Civil War Gen. John A. Logan is credited with creating what we know today as Memorial Day, according to the executive director of the museum in Murphysboro, Ill., that is dedicated to him.

Seventy American flags fluttered in the wind Thursday as the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant honored its employees killed at the munitions factory since 1941.

Charles Gilbert Kapsner has put a lot of Minnesota models — human or otherwise — into the five epic murals he’s spent the past decade painting for the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery, where 7,300 former service members are buried

A large storm, likely the one that swept through central Illinois late Wednesday night, hit Washington, D.C., during a Greater Peoria Honor Flight trip on Thursday.

A banner emblazoned with the words "Honor to Mussolini," unfurled just steps from the Milan piazza where the fascist dictator's body was hung upside down after his 1945 execution. One-armed salutes and fascist slogans shouted at protests. Italy's right-wing interior minister skipping commemorations for the 74th anniversary of the country's liberation from Nazi occupation.

Israeli researchers raised a glass Wednesday to celebrate a long-brewing project of making beer and mead using yeasts extracted from ancient clay vessels —some over 5,000 years old.

Remains of more than 1,000 Holocaust victims were laid to rest on Wednesday in a Belarusian city on the border with Poland after a mass grave was discovered on a building site earlier this year.

Peeking between yellowing fields in the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, behind barbed-wire fences and “no trespassing” signs, the massive four-story brick building is a shell of its former majesty.

The National Veterans Memorial and Museum recently secured a $500,000 grant from Battelle, a science and technology company, to support its efforts to grow that number and find new ways to reach students.

Art Wiknik Jr., a young combat squad leader serving with the 101st Airborne Division, had been in Vietnam for about a month when his unit was sent in to help support the fighting on what became known as Hamburger Hill.

In the 1960s, first lady Jackie Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and Vice President Hubert Humphrey were just a few of the important figures to pay visits to Junior Village, Washington's renowned refuge for impoverished children. the cheerful newspaper photos of those visits and holiday celebrations didn't capture the harrowing abuse occurring when the cameras were gone.

Lance Geiger’s idea of a good time is doing research on something that happened 50 or 100 years ago and sharing what he’s learned with thousands of complete strangers. The crazy part is, he’s making a living at it.

Rich Newcombe still doesn’t know who the men in the helicopter gunship were, or how many other lives they saved under similar harrowing circumstances. He doesn’t even know if they survived the war. But he does know he owes them more thanks than he could ever express.

Former Sen. Bob Dole was officially promoted from Army captain to the honorary rank of colonel during a ceremony Thursday at the World War II Memorial in Washington, becoming the third and only living recipient of such an honor in the service’s 244-year history.

The men who landed in Fresno this week were getting a different kind of welcome than the one they got when they came home from Vietnam. This one was filled with hugs and honor, not resentment.

GALLERY

Relatives, friends and fellow officers are marking National Police Week at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington by honoring the more than 21,000 law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty in the U.S. since 1791.

Damon J. Keith drove a truck in the Quartermaster Corps during World War II in Europe, then made up his mind to become a lawyer after the war when he saw German soldiers riding in the front seats of buses and dining in restaurants where he wasn't welcome. Keith, the senior judge on the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, died April 28.

Nearly 75 years ago, 160,000 Allied troops helped bend the arc of history by landing in Normandy, the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany. Today, new technology at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force is giving visitors an idea of what D-Day was like.

The ditched "Lame Duck" was repaired in Chatham, Mass., and went on to make the first trans-Atlantic flight eight years before Charles Lindbergh's famous crossing. It was the first flight across any of the world's oceans.

President John F. Kennedy's 102nd birth anniversary is on May 29. Perhaps that upcoming birthday was a reason for a recently concluded auction of Kennedy-related items, including the rosary beads carried by the late Rev. James N. Thompson, who was one of two priests present when Kennedy received his Last Rites before he died on Nov. 22, 1963.

The Irish-born Murphy volunteered for war at age 17, and two years later was serving as a corporal in the 31st Illinois Infantry when it was sent to assault the fortifications in Vicksburg, Miss.

One is 94, the other two are 96. They were just out of high school or a year past it when they joined up. They're part of the dwindling number of World War II vets who in a few years will be all but gone. On Friday at the Museum of Flight, they stood proudly, if a little stooped, as they were given France's highest award, the Legion of Honor medal.

It’s not often highlighted in blockbuster movies or best-selling books but if it weren’t for the Army Air Force’s role, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France might not be the success it’s touted as 75 years later.

It was the spring of '42 when James Gardiner and Jack Thompson traveled together to Los Angeles in Thompson's old Lincoln to enlist in the U.S. Navy. It was just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the two farm boys were keenly aware that America was engaged in a global fight for democracy.

It is one of the most famous battles of the long Vietnam War. It inspired a movie and congressional hearings, symbolizing for some the incredible bravery of the American infantry in Vietnam and for others the futility and waste of the war.

One hundred years ago today, Harry Gowdy — commonly known as "Hank" — enjoyed a hero's homecoming from World War I, parading through Columbus, Ohio, as part of the Army's 42nd Infantry "Rainbow" Division.

Nicholas Eslinger's quick action that night in October 2008 saved six soldiers from potential injury or death, earning him a Silver Star Medal in 2009. Last week, he received an upgraded award — a Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for combat valor.

An atomic veteran is continuing a fight for benefits — for himself and other veterans subjected to atomic testing — after his most recent claim was denied by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Analysis

The expression "an army marches on its stomach" actually is far more important to the outcomes of great battles, of great military victories and defeats. You see, it's the nuts and bolts of the things you don't read on the pages of history that determine outcomes.

Joe Ohno graduated from high school in 1943, behind the barbed-wire fencing of an Idaho internment camp for Japanese-Americans. The next day, he joined the very same Army that put him there.

The long journey home for a World War II aviator finally came to an end Saturday with a funeral in Bristol. Lt. John Dudley Crouchley Jr. was laid to rest next to his wife and son in the North Burial Ground almost 75 years after he died in fighting over Europe.

World War II Army veteran Nelson Henry believed he had no choice when his superiors offered him a “blue discharge” in 1945 to leave the military along with thousands of other black soldiers targeted because of their race.

While mustard gas leaks from Europe's underwater weapons cemeteries were long considered a worst-case scenario, officials also are expressing alarm over leaks of explosives such as TNT from dumped land mines or sea mines.

They thought they would would grow up and live minutes from one another, be best men in each other’s weddings, godfathers to each other’s children. They would sit side by side at Dodger stadium, two old men in a sea of blue. But the friends never imagined that after high school both would be sent to Vietnam — and only one would return.

The grandchildren and great grandchildren of a long-lost World War II bomber pilot were on the tarmac at T.F. Green Airport Thursday night when the Providence native finally came home to Rhode Island.

On May 15, World War II veteran Morton N. Katz will celebrate his 100th birthday. And he’ll spend part of that day at the courthouse, representing a criminal defendant who could not afford to hire a lawyer. There’s really no other place he’d rather be.

On Aug. 5, 1944, a warm sunny Saturday in Oswego, New York, buses holding almost 1,000 mostly Jewish refugees from Europe pulled up to the entrance of the town's Fort Ontario, a U.S. military site established during the Revolutionary War.

A soldier’s murder, a leftist militant group’s 1985 terrorist attack and a sister’s lingering questions are the focus of a documentary film being shown in Wiesbaden on Wednesday.

The illegal move eventually ended up with Capt. John S. Lappo being accused of violating Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice at general court-martial.

Except for locals, a once popular quarry in upstate New York is all but forgotten. It’s just one of many businesses and industries — including maple shacks, sawmills, cheese operations, ironworks and logging operations — that made up the local economy long before Fort Drum became Fort Drum.

A crowd gathered near New Bedford, Mass., to commemorate the 75th anniversary of a World War II training operation off the coast of England that ended in tragedy when tank landing ships full of American soldiers were discovered and ambushed by German E-boats.

The letters spent the postwar years in a kind of document limbo, a filing cabinet in the suburban San Jose, Calif., home of Robert Work. His son Mitch Work says it wasn't until his father was going through his papers almost 50 years after the war that they resurfaced.

A drum that once belonged to Jordan Noble, the teenage drummer boy at the Battle of New Orleans who went on to become a local icon -- and which for a century was on loan to the Louisiana State Museum -- is on the auction block.

Only two West Point graduates went on to earn the rank of general and be elected president of the United States. Now there are statues of both men at their alma mater.

On Wednesday, participants gathered at Hurlburt Field, Fla., to mark the 39th anniversary of the April 24, 1980, mission Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue 52 Americans held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran.

Remembering the 15 men who died battling a 60-day deadline to return the USS Saturn to its service as a World War II supply ship.

William "Billy" Gallegos spent 444 days captive to terrorists, and a good portion of his career hunting those who spread terror throughout the world. Now he's been honored with the Denver Police Foundation's inaugural Chairman's Legacy Award.

The ashes of Rev. Frank Brett, who died two years ago at 86, will be placed in the grave with his brother Rev. Robert Brett, who was killed during the 1968 battle of Khe Sanh, on Arlington National Cemetery's Chaplains Hill next week.

Walter Gantz, now 94, was part of an advance party sweeping through Nazi Germany in the final days of World War II that stumbled upon a train — cattle cars abandoned by Nazi soldiers who learned that their hold on Europe was about to break.

Fifty years ago in 1969, on the 57th birthday of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, a MiG 21 fighter jet vectored in on a U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft operating far outside the North's territorial limits, firing two missiles that killed all 30 sailors and a Marine aboard the Navy plane.

Richard Schneider carefully spread the broken pieces of the glass photo negative on the light table at the National Archives and put them together like the parts of a puzzle. A ghostly image emerged. It was Adolf Hitler, sitting stiffly in an upholstered arm chair, his German shepherd at his side.

It’s all part of the Collings Foundation’s Wings of Freedom Tour, a nearly three-day educational stopover in Bakersfield that includes a B-17 Flying Fortress, a B-24J Liberator nicknamed Witchcraft, a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber and a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk.

The hit Warner Bros. superhero film “Shazam!” is based on a character whose origins begin with an Army veteran’s little-known struggle a century ago to adjust to life after war.

James Elsner, who recently turned 100, flew a Curtis P-40 Warhawk while defending Attu after it was reclaimed from Japanese forces in 1943.

Baldwin G. Burr, who researches and writes about New Mexico history, will do a presentation titled “Ernie Pyle: Bringing the World to America’s Doorstep” on April 27 in the auditorium in the lower level of the Main Library in Albuquerque.

“D-Day: Freedom From Above” will premiere May 13 at the museum in Dayton, Ohio. The exhibit will focus on Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first French town to be liberated, and the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division, which fought there.

The film features Hitler and top Nazis Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer and Joachim von Ribbentrop. But it also captures lesser figures like Hitler's doctors, Karl Brandt, who was later executed as a war criminal, and Theodor Morell, who treated Hitler with narcotics, amphetamines, leeches, hormones, vitamins and various quack supplements.

Obituary

Youa True Joseph Vang, one of the last surviving Hmong heroes from the Vietnam War era and a prominent St. Paul leader, pastor and businessman, died Wednesday. He was 83.

Wallace Bonaparte, a former Army captain, will travel to Washington to receive a Purple Heart in honor of his grandfather, as part of an initiative to recognize the 115 servicemembers who died more than 100 years ago aboard the USS Tampa.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Edward Luckey, 88, of San Antonio, Texas, celebrated the 62nd anniversary of his landing in a wheat field with family and friends and reflected on his 22-year career in the Air Force.

OPINION

They were captured. In some cases they were forced to march or to work. In other cases they were tortured.

Kosovo authorities say 20,000 mostly Albanian women were abused by Serb soldiers. That would mean the victims of sexual violence exceeds the 13,595 people killed in the war. Militants from both sides have been indicted for war crimes.

Within the shadows of Upper Table Rock lies a Stonehenge of large concrete boxes around which a shroud of scared urgency hangs in the air like the strings of barbed wire that were here nearly eight decades ago.

Army First Lt. Deane Taylor was shot down from a helicopter and killed in Vietnam on Jan. 15, 1969. His widow, Hattie Ford, recently traveled to Vietnam to see where her husband died.

Video

In the documentary — “The General Was Female?” — which premieres Monday, scientists use skeletal remains and DNA testing to make a case that the Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski , widely celebrated in Chicago, was intersex, or what used to be known as a hermaphrodite.

About a dozen passengers sat in a World War II aircraft wondering what it must have felt like to be an 21-year-old paratrooper ready to deploy over Normandy as fog and rain clouds rolled, weather similar to the morning of D-Day in 1944.

A major event will be a visit by the historic C-47 nicknamed That’s All Brother, which served as the lead aircraft of the 800 planes that dropped two American airborne divisions into France on June 5 and 6, 1944.

GALLERY

Visitors to Washington, D.C. for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival had a brush with history Saturday morning when 22 participants in the Greater St. Louis Honor Flight arrived at the National World War II Memorial, a few steps from the colorful trees surrounding the tidal basin.

Blackbeard boarded Lt. Robert Maynard's ship three centuries ago armed with pistols and a cutlass, ready to die before surrendering. He fought viciously, but in less than 10 minutes on Nov. 22, 1718, Blackbeard and his crew were either dead or had surrendered.

A $15 million memorial will open next year in Washington to honor Native American military service members and veterans, more than two decades after planning began.

On a frigid January morning in 1977, an Army pilot's mission was to spray chemicals on a 20-acre starling roost near an Army ammunition depot in Tennessee.

GALLERY

Monday's wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery marked the end of a three-day visit to Washington by more than two dozen recipients of the Medal of Honor, for an annual event recognizing their bravery.

A group of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and faculty credited with saving lives during a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., were among those recognized Monday at a special ceremony.

The story of Mary Bowser is one of the great but infrequently told spy stories in American history - a shame, say historians and others who write about the Civil War, because it is a tale with an enduring, important lesson.

Tom had it pretty darn good for a British soldier in the 1730s. A fellow could hardly ask for better duty, stationed as he was on the stronghold of Gibraltar amid balmy Mediterranean breezes, fortified libations and comely damsels.

Fort Worth's last surviving member of the Tuskegee Airmen died Tuesday at the age of 96. Robert T McDaniel was one of the elite black airmen who flew combat aircraft in World War II at a time when the military was segregated.

He died while serving on the USS Oklahoma along with 429 sailors and marines on Dec. 7, 1941. And for more than 70 years, the body of Navy Electrician’s Mate 3rd Class Roman W. Sadlowski remained unidentified.

The Commemorative Air Force Red Tail Squadron’s “Rise Above” Traveling Exhibit at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport features a movie theater, a fully operational Red Tail P-51C Mustang, and appearances by Retired Tuskegee Airmen pilot Lt. Col. George E. Hardy.

A Civil War flag that was carried by a Maine regiment into battles in Louisiana and Texas and later passed down by a family in Colorado completed a 156-year journey through history last week when it arrived back in Maine.

One day about 200 years ago, a woman enslaved on a tobacco plantation tossed aside the broken stem of the clay pipe she was smoking in the slave quarters where she lived. The stem bore bore marks where she had clenched it in her teeth and something else she could never have imagined: her DNA.

Of the 3,515 Medals of Honor awarded by the United States, some 2,018 have gone to Irish-Americans, according to Patrick McDermot of Irish Veterans Post 2 in Tampa, Fla.. To help explain the numbers, recipient James Charles McCloughan turned to history.

Richard King, who has tried for decades to find a B-29 bomber that disappeared over Minnesota on a training run on July 14, 1945, will talk about his World War II experiences in the Army Air Forces during a presentation March 18.

Elizabeth Washburn didn't plan on starting an arts nonprofit, but it couldn't really be helped. After reading about military casualties in Iraq in 2007, she wanted to help, and started offering free art classes by volunteering at the Naval Medical Center San Diego (Balboa Hospital). Later, she turned that series of classes into her nonprofit, Combat Arts San Diego.

They were quietly buried at Washington Crossing National Cemetery without fanfare: unknown veterans who served their country, but had no one to pay their last respect for the final leg of their journey.

Walking through the Baltimore Museum of Art's new surrealism show, one senses the world getting busier, more chaotic and confusing, roiling with dark forces and demonic ambitions. "Monsters and Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s" connects art to a moment in history when traditional politics was failing in spectacular and horrifying ways.

A thrilling discovery inside a small, nondescript box left behind after an Orlando man's death has local history enthusiasts extremely excited. The box, uncovered recently by a couple that purchased the man's home, contains a Civil War-era Medal of Honor given to a Union soldier from Toledo, Ohio

At the height of World War II, as darkness descended on the battlefields, a nightmare would appear in German skies: The "Night Witches," as the Germans called the 80 or so female aviators from Russia dropping bombs from rickety wooden planes.

Bertha Dupre, who died at the age of 97, was part of the only all-black unit of women deployed to Europe in World War II. Thanks to the efforts of strangers, she'll be buried with military honors this month.

Tucked away in an alcove was something Mary Jane Clark Fair had lost track of many years ago — a brief holiday missive from her brother, Sp4 James L. Clark, who served in Vietnam in 1968-69. He sent the holiday greeting less than a year before he died on July 25, 1969.

Dale Mette unintentionally became the unofficial historian for the former crew of LST 751, the ship his father, Wilmer, served on in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether a giant cross, a memorial dedicated to 49 local men killed in World War I, is in keeping with the Constitution’s First Amendment and the separation of church and state. The outcome of the case could affect other veterans memorials nationwide.

The sister of an Air Force flight surgeon who went missing during the Vietnam War urged Macon-Bibb County, Ga. officials to not rename an interstate interchange currently named in honor of her brother.

Walk-on access to the USS Arizona Memorial won’t be restored by the end of March, as previously announced by the National Park Service, and it may be many more months before access resumes, officials said.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Enoch Woodhouse, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, spent little time talking about himself Monday at Fort Bragg. Instead, he focused on the story of two others: Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a 1938 West Point graduate and commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, and Navy Capt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., a Medal of Honor recipient.

For the Vietnamese child who became known as “the napalm girl,” the searing burns, the years of surgery and the heavy scarring were only the beginning of her torment.

A helicopter crash in Kuwait provides the green Mortuary Affairs unit members with a chance to learn about recovery scenes from experts of the National Transportation Safety Board. "When sections of the helo burn and melt," Marine Gunnery Sgt. Christian Bussler writes in his memoir. "They can resemble bone or burned flesh."

A World War II B-24 bomber gunner and longtime Kettering resident will receive the Congressional Gold Medal for his military service.

Less than a week before being shipped off to Hawaii to serve as a pilot in World War II, 2nd Lt. Elwood Bailey married his high school sweetheart. Two months later, in August 1942, while battling in aerial combat in Guadalcanal in the Pacific, he went missing in action.

Obituary

Claude Alexander Rowe Jr. of Chula Vista, who served in the armed forces of two allied nations during World War II, was laid to rest Friday at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego with full military honors, including a gun salute and a "missing man" formation flyby of WWII-era fighters. Rowe died on Sept. 20 at age 97.

Jesse Colvin is approaching his quest to unseat Rep. Andy Harris, R, in Maryland's solidly red 1st Congressional District the way one might expect a former military intelligence officer would chase an elusive target. But it could be an ill-fated mission for the first-time candidate.

Former Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II was originally awarded the Silver Star for his actions on April 6, 2008, while assigned to support Special Operations Task Force 33, but his award was upgraded to the nation's highest military honor upon review.

Charles McDaniel, Jr. held onto a precious few things that made his father real. A handwritten letter and a single memory of his dad sweeping him up in his arms. Now there is the dog tag. “This was around my father’s neck,” he said with a tone of wonder that he could ever be this close to him.

In the spring of 1967, Johnnie Ashe, a Marine counting down the days left of his time at war in Vietnam, realized that if he went home, his older brother, who had 15 months left in the Army, could be shipped off to Vietnam.

Ken Spatz never met his father, a B-17 aircraft waist gunner with the same name, who died in World War II. But last week he visited the site where the B-17 crashed and collected a memento — his father’s long-lost high school ring.

“We were in combat immediately with no experience,” Sam Folsom, 98, told Stars and Stripes recently. “Green as can be – very few of us had any real flight experience." He would ultimately leave Guadalcanal with three air-to-air kills.

By the fall of 1942, Casimer L. "Casey" Bukowski decided he had learned enough about being a machinist and quit Emerson Vocational High School to put his skills to work in support of World War II.

VIDEO

When David Carrasco got to the funeral home on Monday morning, he wasn't sure what he would find. But he wanted to pay his respects to the man who had represented Arizona in the Senate for 31 years, and who had fought in the same faraway Vietnam War he had, decades earlier: Sen. John McCain.

As the Santa Fe Indian School gymnasium began to fill early Friday morning, one face etched with age stood out. Clemente Otero sat with his U.S. Army veteran baseball cap shading his eyes as the assembly around him rose with cheers and applause.

Obituary

Frank Denius was a 19-year-old staff sergeant when he and 700 other men of the U.S. Army's 30th Infantry Division – "Old Hickory" – found themselves on a hill in Mortain, Normandy, France, in August 1944 surrounded by four German Panzer divisions, including hundreds of tanks and heavy guns, and 40,000 Nazi troops, among them members of Hitler's elite SS forces.

John Giese has spent his life serving his community and his country: first as a Marine, then as a police officer and police chief, and finally as an elected official.

Retired Gen. John N. Abrams, the former commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, died Monday. He was 71.

William F. Liebenow, a tenacious Navy commander in World War II, died last year at 97. He was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery Thursday.

Robert S. White received a Bronze Star Tuesday during a short ceremony at the Hampton VA Medical Center, more than 70 years after he helped liberate Europe from the Nazis.

Video/Gallery

“If these men and women are having a bad day, they can come in here, rant, rave, curse, scream, holler – you name it – and we all understand,” Donna Porras said. “We might not have been in their shoes, but we understand.”

Researchers are hoping the discovery of the USS Abner Read brings some awareness about the Aleutian Islands campaign to the American public. For families of the sailors who died, they want the finding to offer some solace.

Retired Army Master Sgt. Polito “Paul” Olivas, who jumped into Normandy on D-Day in 1944 with the 101st Airborne Division, has plans for another parachute drop — but this time with no one shooting at him as he lands.

U.S. Marine Corps Pvt. Ruben Bell Jr. has a name, a rank, a hometown, five service medals and several living family members. For 50 years, though, he has remained a ghost.

Ken Dierdorf wanted so badly to sit alongside his Army brothers and feel the rush of air blow through an open-sided UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” one last time at Saturday’s Terre Haute Air Show. But fate, weather and his health wouldn’t allow it.

In the newly released 1.5-minute Air Force video, Tech Sgt. John Chapman can be seen charging up a steep slope toward enemy positions to recover a fellow servicemember who had fallen from the back after the team came under heavy enemy fire from al-Qaida.

Lincoln Parkes, a Navy Air Corps veteran and a veterinarian, first invented and patented a cart that allows disabled animals to walk in the early 1960s, launching a life-long love affair with the craft.

Army Staff Sgt. Michael T. Jeffrey was wounded in Iraq in 2006. He received a Purple Heart in 2012 at the Warrior Transition Unit in Fort Knox, but it wasn't until he made it home that he realized it wasn't his medal. On Tuesday, nonprofit Purple Hearts Reunited righted that wrong in an emotional, official ceremony to bestow the honor.

Francisco Joaquin is surely one of the most senior interns in Washington. He is spending the summer in the D.C. Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs, assisting vets, many of them low-income.

Robert L. Martin, a combat pilot who said he flew "63 and a half" missions during World War II as part of the barrier-breaking Tuskegee Airmen, was shot down over German-occupied territory on the 64th and spent five weeks trying to return to Allied lines with the help of Josip Broz Tito's anti-fascist Yugoslav partisans, died July 26 at a senior living center in Olympia Fields, Illinois. He was 99.

Kentucky is known for its bourbon, and Tennessee for its whiskey. But in Texas, as bold and brazen as the Lone Star State might be, there’s no distinctly Texan liquor. Three veterans are looking to change that.

Retired Marine Corps Maj. Rick Spooner, now 92, said he and his wife, Gloria, opened the Globe & Laurel restaurant 50 years ago out of a desire to serve those who put everything — even their lives — on the line for the love of their country.

President Donald Trump will posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman for his actions in 2002 on Takur Ghar mountain in Afghanistan. He will become the first airman to receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War, and just the 19th in the service’s history.

Retired Rear Adm. Alene Duerk spent her career in the Navy’s nursing corps, serving during three major wars and eventually rising to the Navy’s top nurse position, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Retired Army Gen. Ronald Griffith, who commanded a tank division that helped rout Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard in the Persian Gulf War and later served as vice chief of staff of the Army, died July 18 at his home in Arlington, Virginia. He was 82.

Randy Dexter downplays his story. "I'm just a guy with a dog," he said. But Dexter, a 36-year-old combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, and Captain, his 6 1/2 -year-old service dog, saved each other's lives.

The USS John S. McCain, originally christened in 1992 in honor of Sen. John McCain's Navy admiral father and grandfather, was rededicated Thursday to also honor the former Republican presidential candidate and Vietnam veteran.

Bob Hart uses the VA Choice program to receive medical care at a private hospital close to his home near Jacksonville, Ill. He was informed several weeks ago that he owed the hospital for treatment he thought the VA covered.

Bill Huskins got his start in racing when he left the Navy in 1946. At that time, though, there was no regulated series.

Holly "Cargo" Harrison decided to hike the entire Western Hemisphere, and the journey was marked by dog attacks in South America, a life-threatening heart attack in Nevada and a bear attack in Alaska.

While piloting a B-24 on July 12, 1944, 2nd Lt. Kuchwara was shot out of the sky over Germany, crashed and was taken captive there. In May of 2018, his family finally secured him the POW medal that he deserved.

Fewer than 3,000 paratroopers made four combat jumps with the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II. Following the death of retired 1st Sgt. Harold Eatman, fewer than 16 of those paratroopers are alive today.

The U.S. Army Air Forces airmen were members of the 323rd Bombardment Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group (Heavy), Eighth Air Force. On Nov. 2, 1944, they were part of a nine-man crew that joined an armada of bombers on a mission to Merseburg, Germany.

VIDEO

Garlin “Murl” Conner never wavered under fire during his 28 consecutive months of combat in North Africa and Europe. In the two decades since Conner's death, his family never wavered in their quest for the recognition that they knew he deserved – the Medal of Honor.

President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un committed during their June 12 summit in Singapore to “recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.” Families of missing servicemembers said it's an important step.

VIDEO, GALLERY

Garlin “Murl” Conner never wavered under fire during his 28 consecutive months of combat in North Africa and Europe. In the two decades since Conner's death, his family never wavered in their quest for the recognition that they knew he deserved – the Medal of Honor.

Out of the ashes of the Battle of Okinawa grew “one of the strongest alliances in the history of alliances,” between the United States and Japan, Lt. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson told U.S. Marines attending the memorial.

video, gallery

The brothers' burial together in Normandy is a culmination of improbable events that included the review of a grave marked “unknown” in Belgium, a high school history project, a military forensics team review and a family gathering in Nebraska.

The school district from which Bob Lockard would have graduated in 1944 wants him to know no one forgot his sacrifices. Lockard will walk with 156 other Circleville Tigers at Sunday's commencement ceremony.

VIDEO

The citation for retired Navy SEAL Britt Slabinksi’s Medal of Honor – an upgrade from the Navy Cross he initially received for his heroics – describes “a murderous hail of machine gun fire” greeting Slabinksi and his commando team as he “charged directly toward the enemy” up the mountainside.

The men bathed in the ocean and lived in tents. They’d repair the planes with aluminum cans or whatever they could get their hands on. And they couldn’t run on the beach because they'd sink in the dark sand and ash mixture from a volcano, Joe Tusa recalled.

Retired Air Force Col. Bruce Hollywood was done searching. As an adult, he had found his Japanese birth mother and thanked her. He didn't feel a need to find his father, who had been in the U.S. Air Force. Then, a few years ago, he grew curious.

One night in his Virginia home, Jimmy Hatch decided he was ready for all of the pain to stop. His wife had to snatch a gun from his hands and later knock a knife away before Norfolk police and members of his unit arrived to help. He details his painful experiences in his book "Touching the Dragon and Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars.”

A 52-year-old father of three and the 25-year-old survivor of a horrific attack that made headlines 11 years ago met in college and struck up a friendship.

Johnny Pearson and John Noga were swapping stories and sharing laughs one recent Sunday morning, exhibiting an easy rapport and deep camaraderie that suggests the two have a longtime friendship that can weather any obstacle.

When Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) robbed retired Marine Maj. Randy Hebert of his ability to drive his prized Corvette he raffled it off and the money raised paid for the beach access that carries his name.

Richard Overton is both the oldest man in America and the oldest U.S. veteran. He turns 112 on Friday.

Retired Gen. Crosbie Saint was the commander of U.S. Army Europe from 1988 to 1992, a period that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Seventy-five years after Anthony Grant set off on his first overseas trip — to fight in Europe during World War II — he’s still traveling the world courtesy of Uncle Sam.

When Ken Bosworth reminisces about his World War II service in the Marine Corps, it doesn’t exactly match up with Hollywood.

It was the bone-chilling northern European cold that Harry Miller faced as a teenager in the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge that the Army and Air Force veteran most prominently recalls about his 22-year military career that spanned three major wars.

Representing wars both a lifetime and a world apart, 95-year-old Don Jakeway and 38-year-old Navy Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator and Medal of Honor recipient Edward C. Byers Jr. were honored at a Statehouse ceremony in which they and 28 others were inducted into the Ohio Military Hall of Fame.