Ryan Hendrickson spent 22 years in uniform learning to find the things buried in the dirt that are meant to kill people. When the U.S. left Afghanistan, he discovered he no longer knew who he was without that work.

“I had no identity anymore, because my entire military career had been wrapped up in Afghanistan or Iraq,” the retired Green Beret told Military Times.

That void, and what he eventually filled it with, is at the heart of “Safe Ground: A Green Beret’s Mission to Remove Ukraine’s Landmines,” a documentary now streaming on Prime Video in the U.S. and U.K.

The film debuted Sept. 12, the anniversary of the day in 2010 when Hendrickson stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan while trying to rescue an Afghan soldier.

The Special Forces engineer sergeant recovered and deployed to Afghanistan seven more times.

In 2016, he earned a Silver Star for leading an IED-clearing team through a Taliban ambush in Baghlan Province. After retiring from the 7th Special Forces Group, he went back as a contractor, leaving in July 2021, shortly before the final U.S. withdrawal.

He came home hurt, confused and drinking heavily.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hendrickson felt a pull he couldn’t shake. He had no ties to the country. What he did have was his father’s longtime warning that regret is a miserable way to finish a life.

“I knew if I got to be an old man, and I didn’t at least go and try, I would regret it,” he said.

He flew into Poland in March 2022 with roughly 10 bags of donated humanitarian supplies.

Contacts on a Ukrainian missionary team asked him to bring body armor if he had it, plus two less tactical items: American Reese’s cups and beef jerky. Passing between drivers and safehouses, he reached Kyiv about three days later.

The process felt familiar. Hendrickson compared it to Robin Sage, the final exercise of Special Forces training, set in a fictional country at war.

“Well, everything went back to my training. It’s like, this is Robin Sage,” he said.

Volunteering with the missionary group Youth With A Mission, he was driving a bus into threatened areas the day he arrived, evacuating women, children and the elderly.

After Russian forces pulled back from around Kyiv, the team moved into newly liberated towns such as Bucha with food, medical supplies and shelter materials. He said the work “completely rewired my brain after Afghanistan, and now I had my purpose, and I had an identity back.”

As residents returned home, they began hitting landmines, booby traps and other explosive remnants left in the war’s wake.

Hendrickson started working with Ukrainian territorial defense units, doing what Green Berets do: train, advise and equip. He would fly home, raise money for detectors and safety gear, donate it to a unit and move on to the next one.

In October 2022, that cycle became Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal, a nonprofit he says has since carried him back to Ukraine 13 times.

Along the way, he came to believe the mission could help other veterans, arguing that “a lot of veterans’ mental health revolved around lack of purpose, service, and identity.” He began bringing veterans over as funding allowed.

At the organization’s recent gala, he announced an expansion, the Tip of the Spear Veterans Humanitarian Corps, which is meant to cover everything from mine clearance to reconstruction, agriculture, teaching and medical work.

“In the military we were trained to protect the people of America and our way of life through war. But now, we’re utilizing these same skills, but for saving lives and rebuilding. So you go from killing to healing,” he said.

When producer Colby Barrett, a former Marine captain, first pitched a documentary, Hendrickson said no. They talked for more than a year before he agreed, and Hendrickson said Barrett funded the production himself.

“Safe Ground” is part of Faith in War, a documentary series from the creators of “A Faith Under Siege.”

Hendrickson credits his faith as a huge driving force in his life and his work.

He added that Europeans often tell him he isn’t like a normal American. He pushes back. “I’m extremely normal. I am your normal American,” he said. “There’s Americans that are so much better than I am, and this is what we do as Americans, and this is what we do as veterans.”

The mission also gave him the courage to confront his own wounds. Hendrickson said suicide was once “on the table for me. I had that line in the sand that if things got worse than this, then I had my out.”

He later underwent ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT treatment at a clinic in Mexico, the same psychedelic therapy explored in the veteran documentary “In Waves and War.”

“But the fighting inside myself has stopped,” he said, adding that he isn’t sure whether he has reached a peace agreement with himself or just a cease-fire.

As a Green Beret, Hendrickson said, “I would have a very hard time looking in the mirror because all I would see is failure.” That has changed.

“I’m proud, you know, of the man that’s staring back at me in the mirror,” he said.

Now almost 50, he is exploring similar work in Nigeria and Burma. His final objective is the country where his story began.

“Before I’m finished with my mission, I will be back in Afghanistan, and we will be helping the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

For veterans who have drawn their own line in the sand, his offer is simple: “Let me take you on a mission.”

The cuddly red creature and his Sesame Street buddies have teamed up again with the Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy to continue their work for military preschool-aged children. The Muppets address topics and issues such as deployments, relocation, homecomings, transition to civilian life, stress, grief, the “new normal with a parent with physical or mental injuries,” and others.

All the resources are free and available at SesameStreetforMilitaryFamilies.org.

The new package promotes a whole-family approach to well-being. It includes the “Move with Elmo” game, which features choices at each stage of an animated walk in the park, where children can choose an exercise demonstrated by Elmo along the way, with periodic water breaks.

At each stop, they can choose an exercise and either exercise the entire body or move only their arms. Children get a dose of numbers with each exercise, too. The game provides digital stickers after each activity that children can drag over to their digital coloring pages at the end. Their grown-up can help print their coloring page.

Since its launch in 2006, Sesame Street for Military Families has provided research-based resources especially for military and veteran families.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street,” developed the programs in partnership with DoD and military families. They’ve carefully researched how to relate sometimes complex messages in ways children can understand.

Videos, articles, digital tools, printable activities and provider resources have helped millions of military-connected families navigate the various aspects of military life.

“As we celebrate this milestone, we’re introducing new resources that make it easier for families to stay active, build healthy habits, and spend quality time together,” Rocio Galarza, vice president of U.S. Educational Programs for Sesame Workshop, said in an announcement. “Whether it’s moving with Elmo, trying new family activities, or creating everyday routines, these tools help children grow stronger, healthier and ready for whatever comes next.”

The Sesame Street programs specifically for military children are part of its long-standing educational work for the larger population of young children.

Buzz Bissinger, author of The New York Times bestselling book Friday Night Lights, and its subsequent film’s director, Peter Berg, are teaming up to deliver the true story of The Mosquito Bowl, which saw 65 Marines of the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, facing off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa.

Based on Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars, who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand.

Netflix dropped the official teaser trailer Wednesday, featuring Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry, Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman, Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

As the days of December 1944 passed on Guadalcanal, the island was beset with rumors of where and when the Marines would ship out. It also became the home to some lively trash talk.

Relief from the daily drudgery came over sips of beer and the promise that the “29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two,” writes Bissinger.

That promise swiftly took shape into an all-American sporting event — some thousands of miles from home.

These men were not, according to Bissinger, run-of-the-mill former collegiate football players. Within the 29th alone came an “All-American running back from Purdue who had set a scoring record in the Big Ten; an All-Missouri Valley Conference end; starters from Cornell, Notre Dame, Illinois and Duquesne; and five former captains, including from Notre Dame, Illinois and Purdue.”

The 4th was no slouch when it came to its “roster” either. The unit touted a two-time All-American wide receiver from Wisconsin and another at center from the University of California; an Ivy Leaguer who had started with the New York Giants; and starters from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Fordham, Montana and Ohio Northern, according to Bissinger.

On Dec. 24, 1944, the 65 Marines strode out onto a “field” made up of dirt, pebbles and shards of sharp coral, wearing cut-off dungarees and T-shirts with numbers stenciled on the front. Roughly 1,500 Marines ringed the field with a broadcast on Guadalcanal-based Mosquito Network going out to various Navy and Marine units fighting across the Pacific. The score, according to Bissinger, was occasionally flashed to destroyers at sea.

Tragically, it would be the last game many of the footballers-turned-Marines would play. Fifteen of the 65 players who suited up for The Mosquito Bowl were killed during the Typhoon of Steel.

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25.

Carpenter earned the nation’s highest military honor for his actions on Nov. 21, 2010, in Marjah, Afghanistan. When a grenade landed near him and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio during a firefight, Carpenter threw himself toward the blast to shield his teammate. He was unconscious for five weeks afterward and lost an eye and most of his teeth, along with sustaining numerous other serious injuries.

We’re honored to be partnering with U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, Kyle Carpenter, on the Call of Duty Endowment (C.O.D.E.) Valor Pack. Coming day 1 on October 23 to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

The C.O.D.E. Valor Pack will be available on Xbox Series… pic.twitter.com/t9IWo89vxu

— Call of Duty Endowment (@CODE4Vets) August 21, 2026

President Barack Obama presented Carpenter with the Medal of Honor at the White House in 2014, making him the youngest living recipient at the time.

The Valor Pack is the latest entry in a long-running tradition for the Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s charity dedicated to helping veterans land quality jobs after leaving the service. Proceeds from the bundle will go directly to that mission.

It follows a similar release tied to Black Ops 7, which featured retired NASA astronaut and 9/11-era special operations veteran Chris Cassidy, and comes on the heels of the Endowment’s operator bundle honoring Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green, the first female combat veteran featured as a playable character in the franchise.

Since its founding in 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed more than 150,000 veterans into civilian careers, funded entirely through Activision Blizzard’s overhead support so that all player donations go straight toward job placement.

Modern Warfare 4 launches Oct. 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. An open beta for all players runs Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, following a preorder beta already underway.

According to a memorandum that circulated on social media, eligible soldiers in the 9th Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart who reenlist by Nov. 14 will be authorized a four-day pass that aligns with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, or GTA 6, at the end of November.

An Army official confirmed that the document, signed by the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Ryan D. Hodgson, was authentic.

“The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals,” said Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, with the 3rd Infantry Division’s public affairs office.

To qualify for the video game spree, soldiers must re-up for at least two years, Tomko said. So far, 20 out of 130 eligible soldiers have given Uncle Sam a few more years in exchange for 96 hours of simulated criminal bliss.

The video game franchise, which allows players to roam through cityscapes as criminal masterminds, has been a cornerstone of gaming culture for decades. The upcoming edition is highly anticipated, and according to the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games, it will feature an Army veteran named Jason Duval who “grew up around grifters and crooks” and has now “found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners.”

First reported by Task & Purpose, the July 28 memorandum says the incentive is for eligible soldiers who sign a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14.

“This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6),” it reads. Soldiers who acquire the reward will coordinate days off with their individual unit leadership.

Unfortunately for uniformed GTA fans interested in extended carjacking opportunities, the pass cannot be combined with any other passes to give the soldier an absence of more than four days.

The unconventional incentive comes as the Army becomes more selective with traditional reenlistment incentives, with new guidance tying cash bonuses to soldiers’ physical fitness, job proficiency and command assessments.

Elmore has been drawing for as long as he can remember, but growing up in a family with limited means meant his family had to ration paper, he said in a conversation with Fort Knox Public Affairs Office reporter Savannah Baird.

When Elmore was drafted into the Army after graduating with a fine arts degree from Western Kentucky University, the service gave him the resources to hone his craft, he told Baird.

“Once I got assigned, the Army saw my portfolio and realized I could draw just about anything from memory, so they put me on illustration work,” Elmore said in the release.

The Army changed the look of its field manuals in the 1970s to include more illustrations, and Elmore’s talents were put to use. After studying objects, Elmore could retain their images and draw them from memory, including tanks and rifles, he told Baird.

“It was a God-given gift and I used it,” he said.

Elmore went to basic training and was stationed at Fort Knox. During his time there, he developed skills he had not learned in college.

“Illustrations in the ’70s were just line work, pure ink — white and black, no grays — and they didn’t teach you that in college. I developed those skills at Fort Knox,” he said in the release.

After completing his two-year obligation, Elmore decided to stay on as a contractor, Baird reported. Around that time, a new employee joined the staff and introduced the team to Dungeons & Dragons, changing Elmore’s life.

Despite his initial hesitation, he began playing the game with his coworkers and quickly became hooked, calling it “the king of all games.”

Dungeons & Dragons was relatively new at the time, and its art was elementary, Elmore told Baird. He recalled that a fellow artist said he was going to submit his artwork to Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, because “our art is much better than this.”

Elmore then decided to submit his own portfolio to TSR, which included drawings he had produced for the Army. Soon after, TSR offered to double his salary, hire his wife and move them to Wisconsin, the release stated.

Elmore said he immediately shook the company representative’s hand and told him, “you just bought yourself an artist.”

He went on to create one of the most recognizable images in the game’s history: the cover art for the famous “Red Box” set, which featured a warrior in combat with a red dragon.

After six years at TSR, Elmore decided to move back to Central Kentucky and pursue freelance work for another 40 years, according to the Army’s release.

He recognizes the impact the Army had on his career as an artist.

“I was very lucky,” he said in the release. “Sometimes, I think to be successful you have to be good, but you got to have some of those weird breaks in life — and I got two or three.”

Roll Tide.

The inert cannonballs, which were — naturally — wrapped in paper towels, were discovered during the baggage screening process at Alabama’s Gulf Shores International Airport and later determined by police to have been stolen from the nearby coastal stronghold Fort Morgan.

“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” TSA officer Justin Dupree recalled in a release. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”

Dupree noted the antique artillery projectiles ranged in size, with the largest comparable to a grapefruit.

“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” Dupree said. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.”

A TSA explosives specialist and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office were subsequently notified and determined that the cannonballs posed no threat.

Law enforcement investigating the incident stated the passenger claimed to be unaware of how the projectiles were acquired. The cannonballs were later returned to Fort Morgan, the release added.

Passenger attempts to transport illegal items, including outlandish weaponry, through the screening process are, of course, nothing new.

In a more glaring example from 2019, a Florida man traveling through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport set off alarms after his bag was found to contain a disassembled rocket-propelled grenade.

The individual was subsequently taken into an inspection area, where he told airport security he was under the impression he could bring the checked RPG on the plane, CBS Philadelphia reported.

Inspection of the weapon itself revealed that the launcher was not in working order, and the grenade was a realistic replica.

The items were confiscated by security, and, miraculously, the individual boarded his flight on time.

But as America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is easy to forget that independence was not guaranteed. As they shivered at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778, George Washington and his troops would have scoffed at the notion that victory would come on a silver platter.

For the American Revolution to succeed, the colonists had to create an army. Whether the Continental Army was defeated on the battlefield — as it frequently was — mattered less. As long as the United Colonies could keep an army in the field, Britain would be forced to continue what seemed like a forever war.

“American Revolutionary War” is a computer wargame that depicts the battles of the American Revolution, or what the British call the War of American Independence.

With 148 scenarios, from small engagements like Hubbardton and Kettle Creek, to larger battles such as Princeton, Brandywine and Saratoga, American Revolutionary War is part of publisher Wargame Design Studio’s Musket & Pike series. These games depict warfare from the 15th through the 18th Centuries, an era where polearms were gradually replaced by gunpowder weapons, such as muskets.

By the 1770s, the pike had been replaced by the bayonet, and the primitive arquebus by more reliable flintlock muskets including Britain’s “Brown Bess.”

With a 114-page user manual, American Revolutionary War is not exactly casual entertainment. It is a highly detailed simulation not just of 18th Century European-style warfare — but also how difficult it was to conduct armies’ European-style warfare in the 18th Century North American wilderness.

The game depicts battles at the grand tactical scale, with battalions and companies of infantry, as well as batteries of artillery and the occasional horse soldier (cavalry was much rarer than the later Napoleonic and American Civil Wars). The American have Continental regulars and local militia, while the Crown fields a polyglot force of British regulars, German mercenaries, Loyalist troops and Native American allies.

These units maneuver across a 2-D hex-grid map of eastern North America in its pre-industrial glory. The terrain is studded with forests, fields, marshes and streams.

Units are rated for how many troops or guns they have, and their weaponry (musket, 3-pounder artillery, etc.). Most important is a quality rating from A to F, which affects combat proficiency and movement. The British regulars tend to be quality As and Bs, while the Continentals tend to be Cs and Ds, and the American militias Fs.

Players alternate taking their turns, with each turn representing about 15 minutes of real time. Each player conducts movement and fire combat, followed by a melee phase to resolve assaults. Combat inflicts casualties as well as “fatigue,” which saps morale and effectiveness until units break or rout.

Western battlefield tactics in the 18th and 19th Centuries centered on assuming the right formation in an era when troops fought shoulder to shoulder. Column formation was used to expedite movement, though at the cost of firepower and presenting a juicy target. When engaging in a firefight, infantry would assume line formation, standing in two or three ranks.

Units in line that move through rough terrain, or obstructions, such as walls, run the risk of becoming “disordered,” with movement and fire penalties. On the other hand, a densely packed column can take heavy casualties from enemy troops deployed in line. Dispersing troops into open order makes them less vulnerable to enemy fire, but penalizes them in melee.

One myth is that the conflict “was fought by the British in a strictly linear fashion, while the Americans were primarily in skirmish,” Mike Cox, designer of American Revolutionary War, told Military Times. Both sides were capable of assuming a variety of formations, though this presented challenges for under-trained Continentals.

“The Americans often tried to fight linearly, too,” added Cox. “It just didn’t often work out well.”

Particularly useful are the detachments of light infantry.

“Learning to master your light troops is extremely important,” Cox said. “When to deploy as skirmishers to delay or scout, or recall and use them to effectively melee to push back the enemy and take and hold ground.”

Command and control has always been the glue that binds armies, but especially so in the pre-radio era, when commanders personally led their troops.

American Revolutionary War features historical commanders, rated from A (George Washington) to F, that form chains of command in each army. Leaders can rally broken troops and provide morale bonuses, though they can also be felled by enemy fire.

“Keeping units in range of their leader and their leader in range of the next higher echelon makes an army work well,” Cox explained. American commanders will need to stay close to their militia: “Keeping them in command and preventing their disruption and breakdown is an art.”

One fascination of playing historical wargames is seeing how they model the little things. For example, the British Army’s Scottish Highlanders are given a bonus during melee combat “to reflect their impact on the minds of American troops, and their reputation for relishing close combat,” the game manual notes.

But ultimately, the question comes down to: How accurately does the game depict the battles that determined the fate of the American Revolution? And, how well does it capture the essences of a professional army versus a more amateur — but also more inspired — citizen army?

American Revolutionary War fares well on both questions.

The unit quality, morale and command systems model the capabilities of both sides, including how the Continental Army improved over time due to combat experience, as well as the tutelage of European instructors like Baron von Steuben.

“British forces are often outnumbered,” said Cox. “They need to learn to stretch their lines or get outflanked. They will usually have some high-quality troops and have the advantage of picking the point of attack.”

“The Americans usually have a high number of units. However, quality and strength can vary wildly. The Americans need to know when to give ground and when to hit hard.”

Perhaps what is most striking is the theater of war.

WDS has published almost 120 historical wargames that cover gigantic battles, such as Waterloo, Gettysburg, Kursk and the Battle of the Bulge. In these games, the maps are packed with masses of troops.

In American Revolutionary War, the maps are often big, while the armies are small. One can begin to appreciate how British soldiers and colonial settlers must have felt about fighting in a vast, untamed land.

As Americans mark the Declaration of Independence, this is a reminder of how far our nation has come.

Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was convicted of stealing over $1.1 million worth of the military’s pre-packaged Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas, said Tuesday, in a scheme involving three other co-defendants and more than 200 pallets of the shelf-stable rations.

MREs, typically sealed in distinctive brown branding, are used to feed troops basic nutrients in austere situations and training exercises.

Known for their energy content as opposed to their taste, the emergency rations can be eaten hot or cold and are notorious for producing foul flatulence and blocked bowels — oftentimes contributing to the MRE’s other moniker of Meal, Refusing to Exit.

According to a statement from the office, the group used false paperwork to acquire MREs from Fort Bliss and Davis created false requests, rented vehicles to move the calorically dense provisions, fixed prices and collected compensation in the operation.

The FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division agents executed a search warrant on a civilian warehouse in August 2020 and found scores of pallets of MREs that an investigation showed was a holding facility for a company that purchased the rations from people who had pillaged them from Fort Bliss, the statement said.

Davis was named in the February 2025 indictment — along with the three others — for conspiracy to commit theft of government property and a substantive count of theft of government property between Feb. 4, 2020, and Aug. 12, 2020.

The office said that Davis learned the Army’s food procurement process while working in food service supply in the service. When he retired, the statements said, he got a job as a civilian contractor in a similar position.

“Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it,” said U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons.

Davis served as a culinary specialist in the Army from May 1998 to May 2018, according to an Army spokesperson. He left the service at the rank of sergeant first class.

Forty-year-old goalie Josimar “Vozinha” Dias recently earned a certificate from the Guinness World Records book as “the oldest goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet” in a World Cup debut with his acrobatic play on June 15 for the Tubarões Azuis — Blue Sharks — of Cape Verde, turning away shot after shot to hold powerhouse Spain to 0-0 draw.

Cape Verde again produced a stunner on Sunday, coming from behind to earn a 2-2 draw with heavily favored Uruguay, a score that featured the tiny island nation’s first-ever goal in a World Cup.

“This means everything for our country,” Cape Verde coach Pedro Leitão Brito told the Associated Press. “We have always said that we wanted everybody to see our country, our team and we have shown organization and braveness and this is proof of what our country is about — resilience and to try to overcome hardships.”

Vozinha, however, was in tears after the June 15 match over the money and red tape for a visa that kept his mother from attending her son’s shutout of Spain.

“I cried after the game because I grew up with my grandparents when I was a kid, and they could not be there,” he told reporters. “They passed away a few years ago. My mum could not be here either for a visa issue, and the money we had to pay for it. We did not manage to do this in time.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the only member of Congress of Cape Verdean descent, then worked with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to clear up the $15,000 visa issue.

“No mother should miss the chance to see her child make history,” Jeffries said in a statement. All fees were subsequently waived, Jeffries added.

Vozinha’s mother was in attendance on Sunday to watch her son against Uruguay. Cape Verde next plays on June 26 against Saudi Arabia, with a possible chance to punch their ticket to the elimination round on the line.

The goalie’s heroics and the flap over the visa, meanwhile, drew attention to the long history of the U.S. connection to Cape Verde, sometimes called Cabo Verde, an island chain and former Portuguese possession about 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.

In comments for a Smithsonian Magazine article, Donald Heflin, the former U.S ambassador to Cape Verde, noted, “Cabo Verdean Americans are one of [the U.S.’s] oldest immigrant communities, going back to the colonial whaling days.”

“We have the names of five Cabo Verdeans who fought in the American Revolution,” Heflin continued. “And their proud military tradition grows from there, with the numbers of Cabo Verdean Americans in uniform getting larger with each of America’s wars.”

One of those Cape Verdeans was Joachim Pease, who served aboard the Union sloop of war Kearsarge during the June 19, 1864, epic battle against the Confederate raider Alabama off the French port of Cherbourg.

The Union Army was segregated at the time — the Navy was not. Aboard Kearsarge, Pease served as the loader on a 32-pounder gun that helped sink the Alabama, according to the Smithsonian article.

His Medal of Honor citation — considered by many to be the first for an African-born service member — said that he “exhibited marked coolness and good conduct and was highly recommended by the divisional officer for gallantry under fire.”

Pease disappeared after the Kearsarge returned to Boston. He was never located.

The Navy was unable to present him with the medal, which is now on display at the National Museum of the United States Navy in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington.

What most players sprinting across the map won’t know is that three of those characters are built from real Marines, and that the men behind the motion capture have spent the years since their service trying to keep other veterans alive.

Prime Hall, Don Tran and Rick Briere served together in the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. In the game, they appear as Rob Brooke, Douglas Pham and Atticus Moore. Out of it, they are business partners, nonprofit founders and, by their own account, brothers who have buried too many friends.

For Hall, the throughline from combat to civilian life is simple to name. “It takes a village,” he said. He frames it the way a Raider would. In a fight, you want 360-degree security. After service, he said, that security becomes “your perimeter of the relationships and the people that you have in your life.”

That perimeter matters because the landing is rough.

Hall enlisted in 2005 and was medically retired in 2017 after an insider attack years earlier left damage that finally surfaced.

Stacked with prescriptions, he said he began to feel like he was “in the passenger seat of life.” A holistic-healing retreat in late 2019 turned things around, and the lesson stuck. “You can only do so much on your own,” he said. “At a certain point, you know, you gotta tap into something bigger than yourself.”

The three built that something. Deep End Fitness, their underwater training program, started the year the trio got out and now coaches athletes and civilians nationwide.

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Hall ran a nonprofit, Marine Raider Challenge, until the unit relocated to North Carolina. Tran helped start another, Operation Resilience. The mission Hall keeps returning to, though, is grimmer. He has lost roughly 10 friends to suicide — part of a toll that still claims an average of about 17 veterans a day. The work, he said, is about turning each loss into a chance “to create a positive shift somehow in the community.”

His guiding phrase: “Be what’s missing.”

Tran describes the transition trap in operational terms. In the military, the stakes were high but the problem was simple. “Now it’s like, when you’re out [the problem] became extremely complex.”

Money, school, family and a young business all competed at once. What got them through was dropping the act they had all learned to wear.

“In the Raiders you’re this super tough guy,” Tran said. Out of uniform, that facade has a short shelf life. He and his teammates learned to say the thing operators rarely say: “I need some help, dude. Like, this is not working.”

That honesty, he added, is also what reaches the veterans they mentor. “That humanizes you.”

Briere, who admits he still questions whether he belongs in a mentor’s chair, landed on the same point. “It’s okay to drop the armor,” he said.

He describes a bond that no longer requires performance. “There’s no animosity, there’s only transparency.” Months can pass without the three talking, he said, and they pick back up like no time has passed.

None of them set out to be in a video game. The opportunity came through their Deep End Fitness work, and the developers’ focus on authenticity meant the men actually played the parts in motion-capture suits.

Briere, a lifelong gamer, still can’t quite believe it. Seeing the characters come to life, he said, “it’s surreal to me.”

Tran’s reaction was more practical. “My character doesn’t die,” he said.

The three are clear about what they hope the game does beyond entertain. Hall sees the characters as a doorway, “an access point for people to look into what we’re up to” and the work they have done since getting out, he says. For Tran, it is also a chance to put the Raider legacy alongside the units that already have their movies and books.

Asked what they would tell a struggling veteran, the answers came easily.

“Find your next North Star, dude, and navigate towards that,” Tran said. “You’ve done it before, probably in a way harder world.”

Hall offered a message of hope, the kind he says he is living proof of.

“If I can do it, anybody can do it,” he said. “Give yourself some grace.” Even a broken clock, he likes to remind himself, is right twice a day.

Veterans and service members in crisis can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and pressing 1, or by texting 838255.

His famous Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — or OODA — Loop described the mental cycle by which combatants, from fighter pilots to generals, assess and react to a constantly changing situation.

Those with a faster OODA Loop could exploit opportunities while their befuddled opponents struggled to understand what was going on.

Germany crushed France in 1940 largely because of a sluggish French command system that was always one OODA step behind the swift panzer divisions. More recently, OODA might explain why tactically rigid Russian tank columns were decimated by outnumbered but agile Ukrainian troops in 2022.

Had the Soviets invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, NATO would have relied on OODA — plus airpower and more advanced weapons technology — to stop the Soviet steamroller.

To the troops watching waves of Soviet tanks roll into the Fulda Gap or the North German Plain, OODA would have been just a buzzword. But NATO needed every advantage it could get to compensate for superior Soviet numbers and firepower.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, published by Matrix Games, is a computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.

But it is more than just another World War III wargame. Flashpoint Campaigns is the OODA Loop gamified. In fact, the game comes in two versions: the regular game for armchair generals, and a professional edition for real soldiers.

Flashpoint Campaigns is a 2-D map game, with NATO platoons and Warsaw Pact companies waging battalion- to division-sized battles. Set in the twilight of the Cold War, much of the hardware — such as Abrams and T-72 tanks, and Bradley and BMP infantry fighting vehicles — are still around today.

Players issue orders to their troops, such as movement, direct fire, calling in artillery and airstrikes, combat engineering operations and resupply. For example, a tank platoon can be ordered to head to a crossroads via a series of designated waypoints along the route.

Units can be given standard operating procedures, or SOPs, such as determining at what range to open fire, when to change firing position and when to retreat. Enemy units are usually invisible until spotted. With Late Cold War weapons so devastating, combat is deadly and proper concealment and reconnaissance a must.

After a player finishes issuing commands, they can hit the start button. A game clock then appears and a certain number of minutes elapse, during which units try to fulfill orders.

It all sounds like a straightforward process — until OODA intervenes.

Unlike many wargames, players in Flashpoint Campaigns can’t give orders to their troops at will. Instead, only at certain intervals does the game clock pause and allow commanders to issue fresh orders. This reflects the time it takes for the command system to collect information, analyze it, reach a decision and pass a new order to subordinates.

Like an object in motion in Newtonian physics, units will try to execute their last set of orders until new instructions arrive. That tank platoon heading down the road toward a village will keep going toward that village until told otherwise, even if the tactical situation has changed.

This is where NATO’s OODA advantage kicks in. The NATO player might have to wait, say, for 14 minutes of game time to elapse before issuing fresh orders. For the Soviets, the delay might be 23 minutes, or about 50% longer.

This means that NATO will have more opportunities to give new orders than the Soviets do. In turn, this means NATO troops can more quickly react to new threats such as enemy forces on their flank, or exploit discovery of a gap in the enemy’s lines.

It also means that NATO can be more flexible in its planning, rather than having to anticipate the tactical situation far in advance.

“We all know what happens when plans make contact with the enemy,” Robert Crandall, president of On Target Simulations, which designed Flashpoint Campaigns, told Military Times. “NATO spent considerable efforts to train for what happens after that contact and to respond faster than their counterparts. This could let them operate inside the Warsaw Pact command loop and outmaneuver them.”

But even NATO has OODA problems in the game. The presence of electronic warfare, in which the Soviets invested heavily, lengthens the interval before a player can give orders. Units engaged in combat will require 50% more time to react to new orders.

And commanders who send too many orders to their troops will receive an unpleasant surprise: too much radio traffic reveals the location as a headquarters, marking it for an artillery or airstrike.

Indeed, some U.S. Army experts today worry American command posts are so chatty that they will be targeted in wartime.

As battles progress in Flashpoints Campaigns, and units takes losses and headquarters are disrupted, command delays will inevitably lengthen for both sides.

Clausewitz’s “friction of war” will become an impediment, though a bit less so for NATO. Commanders on both sides will have to grit their teeth and accept that they can’t control their troops as they would like to.

Would NATO’s tighter OODA Loop have been enough to defeat the Soviets?

“One of the nicest compliments the game received came from a former Warsaw Pact officer who said he played the game using strict Warsaw Pact doctrine and won,” Crandall recalled.

“If the Warsaw Pact player has figured things out correctly, his initial plan will not have needed much, if any, adjustment and just rolls along at maximum speed. His opponent will be wrong-footed and at the mercy of the OODA Loop to react in time. With the fast-moving, hyper-lethal forces of 1989, good luck with that.”

In some ways, Flashpoint Campaigns is a memorial to another era.

The year 1989 was the twilight of 20th Century mechanized warfare. With the threat of drones paralyzing battlefield maneuver in the Ukraine War, discussing OODA’s influence on tactics seem almost quaint.

And yet, there is a reason why there is a global arms race today to develop smarter AI, quicker kill chains between sensors and weapons, and tightly networked forces that can act faster than the enemy.

Every year, the OODA Loop seems to tighten, with less margin to fall behind. As OODA reminds us, time is too precious a commodity to squander.

Backed by Universal Pictures, the “Transformers” director is slated to shepherd the speed-of-light-turnaround project based on the April 3 shoot down of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle and subsequent rescue of its crew during U.S.-led operations against the Islamic Republic, Deadline reported.

The untitled movie is expected to be based on a book by author Mitchell Zuckoff, which will be released in 2027, according to Deadline. Bay previously worked with Zuckoff on the film adaptation of 13 Hours, which chronicled the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

On April 3, the F-15, call sign Dude 44, was downed by Iranian air defenses at approximately 4:40 a.m. local time, becoming the first manned aircraft to be lost to hostile anti-aircraft fire since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28.

Both crew members ejected and landed miles apart. Though the pilot was located within hours and rescued — after an intense fight — the aircraft’s weapons systems officer remained on the move, evading Iranian forces in the Zagros Mountains, treating his own wounds and taking cover in a mountain crevice, according to U.S. President Donald Trump, who called the rescue mission “one of the largest, most complex, most harrowing combat search-and-rescue missions ever attempted by the military.”

U.S. special forces eventually rescued the second downed airman following a complex operation, Trump announced on April 5.

The identities of the crew members have not yet been released.

In a statement provided to Deadline, Bay praised his “amazing partnership over [a] 30-year career working with the Department of War and amazing U.S. military members.”

Bay added that the upcoming film adaptation will celebrate “the true heroism and unwavering dedication of our service members.”

Such are the art features wrapping three recently installed arcade games — also available to play online — at the District of Columbia War Memorial in the nation’s capital, the latest protest by the anonymous group Secret Handshake, which previously made headlines in September after installing a statue on the National Mall depicting President Donald Trump holding hands and skipping with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The new installation’s game, officially called “Operation Epic Furious: Strait To Hell,” was developed as a response to the administration’s repeated use of video game footage to highlight military successes in Iran, the group told WUSA9.

One such post featured video from strikes in Iran interspersed with game footage from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The post, shared on March 6 by the White House’s official account, came just five days after six U.S. soldiers were killed by an Iranian drone strike at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba.

Similar posts include one featuring airstrikes alongside footage from Nintendo Wii, and another depicting a bowling alley-style “STRIKE” animation alongside war footage.

“The game features furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope,” the group said in a statement to the local CBS affiliate. “And just to save you time, the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand. But it’s The Middle East, so you also can’t win either.”

Photos were shared across social media Tuesday of National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., checking out the games at the memorial, which is adjacent to the National Mall.

NEW: The National Guard has been spotted playing the arcade games put up on the National Mall by Secret Handshake making fun of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the war in Iran. pic.twitter.com/asLspugm7B

— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) May 12, 2026

Next to the arcade-style games installed at the memorial is a plaque that states, “The Trump administration knows that the best way to sell combat is by making it a video game, that’s why they’ve been pumping out the ‘sickest’ Iran War video game hype reels,” according to WUSA9.

“But why stop at clips when you could go full throttle Introducing Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, a high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground simulator where freedom isn’t debated, it’s deployed. No briefings, no hesitation; just pure pixelated patriotism. Strap in and play hard, because this game may never end.”

The series is built around a covert government agency monitoring giant monsters called Titans. It stars father and son Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell as different-era versions of the same Army officer — a soldier’s soldier who spends decades watching the brass refuse to take a threat seriously until it’s too late.

The story is fiction, obviously. But as anyone who’s sat through a joint readiness exercise knows, the scariest scenario is always the one nobody planned for. So, let’s run the tape.

The first problem is command authority. Under the current National Response Framework, a catastrophic domestic incident triggers a cascade of federal coordination flowing from local authorities up through FEMA, with the Defense Department stepping in for Defense Support of Civil Authorities. It’s a system built for hurricanes, mass casualty events and CBRN -chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear- incidents.

A 300-foot amphibious creature leveling a coastal city technically checks the “catastrophic” box. Still, the chain of command for a threat that moves under its own power, does not respond to law enforcement, and cannot be detained pending arraignment is untested at best.

In a real monster scenario, U.S. Northern Command would likely assume the lead for any domestic Titan event. The command has been quietly expanding its homeland defense footprint, with new component activations as recently as this past January. That’s encouraging, unless the thing you’re defending against walked right out of the ocean and into downtown Los Angeles. At that point, the question of what active-duty troops are actually authorized to do on U.S. soil becomes considerably more urgent.

The second problem is weapons. The U.S. military’s most powerful non-nuclear conventional munition is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bunker-buster delivered exclusively by B-2 Spirit bombers. It can punch through roughly 200 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating. According to Scientific American, the weapon saw its first real-world combat use last year against hardened nuclear facilities in Iran.

The GBU-57 is, by any reasonable measure, an extraordinary piece of engineering. It is also a weapon designed to destroy static targets. A Titan-class threat that can absorb a fuel-air explosion and keep moving rewrites the targeting calculus entirely. Missiles, artillery, carrier air wings: all work against a threat that can be fixed, tracked, and killed inside a standard engagement envelope. A creature that is in the bunker presents a problem that the current inventory was not designed to solve.

The third problem is the kill chain. Even if you could hurt the brute, authorizing the strike would be a bureaucratic event horizon.

Nuclear release authority is well-defined. Authority to conduct a sustained kinetic campaign against a living organism the size of a skyscraper in a populated coastal city would involve rules of engagement, collateral damage estimates, environmental review, and at least one congressional staffer asking if the move requires an Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Pick your favorite bottleneck.

The “Monarch” universe eventually arrives at the uncomfortable conclusion that the military is not the main effort: Containment is. The joint force is extraordinary at destroying thingsbut it is considerably less adept at managing them.

The season finale drops May 1 on Apple TV+.

So is the U.S. military prepared to fight a Kaiju? The answer is a firm “probably not” - but they’re going to try anyway.

Close drew on his own family to find the character. His cousin served multiple tours in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as a special forces member, and one conversation stuck with him.

“He said he had to go back on his third tour because he didn’t feel safe at home,” Close told Military Times. “He felt more comfortable being in situations like Kandahar because he knew who the people were around him. He knew how to behave.”

That kind of detail is exactly what writer-director Aaron Davidman was after. A first-time feature director, Davidman spent years traveling the country talking to people about guns, violence and the cost of military service before writing the script.

A conversation with a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade became the seed of the story.

“He just impressed me with the real layered, nuanced, complex relationship to service, firearms, healing, reintegration,” Davidman said. “I decided to focus a story on a guy like that. What would it be like to follow a trained warrior and a reintegration through their eyes, through the experience of the veteran?”

The result is a film that resists the chest-pounding war movie template.

Slinger comes home from Afghanistan wounded and estranged from his young son, adrift in a country he trained to protect but no longer recognizes himself in. The film examines how, for some veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder and reintegration grief don’t manifest dramatically, but instead quietly erode a person from the inside.

Co-stars Joanne Kelly and Gilbert Owuor round out the film’s central trio, each character at a different point on the road back. Owuor said the dynamic mirrored something true about group identity and the loneliness that can live inside it.

“When you look closer and start to examine the different members in the group, you realize that even for them, that can start to break down depending on where you are in the journey,” he said. “And I think that’s a very scary place to find yourself.”

Kelly drew on her own family, as well, including a cousin who deployed four times to Afghanistan as a nurse. The preparation opened a conversation between them that had never happened before.

“I think it was one of the things I love about this job, the constant learning about humans, about different lives,” Kelly said.

Davidman has partnered with impact agency Picture Motion to build post-screening discussions into the release. It’s a deliberate response to the isolation the film depicts, and to a broader cultural moment the filmmakers believe demands a quieter kind of conversation than the one usually surrounding guns and military service.

“We’re not holding a screening, we’re convening,” he said.

For Davidman, the most revealing research didn’t come from one-on-one interviews but from watching veterans talk to each other.

“Watching these brothers and sisters share their stories, and they may not have even served at the same time or in the same branches, but there was a shorthand that was so informative,” he said.

That earned specificity shows on screen. “American Solitaire” doesn’t reduce its protagonist to a symbol. Slinger is a man trying to figure out who he is once the structure that defined him is gone, a challenge researchers and clinicians have long identified as among the hardest parts of coming home.

“I hope that people feel there is an accurate portrayal of veterans and of three-dimensional human beings going through real experiences,” Close said, “and that they can relate and feel less alone.”

“American Solitaire” opens in select theaters Friday and is coming to VOD at a future date. More information at americansolitairefilm.com.

In the post, the clip kicks off a high-energy mashup of scenes from popular movies and TV shows cut together with real-world footage of U.S. military strikes against Iran.

The video was one of six posts Friday on the White House’s social media accounts that liberally pulled snippets from popular films, TV shows, sports events and music — running the gamut from AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” to SpongeBob SquarePants — and paired the clips with footage of Operation Epic Fury.

Among them: a scene featuring Master Chief, the iconic character from the long-running “Halo” video game series. In the short clip, Master Chief says he’s “finishing this fight.”

JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸🔥 pic.twitter.com/0502N6a3rL

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026

But over the weekend, actors and others involved in some of the projects shown in the clips condemned the White House’s hype videos.

Steve Downes, the actor who voices Master Chief, in particular, was none too happy about it, and said he did not endorse the use of his voice or agree to be involved.

“I demand that the producers of this disgusting and juvenile war porn remove my voice immediately,” he posted on X on Sunday.

pic.twitter.com/JODHpTiAYo

— Steve Downes (@SteveDownes117) March 8, 2026

“Tropic Thunder” actor and director Ben Stiller also called for the video to be pulled down. A clip of Tom Cruise from the 2008 film appears in the post.

“Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie,” Stiller wrote in a post on X on Friday.

Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie. https://t.co/dMQqRxxVCa

— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) March 6, 2026

The Trump administration has often ignored calls from artists to remove their content from its messaging.

After singer Kesha posted on social media last week condemning the use of her song “Blow” in a White House video, White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote in a post on X, “All these ‘singers’ keep falling for this. This just gives us more attention and more view counts to our videos because people want to see what they’re bitching about.”

Directed by Patrick Hughes, “War Machine” follows a group of Ranger candidates grinding through the final stretch of selection when their training scenario collides with something far stranger than sleep deprivation and land navigation. The soldiers discover what appears to be a crashed aircraft deep in the woods. It turns out to be an alien vessel that transforms into a towering mechanical hunter and begins stalking them through the forest.

For veterans watching the film, the most unrealistic part may not be the extraterrestrial robot — it is the fact that nobody immediately assumes the alien is still part of the training scenario.

Anyone who has spent time in the military knows that after enough time in the field, every disaster begins to feel suspiciously like a test. Lost? Training. Hungry? Training. Cold, wet, exhausted and hallucinating? Definitely training. If a giant alien machine emerged from a crash site during Ranger selection, at least one candidate would absolutely ask, “Is this graded?”

Ritchson plays a soldier known only as “81,” which feels exactly like the kind of nickname that would replace an actual name during a miserable training cycle. The character is built like a tank and carries the quiet intensity that helped turn Ritchson into a breakout star in the series “Reacher.” Here, his opponent is not organized crime or a corrupt businessman-turned-warlord, but a massive extraterrestrial war machine with the personality of a bulldozer.

Critics have described the film as a blend of “Predator” and “Transformers,” which is a polite way of saying nobody is going to win an Oscar for this film, but the explosions and over-the-top special effects might. The movie moves quickly through its premise and settles into a simple survival formula. A group of soldiers is trapped in unfamiliar terrain, hunted by something unseen. Their only real plan is to stay alive long enough to figure out how to destroy it.

It is not complicated storytelling. It is also not pretending to be.

That honesty helps the movie. Instead of delivering long speeches about military ethics or global consequences, “War Machine” focuses on the basics. The soldiers run, hide, shoot and occasionally argue about what the machine actually is while trying to reach the next ridgeline.

In that sense, the movie occasionally feels less like a traditional war film and more like a live-action video game level. The team advances through a series of encounters while trying to discover the alien machine’s weak point. Eventually, that responsibility lands on Ritchson’s character, who begins experimenting with ways to damage the machine using whatever equipment the soldiers still have left, blank firing adapters included.

Is the movie perfect? No. Is it so cringe at points that you find yourself wanting more? Yes.

While “War Machine” treats the final field exercise like a chaotic survival event, real training environments are far more controlled and deliberate. Ranger selection, for example, is designed to push soldiers through exhaustion and uncertainty without actually turning the woods into a sci-fi battlefield.

The movie does not aim for that kind of realism. Instead, it asks a simpler question: What would happen if soldiers trained to survive brutal field exercises suddenly had to apply those same skills to an alien invasion?

The answer, according to “War Machine,” is that they would probably treat it like any other mission.

They would form a plan.

They would start shooting.

And someone in the formation would still wonder if the whole thing was being graded.

For years, military narratives on screen have gravitated toward spectacle or trauma. Either elite raids and explosions, or the aftermath: PTSD, divorce, isolation. What gets squeezed out is the middle ground — bureaucracy, boredom and dark humor — where most service members actually live.

Three veterans now working in television say that changes when people who have worn the uniform are inside the writers’ room, shaping the story from page one.

Greg Cope White, a Marine veteran and longtime television writer, built a decades-long career after leaving active duty. His memoir, “The Pink Marine,” later became the basis for the Netflix coming-of-age series “Boots,” about a closeted gay teenager enlisting in the Marine Corps in the ’90s.

Veterans are often misunderstood in writers’ rooms, White told Military Times in a recent interview.

“One of the things veterans might fear about going into the writers’ room is that that’s all the experience people are going to want from them,” he said. “Just give me the military stuff and shut up.

“That’s not what I have found at all.”

For White, the value of veterans extends far beyond accuracy. “Our worldview is instantly expanded the day we enlisted,” he said. “We saw things, and we’re exposed to people and situations that a normal college-age student wouldn’t be exposed to.”

That exposure influences tone and informs how characters handle pressure. It shapes what feels authentic when a unit fractures or rallies on screen.

When working on “Boots,” authenticity mattered, but not as trivia. “You don’t want something like someone in their dress blues with scruff. That’s going to take a lot of people out right there,” White said.

For “Boots” story editor Megan Ferrell Burke, a Marine veteran who served from 2007 to 2011 and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a direct air support officer, authenticity debates often collide with visual storytelling.

Hollywood is a visual medium, noted Burke, who, after leaving the Corps, worked her way through assistant roles on “Army Wives,” served as a writers’ assistant on the World War II drama “Manhattan” and was staffed on “Outlander.” Sometimes what is correct is not what reads best on camera.

In “Boots,” for example, recruits were scripted to sit on their packs during a break, as they would in real life. On set, production placed them on logs.

“In any sort of universe, recruits would not be sitting on logs and talking,” Burke said. “But who cares? It’s so much better visually.”

For her, the issue is not perfection; it is intention. “I’m very okay with being inaccurate,” she said. “I just want to know when we’re being inaccurate, and I want to make that choice actively.”

Burke said she braced for backlash from veteran viewers over creative choices in “Boots,” including decisions about timeline accuracy. Instead, she found that many viewers accepted the show’s choices once they understood they were deliberate.

Over her 15 years in the industry, Burke said she has seen shifts in how military stories are framed. Early portrayals often defaulted to stoic archetypes. Later, she said, many projects focused almost exclusively on trauma.

“If you look out on the landscape and look for the stories of well-adjusted veterans, they’re a little bit harder to come by,” she said.

Burke does not dismiss PTSD narratives. “It is incredibly important to advocate for the very real experiences of service members dealing with trauma,” she said. But she believes the picture is incomplete.

“I feel like I’m the best version of myself because of the experience that I had,” she said.

Joshua Katz, a Navy veteran who served from 1999 to 2003 as a gunner’s mate and missile technician, entered the industry through multiple avenues, including stunt work, tactical consulting and writers’ room support. He worked as a showrunner’s assistant on the CBS sitcom “United States of Al” and later founded Katzmar Tactical Consulting with his spouse, also a Navy veteran.

Katz offered a more direct assessment of Hollywood’s priorities.

“They care about one thing, and that’s making a profit,” he said.

In his experience, veteran status may help secure a meeting, but it does not guarantee advancement. “It will never be because you’re a veteran,” he said. “It opens the door, but it doesn’t necessarily push you through it.”

Still, Katz credited certain showrunners with fostering supportive environments and taking veteran perspectives seriously when storylines demanded it.

He also pointed to story gaps he believes remain underexplored.

“You don’t see below decks,” he said of Navy life. “It’s almost always from an officer’s perspective.”

He would like to see more character-driven stories set in military environments without defaulting to combat or scandal. He also cited the VA hospital as a compelling setting where veterans from different eras intersect.

Across all three writers, humor emerged as a defining difference. Veterans understand that laughter often exists alongside stress, not in spite of it.

“It’s the only way I can tell my story,” White said of using comedy to frame his experience.

Humor, he argued, allows audiences unfamiliar with military life to enter the world without being overwhelmed. “There’s nothing more hilarious than that frailty of the human condition,” he said.

For those considering the leap from the uniform to the writers’ room, none of the three offered easy encouragement.

“It is not a career for the faint of heart,” Burke said. “The good times are great, and the bad times are really hard.”

White urged writers to focus on craft. “Write the story you want to tell,” he said, rather than chasing what seems marketable.

Katz emphasized persistence and preparation. “You’ve got to have the writing sample to go with it,” he said. “It’s never going to be just because you’re a veteran.”

When veterans become writers, war stories shift. The story moves toward lived ambiguity, and service is not reduced to a single narrative.

The difference is not cosmetic. It is tonal. And audiences, especially those who have served, can tell.

The Meal, Ready-to-Eat, better known as the MRE, was designed for war. It had to survive heat, cold, impact and time. It had to deliver calories and consistency in places where kitchens did not exist. And it had to do all of that at scale.

Sound familiar?

Today’s meal-delivery industry, from subscription kits to fully prepared microwavable trays, operates on many of the same principles: Portion control, modular packaging and optimized logistics. Veterans who open a cardboard box filled with premeasured ingredients often recognize the parallels immediately.

The evolution of military rations shows just how deliberate that system became. From older field staples to modern retort pouches, MREs were engineered to balance durability and nutrition. A look back at MREs through the years illustrates how packaging and contents changed to meet operational demands. Meals had to withstand long storage and rough transport while still delivering predictable fuel.

That predictability is central.

Each MRE is structured around caloric requirements and mission profiles. A standard menu includes an entree, side, snack, dessert, beverage powder and accessory packet. Nothing is random. It is a calculated intake designed to support performance.

Modern meal-delivery companies market the same precision. Protein totals are highlighted. Calorie counts are featured prominently. Macro breakdowns are listed like briefing slides. For service members who once identified meals by menu number rather than flavor description, the emphasis on data feels familiar.

Behind the scenes, the logistics mirror each other even more closely. Feeding deployed troops requires a supply chain that can move millions of individually packaged meals across continents. As recently as last year, the Department of Defense refined packaging dimensions, pallet configurations and distribution systems to reduce waste and maximize efficiency. Those lessons now underpin commercial food distribution networks that ship insulated boxes nationwide on strict timelines.

Inside the development process, the parallels become even clearer. Military food scientists test taste, texture and shelf life inside controlled environments before a menu ever reaches a unit. A visit to the kitchen where MREs are created shows how rigorously meals are evaluated for stability and performance. The civilian meal kit industry uses similar controlled testing to ensure consistency across thousands of shipments.

Convenience may be the most obvious link. MREs were built for speed. Open. Heat if you can. Eat if you cannot. No dishes, no prep, no grocery run. The civilian market reframed that efficiency as lifestyle optimization: 10-minute dinners with minimal cleanup and reduced food waste.

There is also a psychological component. Field rations were never just about calories; they provided routine. In austere environments, opening a sealed meal at a predictable time created a small anchor in an otherwise unstable day. Modern marketing leans on the same promise: reliability, dinner handled and one less decision to make.

Of course, today’s meal kits are designed for aesthetics and convenience, not survival in a combat zone. No one is building a subscription box around instant coffee and wheat bread snacks.

Still, the blueprint is unmistakable. Long before venture capital discovered the efficiency of meal delivery, the military had already tested the model under far harsher conditions.

For veterans, the comparison is less surprising than ironic. What once arrived in a case bound for a forward operating base now shows up with a friendly logo and a discount code.

In World War II, tobacco was not treated as a vice; it was a comfort item. Cigarettes were packed into rations as morale boosters, something that could steady nerves between missions, the Imperial War Museums note. The image of a soldier lighting up in a muddy trench or on the deck of a ship became inseparable from the mythology of the American warfighter. The phrase “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em” became a broader cultural idiom, according to the Army Historical Foundation.

That normalization lasted for generations. Smoking was woven into daily military life. A cigarette break punctuated patrols and long nights on guard duty. The smoke pit became a place where rank blurred slightly, and information flowed freely. For young troops far from home, nicotine offered routine in environments defined by uncertainty.

But the same institution that once distributed cigarettes eventually had to reckon with the consequences.

As medical research sharpened the link between tobacco use and long-term health problems, the Department of Defense shifted its posture. Smoking inside military facilities was banned in 1994, and recruits arriving at basic training found tighter restrictions around tobacco use than their predecessors.

In 2016, the Pentagon moved to eliminate discounted tobacco sales in on-base exchanges, raising prices to match civilian markets in an effort to remove financial incentives.

Despite that shift, nicotine use has not disappeared; it has adapted. A recent report found that soldiers are significantly more likely to use modern nicotine pouches than civilians, underscoring how quickly habits evolve inside the ranks.

Today’s service members are less likely to be seen with a cigarette and more likely to carry a vape or a can of tobacco-free nicotine pouches, which have been linked to oral and dental health issues and cardiovascular disease risk. Marketed as cleaner, smokeless and discreet, these products fit easily into field environments and office settings alike. They also sidestep some of the social stigma attached to traditional smoking.

The military has responded by expanding resources for quitting tobacco. Tricare covers tobacco cessation counseling and prescription medications, while military treatment facilities offer nicotine replacement therapy such as patches and gum. The Defense Department also promotes health coaching programs as part of its broader force health protection strategy.

Still, anyone who has served knows the smoke pit has not vanished. It remains a gathering place, a bond that only those who don the uniform can truly understand. It is where junior enlisted troops vent about leadership, where NCOs gauge morale and where small frustrations surface before they grow larger. In many units, stepping outside for a smoke remains one of the few unofficial breaks in a tightly structured day.

That cultural role complicates enforcement. Leaders must balance individual autonomy with readiness standards. Smoking and nicotine use are tied to higher injury rates, slower recovery times and long-term healthcare costs, all of which affect deployability. At the same time, troops operate under sustained stress, long hours and frequent moves. For some, nicotine functions as a coping mechanism that is accessible and socially reinforced.

The military’s relationship with tobacco reflects a broader evolution. What began as a morale staple, packed alongside rations, has become a regulated health concern measured against mission impact. The products may look different in 2026 than they did in 1945, but the underlying tension remains.

Duvall died “peacefully” at his home Sunday in Middleburg, Virginia, according to an announcement from his publicist and from a statement posted on his Facebook page by his wife, Luciana Duvall.

“To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” Luciana Duvall wrote. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented.”

The bald, wiry Duvall didn’t have leading man looks, but few “character actors” enjoyed such a long, rewarding and unpredictable career, in leading and supporting roles, from an itinerant preacher to Josef Stalin. Beginning with his 1962 film debut as Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Duvall created a gallery of unforgettable portrayals. They earned him seven Academy Award nominations and the best actor prize for “Tender Mercies,” which came out in 1983. He also won four Golden Globes, including one for playing the philosophical cattle-drive boss in the 1989 miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” a role he often cited as his favorite.

In 2005, Duvall was awarded a National Medal of Arts.

He had been acting for some 20 years when “The Godfather,” released in 1972, established him as one of the most in-demand performers of Hollywood. He had made a previous film, “The Rain People,” with Francis Coppola, and the director chose him to play Tom Hagen in the mafia epic that featured Al Pacino and Marlon Brando among others. Duvall was a master of subtlety as an Irishman among Italians, rarely at the center of a scene, but often listening and advising in the background, an irreplaceable thread through the saga of the Corleone crime family.

“Stars and Italians alike depend on his efficiency, his tidying up around their grand gestures, his being the perfect shortstop on a team of personality sluggers,” wrote the critic David Thomson. “Was there ever a role better designed for its actor than that of Tom Hagen in both parts of ‘The Godfather?’”

In another Coppola film, “Apocalypse Now,” Duvall was wildly out front, the embodiment of deranged masculinity as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who with equal vigor enjoyed surfing and bombing raids on the Viet Cong. Duvall required few takes for one of the most famous passages in movie history, barked out on the battlefield by a bare-chested, cavalry-hatted Kilgore: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink body.

“The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like — victory.”

Coppola once commented about Duvall: “Actors click into character at different times — the first week, third week. Bobby’s hot after one or two takes.”

Honored, but still hungry

He was Oscar-nominated as supporting actor for “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now,” but a dispute over money led him to turn down the third Godfather epic, a loss deeply felt by critics, fans and “Godfather” colleagues. Duvall would complain publicly about being offered less than his co-stars.

Fellow actors marveled at Duvall’s studious research and planning, and his coiled energy. Michael Caine, who co-starred with him in the 2003 “Secondhand Lions,” once told The Associated Press: “Before a big scene, Bobby just sits there, absolutely quiet; you know when not to talk to him.” Anyone who disturbed him would suffer the well-known Duvall temper, famously on display during the filming of the John Wayne Western “True Grit,” when Duvall seethed at director Henry Hathaway’s advice to “tense up” before a scene.

Duvall was awarded an Oscar in 1984 for his leading role as the troubled singer and songwriter Mac Sledge in “Tender Mercies,” a prize he accepted while clad in a cowboy tuxedo with Western tie. In 1998, he was nominated for best actor in “The Apostle,” a drama about a wayward Southern evangelist which he wrote, directed, starred in, produced and largely financed. With customary thoroughness, he visited dozens of country churches and spent 12 years writing the script and trying to get it made.

Among other notable roles: the outlaw gang leader who gets ambushed by John Wayne in “True Grit”; Jesse James in “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid”; the pious and beleaguered Frank Burns in “M-A-S-H”; the TV hatchet man in “Network”; Dr. Watson in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”; and the sadistic father in “The Great Santini.”

“When I was doing ‘Colors’ in 1988 with Sean Penn, someone asked me how I do it all these years, keep it fresh. Well, if you don’t overwork, have some hobbies, you can do it and stay hungry even if you’re not really hungry,” Duvall told The Associated Press in 1990.

In his mid-80s, he received a supporting Oscar nomination as the title character of the 2014 release “The Judge,” in which he is accused of causing a death in a hit-and-run accident. More recent films included “Widows” and “12 Mighty Orphans.”

Ungifted in school, gifted on stage

Robert Selden Duvall grew up in the Navy towns of Annapolis and the San Diego area, where he was born in 1931. He spent time in other cities as his father, who rose to be an admiral, was assigned to various duties.

The boy’s experience helped in his adult profession as he learned the nuances of regional speech and observed the psyche of military men, which he would portray in several films.

Duvall reportedly used his Navy officer father as the basis for his portrayal of the explosive militarist in “The Great Santini,” based on the Pat Conroy novel. He commented in 2003: “My dad was a gentleman but a seether, a stern, blustery guy, and away a lot of the time.” Bobby took after his mother, an amateur actress, in playing a guitar and performing. He was a wrestler like his father and enjoyed besting kids older than himself.

He lacked the concentration for schoolwork and nearly flunked out of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. His despairing parents decided he needed something to keep him in college so he wouldn’t be drafted for the Korean War. “They recommended acting as an expedient thing to get through,” he recalled. “I’m glad they did.” He flourished in drama classes.

“Way back when I was in college,” Duvall told the AP in 1990, “there was a wonderful man named Frank Parker, who had been a dancer in World War I. We did a full-length mime play and I played a Harlequin clown. I really liked that.

“Then, I played an older guy in ‘All My Sons,’ and at one point I had this emotional moment, where this emotion was pouring out. Parker said at that moment he didn’t think acting can be carried any further than that. And this guy was a very critical guy. So I thought, at that moment at least, this is what I wanted to do.”

After two years in the Army, he used the G.I. Bill to finance his studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, hanging out with such other young hopefuls as Robert Morse, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. After a one-night performance in “A View From the Bridge,” Duvall began getting offers for work in TV series, among them “The Naked City” and “The Defenders.”

Between his high-paying jobs in major productions, Duvall devoted himself to directing personal projects: a documentary about a prairie family, “We’re Not the Jet Set”; a film about gypsies, “Angelo, My Love”; and “Assassination Tango,” in which he also starred.

Duvall had been a tango dancer since seeing the musical “Tango Argentina” in the 1980s and visited in Argentina dozens of times to study the dance and the culture. The result was the 2003 release about a hit man with a passion for tango.

His co-star was Luciana Pedraza, 42 years his junior, whom he married in 2005. Duvall’s three previous marriages — to Barbara Benjamin, Gail Youngs and Sharon Brophy — ended in divorce.

Former Associated Press Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas, who died in 2014, was the primary writer of this obituary

By the middle years of the Revolutionary War, chocolate was part of the ecosystem of soldiering, consumed as a hot beverage and valued for energy when supply lines snapped, or pay fell behind. The Smithsonian Institution notes that Americans have been consuming chocolate since colonial times and points to the Continental Army’s use of it during the Revolution, as detailed in its examination of chocolate as a fighting food.

Even then, chocolate’s value was not only nutritional. It was psychological, a reminder that life extended beyond cold marches and unappetizing food.

That psychological dimension became unavoidable once the U.S. military entered World War II and attempted to feed a global force at industrial scale. The Army Quartermaster Corps needed food that could survive every environment, fit inside a pocket and perform predictably under stress, priorities documented by the Smithsonian’s research on wartime ration development. Chocolate was an obvious candidate, but the version soldiers wanted and the version logisticians needed were not the same thing.

In 1937, the Army approached the Hershey Company with a blunt request: Create a bar that was high in calories, compact, heat resistant and intentionally unpleasant. The goal was to ensure troops did not eat an emergency ration out of boredom. The result was Field Ration D, which the Hershey Community Archives describes as a purpose-built survival food, rather than a morale item.

The bar’s reputation was earned. It was dense, bitter and designed to be eaten slowly, delivering roughly 600 calories per serving. Army specifications required that it taste only “a little better than a boiled potato.” Soldiers did not need to enjoy it. They needed it to exist when everything else failed.

Then the Pacific happened.

Heat and humidity erased margins for error. Even though rations became liabilities, the Army’s needs shifted from merely heat resistant to reliably heat proof. In 1943, Hershey developed the Tropical Chocolate Bar, designed to withstand extreme temperatures while improving flavor to be more palatable.

World War II forced planners to acknowledge a simple truth: a soldier’s willingness to eat matters. While emergency rations like the D ration were intentionally unpleasant to ensure they were saved for survival, chocolate in other forms served a different role, offering quick energy and a brief sense of normalcy alongside rations designed strictly for endurance.

The same tension continues to shape modern ration design, driven by weight limits, packaging constraints and feedback from service members.

Chocolate’s rise from colonial drink to engineered survival ration mirrors the evolution of the U.S. military itself. Early America used it because it was available and useful, while World War II transformed it into a system defined by specifications, testing and mass production. Across centuries and conflicts, the lesson remained consistent: calories keep you moving, and morale helps you keep going.

The 29-year-old soldier and Olympic pairs skater currently preparing to compete in the Milan Cortina Games is the first figure skater in the Army’s program that nurtures elite athletic talent, according to the program director.

Willie Wilson, director of the World Class Athlete Program, told Military Times in a phone interview from Italy that Howe, who enlisted in October 2024 and graduated boot camp in February 2025 as a Motor Transport Operator, had been excited to join the ranks.

“He has done a great job of not only representing WCAP, but also representing the Army,” Wilson said.

Troops, veterans get free streaming of extended Olympics coverage

WCAP, which dates to 1997, offers athletes from a broad range of disciplines the opportunity to train and compete while benefiting from elite in-house coaching while receiving a military paycheck. For U.S. athletes, who don’t receive any money from the government to compete in the Olympics and typically have to pay out of pocket for equipment, coaching and other needs, this can be a pretty attractive deal. In return, the athletes stay current on typical military training and requirements and serve in addition as an outreach and recruiting branch.

“They hold clinics, speak to high school and college audiences, talk with athletic teams and make appearances in support of Army recruiting stations,” WCAP says on its website.

At the Milan Cortina Games, the Army has six WCAP members participating, including Howe and bobsledder Frank Del Duca, who, alongside speedskater Erin Jackson, was selected by fellow athletes to carry the U.S. flag in the Olympic opening ceremonies Feb. 6. The Air Force also sent two members of its WCAP to the Games.

Howe, who has skated with partner Emily Chan since 2019, narrowly made it to the Olympics following a disappointing eighth-place finish in the short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January. They squeaked into a qualifying position after finishing third in the free skate program.

“The roller coaster of the trials really opened my eyes,” Howe, who like other athletes is under a media blackout until the conclusion of the Olympics, said in an Army release. “Looking back at how the competition unfolded and how we were ultimately named to the team, we’re grateful and honored. Now we want to do our best representing the Army and the United States.”

This season, he and Chan are skating to the Italian “Caruso,” performed by Josh Groban, in their short program, and “Unchained Melody” from “Ghost: The Musical” in their free skate.

In an interview with U.S. Figure Skating last November, Howe acknowledged that taking time out to complete Army Basic Training and follow-on job requirements had come with its challenges.

“Even though I learned how to be an 88M, my current duty is to maintain a high level of military standard and a high level of athletic standard as they both now coincide with each other,” he said in the interview. “Every day I check in remotely with my platoon sergeant, and I take on each training day as an opportunity to fulfill my duties as that soldier-athlete.”

When he finally returned to training last June, he said, he came with an additional set of skills — beyond those required to operate and maintain the vehicles in the Army’s motor pool.

“I started looking at skating from a soldier’s perspective and not just an athlete. Taking on the responsibility to compete at the highest level — not just for Team USA but also for the Army — is a different level of commitment," he said. “Working with my partner Emily every day isn’t just a job; it feels like a duty. Approaching training with that mindset has changed how I work and helped me excel.”

According to Army releases, Howe plans to join the Chaplain Candidate Program after finishing his undergraduate degree, begun last year. Eventually, he said, he plans to earn his Master of Divinity.

Wilson, who is attending his eighth Olympics since joining the program in 2007, said Army Secretary Dan Driscoll had already visited the Games to encourage and congratulate the athletes. While the competitors will return to the U.S. at different times following their events, Wilson said the camaraderie and team spirit was strong and would be capped off with a get-together at WCAP headquarters in Colorado Springs later this year.

While WCAP wants its athletes to do as well as they can, it’s a lower-pressure environment than most sports sponsorship programs.

“If your best today is an Olympic gold medal, we’re pretty excited about that,” Wilson said. “But if your best turns out to be a sixth-place performance, we’re honored that you’re here and proud of you, and we would consider that success within the program.”

The pairs skating competition begins Feb. 15.

The Marines deployed to Bardufoss on a combination of military and commercially chartered aircraft – including a Patriots-branded Boeing 767 – to begin preparations for a Norwegian-led winter exercise scheduled for March, the Marine Corps told Military Times.

Roughly 3,000 Marines are expected to join other U.S. forces and some 25,000 personnel from a dozen nations for Cold Response 26. A significant portion of the American contingent hails from the 2nd Marine Division, based at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The drills are designed to test collective defense capabilities, U.S. readiness and interoperability with NATO allies under the harsh conditions of the Arctic.

The aircraft the Marines traveled on are part of a fleet operated by Omni Air International, which is under contract with the U.S. Transportation Command to provide chartered flights for military personnel. Omni Air operates two Patriots-owned 767s that are used for team travel as well as a range of other flights, including humanitarian missions and military charter services, according to the company.

Nicknamed “AirKraft” after team owner Robert Kraft, the planes are painted in the Patriots’ red, white and blue, and emblazoned with the franchise’s six Lombardi Trophies on their tails. Inside, the cabins have been retrofitted with all first-class seats and features a state-of-the-art in-flight entertainment system.

“The 767 we have typically carries 260 people, but since we didn’t have a need to travel 260 people, we wanted to utilize the space on the plane to give more space for people,” Jim Nolan, the chief operating officer of Kraft Sports + Entertainment, said.

The Patriots are set to face the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl.