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.”

VA’s original electronic health record contract had a ceiling of roughly $10 billion. The department has increased that ceiling to roughly $27 billion, an increase of about $17 billion.

The nearly $27 billion figure discussed repeatedly during Wednesday’s hearing is not money VA has already spent. It is the maximum potential value of the Oracle contract.

But the new contract ceiling is substantially higher than the ceiling on the deal VA struck with Cerner in 2018. Oracle acquired Cerner in 2022.

VA’s original contract had a ceiling of about $10 billion over 10 years. The department said at the time that the contract would replace its aging Vista system and create a common electronic health record with the Defense Department.

The issue lawmakers pressed throughout the hearing was why VA needs roughly $17 billion more under that contract.

VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence offered part of the answer during Wednesday’s hearing, but not all of it.

Lawrence said VA had estimated the cost of completing the deployment through 2031, asked Oracle for a proposal and then relied on its acquisition team to negotiate the resulting contract.

But Lawrence says he was not involved in those negotiations and could not explain why Oracle’s proposal reached roughly an increase of $17 billion, how much VA negotiated from the company’s request or what specifically drove the additional cost.

Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., asked whether VA expected to hit the original contract ceiling early and whether the accelerated rollout contributed to the increase.

Lawrence said VA had “hit the ceiling as planned.”

Elsewhere in the hearing, Lawrence described problems and complexities from earlier phases of the program requiring Oracle to address those issues as the department continued the rollout.

Lawmakers did not get a detailed explanation Wednesday of exactly what those complexities were or when VA determined the original ceiling would be insufficient.

The hearing also did not establish how much of the new ceiling VA ultimately expects to spend.

Lawrence emphasized that the roughly $27 billion figure is a contract ceiling, not a $17 billion payment to Oracle. He said the contract operates on a time-and-materials basis, meaning individual work is negotiated and obligated under the ceiling.

The expanded contract encompasses more than the electronic health record itself, including software and licensing, hosting, managed services, training, testing, data migration, change management, deployment support and other work.

What did VA actually negotiate with Oracle?

Lawmakers repeatedly returned to Oracle’s previous assurances about the program’s costs.

During the hearing, members cited a 2022 statement from Oracle Health CEO Mike Sicilia that the company was prepared to bear cost overruns associated with the VA project.

Lawrence said he was aware of the statement but could not explain how it was reflected in the current contract negotiations.

He said VA would need to determine what Oracle had previously promised and how the department’s acquisition team handled those commitments.

The department also provided lawmakers with a much larger estimate for the modernization effort as a whole.

Lawrence said VA estimates it will cost about $37 billion to complete deployment through 2031, plus approximately $11 billion for sustainment, for a total of roughly $48 billion.

When Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., asked whether that was an independent estimate, Lawrence corrected himself and acknowledged that it was not.

The Government Accountability Office told the committee Wednesday that VA still has not provided an updated cost estimate or detailed documentation of its schedule sufficient for GAO to determine whether the schedule is consistent with leading practices. GAO also noted VA has fully implemented only four of its 18 recommendations related to the EHR modernization program, with 14 still not fully addressed as of August.

Members from both parties questioned the cost increase, the pace of the rollout and whether VA could demonstrate that the additional spending is producing better care.

Lawrence defended the recent deployments as an improvement over earlier phases of the program.

VA has deployed the system to 11 sites in 2026, with Cleveland and Anchorage scheduled to go live in October. The department plans 26 additional site deployments in 2027 and expects to continue deployment waves through 2031.

Lawrence said VA is using 15 “return to normal” measures to determine whether facilities have recovered after implementation, including emergency department throughput, ambulatory visits, surgeries and inpatient care.

He also said trouble tickets have declined with each successive deployment and that, at Indiana on Day 12, more than 75% of trouble tickets had been closed and validated by the end users who submitted them.

Lawmakers questioned whether those measures are enough to demonstrate that the system is working safely and effectively.

Rep. Conaway, D-N.J. raised reports that roughly 300 dermatology patients at a VA facility had their referrals canceled after implementation of the Oracle system, including patients with cancer diagnoses.

VA’s chief medical officer, Dr. Adam Evans, did not explain what had happened. Instead, he asked lawmakers to provide the information so the department could investigate.

Lawmakers question the training

Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., said VA employees had reported completing Oracle’s required training without feeling confident using the system and said some new employees had been unable to document care for two to four weeks.

Lawrence defended VA’s training requirements while acknowledging that the department continues to make changes based on feedback from recent deployments.

Throughout the session, lawmakers asked a spate of questions, including: why Oracle’s proposal for additional work came to roughly $17 billion; what VA negotiated; why taxpayers are being asked to shoulder the additional cost after Oracle’s earlier assurances about cost overruns; and how the new contract ceiling fits into VA’s broader estimate of roughly $37 billion to complete deployment and another $11 billion to sustain the system.

VA officials did not provide detailed answers to those questions during the hearing. The dissatisfaction was bipartisan.

Oracle was not there to speak for themselves. The company initially accepted an invitation to testify before the committee but later declined, citing time constraints.

Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., moved to subpoena Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and CEO Mike Sicilia, arguing that the committee cannot perform effective oversight when the company responsible for the contract will not appear to answer questions.

Ranking Member Mark Takano, D-Calif., also questioned whether VA had resolved problems identified during earlier deployments, citing concerns from employees at the Michigan, Southern Ohio and Indiana sites.

“Employees in Michigan, Southern Ohio, and Indiana are telling us that many of the issues identified by the first six sites still have not been fixed,” Takano said.

Lawrence, meanwhile, told lawmakers he remained confident VA could complete the remaining deployments within the new contract ceiling.

“This is the money available to do the things we need to do,” Lawrence concluded.

Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., said in a letter Wednesday to VA Secretary Doug Collins that recent department directives eliminated dedicated LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator positions, dismantled specialized support networks and restricted tailored healthcare resources for LGBTQ+ veterans.

The lawmakers asked VA to bring back dedicated coordinator positions across its health care systems, rescind restrictions on LGBTQ+ support groups and staff training and explain how the department will ensure veterans retain access to those support networks.

The letter follows two internal Veterans Health Administration communications released this year that changed the designation of the coordinators and the national support activities around the program.

A June 12 memorandum from VHA Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum directed that LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinators be redesignated as “Care Coordinators.” The memo said the coordinators would facilitate health care and benefits for all veterans and restricted the use of VHA funds, official time, facilities or other resources for activities promoting what it called “gender-ideology or gender-identity.”

The memo also required VHA officials to certify that activities deemed noncompliant had ended.

According to an internal VHA email obtained by The Advocate, the program’s specialized national support activities and resources were to be discontinued. The email directed the discontinuation of monthly coordinator calls, regional leadership calls, new-coordinator orientations and the program’s community of practice. National communications, processes and procedures specific to the program were also to end, while dedicated Microsoft Teams channels and SharePoint resources were to be archived.

VHA Directive 1340, issued Sept. 21, 2022, required VA medical facilities to designate at least one LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator. The directive says the program was established in 2016 and that the coordinators’ duties had expanded since its inception.

Those duties included helping veterans access appropriate services, identifying health care needs, addressing gaps or conflicts in clinical processes and maintaining relationships with community organizations and local resources.

The lawmakers describe the LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator positions as eliminated. The June VA memorandum, however, says the positions were redesignated as “Care Coordinators.” Publicly available documents do not establish that individuals who previously served as LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinators were removed from VA employment.

VA’s current public-facing webpages use different designations for care coordinators at different facilities.

For example, VA Tampa’s care-coordinator webpage, updated Aug. 24, identifies an “LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator.” The page also provides information about visitation, family definitions, confidentiality of sexual-orientation and sexual-behavior information, and procedures for changing names or sex in medical records.

Meanwhile, VA Tennessee Valley’s care-coordinator webpage, updated Aug. 25, identifies a “Veterans Care Coordinator.” The page continues to list services including mental health care, hormone therapy, gender-affirming prosthetics and HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.

When asked about the changes, the VA pointed Military Times to its June 12 memorandum.

Moulton and Houlahan said the changes could create confusion and discourage LGBTQ+ veterans from seeking medical and mental health care. They cited the history of discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ service members and veterans and called for VA to restore the specialized support infrastructure.

“Our heroes earned their care through courage, duty, and sacrifice. We owe them nothing less than our unwavering commitment to their health, well-being, and dignity,” Moulton and Houlahan wrote.

Her grandfather, Lt. Murray Simon, seldom spoke of wartime experiences, let alone the details regarding being shot down in a B-24 on a secret mission one month prior to D-Day.

All that was left was a piece of that downed plane — an antenna cover loop — painted black to blend into the cover of darkness.

Still, that and a shoebox full of military medals was all “just a little bit of mythology to me,” Sanders told Military Times.

But in 2016, the thread of Simon’s war years started to come undone thanks to Sanders’ persistence and a 1949 recording of the TV hit “This Is Your Life.”

The series, which ran from 1950 to 1990, ran on the premise of luring unsuspecting guests onto the show and then surprising them with loved ones or those whose lives they had touched.

In 1949, the guest of honor for one episode featured, according to its host Ralph Edwards, “a Marine whose life has been packed with enough adventure, thrills, hair-raising escapes, raw courage, and excitement to make half a dozen movies.”

The guest, Peter Ortiz, a lanky man with thick brunette hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, strolled onto stage — only to be surprised by Sanders’ grandfather a short while later.

With that recording and the blackened antenna cover loop, Sanders began to unravel the ties that bound these two men inexplicably together.

“Who was this multilingual, Hollywood-handsome figure who had parachuted behind enemy lines with bags of cash and ammunition for the Maquis, who he was at work training, between blowing up Wehrmacht railcars and eavesdropping on off-duty Nazis at pubs?” Sanders pondered, adding, “How was this not already a Netflix series?”

The full picture of Ortiz, a Marine Corps officer and Office of Strategic Services legend, quickly took shape, resulting in “Ortiz’s War,” written by Sanders and her co-author, retired Marine and CIA officer Nicholas Reynolds.

The book, published Tuesday, weaves the tale of the most battle-decorated member of the OSS who lived a multitude of lives before his death in 1988: as a French Legionnaire, a POW, a U.S. Marine, a spy and, to cap off his career, an actor.

While the OSS, created in 1942 as the first independent U.S. intelligence agency, was short-lived, the exploits of some of its legendary “glorious amateurs” such as William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Julia Child and Mo Berg live on within the American lexicon.

Ortiz, however, despite his many hair-raising adventures and numerous accolades, has lurked in the classified shadows for decades.

Something Sanders and Reynolds hope to rectify in “Ortiz’s War.”

“Even within this sort of very fascinating subset of American operatives, he really stood out,” Sanders said.

One of only 80 Marine Corps officers to serve in the OSS during the war, Ortiz was originally tasked with evaluating the strength and capabilities of the local resistance movement in the Vercors area in southeastern France. He then organized and armed the Maquis in preparation for the long-awaited D-Day assault, according to the CIA.

While operating in France, Ortiz often donned his U.S. Marine uniform — a unique sight, even after June 6, 1944.

“Ortiz felt that entering occupied France at a time when doing so was incredibly dangerous — and there weren’t many allies around — that the actual impact of that gesture on the resistance” was meant to boost morale when the promises of the liberation of France seemed more like a whisper of hope rather than reality, Sanders said.

“He was very symbolic, very literary in a lot of ways,” she continued. “He was there to arm, assess, and mobilize the resistance. So here he was coming in the middle of occupied France and he looks the part.”

That, Sanders said, was very much deliberate.

It was there, while operating in France, that Sanders’ personal family story intertwines with Ortiz’s.

Shot down in May 1944, her grandfather, Simon, had hurled himself out of his burning plane before being rescued by members of the French Underground. Initially hidden by a French Army doctor, Sanders recounts that after the war the doctor, tongue in cheek, demanded “two eggs” from the U.S. government because he had given Simon his last two.

Details like that, Sanders noted, while researching the book, “were very humanizing.”

From there, Simon was disguised as a deaf-mute Frenchman and transported to Valence, France, where he was introduced to the American commando.

Ortiz, codenamed “Chambellan” or ”Jean-Pierre" was the “person who, in my grandfather’s case, you would pray to be intercepted by when you’re a Jewish kid from Queens, New York, shot down over Nazi-occupied France,” Sanders said.

Simon’s encounter with Ortiz, who eventually led him to safety over the Pyrenees, was just one small deed in a series of larger sacrifices, however.

Following the success of Operation Overlord, Ortiz was directed to engage in acts of violent sabotage to prevent the retreating Germans from destroying key installations throughout the region.

During fighting near Albertville, France, in early August 1944, Ortiz, commanding five Marines, a Free French officer and an Army Air Forces captain, was soon overrun by several hundred troops of the German 157th Alpine Reserve Division.

Ortiz surrendered rather than risk German reprisals on the French village.

The commando made numerous escape attempts before being liberated by the British 7th Guards Armored Division on April 29, 1945. By October of that year, with the OSS disbanded Ortiz set his cap on Hollywood.

As for Simon, he “lived and died very grateful,” Sanders said.

“Ortiz’s War” by Nicholas Reynolds and Katie S. Sanders is out now.

Inside an office building in West Los Angeles, retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr. stood tall and strong in his signature spit-shined black cowboy boots. Under the shadow of a red Force Recon Association hat and tinted glasses, Capers’ eyes wore a hardened look that made no effort to hide the darkness and despair that gripped him at that moment.

It was the fall of 2009, and Capers had come in search of a new mission. As the enlisted chief of the Marine Corps’ Hollywood liaison office, I’d been advised that Capers had been recommended for the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam 42 years earlier, and he would likely soon become the first Black Marine officer to receive the nation’s highest award for battlefield valor. Our job was to support the major as he made the move from North Carolina to California, where he planned to complete his memoir and share his story in Hollywood.

I expected to meet a larger-than-life warrior. Instead, I met a soft-spoken, humble man who was grief-stricken over the recent loss of his wife to cancer. His eyes told the story of a wounded soul. At the time, I had no idea I was meeting him in the middle of what would become one of the longest Medal of Honor fights in American history.

That fight finally ended in June at the White House after President Donald Trump clasped a powder blue ribbon around Capers’ neck and straightened the gold, star-shaped medal over his chest. The ceremony concluded a nearly 20-year struggle that profoundly shaped the latter decades of Caper’s life — a trial marked by devastating grief, institutional rejection, deteriorating health, and extraordinary perseverance.

“Jim, the nation kept you waiting far too long,” Trump said at the ceremony. “So I say to you, congratulations. You made it.”

The moment was the culmination of a push to recognize Capers that began in 2007 after a general at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, initiated an investigation to determine if Capers and others who served in Vietnam with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company in 1966 and 1967 should be considered for valor awards or upgrades to medals they had already received. The elite special operations detachment, which fought in the rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of Southeast Asia, had come to be known as “the lost detachment” because administrative records of their exploits were lost for years. After reviewing detailed records and accounts of Capers’ bravery and combat leadership in Vietnam, the general, James L. Williams, believed Capers’ actions were worthy of the Medal of Honor.

‘I had to make sure I kept my troops alive’

Capers is a legend of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Reconnaissance community. In his first enlistment in the infantry, Capers stormed a beach south of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1958, with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. After that deployment, he tried out and was selected for duty with the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company.

In 1965, he volunteered for duty in Vietnam with the newly formed 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company and was placed in charge of an all-white platoon of 20 men. Walter J. Doroski, who served as Capers’ point man in Vietnam, recalled the day he met his new platoon sergeant.

“He stood with confidence and an ominous charisma,” Doroski said in a statement. “In a deep, clear, but not loud voice, he said, ‘Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. I am Staff Sgt. Capers, and we will be the absolute best platoon in this company, which will make us the best platoon of Marines in the world.’ … For the next 18 months, I never knew of anyone who questioned his authority or leadership.”

From August 1966 to early April 1967, Capers led dozens of long-range reconnaissance patrols deep behind enemy lines.

In his first missions in Vietnam, Capers led combat diver teams in shark-infested waters, searching the hull of the USS Boxer for enemy mines and saboteurs while it was docked at ports in Nha Trang and Qui Nhon.

In August and September, Capers and his men endured intense combat during Operations Deckhouse III and IV. When an infantry unit was trapped and isolated by the enemy, Capers led a rescue mission to get the Marines out of the kill zone under fire. He also assumed command of another reconnaissance platoon after its commander was killed in action.

“I wasn’t afraid because I had a job to do, and my job was to lead and to look out for my guys,” Capers said later of the Deckhouse operations.

Then, in late November 1966, Capers and his team were tasked with locating and assessing the wreckage of a downed aircraft. After they gathered critical intelligence from the crash site of the B-57 Canberra bomber, torrential rains prevented the team’s helicopter extraction, leaving the lightly armed patrol isolated with limited food and ammunition. When extraction proved impossible, Capers gathered his men.

“We can’t stay here,” he told them. “If we do, we’ll die. … Saddle up. We’re walking off of this damn mountain.”

As the downpour continued for several days, Capers led his Marines on a grueling 9-kilometer hike through rugged mountains, flooded rivers, triple-canopy jungle, and two minefields, consistently outmaneuvering enemy forces to make it safely back to friendly lines.

Capers was still exhausted from the mission when he learned he would no longer be the platoon sergeant. On Nov. 30, 1966, he received a battlefield commission — a rare honor given to only 63 enlisted men in Vietnam — and was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant.

Still, Capers understood that any failure could reinforce racist beliefs about whether Black Marines should become officers.

“Had I drowned on a dive mission, or had I made the wrong decision, then it would have given the naysayers fodder for saying, ‘We knew we shouldn’t commission those guys.’ So I couldn’t fail,” Capers said. “I had to succeed. … I had to make sure I kept my troops alive.”

Capers earned a Bronze Star with “V” for his actions in January 1967 while serving as assistant patrol leader for a top-secret mission to locate and liberate prisoners of war from a Viet Cong prison camp more than 20 miles behind enemy lines.

After completing that mission, he was sent to Khe Sanh, where he and his Marines patrolled the jungle around the combat outpost, moving like ghosts and killing dozens of enemy soldiers in a near-constant rotation of patrols that Capers coordinated, oversaw, and frequently led.

On one mission, Capers and his team — named Team Broadminded for their tactical efficiency — killed around 15 enemy soldiers. On the chopper back to Khe Sanh, the team was subdued.

“There was no backslapping,” Capers recalled. “For us, death and killing had become business as usual.”

It was just one of many patrols through the jungle that ended in savage close combat.

“You play God,” Capers said in 2009. “And you cover it up by saying, ‘In the interest of national defense — kill him before he kills me.’”

The last patrol

By March 1967, the Marines of 3rd Force Recon in Vietnam had likely killed or wounded hundreds of enemy soldiers, but many of the 39 Marines who originally deployed in April 1966 had become casualties themselves. The survivors were battle-fatigued, short-handed, and waiting to be relieved by another force reconnaissance unit when Capers was given orders to locate a suspected North Vietnamese regimental base camp near Phu Loc.

He gathered Broadminded’s core members — Ron Yerman, Capers’ trusted assistant team leader and first radio operator; Sgt. Richard Crepeau, another seasoned sergeant and the team’s second radio operator; and Billy Ray “Doc” Smith, the team’s medical corpsman.

“He asked us if we would volunteer to go on our last combat patrol into an almost impossible situation,” Crepeau recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve been ordered to go, but you don’t have to.’”

The sergeants and the corpsman looked at each other. There was no question.

“Where you go, we go,” Crepeau said.

Over the four days the patrol lasted, Broadminded got into several firefights. During one engagement, Capers called for fire on an enemy position, which stopped an attack on the unit they were supporting — M Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment.

The team found four booby-trapped trails — likely ambush sites — which Capers reported to the M Company commander, who then ordered Capers to take his team back through the sites. Capers and his men knew the commander was essentially using their reconnaissance team as bait to flush out the enemy forces so the regular infantry could swoop in for the kind of large battle the big-brass strategy demanded at the time.

On the last day of the patrol, April 3, Capers and his nine-man team maneuvered slowly and carefully, identifying and withdrawing from three ambush sites. As the team was about to withdraw from a fourth, the team’s war dog, King, alerted. Then the claymore mines detonated.

A massive, nightmarish explosion swallowed the team in a shockwave of steel balls that punched through limbs and torsos. More than a dozen North Vietnamese soldiers opened fire from two directions with rifles, machine guns, and grenades, wounding every member of the team. The initial blast killed King and knocked Capers against a tree, leaving his body punctured in 14 places and right leg broken.

As the whole team fought for their lives, Yerman, one of the only Marines with relatively minor wounds, crawled over to Capers.

“We’re all down, sir!” Yerman yelled. “But we can still fight!”

Capers ordered Yerman to redistribute the team’s ammo and pull the injured men into a tight perimeter. Smith, bleeding from his neck and face, sprinted from man to man, treating and dressing their wounds. Capers kept firing his rifle and throwing grenades as he shouted orders.

Smith gave Capers a shot of morphine and then darted away to treat the other Marines. As Yerman called for help from the grunts and worked on getting medical evacuation helicopters inbound, Capers ordered Crepeau to call in mortars dangerously close to the Marines’ position — a risky gamble that silenced the enemy guns.

“We’re not going to die on this trail,” Capers told his men. “We’re going home, and we’re going home like Marines.”

With help from the line grunts, Team Broadminded hobbled down a winding, rain-swept trail toward the helicopter landing zone. Capers used his rifle like a cane and limped along, blood sloshing in his jungle boots. At the landing zone, with bullets whipping and cracking around them, Capers — barely clinging to consciousness — refused to board the helicopter until every last man, and his dog’s body, was aboard. When the aircraft struggled to take off under the weight of its load, Capers yelled to the crew chief, “It’s no good,” and tried to sacrifice himself by exiting the aircraft so it could get into the air. The crew chief pulled him back inside — twice — before the pilot managed to gain some speed and lift off.

As the Marines lay recovering in the field hospital later, 3rd Marine Division Commander Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth visited Capers and his men. Hochmuth knelt down beside Capers’ bed and patted his head.

“You did a good job, son,” Capers remembered him saying. “You guys did a real good job out there, and you’ll be hearing from us.” Seven months later, Hochmuth was killed in a helicopter crash.

In the dozens of combat patrols Capers had led, he’d never been caught in an ambush. His record was a point of pride. Perfection was the standard.

“After Phu Loc, the thought never occurred to me that I might deserve a medal, because I felt like I had failed,” Capers said.

A hero’s odyssey

In 2007, the administrative staff at 2nd Marine Division began a years-long process of gathering witness statements, officer endorsements, and other official documents before sending medal recommendations to the Marine Corps Awards Branch on behalf of Capers and several other “lost detachment” Marines.

Lt. Col. Gary Wilder, Capers’ battalion commander in Vietnam until February 1967, recommended Capers for the Medal of Honor for his actions during the last patrol at Phu Loc between March 31 and April 3.

The Marine Corps kicked back the award recommendation in March 2008, citing procedural errors, including the fact that Wilder and Capt. Ken Jordan, who served as Capers’ detachment commander until three days before the Phu Loc patrol, were technically ineligible to initiate the recommendation for Capers’ medal. The four-day timeframe also overlapped with the Bronze Star with “V” that Capers received as an “end of tour” award covering his entire Vietnam deployment — though that award summary did not capture most of the details of the Phu Loc patrol.

The team at 2nd Marine Division regrouped and revised their recommendation, tracking down the correct officers from Capers’ chain of command, obtaining their signed recommendations for Capers’ actions at Phu Loc, and addressing other discrepancies.

As Capers endured a whirlwind of intense scrutiny during that time, he was forced to confront painful memories and long-dormant demons.

“I was stripped down, and all my scars were measured. I answered many questions from investigators,” Capers said. “[They] asked me about the battle of Phu Loc and all the various missions I was involved in.”

“I resented those guys questioning my integrity or my battlefield competence when they had never shed blood as I had.”

When he got fed up with what he perceived as a callous approach by the doctors and investigators, Capers thought about two things. The first was his men. He focused on the effort to get them medals and upgrades for their actions in Vietnam.

The other thing that kept Capers going was his wife, Dottie.

“Dottie was the only woman I ever loved from the time I was 15 years old,” he says. “She was my rock.”

But in June 2009, in the midst of the whole ordeal, Capers lost his rock. A week after their 50th wedding anniversary, he said goodbye to Dottie in a hospital room in North Carolina after a battle with cancer. He slipped her wedding ring gently off her finger and whispered through tears, “I kept my word.”

Dottie was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to Capers and Dottie’s only son, Gary, who was born blind and mentally handicapped and died at 44 in 2003. With his family gone, Capers was lost in grief, and his friends and loved ones could see it.

“I loved her so much. … I was the luckiest man in the world,” Capers said in November 2009. “But now I’m a widower. And my life, as I knew it, has ended, basically. ”

After Dottie passed, Williams, who served with Capers in the 1970s and remains close to him, connected Capers with a manager in Los Angeles and urged him to publish his memoir and pursue a documentary or feature film about his extraordinary life. The general had been inspired to join the Marine Corps, in part, after seeing Capers on a recruiting poster in his dress blues with a chest full of medals. So Capers, still deep in grief and in need of a new focus, left the small military town of Jacksonville, North Carolina, and settled in Santa Monica, California. It was practically the other side of the universe for him.

As he met with producers and writers, nearly everyone placed this measurement on Capers’ life story: With the Medal of Honor approved, Capers was Hollywood gold. Without it, he was unmarketable.

In 2010, Capers said he received a letter from the Pentagon telling him he would be awarded the Silver Star Medal — a downgrade of two levels for which no explanation was given. The processes that led to that decision remain a mystery.

“We may never be able to piece together how that decision was made,” Dwight Mears, a historian who has spent decades investigating and writing about Medal of Honor standards, told The War Horse. “It’s a system that’s very mercurial. It’s not very transparent. You’re basically asking an organization to be transparent about something that may not make it look good.”

Capers was awarded the Silver Star on Oct. 27, 2010, during a ceremony at the officer’s club on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Yerman, Crepeau, Smith, and John Moran, the dog handler on the Phu Loc patrol, also received the Bronze Star that day for their valor during the ambush.

“In the description for the Medal of Honor, it says that your deed has to be so significant that you don’t consider your own life,” Yerman, who accompanied Capers on more patrols in Vietnam than any other man, said in 2010. “He didn’t ever consider his own life when he was out there. … His whole life was dedicated to Marines.”

At the ceremony, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, then commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command, called Capers “the spiritual founder of Marine Corps special operations.”

Hours before the Silver Star ceremony, Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, inducted Capers into SOCOM’s Commando Hall of Honor, enshrining Capers’ legacy as a leader, innovator, and hero in the Marine special operations community.

Capers accepted the Silver Star with grace and humility. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he struggled. His health began to fail. After a long stay in the hospital, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, a close friend and commanding general of 1st Marine Division, had Capers moved to Oceanside, where he slowly got better.

He moved into an apartment and reconnected with James Dixon III, the corporal who worked obsessively for more than a year helping to prepare awards packages for Capers and his men. Dixon moved in with Capers and helped him with his memoir while trying to reignite the effort to award him the Medal of Honor. But Dixon died tragically in 2012. Alone and reeling from another loss, Capers moved back to Jacksonville.

“I’d lost everything important to me,” Capers said of that time. “I guess I bought into the idea that the award was bigger than me because I needed to.”

‘A very subjective award’

For years, supporters tried unsuccessfully to persuade the military to reconsider Capers’ Silver Star. From 2010 to 2019, retired Marine Col. Phil Smith led efforts through the Force Recon Association to reopen the case. None succeeded.

The Pentagon had shown that old valor awards could be reconsidered. In 2014, President Barack Obama presented the Medal of Honor to 24 soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam whose heroism had been overlooked because of racial discrimination. The award upgrades followed a congressionally mandated review that took 12 years. No Marine medals were upgraded.

“The Medal of Honor is a very subjective award that depends very much on how well we tell the story,” Doug Sterner, an archivist and expert on military valor awards, told me in 2015.

Capers’ story gradually reached a wider audience. In 2015, I published an investigative feature about him in Maxim magazine, and Capers published his memoir, “Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers Jr.” in 2018. A documentary about Team Broadminded followed later.

In 2021, Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Greg Murphy of North Carolina called for a review of an updated recommendation supported by new witness statements. Both lawmakers represented places closely tied to Capers: Norman’s district includes Bishopville, where Capers was born into a sharecropping family in 1937, and Murphy represented Jacksonville, where Capers lives.

But then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro denied the recommendation, citing regulations that “preclude reconsideration of any previously approved personal decoration for upgrade to the Medal of Honor unless new, substantive, and relevant material evidence is presented.” Norman then introduced legislation in 2022 and again in 2023 that would have authorized the president to award Capers the medal. Neither effort advanced. By then, supporters had concluded that another appeal through normal military channels was unlikely to succeed.

In 2024, retired Marine Lt. Col. David “Bull” Gurfein, who now serves as a senior Defense Department advisor, took over the campaign with board support from his nonprofit United American Patriots. After Gurfein learned of Capers’ story, he offered to lead a new strategic campaign that combined historical research, congressional lobbying, public pressure, and endorsements from senior military leaders.

“Many senior military leaders believed Capers deserved the Medal of Honor, but few believed he would ever receive it,” Gurfein told The War Horse. “We refused to accept that as a rational conclusion.”

Gurfein led a coalition that expanded upon research begun by Williams, gathering original records and examining why earlier efforts had failed. The coalition worked to push Capers’ story into public view. They circulated petitions urging President Trump to award Capers the medal while he was still alive. The major’s heroism was touted in news reports, opinion pieces, podcasts, and on social media. A 2025 interview with Capers on the Shawn Ryan Show garnered more than 1.7 million views on YouTube.

“We were able to finally get this done through a combination of getting the right people in the right place and having the influence to constantly keep Maj. Capers’ name trending,” said Ruben Ayala, co-founder of BLK-OPS Foundation, which supported the campaign. “As people saw all of the injustices throughout the years of not being able to get this right, they joined the fight.”

Another key victory came after retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia, a former senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, organized a letter to Trump supporting Capers that was signed by 133 retired senior enlisted leaders. A second letter was sent to the Commandant of the Marine Corps with signatures from four former sergeants major of the Marine Corps.

In February 2025, Norman secured a similar letter to Trump signed by 47 members of Congress, including six senators. Norman then introduced legislation waiving the five-year deadline that ordinarily limits consideration of Medal of Honor recommendations. The bill passed both chambers by unanimous consent.

Williams credited Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a key supporter of the legislation who helped push it across the finish line.

“Sen. Graham was absolutely a great supporter and a champion in this process,” Williams said after Graham’s unexpected death on July 11. “He did what he normally does: He strong-armed everybody on Capitol Hill.”

The campaign gained additional support inside the administration. During an August 2025 White House dinner honoring Purple Heart recipients, Capers met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and spoke with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Collins later endorsed the effort in a letter to Hegseth’s senior staff. The effort seemed to reach a critical mass of support after Hegseth presented Capers with Fox Nation’s Salute to Service Award in front of a large national audience in November.

President Trump signed Norman’s bill into law on March 26. On June 18, 59 years after his actions at Phu Loc, Capers became the first Black Marine officer to receive the Medal of Honor.

‘Destiny’

On a hot June afternoon in Washington, two Marines helped the 88-year-old warrior rise and navigate a couple steps onto a stage at the White House, where President Trump hooked his right arm around Capers’ left and helped him stand tall. Then a military member spoke the words that Capers, and all who had advocated for him, had waited decades to hear: “The President of the United States, in the name of the Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to 2nd Lt. James Capers Jr., United States Marine Corps.”

After securing the medal around Capers’ neck, the president put his arm around him, pulling him close and smiling to the gathered guests, who erupted in applause and cheers. Capers stood there, beaming along with the president, flooded with the joy and validation of the moment.

“He has always been an unwavering example of strength, courage and grace,” Renee White, Capers’ niece and one of his only living relatives, said in a statement. “While my heart aches that his beloved wife, my Aunt Dottie, and their son, my cousin Gary, are not here to share in this historic day, I know they, along with his parents and siblings, are looking down with immense love and pride.”

After the ceremony, Capers attended a nearby reception. As he rolled into the venue, a huge crowd of friends, family members, and supporters gave him a long overdue hero’s welcome, showering him with love and admiration.

“The award represented the culmination of decades of patience by Capers and years of disciplined research, principled advocacy, and broad-based collaboration by hundreds of individuals committed to ensuring that the historical record was finally set right,” Gurfein said.

The following day — on Juneteenth — Capers was inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes along with Marine Col. John Ripley, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor the day before.

“Your applause reminds me of some dark days — of some brave men who are not here today. So I’ll speak for them,” Capers said at the ceremony. “This is the greatest country in the world. I fought for that flag. I believed in it.”

In 1943, Capers’ family fled the Jim Crow South to Baltimore, Maryland. Four of his seven brothers and sisters died before age 10. When Capers enlisted in the Marines in 1956, his father drove him to the train station and explained that he would always have to perform better than his peers if he wanted to succeed.

“The Marine Corps did not welcome individuals like me,” Capers said. “But the hierarchy thought, ‘If he’s got the skills, at least give [him] the chance to try.’ That’s all I really wanted.”

Capers rolled in his wheelchair alongside close friends and family members down a long Pentagon hallway as hundreds of friends, supporters, and distinguished guests gave a long overdue hero’s reception. As he stared up with a proud smile at a sea of applauding admirers, he reached out to shake hands and expressed his thanks with a sharp salute.

When he reached the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, Capers located his name, newly printed on the wall.

Afterward, Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter expressed how it felt to see Capers awarded with America’s highest honor and what his legacy means.

“There would be no three-star African-American generals in the Marine Corps if it wasn’t for the leadership and contributions from men like [Maj. Capers],” said Carter, who currently serves as an advisor to the director of national intelligence. “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and our reconnaissance community certainly wouldn’t be as far as it is today without Maj. Capers. … We’re honored [and] pleased that he’s here today with us.”

Theodore Roosevelt Britton Jr., a 100-year-old Montford Point Marine and former American ambassador to Grenada and Barbados, was elated to witness his good friend’s induction into the Hall of Heroes.

“Maj. Capers epitomizes everything that we [Montford Point Marines] could have aspired to. … To see how far we have come is really wonderful,” Britton said afterward.

For Capers, it was a proud and cathartic experience that was somewhat bittersweet.

“I’m a little bit sad because there are a lot of my troops that are not here, but I’m here because of them,” he said in Washington the day he received the Medal of Honor.

Yerman and Crepeau, who both testified to Capers’ unparalleled combat prowess and leadership in Vietnam, never lived to see their former platoon leader receive the medal they believed he deserved.

“Had they not been along with me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

When I asked Capers what finally receiving the medal means to him, he thought for a second and calmly breathed out one word.

“Destiny,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It took a long time to get here. … It means a lot.”

This War Horse article was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by June Strange and Paul Szoldra, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

The answer is more complicated than whether the Food and Drug Administration has approved it.

Inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, a treatment can pass one scientific hurdle and still face others before it becomes routine care.

VA says the process can involve research, clinical guidelines, medication reviews, patient-safety systems, ethics reviews and practical questions about whether the health system has the staff, space and equipment to deliver it.

“VA moves new treatments into practice through a step-by-step process,” Dr. Ilse Wiechers, a VA mental health official, told Military Times. “Only after a treatment is shown to be safe and effective does VA roll it out more broadly.”

It starts with evidence, but evidence is only the beginning.

A new treatment may start with research, move through increasingly larger clinical trials and, for drugs and certain medical devices, undergo FDA review. VA must then consider how the evidence applies to the veterans it serves and how a treatment fits into the health system.

The 2023 VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for PTSD uses the GRADE methodology to evaluate the quality and strength of evidence and weigh the benefits and harms of treatment options. The guideline also considers patient perspectives and feasibility when developing recommendations.

The 2023 PTSD guideline applied GRADE more rigorously than the 2017 version, according to the guideline. That resulted in some recommendations being downgraded as the evidence was reevaluated.

Recommendations can change as research develops, and veteran-specific evidence can matter, too.

Wiechers said evidence involving veterans can be an important consideration when VA evaluates whether a treatment should become available, even when research in other populations is promising.

For PTSD, however, the 2023 VA/DoD guideline says a lack of data on veterans or service members alone did not alter its recommendations. That helps explain why FDA approval and VA availability are not necessarily the same thing.

How a treatment moves into VA care

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, offers a concrete example of how the VA adopts a new treatment.

The FDA approved rTMS for depression in 2008. According to VA, the department then conducted a large study involving veterans, tested the treatment in a pilot program at 35 VA sites and expanded access after the pilot.

VA says more than 60 of its facilities now offer rTMS, with some operating specialized clinics that combine it with other advanced depression treatments. Dr. Wiechers added that the success of the program’s original 35 clinics, as listed on the VA’s website, resulted in the program expanding to over 60 facilities.

The sequence illustrates the difference between FDA approval and VA implementation. VA says it studied rTMS in its own patient population, tested its delivery across multiple facilities, and then expanded access.

There is no single office that makes the decision.

Dr. Wiechers described a team-based process in which draft policies are shared with offices responsible for delivering or overseeing a treatment. That allows potential risks, downsides and ethical concerns to be identified before policies are finalized.

Among the offices involved, Dr. Wiechers identified the Office of Mental Health and its programs, including the National Center for PTSD; the Office of Suicide Prevention; Pharmacy Services; the National Center for Ethics in Health Care; Nursing Services; and Care Management & Social Work Services.

The considerations extend beyond whether a treatment works.

Wiechers said VA also considers whether it has enough trained clinicians, specialized equipment and space to deliver a treatment, as well as whether adding it could take resources away from other care.

For medications, another layer comes into play.

VA’s National Formulary establishes the department’s national preferred list of medications. Some medications also have Criteria for Use documents that establish evidence-based conditions or restrictions for prescribing.

VA says medication reviews can be prompted by new FDA approvals or research that could affect evidence-based prescribing, clinical practice or health outcomes for veterans.

The formulary process includes VA physicians, Pharmacy Benefits Management officials and Veterans Integrated Service Network pharmacist executives. Formulary documents are reviewed, and feedback is solicited from health care teams.

An FDA-approved medication, therefore, can be available in civilian medicine while having different prescribing conditions inside VA.

That distinction can be particularly important for treatments that carry significant risks or require specialized monitoring.

Emerging treatments test the boundaries

Emerging mental health treatments illustrate the difference between scientific promise and routine clinical care.

The VA/DoD PTSD guideline, for example, recommends against benzodiazepines for PTSD, citing a lack of evidence of benefit and known harms, such as drug dependence and addiction.

It also recommends against cannabis and cannabis-derived products for PTSD, citing a lack of well-designed randomized controlled trials and potentially serious side effects.

Veterans are questioning why their legal cannabis license can’t be considered by the VA.

“I have a medical cannabis license, and I have to pay for my medication out of pocket, but almost any other medication is covered by the VA,” explained George Canfield, a retired Army veteran.

“Why can’t VA offer some kind of subsidy to offset the cost of this naturally derived treatment? I don’t expect a VA-run dispensary, but I would like it to be more affordable since it’s what helps me more than any other medication I’ve tried,” he said. “And I’ve tried them all!”

Ketamine presents a different example. The VA/DoD guideline retained a weak recommendation against ketamine for PTSD, citing limitations in the evidence and a lack of demonstrated effectiveness for the condition.

Psychedelic-assisted therapies remain an area of active research, meaning promising findings do not by themselves establish a treatment as routine VA care.

VA has recently expanded its research into psychedelic therapies and is recruiting veteran participants for clinical trials in select regions.

For veterans, those distinctions can affect whether a treatment encountered outside VA is available or subject to different conditions within the federal health system.

What happens after a treatment works?

The process continues after a treatment enters clinical practice.

VA says it monitors treatments through individual reports of adverse events or other problems, ongoing quality monitoring and formal research.

If a patient experiences a bad reaction or other adverse outcome, local staff can report and investigate it. Dedicated safety programs can identify patterns that may warrant broader review or changes in guidance.

VA also evaluates how treatments perform in actual clinical practice, particularly when a new treatment is introduced or when policies governing its use change.

Once a treatment becomes standard care, researchers generally cannot create the same untreated comparison group used in many clinical trials.

Dr. Wiechers said the most rigorous safety and effectiveness checks tend to occur early, while a treatment is still being rolled out.

The process does not end there. VA and the Department of Defense periodically revisit clinical practice guidelines as evidence changes. The current 2023 VA/DoD PTSD guideline contains 34 evidence-based recommendations and is intended to assist, rather than replace, clinical judgment. The guideline is a tool for clinicians and does not define required care.

What veterans see at the end of the process

For a veteran sitting across from a VA clinician, much of this process is invisible.

The veteran sees a treatment that is available, restricted, unavailable or offered only through a clinical trial.

Behind that decision may be years of research, clinical practice guidelines, formulary reviews, safety monitoring and assessments of whether VA can deliver the treatment.

Dr. Wiechers said there are several reasons why a treatment may not be available to veterans.

“VA only offers treatments that have solid research behind them showing they help,” she said. When a treatment is not available, she said, it may be because “the evidence isn’t strong enough yet, or it hasn’t been proven to work well specifically for Veterans.”

There is no single moment when someone decides a treatment “works.”

Instead, VA describes a sequence of decisions involving evidence, safety, effectiveness for veterans, clinical guidance, feasibility and resources. Once a treatment reaches the clinic, monitoring and research continue.

The system is designed to answer a question bigger than whether a treatment works:

Is there enough evidence that it works for veterans, can VA deliver it safely and effectively, and should it become part of routine care?

Roughly 80% of mental health appointments made in the Veterans Affairs’ Community Care Program are scheduled within the department’s 30-day wait-time standard, but VA schedulers still struggle to meet the seven-day requirement for making these appointments, the VA Office of Inspector General has found.

The VA’s watchdog evaluated mental health referrals for community care at 133 VA medical systems and found that just five met the seven-day metric for scheduling the appointments.

But the inspectors also found that despite those delays, 80% of the referrals received appointments within 30 days.

Of those that didn’t meet the requirement, the average wait time for an appointment was 56 days.

In the report released Monday, OIG inspectors said the scheduling issues contributed to the delays in care, with staff often relying on telephone calls and postal mail to communicate with veterans.

Other roadblocks to timely referrals included providers not being available for the types of appointments veterans wanted and issues reaching providers, according to the report.

Delays in mental health consults are a problem because veterans who need the care may pose a risk to themselves and others without treatment, said Larry Reinkemeyer, assistant inspector general for audits and evaluation.

“Process improvements are needed to enable VA to meet its scheduling and appointment timeliness standards for mental health consults. Veterans who receive community care services for mental health consults represent a vulnerable group,” Reinkemeyer wrote in the report.

For the analysis, the OIG reviewed community care consults for mental health services from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025. More than 825,000 veterans received mental health treatment during that period, either directly from the VA — with more than 1 million consults to VA facilities — or 198,000 referrals for community care.

The analysts found that when an appointment did not meet the 30-day metric, scheduling delays consumed much of that window.

Community care is the VA’s program for veterans to receive medical services in the private sector with the cost covered by the VA.

By law, the VA must refer veterans to community care if the wait time for a primary or mental health care appointment at a VA facility is more than 20 days or the drive time is longer than 30 minutes.

Also by law, appointments must occur within 30 days to ensure patients have access to care.

The VA is in the process of reorganizing the management and structure of its medical arm, the Veterans Health Administration, to include reducing the number of regional offices and streamlining the leadership framework.

The reforms also will create a “Community Care Hub” designed to improve services to veterans by improving access to care, tracking payments and standardizing the referral/consult process.

The VA OIG made recommendations to improve the scheduling process, including: adjusting contracts for the companies that manage community care to ensure they can deliver timely care; evaluate its referral system to ensure that it follows best practices; improve its system for identifying available providers to ensure they can provide the care veterans want; and determine whether community care contractors can meet demand for in-person and tele health appointments.

In their response, VA officials said they have addressed several of the recommendations already and expect its new Community Care Network contracts to improve performance.

VA officials also said they were engaging with providers, its contractors and others to identify gaps and address them. They also noted that they are reviewing best practices for reaching patients and working with facilities to ensure that their schedulers are able to communicate with veterans and providers.

“The [Veterans Health Administration] greatly values the OIG’s assistance in ensuring that all stakeholders are unified in supporting VHA’s vision of providing all Veterans with access to the highest quality care,” wrote John Bartrum, the department’s former Under Secretary for Health.

The VA wants to remind veterans that same-day emergency mental health services are available at VA medical facilities as well as private emergency rooms at not cost to veterans — even if they aren’t enrolled in VA healthcare.

The number of veterans who have received care under the Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit, provided under the Compact Act, has grew from 10,023 in fiscal 2023 to 15,218 in fiscal 2025, VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told Military Times on Wednesday.

It also helped 9,434 veterans in the first half of fiscal 2026.

“In FY25, VA covered a record-high $109,934,325 in acute suicide crisis care,” Slaven said. “VA employs several efforts to educate Veterans and non-VA emergency department staff about the availability of [Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit]. Importantly, once crisis stabilization care has been provided, VA will work with all relevant parties to ensure eligible Veterans don’t get stuck with a bill.”

The 4.2% jobless rate for all veterans was up a tick from the 4.1% recorded in June, while the rate for post-9/11 veterans dropped from 4.8% in June to 4.7% in July. The unemployment rate for women veterans, meanwhile, went up from 3.6% in June to 3.8% in July.

The BLS report also included revised figures on the number of jobs added in June and May, which showed major downward trends. The initial May numbers showed that 129,000 jobs had been added, but that number was revised downward to 63,000. June’s initial job growth number was 57,000, but that number was revised to 20,000.

In addition, the BLS report stated, “Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 153,000 to 921,000 in July,” and the “number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million.”

Friday’s BLS report came out the day after President Donald Trump declared at a Las Vegas rally that the U.S. economy was “the greatest in the history of the world,” although archived BLS reports show that the U.S. economy has added a total of 542,000 jobs over the 19 months of Trump’s second term, while nearly 2.7 million jobs were added in the last 19 months of the Biden administration.

In response to Friday’s report, White House aides put out not-to-worry statements noting job growth in construction and manufacturing.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a released statement that the “Trump industrial resurgence is on schedule.”

“Manufacturing (which added 5,000 jobs in July) and factory construction jobs grew again in July even as government payrolls continued to significantly shrink,” Desai said. “Unemployment claims are at record lows.”

On Fox Business News, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said that the end of the FIFA World Cup was a factor in the number of jobs lost. He described it as a “sort of rebound from all the employment we got from the World Cup, because the World Cup was ending.”

Hassett’s comments contrasted with the analysis of other economists who have focused on the eventual long-term impact of artificial intelligence and the uncertainty over whether the chokehold on oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz can be lifted.

“It’s a bleak (BLS) report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a phone interview with Military Times. The report shows that “a lot of people are leaving the labor force,” and “there’s no doubt that the job market has flatlined in President Trump’s second term.”

“It’s just not a dynamic jobs market,” she added. “Tariffs and the war in Iran have caused companies to cut back” on hiring. To sidestep hiring slowdowns due to the impact of AI, “young people are looking again at trade schools.”

The BLS report also highlighted one of the great counter-intuitives of American economics: people losing their jobs can be good news for the stock markets, Long said.

By midday Friday, the Dow Industrial Average was up 50 points, possibly indicating that investors were betting on the gloomy jobs report making it unlikely that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in September.

The trial, known as the Psilocybin Intervention for Veterans Overcoming Treatment-Resistant Depression,” or PIVOT, study aims to include at least 240 veterans, all of whom have difficult-to-treat major depressive disorder and some who also have PTSD.

The study will take place at five VA medical centers through June 2031 and will assess patients’ levels of depression before and after treatment, side effects and overall response among participants.

“Far too many veterans are living with mental health conditions that don’t respond to available treatments,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “Under President [Donald] Trump, VA is pursuing all avenues to evaluate new treatments and offer meaningful relief for those who have worn the uniform. This clinical trial reflects another step toward this goal.”

Last month, researchers with Ohio State University’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education published the findings of a small, 12-person study on the safety of using psilocybin to treat severe PTSD in veterans.

After receiving eight hours of psychotherapy and two doses of synthetic psilocybin and integrative therapy, nine participants, or 75%, no longer met the clinical criteria for having PTSD.

According to the research, published July 30 in Communications Medicine, participants showed no serious adverse effects, including suicidal ideation or behavior. Non-serious side effects included headache, anxiety and dizziness.

“For a population with severe treatment-resistant PTSD, these results are striking,” said Stacey Armstrong, associate director and senior researcher at the center.

The PIVOT study will involve veterans with major depressive disorder who have not responded to current treatments, including those with or without a diagnosis of PTSD. In the double-blind, randomized trial, veterans will receive one dose of psilocybin or a placebo, along with therapeutic support. They will receive a second dose one month later, also with support, and will be evaluated two to four weeks following each session.

They also will receive follow-up six months after their participation.

VA officials said for the study, they will use pharmaceutical-grade drugs and treat veterans in a “safe, controlled, clinical setting.”

The five VA facilities that are slated to host the research include: the Birmingham VA Health Care System and Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center, Alabama; the VA Portland Health Care System, Oregon; Cpl. Michael Crescenz VA Medical Center, Philadelphia; and VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate the review of some psychedelic therapies to treat mental health conditions. The order also required the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services and the VA to collaborate on psychedelic research.

As a result of the order, HHS and the VA signed an agreement last month to increase coordination on research, including increasing clinical trial participation, training therapists, nurses and doctors to administer psychedelic medications if they are approved and collecting data and evidence to support patients, physicians and federal regulators.

According to the VA, its staff is involved in 20 current clinical trials focused on psychedelic treatments for mental health conditions, including MDMA and LSD.

Nearly 5 million veterans have used magic mushrooms, LSD or MDMA, study finds

Studies sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies have shown that 87% of veteran participants in a study on the use of MDMA — the chemical compound known recreationally as Ecstasy or Molly — had significant improvement in PTSD symptoms four months after receiving treatments, and 71% no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD at the end of the studies.

The advancement of MDMA as a treatment met a setback in 2024, however, when the Food and Drug Administration rejected an application to approve it as a PTSD treatment, requesting more research on its safety and efficacy.

VA officials said in a release on the PIVOT study Wednesday that they strongly discourage self-medication, and veterans should not “replace other mental health treatment options with psychedelics or any other unprescribed substances.”

“Proven, evidence-based treatments are currently available at VA facilities to treat Veterans with mental health conditions,” they wrote.

The fall lasted only seconds, but the consequences would span a lifetime.

Under the cover of darkness in Balad, Iraq, Army Sgt. Will Fisher was moving into position for an overnight mission. He fell roughly 40 feet and landed on his feet while wearing about 100 pounds of gear. The force of the fall crushed the talus bone in his right ankle and broke his back. He was medically evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

That fall eventually cost him his leg and his career — the latter more than a decade earlier than he had hoped, and five critical years short of his qualifying for a full military pension.

“I wasn’t planning to leave the Army,” he said. “The injuries made that decision for me, and that was it. The retirement I’d spent almost 15 years working towards was gone.”

Service members qualify for full pensions after two decades of service, but only 17% reach the necessary 20-year mark of eligibility, a 2011 Defense Department report found. An estimated 54,000 veterans sustain career-ending combat injuries before reaching that threshold.

Consequently, medically retired veterans lose part of their retirement pay because they also receive disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last fall, those reductions averaged roughly $1,650 a month, or nearly $20,000 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Major Richard Star Act would change that. The bill — named after an Army major who was medically retired after being injured in combat — has backing from nearly 80 senators, more than 330 House members, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“It is unacceptable that tens of thousands of combat-injured veterans are denied the full military benefits they earned,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the bill’s lead sponsors, who characterized the offset as “one of the deepest injustices in our present veterans’ disability system.”

Some lawmakers support the bill’s premise, but worry about the cost: $78 billion over a decade, according to the CBO.

Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, is one of them. In a statement provided to The War Horse, a spokesperson for Crapo said, “We owe combat-injured veterans nothing less than our full support when they return from their military service.”

But his office also said Crapo is concerned about the bill’s overall price tag and “remains willing to work with his colleagues to address cost-related concerns.”

The cost previously prompted Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., to block the legislation, arguing the long-term financial impact required greater scrutiny.

The cost question Congress hasn’t resolved

When it was introduced in 2023, the Major Richard Star Act applied only to those who were medically retired due to combat injuries and was estimated to cost about $10 billion to $13 billion over 10 years. Eligibility was later extended to an additional 255,000 medically retired veterans regardless of how they became injured, inflating costs nearly sevenfold over the same period.

In an effort to help it finally pass, lawmakers in June included the Major Richard Star Act as part of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act (TCAVA), a legislative package with more than 60 veteran-related measures. The version in that bill would again limit the benefits to only those 54,000 injured in combat, according to advocates and legislative language reviewed by The War Horse.

Candace Wheeler, senior director of government and legislative affairs at the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said advocates ultimately focused on combat-injured retirees because broader proposals would “balloon the cost” and be harder to move through Congress. But after TCAVA failed to get a floor vote in July, its chances of passing this fiscal year are dwindling, leaving some confused about the status of the standalone bill.

According to congressional staff in Sen. Blumenthal’s office, lawmakers intended the amended Major Richard Star Act to extend eligibility to just 1,124 additional combat-wounded veterans, but the bill’s legislative language was interpreted by the DoD Office of the Actuary as applying to roughly 255,000 medically retired veterans, an estimate the Congressional Budget Office used in scoring the bill, accounting for the additional $68 billion.

However, Disabled American Veterans opposes the larger bill because of its funding mechanism, which would reduce future disability claims for some conditions, including tinnitus and sleep apnea. The group said the proposal asks one group of veterans to finance benefits for another and could set a precedent for future reductions in benefits.

“We would be 100% supportive without the poison pill,” said Todd Hunter, DAV’s deputy national communications director.

Currently, there are two similar bills before Congress: The original targeting combat-injured veterans only, and the expanded version that would apply to a broader group of medically retired veterans.

A career cut short five years before retirement

As lawmakers debate the cost, combat-injured veterans say they earned both their military retirement pay and disability benefits.

After serving eight years as a Marine and spending a few years as a civilian, Fisher joined the Army. He deployed repeatedly throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Panama, and elsewhere. Then, on Oct. 19, 2009, while serving as an infantryman with Task Force 16, 155th Brigade Combat Team, in Balad, Iraq, rotor wash from a nearby U.S. helicopter knocked him from a ladder during overwatch operations, ending his career.

For four years, Fisher lived with chronic pain, heavy medications, and repeated efforts to save his right leg. Eventually, he chose to have it amputated below the knee.

“The pain was unbearable,” he said. “The surgeries didn’t work, and I was exhausted from daily medications that I didn’t want to be taking, and after all that, my right ankle was dead.”

Two days after surgery, Fisher was back on his feet. Nine weeks later, he was fitted with a prosthesis and walking.

“I have more legs than I have shoes,” said Fisher, who now owns 11 prosthetic legs.

Within months, he was running. Eight months after surgery, he returned to service as a volunteer firefighter. Later, he became Fort Hood’s first amputee civilian police officer, a job that allowed him to work alongside soldiers and train others for duties he once performed himself.

But because he served in that role as a civilian employee after medical retirement, the work did not count toward the 20 years of military service required for a full military pension.

The retirement they wanted but never received

Fisher wanted so badly to stay in the military that when the war with Iran began earlier this year, he called the recruiter’s office to ask whether the Army was taking retirees. He wanted to serve as a military police officer again, this time on active duty.

When Fisher left the Army in 2014, he had earned a military retirement worth $2,166 a month. He has never received it. The Army assigned him a 40% disability rating during his discharge process, which made him eligible for about $2,700 a month in disability compensation.

Under a federal policy known as the VA Waiver, Fisher’s disability compensation reduces his military retirement pay dollar for dollar. Since his disability pay exceeds the value of his retirement benefit, his retirement check is wiped out. But if both benefits were paid, Fisher’s monthly military-related income would be nearly $4,900.

“My retirement pay was earned through my years of service,” Fisher said. “My VA disability compensation is because I lost my leg serving my country. Those are two completely different things, and I don’t think one should cancel out the other.”

Fisher also earns a salary from his full-time job as a logistics manager for an appliance company. But he said the offset still affects his long-term financial stability. With the extra money, he would have more flexibility.

“I’d pay off debt, save some money, and I could enjoy my family a lot more,” he said.

Naomi Mathis understands the strain.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the former Air Force staff sergeant’s convoy came under attack amid what she described as “total chaos.” Mathis witnessed the aftermath of multiple combat incidents, including the death of a fellow service member. After returning home, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The condition led to a 100% disability rating from the VA. She was medically retired after serving 7.5 years, far short of her goal of serving at least 20 years and eventually becoming a chief master sergeant.

Like Fisher, Mathis said the loss was not simply financial. It was the loss of a career she intended to finish.

“My career was cut short,” she said. “I was not given the opportunity to serve out those 20 or 30 years. But I would have.”

Mathis qualifies for a special combat-injury compensation fund that partially supplements the offset. Even with that assistance, the shortfall still stings: nearly $800 a month less than if she received her full retirement and disability pay.

With three young children at home, Mathis said financial pressure forced her back into the workforce before she had fully recovered.

“I couldn’t pay rent or feed my kids. I needed a job immediately,” she said. “I wasn’t able to heal.”

Mathis now serves as DAV’s deputy national legislative director. She said she remains grateful for the life she built after military service, but still believes the country’s promise to injured service members should not end when their careers are cut short.

“I signed my name on the dotted line, and I wasn’t just under the impression — I was told — that the military would be there for me when I put up my boots,” Mathis said. “Well, they put my boots up for me.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., has proposed barring the VA from collecting voluntary or involuntary separation pay from veterans who are approved to receive disability compensation.

The bill also would allow veterans who later qualify for military retirement pay to remit the net amount they received instead of the gross amount so they don’t end up paying more than they actually received after taxes.

Gallego, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran, and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla, introduced a similar bill in the House when Gallego served in that chamber, but the legislation never made it out of committee.

The senator said the legislation is needed because the money is paid out for separate reasons: disability payments are akin to workman’s compensation and separation pay reflects “time served” — an incentive tool used by the Defense Department to manage force strength and design.

“It is ridiculous to claw back money from a veteran who has put life and limb on the line, just because later in life they qualify for disability benefits,” Gallego said in a statement to Military Times.

From 2013 to 2023, the VA recouped $2.44 billion in separation pay and bonuses from 112,834 veterans under a law that the department cites as prohibiting it from paying disability compensation to those who received the pay unless the money is paid back.

The VA has been required to recover the money since the 1940s, and the Defense Department is required to inform transitioning service members of the potential for recoupment. Sometimes, however, veterans are surprised when letters announcing the recoupment arrive, sometimes decades after they left military service.

In one case, an Air Force officer received $30,000 in separation pay in 1990 and received a letter in 2024 telling him his entire disability compensation check would be withheld until the money was recouped.

The situation placed the veteran at risk for losing his living quarters and vehicle, he told Military.com at the time.

“I fail to comprehend how or why they intend to cut me off for several months without even negotiating a lesser but [survivable] monthly contribution. I also fail to understand why it took 34 years for VA to come up with this [scheme]. Why now?” retired Air Force Maj. Raymond Thomas, 75, told the publication.

By law, veterans’ monthly disability compensation can be withheld if they received readjustment pay, non-disability severance pay, disability severance pay, special separation benefits or involuntary or voluntary separation pay.

According to the VA, the recoupment effort hit a peak in 2018 with 17,066 veterans paying more than $396 million.

The Restore Veterans Compensation Act would also change the recoupment rate for retired military veterans who are required to make payments to 25% of their paychecks rather than the current 40% — an alteration that would lessen the financial impact of the recoupment.

When Gallego and Bilirakis introduced their bill in 2022, it drew the support of Disabled American Veterans who said the practice of withholding VA disability compensation because a service member received a separation benefit “must end.”

Sen. James Risch, R-Id. introduced a separate bill Wednesday that would limit the amount that veterans paid each month to the VA for recoupment.

Risch’s Veterans Earned Benefits Access Act would allow the VA to collect the separation pay but limit it to no more than 25% of their monthly disability compensation checks. Currently, the VA can withhold the entire amount of checks until the veteran pays back the government.

“My [bill] ensures that veterans can receive the disability benefits they need while repaying their separation pay,” Risch said in a release.

In a review of 9.9 million veterans in the VA medical system from 2000 to 2024, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs and elsewhere found that 14,419 patients had received an ALS diagnosis.

In the group with ALS, 46% were Army veterans – nearly the same percentage of soldiers in the entire patient cohort.

Using the rate of ALS diagnoses among Army veterans as the baseline and adjusting for sex, race, and ethnicity, researchers found that Air Force veterans had a 29% higher rate, former Coast Guard members had a 26% higher rate and Navy veterans had a 15% higher rate. Marines had the lowest rate, at 22% below that of Army veterans.

Overall, officers had a 64% higher rate than enlisted personnel, while women officers had a 72% higher rate. Differences among branches were more apparent in men ages 61 and younger and less evident among men older than 75.

“Our study looked at the rates of ALS among people in different branches of the U.S. military and found ALS rates varied considerably by branch and rank, with larger differences among younger veterans,” said study author Marc Weisskopf at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in a release.

ALS is a rare disease diagnosed in roughly 5,000 Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A fatal illness most famously associated with baseball legend Lou Gehrig and British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, it is a progressive disease that affects the motor neurons, causing them to lose connectivity and die off.

There are two types of ALS: sporadic, meaning occurring without a known cause in the general population, and familial, likely the result of an inherited genetic mutation, according to the ALS Association.

While military personnel are diagnosed with ALS at nearly twice the rate of civilians, the cause has not been scientifically proven. The VA presumes the condition to be service-connected given the heightened occurrence in the veteran population.

Researchers have theorized that exposure to hazardous environments and substances, including burn pits, jet fuel, exhaust, heavy metals, dioxins and other toxic materials, may contribute, but no direct connection has been proven.

“Our findings suggest that officers and those serving in the Air Force, Navy or Coast Guard may have been exposed to military environments that increase risk of ALS,” said Weisskopf. “Future research should aim to identify these exposures.”

In the civilian population, some occupations such as airline pilots, truck drivers, metal workers and those who work with pesticides and other toxic substances are associated with increased ALS risk, according to a 2022 Columbia University study.

The authors noted that the likelihood of developing ALS is low, even in the U.S. military. Of the 9.9 million veteran records reviewed, less than 0.2% of patients were diagnosed with ALS, according to the study.

“It is … important to note that ALS is rare and the overall risk remains small, so even statistically significant increases associated with branch and rank represent only modest increases in risk among military personnel,” Weisskopf said.

VA staff evacuated an unknown number of patients to local hospitals and are caring for 27 patients at area shelters, according to the facility’s Facebook page. The medical center, which lies less than a third of a mile from the fire perimeter as of Monday, will remain closed, “with future operations to be determined.”

More than 60,000 people have been evacuated from the area as a result of three fires collectively known as the Spokane Complex Fire. More than 8,000 acres had burned as of Monday, with 0% containment, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

Mann-Grandstaff is closest to the Old Trails Fire, which began Saturday and was fueled by high winds.

“We are grateful for the support received. Spokane VA extends our sincere condolences to all victims, including local VA staff members who, like so many, have lost so much,” VA officials wrote on the hospital’s Facebook page.

According to the post, Spokane-area VA outpatient clinics and business operation centers are also closed. The hospital provides administration and services for local VA clinics, including records, pharmacy management and specialty care.

Mann-Grandstaff is a 46-bed facility with more than 1,400 full-time positions, including its clinics.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as more information becomes available.

“Desert Shield and Desert Storm, to a certain degree, has been a victim of its own success,” Scott Stump, President and CEO of the National Desert Storm War Memorial Association and Marine Corps Reserve veteran, told reporters last Thursday.

Stump, a veteran of the campaign, began what he dubbed “his life’s work” back in 2010, during the 20th anniversary of the successful military campaign.

“I decided that something needed to be done,” Stump said. “That this was too important. I had been to a number of veteran events put on by veteran service organizations that would remember past events and recognize past veterans and those who have fallen. They would skip right over this like it never happened, and I felt like that wasn’t right. I put myself in the shoes of those Gold Star family members. How would I feel if my loved one’s service was just basically overlooked? I felt like that was wrong, and that something had to be done.”

Now, the culmination of his 16-year battle with contracts, commissions, review agencies and countless authorization hurdles is finally coming to fruition.

With the Lincoln Memorial looming off in the distance and an expansive greenspace in the foreground, both Stump and Skip Graffam, lead design partner and lead landscape architect, emphasized the prime location of the Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial — 23rd and Constitution Avenue — during a recent hard hat tour with Military Times and other members of the press.

“During a commission meeting, I stated we want something that is visible, but also ‘visit-able,’ and that’s what we’ve achieved here because the National Park Service has estimated that we conservatively are going to be receiving anywhere in the neighborhood of five to 6 million annual visitors. We didn’t want to have something that people drove by and glanced at. We wanted people to come in and experience this memorial, and I believe we have hit the mark on that.”

“The parade route for the victory parade of Desert Storm was down Constitution Avenue,” Graffam added, “which was the last parade since World War II took place right there. So again, that’s why the site was so critical to the veterans.”

Noting that memorials along Constitution Avenue form a “kind of charm bracelet,” Graffam told reporters that he hopes the memorial “is going to further encourage that kind of connection” with the National Mall.

The memorial itself, while still under construction, is slated to be open to the public on Oct. 24, 2026.

Noting that veterans from the association went over “every inch of belt buckle, machine gun sight and chin strap” for accuracy, the design itself conjures up the impression of a sandstorm and mirrors the famous “Left Hook” maneuver where Lt. Gen. John Yeosock sent the XVIII Airborne Corps deep inside Iraq to block the Iraqi forces’ northern escape. The spiral pattern, Graffam notes, is meant to portray the “kinetic movement” of the campaign.

The memorial’s stone — mined in Brazil — gives off the appearance of barchan dunes found specifically in the Kuwaiti desert.

“It’s kind of flat light here, but you would see it sparkle when it rains,” Graffam told Military Times. “It’ll actually get really kind of a dark tan, and then it dries out. In the afternoon, one of the reasons why we oriented the description wall there, [is that] you get the afternoon sunlight and [it] turns it gold. It’s really cool. …It’s really interesting to see it react to life. I threw a bucket of water on it, you’d be like, ‘wait, that’s not the same thing.’”

Replete with a dune-scape “oasis” and carved, built-in stone seats, both Graffam and Stump urge visitors to take in the memorial at all times of day — but especially at night when the memorial’s stone is lit up.

At the center of the memorial, a large, burnished “unity” shield replete with the Al-Arfaj, Kuwait’s national flower, commemorates the shared effort of the coalition, with the names of the 36 other nations who were involved in the fight. Water will flow over the shield and down into waterways to further add to the experience.

“We hope it’s a memorial that’s designed for not only the veterans, but also something that, you know, 50 to 100 years in the future, [is] for people [who] may not know much about it, are interested in learning more and feel that this is a place that was important enough to remember,” Graffam concluded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Particularly useful are the detachments of light infantry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

American Revolutionary War fares well on both questions.

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

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

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

Perhaps what is most striking is the theater of war.

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

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

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

Researchers at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine in California looked at VA disability benefits and Social Security Disability payments to veterans across 14 years.

They found that the average yearly payment rose from $17,286 in 2010 to $24,057 in 2024, while the percentage of U.S. veterans receiving compensation rose from 9% in 2010 to 22% in 2024.

The increases are likely attributable to a number of causes, the authors said. They noted the high rate of deployments and increased possibility of serious service-connected illness and injury for post 9/11 veterans, improved medical care that resulted in increased survivorship of combat injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan and VA policies that have made more veterans eligible and made it easier to receive benefits.

Over the same time period, meanwhile, annual Social Security Disability Insurance payments to veterans remained steady, averaging around $19,550. Veterans may be eligible for SSDI payments if they have a condition that affects their ability to work.

According to the study published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, college educated, married and younger veterans were more likely to receive VA compensation while older veterans with non-service-connected disabilities were more likely to receive SSDI.

The authors theorized that the challenges associated with filing VA claims — “administrative hurdles,” as they described them — and the draw of VA education benefits may favor those who can navigate the system.

The increase in the percentage of veterans receiving VA disability benefits as well as the rise in amounts paid comes at a time when the population of U.S. veterans is declining: In 2010, the country had 22 million veterans; by 2024, that figure had declined to 15.8 million.

The researchers described their study as “descriptive” and drew few conclusions.

“These findings can inform policy discussions about optimal fiscal payments and program structures needed to achieve and streamline federal programmatic goals, while underscoring the need to reduce growing disability burden among veterans and to ensure ease of benefits navigation,” they wrote.

The authors did not respond to a request for an interview by publication.

Semaglutide is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat Type 2 diabetes and chronic weight management, but not alcohol use disorder.

VA researchers are studying whether the GLP-1 receptor agonist may affect parts of the brain involved in reward, potentially offering a new treatment option for veterans with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder if proven safe and effective.

The department cautioned veterans not to self-medicate or replace evidence-based alcohol use disorder treatments with GLP-1 medications without first consulting a health care provider.

The study, known as the Cessation or Reduction of Alcohol Consumption in Veterans (CRAVE) trial, will enroll more than 600 veterans ages 18 to 80 at 18 VA medical centers nationwide.

Participants with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder will receive weekly injections of either semaglutide or a placebo for 24 weeks, followed by a safety evaluation. Researchers will measure changes in alcohol consumption, overall health and quality of life.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have increasingly studied whether GLP-1 medications, originally developed for diabetes and later approved for obesity, could also help treat substance use disorders.

VA cited an analysis published in March that found patients taking GLP-1 medications experienced lower rates of alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders than similar patients taking other diabetes medications.

The department said larger, controlled clinical trials are needed to determine whether semaglutide is safe and effective for treating alcohol use disorder.

In an official statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said, “By exploring emerging treatment options like the use of a GLP-1 for AUD, we aim to expand the tools available to help Veterans take control of their health and recovery.”

Recruitment began July 28. Veterans interested in participating can contact their local VA medical center or search for the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Think of it as “using AI to navigate your next mission,” Easterly said in a June 29 podcast of the Army’s Transition Assistance Program. Troops can feed information from the DD-214, the record of military service, into AI — minus the Social Security number and other identifiers — and give it prompts to decipher what jobs might be suitable, how much those jobs pay and what the chances might be for getting hired, he added.

In the process, transitioning soldiers should ditch the mindset that AI is a job-killing obstacle to overcome and instead think of it as a tool “that can support your transition,” said Easterly, director of the Plans, Analysis and Integration Office at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

About 200,000 service members — 100,000 from the Army alone — leave the military each year, and this year they are entering a jobs market in flux, with the long-term effects of AI anybody’s guess. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 57,000 jobs were created in June, about half of what Wall Street analysts had expected in the current low-hire, low fire jobs market.

The impact of AI, which some have compared to the vast societal changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, hasn’t yet produced the job apocalypse feared by many, but in May U.S employers cut 97,006 jobs, an increase of 16% over the 83,387 jobs cut in April, according to a report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The report showed that “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is technology,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for the Challenger firm, said in the report. “The open question isn’t whether AI changes the workforce, but how fast.”

The AI issue will become all too real in a few days for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Carr, 34, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, when he leaves the military at the end of July after 13 years in the sea service, mostly in human resources.

“I think I definitely saw that AI was a tool that was being widely adopted” by employers in their recruiting and screening efforts, Carr said in a phone interview with Military Times, but “I don’t think I had the awareness of the impact of AI on the job market that I have now.”

“I heard it’s going to be a tough,” Carr added, noting that he was still confident that “I shouldn’t have to struggle too much,” given his degree from Annapolis and the masters in business administration he earned during his time in service.

Carr is one of the transitioning service members who has sought the help of career “coaches” at the Wounded Warrior Project, where Lesly Marmolejos is a career transition manager for WWP’s Warriors to Work program.

Her first task in meeting with newcomers to the program is to disabuse them of what they think they already know about AI.

“If you tell me you’re an expert in AI, I know you’re lying,” Marmolejos said in a phone interview with Military Times.

As a “coach,” Marmolejos said one of the first things she tells transitioning troops is that there’s “not any type of certification you can get in AI. Well, there is, but it would be irrelevant in a month.”

Despite all the emphasis on being tech proficient, “I still very much believe that the human side of the hiring process is very important,” she said. “The feedback that I’m getting is that while we have to learn how to use AI as part of the employment process, we still matter. If you talk to a [jobs] recruiter, they’ll say the same thing.”

Networking is still a major component of the job search, Marmolejos added, and “we still encourage [service members] to go to job fairs. Who you know matters, and who can give you a referral still matters. I don’t think [AI is] the big bad wolf everyone’s making it out to be.”

In a separate phone interview with Military Times, Jacob Mousseau, a former Army sergeant and a coaching colleague of Marmolejos at WWP, said, “New people need to get over their fear” of AI and stop doomscrolling on how AI is going to make humans in the workforce obsolete.

Mousseau echoed Marmolejos in stressing the importance of networking, calling it “critical this year more than ever.”

He has developed his own five-step strategy for assisting transitioning service members in their job search, beginning with career exploration by using AI to turn “an assessment into a personalized roadmap — realistic pathways, salary ranges, target organizations, a 30-day plan to explore before committing.“

“I use it to build deep, individualized guides for warriors,” Mousseau added, “and I teach them to run a lighter version themselves so they can keep exploring on their own.”

Another perspective was offered by Ben Dufay, a veteran of both the Army and Navy who now is director of career preparation and training at the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

“We’re transitioning into an environment where even people in the environment don’t know what’s going on,” Dufay said of the impact of AI on employers as well as job seekers. “Everybody knows somebody who’s been laid off. Employers don’t know what they want out of AI. It is disrupting stuff. ... Transition has always been something of a guessing game. That hasn’t changed.”

AI’s impact has only added to the traditional list of questions transitioning service members have, he noted.

“I don’t know what AI is. How does it help me?” Dufay stated, citing common questions. “How can I use it to assist me? What’s going to get me into an interview? How do you continue to engage with it, leverage it?”

Transitioning service members will also be facing a jobs market where an employer will occasionally decide that going with AI for a certain task was the wrong move, as happened with the Ford Motor Co. last month.

In a June 29 press call, Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of Vehicle Hardware Engineering, said that AI had botched the job of quality control.

Poon called for about 300-350 engineers to be hired to clean up the mess.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

Suicidal thoughts among U.S. veterans have risen nearly 50% in the past five years, but the frequency of suicide planning and attempts remained relatively stable, according to a new study based on a survey of 2,636 veterans.

Researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD and the Yale School of Medicine analyzed data from the 2025-26 National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study and found that 13.4% of veterans reported suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks, compared with 9% in the 2019-2020 survey.

The analysis found that rates of suicide planning and attempts remained unchanged in the same time frame, but for certain groups — particularly younger veterans and women — rates were higher for thoughts, planning and attempts over the five years.

Ian Fischer, the study’s lead author and a clinical psychologist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, said the research was needed to understand the changing veteran population and potential shifts in suicidal thoughts and behaviors that can drive suicide prevention efforts.

“The veteran population has become younger, and there have been increases in the proportion of women veterans and shifts in its racial and ethnic composition over the past five years, making it essential to monitor changes in suicidal thoughts and behaviors and identify the veterans who may benefit most from prevention and early intervention,” Fischer said Tuesday in a Yale press release.

More than 6,000 veterans have died each year by suicide since 2001. In 2024 — the most recent year for accurate nationwide data, 6,398 veterans died by suicide. Veterans ages 18 to 34 and those experiencing homelessness or health issues were at higher risk.

According to the VA, the suicide rates among veterans are 60% higher than the national average, with suicide the second leading cause of death among veterans under age 45.

The VA has invested millions in suicide prevention and teamed with community partners, providing grants and support to address suicide among former service members. It recently has focused on encouraging veterans to enroll in VA medical services, citing evidence that patients who receive health care at the VA have lower rates of suicide and suicide attempts.

The study, published July 20 in JAMA Network Open, showed that veterans who use the VA for primary health care were twice as likely to have received mental health treatment at some point in their lives. More than half of those who said they used VA health care services were actively enrolled in mental health care.

The survey also found that fewer than 37% of veterans who reported having suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks were receiving mental health care.

“These findings suggest that the VA is playing an important role in connecting veterans at elevated suicide risk with mental healthcare,” said Brandon Nichter, a visiting scholar in Yale’s Department of Psychiatry and study coauthor, in a release.

“At the same time, many veterans with recent suicidal thoughts are still not engaged in treatment. Expanding outreach and reducing barriers to care across both VA and community health systems will be essential to reaching these individuals,” Nichter said.

According to the study, younger veterans remain at higher risk for suicide, possibly because post 9/11 veterans experienced of “elevated trauma exposure” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Researchers noted that service-era comparisons are complicated by generational differences and “survivorship bias,” meaning older veterans may appear less likely to experience suicide behavior because younger veterans at highest risk are less likely to survive into old age.

According to the survey, woman veterans had higher odds of suicide planning and attempts, while VA national data shows that male veterans die by suicide at higher rates.

Risk factors for suicide attempts include major depression, alcohol use and adverse childhood experiences that preceded military service, according to the study, and risk factors for suicidal thoughts and planning included PTSD, major depressive disorder and adverse childhood experiences.

The authors cautioned that the study relied on self-reported data, and veterans may have been reluctant to disclose suicidal thoughts or attempts. Those surveyed also were a recruited group and did not include incarcerated or institutionalized veterans or other unique veteran subsets, meaning the sample was not fully representative of the U.S. veteran population.

Based on the survey results, researchers estimated that between 2.3 million and 2.4 million of the nation’s roughly 16 million veterans experienced suicidal thoughts within the study’s measured time frame. They also estimated that about 1.4 million veterans had planned suicide at some point and around 830,000 had attempted during their lifetimes.

The researchers said they hoped information contained in the study will be used for improving prevention efforts, intervention and treatment.

“Targeting key risk factors in vulnerable sub-populations may help mitigate suicide risk,” they wrote.

The COMPACT Act allows eligible veterans and certain former service members to receive Veterans Affairs-funded emergency suicide crisis care at VA and community hospitals, even if they aren’t enrolled in VA healthcare. New data obtained by Military Times show 49,341 veterans have used the benefit since 2023, but veteran advocates and suicide prevention professionals say many eligible veterans still don’t realize it exists until they experience a crisis.

In 2025, retired Navy Master Chief David Hull’s life unraveled after he lost his job during the government shutdown.

The transition from military service had been difficult, but he had rebuilt his life. Then when his paycheck disappeared, so did his ability to provide for his three children.

“I didn’t always consider taking my own life,” Hull said. “It wasn’t until I felt like I had no one and nowhere to go.”

“It’s easy to sink into feeling nothingness when you can’t see your value anymore or you become disconnected from your purpose,” he said.

After putting his children to bed one night, Hull searched online for combinations of pills that promised an easier way to end his life. As he poured medication into a single bottle, he accidentally knocked the empty container onto the floor.

His 6-year-old daughter picked it up.

“She looked up at me with her big brown eyes,” Hull recalled, his voice breaking. “It cracked me wide open.”

Hull left his children with a neighbor and drove to Garrett Regional Medical Center, a community hospital in Oakland, Maryland.

He wasn’t enrolled in VA healthcare. He didn’t have health insurance. Until that night, he had never heard of the COMPACT Act or that eligible veterans could receive VA-funded emergency suicide crisis care at a community hospital.

“I just needed someone to help clear my head and get me straight again,” Hull said. “I was circling the drain. On the precipice of having no home, no food, no money and no job with a promise of a better tomorrow. Nothing.”

About 40 minutes after arriving, Hull was evaluated by an emergency physician, who assured him he would be taken care of. A hospital social worker then explained that the Department of Veterans Affairs would cover the cost of his emergency treatment and follow-up care.

“I was shocked to find out that I could be seen for free after they identified me as a veteran,” Hull said.

In 2020, Congress signed the COMPACT Act Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit into law to remove financial and administrative barriers to emergency suicide crisis care. Three years later, it was implemented by the VA, but many eligible veterans remain unaware of the benefit until they need it, veteran advocates and suicide prevention professionals told Military Times.

A lifeline beyond VA’s doors

The Emergency Suicide Crisis Benefit was established under the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, or COMPACT Act. Coverage includes emergency evaluation, treatment, inpatient or crisis residential care when clinically appropriate, and up to 90 days of outpatient follow-up care.

According to data provided by VA, nearly 50,000 veterans have received the Emergency Suicide Crisis Benefit since fiscal 2023, including just over 10,000 in fiscal 2023. 14,666 receieved the benefit in fiscal 2024; 15,218 in fiscal 2025; and 9,434 during the first half of fiscal 2026.

“The number of Veterans receiving the COMPACT Act’s Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit has grown steadily since its inception in FY23,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said.

VA spent a record of nearly $110 million on acute suicide crisis care during fiscal 2025.

Slaven said VA reviews eligible cases to ensure veterans receive the benefit, educates veterans and community emergency department staff about its availability and works with providers so eligible veterans do not receive unexpected medical bills after crisis care.

According to VA, 72% of veterans who have used the benefit have since enrolled in VA healthcare.

Misconceptions persist

Despite growing use of the benefit, the Disabled American Veterans, or DAV, organization says many eligible veterans still misunderstand who qualifies for emergency suicide crisis care.

“DAV believes awareness of the safety net created by the COMPACT Act remains lower than it should be,” Jon Retzer, DAV’s national legislative director, said.

Retzer said DAV service officers routinely meet veterans who believe they must already be enrolled in VA healthcare, have a service-connected disability rating or seek treatment at a VA medical center before the benefit applies.

“Many veterans remain uncertain whether an emergency room visit will generate medical debt or whether VA will ultimately cover the care,” Retzer said. “That uncertainty can discourage veterans from seeking treatment during a crisis when immediate intervention is critical.”

Retzer urged veterans experiencing a suicidal crisis to seek emergency care first and allow VA to determine eligibility afterward.

Army Reserve Prevention Integrator David Arthur said those same misconceptions continue to surface in his work, particularly among older veterans.

He said distance from a VA medical center can create uncertainty because many rural veterans live an hour or more away, while nearby outpatient clinics do not provide emergency services.

“When they are in a crisis, in my experience with suicidal soldiers and vets, they are not even thinking about that,” Arthur said. “But those thoughts are huge barriers, especially the cost.”

“I want every vet to know they can go to any ER or hospital,” Arthur continued.

Returning to care

Hull completed the full 90 days of follow-up care available through the benefit before enrolling in VA healthcare.

“I don’t know if I could have afforded the treatment I received after that night without the VA,” Hull said. “And I don’t know that I’d be enrolled with the VA now without the care I experienced.”

“I wish so many of my brothers and sisters knew that this was an option,” Hull said. “It doesn’t matter if you have insurance. It doesn’t matter if you’re a patient in the VA system. None of that matters. There are no strings attached. No barriers to being seen. This is a gift that every veteran needs to know they’re eligible for.”