James Lyon, 80, admitted to submitting fraudulent documents to the VA to help him pocket over $124,000 in disability payments, lying about his military service and claiming he earned combat accolades — including the Silver Star and the Bronze Star — during the Vietnam War.

Lyon never served in combat and confessed to refusing Marine Corps training roughly 60 years ago. Still, he claimed to serve over three different periods and lied about being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, federal prosecutors said. He used that diagnosis to submit fake paperwork for VA disability payments.

Lyon has not yet been sentenced. He faces up to 10 years in prison without parole, the maximum sentence specified by Congress.

“Veterans’ benefits represent a sacred national promise that is rooted in our gratitude to the men and women who have sacrificed and served our country,” R. Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said in the statement.

“When individuals fraudulently obtain these benefits for their own personal gain, they undermine the integrity of these vital programs and divert resources from the veterans who earned them and need them most. That is unacceptable,” he said.

The case was investigated by the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney James Kirkpatrick.

In a report published Friday, the VA watchdog found that 59% of the VA’s 139 reporting facilities struggle to hire qualified practical nurses and 58% face issues hiring psychologists. For non-clinical staff, 57% of Veterans Health Administration leaders reported shortages of potential VA police officers while 53% faced problems hiring custodians.

The report, based on surveys from late March and early April, shows VA hospital leaders’ perceptions of occupations that are difficult to fill, not vacancies.

According to the report, VHA officials reported 4,712 severe staffing shortages across 389 occupations.

The surveys cover fiscal 2026, a period following a reduction in VA staff by roughly 30,000 jobs. Since Sept. 26, 2025, the VA workforce has declined by more than 19,000 persons, including 11,000 from the VHA, which manages the department’s health care services.

A VA official said Monday that the OIG report is not a reliable tool to assess staffing shortages because it is not based on actual vacancies. VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven noted that the report states that a staff shortage refers to “occupations that are difficult to fill,” and this designation “does not necessarily indicate the presence of vacancies.”

But Democratic lawmakers who track VA staffing say the surveys indicate a problem, given that the fiscal 2026 report showed 4,712 severe shortages compared with 2,959 in fiscal 2024.

In the surveys, nearly all VA facilities — 97% — reported severe occupational staffing shortages for medical officers, up from 94% in fiscal 2025, while 86% reported shortages for nurses, up from 79% the previous year.

But Slaven said VA continues to “outperform most other health care organizations” when it comes to staffing, and actual vacancy rates are 15% for doctors and 9% for nurses.

“These are lower than most other health care systems, in line with normal VA historical averages and much lower than the respective 19% and 20% physician and nurse vacancy rates VA saw at times during the Biden Administration,” Slaven said in a statement to Military Times.

He added that pay caps for physicians hinder the VA’s hiring, and the department has asked Congress to address the “longstanding pay disparity” that hurts recruitment.

He noted that since January 2025, the VA has opened 41 new health clinics, enrolled an additional 250,000 veterans in health care and increased medical appointments at VA facilities and in the private sector by 4.1% and 12%, respectively, since fiscal 2024.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., issued a report last year charging that veterans services, including health care and research, were affected by the loss of 40,000 employees at the VA in President Donald Trump’s second term from voluntary retirements, resignations and layoffs.

On Monday, Blumenthal said the OIG report on staffing shortages was also affected by the elimination of “tens of thousands of positions” at the VA’s health care system, which he said artificially reduces vacancy rates and prevents facilities from hiring needed staff.

“This report confirms that staffing shortages at VA continue to increase in number and impact,” Blumenthal said in a statement to Military Times. “Even more employees left VA because of the toxic work environment this administration has created.”

According to the report, the top five medical occupations experiencing severe staffing shortages across VA facilities are: practical nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and nursing assistants.

The top five non-clinical occupations with shortages are: police officers, custodial workers, medical support assistants, food service workers and health care engineers.

As with previous reports on severe staffing shortages, the OIG made no recommendations to VA leadership regarding the data.

“This report is a descriptive review and is intended for informational purposes,” wrote Dr. David Krulak, assistant inspector general for healthcare inspections.

Known as “forever chemicals” because they resist breaking down and can accumulate in the body over time, PFAS are used in a host of products and equipment such as firefighting foam, weapons systems and textiles in military settings and food packaging, cookware, makeup, stain repellent and more.

At least one type of PFAS — PFOS — has been linked directly to testicular cancer, while another type, PFOA, is associated with kidney issues and increased risk of kidney cancer.

PFAS chemical exposure has also been connected to cardiovascular disease, thyroid dysfunction, low birth weight, developmental delays in children and reduced response to immunizations.

According to the study published Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives, young veterans had 13% to 24% higher concentrations of PFAS in their blood than non-veterans the same age.

Male veterans had higher PFAS concentrations than female veterans, while older veterans had levels comparable to their civilian counterparts.

The study reviewed the PFAS blood serum results of participants in National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 2003 to 2018.

According to the review, 58% of the 22.8 million veterans who participated, or 13 million, had blood PFAS levels above a threshold set by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine of 20 micrograms per liter.

Lead study author Christian Hoover, a National Institutes of Health Research Fellow at Brown’s School of Public Health and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the National Academies recommends that those who exceed the threshold be monitored by their physicians.

Having high PFAS levels in their blood does not mean a person will develop cancer or cardiovascular disease, Hoover said, but blood tests and monitoring can provide data that may be useful in the future.

“[Testing] gives people helpful context … as they age for some of the things that might happen to their bodies over time,” Hoover said. “If they don’t get tested now between [ages] 20 and 39 and they get to 55, and they’re having all of these health effects, they won’t know why.”

The surveys at the heart of the cross-sectional study did not ask about possible sources of PFAS exposure.

Hoover said previous research has shown that aqueous film-forming foam, related groundwater contamination on military bases, munitions, treated uniforms and even the burn pits used to dispose of industrial waste in combat zones could be responsible.

Younger veterans are more affected because they are most likely to have had recent exposure as a result of military service.

Older veterans are less likely to have acute exposure and PFAS that may have accumulated will be excreted over time, according to Joseph Braun, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University.

“The common PFAS chemical PFOA, for example, has a half-life of about one and a half to two years, which means that if someone drank a jar of PFOA today, it would take 10 years for their body to get rid of it,” Braun said in a statement.

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not provide or cover the cost of blood tests for PFAS. The Defense Department is required by law to offer blood tests for PFAS to active-duty and civilian DoD firefighters.

The 2020 legislation that mandated the testing does not include retired military firefighters, other active-duty personnel or dependents.

Hoover said all veterans, even those 40 and above, may want to talk to their doctors about exposure and possible health consequences.

“Even though our study wasn’t able to pick this up, it doesn’t mean that older veterans weren’t at the same risk when they were younger,” Hoover said.

Nearly 600 military installations, former defense sites and National Guard facilities have some degree of PFAS contamination. Since the late 2010s, the DoD has reviewed 727 installations and found that 590 require some type of cleanup.

The timeline for completing the review and remediation process has been extended for some installations to 2066.

The provision is Section 104(b) of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, H.R. 9237. It carries forward the home-loan fee changes developed in the standalone Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act, H.R. 6047, before that legislation was incorporated into the broader package.

The proposal would sharply increase two specified VA home-loan fees. The funding fee for Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loans, or IRRRLs, would nearly triple from 0.50% to 1.42%, while the fee for assuming an existing VA-backed loan would double from 0.50% to 1%

For Air Force veteran Amy Murphy, who wants to refinance a $400,000 VA-backed mortgage solely to secure a lower interest rate and monthly payment, the proposed change would mean $3,680 more in funding fees. At the current rate, her fee would be $2,000. At the proposed rate, it would be $5,680.

“The point of the IRRRL is to make it easier for me to take advantage of a lower interest rate. But under the proposed fee structure, I have to save enough through the lower rate to overcome a substantially larger upfront cost.”

VA exempts certain borrowers from the funding fee, including veterans receiving VA disability compensation; some veterans entitled to compensation but receiving retirement or active-duty pay instead; certain borrowers with qualifying pre-discharge disability ratings; and active-duty service members who have received a Purple Heart. Active-duty status alone does not qualify a borrower for an exemption.

The number of IRRRL borrowers who would be subject to the higher fee is not clear from publicly available VA data. VA reported 119,457 IRRRLs in 2025, a 135% increase from 50,825 in 2024. VA’s loan-volume reports do not publicly identify how many of those borrowers paid the funding fee or how many were active-duty service members.

For borrowers who do pay the fee, VA allows the cost to be financed into the new loan. That avoids an upfront payment but increases the loan balance and means the borrower pays interest on the financed fee.

Marcia Black, a VA loan officer with M&T Bank, said higher fees could discourage veterans from refinancing when interest rates fall.

“Higher fees deter veterans from refinancing when market interest rates drop, trapping them in higher-rate loans,” Black said. “Targeting refinances disproportionately harms active-duty military and veterans trying to lower monthly payments during high-cost cycles.”

The Mortgage Bankers Association said it could not support H.R. 6047 as drafted because of the proposed funding-fee increases. MBA urged Congress to remove or substantially modify the proposed fee increases and the extension of higher VA home-loan fee rates.

The IRRRL is designed to streamline refinancing for existing VA borrowers, generally to obtain a lower interest rate or reduce the monthly payment.

In TCAVA’s proposed legislation of more than 60 veteran bills, the VA home-loan fee provisions serve as budgetary offsets.

In its March estimate of the standalone H.R. 6047, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill’s home-loan fee provisions would reduce net direct spending by about $4 billion from 2026 through 2036 by lowering the subsidy cost of VA loan guarantees. CBO estimated the overall H.R. 6047 package would reduce net direct spending by $42 million over that period.

For veteran borrower Mitchell Duffy, who has used VA-backed financing on multiple properties, the potential impact could accumulate across several loans.

Duffy owns four properties he now rents out that were financed with VA-backed loans and has about $1.15 million in combined mortgage debt. If the full $1.15 million were refinanced and each loan were subject to the proposed fee, the 0.92-percentage-point increase would amount to about $10,580 in additional funding fees. The actual amount would depend on the outstanding balance and eligibility of each loan when refinanced.

Section 104(b) does not establish a new IRRRL fee based on whether a veteran is using the VA home-loan benefit for a second or third time.

The House has not passed H.R. 9237. On July 16, a motion to recommit the bill failed 210-211, after which further consideration was postponed. The proposed fee changes have not yet become law.

“I don’t necessarily have an extra $3,680 sitting in the bank,” said Murphy. “So, if this legislation gets passed, I have a decision to make: is the lower interest rate still worth refinancing, or will the higher VA fee make the savings less worth it?”

The group, with a combined 250 years in the military and additional service as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA administrator, Central Intelligence Agency director and other leadership posts, issued a video Tuesday asking voters, candidates and government officials to take time to understand the voting process in their communities and share the information with family and friends.

The message, sponsored by Team Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization with a goal to reduce political polarization, focuses on the principles of free elections and responsibilities of citizens to sustain confidence in American elections.

“Protecting our lawful electoral processes might be our most important civic role of all,” said retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as director of the National Security Agency under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and as Central Intelligence Agency director under Bush and President Barack Obama.

In the video, Hayden joined fellow retirees Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, Army Maj. Gen. Marilyn Quagliotti, Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, Marine Corps Major Gen. Charles Bolden and Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper in speaking on election integrity — without mentioning any candidates, political leaders, parties or previous election outcomes.

President Donald Trump cast doubt on the security of the American election system when he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Although Biden won the popular vote 81.2 million to 74.2 million and the Electoral College 306-232, Trump attempted to overturn the results through legal challenges and political pressure.

According to a poll conducted in June by the Economist/YouGov, more than a quarter of Americans believe that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and only a quarter of Americans are “very confident” that the November mid-term elections will be conducted fairly.

It is in this heated climate that the retired generals have entered the fray. During an interview with Military Times Monday, Lute said the officers weighed in because they feel it is time to “get back to the basics.”

“Before, during and after elections, there are some fundamental rules that everybody ought to agree on, and I think you know why that’s important now,” Lute said.

According to the video, the five fundamental principles Team Democracy is asking Americans to commit to are their beliefs in: an honest process; nonviolent campaigns; secure voting; responsible oversight; and trusted outcomes.

The generals say that free, fair and trusted elections are the root of democracy, and without belief in the system, trust breaks down.

“We know what holds countries together and we know what tears them apart,” Hayden said in the video.

“These aren’t liberal ideas, conservative ideas. They are the rules of the road, the ones that make self-governance possible,” Lute said.

According to the group, more than 6,000 Americans have signed the principles, including roughly 2,000 candidates across the political spectrum.

In addition to supporting the principles, the officers urged Americans to get involved in the election process, sharing trusted information with others, volunteering as a poll worker or taking a tour of local election offices.

“I’ve traveled the world and I’ve seen this country at its best. I’ve seen what’s worth protecting,” McChrystal said.

Founded by two whitewater rafters — Ken Powley, who operated a rafting company in Weatherly, Pennsylvania, and Chris Newlon, an IT manager and specialist — Team Democracy partnered with The Carter Center and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation on the Principles for Trusted Elections campaign and has received financial support from The Carter Center to enable its work.

“My grandfather once said, ‘In our democracy, the only title higher and more powerful than that of president is the title of citizen.’ Whether you are a former U.S. president, a retired general, or any other American citizen, we have a shared responsibility to uphold the principles upon which our electoral system was founded: honest process, nonviolent campaigns, secure voting, responsible oversight and trusted outcomes,” Jason Carter, Carter Center Board of Trustees chairman, said in a statement to Military Times.

“These principles are not about politics — they are about ensuring that our elections remain credible, secure and worthy of our confidence,“ Carter added.

In addition to focusing on trust in elections, the group supports programs that support civic engagement and hosts rafting excursions that bring together people of various backgrounds.

In his interview, Lute said the political divide has become so rancorous he worries it cannot be overcome, especially regarding the topic of election integrity. But he hopes for a future where election winners will be “gracious winners” who are respectful of their opponents and consider their positions, even if they disagree.

“I was part of the transition between Bush and Obama and there was a strong mutual regard for the other party,” Lute said. “There’s an old saying in the Army that I suspect is the same across the other services, that effective leadership reflects that disagreement is not disrespect. … we need to get back to that as a sort of a political model.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday against the administration’s proposals to restrict mail-in ballots, allowing states to proceed as usual with their voting processes for this year’s midterm elections.

Nearly one-third of the country votes by mail.

For Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, the 10 years of wanderings on a perilous sea as Odysseus took the really, really long way home could be seen as an “allegory for the real problems of combat veterans returning to civilian society.”

Shay, a psychiatrist at the Boston VA Medical Center, wrote that “Time and again, Odysseus shows himself as a man who does not trust anyone, a man whose capacity for social trust has been destroyed. This is the central problem facing the most severely injured Vietnam veterans.”

Shay connected the trials of Odysseus in returning to Ithaca to the recurring patterns he observed in his clinical practice with combat veterans — patterns of homelessness, explosive violence, mistrust of anyone other than combat veterans, substance abuse, a fixation on grievances and a “deep suspicion of others’ motives.”

“Odysseus stands for the veterans but as a deeply flawed military leader himself, he also stands for the destroyers of trust. Homer’s Odysseus sheds light, not always flattering light, on today’s veterans and military leaders,” Shay wrote.

For 10 years, Odysseus would remain the artful dodger through the harrowing journey back to Ithaca, where the conflicting traits of Odysseus’ character — war hero and war criminal, master strategist and liar only contribute to his charisma as the “master of cool,” according to Elizabeth Samet, the West Point literature professor and author of No Man’s Land.

Samet draws a similar parallel for modern-day veterans and the difficult journey home.

In a 2007 Book Browse Author interview, Samet called Odysseus her favorite hero in all literature — “He never bores you with his twists and turns, and he outfoxes everyone. Odysseus has restraint, but he can also lose his composure on occasion. He is an epic hero yet somehow a recognizably human creature.”

For Shay, the parallels between Odysseus and modern-day veterans are all too clear.

“I see the adventure with the Cyclops as an emblem for combat veterans’ attraction to danger, an attraction that has cost so many of them their lives after returning home, and tortured those who love them with untold hours of fear for their safety,” Shay wrote.

The Odyssey has survived and endured while so many other oral epics were lost “in no small part because it was — and still remains — the work of literature most seriously engaged with the question of how to reintegrate a damaged, troubled soldier back into civilian life,” according to Shay.

Shay has been credited with introducing the concept of “moral injury” that has been experienced by combat veterans. Shay described moral injury as “the profound psychological and spiritual damage experienced by combat veterans when fundamental moral codes are violated.”

Perhaps Shay’s most crucial insight stems from his conviction that psychologically wounded soldiers can be best healed by sharing their stories with other veterans. “For veterans, recovery from their psychological injuries best happens in the community of other veterans,” he said in an August 2009 interview with Metro West Daily News.

As a result of his work and that of others, moral injury has increasingly been recognized as a signature wound of service members who fought in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom following the 9/11 attacks.

In response to the work of Shay and others on PTSD, Military.com reported in 2023 that the Department of Veterans Affairs had begun “the first-ever large-scale population study of moral injury to be conducted among veterans of the post-9/11 wars.”

The main result of the study was the development of the “Moral Injury and Distress Scale (MIDS),” which the VA called “the first measure to assess moral injury symptoms indexed to a specific event and validated across several high-risk populations.”

MIDS was “being adopted throughout VA as a tool for identifying veterans with moral injury,” described as “the distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes spiritual aftermath of witnessing, failing to prevent, or participating in events that contradict one’s deeply held values and beliefs,” according to a March 2025 release from VA Health Systems Research.

In his chapter of the book titled Among the Dead: Memory and Guilt, Shay dealt with the concept of “survivors’ guilt” and contrasted Odysseus’s haunted memories with the profound “survivor’s guilt” experienced by modern soldiers over the loss of comrades as they second-guess choices that led to the deaths of their friends.

But the poet of the Odyssey, perhaps, put it best in describing the grief of Odysseus’ crew following their losses in the battle of Ismarus:

“Six benches were left empty in every ship that evening when we pulled away from death. And this new grief we bore with us to sea: our previous lives we had but not our friends. No ship made sail next day until some shipmate had raised a cry, three times, for each poor ghost unfleshed. Then two long days and nights we lay offshore worn out and sick at heart, tasting our grief.”

“Everyone knows exactly what they were doing on that day, or where they were, but it’s weird too, because we don’t know what life was like before that,” the high school senior from Bradenton, Florida, explained.

She was born into a country already at war. By the time she was old enough to understand what war meant, American troops had been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for years.

“I almost feel numb to all of the violence of it, because we were told about it so much when we were little … but we were too little to understand,” Cline said.

That distance is one of the defining legacies of 25 years of war. Millions of Americans came of age surrounded by its consequences without ever experiencing the wars themselves.

Now that generation is entering adulthood as the Pentagon confronts a different challenge: What happens when a generation comes of age during an era of war without being asked to participate in it? For most Americans who grew up after 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a constant presence, but military service was not. They inherited the consequences of those wars without necessarily inheriting a personal connection to the people who fought them.

A growing divide

The Defense Department has linked the growing divide to the military’s smaller footprint and declining numbers of Americans with family or personal connections to service.

In 1995, 40% of young people had a parent who had served in the military. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 12%, according to the Defense Department.

The change happened alongside the all-volunteer force and two decades of sustained military operations.

The Defense Department has also found that military service increasingly falls outside the range of careers young people consider. About 20 years ago, just over 25% of young people had never thought about serving. In recent years, more than half had never considered it.

A 2025 ThinkNow survey found that among Gen Z adults who had not served, 28% said they were very or somewhat likely to consider joining. Nearly half, 49%, said they were not very or not at all likely, while 23% were unsure.

For those who said they would consider joining, career opportunities were the leading motivation, followed by financial security and educational benefits. Family tradition ranked much lower.

Among those unlikely to join, about half cited a lack of interest in military service and cited concerns about physical or mental health risks. Others cited fear of combat or deployment.

Sherald Winans, a college freshman at Miami University of Ohio, said that when he pictures someone his age joining the military, he imagines boot camp, followed by deployment “somewhere in the desert to go to war.”

“I don’t know anyone who serves,” he said. “But I think that there’s more danger now than ever when going to fight in the military.”

Choosing to serve

Tiana Ramirez is an example of what that choice can look like today.

A recent high school graduate preparing to join the Marine Corps, Ramirez said she wanted purpose and the benefits that come with military service. She did not want to go to college immediately after high school and had heard positive things about the opportunities available to veterans.

Her grandfather served in Vietnam, and her older cousin serves in the Navy aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Billings.

But 9/11 is not part of her personal history. She was not alive when the attacks occurred and has no direct memory of the wars that followed.

Ramirez said she thinks about Iraq and Afghanistan but does not spend much time worrying about whether she could experience a similar deployment. She wants to begin her military career with an open mind and see what comes next.

For her, the appeal is practical as well as personal: steady income, a career path, health care and education benefits.

She also described military service as a way to find her purpose and determine what she is meant to do.

What young Americans know about war

For young Americans who did not live through 9/11, the attacks are history, rather than memory.

Teachers who have watched those students encounter the subject in classrooms describe that difference.

Sarah Boyles, a Florida history teacher, said that during her first years teaching, she focused less on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and more on their causes and consequences. At the time, the attacks were too emotional for some students to discuss.

Randall Faulks, a social studies teacher in Louisiana, said students do not always have an emotional response because they have no personal memory of the day.

For some students, the experience is more like learning about another major historical event.

Jerrica Santos, a junior in high school and daughter of an Army command sergeant major, said she does not believe people who did not experience 9/11 can feel the same pain as those who did.

“But we can understand their point of view,” she said.

Izzy Williams, another high school senior, compared that inherited experience with another event her generation did experience directly: the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We definitely understand how all of a sudden the world changed, just like how COVID changed everything we knew,” Williams said. “We started doing things differently and getting used to different ways.”

The civil-military gap persists

The Pentagon’s recruiting numbers have improved after several years of shortfalls.

By the end of fiscal 2025, all five active-duty services had met or exceeded their enlisted accession goals. The Army reached 101.72% of its goal; the Navy 108.61%; the Marine Corps 100%; the Air Force 100.22%; and the Space Force 102.89%.

Despite this, the DoD has cited a shrinking eligible population, declining birth rates, fewer family connections and lower willingness to serve among the challenges facing military recruiting and retention.

That disparity matters beyond who chooses to enlist. It also creates a widening gap between the generation that fought the post-9/11 wars and the generation now entering adulthood without a personal connection to them.

As the post-9/11 generation transitions out of the service, military historian Ben Connable shared his concerns about how much knowledge from Iraq and Afghanistan will carry forward.

Connable said the military has previously had to relearn lessons that were not successfully passed from one generation to the next — citing Vietnam as an example.

He said recent cases have often been poorly transmitted into modern military knowledge and warned that knowledge that was developed during years of counterinsurgency might not be passed down.

That transition is occurring alongside significant turnover among the Pentagon’s senior leadership.

At least 20 generals, admirals and civilian defense leaders have been fired or departed their positions since Hegseth became defense secretary, according to a Sept. 2 CBS News tally.

Hegseth directed a restructuring of the senior officer ranks in May 2025. His memorandum called for a minimum 20% reduction in four-star positions across the active component, a minimum 20% reduction in National Guard general officers and an additional minimum 10% reduction in general and flag officers tied to a realignment of the Unified Command Plan.

Inheriting a different military

The young Americans coming of age now are not the same young Americans who enlisted after Sept. 11.

They grew up watching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down. They experienced a pandemic that disrupted daily life.

John Spencer, a military researcher and author who studies combat and military cohesion, cautioned against assuming that younger service members are inherently less capable than the generations before them.

Every generation, he said, has been told that it might not perform as well as the one before it when tested in war.

That is a recurring concern, not a judgment unique to today’s young troops.

What matters in combat, Spencer said, is not simply technology or individual ability.

“Cohesion remains critical to how units perform under pressure,” he said.

Ramirez is about to become part of the institution that shaped the world she grew up in, even though she has no memory of the event that set those wars in motion.

She leaves for boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, later this month, without knowing what her military career will bring, or whether the wars she learned about in school will ever become a larger part of her own life.

“I signed up to serve because I want to do something different,” Ramirez says. “And something that makes a difference, too.”

The VA has held events on Patriot Day, as the date was declared by Congress in December 2001, to honor the 47 veterans and family members killed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the more than 16,000 veterans who have died since and are interred at VA national cemeteries.

“As our nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, VA national cemeteries offer a meaningful place to honor the courage and sacrifice of that day,” said VA Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Sam Brown, a retired Army captain who was severely wounded in combat in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2008.

Patriot Day honors not only those killed in the attacks, but the service members, law enforcement officers, firefighters and first responders who responded, as well as those who gave their lives for their country in subsequent wars.

The efforts mark the eighth year the VA teamed with Carry the Load to host the volunteer events. The nonprofit was founded by two Navy SEALs to promote remembrance of fallen service members on Memorial Day.

“As we come together on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Carry The Load’s National Day of Service and Remembrance gives Americans a meaningful way to honor the nearly 3,000 lives lost,” said former Naval Special Warfare officer and group co-founder Stephen Holley in a statement.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City; the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Forty-four passengers died on United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; 184 people, including 59 passengers of American Airlines Flight 77 and 125 military and civilian Pentagon employees died in Arlington, Virginia, while the remainder perished in the World Trade Center towers, at work, on American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, or in the response and collapse of the buildings.

The events, which will begin at 10 a.m., will include brief ceremonies followed by opportunities to clean headstones and conduct other restoration activities. All supplies will be furnished. Those wishing to participate can register with Carry the Load. More information is available on the VA’s website.

The VA manages 157 cemeteries nationwide and funds an additional 125 state, territorial and tribal veterans cemeteries.

Last week, the department dedicated the first national cemetery in the state of Nevada in Elko. The 15-acre grounds, expected to open for interments in late 2026, will include 1,045 gravesites as well as a columbarium and other facilities.

Veterans who are eligible for VA burial benefits include all who were discharged under something other than dishonorable conditions; spouses or surviving spouses of eligible veterans; dependent children; and some others.

Buzz Bissinger, author of The New York Times bestselling book Friday Night Lights, and its subsequent film’s director, Peter Berg, are teaming up to deliver the true story of The Mosquito Bowl, which saw 65 Marines of the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, facing off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa.

Based on Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars, who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand.

Netflix dropped the official teaser trailer Wednesday, featuring Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry, Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman, Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

As the days of December 1944 passed on Guadalcanal, the island was beset with rumors of where and when the Marines would ship out. It also became the home to some lively trash talk.

Relief from the daily drudgery came over sips of beer and the promise that the “29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two,” writes Bissinger.

That promise swiftly took shape into an all-American sporting event — some thousands of miles from home.

These men were not, according to Bissinger, run-of-the-mill former collegiate football players. Within the 29th alone came an “All-American running back from Purdue who had set a scoring record in the Big Ten; an All-Missouri Valley Conference end; starters from Cornell, Notre Dame, Illinois and Duquesne; and five former captains, including from Notre Dame, Illinois and Purdue.”

The 4th was no slouch when it came to its “roster” either. The unit touted a two-time All-American wide receiver from Wisconsin and another at center from the University of California; an Ivy Leaguer who had started with the New York Giants; and starters from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Fordham, Montana and Ohio Northern, according to Bissinger.

On Dec. 24, 1944, the 65 Marines strode out onto a “field” made up of dirt, pebbles and shards of sharp coral, wearing cut-off dungarees and T-shirts with numbers stenciled on the front. Roughly 1,500 Marines ringed the field with a broadcast on Guadalcanal-based Mosquito Network going out to various Navy and Marine units fighting across the Pacific. The score, according to Bissinger, was occasionally flashed to destroyers at sea.

Tragically, it would be the last game many of the footballers-turned-Marines would play. Fifteen of the 65 players who suited up for The Mosquito Bowl were killed during the Typhoon of Steel.

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25.

VoteVets, a Democratic veterans group, was joined by Home of the Brave, a political advocacy group, and the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit focused on landscape heritage, in an effort to halt the build of the planned arch as the anticipated date of construction nears.

Last week, it was announced on social media that construction would soon begin for the arch, which would be 250 feet tall and sit at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The groups released a new video Tuesday, saying that breaking the sightline from the Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery is “entirely inappropriate and borders on sacrilege” to the 400,000 service members buried there.

“This proposal by this administration doesn’t bear well with me,” Karen Meredith, the Gold Star mother of 1st Lt. Ken Ballard who died in the Iraq War and is buried at Arlington, said in the video. “There will be an observation deck. We don’t need tourists overlooking funerals. I’m just appalled.”

Placing that large of an arch, dubbed the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, in that location would alter the hallowed ground and associated feeling when experiencing the cemetery, Cultural Landscape Foundation President and CEO Charles Birnbaum said in the video.

The National Park Service released documents saying that construction would take two to three years at 20 hours per day, which the video argues could conflict with burials at the cemetery that occur every weekday.

The project is currently being challenged by veterans and a historic preservationist in federal court. The U.S. District Court filing says that there is no legal basis for the arch and that it needs approval from Congress, despite the Trump administration alleging that a 1925 law related to the building of Arlington Memorial Bridge authorizes the construction.

The National Capital Planning Commission is expected to meet Oct. 1 to review the arch’s plans and consider its final approval after granting it preliminary approval in early July.