute of respect, and the Spanish authorities on the island raced to obtain artillery to return the perceived salutations.

As Guamanian officials approached the Charleston by way of rowboat, they were shocked to learn that a state of war existed between the United States and Spain and that they were now technically prisoners of war.

Glass then dispatched Lt. William Braunersreuther to meet with governor Juan Marina Vega and collect the surrender of the small Spanish garrison.

According to Naval History and Heritage Command, Vega was taken aback that he had to go aboard the American vessel, as such an action was forbidden by Spanish law.

“I regret to have to decline this honor and to ask that you will kindly come on shore, where I await you to accede to your wishes as far as possible, and to agree to our mutual situations,” Vega responded.

Vega eventually acquiesced, along with surrendering his small Spanish garrison to the Americans.

LEFT IN QUESTIONABLE HANDS

Glass, eager to sail on to Manila posthaste to join Commodore George Dewey’s fleet, placed the island in the hands of Francisco Portusach, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen.

The former janitor was in the right place at the right time. Portusach’s only qualifying attribute was that he was an American, but that was enough for Glass, and he placed the island — and U.S. interests — in Portusach’s less than capable hands.

Unsurprisingly, after Glass’ departure, Portusach was unable to solidify his position as governor and was overthrown by Spaniard Jose Sisto, a former public administrator. Sisto, too, had a short reign and was quickly overthrown by the native Chamorro population.

The 1898 Treaty of Paris formalized the handover of Guam as a U.S. territory, which it remains today.

This story was originally published on HistoryNet.

A dozen Vietnam veterans returned to the Southeast Asian country — with all but one having not been back since their combat boots left the soil of Vietnam for the last time some 50 years ago.

“I got back from Vietnam in ‘68 and luckily, I didn’t experience any disrespect,” Jerry Melcher, a combat medic in the U.S. Army told Military Times. “Just experienced nobody wanted to acknowledge or talk about it. So I went home, took off my uniform and kind of stuffed it in my back pocket.”

Rudy Dixon, who served in an Army recon team from 1970-1971, had a similar experience.

“[I] didn’t talk about it much because didn’t nobody want to hear about it back then,” he said.

The veterans, who range in age from 74 to 80, represent America’s decades-long war in almost every facet by way of air, land and sea, including: a former infantryman, helicopter pilots, combat medics, a Navy boatswain’s mate and Dixon, a former recon soldier.

All 12 men were part of a weeklong trip earlier this month, organized by the Eagle Society, a Nashville-based nonprofit, and Forever Young Veterans, aimed at supporting, honoring and preserving the memory of the veterans who fought in one of America’s most contested wars.

The Eagle Society has done several trips with veterans, including a pilgrimage to Okinawa with veterans of the Second World War, but the trip to Southeast Asia, dubbed “Vietnam Revisited,” was a first for the society.

“How do we honor these veterans? How do we elevate a level of dignity and purpose and ability and honor?” Michael Davidson, founder of Eagle Society, told Military Times in a phone call prior to the eight-day trip. “Let’s help the country digest because … we’re really still processing that era. We are still dealing with issues that reverberated since that era — everything from geopolitics to civic division. So how do we use experience to expose us to all those issues and help the veterans while we’re doing it?”

The war in Vietnam represented a fracture in American society and politics, which ultimately gave way to something new entirely. For the veterans, however, shedding the uniform, did not shed the memories.

“A lot of my friends [came] back and got on drugs and alcohol,” Dixon said. “We were sort of poor when I grew up, so all I had on my mind when I got back was, is going to work.”

“People that’s never been in combat … you can tell them something and you can tell they don’t believe it. They can’t understand it because they’ve never experienced it,” Dixon continued. “A lot of things I just never would say anything about because I knew it be too unbelievable to them. So most people that I’ll talk to about it is [with] other veterans.”

After his tour in Vietnam, Melcher, the Army combat medic, became motivated to heal himself — and his fellow veterans. The combat medic-turned-Army psychologist became a mental health specialist, “in part for self-help,” Melcher said.

“That’s supposed to be some light-hearted humor,” Melcher quipped.

“I never heard the term post-traumatic stress disorder. I just didn’t know what it was,” he continued. “And I didn’t talk to anybody and no one talked to me. Even my friends, my best buddy from high school, is a vet. We never talked about it.”

But even as a medic, Melcher was called to help.

“I talked with guys a lot, meaning, not only was I treating their physical sense, but trying to treat other things. When people got ‘Dear John’ letters and wanted to talk to somebody … I don’t know why, I just wanted to help and wanted to listen, and that’s what I ended up doing.”

Vietnam Revisited presented an opportunity for veterans to talk and reminisce among one another, but as Davidson put it, “when you get on the ground, you see, touch, feel, learn … it deepens engagement.”

The trip took participants through Hanoi, Da Nang, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City, however, the veterans “could opt out of anything” they wanted to opt out of, said Davidson.

“We try to make sure we our goal is to create the space for them, whatever it is, whatever version of grieving, healing, restoring, renewing, any version of it. We are going to respect and support their process. So our goal is to create options now,” Davidson added.

Unrecognizable

For veterans like Dixon, as a member of 1st Battalion, 52nd Infantry Regiment, a combat unit assigned to the 198th Infantry Brigade within the 23rd Infantry Division Americal Division, his memories of Vietnam don’t include city campaigns, but crawling through jungle tunnel complexes and traversing dense foliage against the threat of a hidden enemy.

His recon team, according to Dixon, worked in and off firebase LZ Stinson — going out for seven days, coming back in for four and rotating back and forth like that for nearly a year.

The war-torn nation he left was very much not the same more than 50 years on.

“I don’t know what I was expecting when I went back, but it was a totally different country,” said Dixon. “It wasn’t even the same place. I’ve never seen such a beautiful place in my life. … The beaches the South China Sea there and China beach and all it was just, man, it looked better than Hawaii.”

“I’ve never seen more courteous people. I mean, they acted like they wanted you there. They, you know, done everything they could to make your stay there as pleasant as they could. And I just, I couldn’t get over how the people were there toward us,” Dixon said of his time back in Vietnam.

For Dixon, memories of his service include shards of light.

While in basic training, a senior drill sergeant had found out that Dixon was likewise from Mississippi. Every morning while standing at attention, Dixon recounted, “he’d walk down that line and he’d get to me and he’d put his nose right, nearly against my nose, and he’d say, ‘Dixon, you ain’t never gonna make no soldier.’”

“And I’d say, ‘I know it, won’t you let me go home?’”

Nicholas “Nic” Crews of Marietta, Georgia, died Wednesday as a result of injuries suffered in a shooting at the clinic. He was airlifted from the scene for advanced medical treatment but succumbed to his injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

His assailant, Lawrence Charles Michels, 51, of Jasper, was shot and killed by law enforcement, the GBI said in a release Thursday.

Michels was in the clinic for a walk-in mental health consultation; Crews was the clinic’s social work case manager, according to the GBI.

“Rest in peace to a dedicated @DeptVetAffairs colleague, Nicholas Crews, who died as a result of this week’s tragic shooting at the Pickens County VA Clinic in Jasper, GA. We are making sure Nicholas’ family, coworkers and local Veterans have the support they need during this difficult time,” VA Secretary Doug Collins wrote Thursday on X.

Crews leaves behind a wife and young children. According to the Atlanta-based 11Alive WXIA, Crews’ wife, Alyssa, is expecting the couple’s third child and is due in two weeks. He celebrated his 34^th birthday on March 14.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will be investigating the shooting along with the GBI. The VA’s Office of Inspector General is also assisting with the case, according to VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz.

Following the shooting, Michels left the clinic and encountered an armed civilian and police officers. Michaels, armed with a handgun, opened fire and was struck and killed.

According to the American College of Surgeons, health care workers are five times more likely to experience violence than other occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the rate of injuries among medical professionals from violence rose by 63% from 2011 to 2018 and has escalated significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pickens County VA Clinic, part of the VA Atlanta Healthcare System, opened in 2020 and serves thousands of veterans in northern Georgia, providing primary care, mental health treatment, lab services and more.

The clinic remains closed through the remainder of the week. The VA has provided veterans and staff access to counseling and chaplain care, Kasperowicz said.

A family friend has set up a GoFundMe to help in the wake of Crews’ death.

“Our hearts are broken as we grieve the tragic loss of Nic Crews. He was deeply loved by so many and will be missed more than words can express,” wrote Amber Williams, a registered nurse from Cartersville, Georgia.

The historian died on March 14 at a Hiroshima hospital, according to Japanese media reports.

Mori was just eight years old when the B-29 carrying the earth shattering “Little Boy” bomb dropped on the city. Less than a mile and a half from the center of the blast, Mori was thrown into a nearby stream that protected him from the firestorm that followed.

“I found myself inside the mushroom cloud,” Mori would later write. “It was so dark that when I held my hands up about 10 centimeters in front of my face, I couldn’t see them.”

In the ensuing days, Mori scavenged for food and water but only found piles of charred bodies instead. When he did find water, it was poisoned with radiation. Unknowingly, Mori drank it anyway.

As a young man, Mori worked at a brokerage house and, later, at a piano manufacturer. “But I’d always wanted to be a historian,” he told The New York Times in 2016.

And so the budding historian began spending his weekends researching the aftermath of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing. Mori conducted his own interviews with survivors, double-checking official histories with contemporary newspaper reports.

“There were so many mistakes in the histories,” he told the Times.

One interview with a local university professor, however, set Mori on a decades-long quest. The professor had found a list of names in a government archive and, not sure what to do with them, handed them off to Mori.

The list contained the names of 12 American airmen who had been shot down over the area on July 28, 1945. They had been killed alongside the Japanese when their fellow Americans had dropped the bomb. Their deaths had gone unrecognized, with both governments keeping quiet about their presence in the city.

“When I first learned of the American victims, I realized that none of them had been officially recognized as a victim of the atomic bomb. It was shocking to me,” Mori told Stars and Stripes in 2015.

It took him three years before he found anyone connected to the Americans.

Eventually, in the 1970s, declassified American documents backed up his findings. His subsequent book, “A Secret History of U.S. Servicemembers Who Died in Atomic Bomb,” detailed the fate of the airmen.

Mori worked tirelessly to bring the death of the Americans to light — building a memorial for them at his own expense and advocating for their inclusion at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The name of the first airman was added to the peace memorial in 2004; the additional 11 were added in 2009.

In 2016, Mori was recognized by former President Barack Obama, who was the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima. The pair’s subsequent embrace at the memorial grounds gained international attention.

“My ultimate hope is to send out a message that war deprives people of everything,” Mori told Stars and Stripes in 2008. “We should never repeat the mistake.”

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., kicked off a series of hearings Wednesday on legislation that would reauthorize several significant VA programs and said he wants to create a comprehensive authorization process — an omnibus-style procedure — that would ensure a yearly legislative review of all VA programs, some of which have not been reauthorized for 30 years.

Bost said such oversight is needed to ensure that the VA remains accountable to its customers, taxpayers and Congress.

“When programs fall short, it is the duty of this committee to ask questions, demand answers and make the legislative changes necessary to fix the problem,” Bost said. “Reauthorization is not simply a procedural exercise. It is how Congress evaluates whether programs are working as intended and whether the department is using its authorities responsibly.”

Last year, the Congressional Budget Office identified more than $122 billion in expenditures at the department with lapsed authorizations. According to the office, Congress has allowed 18 authorization laws — those that set policy and recommend funding levels — for the VA to expire.

Bost said the committee needs to tackle reauthorization to ensure that Congress has “the means to modernize [the] VA.”

“[These bills] are designed to restore accountability, improve transparency and ensure that VA remains focused on veterans,” Bost said.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, members of Congress have complained that the VA has become significantly less responsive to congressional inquiries and oversight. During a hearing in January, Bost scolded VA officials for repeated delays in providing responses and testimony to Congress, saying he considered preventing the department from testifying given its lack of timeliness.

Likewise, at the same hearing, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Mark Takano of California, said the delays showed “enormous disrespect.”

“It is inexcusable. This should never happen again,” Takano said. “Get your testimony here on time, especially when we’re reviewing $1 trillion [in spending].”

Bost has discussed creating a single authorization bill for the VA since last year, sharing his vision first with Politico Pro.

While none of the 27 bills considered Wednesday was a comprehensive authorization proposal, the collection featured several prioritized by House Republicans for review, including bills that address the VA’s restructuring of its health care system, evaluation of the VA’s national drug formulary and reforms of its leasing and construction and contracting and procurement process.

“The goal is simple: better coordination, stronger accountability and better outcomes for veterans,” Bost said.

For the NDAA, House and Senate Armed Services subcommittee members draft portions of the separate bills for their areas of interest, then vote and move their section along to the full committee for consideration. At each step, lawmakers can propose amendments, which are then voted on by committee and either rolled into the bill or rejected. Eventually, the bills are voted on by the respective chambers, and the versions are reconciled in conference before both are passed again. The final bill is then sent to the president’s desk for signing.

For the VA, the authorization process has been piecemeal, with lawmakers proposing policy bills as they see need. For example, other bills proposed Wednesday included legislation that would expand dental care to all veterans in the VA health system and create a Toxic Exposure Advisory Committee to support implementation of the PACT Act.

VA officials at the hearing said that while they “strongly support congressional oversight and engagement,” the department has concerns on comprehensive legislation, saying it “could cause serious disruption to VA benefits and services.”

“VA believes that a clear accounting of programs and services could be achieved through additional avenues such as additional requests for information, briefing request, additional oversight hearings or requiring additional justification materials,” said Phil Christy, the VA’s chief acquisition officer.

During the hearing, Takano said he wasn’t sure that the NDAA strategy would work but added that he is “certainly willing to try.”

“I welcome an effort by this chamber by our House and by this committee to reclaim its authorities and reaffirm our Article I powers by doing the real oversight the VA so desperately needs,” said Takano, referring to the portion of the Constitution that established Congress and gave it the powers to create laws, raise revenue and declare war.

Bost noted that committee oversight is a constitutional responsibility and VA must be accountable.

“It is a task … not an ask,” Bost said.

A memorandum of understanding announced last week by the department gives VA attorneys the legal authority to enter into state court guardianships or conservatorship proceedings in cases where veterans don’t have family or legal representation to determine medical treatment.

VA officials say the process will help hundreds of veterans hospitalized at VA facilities who are unable to transition to more appropriate settings.

“Our new partnership with the Justice Department reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring that every veteran receives timely, appropriate care, even in complex cases,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a release.

VA officials said the agreement is aimed at helping roughly 700 veterans languishing in VA facilities, but the announcement, which noted that the agreement includes some veterans who are “either homeless or at risk of homelessness,” raised concerns among advocates that the authority could be applied to a larger population of veterans, such as those living on the streets.

Carl Blake, CEO of Paralyzed Veterans of America, said court-ordered guardianships or conservatorships could result in a veteran’s loss of rights or lead to unnecessary institutionalization.

Blake asked how the VA previously met the needs of incapacitated veterans and whether they would have access to their own legal representation — paid for by the VA — if necessary.

“Guardianship can severely — or permanently — restrict an individual’s autonomy, civil liberties, and access to community-based supports,” Blake said in a statement on March 13. “Veterans who have served our country deserve care that honors their dignity, preserves their rights, and supports their ability to live in the community with appropriate services.”

Under the program, VA attorneys can ask a state court to determine if a veteran needs a court-appointed guardian to “represent the veteran’s best interests” to determine appropriate medical care, VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in an email to Military Times.

According to Kasperowicz, the decisions would be made with “full due-process and process rights for the veterans involved and continuous court supervision of the guardian,” and the court — not the VA — would appoint the representative.

Despite the VA’s assurances, California Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said the agreement puts VA in a position where it is responsible for a veteran’s well-being as well as the “legal driver of stripping veterans of their rights.”

“Guardianship should always be a last resort, after all less restrictive options have been exhausted, to ensure veterans’ rights are protected. Veterans fought for our freedom and theirs. The federal government should not be engineering ways of taking it away,” Takano said in a statement on March 11.

Kasperowicz said the agreement is not an effort to institutionalize veterans against their will. Instead, he said, it provides the VA an avenue for removing veterans already stuck in VA hospitals who could benefit from other settings.

“We are trying to get them in the most appropriate care setting for their needs,” he said.

Blake asked the VA and Justice Department to commit to transparency, allowing for public scrutiny and independent oversight to ensure that affected veterans do not lose their civil liberties.

“VA must carefully consider any broad use of guardianship as a care-planning shortcut and adopt policies with robust safeguards,” Blake said.

The tool will not, however, be used to pursue potentially fraudulent past claims, a concern that arose recently among veterans following a congressional hearing that divulged the program’s development.

Using a Microsoft data analytics program, the VA program will use information gleaned from forms known as Disability Benefits Questionnaires to identify patterns in language or omissions that could indicate fraud.

VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz said the effort, expected to be rolled out sometime this year, is designed to detect filings from companies that pose as legitimate medical providers or file claims on behalf of veterans and charge them excessive fees.

The number of for-profit companies that assist veterans with disability claims has skyrocketed since 2006, when criminal penalties were removed for those who charge veterans for the service. The PACT Act — the landmark legislation that expanded disability benefits to millions of veterans exposed to burn pits and other pollutants — also has presented these companies with business expansion opportunities.

While these companies market themselves as helping veterans navigate the challenging VA claims process and get appropriate disability ratings, veterans’ advocates say the businesses, which they refer to as “claim sharks,” prey on veterans and charge them exorbitant fees.

While veterans are permitted to hire companies or attorneys to appeal claims decisions, the law prohibits anyone from charging for assistance with initial filings.

But that hasn’t stopped for-profit companies from stepping in. And while some may offer legitimate services, others have been targeted by the VA as bad actors.

Over the past 10 years, the department sent “cease and desist letters” to at least 40 companies, according to an investigation by The War Horse and NPR published in December. The VA will use the Power Business Intelligence program to look for fraud.

“[The program] relies on manual data entry and analysis to help identify patterns that may help VA identify when organized fraud rings are posing as legitimate medical providers and preying on Veterans (for example, by excessively charging them),” Kasperowicz said in an email to Military Times.

In 2024, the VA Office of Inspector General said of nearly 32,000 claims completed in 2022, 69% contained “one or more indicators” of potential fraud risk, with an estimated monetary value of $390 million.

Given the amount of money, it’s no wonder the VA is being proactive in investigating disability compensation claims, said David Pineda, an Army veteran who runs a company that helps veterans with claims.

“In education, there were diploma mills where people were using GI Benefits to go to schools — these mills were unethical and illegal and [the VA] cracked down on it. In this space here, it’s a similar thing happening. Some organizations are DBQ mills,” Pineda said in an interview.

During the traditional claims application process, a VA Compensation and Pension examiner completes a veteran’s DBQ and assesses a veteran’s medical records, physical abilities, medications and daily activities. The review determines a veteran’s disability rating which sets the level of benefits and disability compensation.

This claims process can be navigated without cost to the veteran; with assistance provided by accredited veterans service officers at veteran organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars; through veterans service officers at state and county governments; and at the VA.

For-profit companies can assist veterans for appeals, but some companies unlawfully are charging for initial assistance and in other cases, are charging enormous fees on backdated benefits awards.

One Army veteran who spoke to Military Times said Trajector Medical, one of the companies on the VA’s cease and desist list, provided little assistance and after he canceled his contract, charged him thousands.

The new program is designed to look at discrepancies in DBQs identified by the VA inspector general, such signs of alterations, incorrect contact information, information from a medical examiner more than 100 miles from a veteran’s address or contradicting findings that may indicate fraud.

James Smith, deputy executive director of the VA’s Policy and Procedures for Compensation Service office, said in a February congressional hearing that to develop the program, the VA would scan DBQs back to 2010, which would give it the data and patterns needed to identify future problems.

But a story on Smith’s disclosure in Stars and Stripes generated concerns among veterans that the tool would be used to identify fraudulent claims filed in the past 16 years.

“When veterans hear that the VA is scanning private DBQs for fraud, the community at large interprets this as ‘they’re coming after me,’ whether they have committed fraud or not,” said Clayton Simms, a Marine Corps veteran who created a YouTube channel, The CivDiv, to discuss veterans issues.

VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz said Monday that this is not the case. The VA is only using older claims “to analyze patterns that could indicate fraud and are using that analysis to look at new claims,” he said.

“Those older claims won’t be reopened or reprocessed,” Kasperowicz said. “No veteran’s claim or benefit will be reduced or denied because of this effort.”

In its January 2024 report, the inspector general made five recommendations to the department for improved training and reporting processes and authenticating DBQs, including developing a system for identifying inauthentic or potentially fraudulent questionnaires.

A bill is under consideration in Congress that would require the VA to identify and report instances of fraud in DBQs. The legislation would require the VA to establish a process for veterans and claims processors to report suspected fraud.

VA officials said in the February hearing that the legislation would be a duplication of efforts.

“VA’s been proactive in this space,” Smith said. “We recognize that there are some problem players out there, but we’ve developed training that the claims processors are required to take so that they can understand their responsibility to potentially identify fraudulent DBQs, as well as a defined process for them to report suspected fraudulent DBQs up.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information obtained by The War Horse and NPR through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose ruled in favor of the American Federation of Government Employees National Veterans Affairs Council, ordering the VA to recognize the bargaining contract that represents roughly 300,000 VA employees.

In her decision, DuBose noted that an executive order issued in March, 2025 by President Donald Trump allowed federal agencies that are involved in national security to terminate union contracts, including the VA, which may provide medical care to the general public during national health crises.

But the VA did not cite national security concerns in ending the AFGE contract, DuBose said.

Instead, the VA cited cost and an inability to terminate employees for performance issues or bad conduct as reasons for terminating AFGE’s agreement.

“Other than the one, vague, post hoc statement about national security that appears in [a] declaration, there is zero indication from the [VA] that the termination decision would have been made or implemented without the retaliatory motive,” DuBose wrote.

She also said some unions clearly were favored over others in the VA’s decision process since the department did not terminate all agreements, and the termination did not follow the executive order, which allowed decisions on an “agency or subdivision basis and not union by union.”

The VA ended most of its collective bargaining contracts with federal unions last August, affecting thousands of employees represented by AFGE, the AFL-CIO, the National Association of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United and the Service Employees International Union.

VA officials said the move would make it easier to “promote high-performing employees” and “hold poor performers accountable.”

“Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said at the time. “We’re making sure VA resources and employees are singularly focused on the job we were sent here to do: providing top-notch care and service to those who wore the uniform.”

AFGE filed a lawsuit in November over the termination, which included the VA stopping the withholding of union dues from employees’ paychecks.

In their suit, AFGE officials said the move was harming employees and the union, with employees seeing a decline in benefits, such as a decrease in parental leave from 16 weeks to 12 weeks, and loss of safeguards, while the union has been losing members.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said Friday that DuBose’ ruling holds the VA accountable. He added that AFGE will monitor the VA to make sure it complies with the decision.

“Secretary Collins singled out AFGE and our members for retaliation because we refused to stay silent about cuts and changes at the VA that would harm veterans. His decision to exempt other unions from the President’s executive order and then terminate AFGE/NVAC’s collective bargaining agreement made the retaliation impossible to deny,” Kelley said in a statement.

It’s not clear how long the reinstatement will last. The VA did not respond by publication to a request for comment.

But the department is likely to appeal the decision, and the outcome is uncertain. In a separate lawsuit filed by AFGE on behalf of all government employees, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the administration’s termination of collective bargaining agreements was not retaliatory, and it overturned a preliminary injunction put in place by a different federal judge.

Before the start of the second Trump administration, the VA had about 450,000 employees, nearly 80% of whom were represented by a union.

VA employee unions that were allowed to keep operating following the executive order included those representing 4,000 VA police officers, firefighters and security guards.

Kim Opitz, Retzsch’s great-niece, a freelance writer who lives in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, told Kare 11 News that her “mother never, never let us forget about him.”

Retzsch, a member of Company C, 1st Marine Raider Battalion, 1st Marine Raider Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Amphibious Corps, was first reported missing in action on July 9, 1943, during the Battle of Enogai on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands.

The New Georgia campaign, dubbed Operation Toenails, was led by Rear Adm. Richmond Turner, with amphibious forces landing at various points on New Georgia on June 30, 1943, beginning a campaign that lasted until the Japanese evacuated Vella Lavella on Oct. 7.

On July 9, Company C came under intense Japanese fire as they rushed toward enemy positions. In his post-war account, “Bloody Ridge and Beyond,” Marine Corps veteran Marlin Groft wrote, “All hell broke loose up front. C Company had blundered into a prepared killing field of Nambu machine gun nests, aided by snipers cleverly concealed in the surrounding trees.”

Retzsch was one of three Marines reported missing after the battle.

According to DPAA, from November to December 1947, units from the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company searched for Retzsch, but after conducting an unsuccessful search of the Bairoko Harbor and Enogai Inlet, the case was closed.

Interred as an unknown at the Enogai Cemetery in 1943, Retzsch was then exhumed twice before final burial in Manila. The Marine’s remains were subsequently designated X-182, while Retzsch’s name was recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.

In 2019, however, “after researching losses on New Georgia,” according to DPAA, they “recommended disinterment of several Unknowns potentially associated with losses in the Bairoko-Enogai area.”

That’s where Opitz’s DNA, submitted to the military in 2006, came into play.

In 2025, DPAA, using dental and other DNA analysis, identified Retzsch’s remains and contacted his great-niece.

“It was like elation, like I’ve never felt so spiritually high,” Opitz told Kare 11 News. “He’s going to be brought home with honors.”

Retzsch will be buried on April 13, 2026, in Marana, Arizona.

Lewis, the co-pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay, was en route to Japan from the Pacific island of Tinian when he began recording. Now, his account, written during and in the immediate aftermath of dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, is for sale.

His “blow by blow description,” which includes his famous reaction: “My God what have we done,” has just been put up for sale by Dan Whitmore, a rare book dealer in Pasadena, California, the Washington Post was first to report.

The price: $950,000.

This will be the fifth time that Lewis’ record has appeared at auction: the first being sold for $37,000 by Sotheby’s in 1971. Lewis, present for the auction, reportedly said that he believed that the account was of great historical importance, adding that he “didn’t know what else to do with it.”

It sold once again for $85,000 at Sotheby’s in 1978; $391,000 at Christie’s in 2002 (as part of the Malcolm Forbes sale); and $543,000 at Heritage in 2022, according to Whitmore.

The eight-page account was made at the behest of William L. Laurence, a science writer for the New York Times, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on what he coined as the “Atomic Age.”

As the official historian of the Manhattan Project, Laurence was the only journalist to witness the Trinity test and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. He was supposed to journey alongside Enola Gay’s crew but arrived too late at the bomber’s base on Tinian.

Over the course of the 12-hour flight from Tinian to Hiroshima and back again, Lewis “recorded both what he saw — including a sketch of the mushroom cloud over the city — and what he felt — apprehension, confusion, shock, awe — as he and his crew entered history,” according to the rare book dealer.

Much of Lewis’ writing occurred in near-total darkness, and as he notes, halfway through, he ran out of ink and finished his account in pencil.

Leaving the Pacific island at 2:25 a.m., Lewis recorded at 7:30 a.m. that “we are loaded, the bomb is now alive and it’s a funny feeling knowing its right in back of you. Knock wood. We started out climb to 30,000ft…well folks its not long now.”

As the B-29 approached the city, Lewis wrote: “There will be a short intermission while we bomb our target.”

At 8:15 a.m., the Enola Gay dropped the bomb.

“Little Boy” fell harmlessly for roughly 45 seconds before detonating, instantly killing 70,000 people in the initial blast. At least 100,000 deaths directly resulted from the attacks. A minimum of another 100,000 people also died from illnesses caused by radiation exposure in the weeks, months and decades that followed, according to the National Archives.

In that moment, Lewis wrote:

“We [Bob Caron our tail gunner] got excellent pictures and everyone on the shop is actually crossed out dumbstruck even though we had expected something fierce, it was the actual sight that we saw that caused the crew to feel that they were a part of Buck Rogers 25 century warriors. This essay on the bombing results could go on indefinitely by telling how huge it grew, even after an hour [and half.] [400] miles from the target, then the billow of smoke reached [5500] ft and contained very weird colors. But perhaps the Japs that are left can save me the trouble and let us know. We then headed ho[m]e on 150° and [our ship] sure had a happy [but puzzled crew]. Mission home was as briefed weather the same everyone got a few cat naps.”

Lewis, perhaps more reflective, later recorded in the days after the attack, “I am certain the entire crew felt this experience was more than anyone human had ever thought possible. It just seems impossible to comprehend. Just how many did we kill? I honestly have the feeling of groping for words to explain this … My God what have we done. If I live a hundred years I’ll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind.”

That later recollection was taped into place by Lewis shortly after the bombing. The yellowed tape, according to Whitmore, is still there.

In August 1945, Lewis was a confident, rambunctious 27-year-old with a reputation as a skilled pilot and determined ladies’ man. But the events of that summer day left him haunted.

In his later years, Lewis took to sculpture as a form of healing.

His piece — a mushroom cloud with streams of blood flowing down the side — was later given to Dr. Glenn Van Warrebey, an American psychiatrist who treated Lewis, seemingly for post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to the Washington Post, Whitmore has plans to exhibit the notebook at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, which begins April 30.

While there are two firsthand accounts of the Hiroshima bombing by the Enola Gay crew — the other being Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk’s navigator’s log — only Lewis’ contains a uniquely emotional commentary of the day’s historic events.

While the menace of German submarines were becoming a growing threat in the Atlantic Ocean, nothing could be farther away from the U.S. Navy submarine F-4 (SS-23) as it performed maneuvers off Honolulu, Hawaii.

On March 25, however, the Navy was reminded that one didn’t need a war to be imperiled by the sea, as F-4 sank with Lt. Alfred L. Ede and all 20 of its crewmen.

This was the first American submarine lost at sea and the Navy aimed to raise it and find out what went wrong. But the very act of doing so put two more lives in the balance, in a peacetime drama that would eventually be judged worthy of awarding Frank Crilley the nation’s highest award for valor.

In March 1900, Crilley followed his brother into the Navy at the young age of 16 and soon focused his interest in deep sea diving. By March 1915 he had risen to Chief Gunner’s Mate in the Navy’s experimental diving team — a unit as prestigious as it was hazardous.

In mid-April, five of the divers, G.D. Stillson, Frederick Neilson, Stephen Drellinshak, William K. Loughman and Crilley, arrived at Honolulu with hard hat diving equipment, a recompression chamber and a physician, to seek the lost sub.

Making the first dive on April 16, Crilley located F-4 a mile and a half off Fort Armstrong, 304 feet below the surface — thereby setting a depth record that would stand for 25 years.

At that time the sub was upright, but Crilley determined that more cables would be needed to raise it. This would be no easy task. In order to get 20 minutes of dive time at 300 feet, about three hours were required for the descent and ascent due to the underwater pressures.

“Deep water divers need to descend slowly to allow air spaces, such as in the ears and mask, time to equalize to the pressure changes,” according to the DOD. “Slow ascents are required, too, because divers can build up nitrogen in their tissue due to breathing pressurized air. A slow return to the surface gives the body time to eliminate that nitrogen and reacclimate without risking decompression sickness.”

On April 17, Chief Gunner’s Mate William K. Loughman descended on the submersible and examined one of the wire hawsers attached to it. He then began his ascent, but at that point, things again began to go wrong. A ground swell caused the cable to jerk, fracturing his hip and causing the sub to turn over. Worse, at a depth of 275 feet his lifeline and air hose became so badly fouled by the hawser that he could neither ascend nor descend nor, for that matter, free himself.

What followed was described in Crilley’s citation:

“On account of the length of time that Loughman had already been subjected to the great danger due to the depth of water, and the uncertainly of the additional time he would have to be subjected to the pressure before he could be brought to the surface, it was imperative that steps be taken at once to clear him. Instantly recognizing the desperate case of his comrade, Crilley volunteered to go to his aid, immediately donned a diving suit and descended, after a lapse of time of two hours and 11 minutes, Crilley was brought to the surface, having by superb exhibition of skill, coolness, endurance and fortitude, untangled the snarl of lines and cleared his entangled comrade so that he was brought, still alive, to the surface.”

On Aug. 29, in a diving and engineering precedent, the Navy finally managed to raise F-4, which was found upside down. The fatal flaw turned out to be corrosion of the lead lining of the battery tank, which had let seepage of seawater into the compartment, causing the captain to lose depth control of his ship.

Although the drama off Fort Armstrong made Crilley a legend in deep diving circles, his career had just begun.

He rose to ensign in the Naval Reserve and later a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. With the latter, he was awarded the Silver Lifesaving Medal in April 1916. In 1917 he held command of the derrick salvage barge Salvor.

Returning to active duty, Crilley assisted in the repair or raising of a variety of ships. This included the submarine S-51, and after submarine S-4 was sunk in a collision with Coast Guard destroyer Paulding in December 1927, his role in raising it on March 17, 1928, earned him the Navy Cross.

Amid all that, on February 15, 1929, he was finally called to the White House to receive the Medal of Honor — 14 years late — from President Calvin H. Coolidge.

In 1931, Crilley served as second in command of the submarine Nautilus on its ultimately abortive 3,000-mile voyage to the North Pole, as well as salvaging the presidential yacht USS Mayflower. In 1939 he helped raise the submarine Squalus.

The pioneering naval diver died on Nov. 23, 1947 at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Rep. Kelly Morrison, an OB-GYN and Minnesota Democrat, has teamed with Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., on a bill that would make infertility a presumptive condition under the PACT Act, the 2022 legislation that expanded health care and disability benefits for post 9/11 veterans and other service members exposed to toxic substances, including burn pits.

The Warrior Infertility Act would speed coverage for in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments without requiring veterans to prove their infertility was directly tied to military service.

For veterans like Jenna Schmidtke, a former Army sergeant and medic, the change would shave months, if not years, off the claims process. Schmidtke, who deployed to Iraq in 2007, developed a disease tied to burn pits that led to infertility, and she filed a claim under the PACT Act.

But the 13-month process to receive approval stole precious time from her reproductive years, said Schmidtke, now 39.

“It’s not just a battle wound; it’s like a wound of your soul, of your very being,” Schmidtke said during an interview with Military Times. “It’s something we can address, and we can take care of our women veterans now.”

According to a 2018 survey by the Service Women’s Action Network, 37% of active-duty women faced chronic problems while trying to conceive or carry a pregnancy to term, while 30% experienced infertility while trying to get pregnant.

The infertility rate of military women is more than twice the civilian rate, according to the group.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has covered assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF and adoption fees for combat-injured veterans, since 2016. But proving their infertility is the result of a service-connected condition, other than a severe injury, remains a challenge, according to Morrison.

“Access and coverage of IVF continues to be out of reach for far too many veterans,” Morrison said in a statement Thursday. “Recognizing infertility as a service-connected condition will ensure that our veterans do not fall through the cracks.”

Roughly 43% of the 930,000 women veterans enrolled in VA health care are of reproductive age. Morrison’s office did not say how many veterans would be eligible under the bill but added that it would apply to eligible male veterans as well.

This bill is supported by several military and veterans advocacy organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Military Officers Association of America, Disabled American Veterans and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

It also has the support of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

“Including infertility as a presumptive condition under the PACT Act will ensure our nation’s veterans, exposed to a wide range of toxins during military service, receive the care and benefits they have earned and deserve,” TAPS President and founder Bonnie Carroll said.

McDonough will take the helm of the organization April 14, according to a Feb. 25 announcement by its board of directors.

Since leaving the VA in January 2025, McDonough has maintained a low profile, declining media interview requests and serving as a scholar-in-residence at his alma mater, Saint John’s University, in Collegeville, Minnesota. He is currently teaching a course on health care finance and policy at the school.

Last year, Feeding America served 48 million people — providing 6 billion meals through its food banks and community partners. In a statement, McDonough called the organization an “extraordinary network” and said he looks forward to continuing to serve the American public.

“Throughout my career, I’ve seen what’s possible when people come together with purpose and compassion, and when organizations combine those values with clear goals, hard work and unwavering accountability to the communities they serve,” McDonough said.

McDonough’s appointment will follow the retirement of Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, who has served as the CEO to Feeding America since 2018. Shawn O’Grady, the organization’s chairman of the board, called Babineaux-Fontenot an “extraordinary leader” who had vision and compassion, and said McDonough will continue to work to bring charitable, corporate and public sector groups together to fight hunger.

“[McDonough] has spent his life serving this country at the highest levels of government, always guided by integrity, deep faith and a profound respect for all people. We are grateful to welcome a leader whose heart for service, high standards, and focus on results match the urgency of this moment,” O’Grady said in a statement.

McDonough served as VA secretary from 2021 to 2025, where he was responsible for the second largest federal department, which expanded to more than 450,000 employees during his tenure and serves 9.6 million veterans.

During his time as VA secretary, McDonough encouraged veterans to use their VA benefits and pledged to build a department that could accommodate their needs.

Under his watch, the VA implemented the PACT Act, landmark legislation that expanded health care and benefits for veterans exposed to environmental hazards, and its budget grew from roughly $217 billion in fiscal 2020 to more than $360 billion.

The department rolled out a new electronic health record system in late 2020 under the first Trump administration but McDonough paused the program following a number of setbacks that included incidents of patient harm.

The VA also expanded women’s health care to include access to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In addition, under McDonough, an equity team was created to study the impact of race on disability claims decisions.

The current administration has undone two key initiatives of the Biden-era VA, to include access to abortion and elimination of diversity programs. It is also seeking to restart and accelerate the electronic health records system this year, with an estimated completion year of 2031, as well as expand access to community care through programs that will allow veterans to make it easier to get appointments with non-VA doctors.

McDonough served as White House Chief of Staff under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. Previous academic experience includes working on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

In addressing his new role, McDonough called it a “profound honor.”

“I’m eager to listen, to learn from this extraordinary network, and to work with those neighbors and partners across the country as we drive toward a future where every family has the nutritious food they deserve to thrive.”

“Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl ‘Ach! It’s the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!’”

For many laypeople, that 1970 oratory spectacle that was their first — and perhaps only — introduction to Patton. And it stuck.

Scott’s portrayal of Patton has become almost interchangeable with the veritable World War II general.

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, however, in a two-day symposium taking place on March 13-14, is exploring more than just the “blood and guts” of Patton, but an in-depth exploration of one of the war’s most iconic — and controversial — commanders.

“I think that the reality of Patton and the image that a lot of people have of Patton diverges pretty greatly,” Bradley C. Hart, the World War II military historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, told Military Times.

“When we started planning for the symposium, I went back and did a bunch of reading on Patton and realized that — I don’t have any polling to support this — but I think if I put a picture of George C. Scott in front of people they would think that that’s actually a picture of Patton. I think that 1970 film shapes the way the vast majority of Americans view this man today.”

History and memory are fickle things, and something the museum hopes to tackle during its two-day symposium. In the case of Patton, his early death in December 1945, for better or for worse, helped to shape his legacy.

“There’s a lot of movies about Eisenhower,” Hart noted. But “there’s no movie called Ike, right? I think Patton uniquely lends himself to that sort of discussion of history memory.”

“I think the part I’m most excited about, actually, is sort of digging into that specific nexus between history and memory,” Hart adds. “How is our memory of Patton related to the reality of Patton as individual?”

Gen. Raymond E. Mason’s upcoming lecture, “Patton in Myths, Movies, and Monuments,” as well as the museum’s featured conversation, “Patton’s Shadow: The Making of a Hero in Modern Memory,” will address “the mythology and also try to unravel the real story,” says Hart.

Yet, despite this unraveling, according to Hart, “this is a man who, from my research, gets more interesting the more you dig into.”

The Patton of today commands attention as a near-mythic figure: He cultivated this swagger, this larger-than-life persona; earned the admiration of the GIs who served under him; and died relatively young after winning one of the greatest victories of the war, the Battle of the Bulge, and holding key command of the “Ghost Army” in the lead up to D-Day.

He was rightly lauded in the postwar years by his peers, and famously, by his former adversaries.

Adolf Hitler called him the American cowboy.

German general Günther Blumentritt, a key planner of the invasions of France and Poland, wrote in a study for the U.S. Army after the war, “We regarded General Patton extremely highly as the most aggressive Panzer General of the Allies, a man of incredible initiative and lightning-like action ... His operations impressed us enormously, probably because he came closest to our own concept of the classical military commander.”

Alfred Jodl, who served as Hitler’s chief of operations from 1940 until the end of the war, told American interrogators, “He was the American [Gen. Heinz] Guderian. He was very bold and preferred large movements. He took big risks and won big successes.”

Guderian himself, after Germany’s surrender, told his Allied captors, “From the standpoint of a tank specialist, I must congratulate him for his victory since he acted as I should have done had I been in his place.”

Patton emerged from the war as one of the most recognizable — and written about — American figures of World War II. A fact, perhaps, that the general would have loved.

But he was also a man who wrote poetry. He frequently wrote touching letters to his wife, Beatrice, such as, “I am not so hellish young and it is not spring, yet still I love you just as much as if we were 22 again on the baseball grandstand at West Point the night I graduated.”

In another letter, after a gasoline lantern exploded and badly burned his face, Patton wrote, “I love you with all my heart and would have hated worst to have been blinded because I could not have seen you.”

He also was at the forefront of mechanized warfare from the early aughts of the 20th century.

“Obviously, we know how [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur’s story turns out because of what happens in the Korea period,” says Hart. “I think part of the fascination with Patton is we don’t know how that story might have turned out, right?”

Featured speakers for the National WWII Museum symposium include leading scholars and historians, such as Rick Atkinson, Kevin M. Hymel, Nathan C. Jones, Rob Citino, Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, Greg Fontenot, John Nelson Rickard and Roland Gaul, among others.

“Even if you’ve read a lot about Patton, there’s seemingly always something else to learn,” says Hart. “This is a man who’s whose life is complicated. He had a long career. He’s more influential in the shaping of the contemporary military doctrine, especially armored doctrine, than a lot of people appreciate. So I think that’s where a lot of even our best-read, best-informed guests, are going to going to find out something new.”

The two-day symposium will be live-streamed on the museum’s YouTube channel for those hoping to tune in remotely.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 24, 1916, Walsh joined the Marines as a private in 1933, serving as an aircraft mechanic and a signalman. But Walsh wanted to be in the air, not just fixing the planes, and in 1937 Walsh earned his wings and spent the next few years serving on aircraft carriers, according to the DOD.

When war broke out in December 1941 Walsh was stationed with VMF-121 at New Bern, North Carolina, but by January 1943 Walsh was sent to the South Pacific with VMF-124 — the first operational Marine squadron to fly the F4U Corsair, although the Navy had introduced it earlier to its own fighter outfit, VF-17.

The F4U Corsair was the first single-engine fighter to exceed 400 mph and, despite a rocky start (the Corsair’s carrier takeoff and landing characteristics had been disappointing), became one of the most capable carrier-based fighter-bombers of the war.

Walsh’s first frontline flight was less than auspicious: during a test flight on Feb. 1, he crash landed his Corsair. Nevertheless, its overall characteristics convinced the Marines that for once their latest Navy hand-me-down had the potential for a winner.

Walsh and his fellow pilots worked out tactics to make the most of its performance and ruggedness while avoiding dogfighting with the Zero.

On April 1 he put his concepts to impressive practice when he shot down two A6Ms and an Aichi D3A “Val” dive bomber.

On May 13 he downed three Zeros and damaged a fourth east of the Russell Islands to become the first Corsair ace and subsequently was promoted to first lieutenant on May 31. The following month he added another Zero and a Mitsubishi F1M2 floatplane to his score over Bougainville.

But August was to be a month of violent ups and downs for Walsh.

On the 12th he and 15 squadron mates were escorting Consolidated B-24 bombers when they encountered a swarm of Japanese Zeros over Choiseul Island near the Solomon archipelago.

VMF-124 claimed three of the fighters, two of which were credited to Walsh (in actuality the Japanese lost only one), but in turn a Zero shot up his hydraulics, forcing him to land “hot” at Segi Point with gear and flaps retracted, crashing into another Corsair on the airfield.

Undaunted, he was back in the air on the 15th, providing cover for the Allied landing at Vella Lavella, destroying two Vals off the north coast and a Zero north of Cracker Base. On the 21st he downed a Zero near Baga Island. The 23rd saw him probably shoot down a Zero northwest of Vella Lavella, followed by two Zeros confirmed in the Munda area.

On August 30 VMF-124 rose from Barakoma Airfield to escort B-24s bombing Buin on southern Bougainville. In the course of the day’s missions Walsh suffered engine trouble, but he quickly landed at Munda, apportioned another Corsair and flew to rejoin his formation over Kahili.

He was still separated from his escort when, alone, Walsh encountered roughly 50 Zeros over the objective. Walsh “unhesitatingly attacked,” according to his Medal of Honor citation, “striking with relentless fury in his lone battle against a powerful force. He destroyed four hostile fighters before cannon shellfire forced him to make a dead-stick landing off Vella Lavella.”

He was subsequently picked up by Navy Seabees who had watched his Corsair crash into the sea.

On Sept. 7, 1943, VMF-124 was called home after three combat tours, in which Ken Walsh had earned four Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Air Medals and seven strike/flight Air Medals.

Back in the United States, on Feb.8, 1944, Walsh, already the first Corsair to become an ace, also became the first Corsair pilot awarded the Medal of Honor when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pinned it on him for his tackling of the odds on August 15 and 30, 1943. On the same day, he was promoted to captain.

Walsh’s war was not quite over, however.

After instructing at Jacksonville, Florida, the Marine pilot returned to combat with VMF-222, flying fighter bomber missions from Samar, Philippines, from April to June 1945, and from newly secured Okinawa from June to the end of the war.

Continuing his Marine career, Walsh flew transports for VMR-152 in Korea, from 1950 to 1951, was promoted to major in April 1952 and to lieutenant colonel in October 1958. He retired from the Corps on Feb. 1, 1962.

Walsh continued to work with veterans’ groups and remained active with the men he fought alongside. According to the DOD, an article in the 1994 Orange County Register, Walsh also sought out several Japanese pilots, some who may have even shot him down.

“There is a camaraderie among pilots,” he told the newspaper. “You respect the skills of the other guy. Most have a code of ethics. I would never strafe a downed pilot. Most of them wouldn’t, either.”

Walsh died from an apparent heart attack on July 30, 1998, as he prepared to depart his hometown of Santa Ana, California, for the National Fly-In at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He is buried Arlington National Cemetery.

Following the soldier’s 1921 interment, the burial site was unguarded and often treated as a tourist attraction by visitors.

That is, until 1925, when “concern over the lack of respect led Army Maj. Gen. Fox Conner, the Army’s deputy chief of staff, to order an armed military guard on March 24, 1926,” according to the Department of Defense.

The first sentinel was posted the very next morning, with units from the 16th Brigade, 8th Infantry Division, 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment and the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Calvary Regiment beginning what would become an unbroken vigil. The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as “The Old Guard,” was designated as the Army’s official ceremonial unit on April 6, 1948.

World War I

The English and French had honored and laid to rest their unknown soldiers in 1920 — in Westminster Abbey and at the Arc de Triomphe, respectively. Then, in October 1921, it was the United States’ turn.

The task of selecting a body to represent the thousands of unknown dead from the Great War was daunting. The United States still had not identified 1,237 dead soldiers, and, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, extraordinary care had to be taken to select a body that would not be identified later.

Four bodies were exhumed from the U.S. cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel. Arriving at the city hall of Chalons-sur-Marne, France, on Oct. 23, French and American soldiers then rearranged the caskets to further obfuscate their origins.

The following day, Army Sgt. Edward Younger, an enlisted man, walked slowly toward the four flag-draped caskets. He had been given the honor of choosing the United States’ Unknown Soldier.

According to Arlington National Cemetery, Younger recalled that he thought of himself and his comrades as just “good, average soldiers” and believed that “none of the men had been decorated, nor had performed signal feats.” Speaking to a Washington Post reporter in 1930, he recalled that the process seemed arbitrary — simply being told, ‘I guess you’re the one, Younger. … You select the Unknown.’”

Younger approached the caskets, carrying white roses in his hand given to him by a former member of the Chalons City Council who had lost two sons in the war.

Younger circled the caskets three times, awed by the honor and responsibility he was tasked with. He later recalled in a first-person account:

“I began a slow march around the caskets. Which should it be? Thoughts poured like torrents through my mind. Maybe these buddies had once been my pals. Perhaps one of them had fought with me, had befriended me, had possibly shielded me from a bullet that might have put me in his place. Who would even know?”

Transported aboard a special funeral train, the Unknown Soldier was carried to Paris, and then on to the port town of Le Havre the following day. Marine Capt. Graves Erskine and his 38 hand-picked Marines readied the steel gray casket for its sea voyage by placing it in a rough wooden box wrapped in waterproof canvas.

The casket, too large to be carried through the hatch of the USS Olympia and to relative safety below, had to be lashed to the bow of the ship.

However, the ship almost didn’t make it. Two storms were roiling the ocean prior to the Olympia’s departure causing the Olympia to repeatedly roll to the point of capsizing.

Whether divine intervention or a fleeting weather pattern, the Olympia and its crew battled through, arriving on time and to much fanfare as the ship and its crew made its way up the Potomac River.

Ultimately laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony attended by President Warren Harding, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, senior government representatives, Medal of Honor recipients and other military groups, the Unknown Soldier was finally home.

World War II and Korean War unknowns

Following the end of the Second World War, Congress authorized that two “unknown” candidates — one from the Pacific and one from the Western theater — be included in the selection, with the original date set for interment on Memorial Day, May 30, 1951.

However, with the outbreak of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman postponed the interment.

According to the Society of the Honor Guard, by 1958, Congress directed the selection of a Korean War Unknown Soldier to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and be buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside the World War II Unknown Soldier.

Col. Glenn T. Eagleston, a combat pilot in both WWII and the Korean War, was designated to select the unknown candidate to represent the Pacific Theater, while U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Edward Joseph O’Neil, was designated to make the selection of the European Theater unknown candidate.

Hospital Corpsman First Class William R. Charette, the U.S. Navy’s only active-duty recipient of the Medal of Honor, ultimately made the final selection of the WWII unknown.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded the Medal of Honor to both.

Vietnam War controversy

A decade following the Vietnam War, there were calls from the American public to designate another unknown.

Known only as X-26, the remains of an American service member was being held in the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. Found near a stream in An Loc in 1972, X-26 had remained unidentified for over a decade when the remains were selected to represent the nation’s missing from that war and buried at Arlington on Memorial Day, 1984.

During the ceremony, President Ronald Reagan awarded the Medal of Honor to the unknown.

However, in 1994, in the face of mounting evidence that their son, Capt. Michael J. Blassie, was the Vietnam War unknown, the family of the Air Force pilot submitted a formal request to the DOD to exhume X-26’s body and submit it for DNA testing.

Of the exhumation, then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen remarked that, “we disturb this hallowed ground with profound reluctance. And we take this step only because of our abiding commitment to account for every warrior who fought and died to preserve the freedoms that we cherish.”

The remains were taken to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the test result confirmed on June 28, 1998, that the Unknown Soldier was indeed Blassie.

Several weeks later, an MC-130E aircraft from his former unit, the 8th Special Operations Squadron, flew his remains back to his home state of Missouri. He was then re-interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis County, Missouri, according to the Society of the Honor Guard.

The marble crypt that once honored him was ultimately changed to read: Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958–1975.

In its monthly jobs report, the BLS stated that the unemployment rate for all veterans dropped from 4.5% in January to 4.1% in February, while the rate for post-9/11 veterans went down a full percentage point from 5.8% in January to 4.8% in February.

The drop in jobless rates for veterans came as the rate ticked up for the general population from 4.3% to 4.4%, reflecting the loss of 92,000 jobs cut by employers in February, the BLS said.

The manufacturing sector lost 12,000 jobs in February and a total of 90,000 jobs in 2025, the BLS said, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost blue-collar jobs by pressing industries to bring back factories from overseas.

The troubling jobs report was based upon BLS data that was mostly compiled by mid-February, which was customary for the BLS and was well before the impact of the Feb. 28 start of the war with Iran and the resulting spike in oil prices and stock market turmoil could be gauged.

In her comments on the BLS report, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, placed the blame for job losses on the administration of former President Joe Biden. In a statement, DeRemer said, “I’m optimistic that job growth will continue as we undo the Biden-era catastrophe of soaring prices and stagnant wages.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, also sought to shrug off the troubling signs in the BLS report that he said came as “something of a surprise,” since “the economy is really strong.” He told CNBC that the BLS report was influenced by winter storms and strikes on the West Coast but “on average it’s about what we expect to be seeing.”

Despite the overall loss of jobs in February, the numbers in the BLS report show that “employers still want to hire veterans,” Kevin Rasch, Warriors to Work regional director at the Wounded Warrior Project, said in a phone interview with Military Times.

In previous years, the task was to convince employers that veterans were assets to their workforce, Rasch said, “but now the word is out” that veterans bring reliability, discipline and leadership skills to the job.

As a result, the unemployment rate for veterans has consistently been in the 3-5% range, and “that’s a solid place for us to be.” The concern now is on how the conflict in the Middle East will affect the labor market going forward, Rasch said.

“There is definitely the potential for impact, so we’re definitely watching to see what happens, but right now all we can do is serve those we’re serving,” Rasch said.

The concerns about the jobs market are continuing to pile up, said Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union.

“The war in Iran only adds more uncertainty to an already uneasy mood. Companies are going to be even more reluctant to hire this spring until the war ends and they can see consumers still spending. It’s a tense time for the U.S. economy,” Long said in a statement to Military Times.

A bill that would authorize the president to award the Medal of Honor to Maj. Nicholas Dockery received unanimous approval in the Senate Tuesday night after Sen Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, brought it up for a vote along with bills to award two other Medals of Honor.

Dockery, 41, who works at U.S. Special Operations Command’s office in the Pentagon, was recognized as Military Times’ Soldier of the Year in 2022.

At the time, he was the only Army officer to have been awarded two Silver Stars for valor in the post-9/11 era, and the only living military officer to have done so.

This congressional authorization, first introduced in the House, would upgrade one of those Silver Stars by two awards.

Dockery, then a lieutenant, had been deployed to Afghanistan’s Kapisa province as a platoon leader with 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Light).

While working closely with an Afghan platoon to provide security for the provincial governor’s compound on Oct. 2, 2012, Dockery’s unit was ambushed by Taliban forces armed to the teeth with rocket launchers, grenades and machine guns.

According to his medal citation, Dockery risked open ground to move back and forth multiple times as his troops engaged the enemy, helping to rally them and reinforce Afghan allies.

When word came to him that one U.S. soldier, Staff Sgt. Eric Mitchell, had been wounded, Dockery immediately went to their defense, killing one enemy soldier with his carbine rifle as he moved deeper into the compound.

Having gathered the four soldiers inside the courtyard, Dockery worked to organize a counter-attack to clear the space, even as the enemy countered with heavy fire and called in reinforcements. At one point, Dockery used his own body to shield another soldier from the blast of an enemy grenade. Every soldier in the group sustained wounds in the onslaught.

As Dockery took stock of things, he realized that one soldier, Sgt. Jack Hansbro, was missing.

In a nearby alley, he found the sergeant being dragged away, unconscious, by two Taliban fighters. He charged at the fighters and killed them both, then turned his attention to Hansbro, providing CPR and life-saving first aid.

As the fight continued, Dockery risked the open roof of the compound to signal with smoke grenades to the gunships that would ultimately lay down suppressive fire and save the men.

Dockery, who would separately earn a second Silver Star, would go on to complete Special Forces deployments to Costa Rica and Colombia, among other places, leading an Operational Detachment-Alpha and serving as aide-de-camp to the leader of 1st Special Forces Command.

Beyond the field, he completed Yale University’s global affairs graduate program, a prestigious and exclusive White House fellowship, and the Douglas MacArthur Leadership award, recognizing top company-grade officers.

The question of upgrading his valor award was first raised around 2019 by retired Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, who had just completed a tenure as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York — Dockery’s alma mater.

The recommendation kicked off an Army chain of command review process that would take the better part of seven years.

Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind., introduced the House bill on Jan 21 to award the Medal of Honor to Dockery, an Indianapolis native.

“Maj. Dockery demonstrated extraordinary heroism, going above and beyond the call of duty, while serving in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, and selflessly risked his own life many times to save his soldiers,” Baird said in a statement.

Sen. Todd Young, the senior U.S. Senator from Indiana, heartily endorsed the award.

“Maj. Nicholas Dockery is very deserving of the Medal of Honor,” he told Military Times in a statement. ”He demonstrated sacrifice and unwavering commitment to our nation and his fellow soldiers during his time in Afghanistan, and I am glad that Congress recognizes this incredible Hoosier for exactly what he is — a hero.”

The Army Decoration Board must next make a recommendation about whether to award Dockery the medal, which will then require approval at every level of the chain of command up to the president.

While SOCOM declined to make Dockery available for comment Wednesday, he shared some of his feelings about service in a 2023 Purple Heart commemoration speech at Mount Vernon, in which he also reflected on the 2012 firefight.

“In every humbling moment leading America’s finest warriors, I’ve perpetually felt the challenge of living up to the standards they so rightfully deserve,” Dockery said at the time. “Honoring their trust, recognizing their sacrifices and matching the courage of those beside me demanded a deeper and more profound commitment than I ever envisioned.

“To sacrifice, confront adversities with unyielding determination, and deeply understand the ripple effect of our decisions are the burdens carried by our nation’s sons and daughters. Yet, it is the very cost we shoulder to defend and celebrate American values.”