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Veterans blog
Snyder v. Phelps and the Hardest Free Speech Case Conservatives Ever Defended The Court ruled 8-1 that a hateful picket near a Marine's funeral was protected speech. Conservatives split, and here is who was right. How to Find an Ancestor Who Served in an American War Using Public Records Seven steps to trace a family member's military service through draft cards, the National Archives, the VA gravesite locator and ABMC, then write it down. Veterans Should Carry Their Health Care Dollars the Way They Carry the GI Bill The GI Bill trusted veterans to pick their own college; the same trust argues for letting them take their care elsewhere when the VA cannot serve them. The VA MISSION Act Let Veterans See Private Doctors, What It Changed After the Phoenix wait-list scandal, Congress let veterans see private doctors, and the 2018 MISSION Act made that choice permanent. Here are the rules. Phoenix 2014 and the Secret Wait Lists That Changed Veterans' Health Care Phoenix VA staff kept unofficial wait lists to hit their numbers, and the scandal produced three laws that gave veterans a way out of the line. Seven Myths About Veterans That Shape Bad Policy, and the Facts Hollywood treats veterans as broken or as charity cases, but the record shows productive citizens with real, specific needs, and bad myths make bad policy. The POWs of the Hanoi Hilton and the Code They Tapped Through the Walls How American prisoners in North Vietnam kept faith and chain of command alive for years with a tap code, a blinked word on television and a code of conduct. The Chosin Reservoir and the Marines Who Attacked in Another Direction Surrounded by far larger Chinese forces in brutal cold in 1950, the 1st Marine Division fought out of the Chosin Reservoir in good order with its wounded. What the Medal of Honor Is, Who Awards It and How a Citation Is Written How the Medal of Honor began in 1861 and 1862, the 1917 purge, the standard of valor, the three versions, the review process, and how to read a citation. Five Medal of Honor Citations Read Closely and What Each One Asks of Us Five citations in flat military prose, from Fort Wagner to the Korengal Valley, read closely for what each act asks of the citizens it protected. Valley Forge, Bastogne and Chosin as Three Winters That Tested Americans Three winters 173 years apart tested American soldiers by cold, hunger and isolation, and a side-by-side table shows what they had in common. Desmond Doss Refused to Carry a Rifle and Saved About 75 Men on Okinawa A Seventh-day Adventist medic who would not carry a weapon became the first conscientious objector to earn the Medal of Honor. The Four Chaplains Gave Away Their Life Jackets When the Dorchester Went Down Four chaplains of four faiths gave their life jackets to frightened soldiers and went down praying together, and the country honored them with a medal. The Navajo Code Talkers Built an Unbreakable Code From Their Own Language Twenty-nine Navajo Marines built a spoken code in 1942 that Japan never broke, and the nation kept their service secret for decades before honoring it. Iwo Jima in Thirty-Six Days and the Two Flag Raisings on Mount Suribachi The famous photograph shows the second flag raised on February 23, 1945, and the full story of the battle and the men in it is larger and truer than the image. D-Day Was Won by Sergeants and Privates When the Plan Fell Apart on the Beaches On June 6, 1944 the plan failed in a hundred places and small groups of Americans improvised their way off the beaches, which is what a free army is for. Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 Hour by Hour From Radar Blip to Declaration A timed account of Pearl Harbor from the first sub contact to the declaration of war, with the warnings missed, the courage shown and the vote that answered. Sergeant York Captured 132 Germans in the Argonne and Went Home to Tennessee Alvin York asked the Army to excuse him from killing, was refused, ended a machine-gun ambush on October 8, 1918, then turned down fame and built a school. The 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner and the Soldiers Who Proved Doubters Wrong How a regiment of free Black volunteers, a young colonel and a pay strike answered the question of whether Black men would fight for the Union.