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Battling Bureaucracy After Burn Pits: Why Are Civilian Contractors Left Behind?
As an Army infantryman, Ernest Barrington was very familiar with the thick smoke and fumes that came off the burn pit at Joint Base Balad in Iraq. The toxic dust that wafted from the huge, open-air ditches where the military burned everything from tires and ordnance to medical waste and plastic would coat his skin and settle on the inside of his nose and under his eyelids.
I Volunteered for This Mission. I Could Take Photographs That Might Outlive Me.
I rode the third chopper in a daisy chain of five, each bird maybe 30 seconds behind the next. Clutching my M16 rifle in the left-side door gunner’s seat and surrounded by men cocooned in combat gear, I sat on a flak jacket in the vague hope that a slug coming up through the ship’s soft aluminum belly wouldn’t make me a eunuch.
‘Unclaimed’ No Longer: Volunteers Work to Provide Military Burials for Forgotten Veterans
Veterans who die alone, without connections to friends and family, have piled up on the shelves of county morgues and funeral homes for decades. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates about 21,000 veterans are awaiting burials, some dating back to the Civil War. A nonprofit group that works on behalf of these so-called unclaimed veterans believes that number falls short by tens of thousands.
VA Buried Their Brother as an ‘Unclaimed Veteran.’ Now They’re Working to Bring Him Home.
But on that morning this past March, sitting at her computer in the brick house that her father and brothers built in 1965, she Googled “Alvin Pugh” and “NYC.”. “Oh my God,” Patti said with astonishment, “Alvin is dead.”. The Department of Veterans Affairs had...
My Dad Should Have Lived a Long and Joyful Life. His Love Was Meant to Fill This World.
My dad knew two things. He wanted to serve this country, and he wouldn’t live until his 40th birthday. In 2006, his last prophecy came true. He was 36. “On behalf of the president …” were the last words I remember hearing two uniformed officers say before my ears felt like they heard an explosion. The words left me paralyzed. I felt my heart rate accelerating. My vision slowed and blurred. My mouth went dry.
Thousands of Afghan Allies Who Fled After US Withdrawal Trapped in Immigration Limbo
Three years have passed since President Joe Biden announced that the United States would pull all of its 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan, starting a chain reaction that ended in thousands of Afghans flooding Hamid Karzai International Airport, hoping to escape the resurging violent theocracy of Taliban rule. Tens of...
‘Come Hell or High Water’–Rangers Caught in Urgent Fight, Flight to Save One of Their Own
I looked out the door of the Huey helicopter into the orange, yellow, and purple fan rays of the sunset over Southeast Asia. The air was cool up here—about 70 degrees compared to the 112-degree heat just 2,000 feet below us. It was June 1970, more than a month...
He Served His Country. In Return, His Country Sent Him Into Exile
At 17, Rudi Richardson took a friend’s car for a joyride, crashed it into the side of a parked car, and landed himself in court. It was Southern California in the 1970s. Richardson’s probation officer told him he had a choice: The court could pursue the joyriding charge. Or Richardson could go into the Army.
I Stare at the Empty Chair Next to Me. He Isn’t Coming. We Still Wait for Him.
I sit staring at the empty chair next to me. We know whose chair it is. He isn’t coming. His name was Sam. He’d grown up in the country, the child of a military family, and he was obsessed with computers. We affectionately called him “our admin kid,” but he was more than that, smarter than all of us, and wise beyond his years. He was the energy in our ops section. We instantly liked him.
PACT Act Update: VA Signs Up 280,000 New Veterans, But Some Are Still Left Out
The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has signed up more than 280,000 new veterans and completed roughly 900,000 new toxic exposure claims under the expansion of the PACT Act, a Biden administration move that sped up the implementation of a 2023 law aimed at securing benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits overseas.
After Years of Nomadic Military Life, Permanence Can Be Frightening
This time, I don’t wrap the picture frames, vases, and other delicate souvenirs in bubble wrap, or place them in Tetris-like defensive positions inside a large brown box. I don’t need to; the boxes aren’t going far. After years of going where the Air Force tells us,...
‘Invisible’–More Women Veterans Are Dying of Suicide and VA Still Lacks Resources, Advocates Say
Active-duty service members and veterans thinking of harming themselves can get free crisis care. Contact the Military Crisis Line at 988, then press 1, or access online chat by texting 838255. When she joined the Navy in 2001, Jennifer Alvarado wanted to excel, to be, in her words, a “stellar...
‘Welcome Home’–For Years His Family Waited for His Return. Now, He Waits for His Daughter.
My wife and I sit in a large auditorium in El Paso, Texas, waiting in anticipation, along with other families, for our daughter’s return from deployment. Upbeat music fills the air and the feeling in the assembled crowd is of a group of fans awaiting a rock band to take the stage. This isn’t far off. The main characters are our own family members—the balloons, signs, and flowers overt displays of affection marking the safe return of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, daughters and sons.
‘Consequences of War’–Veterans Incarcerated at Higher Rates and Face Longer Sentences
Late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, Brockton Hunter, a defense attorney in Minnesota, was having drinks with a friend from law school. Hunter had served in the Army before becoming a lawyer; his friend had been in the CIA. The conversation turned from that day’s devastating attacks to what they felt would inevitably follow.
I Learned That Loss Could Bridge the Divide That Separates Us
There is no doubt in my mind that military pilots have egos stretching to the stratosphere. I found out early in my military career that fighter pilots, as a group, are a bunch of assholes. I learned to tolerate most of them, but none considered me a buddy, and I didn’t consider any of them one either. Nonaviators knew flyboys depended on nonflyers to support them, not associate with them.
Finding Empowerment in Choice, Asking for Help, and the Journey to Build a Family
I shared my big news with friends while visiting them out of town over Mother’s Day weekend. I planned to begin in vitro fertilization with a donor to freeze embryos later that year. The couple, a fellow Navy veteran and their spouse, had experience in finding a sperm donor.
Most Veterans Who Support Extremism Had Negative Military Experiences, Study Finds
In interviews, nearly three-quarters of veterans who said they supported an extremist group or ideology reported experiencing a traumatic or otherwise negative event during their military service, according to a study released today by the RAND Corporation. And more than half of the veterans interviewed said they struggled with the transition to civilian life, with difficulties including homelessness and incarceration.
The First Battle of Fallujah: ‘We Hurt Ourselves in So Many Ways’
“I remember the trees,” retired Lt. Col. Philip Treglia said about the day in April 2004 when he returned to his command post in Fallujah, Iraq, to find it had been attacked by insurgents armed with RPGs. “The trees all around were cut in half, kind of like those...
A Presidential Palace, a Haunted Rolls Royce, and a Historic Election in Haiti
“This place needs a fresh coat of paint,” Mike said to me as we stood in the flag-bedecked United Nations Square in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Mike, my executive officer, was the king of dry wit. Besides his sense of humor, Mike was a superb executive officer, and I wouldn’t meet his equal until years later when another snarky “minion” named Bryan kept me laughing through a year in Kabul, Afghanistan. Of course, in the grand tradition of the Army’s “small world continuum,” Bryan and Mike, both retired from the military, worked together until recently. Oh, to be a fly on their connecting cubicle wall. But back to our story.
Years Later, VA Still Has Still Not Fulfilled Promise to Cover Gender-Affirming Care
Three years after Secretary Denis McDonough promised that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would begin covering gender-affirming surgery, that commitment has still not been met. And as anti-trans legislation continues to sweep the country, transgender veterans say they see the latest delays by VA as further evidence of politically motivated bias against their community.
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