On Friday, roughly 200 firefighters were deployed to Adolf Hitler’s notorious Bavarian retreat, dubbed the “Eagle’s Nest,” shortly after a smoke detector triggered an alarm around 9:15 p.m. local time.

Surrounded by rough mountainous terrain near the Austrian border, the infamous retreat is accessible only by a single road and a series of tunnels that lead to the base of the knoll. The historic building sits at an altitude of roughly 6,000 feet, hampering efforts to put out the blaze.

By 9:52 p.m., when firefighters arrived on the scene, the entire structure was engulfed in flames and deemed largely unsalvageable.

No one was hurt, authorities said, and their investigation into what appears to have been a deliberately set fire is ongoing.

Carved into an Alpine crag, the structure, designed by Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary, was intended to serve as a diplomatic reception venue rather than an operational command center. It did not, according to The Telegraph, host any of the regime’s fateful conferences, which all took place lower down at the Berghof.

“This was because the supposedly fearless Alpine Führer was really a hypochondriac crippled by acrophobia who complained the thin air at the Eagle’s Nest aggravated his stomach spasms. He was also terrified of lightning striking the complex’s lift mechanism,” writes the outlet.

Hitler himself only visited the site a handful of times.

The building, however, also holds unique lore for one unit of Army paratroopers — made famous by Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 bestseller Band of Brothers and the subsequent 2001 HBO miniseries of the same title.

In 1945, the Allied Command feared the Germans were planning a “last stand” in Berchtesgaden and, to that end, Gen. Eisenhower ordered it to be secured before German resistance could coalesce around the Nazi stronghold.

On the morning of May 5, the hard-bitten 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, which had fought near-continuously from D-Day through Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, arrived in Berchtesgaden. While they weren’t the first — the 7th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division and the French 2nd Armored Division hold that distinction — they stayed the longest, culminating in some iconic photos from the end of the war — particularly that of a heavily hungover Capt. Lewis Nixon after he and his men drank their way through Hitler and Hermann Goering’s booze collection.

The structure was spared from the wrath of Allied bombing and postwar, and while plans to dynamite the Eagle’s Nest — and all remaining Nazi structures — were created, the notorious guesthouse was spared from destruction on the intervention of the district administrator, Karl Theodor Jacob.

Jacob proposed to neutralize Nazi tourism through “profanation” — namely beer.

“I always said, let’s serve Munich Hofbräu beer up there,” Jacob later recalled, “and then no reverent mood will ever take hold.”

Now, the alleged arsonist has destroyed what the Allies and postwar Germans did not.

“It is damaged to a large extent,” a police spokesperson told the German tabloid Bild. “The house is unlikely to be saved.” 

On March 6, 1945, the Navy found its solution in Jane Kendeigh and her 11 fellow flight nurses. For the first time in the war, the U.S. Navy began deploying combat nurses to an active battlefield. With only six weeks of training, these nurses began to instantly triage and evacuate wounded Marines, working in frigid, unpressurized aircraft amid constant enemy assaults.

Oftentimes called “mom” by their wounded comrades, these 12 women evacuated 2,393 men on 125 flights — more than 13% of everyone evacuated from Iwo Jima — and continued their bloody, lifesaving work in what was to become the largest Allied amphibious landing in the Pacific theater and the final island battle of the Pacific, Okinawa.

Author and professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, Leah Garrett, sat down with Military Times to discuss her latest work, The Flight Nurses’ War: The American Women Who Saved Thousands of Lives at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as well as the conditions these women worked under and how researching her latest book left her with one of “the most moving moments of my life.”

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

Military Times: When one thinks of Iwo Jima, images come to mind of the blackened sand, brutal conditions and Mount Suribachi, but never women. How did the story of these 12 women come to your attention?

Leah Garrett: When I was writing my last book, I kept hearing these rumors that there had been women at Iwo Jima, and I thought there was no way that there were women at Iwo Jima. I reached out to the Navy, and I got military clearance and worked with an archivist there. He had written a bit about it, but there had never been a book about it — the full story of who these women were and what they were doing there.

Once I started to search about it, I found out that there had indeed been these 12 Navy flight nurses who had landed at Iwo Jima under fire, and in the worst kind of nightmare anyone can imagine, and flew out these men. Part of the reason that no one had done their stories is that these women themselves … I don’t think they realized how extraordinary it was what they had done.

I started to reach out to the families of those 12 flight nurses, and discovered that every historian wants to discover — there was a massive amount of material. Most of the story was actually in these well-cared-for boxes in basements and garages, and so the way I wrote the story was I worked with the military archivists, but then I flew around the country and met with the families themselves, interviewed the children, and went through the boxes and found just all this extraordinary first-person material: photographs, letters, memoirs.

Before we get into the nurses themselves, can you talk about the creation of flight nurses?

All of the flight nurses signed up to join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. For each of them, that was the watershed moment when they said, “I need to serve.”

There’s this one woman named Mary O’Connor who goes to Washington and says, “Look, we want you to set up a flight nurses program.” The reason that they wanted to set it up is that the Army had women in combat positions who were nurses, but the Navy didn’t.

As we get into 1945, the final two battles in the Pacific were really far more horrific than anyone expected them to be in the Navy, particularly at Iwo Jima. The Japanese were targeting the medical corps as well, so there was a massive attrition rate, and they did not have enough people there to take care of the men. And also, Iwo Jima is really complicated because you can’t set up field hospitals in Iwo Jima because of the landscape; it’s just too exposed. So then the question becomes: “Well, how do we get these men out?”

What happens is all these different nurses are serving in the Navy at different military hospitals, Navy hospitals around the country, and their supervisors reach out to the best one or two of each group and say, “Look, would you be interested in overseas service?” Nobody knows what it will be, but these women say yes. O’Connor gets hundreds of applications. She picks the top 24 that seem the best to her — basically smart, very capable, very brave women. So these 24 women are then sent out to Alameda, California, to do … this very intense six-week training.

The cream de la creme of the 24 were then flown to Guam, and once they’re in Guam, they’re going to be given their assignment. This had never been done before. The Navy had never put women in combat positions under direct fire, and it was a very incredibly dangerous thing to do. I mean, what if they’re killed? What if they’re captured? What if they’re used for propaganda? Like, there’s so much that could have gone wrong, and I think, much to everyone’s surprise, probably including some of the women, they were so effective in getting those men out.

On March 6, 1945, Jane Kendeigh became the first Navy flight nurse to appear on an active Pacific battlefield. Ultimately, she and 11 other nurses evacuated 2,393 men from Iwo Jima. That’s an incredible statistic, but does any story in particular stand out to you?

One of the crazy aspects of this story is that when you’re in an aircraft flying from Iwo Jima to Guam, there are no doctors on these flights. They fly over there with their corpsman and then a pilot, maybe a navigator. And when they get to Iwo Jima, it’s active fire.

Every time they’re supposed to be landing, there’s supposed to be a lull. There’s no lull because it’s such a horrific battle. They can’t turn around. They have to land. And when they land, they all talked about this visceral aspect of it. The smell of death. The sulfur smell. That the airstrip is shaking. And again, because there are no field hospitals there, they walk over to scores of extremely wounded Marines who are just lying there on stretchers on the ground in terrible, terrible shape.

It’s absolute chaos that they have to face, and then they’re on the aircraft, and they’re by themselves. One of them said, “I can’t even phone anyone to ask what I should do. I’m in the middle of the Pacific. There are these men who are dying or near death all around me, and I have to figure out what to do.” All of it was this learning curve on the plane. It’s freezing cold. There’s no air pressure.

One of the stories that moved me so much — it’s actually one of the more famous stories — but I think one of the most moving ones is about Kendeigh’s first flight. She’s actually not supposed to go on the first flight. There’s this photo a Navy photographer takes of Jane, where she gets off the plane, and she walks over to a Marine, Sgt. Bill Wyckoff, lying there. He’s got bandages all over his face. Wyckoff later said it was like an angel took my hand. He’s lying there near death, and he hears this woman whispering in his ear, “It’s going to be okay.”

Albeit brief, what kind of relationship did these Marines and nurses forge?

The men called them mom. They would say, “Mom, can you come here?”

“Mom, can you put on your lipstick?”

“Can I watch you put on your lipstick like my mom used to do?”

When the book was published, I insisted the font color on the cover be that lipstick red.

The women always said, “We were treated with the greatest respect by these men.” They never dealt with any hassling, no sexualization, none of that. It was just pure respect and love that they received and gave back.

One of my colleagues likes to talk about “research rapture.” What was the process like researching for The Flight Nurses’ War?

The families were incredible because I think that they were so glad somebody was finally telling these amazing stories of their role. And I had so many extraordinary moments. Part of the way that the unpacking of the boxes would work was that I would be with the children as we unpacked the boxes, so it was this extremely moving and rich moment that the kids would remember: “Oh wait, like there’s a shell necklace from Guam,” and then they would tell the story of how the mom got it when she was there.

I talk about this moment a lot in the book, and I always get very seriously teary when I talk about it. Another one of the flight nurses, Mary Leahy Hudnall, came from Massachusetts. She didn’t particularly want to go on planes. She joined the Navy because she thought that she would be on a ship. There you go.

She ends up on these flights, and in one instance they’re putting these men on the aircraft who are mortally wounded, right? There’s no doctor; it’s just them and the corpsman. One of the Marines on her flight out of Iwo Jima, who she knows is very, very, very wounded. He’s probably not going to make it, and he insists that she take a vial of sand from Iwo Jima that he took. She says, “No, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine,” but he keeps saying, “No, can you please take this. I need you to take it because you need to tell the story of what we went through.”

So she takes the vial of sand, and then he unfortunately passes away. She gives that vial of sand to her daughter, and then when I’m in Canada visiting with her daughter, we find that vial of sand in one of the boxes. I got to hold it, and it was honestly one of the most moving moments of my life.

I took a picture of it and put it in the book because, as a historian, it’s my imperative to tell his story. I’m not only telling the story of the nurses, but I’m equally telling the story of the wounded men under their care whose stories need to be told.

At roughly 10:13 p.m., officers with the Prince William County Police Department responded to calls about property destruction near Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument, per the police department.

The alleged destruction via a sledgehammer has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the historic military monument, police said.

Per the Washington Post, a second Marine from the statue is missing the bayonet from the rifle slung over his back, while a third figure’s helmet and face had been “chipped and gouged.”

The memorial was created in honor of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.

Austrian-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon, serving with the U.S. Navy at the time, was so moved by the image that he immediately constructed a scale model of the flag raising.

It would take him another nine and a half years to complete the full-sized model now standing in Arlington, Virginia. The smaller monument, allegedly defaced by Maldonado Soriano, stands near the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Maldonado Soriano is being held without bond pending a court appearance.

During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

The three-man team traveled from Kościuszko’s native Poland to use 3D scanning, aerial photography and other digital technology to digitally document Revolutionary War-era sites and artifacts associated with the Polish-American hero, according to West Point.

As West Point’s earthwork fortifications and landscapes face continual erosion, the project, titled “Tadeusz Kościuszko at West Point: The Digital Heritage of the Polish-American Hero of Freedom,” seeks to preserve the physical traces of the Polish Revolutionary War hero’s contribution to buttressing West Point from the invading British forces.

From Sept. 14 to 29, the Polish team comprising Piotr Bialobrzycki, Damian Kuc and Jerzy Pajo worked to create “3D digital records of the sites as they exist today,” with the project providing “a benchmark for future conservation while eventually allowing people around the world to virtually explore historic resources at West Point… [and] create a precise and lasting digital record of Kościuszko’s material heritage at West Point,” a news release reads.

Project director Bialobrzycki led the terrestrial laser scanning of eight heritage sites at West Point, while Kuc, “the project’s lead specialist in 3D scanning and modeling, used structured-light scanning to document cannons, commemorative plaques, elements of the Kościuszko Monument, the Great Chain and selected artifacts, including Kościuszko’s sword at the West Point Museum,” according to West Point.

For his part, Pajor used his background in professional photography to document the sites with multimedia and gigapixel imagery, which will eventually support virtual walkthroughs of the historic site.

“We wanted to use this moment to demonstrate that the Polish contribution to the American Revolution was concrete and consequential,” Bialobrzycki said. “Its traces can still be read in the terrain, fortifications, monuments, documents and historical objects at West Point.”

Kościuszko’s journey from Polish tutor to war hero was non sequitur — all thanks to an unsuccessful attempt to elope with a lord’s daughter back in Poland.

After discovering his brother had spent all the family’s inheritance, Kościuszko was hired to tutor Louise Sosnowska, a wealthy lord’s daughter. The pair fell in love and attempted to elope in the fall of 1775 after Lord Sosnowski refused Kosciuszko’s request.

According to the Smithsonian, “Kosciuszko told various friends, Sosnowski’s guards overtook their carriage on horseback, dragged it to a stop, knocked Kosciuszko unconscious, and took Louise home by force.”

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

The Pole oversaw the damming of rivers and flooded fields to stem a British pursuit following their victory at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777. This action bought time for the patriots to regroup and prepare for their first major victory of the war — Saratoga.

Fortifying Bemis Heights overlooking the Hudson, Kościuszko’s design contributed to the surrender of Gen. John Burgoyne and precipitated the French’s entry into the war.

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

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

From Sept. 11 to 19, 11 squads battled at Fort Benning, Georgia, to earn the titles of Soldier of the Year, Noncommissioned Officer of the Year and Best Squad.

Cpl. Michael Shield was named the Army’s Soldier of the Year, and Staff Sgt. Colin Doyle as the Army’s non-commissioned officer of the year. The announcement cements the Rangers as a dominant force within the Army competition, with the special forces unit sweeping the last three events in four years.

“The 75th Ranger Regiment is a one-of-a-kind unit,” Doyle said, an Army release states. “We simply show up to work every day focused on marksmanship, small unit tactics, medical training and mobility.”

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael R. Weimer presented the awards to Shield and Doyle, as well as to the soldiers that rounded out the best squad, which included Sgt. William Masters, Spc. William Schaeffer and Spc. Marshall Garren.

After securing its place in the competition and being named the Army Special Operations Command top squad in August, the five-soldier squad found themselves in the muck and mire of Fort Benning.

During the 2026 competition, events ranged from fitness assessments, weapons qualifications, medical scenarios and an 18.6-mile nighttime foot march and obstacle course. Competitors also experienced the “First 100 Yards” evolution that replaced the traditional “shark attack” opening day for recruits, the release said. The soldiers also completed the combat water survival course, loaded and fired from an M1A2 Abrams and rounded out the competition with interviews with review boards.

“The Army Best Squad Competition is important because it shows where the readiness of the different commands is at across the entire Army,” Shield said. “And on top of that, competition is a huge part of the Army. And who doesn’t want to be first?”

This is the first Best Squad competition in two years after the yearly competition was canceled in 2025 due to a “lapse in appropriations” caused by Congress’ failure to pass a fiscal 2026 budget.

In 2022, Rangers earned the title of Best Squad and swept all three awards the following year. In 2024, a team from the U.S. Army Pacific won Best Squad.

Despite massive technological shifts, that paradigm still holds, which is why the U.S. Army and Navy have teamed up to keep systems operational — even in the extreme cold of the Arctic.

As the Department of Defense eyes greater operability in the far north, these low temperatures can wreak havoc on equipment and machinery (and toilets), with ice becoming enemy No. 1.

Which is why the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, or NAVFAC EXWC, and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or CRREL, began working with both branches to field a rapidly deployable Triple Container rigid-wall shelter system usable in temperatures as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The already fielded version can operate in temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. The team focused on different configurations of thermal wrappings, insulation and other components to ensure that parts of the kit’s components that are particularly vulnerable to cracking and freezing — hoses, valves, bladders and pumps — were able to withstand the greater threshold for cold, according to a recent Army release.

The result, per the release, far exceeded the objectives, with the TRICON-based system staying operational down to -65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Testing took place in CRREL’s New Hampshire-based Extreme Cold Chamber, a 288-square-foot cold room capable of reaching temperatures as low as -90 degrees Fahrenheit, per the release. While military units typically have to wait until the Alaskan winter reaches its peak to simulate similar conditions, the controlled environment allowed the research team to create conditions similar to those of the real world.

“Our armed forces live and operate in extremely cold and difficult conditions, so having these facilities operational is important for their physical and mental health while serving in the Arctic and other high-north environments,” said Dr. Dan Tague, a research chemist at CRREL, one of seven U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center laboratories.

In 2024, the DoD released its “Arctic Strategy,” citing “Major geopolitical changes are driving the need for this new strategic approach to the Arctic, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO Alliance, increasing collaboration between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

The region, according to the report, had become “a venue for strategic competition,” and a space where the United States intends to build a more persistent presence.

The latest successes with TRICORN-based systems provide, beyond the obvious comforts for personnel stationed in the Arctic — Toilets! Laundry! Showers! — an expanded operational footprint for the U.S. military as a whole, according to James Pilkington, a project manager in NAVFAC EXWC Expeditionary Technical Department.

“This extends the operational range of base camps in terms of geographic locations and durations,” said Pilkington. “In turn [it] extend[s] force posture.”

But for his owner and handler Sgt. Mollie Karazim, a religious affairs specialist, the transition was one befitting Axel’s soft, happy demeanor.

“Axel is not a tactical asset; he is a force multiplier by means of mental health and soldier readiness,” Karazim told Military Times. “He helps soldiers who are fighting wars sometimes silent and in their own heads by offering comfort to them. By being that icebreaker that allows the unit ministry team to be introduced and help. Dogs are absolutely incredible blessings and I’m so grateful to share him, and it makes me so proud to watch him work and put smiles on people’s faces.”

His deafness, Karazim added, is not a detraction but his superpower.

“I truly do think that his deafness has created a different kind of bond between the two of us,” she said. “I love how willing he is to learn. He always wants to learn. He always wants to be doing new things, experience new things.”

Before adopting Axel from DC DOGO Rescue, Karazim had been specifically seeking to rescue a deaf dog, having previously owned one without the gift of hearing.

“I really appreciate the bond that comes with a dog that cannot hear,” she added.

Adopted as a puppy, the now three-year-old Axel began training with Karazim from the jump and is now readying to deploy alongside Karazim, who has spent more than three years with the 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment, working alongside chaplains to support soldiers throughout the formation.

“I trained all the behaviors in him that I wanted and the things I wanted him to do,” she said. “I exposed him to all the things he was going to be exposed to — to a certain degree. … It sounds funny, like, ‘how do you expose a deaf dog to fireworks?’ But he needs to be exposed to all that stuff, because even though he can’t hear it, he can feel everything, and he needs to not be scared. He needs to trust me.”

But Axel’s deafness does have some advantages.

“He can just shut it down and take a nap in the middle of the office when it’s loud, and things are going on and banging, and he is just knocked out, snoring on the floor, you know? So I really do think that does help him in that sense,” Karazim noted.

Despite knowing she wanted to train Axel as a ministry therapy dog, the soldier had to bide her time to make sure it was the right fit.

Karazim immediately placed Axel on a regimented training schedule and waited… one year, two years — hoping that the years of training would make Axel blend seamlessly within her unit.

That wait paid off in spades earlier this year, when Axel began working alongside Karazim, riding in Humvees, taking in the sights from airplanes and running or rucking alongside soldiers of the battalion during PT tests.

“He ran the two-mile right with everyone, and I can 100% confidently say that everyone ran faster because of him. I know I did,” Karazim laughed.

“He just really loves it,” she continued. “And he knows that that’s his job now. He has his collar that has his name and his rank on it, and he knows that he only wears that when he goes to work. When he sees my uniform, he knows what it means. And when he has his collar, he knows what it means. He really is a different dog at work.”

Since then, Axel’s little black nose and impish, big smile have become a staple within the unit.

“He’ll go into the office and just wag his tail and put his head on you. Just that little bit of comfort to people is a game changer,” said Karzim. “So many times I’ve had people say, ‘Man, just having him walk in just made my whole day. I needed that so much.’ If there are people that he can sense need more time, he will stay in there, and they can just sit there and pet him and love on him.”

Trained as a therapy dog, Karazim developed a system of visual cues and hand signals to communicate with him that includes more than 50 commands and incorporates American Sign Language. And while he is very in tune with his owner, soldiers within the unit have begun learning ASL to communicate with him as well.

“If you watched me interact with him, you would have no idea that he’s deaf at all. And most people are shocked when I introduce him to people. I really do think that’s his superpower. I truly do. I think it makes him very special, and it just makes him more in tune with everybody’s emotions and that’s what makes him a special therapy dog.”

Axel is now preparing to deploy alongside Karazim and her unit, where he is set to circulate with her and other chaplains to meet with soldiers across the battalion.

“He’ll circulate with us, and he’ll travel wherever we go. People can request to talk to us; people request him all the time,” Karazim said.

“When you’re deployed,” she continued, “everything that you have, that sense of home, is taken away from you. This is why I wanted him to start working with us a year before we left so that he was integrated into the unit — that he knew this was his new normal, these were his people, and this was his job, and that people also had the opportunity to get to know him, so that when we do deploy, and we’re downrange, that he is that piece of home for people.”

Pfc. Ethan Brewer, a 20-year-old from Apex, North Carolina, was killed and another soldier injured during a training exercise, which involved a Humvee modified to perform medical evacuations. The injured soldier has since been released from the hospital, according to a Fort Hood release.

Brewer, who entered the Army in 2025 as a medic, was assigned to 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division Artillery Brigade. He arrived at Fort Hood in early 2026, per the release. His awards include the Army Achievement Medal.

“Our team is extremely saddened by the loss of Pfc. Brewer. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, loved ones, and fellow Troopers,” said Col. Nathan Adkins, commander of 1st Cavalry Division Artillery Brigade. “We will remember Ethan for the Soldier, teammate, and friend that he was. We are forever grateful for his commitment to serve our nation and for the impact he made on those who served alongside him.”

The U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center is investigating the incident.

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.