They served in the military decades ago, often putting their lives on the line for their country. But aging veterans are learning that their sacrifice may not guarantee them a COVID-19 vaccine at a Veterans Affairs clinic.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday named Dat Tran, the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Enterprise Integration, to immediately take the helm of the agency.

Air Force veteran Isabelle Hyon DuCharme had spent nearly a decade attempting to find her mother’s family in South Korea — but it took just three days for the internet to find her relatives after her request for help went viral.

President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday announced new leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs – the country’s second-largest federal agency.

Part “Beavis and Butt-Head” and part “Looney Tunes,” “Frag Out” follows the exploits of Marines Buck and Chuck, who experience perpetual boredom while standing post in a desert war zone.

Air Force veteran Isabelle Hyon DuCharme is hoping the Internet can help reunite her mother, who is intubated and on a ventilator because of COVID-19, with family members in South Korea.

The Department of Veterans Affairs decided this week it would administer coronavirus vaccinations to veteran caregivers — a population that was not included in the agency’s vaccination strategy.

The VA is undertaking a plan to distribute vaccines to more than 418,000 employees and 10 million enrolled patients — a task one VA official called a “Herculean effort.”

Thirty-seven years after terrorists exploded a truck bomb in a Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. military personnel, Iran has started to pay.

Multiple veterans and service members are being investigated for their roles in the mob takeover of the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, and at least two national veterans organizations want to ensure they’re not on their membership lists.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and its precursors had denied repeated requests by the family of Alexander “Sandy” Nininger Jr. to exhume remains in a Philippines grave for DNA testing, maintaining the agency’s documentation could not validate taking that step.

Dorothy "Dot" Cole was 28 years old when she boarded a bus for the 150-mile trip to Pittsburgh, where she hoped to volunteer for the Navy. She was turned away for being too short — so she joined the Marines instead.

Frustrated by what they call a decades-long “bureaucratic logjam” in bringing his remains home from the Philippines, the family of First Lt. Alexander “Sandy” Nininger is requesting the federal government remove the soldier’s name from all public buildings and installations.

He flew combat missions during the Normandy Invasion. He has counted Charles Lindbergh and six U.S. presidents as friends. On Jan. 16, Henry Benton Sayler Jr. celebrated his 100th birthday, an age that impressed even him.

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping legislative package Tuesday that aims to help veterans facing a variety of challenges, including homelessness, access to care for women and Native Americans, toxic exposure and the coronavirus.

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.

Officer Brian Sicknick was mortally injured during a clash with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters as they sieged the Capitol Building on Wednesday.

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager was remembered at a memorial service Friday as a hero, legend and friend who would go out of his way to help others.

ANALYSIS

The military and law enforcement ties among some rioters rattled U.S. officials ahead of more possible violence.

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.

David Smith decided he wanted to do something about the remnants of the riot strewn around the streets, calling on a group of fellow veterans and volunteers to do a thorough sweep of the area around the Capitol and downtown Washington D.C.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and safety restrictions that required an intimate ceremony, World War II veteran Orlando Samuel Romero proudly received his high school diploma on Thursday at the age of 96.

Obituary

Clayton Pitre was one of the first Black men to join the U.S. Marines and trained at the segregated Camp Montford Point in North Carolina. He fought in the Battle of Okinawa. In 2012, he was among over 400 Montford Point Marine veterans who received the Congressional Gold Medal.

A 73-year-old man who pleaded guilty to obtaining nearly $1 million in VA health care benefits was sentenced to probation and community service Tuesday, according to a news release.

One year after the Department of Veterans Affairs promised to create a more transparent way to compare the quality of its hospitals with others, some veterans are complaining that it still hasn't been done.

Michael McKinney is charged with attempted murder in the Dec. 6 shooting in Des Moines. McKinney, who was heavily armed and wearing body armor, told police he fired the shot in self-defense.

A Florida-based group running a supposed charity for wounded veterans has settled allegations that it deceived donors and has agreed to close its doors, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said.

Montana has 47,000 veterans enrolled within the health care system. Officials have said their goal is to inoculate all members. On Wednesday, Montana reported 87,630 total cases of coronavirus, with 81,676 of those recovered, and 1,069 deaths.

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie won’t resign in the aftermath of the takeover of the U.S. Capitol building, the agency said Friday.

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.

Theodore "Ted" Lumpkin Jr., a member of the Tuskegee Airmen whose service as a member of the all- Black unit during World War II helped desegregate the U.S. military, has died at age 100.

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.

It's been 30 years since the U.S. went to war in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq. Anthony Baca, then a truck driver with the New Mexico National Guard's 720th Transportation Company, remembers as if it were yesterday.

The VA reported 7,099 total deaths Thursday and nearly 16,000 active coronavirus cases. Only seven days into the new year, January is already on pace to be the agency’s deadliest month.

Ten months after the coronavirus first infiltrated the Holyoke Soldiers' Home, leadership has changed, vaccines are being administered and two of the facility's former top officials are facing criminal neglect charges.

ANALYSIS

The emergence of a bipartisan squad young lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds as key players in the lead-up to Wednesday’s impeachment vote betokens a greater role for these members in Congress’ future political and security debates.

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.

Court documents said the employees of the Veterans Independent Enterprises of Washington went without pay for weeks at a time in 2018 and 2019.

While many people go for runs to clear their head or stay in shape, Marine vetera Eric Morehouse runs in honor of fallen Marines and to commemorate historic events in which Marines have participated. And he does it while holding an American flag.

A fellow soldier is scheduled to be charged in connection with the sexual assault of Asia Graham, the 19-year-old who was found dead on New Year's Eve at Fort Bliss, Texas, military investigators said Friday.

After leaving the Marine Corps, Ryan Doyle had various jobs and tried an online university program before he decided to enroll in the dental assistant program. "I am beyond grateful and humbled," Doyle said of a $5,000 scholarship he recently received.

South Korea started shipping masks to to veterans across the globe who defended the country during the Korean War in 22 nations in December.

The same day that Iraq war veteran Sean Overal collapsed and later died of an apparent heroin overdose at the Hancock County jail, he had been approved for a transfer to a drug rehab center for treatment.

Representatives of veteran and retiree support organizations in the Philippines wrote to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, outlining their concerns about the U.S. government’s vaccination plan.

An American Legion post commander has been removed by the veterans service organization from two national leadership roles after he bragged on social media about participating in a street brawl and joining the Proud Boys, the California state commander said Saturday.

Ron Rivera and Lt. Col. JC Glick met shortly after Glick retired from the military in 2015. Glick had confounded a private leadership consulting business and worked with big names, such the McKinsey Group and the Denver Broncos.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is readying doses of the Moderna vaccine, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Friday for emergency use.

Marine veteran Gerald Culhane sued the U.S. government in 2017 over his care at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, which his lawyers described as a "total system failure" that included misinterpreted scan results and a lack of follow-up that would have diagnosed his cancer sooner.

Congress approved a bill Wednesday that increases resources for homeless veterans, creates a Department of Veterans Affairs advisory committee for Native American veterans and mandates that every VA hospital hire a dedicated women’s health provider, among dozens of other measures.

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.

Following the surprise removal of a Naval Air Station Barbers Point memorial in 2018 and a couple of failed efforts to relocate it, AMVETS Hawaii is again trying to rebuild the pole-mounted scale model P-3 Orion aircraft surrounded by a moss rock wall.

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.

Mare Island is the oldest naval cemetery on the West Coast and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. It has three Medal of Honor recipients — James Cooney, Alexander Parker and William Halford.

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.

Helen Lattal sat under a tent and waved an American flag Monday in Montgomery, Ala., as friends, family members, veterans’ groups and well-wishers drove past her, honking and dropping off birthday cards.

Despite being injured twice in Vietnam, once so severely he was lucky to survive, John Hurley Jr. says he never regretted joining the U.S. Marine Corps even as it came during wartime.

Obituary

Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Michael Gasper, who was one of the first people injured in the Japanese bombardment on Pearl Harbor and one of the few survivors left from that fateful day, died Dec. 20 at his Ellwood City home at the age of 102.

An investigative report on Missouri veterans nursing homes sheds new light on how top government officials first reacted — and didn't react — to information about the spreading danger of COVID-19 at the state-run facilities.

Obituary

Dr. Robert L. Pollack, 94, of Philadelphia, a scientist, author, Navy veteran, and the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry at Temple University's School of Dentistry, died Tuesday, Dec. 1, of COVID-19 at Cathedral Village.

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.

Investigators have condemned the former managers of the Southeastern Veterans' Center, a state-run nursing home in Chester County, Pa., for inadequate precautions against COVID-19, which "swept through the facility like wildfire" this spring and caused the deaths of 42 residents.

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.

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 family of a veteran who died in Wisconsin nearly three years ago when he wandered away from a veterans hospital in bitterly cold temperatures filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government, alleging the hospital's negligence led to the man's death.

The legislation would require the VA to provide an urn or commemorative plaque for veterans who don’t receive a headstone or burial marker.

The Horsham VFW Post in Levittown, Pa., was shuttered in mid-2019 after it fell into a state of disrepair. Now, more than a year and a half later, the revitalized VFW has more than 300 social members, and it gained nearly 20 new VFW members.

Vanessa Lauziere, a nurse for 24 years, was among those forced to resign as the decision-maker behind combining two dementia units in a bid to contain the coronavirus at the Soldier’s Home in Holyoke, Mass.

As COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact the Navajo Nation, a national nonprofit organization led by veterans that specializes in disaster relief continues to do what it can to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.

By mid-June, 76 veterans who tested positive for the virus were dead at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home. 100 or so veterans are isolated, increasingly depressed and anxious, their families say, as the home adheres to strict infection control standards

Just weeks after the Battle of Iwo Jima was fought in 1945, Bill Horne climbed to the top of Mount Suribachi and sat under the American flag that can be seen in the historic photo of U.S. troops raising that flag. Horne turns 100 on Christmas Eve.

Health care workers will come first and then older veterans who are already registered with the VA. Care managers “will reach out to eligible veterans to schedule vaccinations,” said agency spokeswoman Mary Kay Rutan.

Edward D. Parks sought reimbursement under the Beneficiary Travel Program, which pays back veterans for mileage and other expenses they incur going to and from approved health care appointments. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted.

A retired U.S. Marine who had served as a chaplain in the Marine Corps League died Saturday after the kit plane he was flying crashed in a business parking lot in Texas.

The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday administered its first doses of the coronavirus vaccine as part of national inoculation effort to prevent the disease as the death toll from the virus surpassed 300,000 in the United States.

The coronavirus has killed more than 1,000 veterans so far in December, making it the deadliest month for Department of Veterans Affairs patients with nine days remaining until January.

The administrator of the New Mexico State Veterans Home has been placed on administrative leave while the state investigates whether proper procedures were followed before COVID-19 swept through the state-run home and turned deadly over the past two months.

Marine Corps veteran Donnie Dewey read stories about people who were building desks for distance-learning students during the pandemic. I should do that, he thought. Then: I am going to do that.

David Pinder was replacing a worn-out American flag outside his Comcast office in April 2017 when he thought of a new way to honor Old Glory.

A pilot program that began in 2018 through the nonprofit Veterans Florida, the six-month paid fellowship offers veterans with no prior knowledge hands-on experience in agriculture.

Thirty-seven hospitals within the Department of Veterans Affairs have been selected to receive the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine, though VA officials are not confident that every veteran will have quick, easy access to the treatment.

Black, Hispanic and Native American veterans will be given priority for receiving coronavirus vaccines once they become available, according to a document published Tuesday by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers called on the Department of Veterans Affairs this week to continue its nine-month pause on billing veterans for medical debts after the agency announced it would start collections again in January.

A forensic anthropologist believes he has identified the remains of Pfc. Charles McAllister, who died in WWI — but the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's lack of proper jurisdiction over the case has prevented McAllister's family from receiving his remains.

It all started with a chance meeting between Lakewood Ranch High School sophomore Lorenzo Liberti and a Vietnam war veteran.