On board the submarine, the crew had assembled on the deck in dress uniforms, which were starkly different than what American sailors were wearing. A dashing figure in officer’s regalia bearing a row of medals across his chest stood at the conning tower. Suddenly, the larger vessel was bumped by a small motor launch with a reporter on board.

“Have you come here to be interned?” asked the curious newspaperman.

“No,” answered the distinguished officer. “But I’ve brought a letter for the German ambassador. Will you mail it for me?”

The submarine’s commander was Kapitänleutnant Hans Rose of the Imperial German Navy. On Oct. 7, 1916, while World War I raged across Europe, he boldly sailed his submarine, U-53, into the neutral port under the incredulous gaze of the U.S. Navy in an attempt to rattle the American public and convince the country to stay out of the conflict.

“Audacity,” says Ret. Rear Admiral Samuel J. Cox, director of naval history and curator for the Navy at the Naval History and Heritage Command. “That’s the only word I can think of to describe Rose cruising into Newport. The U.S. was still neutral then, but he did not know how the Navy would react to his arrival.”

That event 110 years ago made banner headlines in newspapers across the country and around the globe. Planned months in advance, Rose was under strict orders to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and show up at the Rhode Island naval base to introduce himself to American officers as a “goodwill” gesture. In reality, his courtesy call was a propaganda move designed to shock the United States into fearing the far-reaching dangers of German submarine warfare.

“Rose was basically trying to say, ‘My U-boat can reach your shores and you should be aware if you decide to get involved in the First World War,’” said David Kohnen, Naval War College professor, in a video posted on C-Span Classroom

At the time, millions of lives were being sacrificed on the killing fields of Europe as the Central Powers of Germany, Austria and Turkey tried to deliver a knockout blow to the Entente allies: France, England and Russia. With an impartial stance, the United States looked on as both sides became mired in the mud of trench warfare.

Though officially neutral, American factories were churning out armaments — mostly for Entente armies, but also for the Central Powers. Cargo ships of all registries transported this matériel from U.S. ports to the battlefront, prompting the Imperial German Navy to begin hunting freighters carrying “contraband” on the open sea.

Early in the war, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare — meaning its unterseeboots would attack ships without warning if they believed they were transporting munitions. That changed in 1915 with the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, a British luxury ocean liner. Some 128 American citizens were killed in the attack, prompting calls for U.S. intercession in the war.

To calm nerves across the Atlantic, Germany then intercepted ships and checked manifests for wartime supplies. If carrying such a cargo, the ship would be sunk after passengers and crew were offloaded onto lifeboats.

“Americans were concerned by the sub threat,” Cox says. “Newspapers carried stories of how freighters were being sunk, some not far off U.S. shores. There was a great deal of tension since ships were the way most people traveled distances then.”

Rose received his orders from Cmdr. Hermann Bauer, who was in charge of the German U-Boat fleet. Bauer had cleared the plan with German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II, who believed it would shock the United States into staying out of the war.

“Convinced the Americans were essentially spineless, [the Kaiser] reasoned that a German U-boat sally into a U.S. naval harbor would be so intimidating as to keep the United States out of the war,” wrote journalist Wellington Long in a 1966 article.

On the mission, U-53 was supposed to escort the Bremen, an unarmed merchant submarine designed to carry cargo under the British blockade of Germany. However, the two vessels failed to rendezvous, so U-53 crossed the Atlantic on its own (the Bremen was later presumed lost at sea, possibly sunk by a British mine or torpedo).

It took U-53 three weeks to make the trip. On Oct. 7, Rose and his crew surfaced in American territorial waters just off the coast of Rhode Island. According to neutrality laws, belligerent warships were allowed into neutral ports for 24 hours, usually for food, water, fuel, repairs or to surrender. Rose needed none of those things, but was concerned how he would be received in the American port, home of the Navy’s Atlantic destroyer fleet.

“There I was, a 31-year-old German naval officer… heading my submarine for Newport naval harbor, and no one really knew how neutral those American destroyers would be,” the U-53 commander told Long in an interview.

Uncertainty was prevalent that day. Telegrams flew between Newport and Washington, D.C., as local commanders sought guidance on how to respond to the unusual situation. Eventually, the commander of the Second Naval District arrived to find out what was going on in his homeport.

A confused Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight asked if Rose required repairs, fuel or anything else, only to be told no. Finally, the American officer stammered, “Well, then, what the devil do you want here?”

“I only wanted to visit you, Admiral,” Rose responded.

U-53 became a spectacle in Newport Harbor. Yachts and pleasure craft tied up next to the German submarine for a closer look. Citizens and reporters walked her deck and were greeted by friendly German sailors. Officers of anchored American destroyers, including USS Jacob Jones, stopped by to see the U-Boat. Even Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves, commander of the destroyer flotilla at Newport, came aboard — along with his wife and daughter. They were given a tour below decks of the submarine.

That afternoon, Rose left the U-53 by water taxi and visited Coasters Harbor Island. He strolled up the steps to the Naval War College and knocked on the door, according to Kohnen. When greeted, Rose answered, “I’m here to mail a postcard.” It was addressed to his mother back in Germany.

Eventually, Rose sensed his welcome was wearing thin, so he bid farewell to his hosts and left the harbor. He anchored off of Nantucket Lightship that evening. At first light the next day, he was underway and cruised past the U.S. 3-mile territorial limit. Then it was back to war as he began hunting for cargo ships carrying contraband.

U.S. Navy destroyers left Newport and stayed a short distance away as U-53 intercepted, inspected and sank five freighters. The American ships rescued 216 survivors from British, Canadian, Dutch, Norwegian and U.S. freighters.

Before the mission, Rose said he was informed by Cmdr. Bauer that the Kaiser planned to announce a return to unrestricted submarine warfare — something Rose believed was necessary if Germany was to win the war. That didn’t happen until 1917. The Kaiser was reticent to do so, fearing it would provoke the Americans into joining the war, which it did. A year later, the United States declared war on Germany.

Rose would go on to become one of Germany’s most successful U-boat captains, sinking 81 merchant ships with a gross weight in excess of 200,000 tons. He was also credited with sinking the USS Jacob Jones, whose officers toured his submarine in Newport Harbor. It was the only U.S. destroyer to be lost in enemy action in World War I.

Designed to strike fear into the American public, the arrival of U-53 in Newport had the reverse effect. If anything, it confirmed U.S. suspicions that Germany was dangerous and forced many isolationists to reconsider their neutral stance. It also proved to the United States just what was at stake in the Atlantic with German submarines on the prowl.

“U-53 demonstrated that the U-boat commanders were audacious and a foe that deserved to be treated with respect,” Cox says.

“I just got tired of watching my friends die” without recognition, Kerr said of what drove him two years ago to found the Utah Agent Orange Veterans Foundation, a non-profit with the mission “to honor veterans of the Vietnam War who were exposed to the deadly herbicide known as Agent Orange.”

In a phone interview with Military Times, the 78-year-old Kerr said, “We’re just a bunch of old guys trying to get this done” by Veterans Day.

Kerr served two tours in Vietnam with the 412th Munitions Maintenance Squadron, whose members have a presumption of exposure to Agent Orange based on the locations in which they served. Since leaving the service, Kerr said he has dealt with a bout of testicular cancer and heart disease, and will soon face an operation to remove three tumors on his bladder.

But what angers Kerr most is the treatment of veterans who came back from Vietnam with medals for valor and were told that their illnesses were not service-related.

“We’ve had so many survive, come back with Purple Hearts, Silver Stars, and then come back here to die of Agent Orange — that’s what really burns my butt,” Kerr said.

Kerr’s push to honor Agent Orange victims led Mayor Scott Wiggill and the city council of Sunset City, Utah — a town of 5,400 about 25 miles north of Salt Lake City — to grant permission to the Utah Agent Orange Veterans Foundation to put up a memorial in Sunset City Veterans Park.

“We were more than proud to do it,” Wiggill, whose office is non-partisan, said in a phone interview with Military Times. He added that “It’s a shame our federal government failed to recognize the Agent Orange victims for such a long time.”

The Memorial will mark one of the great tragedies to come from the Vietnam War that began with the approval in 1961 by the administration of President John F. Kennedy for the military to conduct defoliation and herbicide spraying missions.

On Jan. 18, 1962, Operation Ranch Hand was launched using twin-prop Air Force C-123 Provider aircraft. The initial spraying missions focused on transportation routes and the perimeters of U.S. bases.

Soon, the Ranch Hand aircrews began engaging in gallows humor about their missions, claiming that their new motto was “Only you can prevent a forest,” a takeoff on the Smokey the Bear public service announcements of the National Park Service.

The operation quickly expanded beyond Agent Orange to include other herbicides, code-named Agents White, Purple, Blue, Pink, and Green. In all, more than 20 million gallons of tactical herbicides and defoliants were sprayed in Vietnam between 1961 and 1971. Roughly 61% of the total came from Agent Orange, which was contaminated with the highly toxic chemical compound dioxin, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The strategy behind the use of the defoliants was intended to deprive the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars of the cover provided by the forests and jungles; make them more vulnerable to ground and air attack; and also destroy the crops that sustained them.

Army field manuals at the time stated that the agents were “relatively non-toxic to man or animals,” which led commanders to drop precautions when spraying was nearby.

In his memoirs, Army Gen. William Westmoreland, the former commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, defended the use of Agent Orange as a tactical necessity: “The enemy used the jungle to hide, to ambush, to move troops. We had to find a way to deny him that cover.”

Following the war, veterans continued pressing for a service connection to the illnesses they developed after the conflict and for disability compensation that would come with the service connection. However, the VA maintained that “there is no positive evidence for deleterious effects on the health of individuals exposed to these herbicides which is of a permanent nature,” according to a 2024 VA report.

Yet the military discontinued use of Agent Orange and the other herbicides in 1971 and, tellingly, it gathered up the remaining stocks of Agent Orange and shipped them to Johnson Atoll, about 825 miles southwest of Honolulu, where they were incinerated in 1977.

In 1984, Vietnam veterans and their families filed in Brooklyn federal court what would become a landmark class-action lawsuit against seven chemical companies, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto, which resulted in a $180 million settlement for the veterans while allowing the chemical companies to continue denying any liability for the health problems of the veterans.

At the time, Victor John Yannacone Jr., the Long Island lawyer who first filed the class action suit for the veterans in 1979, said that the settlement should spur more action in Washington: ‘’I hope that the President of the United States directs the Veterans Administration to honor the claims of the Vietnam combat veterans and recognizes that chemical bullets are just as deadly as lead bullets — they just take longer to kill."

Finally, on Feb. 6, 1991, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Agent Orange Act to establish a group of “presumptive” conditions for Vietnam Veterans exposed to herbicides, meaning that veterans with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcomas and chloracne could now receive medical benefits from the VA as a result of service in Vietnam.

Since the signing of the Agent Orange Act, the VA has added to the list of “presumptives,” and there are now roughly 19 specific presumptive conditions linked to Agent Orange and other herbicides.

Now, Kerr and his fellow veterans in Sunset City, Utah, are working to recognize the decades-long fight to recognize and honor Agent Orange victims.

The inscription on one of the panels being put up by Kerr succinctly speaks to the veterans affected by Agent Orange:

“This memorial stands as a promise that their sacrifices will never be forgotten, their voices will never be silenced, and those who follow will be protected.”

Bernardino Mijares has spent most of his life searching for his father.

For many years, all the 33-year-old tricycle taxi driver knew was the name his mother had told him — which later was found to be incorrect — and that his father had served in the Philippines with the U.S. Navy. Growing up in the city of Antipolo, Mijares was often singled out because of his darker skin and curly hair. He came to understand that his father was Black, but looking different from other Filipinos exposed him to bullying at school and limited his opportunities later in life.

“Discrimination, it’s hard,” Mijares said. “I didn’t have recognition in school. I don’t have a family tree. I feel incomplete.”

Mijares is one of more than 100,000 Amerasians, a term commonly used for children born in Asian countries to U.S. service members and local women. Many grew up in the aftermath of American wars and military deployments in Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and elsewhere, often facing stigma, poverty, and exclusion. While U.S. forces over the years have been deployed worldwide, the scale of the Vietnam and Korean wars resulted in high numbers of children fathered by US servicemen in Asia. This, coupled with the perception of the U.S. as the enemy or an occupying force, contributed to heightened stigma for the children they left behind.

Now, as many of the American servicemen from those wars enter their twilight years, some Amerasian children are running out of time to find them.

Those who served in Vietnam and Korea, in particular, “are getting old,” said Chelle Reed, founder of the charity WarBabies, which works to reconnect U.S.-based Amerasians with their fathers. Her father was a Vietnam War veteran who she later learned had fathered a son during his deployment before she was born. Unfortunately, her father died before her brother was found.

Stories like these are why Mijares considers himself one of the lucky ones. After years of searching — and a decade spent talking with a man who turned out not to be his father — a DNA test finally gave him an answer.

Days before Father’s Day in June 2025, the nonprofit Father Founded confirmed that Clifford Jeudy, a 52-year-old radio DJ living in Orlando, Florida, was Mijares’ biological father.

Jeudy had no idea he had left a child behind during a three-week stint to the Filipino island of Luzon in 1992.

He was 18, fresh out of high school, and serving on his first Navy deployment aboard the USS Belleau Wood. The ship was stationed in Subic Bay as the United States prepared to end its permanent military presence in the Philippines.

Jeudy described his relationship with Mijares’ mother as a “whirlwind.” He said he was drawn to her resemblance to Holly Robinson, one of his favorite actresses at the time. But the relationship ended when the ship departed.

“We didn’t have the internet [or] cell phones,” Jeudy recalled. “We talked about her coming over, but it was such a whirlwind type of situation, and the next thing you know, I’m in my dress uniform on the ship and we’re leaving Subic Bay.”

Neither heard from the other again and so he had no idea that months after he left, she gave birth to a son.

Thirty-three years later, Jeudy was on his way home from work in Florida when his fiancée called to say she had signed for an important-looking envelope. He asked her to read it aloud. As he stared at the road ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel, he learned that he not only had a son, but three grandchildren.

Father Founded, which has successfully identified family members in 452 cases, had used DNA to identify Jeudy and contacted him on Mijares’ behalf. The nonprofit also served as an intermediary between a father and son living on different continents and speaking different languages.

Jeudy was stunned.

“I went from having one biological son and two stepsons to having a whole bloodline,” said Jeudy, who had no other grandchildren. He did not need to study the DNA results. The enclosed photograph of Mijares was enough.

“The pictures when he was young … the similarity [is] amazing,” Jeudy said.

Jeudy’s other son and extended family welcomed Mijares, albeit only over video calls so far. Jeudy says he hopes to visit the Philippines soon.

The Cost of Being Amerasian

Mijares’ reunion with his father brought answers after decades of uncertainty. But his childhood reflected a broader pattern experienced by many Amerasian children born in the aftermath of U.S. wars and military deployments.

Brian Hjort, founder of Father Founded, said Amerasian children were often stigmatized because of their American parentage and mixed-race appearance in Vietnam. In some communities, he said, they were treated as reminders of “the enemy.”

“[They] are discriminated [against], not allowed to take certain jobs or education,” Hjort said. “They grow up being outcasts.”

Mijares’ mother left him in the care of his grandmother and went on to marry and have three other children. He had to navigate life as an Amerasian without any of his peers looking like him or knowing who his father might be.

“My mother could not take care of me back then because she had her own family, and her other children were her priority,” he said. “People would always ask where my father was, wonder why I had no middle name, or notice I stood alone during family days. … But I managed to get through all of that.”

With limited financial means, he was not able to go past the elementary level in school, narrowing his employment options and earning potential. He relied on friends and his grandmother to support him until he was old enough to work.

“I was only 12 years old at the time and I could not work to provide for myself,” Mijares said of his life after finishing elementary school. “I just went wherever I could, until I was no longer able to continue schooling.”

For Julie Henning, who grew up in South Korea after the Korean War, the consequences were even more severe.

Henning said she and her mother were shunned because she was the child of a Korean woman and an American serviceman. People saw them as bringing shame and dishonor to the community.

“[I was] considered a half-breed, less than a dog,” Henning said.

Her father had returned to the United States by the end of the war in 1953. At this time, South Korea had plunged into the worst levels of poverty globally, and Henning’s mother struggled to support her family. It didn’t help that societal stigma from having been involved with an American soldier blocked her from certain employment. Henning remembers growing up without running water and foraging for dandelions, mushrooms, and snails. Her sister died of malnutrition.

Henning said her mother considered putting her up for adoption multiple times, but could not go through with it.

When Henning was 13, she received a scholarship to attend the Pearl S. Buck Opportunity Center near Seoul, run by the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which served children who faced discrimination because of their mixed heritage. Soon after Henning arrived in the South Korean capital, her mother died.

Henning has long believed that her mother saw her departure for school as a chance for her daughter to build a different life.

“[My mother] impressed upon me to get an education and go to America, the land of your father,” Henning said through tears.

The author Pearl S. Buck later adopted Henning and brought her to the United States, where she attended college and became a math teacher and author.

Mijares’ and Henning’s experiences were not unusual. The discrimination Amerasians faced was one reason Hjort started a group to help them.

In Vietnam, some Amerasian children were derided as “dust,” a reference to those left to survive on the streets. In South Korea, biracial children were sometimes labeled “mixed bloods,” while in Thailand they were called “half children.” Research has documented Amerasians struggling with poverty, limited educational opportunities, and lasting harm to employment, income, and mental health.

“I saw the Vietnamese really treat them badly … talk down to them and abuse them,” Hjort said, speaking of the time he spent in Vietnam in the 1990s and the impetus for creating Father Founded.

His work is made harder because many veterans themselves do not know they left children behind, but finding them has become easier than it was in the 1990s. Researchers once relied on military records to determine where servicemen had been stationed and when.

Today, DNA testing, ancestry databases, and social media can narrow the search. Even so, some cases take years. Once the organization identifies a likely father, it contacts him on the child’s behalf. Some men are overjoyed. Others are hesitant.

“Sometimes people don’t want to be reminded about the past,” Hjort said. “[These were] very bad wars and people have remarried and had their own kids.”

For the children, however, the past has never been distant. Many grew up facing discrimination because of their appearance and American parentage, without knowing the identity of the father who shaped how others saw them.

The Immigration Barrier

For some Amerasians, finding an American father is tied not only to identity, but also to hope of learning more about the United States and perhaps one day visiting.

The Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987 allowed certain Vietnamese children of U.S. service members born between 1962 and 1976, and their immediate family, to immigrate to the United States without definitive proof of paternity. Applicants could qualify based on interviews, physical appearance, testimony, and other evidence. Prior to this, a broader act, the Amerasian Act of 1982, applied to those born in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand after 1950 and before 1982, but only applied to the Amerasians themselves, not the family members.

The law ultimately allowed at least 25,000 Vietnamese Amerasians and 70,000 relatives to immigrate.

“Our country knew that our men over there did this and left so many children behind,” said Reed. “They didn’t have DNA testing back then … but the government wanted to do the right thing.”

WarBabies’ Reed said the law allowed her Amerasian brother to leave Vietnam in 1990 even though he had not yet identified their shared father. Reed has a different mother from her brother and was born after her father returned to the U.S. Years after finding one another, brother and sister now live in Georgia, about 15 minutes away from one another.

For Amerasians born elsewhere in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines, no comparable program exists. Without documented proof of paternity in the form of a birth certificate or a recognized claim to U.S. citizenship, immigration can be difficult.

“They want to have the love of their father and to be accepted,” Hjort said. “Of course, they hope to go to America, but they realize … it’s not easy.”

For Mijares, however, the search was never about moving to the United States. He wanted to know who his father was, understand his American heritage, and fill a gap that shaped his life.

Mijares now speaks regularly with his younger brother and has connected with members of Jeudy’s extended family. Jeudy hopes to meet his son and grandchildren in person in the near future.

Jeudy said he believes children who can prove a biological relationship to an American parent should have a clearer path to recognition, and, where legally justified, United States citizenship. The State Department offers support if a person can prove their father’s U.S. citizenship and has their name on their birth certificate. The challenge is when an individual lacks that vital paperwork or doesn’t know who their father is. Even in cases where they have identified them and there is DNA available, it would need to be backed up with an affidavit from the father in place of a birth certificate, but even then citizenship is at the discretion of the embassy or consulate in question.

“If we could prove that these are our children … they should have the option to get their names changed and potentially citizenship,” Jeudy said.

Time is Running Out

As Vietnam veterans in particular enter their final years, Amerasian families are running out of time to find them.

“A lot of them have Agent Orange exposure, and they’re very ill,” said Reed. She said her organization has helped reunite 102 families.

The time factor applies to veterans from other missions too. By the time math teacher and author Julie Henning found her father’s relatives in South Carolina, he had been dead for four years. She later visited his grave, the only connection still available to her.

“This is the man I never knew, but this is the man who gave me life,” Henning said. “It was [a] really strange unreal feeling. … You cannot quite put it in words.”

She also learned that she had a brother, but he too passed away, months after she spoke to him for the first time.

Reunions are not always simple.

Families may face language barriers, cultural differences, conflicting expectations, and resentment over decades of absence.

People have ideas that their mystical father will be “sitting on a white horse,” Hjort said, then they realize he’s more likely to be “an old chap with a beer gut.”

Some fathers have also spent decades searching for children they left behind.

Jim Reischl served one tour in Vietnam when he was 21 and had a girlfriend, whom he rented a room for near his base. After a few months of dating and just before he was set to head home, she told Reischl she was pregnant. He didn’t want to stay in the country longer than necessary, and he’d been warned in orientation upon arrival in Vietnam that this was a common line used to try to secure passage to America. Skeptical, Reischl left Vietnam but wrote her letters, hoping to learn more about whether the child existed. He never heard back.

In 2005, the question mark over whether he had a child in Vietnam loomed too large, so he reached out to Hjort’s team for help locating the woman and her potential child. He found her after placing an ad in a local newspaper in 2015, and he traveled to Vietnam the following year to visit in person. Reischl’s former girlfriend said that after giving birth, she gave the baby to a local woman to put up for adoption after her family warned of the difficulties of raising a biracial baby. But with few details, he’s still unsure whether he has a child out there or who they might be.

Robert Elliot left a military base near Da Nang, Vietnam, in 1971, knowing the woman he had been seeing was eight months pregnant. He felt that staying wasn’t a realistic option at the time, but planned to maintain contact and figure out a solution. That didn’t happen.

Now, 55 years after leaving Vietnam, Elliot still does not know what became of the child.

“I’ve been searching for close to 30 years, but I haven’t received any hits on DNA,” Elliot said.

Reed said such unresolved cases are common. Her organization has 29 open searches, and many Amerasian families continue looking without knowing whether the veteran they seek is still alive.

“They don’t want to … disrupt their [fathers’] lives,” Reed said. “But they have a deep, internal knowing that they need to know who they are—just a picture or a name. Even to be able to give that to them would satisfy them.”

She urges veterans who believe they have fathered children overseas or their family members to submit DNA to ancestry databases that can then help to identify family members and ancestral ties. Even when Amerasians do not find their fathers in time, DNA testing can connect them with siblings, cousins, or other relatives.

“I don’t care if they think or deny that they had a possibility of children,” Reed said. “They should get tested now.”

For some veterans, testing can create a reunion — or help some other family resolve their case. But for others, a match may only lead to a grave, a photograph, or the name of someone who died before they could be found.

But with each passing year, even those answers become harder to reach.

This article from The War Horse was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Fewer veterans died by suicide in 2024 than the previous year, and the rate — the number of deaths per member of the veteran population — also declined slightly, according to a new report from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA’s annual suicide prevention report, released last week, said that 6,488 veterans died by suicide in 2024, down from 6,662 in 2023. The rate of suicide among the nation’s veterans in 2024 also fell, from 36.6 per 100,000 in 2023 to 36.4 per 100,000 in 2024.

Despite the declines, the suicide rate among U.S. veterans remains more than twice the rate of the general U.S. population, which was 16.4 per 100,000 Americans in 2024 and 16.7 per 100,000 in 2023.

According to the report, the risk of suicide remains high for young veterans, with the highest rate — 45.5 per 100,000 among veterans ages 18 to 34. The rate was 38.5 per 100,000 for those ages 35 to 54; 32.7 per 100,000 for those ages 55 to 74; and 35.8 per 100,000 for those aged 75 and older.

But within those figures, there’s some good news for younger veterans: According to the VA, the rate decreased for those ages 18 to 34 by 4.7% and for those 35 to 54 by 2.3%.

The VA has invested millions in suicide prevention and outreach in recent years, conducting an outreach program to veterans that resulted in enrolling 250,000 veterans in VA care since January 2025 and launching a “Don’t Wait. Reach Out” public service campaign that the department says has contributed to 3.5 million veterans taking action.

The VA announced Tuesday it had awarded $111 million in grants to nonprofits, state and local governments and organizations to support suicide prevention programs. The Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program aims to connect with veterans who aren’t connected with VA services.

While the rates of suicide among veterans who receive health services from the VA remain higher than those who don’t get VA medical care, the rate for those enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration fell 4.8%, which VA officials said was significant given the complex medical needs and risk factors for suicide among veterans seeking health services.

Leaving military service has traditionally also been a significant risk factor. But suicides among those separated from active duty have declined dramatically since 2019, when the rate was 51.1 per 100,000 veterans. In 2023, the most recent year the data was available, the rate was 36.1 per 100,000.

VA officials said the Solid Start program, an effort to provide outreach to those recently separated from the military, has had an impact, with the rate of suicides among those who have been contacted at 30.5 per 100,000, and 42.7 per 100,000 among those the VA has tried to reach but did not make contact.

The department has launched several initiatives it hopes will make a bigger impact on veterans’ suicide, including tracking staff efforts to encourage veterans to enroll in VA care.

“VA healthcare saves lives, so we’re making every effort to get more Veterans into the system to get the care and benefits they’ve earned,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “That means deploying innovative new ways of reaching unenrolled Veterans, screening them for suicide risk and expanding suicide prevention training both inside and outside VA.”

More than 159,000 veterans have died by suicide since 2001. Those at highest risk include homeless veterans, those with mental health conditions and female veterans.

According to the new report, 17.7 veterans die by suicide each day, down from 19 per day in 2018, when a record 7,015 veterans took their own lives, according to the VA.

The data contained in the VA’s annual suicide report is based on national and state reports.

Floyd Johnson, who served in the Army from 1983 to 1985, was sentenced in 2013 to 40 years in prison on felony charges in Florida. While incarcerated, Johnson was diagnosed with service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder and received an 80% disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Because Johnson was in prison, however, his rating was reduced to 10% because veterans who are incarcerated for more than 60 days are restricted by law from receiving full benefits.

To fight the reduction, Johnson, who represented himself, filed a case in a Florida district court arguing that Congress violated his constitutional rights by instituting a law that placed caps on veterans’ benefits for those in prison.

The Middle District of Florida court dismissed the case in 2022. Johnson appealed to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where he received legal representation and requested to name a new defendant — the VA or the VA secretary. He also strengthened his argument against the Veterans Judicial Review Act of 1988, which created a process for veterans to appeal disability claims decisions.

Under the law, a veteran whose claim is denied or disputed goes to the Board of Veterans Appeals, and if the result is not satisfactory to the veteran, it can be appealed to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Johnson’s attorneys argued that the Veterans Judicial Review Act improperly limited the process to the BVA and CAVC, stripping a veteran of the right to file suit in a district court.

They argued that a previous case allowed veterans to pursue benefits cases elsewhere under circumstances that involve constitutionality. They also noted in their Supreme Court petition that other appellate courts have agreed that veterans may take their cases to district courts.

“A veteran’s access to the courts should not vary depending on where he lives. This case presents an ideal vehicle for resolving this conflict on an important question of federal law,” they wrote in the petition.

During oral arguments Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the system “odd,” but not for the reasons that Johnson’s attorney — Jeffrey Chen of the Atlanta-based firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore — cited.

Sotomayor pointed out that with a regulation in place saying the BVA can’t address constitutional questions, the veteran can still appeal any decision that comes out of it, but the government cannot, according to the law.

“We have to take the system as it exists, and that’s a very odd system, is it not?” Sotomayor said. “It leads to your conclusion … which is let constitutional questions go to the court because that’s where the government would have a right to defend the law.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed out that if the Board of Veterans Appeals violated a veteran’s constitutional rights, they could appeal to the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals and eventually, the federal circuit where constitutional questions are decided.

“He has that route. He still has a way of pressing the constitutional claim,” Barrett said.

Chen argued that restricting claims reviews and suits to the BVA process would “empower the inferior officers of the BVA to render final decisions” and disregard laws.

“None of the government’s proposed workarounds is consistent with the Veterans Judicial Review Act,” Chen said.

Assistant to the Solicitor General Kevin Barber argued that the current system is sufficient and the previous case cited by the plaintiff preceded the VJRA and should not apply because the law changed the entire process.

“VJRA fundamentally changed the statutory scheme. … It’s the current statute that matters,” Barber said.

He added that the plaintiff’s additional argument, that the VA can’t decide constitutional challenges to statutes, “is mistaken.”

“True, the Board of Veterans Appeals in the past has been inconsistent on its authority, sometimes deciding such claims and sometimes not, but as we see it, the board can and must decide veterans’ constitutional claims,” Barber said. “Petitioner’s contrary view would conflict with the statutory text and deprive veterans of their ability to bring such claims to the agency. It would even compel the VA to enforce a hypothetical benefit statute that was blatantly unconstitutional.”

An estimated 107,400 veterans are incarcerated in state or federal prisons, according to the Department of Justice, although not all receive VA disability benefits. Johnson’s case does not challenge the law that limits the amount of VA benefits veterans receive while imprisoned. But in their petition, Johnson’s attorneys said he plans to pursue that effort after the current case is decided.

“This case illustrates the impact of a single veterans’ benefits statute. Section 5313, the statute Mr. Johnson challenges, limits the benefits of thousands of veterans. Moreover, 30 percent of all veterans experience service-connected disabilities, and veterans with PTSD are disproportionately at risk of incarceration,” the petition states.

The court is expected to rule early next year.

Andrew Tangen, attorney and superintendent of the Veterans Assistance Commission of Lake County, Illinois, alleges that Lukas Simianer and his company, VetClaims.ai, posted defamatory statements on social media accusing Tangen of having “backed fraudsters from his government email to maintain ... [a] monopoly” in assisting veterans with their claims.

Simianer said he developed the VetClaims.ai system following his own challenges with the VA disability claims process.

Tangen’s lawsuit, filed Sept. 15 in federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleges that Simianer “attacked the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, The American Legion, and [National Association of County Veterans Service Officers], as a monopoly” in assisting veterans with claims.

Then, Tangen alleges, Simianer pointed veterans to the company he owns, which sells services that veterans service organizations provide at no cost. The lawsuit names Simianer and Patriot Claims, LLC, doing business as VetClaims.ai, as defendants.

In an interview with Military Times, Simianer said he has no intention of removing the comments about Tangen and the other veteran service organizations.

Instead, he would like to bring more attention to the issue.

“Truth is the ultimate defense to defamation,” Simianer said.

Tangen ‘tagged and taunted’

Tangen is also the president of NACVSO. Simianer has challenged Tangen, the VFW, DAV, American Legion, and the NACVSO to debates about the current system versus the benefits of the VetClaims system of assisting veterans with their claims. VetClaims.ai is based in Pflugerville, Texas.

The VACLC, which Tangen heads, is a public, county-funded veterans service agency within Lake County government. It’s staffed by officers accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs who provide the same pro bono claims assistance as private veterans service organizations.

For years, veterans and their advocates have complained about a handful of for-profit companies, sometimes referred to as “claims sharks,” that take advantage of veterans by charging them excessive amounts of money to help them file disability claims, when a number of veterans service organizations provide these services for free.

Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs has reduced the claims backlog to under 70,000 for the first time in six years. The average wait time is now about 78 days.

Federal law limits who can act as an agent or attorney in preparing, presenting or prosecuting a benefits claim with the VA. They must be accredited by the department to do the work.

The law also limits when veterans can be charged fees. Accredited agents and attorneys generally aren’t allowed to charge or receive fees for claims representation services provided before a veteran receives notice of the initial decision.

Tangen alleges that in the fall of 2025, a veteran came into the Veterans Assistance Commission of Lake County and told Tangen that a woman who claimed she worked for VetClaims.ai asked him for $1,250 “to file a VA claim he could file for free.” He checked and found that VetClaims.ai is not accredited by the VA.

Tangen referred the matter to the Illinois Attorney General for investigation. According to the lawsuit, Tangen said nothing about the referral in public and stepped aside after handing the matter to authorities.

“He spends his career helping veterans obtain their earned benefits at no charge,” the lawsuit states. “Reporting improper solicitations to the authorities is part of that job.”

Tangen told Military Times in late September that VetClaims.ai isn’t the only company his office has referred to the Illinois Attorney General.

The state attorney general’s Military Rights Veterans Bureau “received one complaint from a Veterans Assistance Commission superintendent claiming VetClaims.ai is exploiting veterans for disability claims while sharing personally identifiable information to an artificial intelligence platform,” said April McLaren, deputy press secretary in the Office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. “While the Attorney General’s office is actively investigating similar companies and claims, we do not share details of ongoing investigations.”

The core allegations of the lawsuit are about Simianer’s alleged defamation of Tangen.

“The accusations attack the honesty on which Mr. Tangen’s life’s work depends,” the lawsuit alleges. “He brings this suit to clear his name, recover the damages allowed by law and have the statements identified in this complaint taken down.”

Tangen told Military Times he has never charged veterans for his work. He became a county veterans-service officer to help veterans without taking a share of the benefits they are able to recover, he said.

His only compensation is the fixed public salary he receives as the VACLC superintendent, and he works regularly with the VA, the VA Office of Inspector General, state authorities and members of Congress on deceptive practices that harm veterans.

Months after Tangen filed the report, the state attorney general, Simianer, and his company “told a national audience that Mr. Tangen was corrupt,” the lawsuit alleges, referring to a June 4 post by Simianer on X.

Tangen denied the accusation and posted the government email showing he had reported VetClaims.ai to the Illinois Attorney General.

For weeks, Simianer “tagged and taunted Mr. Tangen across social media platforms,” the lawsuit alleges.

In his lawsuit, Tangen asks the court to require Simianer and VetClaims.ai to remove false and defamatory statements, and asks for an unspecified amount in damages.

Simianer told Military Times that at no point has the Illinois Attorney General’s office conducted an investigation on VetClaims.ai.

Charging for claims assistance

VetClaims.ai charges veterans $1,250 for their services. The company draws on a plethora of resources to help veterans back up their claims, Simianer said.

“When they go to VetClaims.ai, within six days they will have everything they need to file a claim,” he said. “We support them through the appeals process at no extra cost,” he said.

Simianer and the company website acknowledge that VetClaims.ai is not accredited by the VA.

“This country was not built by men who follow unjust laws,” Simianer said. “Anybody who looks at this law and has any ounce of legal research to their credit or capability would understand that vets are the only federal claimants who are forced to fail first before they can seek professional help.

“Some make the argument you should go to the VSOs. They’re free. God bless, free stuff is great. But if free stuff worked, there wouldn’t be a $1 billion market. The VA’s own accredited attorneys are taking home $33 million a month out of veterans’ own back pay. “

By law, the VA may withhold a portion of a veteran’s back pay to pay accredited representatives directly, under strict conditions, and the fees are generally limited to 20%. According to the VA website, $37.2 million in these fees were paid in August.

Simianer contends the current system costs veterans money. He cites an example of one veteran who had been rated by the VA with a 20% disability since 2013, but with three months of working with VetClaims.ai, he was granted 80%.

“Being stuck at 20% instead of 80% from 2013 to 2026 due to an incompetent [veteran service organization] cost this veteran roughly $233,000 in unpaid compensation,” Simianer claimed. “And closer to $350,000 once you count what that money would have earned had it been in their hands all along.”

According to the VetClaims.ai website, the company’s veteran experts “use advanced AI to quickly and accurately prepare claim strategies by generating compliant medical evidence, documents, and communications that meet the VA’s strict standards.”

Meanwhile, the VA has spent millions of dollars on automated systems, including a program called Automated Decision Support, which pulls together information and a variety of evidence for claims adjudicators to consider when deciding a claim. The department has also increased the size of its processing staff.

Veterans of Foreign Wars defended its record of helping veterans, noting that they have modernized their processes alongside the VA and its technology partners, among other actions.

“Over the past decade, our program has evolved to reach more veterans, now representing more than 600,000 beneficiaries who received more than $16 billion in earned benefits last year alone,” said Ryan Gallucci, executive director of the VFW Washington Office.

VA-accredited representatives are subject to “rigorous training, professional conduct requirements and legal obligations to protect veterans’ information, Gallucci added.

“Veterans deserve to know the difference between accredited professionals providing accountable representation and unaccredited profiteers exploiting regulatory loopholes under the guise of innovation,” Gallucci said. “There’s no debating that if someone fails to adhere to basic accreditation standards, their motivations are likely somewhere other than serving veterans.

“Instead of recycling outdated tropes about VA or flashing their largesse across the internet, perhaps these unaccredited actors should spend more time understanding how today’s veterans’ benefits system has evolved to better serve veterans.”

The latest BLS data, gathered through mid-September, showed only 29,000 jobs added to non-farm payrolls in September, compared with the revised August figure of 133,000 jobs added, as the overall unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% in August to 4.2% in September. The 29,000 jobs added were well below market expectations that the economy would add 84,000 to 95,000 jobs in September.

The slower-than-expected job growth suggested that the job market, which has shown remarkable strength going back to the Biden administration despite rising gas and diesel prices, war with Iran, and tariff wars with once-firm allies, may be showing signs of weakening.

In its report for September, the BLS said that the unemployment rate for all veterans at 3.5% remained the same as the 3.5% recorded in August, while the jobless rate for the generation of veterans who joined the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks went up from 3.5% in August to 4.1% in September.

In response to the jobs report, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said that the BLS data showing that 9,000 manufacturing jobs and 12,300 construction jobs were added in September were “proof that President Trump’s reindustrialization agenda is working,” and Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council.

When asked on Fox Business whether the BLS report was disappointing, Rogers responded, “No, not even a little bit.”

However, Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long said the report was “disappointing for a lot of Americans — it’s still a low hire, low fire economy.”

In a phone interview with Military Times, Long said that “wage growth has been totally wiped out by inflation.” She noted that average hourly earnings fell 3% on an annual basis in September, compared to the current 3.4% inflation rate.

“Nothing here looks alarming,” Long said of the BLS report, but the overall “hope for hiring picking up is gone.” However, the market for veterans with blue-collar job skills “still looks pretty good,” she added.

Despite the disappointing jobs report, “we’ve exceeded all our placement goals” for 2026, said Kevin Rasch, a retired Navy commander and now regional director in Florida for the Wounded Warrior Project’s Warriors to Work program.

In a phone interview, Rasch told Military Times that the goal for 2026 was to find job placements for 1,375 veterans, and the Wounded Warrior program had already helped to find jobs for 1,535 vets, Rasch said

He attributed part of the success of the Wounded Warrior program to “being a little bit more proactive in our outreach efforts. We’re meeting vets where they are.”

Starting in November, veterans won’t have to pay insurance premiums for three months, ending in January 2027, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs announcement.

All told, the break is expected to save veterans nearly $150 million in insurance payments, officials said.

On average, veterans pay about $110 a month for VGLI coverage. VGLI insurance premiums vary and increase every five years as veterans age. Payments range from $30 a month for the maximum $500,000 in insurance to $2,200 a month for the maximum coverage for veterans 80 and older.

All veterans with VGLI policies are eligible for the premium holiday if they have a current policy that hasn’t lapsed or been cancelled due to non-payment of premiums.

Eligible veterans don’t have to take any action. They will be automatically exempted from the three months of premium payments and will be notified by letter or email within the coming weeks if they are eligible. Many veterans pay by allotment from military retired pay, or by withdrawals from their bank account.

Those veterans who paid in advance can either receive credit on their policies for three months or ask for refunds, officials said.

Officials said the program’s financial performance has been “incredibly strong,” making the premium holiday possible.

“VA is all about making life better and more affordable for veterans, and this premium holiday will help the men and women who served this nation keep more of their hard-earned money,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins in the announcement about the initiative.

Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance coverage doesn’t automatically carry over after leaving the military. Everyone leaving the military with SGLI coverage qualifies to sign up for VGLI, with certain time limits.

However, VGLI is more expensive than SGLI, so experts advise shopping around for other life insurance options. One advantage of VGLI is that veterans who sign up within 240 days of leaving the military don’t need to prove they’re in good health.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Veterans’Affairs Committee, and six other Democrats on the committee sent a letter Sept. 23 to Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison and CEO Mike Sicilia demanding documents and detailed explanations for the increase. The lawmakers gave Oracle until Oct. 23 to respond.

The request comes weeks after VA increased the ceiling on its Oracle EHR contract from roughly $10 billion to approximately $27 billion.

At a Sept. 2 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, lawmakers repeatedly pressed VA officials to explain what specifically drove the additional $17 billion.

VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence told lawmakers that VA had estimated what it would cost to complete the system’s deployment through 2031, asked Oracle for a proposal and then relied on the department’s acquisition team to negotiate the contract.

But Lawrence said he was not involved in the negotiations and could not explain the specific basis for Oracle’s proposal, how much VA negotiated from Oracle’s request or what specifically drove the additional costs.

When lawmakers asked where the $17 billion was going, Lawrence said it was not necessarily all going to Oracle.

Oracle declined to appear at the Sept. 2 hearing after initially accepting the invitation. The House committee subsequently voted 19-0 to subpoena Ellison and Sicilia to testify.

The Senate lawmakers said they support the House subpoenas and expect Oracle to comply. They also separately asked Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to hold a full committee hearing examining the EHR modernization program’s costs, delays and patient-safety concerns.

The Senate lawmakers are now asking Oracle to provide documents and analyses supporting the increase, including a full itemization of the “unanticipated complexities” cited as the basis for the additional costs.

They also want Oracle to explain what changed since 2022, when Sicilia told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that Oracle was committed to delivering the VA system without exceeding the contracted cost of $10 billion and would fix issues at Oracle’s expense.

The lawmakers also want Oracle to describe its role in helping VA address the 14 outstanding Government Accountability Office recommendations related to EHR modernization that remain not fully implemented. Documentation of cybersecurity performance measures have also been requested, along with an inquiry as to what Oracle has implemented or has plans to implement for the EHR system, in light of the GAO’s finding that the program lacks adequate cyber performance measures.

The $27 billion contract ceiling is separate from VA’s broader estimate of the program’s total lifecycle cost.

Lawrence told House lawmakers that VA estimates it will cost about $37 billion to complete deployment of the system through 2031, plus roughly $11 billion for sustainment, for a total of about $48 billion. He acknowledged during questioning that the estimate was not an independent assessment.

The GAO also told lawmakers that VA had not provided an updated cost estimate or enough detailed documentation for the watchdog agency to determine whether the department’s plans followed best practices.

The GAO reported that VA had fully implemented four of its 18 EHR modernization recommendations but had not fully implemented 14, including 12 priority recommendations, as of August.

Licensed Professional Counselor Kevin Curry, 64, of Frisco, Texas, was convicted last week for his role in health care fraud involving Tricare, the Defense Department’s health program.

According to the Justice Department, Curry, who ran three purported mental health clinics in Texas and Florida, billed Tricare for transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, therapy services for troops and their families that they either never received or were ineligible for.

Curry falsely portrayed himself as a doctor, used fake doctor credentials and paid more than $5.5 million in kickbacks to persuade eligible Tricare beneficiaries to sign up for the therapy, a treatment for severe depression that involves using magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain.

“This defendant exploited a critical health care program serving active-duty service members and their families, diverting taxpayer dollars to bankroll personal luxuries ranging from hotel stays to a casino-themed party and even a gold‑plated Tesla Cybertruck,” National Fraud Enforcement Division Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said in a release. “Such conduct is an affront to the military community and the American public.”

According to the Justice Department, Curry directed employees to fabricate medical records, which he submitted to Tricare as proof of services and billed the program more than $26 million in “false, fraudulent and kickback-tainted TMS claims.”

Tricare paid Curry $17 million, which he used to finance his lavish lifestyle.

A jury convicted Curry of three counts of health care fraud, three counts of offering and paying illegal kickbacks and three counts of “engaging in monetary transactions in criminal derived property.”

Each count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.

“Kevin Curry shamelessly preyed on the trust of service members, veterans, and their families, siphoning millions from Tricare through lies and coercion,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in a statement. “This conviction sends an unmistakable message that those who manipulate our military community and defraud federal healthcare programs will face the full force of federal prosecution.”

The case was investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Texas Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, in addition to the Justice Department.

Growing up in the Depression era Jim Crow South, Greason never let prejudice define him. Rather, he kept moving forward with dignity, humility, and a sense of humor, creating a legacy that began with one question: Did I help someone?

Before Greason teamed up in the Negro Leagues with Hall of Famer and U.S. Army veteran Willie Mays — and decades before he preached the Gospel from the pulpit — he was a Montford Point Marine, America’s first group of African Americans to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II.

In 2012, Greason joined roughly 400 Montford Point Marines in Washington, D.C., to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Today, fewer than 400 Montford Point Marines survive among the 20,000 who served during the war.

Born in Atlanta on Sept. 3, 1924, Greason grew up across the street from Martin Luther King Jr. in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood bustling with Black-owned businesses, jazz and ragtime. His father, James, was a laborer, while his mother Lizzie took in laundry for white families.

Greason spoke with a whisper and chuckled about his circuitous path into baseball when he spoke to the author about his athletic legacy. He said, “I wanted to become a doctor and played two years of semi-pro football, but the Lord had other ideas for me, and I didn’t argue with him.”

To this day, he proudly wears a Marine Corps ballcap embroidered with the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor — a declaration that says, “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

The first Black Marines

As war loomed and fascism rose across Europe, there were few opportunities for Blacks to serve in the U.S. military. That scenario changed six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, permitting Blacks to join the Marine Corps and any branch of the U.S. military — albeit segregated.

For a poor young man from Atlanta, this breakthrough signaled a chance.

At Booker T. Washington High School, Greason was an athlete and a budding leader. According to his military records, he captained the school’s softball team. He also participated in boxing, football, baseball, basketball, tennis and wrestling, so he was in fighting shape when he enlisted in the service in Macon, Georgia, at age 17 on May 13, 1943.

Greason soon found himself at a remote coastal North Carolina installation, built on swampy lowland behind a piney curtain, inhabited by snakes, bears and blood-thirsty swarms of deer flies and mosquitoes.

For Black Marines, Montford Point was their Parris Island, just on rougher terrain with fewer luxuries.

The first Montford Marines cleared the land with basic tools and saws in 1942. They laid gravel roads, dug latrines and built dozens of prefabricated huts, along with a mess hall, a chapel and supply warehouses to create a functioning Marine installation for thousands of men.

Montford Point would ultimately produce more than 20,000 Marines, including 13,000 who went on to serve in the Pacific during World War II.

Private Greason shipped out to the Pacific Theater with the 66th Supply Platoon, 34th Marine Depot Company, V Amphibious Corps. The men arrived on Iwo Jima several days after the initial invasion, when the island looked like a jagged moonscape choked with volcanic ash, smoke and blood.

His platoon’s job was one of the most dangerous on the beachfront — unloading heavy ammunition and critical supplies from ships onto the shore under the constant spray of enemy fire.

“Two of my best friends were killed on that island. I prayed and said, ‘Lord, if you get me off this island, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it,’” he told MLB in an interview.

Greason’s Iwo Jima

As U.S. forces prepared to land on the beach, Greason was instructed to move forward, no matter the casualties that surrounded them, and not tend to the wounded, according to Gerard Choucroun, the executive director of the Heart and Armor Foundation.

As they advanced onto the island, Greason saw that his best friend at Montford Point, Hubert “Claro” Duverney, a fellow squad leader from New York, and another good friend, James Wilkins, from Tennessee, had been hit by enemy fire. Cpl. Duverney was alive. As blood poured from his stomach, Greason made the choice to disobey orders and picked up his friend and carried him to the medical tent overrun with wounded and dying Marines.

Wilkins perished. His valor is memorialized with a Purple Heart. And despite Greason’s heroics, Duverney died two days later.

Greason spent 13 months in Japan with the American occupation force, where he was stationed in Sasebo and Nagasaki, after the United States leveled the city with the second atomic bomb. Choucroun recounts that his 102-year-old friend still dreams about being on the island.

On April 1, 1946, Greason was discharged from duty, yet he soon faced another battle — finding a job to come home to.

Though the young Marine was a capable leader with solid mechanical skills, trade jobs with decent wages were hard to find for Blacks, especially in the Jim Crow South.

So he turned to the Marines to find work as a ball player.

In a typed letter, received June 3, 1946, to his rehabilitation officer at the 6th Marine Reserves District, he wrote: “I am now unemployed. I would appreciate it very much if you could contact some team, it doesn’t matter where, but I am sure I have what it takes to make any team, and I would like a chance to prove myself, if given the chance.”

The age of athletic patriotism

Greason, never formally trained as a baseball player, calls baseball a “Gift from God.”

Standing five foot ten, weighing 170 pounds, the Marine was blessed with a strong arm, a quick mind and a relentless work ethic that soon landed him with the Nashville Black Vols in 1947, and the Birmingham Black Barons from 1948 to 1951.

As Greason perfected his fastball and scouts took note of his Major League potential, Greason once again put his potential on hold, joining the ranks of future Hall of Famers, including Marine combat pilots Ted Williams and Jerry Coleman, who left the game to serve in Korea. However, Greason’s war stayed closer to home this time.

Reflecting on his second tour of duty at Camp Lejeune, in an interview with The Oklahoman in 2012, Greason said he had a good camp commander, who said, ‘That’s a no-win war. You stay here. I’m going to have a baseball team.’”

During the Korean War, Camp Lejeune became a high-profile baseball hub for major and minor league talent who boosted morale. The Lejeune Leathernecks bested Fort Bragg, Cherry Point and Fort Jackson in America’s favorite pastime. Greason certainly delivered on the mound, winning all but one game, and even beating a team with Brooklyn Dodgers ace and future Hall of Famer Don Newcombe.

A barrier-breaking debut

After eight years in the Corps, Greason faced difficulties with team owners, reluctant to sign players who might get called back to duty.

On July 23, 1952, the pitcher once again wrote a letter to his superior officer with the 6th Marine Corps Reserve District, requesting acceptance of his resignation from the reserves.

In loopy cursive handwriting slanting to the left, Greason wrote, “I served proudly with the Corps. and would be glad to serve again if another need should arise, but I do not wish to make a career of it. As we say, once a Marine, always a Marine, therefore, there is no other outfit I would care to serve in if there was another war.”

The Marines released Greason on July 25, 1952. Just three days later the rookie broke the color barrier in professional sports as the first Black player for the Oklahoma City Indians of the Double-A Texas League.

The Marines cheered on their pitcher when he landed on the biggest stage of all, making history as the St. Louis Cardinals’ first Black pitcher in 1954.

There were 35,000 people in the stands at Wrigley Field on Memorial Day when the 29-year-old Marine pitched against the Chicago Cubs — the first game of a doubleheader. Greason could whip a wicked fastball. He could paint the corners of the strike zone but gave up a few runs in three innings, including Ernie Banks’ homer smashed onto the back row of the left field bleachers. The Cardinals lost the rain-shortened game, 14-4.

After finishing out his career with Cardinals farm teams and playing ball in Puerto Rico with Roberto Clemente, the first Latin American player enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Greason retired in 1959.

Greason and his wife Willie settled in Birmingham, where he drove a delivery truck for Pizitz Department Store and joined the 16th Street Baptist Church. On Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, however, the Greasons weren’t in their usual spots in the church. As they headed to a baseball game in Tuscaloosa, they heard the distant “boom” of an explosion that killed four innocent young girls at their church.

That infamous Baptist Street Bombing signaled a spiritual turning point for the budding minister, who went on to receive a doctoral degree in divinity.

Did I help someone?

Whether holding a bayonet, a baseball or a Bible, Greason maintains the same quality — that of a consummate team player.

“I’ve been through a lot of stuff. I know nobody, but God brought me out,” he told the author in 2021. “No matter what happens in the world, nothing is impossible with God.”

Today Greason is a Veteran Ambassador for Heart and Armor, serving as a role model for veterans transitioning from difficult military service to civilian life.

“Reverend Greason has an astounding resume of achievement and citizenship. But his most inspiring qualities are his most subtle — humor and humility, said Choucroun. “Whatever uniform he wears — military, baseball or clergy — he plays for the team, not for himself. His personal warmth and longevity are indomitable. But these qualities are real and, when viewed up close, massively inspiring.”

Anne R. Keene writes about the age of Athletic Patriotism, celebrating athletes who served in World War II and the Korean War. She is the author of the wartime classic, “The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win WWII.”

The Sept. 21 meeting covered some of the most persistent challenges facing military families: spouse employment, access to healthcare, childcare, housing and the difficult transition from military service to civilian life.

The commission was established by President Donald Trump in August to advise and assist him on policies affecting military spouses and families. The order requires the commission to provide the president with a report at the end of each fiscal year while it exists, as well as a final report before its termination. The commission is scheduled to terminate two years after its creation unless Trump extends it. The intention behind the term limit is to enact improvements now, not later.

At the inaugural meeting, commission officials said they had received hundreds of messages from military spouses describing the challenges they face and outlined several policy changes that commission officials attributed to the group’s work.

A new executive order

One of the bigger announcements of the afternoon came during a discussion about the transition from military service to civilian life.

Desiree Thompson Sayle, the commission’s executive director, said the group had advised the president on improving the transfer of information between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump signed Executive Order “Accelerating Access to Veterans’ Benefits and Employment Opportunities” on Sept. 8. The order directs the secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs to establish updated information technology systems, policy guidance and memoranda for the permanent, prospective and ongoing sharing of all Official Military Personnel Files and Service Treatment Records between the two departments.

The order also requires the Department of Defense to ensure that current service members’ official personnel files, health records and Service Treatment Records are shared with VA immediately when a service member is discharged or released from the armed forces, within 30 days of the order and at all times thereafter.

The EO gives the departments 180 days to create and deploy digital tools using artificial intelligence and other emerging capabilities to streamline veterans’ applications for and access to benefits earned through military service, including job training and opportunities offered by the Department of Labor.

DoD will consult with the Labor and Veterans Affairs departments to update the Transition Assistance Program and other workforce programs within 180 days so that, “to the maximum extent practicable and applicable,” every service member leaving active military service is either connected with specific, open jobs related to their skills and interests or enrolled, at their discretion, in qualifying education, training or apprenticeship programs.

The order further calls for separating service members to be connected with appropriate veterans’ representatives acting on behalf of a federal, state or local government to facilitate applications for healthcare, disability, home loan, job placement or education benefits.

Thompson Sayle said the order would help ensure families receive benefits and services they have earned by “facilitating and modernizing the transfer of records and personnel data” from the Department of Defense to VA.

While the executive order itself does not identify the Military Spouse Commission as the source of its recommendations. The commission’s leadership, however, presented the order as an early example of how its work had already influenced policy change.

Military spouse employment

Employment was the subject of nearly 500 messages submitted by military spouses, according to figures presented during the meeting.

Those spouses described repeatedly rebuilding careers after permanent changes of station, including leaving jobs, losing professional connections and beginning another job search at a new duty station.

For spouses in licensed professions, members said moving across state lines can mean new applications, additional fees and delays before they can resume working.

The issue was illustrated during the meeting by Jennifer Conrad, a Marine Corps spouse of nearly 30 years whose husband retired as a sergeant major last year.

Conrad described the challenges military families can face after a service member leaves active duty, particularly Reserve and National Guard families navigating retirement, VA benefits, healthcare and employment.

“Families rarely experience these issues in isolation,” Conrad said.

“Deployment affects marriages. Employment affects financial readiness. Healthcare affects transition. Transition affects identity. VA disability affects the entire household.”

Her comments broadened the commission’s discussion beyond active-duty life to the years after military service, when families can find themselves navigating multiple government systems.

The commission also discussed occupational-license portability, remote work, federal hiring and employment fairs as existing tools intended to address spouse employment barriers.

Problems with healthcare access

Healthcare was the subject of roughly 350 messages to the commission, according to their records.

Military spouses described difficulties finding doctors, therapists, specialists and other providers after a permanent change of station. Members also cited wait lists and administrative barriers involving mental healthcare, fertility treatment, specialty care and children with complex medical needs.

One commission member, a Navy spouse and licensed healthcare professional, said she had seen the effects of those gaps firsthand and identified continuity of care, appointment wait times, specialty care and mental health services as priorities.

Another military spouse in attendance described becoming her husband’s caregiver and advocate after he returned from deployment with serious injuries, including a traumatic brain injury and mental health challenges.

She said spouses can become the primary caregiver, transportation provider, advocate, scheduler and emotional support system for injured service members.

“Supporting veterans means supporting the families who care for them every day,” she said.

The commission also discussed an issue it said had surfaced unexpectedly in its work: spouses being prevented from accompanying service members to medical appointments even when the service member wanted them there.

Thompson Sayle said the commission raised the issue with the Defense Health Agency, which subsequently issued DHA Memorandum 26-056.

Thompson Sayle said the memorandum requires military treatment facilities to accommodate a patient’s request for a spouse or other attendant to be present during a medical appointment, subject to the patient’s preferences, privacy requirements and clinical operations.

“We had to fix that,” Thompson Sayle said.

Long childcare wait lists

Education and childcare accounted for 709 messages, or nearly 40% of the commission’s incoming messages, according to details presented during the meeting.

Spouses described long wait lists for military child development centers, expensive off-base care and schedules that do not fit traditional childcare hours.

Maj. Sabina Kreitz, an Army reservist married to an active-duty soldier, said she works full-time as a contractor, owns a small business and has two young children.

She told the commission that spouse employment initiatives are difficult to use when families cannot secure reliable childcare.

“Military spouses are encouraged to build careers, pursue education, and contribute financially, yet many installations have child development center wait lists that stretch months or even years,” Kreitz said.

She called childcare “the infrastructure that makes readiness possible.”

The commission said the Defense Department is launching a five-location pilot allowing existing fee-assistance funds to be used with certain faith-based, license-exempt childcare providers.

The pilot will be launched in Arlington, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Naval Base Kitsap and Naval Base Point Loma.

Commission members are considering whether the program can be expanded to state-approved childcare providers and whether Coast Guard families would be eligible.

National Guard families exposed another gap: traditional military childcare programs may not address the weekend and extended-hour requirements of drilling Guard families.

The Navy also described a series of steps it has taken to address childcare staffing and capacity, including higher entry-level pay, recruitment incentives, enhanced training, retention incentives and additional child-care positions.

April Cao, wife of acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao said during the meeting that unmet childcare needs had fallen more than 27% since the beginning of fiscal year 2025, from about 2,200 spaces to 1,800.

Jennifer Hegseth, Chairwoman of the President’s Military Spouse Commission, said they are looking at both broad problems affecting military families across the force and more specific issues affecting individual branches, regions and communities.

“We have the big bucket issues, but then we have those that are pretty specific,” she said. “And so, I think we’re looking at addressing them all.”

The $1.1 billion figure is not a measure of taxpayer savings, according to the VA Office of Inspector General. It represents the total value of the contracts over their full performance periods and does not show how much had already been paid or how much the government ultimately spent to end the agreements.

The review examined the contract-cutting effort that was initiated when VA received requests from the General Services Administration, VA senior advisers and representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to terminate certain contracts.

The OIG’s finding contrasts with the $120.9 billion in contract value VA reported to Congress on May 16, 2025, a figure the OIG found contained significant errors.

VA’s May submission reported that the department had terminated 446 contract actions with a combined value of about $120.9 billion. The OIG found that only 357 of those actions had actually been terminated as of April 30, 2026. Eleven had been terminated and later reinstated, while 78 had never been terminated.

Errors were also found with the values of the contracts reported by VA.

VA’s May list included 16 contract actions valued at $1 billion or more. The OIG found that none actually exceeded $150 million. One contract reported at more than $21 billion had an estimated total value of just over $74 million, according to the review.

A VA contracting official told investigators that a department dashboard used to track terminated contracts had miscalculated contract values. Another VA official said some errors stemmed from employees who were unfamiliar with federal contracting and acquisition terminology.

The July 2025 submission contained another mismatch.

VA told Congress it had terminated or was in the process of terminating 1,667 contracts, while the list contained 1,664 contract actions and reported a combined value of more than $1.4 billion. The OIG found that VA had actually terminated 366 of those actions, including 17 that were later reinstated.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who requested the OIG review with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said Wednesday that the report confirmed concerns he had raised about the cancellation campaign.

“This report confirms my repeatedly expressed concerns that VA has recklessly cancelled hundreds of contracts with no consideration of the impact on veterans or VA operations,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “Secretary Collins owes us answers on how VA will replace lost services and how much this fiasco has cost taxpayers in arbitration, settlements, and reinstatements.”

VA defended the cancellation effort and said it had saved more than $1 billion.

“The IG report simply confirms what we’ve said from the beginning: VA terminated hundreds of wasteful and duplicative contracts, saving the department more than $1 billion,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told Military Times.

Slaven also said VA’s review process prevented disruptions to veterans’ services.

“Thanks to the methodical and careful review process VA put in place, these contract cancellations had no negative impact whatsoever on VA care and benefits,” Slaven said.

He shared that the department is reinvesting what VA describes as savings into improvements to veterans’ care and benefits.

The OIG did not calculate savings from the contract terminations. Instead, it reported the $1.1 billion as the total value of the 435 terminated contract actions and said that figure does not reflect amounts already paid or settlement costs. The OIG found that VA had agreed to about $10.6 million in settlement costs for 117 completed settlements.

The VA established procedures to review contracts before terminating them, and the agency’s contracting officials generally complied with federal acquisition requirements, the OIG reported.

‘Confusion and frustration’

The OIG documented challenges created by the speed and volume of the cancellation requests.

On Feb. 21, 2025, VA officials were instructed to review 1,049 contract actions in fewer than 11 hours, obtain the necessary approvals and report their findings to department leadership. Some offices did not finish their reviews by the deadline.

According to the OIG, VA senior advisers and DOGE representatives directed officials to terminate the contracts on Feb. 25, 2025, despite some reviews remaining incomplete. As the reviews continued, the number of contracts proposed for termination fell.

The OIG found that department contracting officials received instructions from multiple individuals and offices and received various lists of contracts that were inconsistently formatted, making them difficult to track.

VA and Veterans Health Administration officials told investigators the process created “confusion and frustration” and required staff to devote significant time to monitoring the lists and related correspondence.

The department created a database in April 2025 to better track the cancellations.

What was cut

The OIG found that 375 of the 435 terminated contract actions, or 86%, involved consulting services. Those contracts primarily covered management consulting, administrative management, program management and strategic communications.

But some contracts initially marked for termination were brought back.

One contract that was terminated but later reinstated involved financial audit services for invoices from contractors performing medical disability examinations. It was terminated Feb. 25, 2025 and reinstated about six months later.

The OIG also found that VA’s July 2025 report to Congress included hundreds of contract actions that had not actually been terminated.

Among them were 974 supply-related contract actions, including contracts involving prosthetics, surgical implants and wheelchair ramps. Another 151 health care-related actions, including nursing-home services, had not been terminated.

The OIG reviewed 2,210 unique contract actions. It determined that 435 were terminated, 100 were terminated and later reinstated, and 1,675 were never terminated.

Of the 435 terminated contract actions, VA had completed settlement agreements for 267 of them, with 150 that were no-cost settlements.

In January 2026, the OIG briefed VA officials on the preliminary findings from its investigation.

Following the briefing, VA submitted an updated list of terminated contracts to Congress on April 13, 2026, after revising its information to distinguish contracts it had terminated, reduced in scope or chosen not to extend through option periods.

The OIG did not independently review the accuracy or completeness of that April 2026 submission.

Blumenthal and King requested the OIG investigation in June 2025 amid concerns about the cancellation process, including the impact on veterans, the use of algorithms in decision-making, the involvement of career VA subject-matter experts and the financial consequences of terminating contracts.

The OIG made no recommendations requiring VA action, but the review found that the department had repeatedly provided Congress with inaccurate information about the contracts it said it had terminated.

“This report shows that VA failed multiple times to submit accurate data and are still in the process of correcting mistakes their process created,” Blumenthal said.

The reason: advances in DNA technology.

During a Sept. 1 webinar, Kelly McKeague, the director of the DPAA, told Stars and Stripes that “We will petition Arlington National Cemetery to disinter the remains at the Tomb of the Unknown simply because the probability is high that we will be able to identify that unknown,” he said.

According to McKeague, the agency now possesses DNA samples from 94% of the roughly 7,400 American service members still listed as missing from the Korean War.

While the agency plans to petition the Army, which oversees Arlington, the potential exhumation and identification process will not commence until all Korean War unknowns — currently residing in the Honolulu cemetery — are exhumed and identified.

There are fewer than 50 Korean War unknowns left, Lance Pridemore, assistant director at the cemetery, told Stripes. And that process should be complete by the end of November.

The Korean War Unknown has rested in the national cemetery since May 30, 1958, when both the Korean and WWII Unknowns were interred during ceremonies presided over by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former five-star general and commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during the Second World War presented the Medal of Honor to each Unknown.

The exhumation would have some precedent.

In the 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 were 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.

James Lyon, 80, admitted to submitting fraudulent documents to the VA to help him pocket over $124,000 in disability payments, lying about his military service and claiming he earned combat accolades — including the Silver Star and the Bronze Star — during the Vietnam War.

Lyon never served in combat and confessed to refusing Marine Corps training roughly 60 years ago. Still, he claimed to serve over three different periods and lied about being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, federal prosecutors said. He used that diagnosis to submit fake paperwork for VA disability payments.

Lyon has not yet been sentenced. He faces up to 10 years in prison without parole, the maximum sentence specified by Congress.

“Veterans’ benefits represent a sacred national promise that is rooted in our gratitude to the men and women who have sacrificed and served our country,” R. Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said in the statement.

“When individuals fraudulently obtain these benefits for their own personal gain, they undermine the integrity of these vital programs and divert resources from the veterans who earned them and need them most. That is unacceptable,” he said.

The case was investigated by the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney James Kirkpatrick.

In a report published Friday, the VA watchdog found that 59% of the VA’s 139 reporting facilities struggle to hire qualified practical nurses and 58% face issues hiring psychologists. For non-clinical staff, 57% of Veterans Health Administration leaders reported shortages of potential VA police officers while 53% faced problems hiring custodians.

The report, based on surveys from late March and early April, shows VA hospital leaders’ perceptions of occupations that are difficult to fill, not vacancies.

According to the report, VHA officials reported 4,712 severe staffing shortages across 389 occupations.

The surveys cover fiscal 2026, a period following a reduction in VA staff by roughly 30,000 jobs. Since Sept. 26, 2025, the VA workforce has declined by more than 19,000 persons, including 11,000 from the VHA, which manages the department’s health care services.

A VA official said Monday that the OIG report is not a reliable tool to assess staffing shortages because it is not based on actual vacancies. VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven noted that the report states that a staff shortage refers to “occupations that are difficult to fill,” and this designation “does not necessarily indicate the presence of vacancies.”

But Democratic lawmakers who track VA staffing say the surveys indicate a problem, given that the fiscal 2026 report showed 4,712 severe shortages compared with 2,959 in fiscal 2024.

In the surveys, nearly all VA facilities — 97% — reported severe occupational staffing shortages for medical officers, up from 94% in fiscal 2025, while 86% reported shortages for nurses, up from 79% the previous year.

But Slaven said VA continues to “outperform most other health care organizations” when it comes to staffing, and actual vacancy rates are 15% for doctors and 9% for nurses.

“These are lower than most other health care systems, in line with normal VA historical averages and much lower than the respective 19% and 20% physician and nurse vacancy rates VA saw at times during the Biden Administration,” Slaven said in a statement to Military Times.

He added that pay caps for physicians hinder the VA’s hiring, and the department has asked Congress to address the “longstanding pay disparity” that hurts recruitment.

He noted that since January 2025, the VA has opened 41 new health clinics, enrolled an additional 250,000 veterans in health care and increased medical appointments at VA facilities and in the private sector by 4.1% and 12%, respectively, since fiscal 2024.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., issued a report last year charging that veterans services, including health care and research, were affected by the loss of 40,000 employees at the VA in President Donald Trump’s second term from voluntary retirements, resignations and layoffs.

On Monday, Blumenthal said the OIG report on staffing shortages was also affected by the elimination of “tens of thousands of positions” at the VA’s health care system, which he said artificially reduces vacancy rates and prevents facilities from hiring needed staff.

“This report confirms that staffing shortages at VA continue to increase in number and impact,” Blumenthal said in a statement to Military Times. “Even more employees left VA because of the toxic work environment this administration has created.”

According to the report, the top five medical occupations experiencing severe staffing shortages across VA facilities are: practical nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and nursing assistants.

The top five non-clinical occupations with shortages are: police officers, custodial workers, medical support assistants, food service workers and health care engineers.

As with previous reports on severe staffing shortages, the OIG made no recommendations to VA leadership regarding the data.

“This report is a descriptive review and is intended for informational purposes,” wrote Dr. David Krulak, assistant inspector general for healthcare inspections.

Known as “forever chemicals” because they resist breaking down and can accumulate in the body over time, PFAS are used in a host of products and equipment such as firefighting foam, weapons systems and textiles in military settings and food packaging, cookware, makeup, stain repellent and more.

At least one type of PFAS — PFOS — has been linked directly to testicular cancer, while another type, PFOA, is associated with kidney issues and increased risk of kidney cancer.

PFAS chemical exposure has also been connected to cardiovascular disease, thyroid dysfunction, low birth weight, developmental delays in children and reduced response to immunizations.

According to the study published Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives, young veterans had 13% to 24% higher concentrations of PFAS in their blood than non-veterans the same age.

Male veterans had higher PFAS concentrations than female veterans, while older veterans had levels comparable to their civilian counterparts.

The study reviewed the PFAS blood serum results of participants in National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 2003 to 2018.

According to the review, 58% of the 22.8 million veterans who participated, or 13 million, had blood PFAS levels above a threshold set by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine of 20 micrograms per liter.

Lead study author Christian Hoover, a National Institutes of Health Research Fellow at Brown’s School of Public Health and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the National Academies recommends that those who exceed the threshold be monitored by their physicians.

Having high PFAS levels in their blood does not mean a person will develop cancer or cardiovascular disease, Hoover said, but blood tests and monitoring can provide data that may be useful in the future.

“[Testing] gives people helpful context … as they age for some of the things that might happen to their bodies over time,” Hoover said. “If they don’t get tested now between [ages] 20 and 39 and they get to 55, and they’re having all of these health effects, they won’t know why.”

Study links 'forever chemicals' to testicular cancer in US troops

The surveys at the heart of the cross-sectional study did not ask about possible sources of PFAS exposure.

Hoover said previous research has shown that aqueous film-forming foam, related groundwater contamination on military bases, munitions, treated uniforms and even the burn pits used to dispose of industrial waste in combat zones could be responsible.

Younger veterans are more affected because they are most likely to have had recent exposure as a result of military service.

Older veterans are less likely to have acute exposure and PFAS that may have accumulated will be excreted over time, according to Joseph Braun, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University.

“The common PFAS chemical PFOA, for example, has a half-life of about one and a half to two years, which means that if someone drank a jar of PFOA today, it would take 10 years for their body to get rid of it,” Braun said in a statement.

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not provide or cover the cost of blood tests for PFAS. The Defense Department is required by law to offer blood tests for PFAS to active-duty and civilian DoD firefighters.

The 2020 legislation that mandated the testing does not include retired military firefighters, other active-duty personnel or dependents.

Hoover said all veterans, even those 40 and above, may want to talk to their doctors about exposure and possible health consequences.

“Even though our study wasn’t able to pick this up, it doesn’t mean that older veterans weren’t at the same risk when they were younger,” Hoover said.

Nearly 600 military installations, former defense sites and National Guard facilities have some degree of PFAS contamination. Since the late 2010s, the DoD has reviewed 727 installations and found that 590 require some type of cleanup.

The timeline for completing the review and remediation process has been extended for some installations to 2066.

The provision is Section 104(b) of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, H.R. 9237. It carries forward the home-loan fee changes developed in the standalone Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act, H.R. 6047, before that legislation was incorporated into the broader package.

The proposal would sharply increase two specified VA home-loan fees. The funding fee for Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loans, or IRRRLs, would nearly triple from 0.50% to 1.42%, while the fee for assuming an existing VA-backed loan would double from 0.50% to 1%

For Air Force veteran Amy Murphy, who wants to refinance a $400,000 VA-backed mortgage solely to secure a lower interest rate and monthly payment, the proposed change would mean $3,680 more in funding fees. At the current rate, her fee would be $2,000. At the proposed rate, it would be $5,680.

“The point of the IRRRL is to make it easier for me to take advantage of a lower interest rate. But under the proposed fee structure, I have to save enough through the lower rate to overcome a substantially larger upfront cost.”

VA exempts certain borrowers from the funding fee, including veterans receiving VA disability compensation; some veterans entitled to compensation but receiving retirement or active-duty pay instead; certain borrowers with qualifying pre-discharge disability ratings; and active-duty service members who have received a Purple Heart. Active-duty status alone does not qualify a borrower for an exemption.

The number of IRRRL borrowers who would be subject to the higher fee is not clear from publicly available VA data. VA reported 119,457 IRRRLs in 2025, a 135% increase from 50,825 in 2024. VA’s loan-volume reports do not publicly identify how many of those borrowers paid the funding fee or how many were active-duty service members.

For borrowers who do pay the fee, VA allows the cost to be financed into the new loan. That avoids an upfront payment but increases the loan balance and means the borrower pays interest on the financed fee.

Marcia Black, a VA loan officer with M&T Bank, said higher fees could discourage veterans from refinancing when interest rates fall.

“Higher fees deter veterans from refinancing when market interest rates drop, trapping them in higher-rate loans,” Black said. “Targeting refinances disproportionately harms active-duty military and veterans trying to lower monthly payments during high-cost cycles.”

The Mortgage Bankers Association said it could not support H.R. 6047 as drafted because of the proposed funding-fee increases. MBA urged Congress to remove or substantially modify the proposed fee increases and the extension of higher VA home-loan fee rates.

The IRRRL is designed to streamline refinancing for existing VA borrowers, generally to obtain a lower interest rate or reduce the monthly payment.

In TCAVA’s proposed legislation of more than 60 veteran bills, the VA home-loan fee provisions serve as budgetary offsets.

In its March estimate of the standalone H.R. 6047, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill’s home-loan fee provisions would reduce net direct spending by about $4 billion from 2026 through 2036 by lowering the subsidy cost of VA loan guarantees. CBO estimated the overall H.R. 6047 package would reduce net direct spending by $42 million over that period.

For veteran borrower Mitchell Duffy, who has used VA-backed financing on multiple properties, the potential impact could accumulate across several loans.

Duffy owns four properties he now rents out that were financed with VA-backed loans and has about $1.15 million in combined mortgage debt. If the full $1.15 million were refinanced and each loan were subject to the proposed fee, the 0.92-percentage-point increase would amount to about $10,580 in additional funding fees. The actual amount would depend on the outstanding balance and eligibility of each loan when refinanced.

Section 104(b) does not establish a new IRRRL fee based on whether a veteran is using the VA home-loan benefit for a second or third time.

The House has not passed H.R. 9237. On July 16, a motion to recommit the bill failed 210-211, after which further consideration was postponed. The proposed fee changes have not yet become law.

“I don’t necessarily have an extra $3,680 sitting in the bank,” said Murphy. “So, if this legislation gets passed, I have a decision to make: is the lower interest rate still worth refinancing, or will the higher VA fee make the savings less worth it?”

The group, with a combined 250 years in the military and additional service as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA administrator, Central Intelligence Agency director and other leadership posts, issued a video Tuesday asking voters, candidates and government officials to take time to understand the voting process in their communities and share the information with family and friends.

The message, sponsored by Team Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization with a goal to reduce political polarization, focuses on the principles of free elections and responsibilities of citizens to sustain confidence in American elections.

“Protecting our lawful electoral processes might be our most important civic role of all,” said retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as director of the National Security Agency under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and as Central Intelligence Agency director under Bush and President Barack Obama.

In the video, Hayden joined fellow retirees Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, Army Maj. Gen. Marilyn Quagliotti, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, Marine Corps Major Gen. Charles Bolden and Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper in speaking on election integrity — without mentioning any candidates, political leaders, parties or previous election outcomes.

Advocates call on veterans to serve as poll workers for upcoming elections

President Donald Trump cast doubt on the security of the American election system when he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Although Biden won the popular vote 81.2 million to 74.2 million and the Electoral College 306-232, Trump attempted to overturn the results through legal challenges and political pressure.

According to a poll conducted in June by the Economist/YouGov, more than a quarter of Americans believe that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and only a quarter of Americans are “very confident” that the November mid-term elections will be conducted fairly.

It is in this heated climate that the retired generals have entered the fray. During an interview with Military Times Monday, Lute said the officers weighed in because they feel it is time to “get back to the basics.”

“Before, during and after elections, there are some fundamental rules that everybody ought to agree on, and I think you know why that’s important now,” Lute said.

According to the video, the five fundamental principles Team Democracy is asking Americans to commit to are their beliefs in: an honest process; nonviolent campaigns; secure voting; responsible oversight; and trusted outcomes.

The generals say that free, fair and trusted elections are the root of democracy, and without belief in the system, trust breaks down.

“We know what holds countries together and we know what tears them apart,” Clapper said in the video.

“These aren’t liberal ideas, conservative ideas. They are the rules of the road, the ones that make self-governance possible,” Lute said.

According to the group, more than 6,000 Americans have signed the principles, including roughly 2,000 candidates across the political spectrum.

In addition to supporting the principles, the officers urged Americans to get involved in the election process, sharing trusted information with others, volunteering as a poll worker or taking a tour of local election offices.

“I’ve traveled the world and I’ve seen this country at its best. I’ve seen what’s worth protecting,” McChrystal said.

Founded by two whitewater rafters — Ken Powley, who operated a rafting company in Weatherly, Pennsylvania, and Chris Newlon, an IT manager and specialist — Team Democracy partnered with The Carter Center and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on the Principles for Trusted Elections campaign and has received financial support from The Carter Center to enable its work.

“My grandfather once said, ‘In our democracy, the only title higher and more powerful than that of president is the title of citizen.’ Whether you are a former U.S. president, a retired general, or any other American citizen, we have a shared responsibility to uphold the principles upon which our electoral system was founded: honest process, nonviolent campaigns, secure voting, responsible oversight and trusted outcomes,” Jason Carter, Carter Center Board of Trustees chairman, said in a statement to Military Times.

“These principles are not about politics — they are about ensuring that our elections remain credible, secure and worthy of our confidence,“ Carter added.

In addition to focusing on trust in elections, the group supports programs that support civic engagement and hosts rafting excursions that bring together people of various backgrounds.

In his interview, Lute said the political divide has become so rancorous he worries it cannot be overcome, especially regarding the topic of election integrity. But he hopes for a future where election winners will be “gracious winners” who are respectful of their opponents and consider their positions, even if they disagree.

“I was part of the transition between Bush and Obama and there was a strong mutual regard for the other party,” Lute said. “There’s an old saying in the Army that I suspect is the same across the other services, that effective leadership reflects that disagreement is not disrespect. … we need to get back to that as a sort of a political model.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday against the administration’s proposals to restrict mail-in ballots, allowing states to proceed as usual with their voting processes for this year’s midterm elections.

Nearly one-third of the country votes by mail.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to attribute a quote to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper.

For Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, the 10 years of wanderings on a perilous sea as Odysseus took the really, really long way home could be seen as an “allegory for the real problems of combat veterans returning to civilian society.”

Shay, a psychiatrist at the Boston VA Medical Center, wrote that “Time and again, Odysseus shows himself as a man who does not trust anyone, a man whose capacity for social trust has been destroyed. This is the central problem facing the most severely injured Vietnam veterans.”

Shay connected the trials of Odysseus in returning to Ithaca to the recurring patterns he observed in his clinical practice with combat veterans — patterns of homelessness, explosive violence, mistrust of anyone other than combat veterans, substance abuse, a fixation on grievances and a “deep suspicion of others’ motives.”

“Odysseus stands for the veterans but as a deeply flawed military leader himself, he also stands for the destroyers of trust. Homer’s Odysseus sheds light, not always flattering light, on today’s veterans and military leaders,” Shay wrote.

For 10 years, Odysseus would remain the artful dodger through the harrowing journey back to Ithaca, where the conflicting traits of Odysseus’ character — war hero and war criminal, master strategist and liar only contribute to his charisma as the “master of cool,” according to Elizabeth Samet, the West Point literature professor and author of No Man’s Land.

Samet draws a similar parallel for modern-day veterans and the difficult journey home.

In a 2007 Book Browse Author interview, Samet called Odysseus her favorite hero in all literature — “He never bores you with his twists and turns, and he outfoxes everyone. Odysseus has restraint, but he can also lose his composure on occasion. He is an epic hero yet somehow a recognizably human creature.”

For Shay, the parallels between Odysseus and modern-day veterans are all too clear.

“I see the adventure with the Cyclops as an emblem for combat veterans’ attraction to danger, an attraction that has cost so many of them their lives after returning home, and tortured those who love them with untold hours of fear for their safety,” Shay wrote.

The Odyssey has survived and endured while so many other oral epics were lost “in no small part because it was — and still remains — the work of literature most seriously engaged with the question of how to reintegrate a damaged, troubled soldier back into civilian life,” according to Shay.

Shay has been credited with introducing the concept of “moral injury” that has been experienced by combat veterans. Shay described moral injury as “the profound psychological and spiritual damage experienced by combat veterans when fundamental moral codes are violated.”

Perhaps Shay’s most crucial insight stems from his conviction that psychologically wounded soldiers can be best healed by sharing their stories with other veterans. “For veterans, recovery from their psychological injuries best happens in the community of other veterans,” he said in an August 2009 interview with Metro West Daily News.

As a result of his work and that of others, moral injury has increasingly been recognized as a signature wound of service members who fought in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom following the 9/11 attacks.

In response to the work of Shay and others on PTSD, Military.com reported in 2023 that the Department of Veterans Affairs had begun “the first-ever large-scale population study of moral injury to be conducted among veterans of the post-9/11 wars.”

The main result of the study was the development of the “Moral Injury and Distress Scale (MIDS),” which the VA called “the first measure to assess moral injury symptoms indexed to a specific event and validated across several high-risk populations.”

MIDS was “being adopted throughout VA as a tool for identifying veterans with moral injury,” described as “the distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of witnessing, failing to prevent, or participating in events that contradict one’s deeply held values and beliefs,” according to a March 2025 release from VA Health Systems Research.

In his chapter of the book titled Among the Dead: Memory and Guilt, Shay dealt with the concept of “survivors’ guilt” and contrasted Odysseus’s haunted memories with the profound “survivor’s guilt” experienced by modern soldiers over the loss of comrades as they second-guess choices that led to the deaths of their friends.

But the poet of the Odyssey, perhaps, put it best in describing the grief of Odysseus’ crew following their losses in the battle of Ismarus:

“Six benches were left empty in every ship that evening when we pulled away from death. And this new grief we bore with us to sea: our previous lives we had but not our friends. No ship made sail next day until some shipmate had raised a cry, three times, for each poor ghost unfleshed. Then two long days and nights we lay offshore worn out and sick at heart, tasting our grief.”

“Everyone knows exactly what they were doing on that day, or where they were, but it’s weird too, because we don’t know what life was like before that,” the high school senior from Bradenton, Florida, explained.

She was born into a country already at war. By the time she was old enough to understand what war meant, American troops had been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for years.

“I almost feel numb to all of the violence of it, because we were told about it so much when we were little … but we were too little to understand,” Cline said.

That distance is one of the defining legacies of 25 years of war. Millions of Americans came of age surrounded by its consequences without ever experiencing the wars themselves.

Now that generation is entering adulthood as the Pentagon confronts a different challenge: What happens when a generation comes of age during an era of war without being asked to participate in it? For most Americans who grew up after 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a constant presence, but military service was not. They inherited the consequences of those wars without necessarily inheriting a personal connection to the people who fought them.

A growing divide

The Defense Department has linked the growing divide to the military’s smaller footprint and declining numbers of Americans with family or personal connections to service.

In 1995, 40% of young people had a parent who had served in the military. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 12%, according to the Defense Department.

The change happened alongside the all-volunteer force and two decades of sustained military operations.

The Defense Department has also found that military service increasingly falls outside the range of careers young people consider. About 20 years ago, just over 25% of young people had never thought about serving. In recent years, more than half had never considered it.

A 2025 ThinkNow survey found that among Gen Z adults who had not served, 28% said they were very or somewhat likely to consider joining. Nearly half, 49%, said they were not very or not at all likely, while 23% were unsure.

For those who said they would consider joining, career opportunities were the leading motivation, followed by financial security and educational benefits. Family tradition ranked much lower.

Among those unlikely to join, about half cited a lack of interest in military service and cited concerns about physical or mental health risks. Others cited fear of combat or deployment.

Sherald Winans, a college freshman at Miami University of Ohio, said that when he pictures someone his age joining the military, he imagines boot camp, followed by deployment “somewhere in the desert to go to war.”

“I don’t know anyone who serves,” he said. “But I think that there’s more danger now than ever when going to fight in the military.”

Choosing to serve

Tiana Ramirez is an example of what that choice can look like today.

A recent high school graduate preparing to join the Marine Corps, Ramirez said she wanted purpose and the benefits that come with military service. She did not want to go to college immediately after high school and had heard positive things about the opportunities available to veterans.

Her grandfather served in Vietnam, and her older cousin serves in the Navy aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Billings.

But 9/11 is not part of her personal history. She was not alive when the attacks occurred and has no direct memory of the wars that followed.

Ramirez said she thinks about Iraq and Afghanistan but does not spend much time worrying about whether she could experience a similar deployment. She wants to begin her military career with an open mind and see what comes next.

For her, the appeal is practical as well as personal: steady income, a career path, health care and education benefits.

She also described military service as a way to find her purpose and determine what she is meant to do.

What young Americans know about war

For young Americans who did not live through 9/11, the attacks are history, rather than memory.

Teachers who have watched those students encounter the subject in classrooms describe that difference.

Sarah Boyles, a Florida history teacher, said that during her first years teaching, she focused less on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and more on their causes and consequences. At the time, the attacks were too emotional for some students to discuss.

Randall Faulks, a social studies teacher in Louisiana, said students do not always have an emotional response because they have no personal memory of the day.

For some students, the experience is more like learning about another major historical event.

Jerrica Santos, a junior in high school and daughter of an Army command sergeant major, said she does not believe people who did not experience 9/11 can feel the same pain as those who did.

“But we can understand their point of view,” she said.

Izzy Williams, another high school senior, compared that inherited experience with another event her generation did experience directly: the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We definitely understand how all of a sudden the world changed, just like how COVID changed everything we knew,” Williams said. “We started doing things differently and getting used to different ways.”

The civil-military gap persists

The Pentagon’s recruiting numbers have improved after several years of shortfalls.

By the end of fiscal 2025, all five active-duty services had met or exceeded their enlisted accession goals. The Army reached 101.72% of its goal; the Navy 108.61%; the Marine Corps 100%; the Air Force 100.22%; and the Space Force 102.89%.

Despite this, the DoD has cited a shrinking eligible population, declining birth rates, fewer family connections and lower willingness to serve among the challenges facing military recruiting and retention.

That disparity matters beyond who chooses to enlist. It also creates a widening gap between the generation that fought the post-9/11 wars and the generation now entering adulthood without a personal connection to them.

As the post-9/11 generation transitions out of the service, military historian Ben Connable shared his concerns about how much knowledge from Iraq and Afghanistan will carry forward.

Connable said the military has previously had to relearn lessons that were not successfully passed from one generation to the next — citing Vietnam as an example.

He said recent cases have often been poorly transmitted into modern military knowledge and warned that knowledge that was developed during years of counterinsurgency might not be passed down.

That transition is occurring alongside significant turnover among the Pentagon’s senior leadership.

At least 20 generals, admirals and civilian defense leaders have been fired or departed their positions since Hegseth became defense secretary, according to a Sept. 2 CBS News tally.

Hegseth directed a restructuring of the senior officer ranks in May 2025. His memorandum called for a minimum 20% reduction in four-star positions across the active component, a minimum 20% reduction in National Guard general officers and an additional minimum 10% reduction in general and flag officers tied to a realignment of the Unified Command Plan.

Inheriting a different military

The young Americans coming of age now are not the same young Americans who enlisted after Sept. 11.

They grew up watching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down. They experienced a pandemic that disrupted daily life.

John Spencer, a military researcher and author who studies combat and military cohesion, cautioned against assuming that younger service members are inherently less capable than the generations before them.

Every generation, he said, has been told that it might not perform as well as the one before it when tested in war.

That is a recurring concern, not a judgment unique to today’s young troops.

What matters in combat, Spencer said, is not simply technology or individual ability.

“Cohesion remains critical to how units perform under pressure,” he said.

Ramirez is about to become part of the institution that shaped the world she grew up in, even though she has no memory of the event that set those wars in motion.

She leaves for boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, later this month, without knowing what her military career will bring, or whether the wars she learned about in school will ever become a larger part of her own life.

“I signed up to serve because I want to do something different,” Ramirez says. “And something that makes a difference, too.”

The VA has held events on Patriot Day, as the date was declared by Congress in December 2001, to honor the 47 veterans and family members killed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the more than 16,000 veterans who have died since and are interred at VA national cemeteries.

“As our nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, VA national cemeteries offer a meaningful place to honor the courage and sacrifice of that day,” said VA Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Sam Brown, a retired Army captain who was severely wounded in combat in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2008.

Patriot Day honors not only those killed in the attacks, but the service members, law enforcement officers, firefighters and first responders who responded, as well as those who gave their lives for their country in subsequent wars.

The efforts mark the eighth year the VA teamed with Carry the Load to host the volunteer events. The nonprofit was founded by two Navy SEALs to promote remembrance of fallen service members on Memorial Day.

“As we come together on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Carry The Load’s National Day of Service and Remembrance gives Americans a meaningful way to honor the nearly 3,000 lives lost,” said former Naval Special Warfare officer and group co-founder Stephen Holley in a statement.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City; the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Forty-four passengers died on United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; 184 people, including 59 passengers of American Airlines Flight 77 and 125 military and civilian Pentagon employees died in Arlington, Virginia, while the remainder perished in the World Trade Center towers, at work, on American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, or in the response and collapse of the buildings.

The events, which will begin at 10 a.m., will include brief ceremonies followed by opportunities to clean headstones and conduct other restoration activities. All supplies will be furnished. Those wishing to participate can register with Carry the Load. More information is available on the VA’s website.

The VA manages 157 cemeteries nationwide and funds an additional 125 state, territorial and tribal veterans cemeteries.

Last week, the department dedicated the first national cemetery in the state of Nevada in Elko. The 15-acre grounds, expected to open for interments in late 2026, will include 1,045 gravesites as well as a columbarium and other facilities.

Veterans who are eligible for VA burial benefits include all who were discharged under something other than dishonorable conditions; spouses or surviving spouses of eligible veterans; dependent children; and some others.

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.

VoteVets, a Democratic veterans group, was joined by Home of the Brave, a political advocacy group, and the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit focused on landscape heritage, in an effort to halt the build of the planned arch as the anticipated date of construction nears.

Last week, it was announced on social media that construction would soon begin for the arch, which would be 250 feet tall and sit at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The groups released a new video Tuesday, saying that breaking the sightline from the Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery is “entirely inappropriate and borders on sacrilege” to the 400,000 service members buried there.

“This proposal by this administration doesn’t bear well with me,” Karen Meredith, the Gold Star mother of 1st Lt. Ken Ballard who died in the Iraq War and is buried at Arlington, said in the video. “There will be an observation deck. We don’t need tourists overlooking funerals. I’m just appalled.”

Placing that large of an arch, dubbed the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, in that location would alter the hallowed ground and associated feeling when experiencing the cemetery, Cultural Landscape Foundation President and CEO Charles Birnbaum said in the video.

The National Park Service released documents saying that construction would take two to three years at 20 hours per day, which the video argues could conflict with burials at the cemetery that occur every weekday.

The project is currently being challenged by veterans and a historic preservationist in federal court. The U.S. District Court filing says that there is no legal basis for the arch and that it needs approval from Congress, despite the Trump administration alleging that a 1925 law related to the building of Arlington Memorial Bridge authorizes the construction.

The National Capital Planning Commission is expected to meet Oct. 1 to review the arch’s plans and consider its final approval after granting it preliminary approval in early July.

The unemployment rate for all veterans also came down from 4.2% in July to 3.4% in August — compared to the overall unemployment rate of 4.1%. This comes as the economy rebounded from the negative job creation numbers recorded in July, when employers shed 23,000 jobs.

The 162,000 jobs added in August blew past most analysts’ expectations of 53,000 jobs, and also gave evidence of the economy’s resilience in the face of war with Iran, rising gas and diesel prices and a new tariff war with Canada.

The surge was led by employment in food services and bars, which added 59,000 jobs in August, compared to the average monthly gain of 12,000 jobs in food services and bars over the previous 12 months, the BLS report said.

Local government schools added 42,000 jobs in August while “employment in manufacturing continued its upward trend” by adding 16,000 jobs in August — bringing the total of manufacturing jobs added this year to 58,000, the BLS report noted.

President Donald Trump quickly seized on the latest BLS numbers as an example of his administration’s success in managing the economy that he said should lead the Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates at its next Open Market Committee meeting on Sept. 15-16.

“Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago!” Trump said. “A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE - IT’S A BETTER CREDIT…Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like ‘the old days.’”

The main takeaway from the latest jobs report was that “it’s a lot easier to get a job [now] than it was a year ago,” said Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union. In a phone interview with Military Times, Long noted the 21,000 construction jobs added in August to cope with the demand for new data centers.

The concern for Long, however, was that wage gains were not keeping up with the rate of inflation. Wages rose 3.1% in August while inflation stood at 3.4%, she noted.

The turnaround in the jobs market has been a boon for veterans looking for work in what has been described as a “low hire, low fire” economy, said Kevin Rasch, a retired Navy Commander and the Warriors to Work Regional Director for the Wounded Warrior Project.

“We’re seeing success in placing Warriors,” he said in a telephone interview with Military Times. “The system seems to be working like it should” and it also “seems like what we’re doing is working.”