Winston Churchill described it as the “worst journey in the world,” and two local Merchant Marine veterans in their 90s are among the last left in the U.S. to have endured it.

Gallery

Three decades ago, Kirby Lee Vaughn prepared to cross into Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm. The Army sergeant had brought his Canon T-70 camera into the desert to capture the experiences of his unit.

When the Smithsonian introduced a futuristic plan for the 17 acres around its iconic administration building, the National Historic Landmark known as the Castle, officials predicted it would be a game-changer that would remake the structure into a visitor gateway to the storied institution.

A new federal law requires West Point to rename structures and roads honoring Confederate generals, including a cadet dormitory that for 50 years has borne the name of the rebel commander Robert E. Lee.

The Rev. Thomas Conway, the heroic chaplain of the ill-fated USS Indianapolis, was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously on Friday for his selfless courage.

Neil Sheehan, a tireless chronicler of the Vietnam War who obtained the Pentagon Papers for the New York Times and later received the Pulitzer Prize for his book "A Bright Shining Lie," a meticulously researched indictment of America's role in that conflict, died Jan. 7 at his home in Washington. He was 84.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is urging Americans to share photos, videos and written stories of 2020 – a historic year that the institution assumes will be of interest to future historians and researchers.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency recently conducted an "honorable carry" ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for about 40 sets of "unknown" World War II U.S. remains that were returned from the Philippines for identification.

The nonfiction work alternates between the letters and the present as Loretto Thompson visits the various places her father was stationed both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom during the war.

As the most tumultuous year of many of our lives comes to an end and she reflects on her life at the eve of her 100th birthday, Jean Mitoma spoke about her time at the Japanese Internment camps during World War II.

The decision to place a new memorial to Native American veterans outdoors, instead of inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian as originally planned, appears not only inspired, but well executed.

Fred Risser, 93, was elected to Wisconsin's state Senate in 1962 after six years in the Assembly. He is the last World War II veteran to serve in the state or nation's legislatures.

Army recruit Jerome J. Garcia’s staunch resistance to the strictures of military life six decades ago got him discharged just months into his enlistment. Five years later, he founded the Grateful Dead.

Rishi Sharma created a nonprofit called Heroes of the Second World War for his project, and has interviewed about 1,100 veterans over the past four years in 45 states, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

A historic ferry that shuttled commuters across the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland closed Monday after a legal dispute.

The soldier is thought to have been a member of one of the Civil War's first Black regiments, an iconic infantry whose hard-fought loss near Charleston, S.C., was depicted in the Oscar-winning 1989 film "Glory."

During the second wave of Spanish influenza in December 1918 and January 1919, San Franciscans were weary after an autumn of restrictions that were tougher than in most other cities — though they did appear to help reduce cases and deaths.

Charles Schulz, the cartoonist behind “Peanuts,” took part in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp and the occupation of Munich. His Combat Infantryman Badge would remain one of his proudest possessions.

Confederate symbols immortalized in bronze at National Park Service sites dodged a bullet this week. The final version of the fiscal 2021 spending package excluded language pushed by House Democrats that would remove the monuments from those sites.

Robert E. Lee's 700-pound likeness left the grandeur of the U.S. Capitol and landed here Tuesday morning as workers rolled the statue off a truck and left it supine, on a wooden pallet, in storage space at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

The Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Va. honors the personal doctor to Stonewall Jackson, one of the most famous Confederate generals of the Civil War.

The 5,500-page spending and relief bill that Congress passed Monday night includes the authorization of two Smithsonian museums — one focused on the American Latino, the other on American women — that pave the way for the world's largest museum complex to become even more diverse.

The question of what should happen to a medal when the veteran who received it has died draws impassioned responses and was part of the Stolen Valor Act in 2006.

While the populations most vulnerable to the coronavirus skew older, poliomyelitis was largely identified as a children’s disease.

Janine de Greef was believed to be among the last surviving members of the "Comet Line," the clandestine Belgian resistance network founded in 1941 by 24-year-old Belgian nurse Andrée "Dédée" de Jongh, to spirit allied airmen through Nazi lines to safety in Spain and eventually to Britain.

For decades, the area was covered with asphalt, railroad tracks and warehouses as part of an Army base. But now a new project is transforming the landscape back to wetlands, creeks and trails for birds, fish, crabs and other wildlife — and for outdoor lovers.

With no Pearl Harbor veterans present in the audience, speakers focused more broadly on the role of World War II veterans and on the 75th anniversary of the end of the war.

When a a U.S. military plane crash-landed on a glacier in 1946, the Americans were asked to leave the plane where it was and allow it to be enveloped by the ice. A scientist thinks it will reemerge sooner than previously expected.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Edward John Socha was standing on the USS Maryland flag bridge battle station in Pearl Harbor as the USS Oklahoma, moored next to his ship, took several Japanese torpedoes to its hull and sank.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website's Wall of Faces had only an extremely blurry photograph of the late Army Spec. 4 Ralph Burkhalter, Jr. Vietnam veteran Bobby Bazzell took on the task of finding a better one.

The U.S. Navy's first patrol craft hydrofoil was launched in 1962 and deactivated in 1985. The USS High Point is no longer seaworthy, but that may be about to change if Neil Beach gets his way.

"Some of that stuff is indelible in my memory," George Coburn said in a phone interview Sunday. "You don't forget something like that."

Michael "Mickey" Ganitch was in uniform to practice for a big football game when the first wave of Japanese Zeros bore down over his battleship, while Clarence Byal mostly remembers the smoke and explosions before his light cruiser managed to reach the open sea and begin a hunt for the Japanese fleet.

In August 1962, in the midst of the tension-filled Cold War, the Navy hyped the High Point not only as the largest hydrofoil in the world but also as a revolutionary, new high-tech weapon in the field of anti-submarine warfare.

The final version of the defense spending bill for fiscal 2021 includes $2 million to form a commission to plan the renaming of the military bases that honor Confederate leaders, defying a veto threat from President Donald Trump.

A 93-year-old veteran and former chief communicator aboard Air Force One will get one last wish fulfilled: when the time comes, E.E. "Van" Valkenberg will be laid to rest at the veterans cemetery in his hometown of Vancouver, Wash.

After years of commissions, reports and hearings, two proposed museums dedicated to American Latino and women's history moved a step closer to reality Thursday, when a key Senate committee voted unanimously to approve them.

A massive Army project aims to pare down the 580,000 items in its collections, and make the excess available to other museums, government and private institutions, and historical sites, officials said.

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks called Maxwell Air Force Base "an alternative to the ugly policies of Jim Crow” she experienced outside of its fortified walls. “When I left the base, I had to ride home on a segregated bus.”

The motorcycle club’s ethos is grounded in community service. Before probationary members can be elevated to “full patch” status, they must first complete a monthslong service project detailing how their efforts have had a positive impact on their community.

The Army football team will wear jerseys for the Army-Navy game celebrating the contributions of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division, which fought in the Pacific Theater during World War II, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam War.

An Algona, Iowa, High School student and teacher are doing their part to honor and remember one of their own, a 1936 graduate of the school who died from injuries suffered in the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

More than 120 years after his death, Pvt. James Johnson will receive a symbolic burial and be remembered for his military service Saturday in Bartow, Fla.

Capt. Melissa Vargas is the first female infantry troop commander of the U.S. Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

Sickles, a former Union general, noticed something about the early returns, which gave Democratic New York Gov. Samuel Tilden a large lead. If four states where the results already were in dispute went to Hayes, he would win the presidency by one electoral vote.

U.S. soldier Ralph L. Bourn was killed on a German battlefield during World War II. The Purple Heart medal that he received 75 years ago is now on display at a museum in Europe, and his Ohio relatives didn’t know it was there.

A resolution was introduced in Congress in April of 2019 to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the 23rd Special Headquarters Troops and the 3133rd Signal Service Company for their service during World War II.

The epidemic that ultimately would claim an estimated 675,000 American lives — probably a tremendous underestimate since it didn't include countless deaths involving pre-existing conditions — was on fire in the fall of 1918. Yet on Nov. 28, 1918, the nation celebrated Thanksgiving. Exuberantly.

Old 439 rolled slowly down the runway in the afternoon sun, trailing noise and jet fumes, and still looking sharp in blue and gold after 33 years in the Navy.

Several vintage plane crew members who came to Hawaii to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II were infected with COVID-19, including one pilot in his 80s who later died.

Visitors to Tampa’s Riverwalk have a new place to honor families who have lost loved ones in military service.

These songs were part of an annual wreath-laying ceremony honoring prisoners of World War II buried on base. There are 21 German soldiers and one Italian soldier buried in the POW cemetery.

The fort served as a primary induction center for Michigan soldiers entering battle during the Civil War, and played an active role as an induction center for tens of thousands in America's wars until the Army discontinued its use in 1971 during the Vietnam War.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian marks the official opening of the National Native American Veterans Memorial Wednesday.

Medal of Honor recipient Kyle White continues to advocate for veterans getting help sooner than later — and for a new Cohen Veterans Network mental health treatment center that recently opened in Hawaii to help do just that.

Medal of Honor recipient Staff Sgt. Roy Benavidez has become the most prominent candidate in a campaign to rename the Army's largest post, Fort Hood, after someone from Texas.

At the end of the Civil War, the country faced the unprecedented challenge to care for the thousands of disabled veterans who fought to preserve the union. The answer: soldiers' homes constructed on a scale unseen in America.

Shannon Peck-Bartle is among those tasked with creating a curriculum for Ridgewood Cemetery, the forgotten and unmarked mid-20th century burial ground for the indigent and unknown found last year on Tampa’s King High School campus.

The transition between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joseph Biden until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 promises to be the most contentious since the 1933 handoff.

Breaking News

Fairfax County, Va., on Thursday night removed a trio of Civil War markers in front of the county's judicial complex, part of a broader effort in Virginia to turn a page on the state's Confederate legacy.

“The Silent Soldier and the Portrait” delves into two secrets John Waller kept since his war days. One involves a military tragedy, the other stems from how he came to possess a miniature French portrait.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, James Monroe Flanagan's family in Jacksonville rarely mentioned his name. It just hurt too much: He was only 22, and he was gone without a trace.

In 1943, the Memphis Belle flew into Dayton during a war bond tour of 30 cities. The tour, a way to raise money and boost morale, was dubbed the "26th mission."

A naval air museum in Hawaii whose vintage aircraft could be auctioned off or chopped up is scrambling to remove some of its collection ahead of the Saturday deadline to vacate the premises.

Minot's Ledge Light hasn't had a keeper for decades, but some say that the victims of one of the most tragic lighthouse disasters in history continue to keep guard more than 150 years later.

The long-awaited Medal of Honor for Alwyn Cashe, who suffered fatal wounds while pulling six soldiers from a burning vehicle in Iraq, has been delayed in the Senate as lawmakers fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, according to congressional officials familiar with the issue.

William Curtis Twitchell's brain tumor presented a particular problem for the Atomic Energy Commission: It had the potential to cause erratic behavior and uncontrolled verbal outbursts. As he lost control of his mental faculties, would Twitchell begin spilling nuclear secrets?

A hazardous waste and explosives cleanup project of "one to two" years at Camp Bonneville, a 3,840-acre property in Washington state where troops trained from 1909 to 1995, is nearing completion — nearly two decades later.

Time and again this week, Chinese leaders pointed to that moment as a juncture when China turned from a victim of bullying by Japan and the West to a respected power under Communist leadership.

The Bluetails, from commander to newest sailor, start their days the traditional way: a “FOD walkout," picking up any foreign objects or debris in the flight line.

A collection of documents shed light on the USS Constitution's early years and the young United States' first international conflict.

U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Earl W. Smith Jr., serving with the 80th Fighter Squadron in the Pacific Theater during World War II, was just 22 years old when he took off on the last flight of his life.

During the Andrew Jackson administration, Francis Scott Key served as the district attorney for Washington, D.C., where he spent much of his time shoring up enslavers’ power. He strictly enforced slave laws and prosecuted abolitionists who passed out pamphlets mocking his jurisdiction as the “land of the free, home of the oppressed.”

Martin Goldsmith swiftly pried open the package. With careful hands, he uncovered a 16th-century kettle that belonged to his grandparents before they died in the Holocaust.

World War II has become known as “The Last Good War,” the subject of countless movies, books and documentaries over the decades. And yet, 75 years after V-J Day, there are still stories of wartime courage and daring that haven’t been publicly told. Jack Wilde's is one of them.

When Gerry Wright was a young man serving in the Army in Vietnam, he sprayed Agent Orange from a tanker truck onto the vegetation where the enemy could hide — and onto himself.

After the war, Hal Halvorsen dropped chocolate bars for the children of Berlin as part of a humanitarian airlift. They soon started calling him the “Candy Bomber.”

Cmdr. Edward Pledger, current captain of the USS Cole, told the families of the fallen and members of the former crew that the 17 golden stars on the bulkhead by the ship’s mess line are kept polished and shining — and continue to inspire his own shipmates today.

At President Abraham Lincoln's side on Nov. 19, 1863, helping take care of him was one of the most important yet historically overlooked people in his life — William H. Johnson, a 30-year-old Black man the president had brought with him from Illinois to be his personal valet.

Obituary

Ruth Kluger, whose unsparing account, published in English as "Still Alive," of her coming-of-age during the Holocaust, has died. She was 88.

In a strange twist of historical irony, the Supreme Court nominee put forth by President Donald Trump was able to adopt her child from Haiti thanks in part to Trump's 2016 archrival, Hillary Clinton.

When Randall Edwards entered a Japanese prisoner camp in Manchuria during World War II, he expected his life to end soon. But he survived, and lived to age 103.

A World War II veteran and grandson of 10th U.S. president John Tyler, who left office 175 years ago, died at age 95 last month, a historical anomaly of a family whose three generations span three centuries.

Sarah Gauna Esquivel remembers the day her 19-year-old first-born, Tim, headed off to Naval Station Great Lakes for boot camp.It’s harder to remember when he came home.