When Capt. Alan Carlton’s B-24 bomber was shot down over Germany during World War II, he felt lucky. He survived, after all. Now, 75 years later, Carlton has another reason to feel lucky about what happened that day.

The breakdown of negotiations with congressional Democrats means it's becoming more likely that President Donald Trump will declare a national emergency to build a wall on U.S. southern border -- an extraordinary action sure to draw lawsuits and consternation on both sides of the aisle.

For decades, the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico had been little more than an imaginary line in the sand, marked only by the occasional pillar in the Sonoran desert. But rampant smuggling, the Mexican Revolution and the outbreak of World War I had split a border town in two, sowing fear and stoking tensions.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Arnold Austin of Warrior, Ala. was accounted for in September 2018, 77 years after his death on board the USS Oklahoma.

A proposal to possibly move Durham’s crumpled Confederate soldier statue to a historically black, city-owned cemetery angered a county leader Tuesday, who compared it to honoring Nazi soldiers on Jewish burial grounds.

On Jan. 23, 1968, North Korea attacked and captured the USS Pueblo and its crew. While eventually released, not all of the crew made it home. None of them came back unscathed. The ship remains in North Korea. One survivor is fighting to change that.

In April 1918, during World War I, a pilot flew over the District of Columbia, rallying crowds at a parade and raising money for troops overseas. The uniformed pilot flying above the houses of Washington power was a woman - Ruth Law. Change was literally in the air.

Obituary

Clifford Moore, who died at age 99 on Dec. 29, kept his war experiences mostly to himself until July 2012, when he issued a five-page memoir about his time as a B-17 pilot, including his months in German captivity.

Analysis

Pentagon officials have better things to do, I'm sure, than reply to strange questions from civilians about monsters, but I got a response to mine the morning after I sent it. "I've never heard of it," the DOD's deputy chief historian at the time replied to a question about "the glitch of the Pentagon," described in the Columbia Encyclopedia as "responsible for general chaos."

On New Year's morning of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, decreeing "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious Southern states "are, and henceforward shall be, free." Many abolitionists criticized Lincoln's action as too limited. The proclamation purported to free millions of slaves in the Southern states that had seceded from the Union. It exempted 850,000 slaves in border states and parts of three Southern states that were not in rebellion.

Rusting, cracked and covered in dead leaves, three relics of Navy aviation sit rotting in an overgrown field in Temple, Texas – a far cry from their glory days of fighting for America in the skies over Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 1934, Howard University students spoke out against lynching by looping nooses around their necks. More than eight decades later, two students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fastened nooses around their necks amid demonstrations against a Confederate monument on their campus.

Alfred Procopio Jr. left the Navy in 1967, decorated with medals for his service on the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier deployed off the coast of Vietnam. He also came home with health problems the U.S. government has linked to exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange.

Word War II veteran Bruce Benson, 94, has made it a daily routine to play music in honor of the country’s past and current military members. He’s regularly joined by U.S. Marine Corps veteran Dave Bergland, 55.

An honorary major in the U.S. Army, Clifford Rousseau has spent decades working on tanks, crossing paths with decorated leaders and proving his merit on bases in Washington and Alaska. He’s done it all despite suffering from cerebral palsy, which makes it difficult for him to walk and speak.

For more than 30 years, the Francis Land House has taught elementary students about a wealthy plantation owner and slavery during the early 1800s. But that's about to change.

Which items of the past are worth keeping? Which spoils of war should be preserved? And which symbols of hatred are better off consigned to history's trash heap?

In a community in which many older residents oppose illegal immigration and younger ones tend to lean left politically, the controversy is just the latest to underscore the generational divide among those of Vietnamese descent.

On Jan. 9, 1943, as World War II raged, President Franklin Roosevelt left Washington on a train heading north. It was a misdirection. What followed made history.

Many famous musicians have served in the armed forces, but it’s unlikely that any assignment to Europe influenced the history of rock ’n’ roll and country music as much as when Johnny Cash learned to play the guitar here.

Christmas, first brought to this nation by American missionaries in the late 19th century and designated a public holiday under U.S. military rule in the 1940s, has evolved into a very different kind of celebration than the one across the Pacific.

On Christmas Eve in 1968, the world paused to watch telecasts of pictures of the moon and Earth taken from lunar orbit. As they circled the moon, the American astronauts read passages from the Book of Genesis in a powerful moment of calm. But the first manned mission to orbit the moon was rocky, chaotic and fearful.

A Hawaii historian and researcher is looking to preserve an old Quonset hut on Oahu that was possibly part of a segregated encampment for black laborers and enlisted men during World War II.

VIDEO

The Oscar-winning director best known for the "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" films turned his attention to modernizing World War I footage. Using advanced techniques, Peter Jackson created an intensely gripping, immersive look at the Great War.

On a windy morning in December 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright changed history when they became the first to fly “an air machine” for just 12 seconds. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Ohio state officials celebrated the 115th anniversary of their first flight on Monday

A five-by-four-foot plate of steel, salvaged from the wreck of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and seen as an important relic for holding onto the history and lessons of World War II, made its final journey on Monday morning.

For 52 years, Paul Schultz never revealed details about his Vietnam War service. The closest he got was telling his sons that they owed their lives to his best friend in Vietnam.

The African American Veterans Monument Committee is one giant step closer to their fundraising goal thanks to a $200,000 joint grant from Delaware North and M&T Bank.

The event would lead to the largest ever mass expulsion in West Point history and change forever the Academy's culture and even its architecture. And it very nearly changed forever the fortunes of one of America's most important 19th century figures.

A 24-acre plot of land on Grays Ferry Avenue in Philadelphia has been associated with the Navy since 1827 and has the unusual distinction of being the final resting place of Dexter, the Navy’s last working horse.

After 73 years, Joseph Natvik is finally home. An airman in the U.S. Army serving in World War II, Natvik perished when his C-109 aircraft crashed in the treacherous terrain known ominously as "The Hump," between India and China on July 17, 1945. The crash occurred about a month before the end of World War II.

Halfway through Bruce Springsteen's solo act on Broadway, the Boss reminisces about two bar-band rockers he idolized in New Jersey in the 1960s. But the memories about a pair of little-known musicians takes a sorrowful turn: Walter was killed in 1968 in the Vietnam War, a disclosure that, following such loving tributes, prompted slight gasps in the audience.

A museum exhibit opened here Thursday with a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Army’s occupation of Germany at the end of World War I, a period in the interwar years that historians said is often forgotten.

Poway, Calif. said goodbye in grand and patriotic fashion to its most famous citizen, Ray Chavez, who until his death at age 106 last month, was the nation’s oldest surviving Pearl Harbor veteran.

The nearly 32-year-old tradition of a Memorial Day motorcycle ride through Washington, D.C. is ending because of escalating costs and a lack of cooperation from the Pentagon and metropolitan police departments, according to a letter shared by Artie Muller, a Vietnam veteran and founder of Rolling Thunder.

A reunion of sorts Wednesday in O’Hara saw four 1942 graduates of Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse High School reminiscing as if seven decades hadn’t passed since they were classmates.

As a 15-year-old student, Ardmore resident and former Marine Cpl. Glenn Mitchell heard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt say the famed phrase “a date which will live in infamy” and later fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

What stood before a team of riggers at the National Museum of the Marine Corps last week looked like a piece of cosmic sculpture, and a remnant of some terrible tragedy. In a way, it was both.

The museum covers the multifaceted activities that unfolded in Georgia's Golden Isles during the war years, from military training and Naval airship patrols to civilian shipbuilding, volunteering and sacrifice.

ANALYSIS

Jefferson Davis was loathed by much of his military, Congress and the public — even before the Confederacy died on his watch. Since then, several historians have made the case that, regardless of whether Davis was a hero or a traitor, he was a lousy president.

The Titan Missile Museum, in Sahuarita, Arizona, is offering a new tour of the deactivated Titan II missile facility. It is the Director’s Tour, and it is an opportunity to view the site through the eyes of its director, Yvonne Morris, who was a U.S. Air Force officer and a missile combat crew commander at that very site from 1980 to 1984.

On Feb. 20, 1939, 22,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, took over the venue that stars still consider a peak achievement if you can fill it up. That night, it was a full house for Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, who had become a household name as the "American Hitler. "

None of the family members attending the funeral of Navy Fireman 1st Class Albert Kane on Friday ever met him, but they still understood the importance of bringing him home to Dallas where he can rest in peace among his fellow veterans.

An atmosphere of vanishing time permeated the Friday morning ceremony at Pearl Harbor commemorating the 77th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Oahu by Japan.

It was Dec. 5, 1941, and Lt. Ted S. Faulkner's mission would be delicate and dangerous: fly his B-24 Liberator thousands of miles from Pearl Harbor, sneak over Japanese-held islands in the South Pacific, and take photographs — without starting a war or getting shot down.

Those hairy first moments of the attack on FOB 4 in Vietnam still keep many of them awake at night. Speaking at the Special Operations Association memorial breakfast, Doug Godshall recalled the sounds of the battle: the explosions, the flares, the “shouts of desperation.”

The new addition to the International Museum of World War II's permanent collection is a life ring that was aboard the USS Arizona when it was sunk by Japanese fighter planes on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

“I thought in retrospect, I was darn near the scene of a president that bought the farm,” retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton said. “It was a pretty harrowing experience for him.”

On Aug. 28, 1968, the streets of Chicago exploded into violence. Antiwar protesters, defiant and bloodied, poured onto Michigan Avenue, determined to reach the International Amphitheatre, where the Democratic National Convention was in its third day.

Fifteen veterans of one of America’s bloodiest wars retraced their steps through the former battlegrounds of Vietnam. Follow their journey as they reflect on what it means to return decades later to a place all them once desperately wanted to escape.

“I don’t know that Hollywood could create as authentic a story about Iraq or Afghanistan or people on their fourth, fifth, sixth tours of duty that couldn’t be told much, much better by a documentary or caring news media,” actor Tom Hanks said. “It’s a tough thing.”

George H.W. Bush died on Friday, just a week before the country marks the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — an event that would change his life.

There was nothing about the hungry, bedraggled man who surrendered at a remote desert checkpoint belonging to the United States' Kurdish allies this year to suggest he had once played a part in one of the biggest events in American history.

After spending billions of dollars over several decades to remove radioactive waste leaking from a plant where nuclear bombs were made, the Energy Department has come up with a new plan: leave it in the ground.

In the past few weeks, Kabul has been flooded with images of Gen. Abdul Raziq Achakzai, 39, a fearsome police commander and anti-insurgent fighter who was gunned down Oct. 18 near his headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar.

The effort to memorialize the 129 men who were lost aboard the USS Thresher on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery got a boost this month with approval from the cemetery's advisory committee.

As workers replace and add chain-link fences around rotting dormitories and graffitied ranch houses at the old North Truro Air Force Station on Cape Cod, officials agree that a plan for a vibrant cultural center has gone nowhere.

The Tsukuba Naval Air Corps Museum, which has a collection of about 2,000 items donated by former corps members and their families, has about 150 items, including the last wills and testaments written by members of a suicide attack squads, on display.

In the lead-up to a historic summit Sunday in Brussels, where a Brexit deal is expected to be rubber-stamped, tiny Gibraltar suddenly loomed large. It literally put Britain's European Union divorce settlement between "The Rock" and a hard place for a time.

Despite witnessing how the war had ravaged the hearts, minds and bodies of countless American soldiers, WWII combat nurse Lt. Leila Allen Morrison and her fellow female nurses were blocked at the gate when they arrived at Buchenwald. The soldiers were trying to shield the women from the "deplorable" conditions of the camp.

The Civil Air Patrol in Pennsylvania was involved in home front defense almost from day one. Three weeks after the U.S. declared war on Japan, The Sentinel published a United Press article on Dec. 29, 1941, calling on the state’s 8,000 civilian pilots and student flyers to volunteer and do their part in service squadrons that were being organized.

The names of the 15 Valley Forge High School alumni who died during the war in Vietnam were affixed to an honor roll plaque that has hung in the school for decades. But in May of 2017, some students decided that something more could and should be done to honor the memory of those fallen grads.

They stood in silence or whispered as the breeze rustled the remaining leaves on the trees, and a distant bell tolled the hour. At the top of hill, the flag at the Arlington mansion snapped in the wind, and a hawk soared overhead.

After a stint in the Marines and various other jobs, Donald McCaig established himself as one of America's leading chroniclers of the rural life, a master stylist whose understated prose — often featured in the NPR program "All Things Considered."

Ray Chavez surged into national prominence three years ago when fellow Pearl Harbor veterans recognized him as the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II.

Charles Houston Harris, 22, the U.S. Navy electrician's mate 3rd class assigned to the USS Oklahoma, grew up outside Jena in the small community of Good Pine with his eight brothers and sisters in the 1920s and 1930s, census records show.

The 440-foot-long gray vessel is one of only two fully operational Liberty ships, which transported vast numbers of military personnel and countless tons of cargo during the war — and the only one sailing regularly out of the port city where it was built.

Over the course of 76 hours, 961 Marines and sailors were killed trying to take the heavily defended Japanese outpost on the tiny isle of Betio between Nov. 20 to 23, 1943.

In 1917, 118 black soldiers were charged with murder, mutiny, aggravated assault and disobeying orders after a race riot in Houston. Nineteen of the soldiers were eventually hanged.

Chelsey Poisson's hypothesis was that between pre- and postdeployment, servicemembers whose trash was burned in open pits experienced a significant decrease in fitness and increase in medical symptoms lasting more than a month. Her results, she said, confirmed her hypothesis.

House Resolution 2315 would posthumously award each of the four Americans killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors a civilian can receive.

The little girl was so adored by Adolf Hitler that his personal photographer frequently snapped pictures of the two them holding hands, exchanging kisses on the cheek, or just smiling at each other. Hitler refused to cut off contact with her even after he was told she had a Jewish grandmother.

Dorothy Jones served in the Navy during World War II and was involved in classified communications. Her work was so secret that she never talked about it to anyone outside of her family -- and even then only sparingly.

Although she began working at 13, Helen Holloway's first job as a Rosie was test-firing army rifles when she was 17 years old.

The National Archives and The National Archives Foundation exhibit “Remembering Vietnam” provides a plethora of information and artifacts on the Vietnam War.

Women have served in the military since the Revolutionary War -- mostly unrecognized and under-appreciated until recent times, Teresa Shane, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2513 commander, said.

On the 100th anniversary of the "War to End All Wars," Walter Johnson's grandson John Sharples decided it was time to unlock the chest's treasures: All of the things Johnson took home with him when he was discharged shortly after the end of the war.

Daily letters home chronicled Squire Utsler's service, from the first day of boot camp on Aug. 18, 1943, until he hitchhiked from California to arrive home in Enid on Christmas Eve 1945.

At that time, Ronald Reagan was the first sitting U.S. president to have visited Beaufort County since President Franklin Roosevelt, who traveled by train from Yemassee to Port Royal in April 1943.

John B. "Jack" Cummings was 22, a handsome college man headed off to World War II from Juneau, Wisconsin, where his family, no doubt, prayed he would return. But on Dec. 31, 1944, near the French village of Neuhaeusel on the Rhine River, he vanished from his foxhole.

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but for Andres S. Ribera, once a laborer at a hotel in Santa Fe, it seemed the first two days he spent in battle would never end.

A monument to American troops who fought at Resaca de la Palma on May 9, 1846, is about to be removed and re-installed at the Palo Alto Historical National Battlefield Park about five miles north on Paredes Line Road.

Dozens of former Army nurses from across the country gathered Sunday around the bronze sculpture on the National Mall that's dedicated to their service in the Vietnam War.

Ten days after Chilton “Chilly” Raiford received the Purple Heart, the Rappahannock County resident died, on Aug. 14, 2018, at the Martinsburg VA Medical Center. He was 95.

Arlington National Cemetery had never seen a funeral quite like the one that was held the morning of Nov. 11, 1921. The nation's highest military officers were there, along with congressional leaders, Supreme Court justices, diplomats from around the world and a crowd so huge the president's car was forced to drive across fields for him to get there in time.

Words jotted down a century ago rang true Friday afternoon when the public and the Carlisle Barracks community converged on the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.

ANALYSIS

Today, as solemn official ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary take place in many parts of the world, we look back at Japan’s role in the war and how that role shaped the country domestically and on the international stage.

Mules, dogs and pigeons were among the many types of animals that were a vital — and for decades overlooked — part of the Allied war machine.

Eve of Destruction, on display in the U.S. Army Transportation Museum, is the last of the giant trucks that soldiers in Vietnam built up with makeshift armor to craft a highly effective weapon not officially approved by the Pentagon.

Everywhere you look inside the new National Veterans Memorial and Museum, there are stories. Here are three from veterans featured there.

Perhaps the quickest way to start an argument with the Dalton brothers is to suggest that — because they all served in the U.S. military during World War II — they might be heroes. It also might be the quickest way to bring them together.

On July 30, 1943, an American B-17F bomber, heading home to its base in England after a raid over Kassel, Germany, was shot down and crashed in a field at Opijnen, Netherlands. Villagers looked up to see men falling out of the sky.

The idea for the National Veterans Memorial and Museum started with one veteran. Astronaut John Glenn, a former Marine, U.S. senator and Ohio resident, wanted a special, sacred place to honor and connect veterans and teach others about their service.

Before World War I, the U.S. military was 140,000 strong; by the end of the war, the military's ranks swelled to 2 million. Seventy percent of the ranks were new draftees: One of them was Samuel Marcus. He left behind his family and girlfriend, Ann, and was totally unprepared for what he found when he arrived in France.

During the visit to Fort Bragg, Hubert Edwards shared stories from the 37 months he spent fighting in World War II. That included 660 days on the front lines, spread across four major invasions that included North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France.

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.