The March 15, 1962, night shift started like any other aboard the Standard Oil super tanker Lenzen.

The ship and its crew were cutting through the waters between Guam and the Philippines. It was calm on the seas and in the skies. Above, scattered clouds floated pale across the inky blackness. About 1:30 a.m., the night watchman spotted what looked like a vapor trail high above him. When he spoke later to investigators, he said it appeared to be moving in an east-west direction. He tracked it until it passed behind a cloud. Then, something exploded.

Night turned to day as a flash lit up the deck. Crew members recalled seeing a “white nucleus surrounded by a reddish-orange periphery” and two large, flaming objects falling to Earth. The captain, now wide awake, hurriedly used the stars to estimate where the burning wreckage may have landed. The vessel, in hot pursuit, steamed into the night.

It wasn’t until the next day the crew learned what they’d witnessed: the last probable sighting of a plane taking 93 Army Rangers to a mission so secret, it’s a mystery to this day.

There are two primary questions around Flying Tiger Line Flight 739. The first is what happened to it. The second is why it was there in the first place.

First, a bit of historical context. In the early 1960s, the U.S. was vociferously denying any serious involvement in Vietnam, while simultaneously putting its sticky, anti-Communist fingers all over the region. In 1960, South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm survived a failed coup that he was convinced was backed by the CIA. His suspicions weren’t misplaced; a few years later, he was killed in another overthrow attempt, backed by President John F. Kennedy (who, reportedly, was tormented by the assassination as he believed Diệm would only be exiled).

Along with interfering at the top, the U.S. was putting a lot of troops on the ground. By 1962, they were orchestrating combat missions and deploying Agent Orange. But as the U.S. military was keeping up a charade of not actually being involved, they signed a contract with the civilian cargo airline Flying Tiger Line. Instead of military aircraft ferrying over troops, they traveled on Flying Tiger’s chartered planes, helmed by civilian pilots and served by civilian flight attendants. Call it a bit of plausible deniability.

Many of these Flying Tiger planes departed from Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. And it was there that 96 passengers and 11 crew members boarded a Flying Tiger Line Lockheed Super Constellation on March 14, 1962. Among them were Master Sgt. Robert R. Glassman of San Jose, Pvt. Robert Henderson of San Francisco and flight engineer Clayton E. McClellan of San Mateo.

Ninety-three of the passengers were Army Rangers, and three were South Vietnamese soldiers. The identities of the Vietnamese soldiers are still not known. The Rangers we do know. They were from all over the nation, not one particular unit, which has led historians to speculate they were hand-picked for a special mission. Early media reports claimed the men were “jungle troops,” which is probably what you envisioned when imagining Rangers sent to Vietnam. But according to the 1963 Civil Aeronautics Board crash report — and the recollections of surviving family — the men were specialists in something else.

The CAB report called them “mainly highly trained electronics and communications specialists.” One man’s mother believed he was sent to Vietnam to make “a training film,” a suspicion that was bolstered by a letter from his commanding officer at the Film Library Division. Electronics experts with the Rangers also assisted in a crucial espionage tactic: wiretapping. So it’s possible the men were headed into a simmering conflict that the CIA wanted to control, via propaganda or spying or both.

Whatever the mission, the Rangers knew it was dangerous. A number of family members remembered that their loved ones acted especially fatalistic in the lead-up to the flight. A few asked that their wives and children be taken care of. Some said flat out they didn’t think they would return.

“The day my dad volunteered to go, he went to my mom and said, ‘Mommy, I think I signed my death warrant,’” Jane Wendell East, whose father, Sgt. 1st Class John Wendell, was on the plane, said in a statement to SFGATE. “I don't know what the military said in the briefing of this mission, but I have learned that several others said the same thing.”

“He said, ‘I won’t be back from this,’” echoed Spc. Roger Oliver’s daughter, Kristina Hoge, in a 2003 interview with Stars and Stripes. “My grandfather told him, ‘You’ll be fine.’ I think it haunted my grandfather.”

Although their words now read like premonitions, it’s unlikely the men believed the flight itself would be deadly; they probably feared what awaited them in Vietnam. The flight was just the first, long step on the way there.

Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 was scheduled to make four refueling stops between the Bay Area and Saigon: Honolulu, Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines. The first leg took the usual 12 hours. Upon landing in Hawaii, there was a small kerfuffle with the flight attendants. The head flight attendant complained that the plane wasn’t up to regulation for crew rest areas. After a 30-minute delay, another mattress was added for the crew and the plane took off.

At Wake Island, the most momentous coincidence in the lives of eight women took place. The four original flight attendants got off and were replaced by four new crew members: Christel Diana Reiter from San Mateo, Barbara Jean Wamsley from Santa Barbara and Patricia Wassum and Hildegarde Muller, both based in California. The plane set off again.

In Guam, the plane was refueled and given a routine maintenance check. “It was reported that the aircraft was left unattended in a dimly lighted area for a period of time while at Guam,” the incident report remarked.

The crew and passengers boarded once more and, as the hour approached midnight, set off for the Philippines. The flight was expected to take six hours, but the plane had enough fuel for nine. After takeoff, the crew made several routine radio transmissions, including asking to change their cruising altitude from 10,000 to 18,000 feet. This request was approved.

A few hours later, the tower in Guam realized they hadn’t heard from the flight in much too long. They began attempting contact. Each call-out was met by silence. The crews in Guam escalated the crisis, and the Air Force scrambled planes to search the route. Ten hours after takeoff, an hour past when the plane would have run out of fuel, it was assumed they had crashed.

“The chances of finding any survivors now are about one in infinity,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Theodore R. Milton told the press, likely to the horror of hopeful family and friends.

The search was one of the largest in aviation history. More than 1,300 people and 48 aircraft combed 144,000 square miles. Aside from a large piece of driftwood and some tubing with no link to the plane, searchers found nothing. The plane had vanished forever.

In the official incident report published a year later, the Civil Aeronautics Board had few answers. The plane was airworthy, the crew was qualified, weather wasn’t a factor, and protocol, other than the mattress incident, appeared to have been followed by the book. Whatever happened occurred in an instant since the plane never sent a distress signal.

“A summation of all relevant factors tends to indicate that the aircraft was destroyed in flight,” the report ruled. “However, due to the lack of any substantiating evidence the Board is unable to state with any degree of certainty the exact fate of N 6921C.”

In that absence of certainty, theories have proliferated for decades. Many believe the flight was sabotaged, perhaps in Guam where the plane was left unattended on the tarmac. At the time of its disappearance, Flying Tiger Line Executive Vice President Frank B. Lynott told the media that if the plane did indeed blow up mid-air, it would validate the company’s suspicion it was tampered with.

“So far as blowing completely apart, there’s nothing that powerful aboard,” he said. “The fuel tanks just don’t go off like that.”

Modern Flying Tiger Line historians have pointed instead to friendly fire, suggesting the plane may have been accidentally shot down (which would help explain the military’s extreme caginess about the situation and perhaps the moving vapor trail seen before the explosion). And then there’s just plain old mechanical failure. According to Bureau of Transportation statistics, there were 429 fatal accidents involving U.S. planes in 1960. Flying Tiger Line was ramping up operations in Vietnam, too, and it’s believed maintenance standards dropped as a result of increased demand.

About the only scenario that’s been ruled out is a hijacking — it would take quite the force to subdue an entire plane full of Army Rangers.

Because the plane was chartered from a civilian company, the U.S. government and military continue to deny any knowledge of the plane’s fate. Over the years, records requests to the Army, Air Force, Defense Department, National Archives, State Department and CIA have yielded nothing. A historian at Travis Air Force Base told Stars and Stripes in 2003 he was upset to find no documentation in their archives about the flight.

This iron wall of silence has tormented the victims’ families, who still live every day without answers. They’ve been repeatedly denied requests to add their loved ones’ names to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., as the government considers the deaths to be outside of the combat zone.

A small bit of solace comes on May 15, when the families are set to gather in Columbia Falls, Maine, to unveil the first memorial to the lost flight. The land was donated by Morrill Worcester, founder of Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit that helps fund and organize wreath-laying on Veterans’ graves around the world. For many, it will be the first time they’ve ever met other surviving family members.

Among them will be Jennifer Kirk, the niece of Spc. Donald Sargent. The day he left for Travis Air Force Base, "he just kept coming up (to his sister-in-law), saying, 'I just need one more hug before I go. I just need one more hug,'" Kirk recalled to CNN. "Then he'd go downstairs to go to the vehicle that was picking him up and he'd come back upstairs. 'I just need one more hug.'

"So he knew something, but he didn't say."

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Dale Edge never talked about the war but always wondered what happened to that wounded Vet he helped save that awful day in Vietnam

ASHLAND, Ill. — There is never an easy route to the places that matter.

And on this day, two men are going in a new direction.

The destination is Ashland, Illinois, a farming community about 120 miles and decibels from St. Louis.

"I've always liked farming because it's you're your own boss," said Dale Edge.

Edge lives and works on 400 acres. He's been farming this land practically all his life except for the time when he traded in his work boots for army boots.

The year was 1968, and Dale Edge was drafted to fight for his country in Vietnam.

"I knew probably it was a good likelihood I would get drafted. I wasn't going to volunteer, but I wasn't going to run either," he said.

But the Vietnam War was like a wound that never healed. Soldiers bravely faced the enemy only to come home and face scorn as soon as their plane landed.

"There's guys kissing the ground, glad to be back, glad to have made it," he said. "Then, another 30 feet from where they were doing that, people behind a fence started screaming and hollering and stuff that I ain't going to repeat it."

That's why Edge took his feelings and his stories and buried them. Except for one.

One story that needed an ending.

And recently, after getting his first smartphone, he finally decided to solve the mystery by doing some checking on the internet. Then, he got up the courage to make a phone call.

Fred Kjorlien answered.

"I said, 'Dale I got to be really honest, I don't know who you are.' He said, 'It's been 53 years so I can understand that.'"

Kjorlien lives in Minnesota and works for Great Steps, a company that makes prosthetic and orthotic devices. And he's pretty popular with his clients.

"They like people that are amputees because you can feel some of the stuff," he said. " And some people think 'Oh you got one, then I'm OK.'"

Kjorlien lost his leg during a firefight in Vietnam.

"I got behind a tree dropped down and this leg was up and I was shooting," he said. "And an RPG hit the side of the tree."

Edge remembers that attack.

"Before the medics got there, I put a tourniquet on Fred's leg," he told us.

And then he remembers keeping Fred calm and helping to get him on a medical evacuation chopper.

"He said, 'I'm going to beat you home,'" Edge recalled. "I said, 'I'll never forget that Fred.' And I didn't."

They were in the same platoon but didn't know each other that well before that day. Still, for more than half a century, Dale Edge wondered.

"I didn't know if he lived. I wanted to know if he made it or not," said Edge.

Thanks to one phone call, his empty feeling was now filled.

And then his heart was filled, when Fred drove more than 560 miles for a reunion more than 50 years in the making.

So much time and distance meant so little as soon as the two men started talking. They would spend the weekend excavating memories.

"It was an answer to a prayer if you want to know the truth," Edge said. "I don't know how many times I prayed for that man."

Remembering the hard days is always easier with an old friend.

For the first time since they've been back from Vietnam, these two Veterans finally get a welcome home.

"It means a lot because I love him," said a teary-eyed Kjorlien.

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HARRISON COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — Vietnam War Veteran Paul Helvey has not received mail at his Cynthiana home for about a year now.

USPS stopped delivering after a carrier was attacked by a dog on his street back in June 2021.

After that, people in the area had to go pick up their mail at the post office about a mile away.

For Paul, who is legally blind and can't drive, that was not an option.

Instead, his nephew, Tim, made the trip to the post office daily. He had to do this because Paul receives his life-saving medication through the mail.

Tim reached out to LEX 18 to get help with the problem. We reached out to USPS and a spokesperson explained that a community mailbox (CBU) would be installed by early April.

USPS said delivery to the CBU started earlier than expected on March 16th.

But there's still a problem.

It's located at the end of Paul's street, which is riddled with potholes. For a man who is legally blind and deemed catastrophically disabled, it simply does not work.

"It might as well be 20 miles up the road because he can't do it and he ain't gonna do it," Tim said. "I mean he's not physically capable of walking up there and getting it and then walking back. He's just not."

Because of that Tim put in a request for door delivery. Tim said he had to collect the proper documentation from Paul's doctor to apply.

Tim said the local post office has contacted him about where a new mailbox could be installed at the end of Paul's sidewalk. But he contends that doesn't work either. Paul would have to climb up and down his steps to get his mail which is something he says could be a hazard in the winter.

"The mail needs to be delivered in the same place that they've been delivering it for years," Tim said.

This mailbox is about 20 feet from the street.

Before the dog attack, this is where mail was delivered for years. Tim and Paul are at a loss as to why that can't resume.

"The mailman doesn't have to climb steps," Tim said. "He opens it up and puts it in."

We contacted USPS about this and we were told they had no additional information for us.

Further complicating the issue, Tim said the current mail carrier actually turns around in the cul-de-sac directly adjacent to Paul's home after delivering to the CBU. He said he believes making a quick stop to bring mail to Paul's box on his porch should be simple since he already passes by it every day.

"It's outrageous," Tim said. "It's getting stupid."

He added that he feels like he is being fought every step of the way. For nearly a year now Tim has put his life on hold to help Paul out and now he's considering legal options to fight back.

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A trip to the Harold L. Bradley American Legion Post 584 in Marion this weekend takes visitors into history.

“I want to feel like they go back in time to get an idea about the Vietnam War,” Chuck Van Voorhis, 74, said. “This is the way I remember it.”

Van Voorhis, who is a Veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, spent 13 months in Vietnam, and his memories are a central part of the Vietnam War Experience Traveling Museum on display in the Legion’s banquet hall.

The museum showcases a wide variety of memorabilia, including uniforms from all U.S. military branches, weapons, and photos, along with more than 18 displays featuring scenes ranging from Marine boot camp to the experience in the jungle and encounters with the Viet Cong fighters.

Students from several schools have taken free tours this week, which is the first time Van Voorhis and his wife Annette have set up the annual museum since the pandemic.

The idea started as a Vietnam Awareness School involving school visits and talks with a local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America in the 1980s, but when that chapter closed, Van Voorhis said he took it over with some sponsorship from the Legion.

“This is the 35th year we’ve been doing (this). We’ve put thousands and thousands of kids through this school,” Van Voorhis said. “It’s easier to talk to kids about something as harsh as war when you can show them things.”

He and Annette have accumulated their extensive collection through personal items, donations, military surplus stores, thrift stores, and a recent trip back to Vietnam, Van Voorhis said.

“It’s our life, I guess,” Annette said with a smile. “It’s therapy for him. I support him 100%.”

While the focus has always been preserving and sharing the history of the Vietnam War, Van Voorhis said it’s also become a way to help with his PTSD.

“Some Veterans when they were in Vietnam, they’ve seen different things, like you see around the room, like munitions and guns, and they haven’t seen anything since. I see it all the time,” he said while also crediting his wife for her help.

“She keeps me kind of going on the on the straight and narrow,” Van Voorhis said.

The Ohio Department of Veterans Services has recognized his commitment to educating more the 35,000 students. He was inducted into the Ohio Veteran Hall of Fame in 2015.

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Bill Moore has no regrets joining the U.S. Navy to fight in the Vietnam War.

“I will never regret going into the military,” the 73-year-old New Jersey resident said during the annual gathering of six Navy buddies held in late October at the home of Chuck and Jan Smiley of Newport. This year's reunion was Oct. 23-26.

“A lot of good memories, laughs and tears,” said Cam Borruso, 73, of New York. “We got to see the world – Asia, Australia, Philippines, Guam and Pearl Harbor.”

All of the six were electrical mechanics who served on the USS Hopewell destroyer that was commissioned in 1943 and served as their home away from home during multiple six-month-long tours overseas between 1968 and 1971.

“We kept the ship running,” said Mike Creech, 75, of Texas, who came the farthest for the reunion. “You might say we were the unsung heroes.”

Creech said he was the only one drafted into service. The rest of the friends – Larry Cox, 74, of Lapeer, MI, and Leo Labbe, 75, from Akron, Ohio – all enlisted.

“Nobody wanted to be drafted,” Smiley said. “We went on our choice. It was hard, a good character-building experience. You learned how to grow up and wear big-boy pants.”

“It taught us patience,” said Borruso, who enlisted at 17. “It was something I always wanted to do. I lost one of my cousins in Okinawa in World War II.”

Every fall, the six get together for a few days at the Smiley home and reminisce about their war experiences, sleeping in close quarters, bombings and current events in the world.

“We mostly talk about old times and rag on each other,” Creech said with a laugh. “We can’t remember what happened yesterday, but 50 years ago we can.”

“There’s never a lull in the conversation,” Borruso chimed in.

After meeting in 2015 at the Smiley home for the first time in over 50 years since they left the military, some of them got emotional when the first reunion ended, said Creech.

“When you live together like we did, you get close,” Smiley said. “We slept in the same compartment three racks high with our foot lockers on the floor. We slept head to toe to not spread disease. The guy next to me, his feet were about a foot from my head. Today’s ships aren’t like that.”

They recalled their ship at sea firing missiles and shells 10-12 miles away at targets that included Viet Cong supply depots and troop concentrations.

“We’d drop anchor and our guns would rotate and shoot day and night,” Smiley said. “Our salvos were most accurate. We got a lot of commendations for our accuracy.”

Citing a book published about the USS Hopewell, Borruso said the vessel had 67 firing missions recorded in 1968-69 in the West Pacific Ocean while encountering Russian ships a dozen times. He said naval gunfire is “most accurate” among the Armed Forces.

“We were constantly moving” to position itself for the bombings, Moore said.

Labbe remembered one Viet Cong bunker that was targeted on a Saturday.

“We wiped it out from the face of the earth,” he said emphatically.

On the less serious side, the men recalled fun shaving cream fights, initiations, sea bat jokes and other comical pranks that occurred on board. Liberty weekends and drinking with their buddies were among the good times shared.

“That’s what kept us sane,” Borruso said. “It’s a wonder we won the war… did we win? They called us every name in the book when we came back.”

Moore remembered getting spit on when he returned and being called “baby killers.” Borruso said the nation’s acceptance of Vietnam War Veterans changed for the better about 10 years ago with more people acknowledging the many trials, difficulties and trauma soldiers and sailors faced. Moore said all but Labbe was exposed to Agent Orange, a defoliant spray that caused cancer in thousands of war Veterans.

“Almost all of us got some form of disability” from work because of Agent Orange, Moore said. “If the wind blew, you got it. Leo may have escaped it because he was always below deck.”

Cox said he’s currently dealing with diabetes, one of the lingering effects of Agent Orange.

The USS Hopewell was 376 feet long, 39 ½ feet wide and drew a draft 17 feet deep.

“We were the fasted destroyer on the West Coast,” Labbe beamed with pride. “We could sail 41 knots.”

The ships don’t last forever. In 1972, 30 years after it was built, the Hopewell was destroyed, but it didn’t go down without a fight, the men said.

“They hit it with a missile off the coast, but that wasn’t enough,” Creech said. “They had to hit it again. It’s down at the bottom of the ocean near San Clemente Island.

“We felt bad” after hearing about it later, Smiley said. “That was our home. You got attached to each other."

All of the men sat at the kitchen table wearing dark T-shirts Borruso obtained online with a photo of the Hopewell emblazoned on them. Moore found caps, Cox got mugs and Creech obtained fountain pens with the Vietnam ribbon on them. All nice souvenirs of the ship to remember it by in between reunions.

Cox brought his wife, Judy, and daughter, Becky, with him to Sunday dinner with the guys. The two ladies kept Jan Smiley company while the men carried on. Jan spent nights with her son, Scott, a Monroe firefighter. She said she enjoys the men's get-togethers when she is with them.

"Oh yeah, I get a big kick out of it," she said. "I love seeing them together. I don't know where they come up with (so much) to talk about."

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – With Memorial Day upon us, the annual “Day of Remembrance,” hosted by the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Thomas J. Tori Chapter 421, will take place Sunday, June 12.

The ceremony, which is always conducted on the Sunday before Father’s Day, will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Staten Island Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park at the corner of Manor Road and Martling Avenue in West Brighton.

The “Day of Remembrance” will honor the 85 Staten Island Veterans who lost their lives in the longest military conflict in United States history.

“Let us not forget them, their families, and all they have sacrificed for our country,” a flyer from the VVA 421 stated.

Chapter 421 President, Gene DiGiacomo expressed that updated, digitalized photos of the 85 will be hung on the fence for the families, as it is a day for them.

While there will be dignitaries, elected officials, family members, and friends, the VVA chapter is inviting everyone to join the event.

For additional information on the event or Chapter, check out the website, which lists the 85 names.

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Americans are flocking to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from May 11-13 to thank Vietnam veterans for their service and sacrifices 50 years ago.

The national “Welcome Home” event was planned by the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration, a congressionally-authorized organization launched by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to honor and pay tribute to Vietnam-era veterans, prisoners of war, and MIAs, as well as their families.

The opening ceremony begins May 11 at 11 a.m. with a flyover of four Vietnam-era Huey helicopters and a ribbon-cutting of “Camp Legacy,” on the west end of the Mall, where attendees can explore static helicopters and vehicles, military museum displays, and more than 40 exhibit tents.

The three-day event will also feature drill teams and service bands playing live music, the U.S. Army Golden Knights conducting daily precision parachute drops, and Vietnam veterans gathering at “rally points” to honor fellow service members who remain unaccounted for.

Eight panel discussions will also take place, focusing on different historical aspects of the war. Topics range from the ongoing mission of accounting for MIAs to the legacy of servicewomen and journalists during the Vietnam War. The full schedule of events can be found here.

One panel, organized by the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA), is hosting six Vietnam veterans, all retired four-star officers from different military branches: former Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman; Army Gen. Dennis J. Reimer; Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan; Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen; National Guard Gen. Craig R. McKinley; and Coast Guard Adm. James M. Loy.

“Some 2.7 million Americans veterans served in Vietnam. Many returned home wounded, physically and emotionally, only to face further injury and insult from the very citizens they had served,” said AFA President & CEO retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright. “The observance and ‘Welcome Home’ now may be 50 years late, but it is nonetheless welcome and deserved. Together, we as a people owe our veterans a debt of gratitude. As Americans we must all recognize the sacrifices made by those who serve their nation. The men and women who served in Vietnam—and those who did not make it home—must be recognized as the true heroes that they are.”

The commemoration ends the afternoon of May 13 with a crowning “Welcome Home” concert. The full-stage celebration will pay tribute to all Vietnam veterans and families with live music and multimedia entertainment from Broadway star Jon Hacker, TV star Lauren B. Martin, The New York Tenors, country music performer and U.S. Naval Academy graduate Chris Nurthen, and The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own.”

The commemorative event is open to the public, but those who cannot attend in person can livestream the May 11 opening ceremony and May 13 “Welcome Home” celebration on the organization’s Facebook page.

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President Ronald Reagan wasn't coming because of what the White House called "security concerns" and so it fell to a veteran who had been a prisoner of war for more than eight years to represent the administration at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Nov. 11, 1982.

Retired Navy Cmdr. Everett Alvarez, the first U.S. aviator to be captured by the North Vietnamese when his A-4 Skyhawk was shot down in August 1964, took on the task of speaking at the dedication with some doubts about the memorial's design.

But his main concern was with how veterans, and the nation, would react to a shiny black granite wall dug into the earth that listed the names of more than 57,900 U.S. service members who lost their lives in a divisive conflict, a number that would grow over the years.

"The Wall" has since become the most visited memorial in Washington and maintains its iconic grip on the national conscience. But back in 1982, "Oh yeah, I had concerns. It was a tumultuous time," the 84-year-old Alvarez recalled in a recent phone interview with Military.com.

In more normal times, the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, known as the Veterans Administration back then, would have been the logical choice to represent the government at the memorial's dedication in the president's absence, but VA Administrator Bob Nimmo had resigned abruptly in October 1982 after enraging veterans with his comments and conduct in office.

He had called veterans organizations "greedy," and written off the aftereffects of Agent Orange as cases of "a little teenage acne."

Nimmo "had basically been run out of town," said Alvarez, who had been confirmed in July 1982 as deputy administrator, or No. 2, at the VA.

It was his job to go to the dedication despite his misgivings with the design by Maya Lin, a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate architecture student, whose concept was chosen in an arts competition.

"At the time, I had to deal with this trench. Initially, I thought it was unkind," Alvarez said of the memorial's black walls, which extended along a walkway and reached out to grasp at ground level.

The unconventional design broke with what many thought of as war memorial tradition -- white marble columns in a Greco-Roman motif, or maybe the great man on a horse.

"To me, it was representative of how veterans were being depicted in the media and Hollywood -- in other words, losers, drug addicts, homeless, living in the woods," Alvarez said, and that was not how he viewed Vietnam veterans.

"They gave their lives; they did their jobs," he said. "They were asked to go, and a lot of them got drafted, a lot of them volunteered. And they went and did their jobs, and it was basically to preserve freedom. You can argue one way or another whether it was successful."

Some of the commentaries from pundits and Vietnam veterans also were highly critical, suggesting that the memorial was a "monument to defeat," a "black gash of shame," or a "wailing wall for draft dodgers."

But all of that angst appeared to dissolve when veterans themselves and the parents, relatives and friends who had waited in vain for the return of those listed on the walls -- in chronological rather than alphabetical order, without ranks to distinguish the officers from the privates and lance corporals -- saw the monument.

At the ceremony on Nov. 11, 1982, the crowd surged forward at the conclusion of the remarks, taking down, with the help of the National Park Service, the snow fence that separated them from the walls. They reached out to touch, chiseled into the granite, the names of those they knew -- to speak to them, to leave behind a note, or maybe their jungle boots, or a pack of cigarettes, or a can of beer.

As he watched the emotional response, Alvarez said, "I changed my view" on the memorial as he "realized how it affected the public," and what it would mean to future generations.

"What struck me was the tremendous outpouring of the people, the veterans that came for the dedication and their families," he said. "That was heartwarming. It is, I would have to say, very therapeutic in a way for a lot of people."

'We Shouldn't Have Been Able to Do It'

Veterans who come to the memorial, located off Constitution Avenue NW near the Lincoln Memorial, for the first time can find the experience overwhelming.

"I felt like I had walked into a cathedral," former Army 1st Lt. Marsha Four, a nurse who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, said of her first sight of the memorial in 1992. "At night, I came up over a rise and, all of a sudden, the wall comes up out of the earth. I literally fell down on my knees. It was so powerful to see the wall and all those names.

"It's simple, it's blunt and it's the truth," she said of the memorial. The message is that "this is what happened. This is the sacrifice we made."

Four, now 75, has been coming back to the site on the National Mall every year since 1992, and she'll be coming down from Philadelphia, where she's in a chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, for the 40th anniversary.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, or VVMF, has planned a series of events for the anniversary, beginning with a reading of the more than 58,300 names now listed on the memorial's walls on Nov. 7 and concluding at midnight Nov. 10, followed by ceremonies and speakers at the memorial on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. (More info can be found at vvmf.org.)

Former Army Sgt. Grant Coates, who served with the 78th Combat Tracker Team from September 1968 to September 1969, will be coming to the anniversary from Oneonta, N.Y. He has been coming every year since 1986, when he visited with his mother, wife and daughter.

"Personally, it's a pilgrimage to me," Coates said. He looks at the names and wonders: "Each person would have had a life, would have had a future." Every time he visits, he searches out the name of a buddy, Spc. 4 Edwin Erlin Cox Jr., to say hello. Cox was killed by a booby trap that also wounded Coates.

The memorial's reflective walls also invite engagement from visitors, and that can be tough for some veterans, said former Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class John P. Brown of Youngstown, Ohio, who ran cargo and troop carrier craft around Danang and along the coast in support of the 3rd Marine Division.

"When you see yourself reflected in that wall, it hits hard," he said. "It's tough, but you've got to keep fighting on for yourself and your family. You can't let the war take over your life. You have to seek help when you need it. I got the help, and I continue to get the help," said Brown, a former national commander of the AMVETS organization.

Then there are the Vietnam veterans for whom it is still too painful to visit the memorial, even after 40 years. Former Marine Staff Sgt. Sheldon Hartsfield, who served with the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, said that he eventually wanted to visit the memorial in Washington but did not think he was ready.

As a past Missouri state commander for AMVETS, he has visited the "Traveling Wall" version of the memorial when it comes to Missouri, and he continues to serve at funerals for veterans in the state. But "personally, it's difficult for me" to make the trip to Washington. "I'm here, I made it home," he said, but "I have not successfully defeated all my demons yet."

The wall's impact on veterans and how the memorial would be received by a nation still mired in endless debate over the war, how it was fought, and who was to blame for the chaotic withdrawal that saw Vietnamese clinging to the skids of departing helicopters, was an issue for the small and sometimes fractious group of veterans who advocated in the late 1970s for the project.

But the main concern was to get approval for a site on the National Mall and to set the politics aside. What the design would be and how they'd raise the $8 million that would eventually be needed to complete the memorial -- well, they'd figure it out.

"We were too dumb and too naïve to realize we shouldn't have been able to do it," said Robert Doubek, a former Air Force intelligence officer who would become executive director of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

"We were just junior officers and enlisted," he said, "entrusted with two acres of the most valuable land in the country" on the National Mall when Congress and President Jimmy Carter gave approval for the site.

"The whole idea was Scruggs,'" Doubek said, referring to Jan Scruggs, who founded the VVMF and was the driving force behind the effort to create the memorial. Scruggs is an enlisted Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1969 and received a Purple Heart for wounds from a rocket-propelled grenade.

At a 1979 White House Rose Garden ceremony where Carter signed the bill approving the site, Scruggs gave his vision for the meaning behind the memorial: "We do not seek to make any statement about the correctness of the war. Rather, by honoring those who sacrificed, we hope to provide a symbol of national unity and reconciliation," he said.

Shortly after the White House ceremony, the VVMF announced that there would be an open arts competition for the design and issued a booklet setting out parameters for what the artists should consider in submitting proposals.

The memorial should seek to inspire contemplation and reflection, the booklet said. "Finally, we wish to repeat that the Memorial is not to be a political statement, and that its purpose is to honor the service and memory of the war's dead, its missing, and its veterans -- not the war itself. The Memorial should be conciliatory, transcending the tragedy of the war."

In Doubek's estimation, the design by Maya Lin met and exceeded the expectations of the VVMF. "I would simply say it's had a profound effect on the soul of the country. It's a sacred place of healing, remembrance and homage for veterans, their families and all Americans," he said.

"It represents immense pain and sacrifice, and it's played a pivotal role in our country's cultural shift to separate the war from the warrior because nobody anymore puts down Vietnam veterans for the war," Doubek said.

For West Point English Professor Elizabeth Samet, whose books "No Man's Land" and "Looking For the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness" have explored the interplay and influence of war and literature on the national memory, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a place apart from monuments to previous wars.

Speaking personally, and not as a representative of the Army or the U.S. Military Academy, Samet said, "The first time I went, I remember it remaining for me the most powerful war memorial I have ever visited.

"It seems to me that Maya Lin's wall does two things: It acknowledges the sacrifice of those who fought and honors that sacrifice," she said. "It's also a monument to the real horrors of war. It doesn't celebrate, it commemorates, and for that reason I think it seems to be starkly honest.

"The names are about memory. They're about commemoration, about not forgetting," Samet added. "Most memorials have to represent the many, but this monument by mentioning, by naming all those who died, gives an individual kind of honor that one normally doesn't think of as possible in a memorial. So it's quite extraordinary for that reason."

A Place to Let Go

In his remarks at the dedication of the memorial on the afternoon of Nov. 11, 1982, Alvarez said that "many Americans today still have a difficult time dealing with that war, but no one can debate the service and sacrifice of those who fell while serving."

He regretted that veterans returning from Vietnam did not receive "the type of welcome given to the veterans of other wars or even to those of us who were prisoners in Vietnam," but with the dedication of the memorial, “America is saying 'Welcome Home.'"

As the crowd began to press forward at the close of the ceremony, Army Chaplain Max Sullivan, who received the Silver Star and Purple Heart while serving with the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division in 1968, gave a benediction that sought to address what he believed many of the veterans present were feeling.

"Standing before this monument, we see reflected in a dark mirror dimly a time that was, and we remember ourselves, our lovers, our friends, our nation," Sullivan said. "We remember our enemies, our leaders, our buddies, our families. We remember the dreams we shared, the fear and the terror we endured, the lovemaking, the frivolity, the hate and the anger, the desire for survival and its uncertainty, the desperate need to understand."

The memorial offered "a chance now to let go -- to let go of the pain, the grief, the resentment, the bitterness, the guilt. To let go of impossible dreams, old realities, lost innocence, the loss of unity, the loss of wholeness."

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Bill Ebeltoft's life could be divided into three parts: before the Vietnam War, during the war and after the war.

That's how Paul, Bill's younger brother by three years, chose to approach his obituary -- which was published in The Dickinson Press, the local paper of Dickinson, North Dakota, where Paul and Bill grew up.

Bill died Sunday. He was 73.

But, as Paul eloquently begins in the obituary, Bill first lost his life in Vietnam.

"Before Vietnam, Bill was a handsome man, who wore clothing well; a man with white, straight teeth that showed in his ready smile," Paul wrote. "A state champion trap shooter, a low handicap golfer, a 218-average bowler, a man of quick, earthy wit, with a fondness for children, old men, hunting, fast cars, and a cold Schlitz. He told jokes well."

From here, Paul takes the reader on a journey. He spends little time on Bill's actual service in Vietnam -- Paul wasn't a Veteran and didn't feel like he could personally speak to the experience, he told CNN. But it was important to him to focus on who Bill was, and what he became when he returned.

"After being discharged as a decorated hero, Bill had a rough reentry into civilian life. It is not necessary to recount Bill's portion of what is an all-too-common story for wartime Veterans, particularly those of the Vietnam era," Paul wrote in the obituary. "It may be sufficient to say that after a run at business, a marriage and while grappling daily with his demons, his mental faculties escaped him."

A 'drastically different self' afterVietnam

In Paul's retelling, though, the details of Bill's unraveling are left vague. He mentions that his "shaky grip on physical health... slipped through his fingers." He spends some time recounting his inability to comprehend the passing of time, writing "Bill denied that anyone he loved had died; could not understand why anyone would fill with gas at four bucks a gallon when "Johnny's Standard sells it for 27 cents;" and still "drove" his 1968 Dodge Charger."

"Anyone who knew Bill before (the war) would have watched as his family did in dismay, sometimes in horror even, at the decline of a talented, friendly, outgoing, intelligent man into not a lesser self... but a drastically different self," Paul told CNN.

But Paul doesn't diminish his older brother. He instead chooses to remember Bill in the way he thought of himself.

Toward the end of the piece, he writes: "Bill was always a proud man, remembering himself as he was in 1969, not as he became. Who are we to suggest differently?"

When asked about this line, Paul recalled a story about a moment that occurred between Bill and a nurse at his Veteran's home in Columbia Falls, Montana -- where he'd been staying since 1994.

The nurse had just moved to Montana from Kentucky, a fact she had mentioned to Bill. One day, while at work, she was feeling particularly lonesome and sad, for a reason Paul didn't mention.

Bill noticed. He started singing "My Old Kentucky Home." He wasn't known for his voice, but Bill had been a willing singer, Paul said.

He imagines Bill's voice must have been quiet, a little gravelly. But he went through all the verses: "Oh the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home / Keep them hard times away from my door."

The nurse was moved to tears.

"He wanted to cheer her up," Paul said, finishing the anecdote. "And if you had looked at him, you wouldn't have imagined anything behind the eyes. But there was."

Paul continued, "Who are we to say, 'What a wreckage.' We could say that about homeless people, we could say that about many, many in life who are less fortunate than me. But who are we to say?"

Paul's words have resonated with many

Since publishing the obituary, Paul has received many emails from people he doesn't know, he said. They tell him his writing touched them, speaking of their own relatives and friends with troubles similar to Bill's.

The effects of the Vietnam War, and the way Veterans were treated upon their return, have lingered with so many people, Paul said. His brother's life fell apart afterward, and his wasn't the only one.

Studies have shown that Vietnam Veterans were twice as likely than Veterans of other eras to have elevated levels of depression and anxiety. Other studies have shown that many Vietnam Veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and delayed onset is common. About 30% of Vietnam Veterans have had PTSD in their lifetime, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

"That's a sadness," Paul said, when speaking of the difficulties Vietnam Veterans faced upon returning home. "And I hear that sadness in the responses I've gotten."

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In recognition of National Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service is rolling out three tractor-trailer trucks with a message to those that served in the war: “Thank you for your service to our nation.”

The 53-foot rolling billboards include the paint scheme of vehicles from the Vietnam War, the word “Vietnam” superimposed over an American flag and a call-out to National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

“The American public didn’t understand the sacrifices of Vietnam War Veterans, and these heroes often didn’t receive the homecoming they deserved,” said Exchange Director/CEO Tom Shull, a Vietnam-era Veteran. “These trucks allow the Exchange to help properly acknowledge our Vietnam Veterans’ distinguished service.”

Exchange Corporate Communication Specialist Mario Baltierra designed the wraps to resemble vehicles used during the Vietnam War era.

“We wanted to make a connection to the Warfighters that served during that era and recognize their patriotism with the paint scheme from that time and the symbol of the draped American flag,” Baltierra said. “Most important, we wanted to thank them for their service.”

The Exchange is a 50th Anniversary Vietnam War Commemorative Partner, planning and conducting events and activities that recognize the service, valor and sacrifice of Vietnam Veterans and their families in conjunction with the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration. The truck wraps support the Exchange’s longstanding commitment to the Commemoration.

Air Force Veteran Jim Williamson, who flew B-52s in Vietnam and is aworkforce business analyst at the Exchange’s headquarters in Dallas, appreciates the recognition.

“The trucks are an amazing tribute to Vietnam War Veterans and their families,” Williamson said. “I hope it reminds Americans to remember all their Veterans and MIAs.”

The three trucks will transport goods from the Exchange’s continental U.S. distribution centers to service members throughout the country. The West Coast Distribution Center in Manteca, Calif.; Dan Daniel Distribution Center in Newport News, Va.; and the Waco Distribution Center will each have a truck in service on their standard delivery routes.

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Acting VA Deputy Secretary Pam Powers thanked Vietnam Veterans “to whom we all owe the greatest debt of gratitude” at the Martin County Veterans Memorial Bell Helicopter dedication ceremony Aug. 1 in Fairmont, Minnesota.

The ceremony, hosted by Martin County and the memorial committee, dedicated AH-1-66-F-15327, or Cobra 327, which served in Vietnam and Laos from 1968-1971.

Powers spoke of the helicopter’s missions in Southeast Asia, flying armed escort, reconnaissance and battle support. She also talked about the sounds that resonate with Vietnam Veterans, from miniguns to whirring of blades.

“I have little doubt the Vietnam Veterans among us and those who see it here in years to come still hear and feel it,” she said. “Thousands of men and women fighting in Vietnam and in other conflicts since have seen that Cobra silhouette overhead. In that, they found some measure of comfort, of relief, perhaps some measure of inspiration and salvation.”

Army records show Cobra 327 received enemy fire at least 12 times. The acting deputy secretary also told the story of Army 1st Lt. David Stinson and Warrant Officer Stephen Wilton. They landed Cobra 327 safely the last time in Laos, in spite of massive damage from enemy fire.

“They put their lives on the line for all of us”

She said the pair, along with many others who flew in Southeast Asia, deserve the nation’s gratitude.

“They put their lives on the line for all of us, and for generations to come,” she said.

Powers said the thanks also go to the crews who kept the helicopters in the air.

“We honor and celebrate the courage, determination, ingenuity, and plain grit of the tireless crews who kept them flying in and out of combat,” she said. “They are the crew chiefs, the engine mechanics, sheet metal mechanics, avionics repairmen, armament techs, test pilots, and others.

Powers said these Veterans “worked tirelessly to patch them back up, make them airworthy again so they could get back to the fight,” protecting Veterans who served on the ground

“By honoring all of them, we honor every Veteran who came before and after, and those servicemembers fighting and standing watch today around the globe.”

Getting Cobra 327 on display

Following military service, Cobra 327 went to the Kern County Fire Department in California to fight night fires. The helicopter can see through the smoke with its military infrared scanners and locate people. Once the fire department retired Cobra 327, five different states tried to acquire it.

Martin County’s Veteran Memorial Committee started restoring Cobra 327 in 2019, returning it to the likeness of 1971. The helicopter is one of several monuments that compose the larger Veterans Memorial.

Powers also visited multiple VA medical centers on the trip, recognizing front line workers for COVID-19 work.

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WASHINGTON — National Veterans organizations launched a “final push” Thursday for Congress to grant Department of Veterans Affairs benefits to tens of thousands of Vietnam War Veterans believed to be suffering the effects of Agent Orange.

The effort, led by Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif., is designed to put pressure on lawmakers to publicly support the Fair Care for Vietnam Veterans Act. The measure was added to the Senate’s annual defense bill last month but didn’t make it into the House’s version because of cost concerns, Harder said. It must survive negotiations between House and Senate lawmakers before becoming law.

“People on the other side of this issue, their position is so indefensible that they don’t want to be seen fighting against this,” Harder said Thursday on a call with Veterans groups. “Our job is to draw them out and shine sunlight on this issue.”

The bill would approve benefits for Vietnam War Veterans suffering from bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s-like symptoms — conditions thought to be caused by exposure to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange. The bill would add the diseases to the VA presumptive list, which lowers the amount of proof Veterans must provide in order to receive VA benefits.

Navy Veteran Lyle Ducheneaux, who spoke on the call Thursday, served as a machinist mate aboard the USS Blue Ridge during the Vietnam War. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2015, making him one of five Veterans from his division that have the disease, he said. Ducheneaux has undergone two operations and multiple treatments. He’s relapsed twice.

Ducheneaux applied for VA benefits but was rejected. He’s appealed that decision multiple times and is now waiting for his case to be heard by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals.

“I’m now on my third or fourth denial,” he said. “I lost track of how many times at this point. Last time I checked, I’m number 125,800 on the docket to be reevaluated again. If I’m not dead by that time, well… something might come of it.”

Harder said he wants Ducheneaux’s story – and others like it – to get the attention of lawmakers who are against the measure.

“I want to make sure everybody understands what’s at stake here,” Harder said. “Everybody talks a big game about helping Veterans, but congressmen and senators of both parties have failed to provide the support our Veterans deserve.”

Harder plans to send a letter this week to the House lawmakers who were selected to negotiate on the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The letter asks them to include the measure in the final version of the defense bill.

Further, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America and Military Officers Association of America tasked their members with calling their representatives and urging their support.

“With this NDAA, we have an incredible opportunity to make things right,” said retired Lt. Gen. Dana Atkins, CEO of Military Officers Association of America. “Veterans suffering now can’t wait for further studies like the VA has proposed, nor should they have to.”

While the VA secretary has the power to add the conditions to the presumptive list, Robert Wilkie said earlier this year that he wouldn’t make a decision about the conditions until at least the end of 2020, , when results of two more scientific studies on the issue are expected to be published.

Advocates, however, think there is already enough evidence.

In 2018, researchers with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine determined there was “suggestive” evidence linking Agent Orange exposure to hypothyroidism.

A 2016 report from the academies determined that there was “limited” or “suggestive” evidence linking Agent Orange to bladder cancer. That year, the academies also clarified that Parkinson-like symptoms should be considered as part of Parkinson’s disease, which is on the list of presumptive diseases.

Previous efforts were made by former VA secretaries to add the conditions. Under former VA Secretary David Shulkin, the agency recommended in 2016 the addition of bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s-like tremors to the presumptive list. Shulkin’s recommendation never made it past OMB. Lawmakers were told at the time that OMB was waiting on the results of more scientific studies.

OMB and Mick Mulvaney, its director at the time, objected to the recommendation. In addition to a lack of scientific evidence, OMB had concerns about the budget implications of expanding access to VA benefits to the thousands of Veterans diagnosed with the conditions, Military Times reported, citing emails between Shulkin and OMB.

Seven national Veterans groups wrote to President Donald Trump in February and asked him to intervene. They criticized the VA for dragging its feet.

It’s uncertain when negotiations on the annual defense measure will be finalized, but it’s likely to happen around the end of the year, Harder said. Trump has threatened to Veto the bill if it includes language that would remove Confederate names from military installations.

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A decorated military Veteran who served in Vietnam and Iraq has claimed that his prosthetic legs were taken away after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would not cover the cost.

Jerry Holliman, 69, told the Clarion Ledger that he was in his room at the Veterans Home in Collins, Mississippi just a couple days before Christmas when a man walked in and took away his prosthetic limbs. According to Holliman, the VA said it would not cover the cost of the limbs, while Medicare said there'd be a copay required.

"Medicare did not send me to Vietnam," Holliman, who received Bronze Stars in both wars in which he served, told the Ledger in an article published Thursday. "I was sent there by my country...with the understanding that if something bad happened to me, that it would be covered by the VA."

Matthew Gowan, a VA spokesperson, told Newsweek that the claims were "highly misleading."

The newspaper reported that Holliman received his prosthetics in August from the national company Hanger, which produces them. Holliman said, however, that after he received a few training lessons from Hanger staff, he was told the VA would not cover the cost and to check with Medicare.

According to Holliman, the Medicare paperwork said there would be a copay, and Holliman did not want to pay since he expected the VA to cover the costs in the end.

Holliman said that a man then came to him at the Veterans Home on December 23 and requested that he sign paperwork for Medicare. After Holliman refused, the man took away the prosthetics.

VA spokesperson Matt Gowan said that "VA's Prosthetic & Sensory Aids Service, which also has more than 600 local contracts with accredited orthotic and prosthetic providers, stands ready to deliver comprehensive support to optimize health and independence of our Veterans. If eligible Veterans do not wish to take advantage of these services, VA is unable to intervene and correct issues arising with personal purchases."

William C.F. Polglase, a press officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services referred Newsweek to a website link outlining how Medicare covers prosthetic limbs when reached for comment.

"Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) covers artificial limbs and eyes when your doctor orders them," the website information said. "You pay 20 percent of the Medicare-approved amount, and the Part B deductible applies." It also noted that the "specific amount" an individual would pay depends on factors such as: "other insurance you may have," "how much your doctor charges," "whether your doctor accepts assignment," "the type of facility" and "where you get your test, item, or service."

"Hanger Clinic does not take back prosthetic devices after final delivery to a patient has been made," Hanger spokesperson Meghan Williams told the Ledger. But she noted that "final delivery" of prosthetics would only be complete after "a patient has signed a verification of receipt that allows a claim for payment to be submitted to the applicable insurance payer."

Newsweek has reached out to Hanger for additional comment.

Holliman's prosthetics were returned to him on January 2, after he met with a photographer and a reporter. He said that he still doesn't know why they were taken and then returned, but suspects it was because he reached out to the media.

However, adjustments are required as Holliman can't currently walk on the artificial limbs. He said the man who returned them said they would not be adjusted by Hanger until they were paid for.

High healthcare and insurance costs have taken center stage in the Democratic presidential primary, with the leading candidates divided over the best path forward to address soaring costs, high copays and uncovered treatments.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the leading progressive candidates, have advocated for significantly expanding Medicare to all Americans, while also greatly limiting the role of private insurance. Sanders has repeatedly noted on the campaign trail that he would expand Medicare to cover dental care, while also getting rid of copays and other costs under current insurance plans. The senator has often pointed out that most other wealthy and developed countries have similar government healthcare programs to the one he and Warren are proposing, which often result in better healthcare outcomes and lower costs than what currently exists in the U.S.

"Medicare for All means: - No premiums - No co-pays - No deductibles," Sanders wrote in a September tweet.

More moderate proposals by fellow candidates Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden advocate for expanding Medicare to cover more Americans, while retaining a significant role for private insurance. Buttigieg has dubbed his personal proposal "Medicare-for-all who want it."

Whether any of the Democratic candidates' proposals would address a problem like the one facing Holliman remains to be seen. For now, he just wants to be able to return to his home, but can't without being able to walk with his prosthetics.

"I was here for one thing — to get my prosthetic legs, learn how to walk in 'em, and go home," the Veteran told the Ledger.

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"Immediately, [in my mind] it's not 'I'm going to get killed.' It's 'if I don't go up there, these guys will die.' There's no second-thinking, you just do it," DeRuggiero told Army Times.

On Thursday, DeRuggiero received a Silver Star for his bravery in a small conference room crammed with two to three dozen people in a congressional office building. It was the culmination of a long effort by his former leaders to properly recognize his actions.

The description of DeRuggiero's heroics June 17, 1968, leap off the award citation's page. The fire team leader of 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, C Company, 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Corps, fought "with total disregard for his own life for more than five hours" to protect three wounded soldiers. He fought off flanking attacks, provided care and assurance, and despite his own wounds did not withdraw to safety until the last of the three endangered paratroopers had been evacuated.

Like so many citations, it still doesn't capture the full story.

'I'm screwed'

DeRuggiero, drafted in 1966, said Vietnam felt like a different world. He said men in his unit referred to home as "the world." His unit faced "horrendous conditions; we lived like animals," receiving supplies of food, socks and ammo every three weeks and little else. During his year in Vietnam his unit almost never saw the rear. The war was chaos, and one couldn't rely on any particular strategies to deal with the life-threatening scenarios that emerged regularly, and often suddenly.

"It was more survival than it was a purpose to fight in a war. Realizing later on, in my opinion, it had very little to do with freeing a people. There was a civil war there, no one wanted us there," he said. "So now what we were left with was the guy next to you and how we were going to live through this and be proud of what we've done."

That shared adversity, survival mentality and brotherhood would factor into his decision to risk his life to save others.

DeRuggiero's company had just engaged in an assault on a Viet Cong base camp near Bao Loc; eventually uneven numbers forced the company to retreat. DeRuggiero said he was last to retreat, but before he could leave the area he saw uniforms he knew were American. One of the three was trying to resuscitate the other, he said, and a third, wounded in the stomach, was on the ground nearby.

"He went out to help this wounded person. He was pretty much alone. He was alone," Davids said.

DeRuggiero fought off Viet Cong for hours with "hand grenades and well-aimed M-16 fire," the citation reads. Davids said at times "he hovered over" one of the wounded. During the battle DeRuggiero himself was wounded twice: He took grenade shrapnel in his hip area, and a rifle bullet ricocheted and hit his calf, though the slowed bullet "didn't go all the way through," DeRuggiero said. He called his wounds "light"; he'd spend eight days in the hospital after the battle. But for a while it looked like he'd never get to a hospital.

Hours in he was hiding behind a termite hill about 2 feet tall. He said he saw a Viet Cong with an AK47 approach from about 30 feet away. He aimed his gun — which turned out to have a broken firing pin.

"I pointed at his head and pulled the trigger; nothing happened. Just a click. And he heard the click. And my heart was pounding. So I says, oh, I'm screwed," DeRuggiero said.

He ejected the round. He said that while the sounds got his adversary's attention, the other bodies, partial obstruction of his position and other gunfire made him a little more difficult to find. So he aimed again. Click. He cleared the chamber and tried a third time. Click.

"Now he's probably 12, 13 feet away from me. I'm not going to get captured. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to die fighting," said DeRuggiero, who was angry after watching several friends die. "I say goodbye to my parents, say goodbye to my brothers and sisters. And say I'm going to kill him."

He had a knife hidden under his chest, ready to attack when the man got close enough to realize he was still alive. He had smeared blood from his wound onto his face to appear dead. Then he felt something: the heavily used barrel of an M16, largely buried by an earlier explosion, burned his arm. He pulled it out, saw it didn't have a clip in it, and acted fast.

"I popped in a clip and I blew him away," he said.

Not too long after that, reinforcements including air support arrived; that allowed enough breathing room for the group to evacuate. Davids said nearly the entire platoon of about 30 paratroopers were either killed or wounded in the fight. Two of the three men DeRuggiero risked his life defending died, but one survives to this day.

Unique camaraderie, belated recognition

The camaraderie that led DeRuggiero to fight also pushed the effort to recognize him.

Davids submitted his recommendation to award DeRuggiero from the field. When he returned to the rear, he said, no one had seen it. He put it back in the system, but it was rejected. He said the explanation made clear no one had read it because it didn't make sense. After spending so much time in confined spaces and facing hell, the intimate brotherhood was not going to allow DeRuggiero's fellow soldiers to just let it go.

After the war, they spent decades trying to find a way through the bureaucracy. Meanwhile DeRuggiero left the Army in 1969 and went on to work as a gemologist and then a carpenter. But he remained close to his former comrades in arms.

"Coming home afterward, I was never able to achieve that kind of camaraderie in a workplace, which was disappointing to me. It's unfortunate. You can accomplish so much more when you work together as a coherent team," DeRuggiero said.

The most recent effort to recognize him came when Brewster, the company commander and a Colorado resident, contacted Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and, in Gibson's words, "wouldn't take no for an answer." On Jan. 4, the Army signed off on the upgrade.

At the ceremony, Gibson, a retired colonel with more than two decades in the Army before his election to the House in 2010, said he'd seen his share of firefights but nothing like what DeRuggiero experienced. The former commander of the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, occasionally broke up during his speech, and paid tribute to those who had died in the war. He said that although Vietnam constituted just a bit over 1 percent of DeRuggiero's life, it had an outsized share in defining him, as it did for many others.

"Every soldier wonders how they'll do in an especially difficult situation. Sometimes they'll go their whole life wondering. Stan will never have to worry about that," Gibson said to the audience. "We will never be able to fully repay you. We will never be able to adequately recognize you. But we will be able to say thank you."

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After graduating from the University of Georgia, Charles Beckwith turned down a chance to play football for the Green Bay Packers. He chose instead to serve his country in the Army. He deployed to Vietnam with the 7th Special Forces Group in support of Operation Hotfoot, a covert mission to train and advise Laotian military forces.

Origins of what would become Delta Force

When he returned from Vietnam, Beckwith joined an exchange officer program and led members of the British Special Air Service on counterterrorism operations in Malaya. There, he developed the idea for creating Project Delta, a Special Forces counterintelligence detachment. He created a selection process to find the right candidates, and then assumed command of its operation in South Vietnam.

While serving with Project Delta, Beckwith took a 50-caliber bullet to his abdomen, putting him in such a critical condition that the surgeons deemed him as beyond saving. He made a full recovery.

When promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Beckwith returned to Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, where his unit fought to establish Fire Base Bastogne.

After being promoted to colonel, Beckwith became the commandant of the Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.

On Nov. 19, 1977, Beckwith co-created Delta Force to address the increasing threat of global terrorism. He led the elite unit on its first mission to rescue 54 hostages held at the American embassy in Tehran. Though the mission failed, Beckwith’s recommendations led to the creation of SOAR and JSOC.

Beckwith retired in 1981, then wrote a memoir about his time creating and leading Delta Force.

We honor your service, Charles Beckwith.

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Keith Cooper, 73, was attacked in Hyde Park area of city

Two teenagers in Chicago were charged in a brutal attempted carjacking that left a Vietnam War Veteran dead of a heart attack.

Frank Harris, 18, was charged with one felony count each of murder and aggravated vehicular hijacking, police said Thursday.

The other teenager is an unidentified 17-year-old who was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted aggravated battery to a person over 60. Chicago police told Fox News it will be decided in court if the 17-year-old will be tried as an adult.

The charges come after Keith Cooper, 73, died Wednesday at around 12:30 p.m. in the Hyde Park area after two people demanded he give them his car while he ran errands.

Cooper was then beaten and repeatedly hit in the head. His family said his heart could not handle the trauma of the assault and he was pronounced dead of a heart attack at a local hospital.

He died just days before his 74th birthday and served two combat tours in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War.

"I’m just in shock. I’m still in shock because this is not the way I thought my day was going to go," said Cooper’s daughter, Kenika Carlton.

Harris and the 17-year-old are scheduled to appear in court Friday.

The crime comes as Chicago carjackings have increased over the last two years, with 2020 seeing a 135% spike compared to 2019, from 603 carjackings in 2019 to 1,416 in 2020.

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Nine U.S. Army soldiers may receive the Medal of Honor or have previous awards upgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross after President Joe Biden signed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act on Monday.

The defense spending bill, which authorizes $740 billion in funds for the Department of Defense, also contained a clause that authorized Biden to present the Medal of Honor - the United States’ highest military award - to five soldiers. Another four additional soldiers are also eligible to have their Silver Star awards upgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second highest award behind the Medal of Honor.

The provision bypasses constraints imposed by U.S. law that stipulate the awards must be made no more than five years after the deeds that earned them for the recipients.

Three of the five eligible to receive the Medal of Honor served in the Korean War; the remaining two served in the Vietnam War. All five were previously decorated:

Charles R. Johnson, Silver Star, Korea

Wataru Nakamura, Distinguished Service Cross, Korea

Bruno R. Orig, Distinguished Service Cross, Korea

Dennis M. Fujii, Distinguished Service Cross, Vietnam

Edward N. Kaneshiro, Distinguished Service Cross, Vietnam

Johnson, Nakamura and Orig earned their awards posthumously; Kaneshiro was killed in a subsequent action, according to the Military Times.

The four soldiers eligible to have their Silver Star awards upgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross all served during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993, also known as the Black Hawk Down incident. They are:

Earl R. Fillmore Jr.

Robert. L. Mabry

John G. Macejunas

William F. Thetford

The upgrades are not the first of their kind this year for Mogadishu Veterans. In July, the Army upgraded 60 medals for Army special operators who took part in the battle, most of whom were not named publicly. Those included 58 Silver Stars and two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

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A U.S. soldier who sacrificed his life to save his comrades from their burning vehicle after it was struck by roadside bomb in Iraq is soon set to become the first Black servicemember to receive the U.S. government's most prestigious award for valor since the Vietnam War after a years-long battle for recognition, Newsweek has learned.

Two sources familiar with the process have confirmed to Newsweek that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is the first Black Pentagon chief, has signed off on Army Sergeant 1st Class Alwyn C. Cashe receiving the Medal of Honor. A third source aware of the proceedings has confirmed that the White House is working to set a date for the award ceremony and that Cashe's family has been notified.

Cashe, 35, was serving with Company A, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division outside Samarra city in central Iraq on October 17, 2005, when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device that tore through the BFV and ignited its fuel cell.

"Without regard for his personal safety," his posthumous Silver Star award citation reads, Cashe pulled the driver from the vehicle after having already suffered minor injuries, and then rushed back inside three times to extract six trapped soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter as his own fuel-soaked uniform caught fire.

Cashe suffered 2nd and 3rd-degree burns over some 72% of his body and ultimately succumbed to his injuries about three weeks later at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

The translator and four soldiers ultimately died from their wounds as well, but the rest survived. Cashe was described as having "stayed a hero through it all."

"Sergeant First Class Cashe's heroic actions saved the lives of six of his beloved soldiers. He is truly deserving of this award," the citation reads. "His actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism and reflect distinct credit upon himself, Task Force LIBERTY and the United States Army."

While Cashe was swiftly awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest U.S. military decoration for valor in combat, his battalion commander, Brigadier General Gary Brito, later opted to upgrade the merit to the top Medal of Honor after he said he realized the extent of the fallen soldier's ordeal, after omitted details emerged about enemy fire and other factors that further clarified Cashe's already harrowing experience.

The campaign for this award has grown over the years to include influential allies seeking further recognition for Cashe. And all indications are that this will soon be a reality.

But the path toward Cashe's Medal of Honor has been an arduous one, spanning some three Pentagon chiefs over the course of just several months.

The first to formally back the nomination was then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who came out in support of the call in August after receiving a letter urging the move by Representatives Michael Waltz and Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Dan Crenshaw of Texas.

Protocol has it that the Medal of Honor must be awarded within five years of the heroic action, and Esper joined the chorus of voices urging a congressional waiver for Cashe.

President Trump ultimately removed Esper in November, initially stalling the momentum for Cashe's cause. But the following month, Trump signed the necessary legislature for waiving the constraints on Cashe receiving the award.

Esper's acting successor, Christopher Miller, also endorsed Cashe for the Medal of Honor, and, with restrictions lifted, increasing anticipation in early January that the ceremony would take place before Trump left office on the January 20.

The announcement never came, however, and national attention toward Washington was soon consumed by the set of mass pro-Trump demonstrations that stormed the Capitol on January 6, resulting in deadly clashes as protesters sought to disrupt the confirmation of President Joe Biden's victory by lawmakers.

With his Pentagon chief's approval for Cashe, it would be up to Biden to officiate the process. A fourth source with whom Newsweek spoke, a Veterans advocate aware of the process, confirmed that the White House was in the ceremony planning phase for Cashe's Medal of Honor.

The White House has yet to announce any date for the ceremony, but once it does, Waltz, one of the three members of Congress advocating for Cashe to receive the Medal of Honor, confirmed to Newsweek it would mark the final step in the process.

Waltz described the movement toward Cashe receiving the Medal of Honor as "fantastic."

"I think it's incredibly important to highlight these acts of heroism, and what fellow Americans are willing to do for each other," Waltz told Newsweek. "There's so much in our national discourse now about what divides us and this is something that should be unifying and should be inspiring."

Fellow Florida lawmaker Murphy, who has also championed for Cashe's, expressed excitement over the latest developments.

"I am overjoyed that Alwyn Cashe will receive the Medal of Honor," Murphy said in a statement sent to Newsweek. "I wish this amazing man were alive to receive it himself. I am so happy for his family and fellow soldiers, who fought for years to ensure that Alwyn received the recognition he earned, and it's finally happening. This nation is beyond grateful for Alwyn's service and ultimate sacrifice."

Members of Cashe's family did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Cashe's Medal of Honor citation would mark the first for a Black soldier for heroism in action since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 2014, former President Barack Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor upon retired Black Special Forces soldier Sergeant 1st Class Melvin Morris along with 23 other mostly Latino and Jewish servicemembers for their service in Vietnam as part of a congressionally mandated effort to correct citations overlooked due to historic discrimination.

Morris had previously received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for combat valor.

The latest developments in Cashe's case came as Biden puts Iraq-related affairs at the forefront of his agenda.

On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussain for the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue and Biden himself will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, part of the dynamic forged between Washington and Baghdad since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled longtime leader Saddam Hussein.

The invasion and the war that followed have elicited deep controversy over the years, but Cashe's own actions have been met with unanimous acclaim by those who've discussed his service in Iraq. In addition to his Silver Star, Cashe has been honored in other ways.

In July 2014, an Army Reserve center in Cashe's hometown of Sanford, Florida was renamed for him, as was the U.S. post office in Oviedo, where he grew up, in May 2019. In May of this year, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, with which Cashe served, announced it would rename its Marne Garden ceremony area in Fort Stewart, Georgia to Cashe Garden.

"For the many of us who knew and served with Sgt. 1st Class Cashe, we know he wouldn't want any of this. He didn't need anything named for him," Command Sergeant Major Quentin Fenderson, said at the time. "He believed the only acknowledgement he needed was that his boys were safe."

This Friday will mark the anniversary of Cashe's son, Andrew Cashe, graduating from the U.S. Army's One Station Unit Training for Infantry at Fort Benning, also in Georgia.

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Historian Rick Atkinson has become famous as one of our greatest chroniclers of war with his World War II Liberation Trilogy, and he’s off to a strong start to his Revolution Trilogy with the 2019 best seller, “The British Are Coming.”

More than a decade before he won the Pulitzer Prize for “An Army at Dawn” (Liberation Trilogy, Book 1), Atkinson caught the attention of military history readers with 1989’s “The Long Gray Line,” a chronicle of 25 years in the life of the West Point Class of 1966.

The book captures a shift in military culture. These young officers were born in the waning days of World War II and inevitably brought a different perspective that sometimes clashed with senior officers whose experiences were defined by that conflict.

Some of these men didn’t make it back, and others were instrumental in remaking the Army in the years after Vietnam. Atkinson uses their experiences to tell an epic story of how U.S. forces redefined their mission in the late 20th century.

Since the book was published, we’ve lived through a terror attack on U.S. soil and a pair of wars that lasted far longer than the conflict in Southeast Asia. Even though no one profiled in the book nor the author could have imagined what was coming, “The Long Gray Line” nonetheless offers a lot of perspective on why we’ve conducted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the way we have.

Atkinson’s Army officer father was stationed in Munich when the writer was born there in 1952. He turned down an appointment to West Point himself and built a career as a reporter at The Washington Post, winning a journalism Pulitzer for a series of articles about the West Point Class of 1966. Those articles are the basis of “The Long Gray Line.”

If you weren’t around in 1989 or weren’t listening to audiobooks back then, you probably don’t know that almost anything over 300 pages was abridged for its audio version so that it wouldn’t require too many cassette tapes. CDs helped a bit, but the unabridged audio standard didn’t hit until we started streaming and listening to books on our iPods and phones in the early 2000s.

So, here we are in 2021, and we’ve finally got an unabridged version of “The Long Gray Line.” The full 28 hours include an introduction read by Atkinson and a conversation between the author and Ty Seidule, the former head of the history department at the United States Military Academy. Narrator Adam Barr reads the book for you.

You can listen to Chapter 1 embedded below. It’s only nine minutes long, but you are likely to find yourself hooked before it’s over.

If you’re into reading instead of listening, “The Long Gray Line” is available in ebook or paperback editions.

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Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam were tested or stored elsewhere, including some military bases in the United States.

The Department of Defense gave VA a list of dates and locations of herbicide tests and storage. View dates and locations:

• In the U.S. – Herbicide tests and storage
• Outside the U.S. – Herbicide tests and storage

View all as PDF: Herbicide Tests and Storage Outside of Vietnam (Department of Defense List) (224 KB, PDF)

VA benefits

Veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange or other herbicides during service may be eligible for a variety of VA benefits, including an Agent Orange Registry health exam, health care, and disability compensation for diseases associated with exposure. Their dependents and survivors also may be eligible for benefits.

Learn more about benefits related to Agent Orange exposure.

Need help determining exposure?

VA will help determine exposure to Agent Orange or other herbicides during military service after you file a claim for compensation benefits.

Veterans may be eligible for a free Agent Orange Registry health exam. You don't have to file a disability compensation claim to receive the exam. Contact your local VA Environmental Health Coordinator about getting an Agent Orange Registry health exam.

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HR 3596, the Lawrence J. Hackett, Jr. Vietnam Veterans Agent Orange Fairness Act, will direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a task force on Agent Orange exposure. Over a half century since this toxic herbicide was first used, we still do not understand its effects or even where it was used. Contrived controversies such as whether the herbicide was used for tactical or commercial purposes have only muddied the waters. We need a full baseline review concentrating on the science and not the rationalizations to finally turn the corner of cornering this deadly substance. Too many have died already. Let's fix the problem now!

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Longtime American foreign correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, best known for his book recounting a pivotal battle in the Vietnam War that was made into a Hollywood movie, has died. He was 79.

A native of Refugio, Texas, Galloway spent 22 years as a war correspondent and bureau chief for United Press International, including serving four tours in Vietnam. He then worked for U.S. News & World Report magazine and Knight Ridder newspapers in a series of overseas roles, including reporting from the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Galloway died Wednesday morning, his wife Grace Galloway told AP, after being hospitalized near their home in Concord, North Carolina. He is also survived by two sons and a step daughter.

“He was the kindest, most gentle and loving man,” Grace Galloway said. “He loved the boys and girls of the U.S. military. He loved his country.”

With co-author retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, Galloway wrote “We Were Soldiers Once... And Young,” which recounted his and Moore’s experience during a bloody 1965 battle with the North Vietnamese in the Ia Drang Valley. The book became a national bestseller and was made into the 2002 movie “We Were Soldiers,” starring Mel Gibson as Moore and Barry Pepper as Galloway.

Galloway was decorated with a Bronze Star Medal with V in 1998 for rescuing wounded soldiers under fire during the la Drang battle. He is the only civilian awarded a medal of valor by the U.S. Army for actions in combat during the Vietnam War.

After reporting from the front lines during Operation Desert Storm, Galloway co-authored “Triumph With Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf War.” As he approached age 50, that was Galloway’s last combat assignment, but not the end of his career covering the U.S. military.

In 2002, Knight Ridder asked Galloway to return to reporting after a stint as an adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell to bolster its Washington bureau’s skeptical coverage of the Bush administration’s case for ousting Hussein.

Galloway did that by contributing, often anonymously, to his colleagues’ stories and by writing a column that often was critical of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their aides who were bent on invading Iraq.

John Walcott, Galloway’s longtime editor and friend, recounted how an exasperated Rumsfeld finally asked Joe to meet with him alone in his office. When Joe arrived, he was greeted by Rumsfeld — and a group of other high-ranking Pentagon officials.

“Good,” Galloway reported when he returned to the Knight Ridder office. “I had ‘em surrounded.”

Galloway then described how after Rumsfeld accused him of relying on retired officers and officials, he had told the group that most of his sources were on active duty, and that some of them “might even be in this room.”

Asked by his colleagues if that was true, Galloway replied, “No, but it was fun watching ‘em sweat like whores in church.”

Galloway’s contributions to Knight Ridder’s critical coverage of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq was later portrayed in another movie, Rob Reiner’s “Shock and Awe,” in which fellow Texan Tommy Lee Jones played Galloway.

“The thing about Joe is that there wasn’t a dishonest bone in his body,” director Reiner told the AP by phone. “He spoke truth to power. … We will miss him, there’s very few people who hold his level of integrity.”

Clark Hoyt, former Washington editor for Knight Ridder, said it was a privilege to work with Galloway, who he called one of the great war correspondents of all time.

“He earned the trust and respect of those he was covering but never lost his ear for false notes, as shown by his contributions to Knight Ridder’s skeptical reporting on the run up to the Iraq war,” Hoyt said.

Walcott said he was an exemplar of what journalism should be. From the People’s Army of Vietnam to Rumsfeld, no one ever intimidated Galloway other than his wife Gracie, Walcott said.

“He never went to college, but he was one of, if not the, most gifted writers in our profession, in which his death will leave an enormous hole at a time when our country desperately needs more like him,” Walcott said. “He never sought fame nor tried to make himself the star of his stories. As sources, he valued sergeants more than brand name generals and political appointees.”

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Stumpf earned America’s highest valor award for his actions on April 25, 1967 in Quang Ngai province.

Kenneth Stumpf, who received the Medal of Honor for heroism in Vietnam, died on April 23 at age 77 of pancreatic cancer. Born in Wisconsin in 1944, Stumpf was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965.

The deeds that earned him America’s highest valor award took place on April 25, 1967, when Stumpf was sent on a search-and-destroy mission in Quang Ngai province. The 22-year-old specialist was then a squad leader serving in 3rd Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division.

After a helicopter gunner opened fire on two enemy combatants, one survived and “crawled into a spider hole,” disappearing from view, Stumpf later recalled in an interview. He was given orders to “take my squad and try to find this dude.” His group had only walked about 100 meters when they found themselves being fired upon by unseen foes from all directions.

Stumpf was told by one of his men that “three of the guys were hit real bad and there was a bunker complex. So four of us then went into the ditch and we just fired away.”

The wounded Americans lay vulnerable in vegetation so dense that their comrades could not see them. Two of them were new soldiers, Stumpf said, while the third he affectionately referred to as “my old-timer.” “All the time my thoughts were of my three guys,” he said.

Stumpf and his comrades fired fiercely at the Viet Cong shooting at them from trees, bushes and spider holes all around. “I used to carry a sandbag full of hand grenades on my back, on my harness. People thought, ‘He’s crazy,’” Stumpf recalled. Yet he put the grenades to use in battle, expending all of them and most of his ammunition in two hours of fierce combat, he later said.

Prospects looked grim when Stumpf decided to risk it all to save his buddies. “I told the guys, ‘I’m going in to get my men.’” Although he could not see where the wounded were lying in the dense scrub, Stumpf charged into the open. “My mind and everything was like a blur to me,” he said, but thankfully he “guessed right.”

He located the three wounded about 15 to -20 meters ahead of him and transported them to safety one by one — alternately carrying and dragging them, and even pulling one man by his shirt to get them back to the safety of the trench where he and others had taken cover. All three needed to be medevaced. Additional men and fire support arrived. Fighter bombers and artillery fire razed the landscape and exposed the Viet Cong bunkers to full view.

By this time, Stumpf was angry. Casualties had torn apart his squad and one of his comrades had died fighting beside him, according to an article published in the July 1996 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

Armed with a fresh batch of grenades, Stumpf began charging the enemy bunkers, blazing a path of destruction. “I just started throwing grenades,” he recalled. Yet one of the enemy fighters, peering through a slit opening in a bunker, dared to mock him. “The one that I really wanted bad — I could see the guy …. He was actually laughing at me, with a grin like he got caught in the cookie jar. He had that smile on his face. [I thought], ‘“I’m getting you!’”

Stumpf’s effort nearly got him killed. After throwing the grenade into the bunker, the enemy threw it back out at him. Stumpf flattened himself on the ground and prepared to die. Miraculously, he was unharmed by the ensuing explosion. With only two grenades left to spare, Stumpf threw both into the bunker. The enemy did not get the last laugh. The battle ended in the wake of the terrific explosion.

In 1968, Stumpf was awarded the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B. Johnson. Because of his daring actions, his unit had successfully overrun the enemy position. He served for a total of three tours in Vietnam and afterwards remained in the Army for 29 years. He retired in 1994.

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LUBBOCK, Texas — This week, the Lubbock County Medical Examiner’s Office was notified that a man whose remains are still left unclaimed, is possibly a Vietnam War Veteran.

Alvin Leon Johnson, 73, died at University Medical Center on February 19. Nearly two weeks after his death, his remains have not been claimed. A childhood friend of Johnson told LCME officials that Johnson served multiple tours in Vietnam.

The medical examiner’s office sought help from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post to help locate Johnson’s DD-214, a federal form which documents a person’s military service and allows for them to be buried with full military honors.

Johnson did not register his DD-214 with Lubbock County and cannot be found.

Benny Guerrero of VFW Post #2466 stressed the importance of keeping track of that particular document.

“If you’re the family member of a Veteran, you need to find out where that DD-214 is because it’s so important,” he said. “Because when your loved one passes and he doesn’t have that document, it’s like he never served.”

Guerrero and other Veterans have stepped up to track down Johnson’s DD-214 so they can provide him with a proper burial if his service can be verified.

“They gave their lives so we can come home and I owe it to him to make sure he gets walked to the pearly gates with honor and respect,” said Guerrero.

If Guerrero and other Veterans can locate Johnson’s DD-214, they hope to have Johnson buried at the San Antonio National Cemetery.

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A missing pilot who gave his life in the Vietnam War could soon be laid to rest by his family.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said officials recently were able to brief the family of U.S. Naval Reserve Commander Paul C. CharVet on the identification of his remains.

The agency said CharVet, 26, of Grandview, was accounted for March 1, 2021 and that his family has now been given all the information, according to a release from the agency.

He was missing, presumed killed in action, for more than 50 years.

CharVet was the pilot of an A-1H Skyraider airplane assigned to Attack Squadron 215 aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard.

During a mission near Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, on March 21, 1967, his plane disappeared in an area of low cloud cover and fog a kilometer northeast of Hon Me Island.

His remains were not recovered after a search of the area.

On March 22, Radio Hanoi Broadcast reported an American aircraft was shot down the day before off the coast of Thanh Hoa Province. Officials believed it was CharVet’s plane because his was the only U.S. aircraft lost in that area on March 21.

CharVet was considered missing in action until Dec. 2, 1977, when his status was changed to “Presumed Killed in Action.”

CharVet’s name is recorded on the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with others who are unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

CharVet’s funeral date and location has not yet been decided.

Recovery

On Sept. 24, 2020, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam turned over presumed human remains and material evidence to the U.S. government.

Additional material evidence was turned over Oct. 15, 2020. The remains and evidence were then turned over to DPAA’s laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii where scientists used dental and anthroplogical evidence to identify CharVet.

The material evidence helped support their conclusion. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis.

POW/MIA

Officials also have been working to find the remains of a Burbank man who went missing during the Vietnam War.

The family of Major San D. Francisco’s has been waiting to hear that he’s been found after his F-4 Phantom jet fighter was shot down over North Vietnam in 1968.

In November, the DPAA said that it had received information about two possible sites that Francisco may have been buried, but Department of Defense excavations in Vietnam have stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Francisco graduated from Kennewick High in 1962 and then graduated from Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps at what is now Central Washington University. He was promoted to major after his death.

The U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency told the Francisco family that a man who helped bury Francisco and another who stood guard by a tunnel and watched as Francisco’s parachute came down had information about his burial that could be viable.

U.S. officials believe Francisco’s body was placed in a bomb crater, then dug up within days so photographs could be taken for Vietnamese Army propaganda because of the claim that his was the 2,000th plane shot down during the war. He was reburied in the same area.

The DPAA said required quarantines due to COVID-19 significantly cut down the windows they are given to excavate potential burial sites. It is unclear when the search will resume.

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GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX) - Homeless and diagnosed with cancer, Timothy Holliman was running out of options.

He had gone to the Veterans Administration, but a paperwork snafu had left him without benefits, despite serving for nine years.

He shared his story with WLOX News Now in hopes of finding a solution.

“I’m banging my head against the wall because I can’t get no straight answers,” Holliman said in the shade of a gutted hotel on Highway 49 two weeks ago. He was sitting in his car with his fiancé Shirli Nalley and his fledgling service dog Poncho Villa.

He has been fighting the battle for seven years, but the federal bureaucracy that is the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs could not see past a less than honorable discharge that Holliman insisted was not deserved.

A soldier’s story

Timothy Holliman Jr., 44, served two stints in the military with the National Guard and Reserves beginning in 1998. The first stint lasted seven years. He served in multiple units.

“Any time a school come up, I volunteered for it because I figured the more I could learn, the better I could serve, not only myself but my country,” he said.

He was one of those soldiers that would be assigned to a unit that needed an extra man with his skills.

“I’ve been in Iraq, Afghanistan, a few other places. Lost some friends in combat. It’s been pretty hard, but I live with it.”

Adjusting to civilian life after serving in combat can be difficult, especially for those in the Guard and Reserve.

“PTSD, depression, anxiety, insomnia and a few other things to go along with it,” he said in a casual tone that only another Veteran would understand.

After serving with the 1108th Aviation Group in Fort Knox, Kentucky, he suffered a mild heart attack while on leave and was unable to return.

“They said don’t worry about it, you’re National Guard, we’ll discharge you at home”

Instead, Holliman was inadvertently reassigned to an active-duty unit without his knowledge. When he didn’t show up, he was declared AWOL. He was arrested, set free, then taken into custody again. He eventually served two weeks in the brig. That is where he got his other than honorable discharge.

It’s a long and complicated story.

Recalled

Despite his status, he was called back to the Inactive Ready Reserves in 2005. He served two more years in Hattiesburg and Gulfport and was discharged again, this time with an honorable discharge that should have earned him VA benefits.

As he reads through his records, it tells the story of his problem: conflicting statements.

“This says uncharacterized, unknown, uncharacterized, unknown, unknown and honorable was the last one.”

Among other things, his paperwork says he enlisted in 1985 when he was 10 years old.

Whenever he went to the VA, they would reject him because of the less than honorable discharge.

Instead of offering to help correct the problem, the VA would tell him “Get my 214 and figure it out,” he said with a shrug.

A DD-214 is an essential piece of paper for any Veteran. It defines who he is for VA benefits. Without it, you don’t exist. In Holliman’s case, he had two of them that conflicted, and the VA wasn’t interested in helping him get it fixed.

“This VA has this paperwork, this VA has this paperwork,” he said in frustration.

“So how am I honorable but I can’t get no benefits?” He asked, waving one of several sheets of paper that defined his life. “I can’t get any help.

“They’re (Biloxi VA) saying until I get my 214, and I can get Tampa (VA) squared away and get them (Biloxi VA) squared away, I’m stuck. Even though it says I’m eligible for VA benefits, but I’m not, so what am I supposed to do?”

This is not unusual

WLOX put Holliman in touch with the Mississippi Veterans Affairs. Their office is not a part of the federal VA, but they do work hand-in-hand with them to help Mississippi Veterans get their benefits. They were willing to help.

“This Veteran is an example of one of those who gets stuck in the cogs of the bureaucratic wheel, falls through the cracks,” said Stacey Pickering, executive director of Mississippi Veterans Affairs. “This is not unusual that a Veteran or a family member, they get caught, they don’t know where to turn. That’s what we’re here for, navigating that federal system that is often complicated; it’s often convoluted.

“We want to be there as a state agency to help them pick up those pieces, put it together and get them the benefits that they’ve earned.

“If he has been in Iraq, Afghanistan during the global war on terror, there are benefits he’s entitled to, and we need to help him get that access, and the fact that he has contradictory paperwork, two different DD-214s, different discharge levels, we need to reconcile that to make sure that we’re assisting him.”

Holliman said he has been trying to clear up these paperwork problems for seven years. His needs became more urgent late last year when he was told that his lymphoma had returned. He needed a biopsy but can’t afford treatment.

His fiancé‘s late husband was a Vietnam Veteran who had died from lung cancer, so she had traveled this road before. When they hit a roadblock in Biloxi, they went to Tampa where her husband had been treated. Things started well, but they ran into that same roadblock of the less than honorable discharge.

“They tell me your best bet is to go back to where you originally enlisted, talk to the VA there.”

That didn’t help.

“I’ve got Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’ve got a mass in my right lung, and paying out of pocket to get in to see a doctor gets very expensive.”

Three days after WLOX News Now contacted Pickering’s office, Holliman got his DD-214s, something the federal VA was never able to accomplish. They helped him file the paperwork to correct the errors in his records. However, that could take anywhere from three months to years to make it through the bureaucracy.

In the meantime, they put him in touch with an agency that provided temporary housing. He has food and a few supplies to start a household if another agency is able to find a place for him to live.

However, his VA benefits status, and thus he access to medical care, is still in question.

“I gave this country nine years of my life,” Holliman said. “I’m nobody special. I’m not no hero, I’m not anything. I’m just a Vet that’s homeless and is trying to take care of his family, and I just need some help to get this stuff straightened out.”

If you are a Mississippi Veteran in need of assistance with getting access to your benefits, you can contact the Mississippi Veterans Affairs office at (877) 203-5632 or on the website at Mississippi VA.

“They can e-mail, they can call,” Pickering said, “And we can help navigate this system for them.”

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SPRINGFIELD — The nation’s Vietnam Veterans are honored every year on this date. It was 50 years ago the last of the U.S. troops left Vietnam.

The Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act, signed by then President Donald Trump, designated March 29 as National Vietnam Veterans Day.

News Center 7′s Xavier Hershovitz spoke with Veterans Wednesday about what the day means to them.

Michael Vanderveen enlisted into the Marines on his 18th birthday and served in Vietnam for seven months.

“I was shot, I was hit with a grenade, I got malaria, I got dysentery, and then I stepped on a landmine,” Vanderveen said.

He lost both legs, and when he came home, it was not the welcome he expected.

“We weren’t welcomed home, in the nicest way. We had things thrown at us. We were called very vile names and it was really unfortunate, not only to the warriors coming home but to the actual fact that these guys risked their lives for a year for the country,” said Vanderveen.

Vietnam War Veteran David Fuchs shared how he likes to honor fellow Veterans when he sees them.

“When you see a soldier and his wife in a restaurant, call the waitress aside and say, ‘give me that guy’s check. I’ve done it. I’ve had people do it for me. I’ve done it myself,” said Fuchs.

The Daughters of The American Revolution are hosting a wreath-laying ceremony Wednesday to honor Vietnam Veterans.

“We should be recognizing all Veterans,” Patricia Nowicki Lagonda Chapter Daughters of American Revolution, said.

By honoring these Veterans, Nowicki hopes that ceremonies like this can make up for the not-so-welcome home many Veterans like Vanderveen received.

“I hope it heals those feelings that the nation doesn’t care about me, the public didn’t care about me. I hope that people understand that they deserve their welcome home also,” Nowicki said.

Honoring those who are still with us, and the 58,220 that did not make it home, is a loss Vanderveen knows personally.

“One of my best friends over in Vietnam, Vince Venuti. He was from California. And he was killed just a week before I hit my landmine,” Vanderveen said.

Vanderveen is now the President of the Dayton Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America and went to Washington D.C., to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“Vince Manute, his name right there. And the wall is huge. What are the odds? and like I said, when I saw his name, it drove me to tears,” Vanderveen said.

That is why he says a simple thank you for your service goes a long way.

“It really feels good to have a welcome home or thank you for your service rendered to you. I’m proud of my service. I would do it again,” Vanderveen said.

Those interested can stop by any of the several Vietnam Veterans Memorials today to remember the sacrifices so many made.

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Veteran's powerful message: ‘I consider it an honor to remember'

As the nation celebrates Veterans Day on Thursday, Nov. 11, Richard Pecci, 75, a member of the New York State Senate Veterans Hall of Fame, says he considers it an honor to remember all the friends he served with in Vietnam.

Many of those battlefield friends have sadly died by now, he said.

"I consider it an honor to remember, but to this day I have failed to grieve for the friends I’ve lost because in my mind they still live," Pecci, of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, told Fox News.

"Yet I have been true to my word. I will not forget."

"I am very proud that I served my country, that I fought to protect our freedom today," he also said. "I have always felt that way."

Born in 1946 in Queens, New York, Pecci was drafted at age 20 and began basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Six months later, he joined the elite 17th Air Cavalry unit at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

"The darkness we speak of is not the darkness everyone else sees. Ours is more of a dusky haze that clouds our emotions. It’s a spirit that can take us from contentment to sadness in a heartbeat."

— Veteran Richard Pecci

In 1967, he was sent by ship, the USS Walker, to Vietnam as an infantryman. The 3rd Squadron 17th Air Cavalry unit’s main effort was enemy search-and-destroy missions, plus convoy support, he said. He served in reconnaissance and infantry.

Specialist Fourth Class Pecci possessed such superb skills in weaponry as a young man that he was often assigned to solo missions on the ground in war zones, sometimes for days at a time, according to documents prepared for his nomination to the New York State Senate Veterans Hall of Fame in 2018.

Today, Pecci serves as commander of his local American Legion post, Admiral Farrugut Post 1195 in Hastings-on-Hudson. After he returned from military service, he worked in food service, mail distribution and production for 38 years at The New York Times, from which he retired.

Pecci and his wife, Linda, have lived for decades in the lower Hudson Valley, where they raised their son, Michael. Pecci has been active in Veterans’ memorials, activities, parades and other key events for Veterans and military in his upstate New York hometown for many years.

He told Fox News, "‘Moving on’ is not and has never been an option for most of us. I applaud those who have been able to put [their combat experiences] behind them. Personally, I keep expecting the dam to break one day, but so far it has only trickled down in the quiet hours. One day I’ll be able to put it down—and that day will be when they put me in the ground."

He added, "I know some just don’t get why we as Vietnam Veterans or any combat Veterans always speak of ‘dark days’ and ‘sleepless nights.’ There is just no way to explain it to anyone who has not been in a hostile war environment."

"There’s not an explanation in the world to bring to light the loss of a friend who has died on foreign soil," he also said. "In an instant a life is removed from us. And in a lifetime, we can never forget that loss." 

Pecci went on, "We were kids planted in the middle of a war, and as kids our loyalties ran deep. We were still innocent and unknowing when we stepped into war. We were unprepared for what would be required for us to survive."

In a sentiment that’s often shared by many other combat Veterans, Pecci noted, "The darkness we speak of is not the darkness everyone else sees. Ours is more of a dusky haze that clouds our emotions. It’s a spirit that can take us from contentment to sadness in a heartbeat. It can be brought on by most anything. And it often is."

He added, "So when we speak of this, we speak of memories and a broken spirit, a darkness that seals our souls up for a time. Sure—we will snap out of it and return to what we call ‘normality’ for a while. But what we have been through is a life-changing experience. When you see the blank look or the tear, when you see the silence that has overtaken us," he advised, "just realize that this is the darkness we speak of."

He said that from time to time, people will ask him, "When were you in Vietnam?" He said that no matter how many years have passed since his service, his answer always feels like it should be, "Every day."

"Please don’t think that the things we say are just a robotic reply to gain attention," Pecci also said. "We’re not looking for sympathy — just understanding. And if you can’t understand what we mean, then just walk away. That’s a privilege that we as Veterans don’t have."

Pecci also told Fox News, "I hope my comments help those who have misunderstood us. I also hope it helps all those who have been there and ‘get it.’ For those who have served and ‘been there,’" he said, "I want them to know that you are not alone."

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RANGER – Big things are coming for Big Country Veterans.

“I don't think there is much that's coming down that's going to be more profound than what the PACT Act is going to be doing,” James Douglas said. “It's very comprehensive.”

Douglas is the associate director for the Veterans Administration’s West Texas Health Care System. On Saturday, he was the keynote speaker for the 15th anniversary of the Ranger Vietnam Memorial and used the opportunity to educate his audience about the benefits coming their way.

The Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, or PACT Act as it is known by shorthand, is expected to be signed this week by President Joe Biden. According to the VA, more than 3.5 million Veterans could've been exposed to toxic materials while serving overseas.

A PACT with Veterans

During military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was common to dispose of debris by digging a large hole, piling the refuse within and setting it on fire. Some of these burn pits were reported to be the size of Olympic swimming pools.

Without a landfill, just about anything would go into these pits. Plastics, rubber, human waste, carcasses, you name it. Often those pits burned for days.

Outside of that, there are still Vietnam Veterans living with a range of health problems caused by the defoliant Agent Orange. Add on the myriad other chances for exposure to toxic substances while serving and you can see how military life can be hazardous even for those not in a combat zone.

Michael Crouse, the executive director of the Waco Veterans Affairs Regional Office, described how the PACT Act will change the game for those Veterans affected by toxins.

“The biggest crux of this is it will open more gateways for those folks that were potentially exposed to toxins, where future or current healthcare conditions can be recognized and treated by VA,” he said.

Remembering the fallen and those who served

The Ranger memorial was dedicated August 4, 2007, with the inscribed names of nearly 200 Veterans who served during the Vietnam era, either in-country or stationed elsewhere.

Set aside on its own is the name of the only Ranger native killed in action during Vietnam, Marine Larry Joe Rogers, who died March 17, 1968 and received the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions.

“That’s my uncle,” Amanda Ponce de Leon said. “He manned a machine gun for his platoon for 10 minutes. Everyone in his platoon was able to get out except for him.

“From what I was told, he was the only one from Ranger to not come back alive.”

She held a photograph of an elderly woman - her grandmother Virgie Horton - in a chair flanked by two Marines in dress uniforms 15 years earlier when the memorial was dedicated. Sept. 4 will mark a year since her death.

"She was a Gold Star mom, she lost her son," Ponce de Leon said. "But she was proud of her son, even though he didn't come home, and loved anything to do with the Marines.

"And that meant a lot to me, you know?"

Remembering their buddies

Larry Monroe and his friend Joel Jimenez both grew up in Ranger, shipping off to Vietnam as young men.

Years later, with a plot of land along East Loop 254 sitting mostly idle, they were able to convince the city to create the memorial to honor the city’s Vietnam Veterans.

Monroe is also a member of the Disabled Veterans of America. His group, along with the Abilene Vet Center, also wanted to use the event to get the word out to Veterans about the benefits that are not only coming their way in the near future, but also the ones available to them right now.

“A lot of a lot of information they don't get in these rural areas, it was brought here today,” he said. “They came to a rural community to help us.”

A common problem for many Veterans is their own reluctance to participate in the VA system. According to Monroe, many think that when they file a claim, or look for some other kind of help, that they’re trying to get a hand-out.

“They’re not. If you're a Veteran, you earned that. Get your picture taken, get an ID card and get in the system,” he said. “The more people that file for what they really earned and deserved, the more money (VA) gets to help us.”

He added that any Veteran who hasn’t registered with VA needs to make sure their DD-214, the document stating they were discharged from the military, is copied and preferably registered in that Veteran’s county courthouse. You can’t do anything with VA without having proof of that document, and that includes military funerals.

VA to grow with Abilene

Abilene is set to experience notable growth in the coming years and according to Douglas, the VA is preparing to meet that moment.

As a Veteran using the VA Clinic next door to Target on Ridgemont Dr., I can tell you that while the care has been excellent, the space has lately begun to feel a little cramped.

“It is tight, you're absolutely right,” Douglas admitted. “So that building, it's a little over 11,000 square feet. We've got six Primary Aligned Care teams crammed in there.”

Currently there is a bid out for VA to build a new 28,000 square-foot facility at a site yet to be determined in Abilene. The clinic will then utilize both buildings as they prepare for their next move.

“We're going to get back to the table and talk about what our true need is in the Abilene market, because I think it's going to be something much bigger than the 28,000 and 11,000 combined,” Douglas said.

'Volume, volume, volume'

When the architecture and infrastructure review committee was stood up to assess the VA, Douglas said they noted VA was already occupying their three fastest-growing markets; San Angelo, Odessa-Midland and Abilene. Of those, the Key City is projected to grow the quickest.

To that end, Douglas preached “Volume, volume, volume” during his remarks.

“If you qualify for VA health care, I think we have a responsibility to get in and keep growing those numbers,” he said.

“A lot of Veterans don't know what is actually available for them out there, our doors are open. We want to actually serve Veterans, their family members and survivors out there.,” Crouse said.

Ronald Erdrich is the photojournalist and a columnist for the Abilene Reporter-News. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.

“Yeah, there's been so much change going on within VA for the better over the last 10-15 years,” Douglas added. “People who have sworn off going to VA, Veterans; I wish they'd come back in and give us another try.”

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The first time Jim Cash took the controls of a jet as a teenager, he knew he was right where he was meant to be.

Now in his 80s, the retired Air Force Brigadier General and Bigfork resident flew combat missions in Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom in the 1960s, was among the first pilots to fly the F-15 Eagle in the 1970s and later flew the F-16 Falcon as a wing commander at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base before retiring as the vice commander of the 7th Air Force in South Korea in 1991.

The survivor of several harrowing missions in Vietnam, a training flight accident and more, Cash says there has always seemed to be someone looking out for him.

“I am one of the luckiest people you have ever met,” Cash said sitting among the plane models and flight memorabilia that decorate his home office. “There has always been something or somebody sitting on my shoulder because I have definitely used up all of my nine lives in these airplanes. I will guarantee you that.”

BORN AND raised in the small town of DeKalb in Northeast Texas, Cash developed a fascination with flying at a young age. It was a fascination he took with as he attended college at Texas A&M, where he earned an engineering degree in 1962, though Cash says he really majored in something else.

“I didn’t major in electrical engineering at A&M. I never cracked a book. I majored in the Corps of Cadets. I loved that stuff,” Cash said with a grin. “I liked the uniform and discipline. I liked everything about it. When I wasn’t doing that, I was at the airport — Easterwood Field. I would do anything they wanted me to do to get an hour of flight time. I had my first solo flight at just 3.5 hours and I got my license at 35 hours.”

In September 1962, Cash was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Texas A&M and was sent on his first assignment, manning the Air Force’s radar station at the top of Blacktail Mountain, where he would watch the F-106 Delta Dart fighters that would occasionally grant him a friendly flyby.

It was during his time in Lakeside that Cash met his future wife, Martha (Marty), who lived in Somers at the time.

It was during his time at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls that Cash first faced one of the biggest obstacles of his career, a challenge that nearly grounded him before he ever took to the skies — the Air Force physical eye exam.

CASH HAD failed to achieve the 20/20 vision certification needed to get into flight school four times before nervously taking the test at Malmstrom.

“I took my exam and this kid writes down 20/20. I asked him to check it again and he smiled and said I had really tested 20/20,” Cash said. “I think it was because I had gotten away from reading books while I was out on the radar site.”

Unfortunately for Cash, the result was not the same when he took the eye test again upon entering flight school at Laredo Air Force Base in Texas, where the flight surgeon told him he had tested 20/25.

“I told him, I have been dreading this test for almost a year,” Cash said. “He told me that after I finished flight training, I could wear bifocals and the Air Force wouldn’t care. This was just a way to limit all of the people that wanted to go into flight training. He said he wasn’t going to ruin my career by writing down the wrong number, and he put down 20/20.”

Finally right where he wanted to be, Cash received his pilot wings in May 1965 and, after completing F-102 and F-106 training, was assigned to the 456th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Castle Air Force Base, California, for one year.

AFTER TRANSITIONING to the F-4C as an aircraft commander, Cash was assigned to the 12th Tactical Fighter Wing at Cam Rahn Bay Air Base in the Republic of Vietnam, where he soon found himself flying combat missions on a regular basis with the call sign of “Swine.”

“I don’t know anyone that felt scared over there. It was just another regular flying thing. You got scared when you got back down and realized what you had just flown through. When you are flying, you are just too damn busy. You are so preoccupied and so focused. Every flight was just another flight. You relied on your training to get you through,” Cash recalled. “We were trained to keep emotion out of it. We were told that if we let the enemy shooting you get under our skin, we wouldn’t last a year. All of our missions into the north were ‘one pass, then haul ass.’ That’s the mantra we lived by.”

EARLY IN his time in Vietnam, Cash engaged in the mission that would earn him the first of two Distinguished Flying Crosses he would receive during the conflict.

A Marine F-4 had taken a hit and both the pilot and radar intercept officer had ejected, but only the pilot had survived. Equipped with a radio, the pilot was on the run in a river valley full of open fields. Both Cash and his flight leader had loads of six 750-pound bombs, but they were taking 23mm ground fire while trying to clear the way for the pilot, but couldn’t tell where the fire was coming from. After making six passes dropping their bombs along the river, Cash caught sight of the enemy guns, 15 or 20 of them, under a row a trees away from the river.

“I can’t tell you the feeling I had. It was total elation. I would like to have that feeling again today. I just yelled over the radio, ‘I’ve got them,'” Cash remembered.

The fighters made one more pass, and using his M61 Vulcan rotary cannon, Cash took out all of the enemy guns. The rescue crew was then able to move in and retrieve the Marine pilot without taking a single shot of enemy fire.

Cash recalled that most of his missions involved little more than “turning several big trees into toothpicks,” but there were several that will never leave his memory, especially those during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

“We were just overrun at Khe Sanh. When I was there, the weather was bad and they were over-running our base there. Our guys were literally calling in napalm strikes right on top of themselves,” Cash said. “I wasn’t going to do it and I remember one of them telling me ‘Why don’t you just go home? You are not going to do us any good if you drop it that far away.’ It looked to me like I was burning the eyebrows off our troops where I was putting it and they wanted it closer.”

IT WAS also during his time in Vietnam that Cash learned some tough lessons about how the war was being portrayed to the American people back home.

“I remember sitting there watching TV one night and there is Lyndon Johnson looking right into the camera, with his Texas drawl, saying ‘I want to assure the American people that we have not and we will not make any type of military attack inside the nation of Cambodia,'” Cash recalled. “Guess where, for the previous two weeks, every other day, I had placed a load of six 750-pound bombs? We were going into Cambodia every day. It was routine.”

In September 1968, Cash was assigned to George Air Force Base in California as an F-4 instructor and was later assigned to the U.S. Air Force Academy as air officer commanding Cadet Squadron 18.

A few years later, Cash was afraid he was going to be passed up for promotion when his guardian angel came through once again.

“Whenever I thought my flight career was over and I was facing a staff job for the rest of my career, the telephone would ring and it would be somebody asking ‘How would you like to fly an F-15’ or later, the F-16,” he said.

Cash had been given the chance to be one of the first pilots to fly the new F-15 Eagle as he was transferred to Langley Air Force Base in 1976. There were 11 of the new fighters when he got there.

Cash spent six years at Langley, rising from the rank of major to colonel while, in his own words, working just about every job that was available.

“Langley was probably my best assignment,” Cash said. “At the lieutenant colonel level, you have 24 planes sitting out there. If you go to war, you know exactly where you are going. It’s the last rank in the Air Force that, when you have to go shoot at people, you get to lead the pack. After that, you are sitting behind a desk.”

Just when he thought he would be stuck behind a desk, Cash got the chance to fly the F-16 as he was assigned as deputy commander for operations for the 56th Tactical Training Wing at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in July 1983.

CASH WAS promoted to brigadier general July 1, 1988, and continued flying until retiring as the vice commander of the 7th Air Force at Osan Air Base in South Korea in 1991.

In all, Cash moved 25 times in his 29 years in the Air Force, but his final move was back to his wife’s home state of Montana, where he now enjoys building and flying experimental aircraft with the same confidence and swagger he had as a fighter pilot.

“Fighter pilots are vain guys, you can count on it. If they are not, they don’t need to be up there,” Cash said. “If a guy doesn’t think he is the best out there, it’s my attitude that they don’t need to be out there. If you ask me who is the best fighter pilot that I know, guess what the answer is going to be to this day? You can kind of tell by being around me that I really enjoyed what I did for a living. I would do it all again in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

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Visiting Vietnam is something not many Sailors will experience in their Navy career. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) is only the second carrier to visit Vietnam in more than 40

years. This historic port visit comes 25 years after diplomatic relations began between the United States and Vietnam.

Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Da Nang, Vietnam, March 5, 2020. Sailors experienced the culture and met with the people of Vietnam through tours, professional exchanges, and community relations events.

They volunteered at multiple establishments, including the Agent Orange Center of Da Nang, a vocational school for people affected by Agent Orange, and Dorothea’s Project Legacies Center, a children’s orphanage in Da Nang.

AGENT ORANGE CENTER

Agent Orange is a chemical that was used during the Vietnam War, and was harmful to anyone

who came into contact with it. The children of Agent Orange victims often have mental and physical disabilities. The Agent Orange Center helps these children learn in a fun and welcoming environment.

Phan Phanh Pien, the vice president of the Agent Orange Center said more than 30 children attend the school, where they learn general education, as well as vocational skills to help them later in life.

“We teach them special education living skills, and we give some of them vocational training,” said Pien. “We want to enlighten the children so they can be better, confident, and find a job in the future.”

As a gift to the children, who were not at school, Sailors painted a mural to celebrate the 25 years of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.

“We painted this beautiful 25th anniversary mural for them,” said U.S. Navy Retail Services Specialist Seaman Keeshma Singh. “The mural was to commemorate our peace with them. It was amazing, knowing that they’re going to come back and see our gift to them.”

Sailors also spent the day beautifying the school, doing yardwork and general clean-up to surprise the children when they return to class.

“I was heartbroken when I heard they wouldn’t be there,” said Singh. “But knowing that I was still able to make an impact to them had my heart racing.”

DOROTHEA’SPROJECT LEGACY CHARITY CENTER

Dorothea’s Project Legacy Charity Center is a children’s orphanage that provides schooling and shelter for children in need to ensure a better future for all involved.

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink; Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet; and his wife, Laura Aquilino, joined Sailors from Theodore Roosevelt and USS Bunker Hill (CG 52)

for a community relations event at the center March 6, 2020,.

According to U.S. Navy Aviation Ordnanceman 3rd Class Khaden D. Vaughn, when the Sailors approached the facility they were met by the excited, smiling children living at the charity center. They could not wait to talk and spend time with the people who came to visit them.

“Interacting and playing with the children felt great,” said Vaughn. “It was a very humbling experience being able to interact with those less fortunate.”

The children at the charity center spent the day with Sailors playing games, sports and making arts and crafts. They also listened to a performance by U.S. Navy musicians from the U.S. Pacific Fleet

Band.

“The kids were great, it seems like they really enjoy themselves here,” said U.S. Navy Operations Specialist 1st Class Kimberly Loughridge. “Being able to make them smile was one of my favorite parts of Vietnam.”

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Former Texas Rep. Sam Johnson, a military pilot who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before serving more than two decades in Congress, died Wednesday at age 89.

The conservative Republican, who lived in the northern Dallas suburb of Plano, died at a Plano hospital of natural causes unrelated to the coronavirus outbreak, said his former spokesman, Ray Sullivan.

Johnson flew nearly 100 combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. He was flying a bombing mission in 1966 when he was shot down and wounded. He was imprisoned in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" for nearly seven years, mostly in solitary confinement. He retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1979, after a 29-year career.

The ardent conservative and anti-communist was elected to Congress in 1991 after six years in the Texas House of Representatives. He vowed to stay a maximum of 12 years, though he served more than double that.

Johnson had been a POW with U.S. Sen. John McCain, and although they clashed in Congress, Johnson defended McCain in 2015, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested he wasn't a hero because he'd been captured. Johnson announced in January 2017 that he would retire at the end of his term. When Johnson stepped down in 2019, at age 88, he was the oldest member of the U.S. House.

"Scripture tells us `There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,"' Johnson wrote in a January 2017 letter to constituents, telling them he would retire at the end of his term. "For me, the Lord has made clear that the season of my life in Congress is coming to an end."

Another former Texas congressman, Ralph Hall, was the oldest-ever member of the U.S. House when he left office at age 91 in 2014. Hall, a Republican and World War II pilot, was 95 when he died in March 2019.

Samuel Robert Johnson was born on Oct. 11, 1930, in San Antonio. He grew up in Dallas, married Shirley Lee Melton in 1950 and graduated the following year from his hometown's Southern Methodist University with a degree in business administration.

Johnson enlisted in the military at age 20 and served during the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was 35 on April 16,1966, and flying a night mission carrying loads of napalm, when his aircraft came under heavy enemy fire over Vietnam.

The gun of Johnson's F-4 Phantom II jammed and the plane was hit. Its right engine caught fire, forcing Johnson and co-pilot Larry Chesley to eject, and the future congressman broke his arm and back and dislocated his shoulder.

Johnson recalled trudging through the jungle before being surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers who took him to the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the "Hanoi Hilton." He endured what he would later describe as 3-foot by 8-foot, rat-infested "dark and filthy cell."

"Forty-two of those months were spent in solitary confinement with 10 other fine American patriots because the Vietcong labeled us `die hard' resistors," Johnson wrote in 2015.

He recalled tapping code on the wall to communicate with other Americans being held, and that "our captors would blare nasty recordings over the loud speaker of Americans protesting back home."

While speaking on the House floor in 2003, Johnson said his faith only got stronger through captivity. He recalled how one day his captors put him against a wall and promised to execute him with machine guns.

"I started praying harder than I have ever prayed in my life. In a few seconds, the guns went click, click, click, click, click," Johnson told the chamber. "It is only because of the grace of God I survived."

He was released and flew out of Hanoi on Feb. 12, 1973. He earned a master's degree at George Washington University in Washington in 1976. He retired from the Air Force three years later and began a home-building business. He was elected to the Texas Legislature in 1984 and went to Congress following a special election in 1991, after Rep. Steve Bartlett resigned to become Dallas mayor.

Representing Plano and other conservative northern suburbs of Dallas, Johnson was known for his work on Veterans' affairs and for his efforts to bolster the financial standing of the Social Security program. He took office backing term limits, yet he stayed in Congress more than double his promised maximum of 12 years.

When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, Johnson and other Republican military Veterans in Congress alleged that Russian intelligence lured Clinton to Moscow during the Vietnam war when "I was sitting in a POW camp in Vietnam eating fish eyes and pig fat." Questions about Clinton's patriotism dogged him during his first campaign, but the allegations made by Johnson and the others were largely soon forgotten.

As a prisoner of war, Johnson shared a cell with McCain, who would later become a U.S. senator from Arizona. But the pair later clashed on political issues -- including McCain's efforts to eventually help normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam. Still, Johnson criticized Trump for suggesting McCain was no hero.

"Comments like those of Donald Trump, or any other American, suggesting that Veterans like Senator John McCain or any other of America's honorable POWs are less brave for having been captured are not only misguided, they are ungrateful and naive," Johnson wrote in 2015.

In February 2018 -- marking the 45th anniversary of the operation that led to his release -- Johnson donated a chipped green tin cup issued by his captors and tube of toothpaste he smuggled out of North Vietnam to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Johnson recalled then how he and other prisoners would communicate by tapping on the walls and how he'd hold his cup against them to amplify sounds and better hear their messages.

In his autobiography, "Captive Warriors: A Vietnam POW's Story," Johnson wrote of the cup: "For me, it symbolized our war of resistance for seven long years. It had been a means of communication and, as such, a means of survival."

Johnson's wife died on Dec. 3, 2015 at their home in Plano at age 85. He is survived by his adult daughters, Gini Johnson Mulligan and Beverly Johnson Briney, and 10 grandchildren. His son, James Robert "Bob" Johnson, died in 2013 at age 61.

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A recent ruling by the Defense Department has granted Veteran status to a group of civilians who served in Vietnam.

Specifically, the group consists of "Department of the Navy civilian special agents who served in direct support and under control of the Department of the Navy within the Republic of Vietnam between Jan. 9, 1962, and May 7, 1975."

The ruling determines that this group will be "considered as having served on active duty for the purposes of all laws administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs."

That means that they and their family members may be eligible for health, disability and burial benefits, just like military members who served during that time period. They won't, however, be eligible for any retroactive benefits. They may also be eligible for state Veteran benefits.

If the Veteran is deceased, a surviving family member may still file the application for Veteran status.

To receive benefits, these Veterans must first get a DD-214 to use when applying to state or federal agencies. To get a DD-214, an affected person must submit a DD-2168, Application for Discharge of Member or Survivor of Member of Group Certified to Have Performed Active Duty with the Armed Forces of the United States.

The form must be submitted to the Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tennessee, with all supporting documentation.

The burden of proof is on the individual. However, suggested supporting documentation includes:

• Employment records from the Navy Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) or Naval Investigative Service (NIS).
• Copies of passports with appropriate entries.
• Military or civilian orders posting the applicant to an assignment in the Republic of Vietnam.
• Reports signed by or mentioning the applicant's work as part of ONI/NIS in the Republic of Vietnam.
• Letters of award or commendation.
• Expense reports.
• Military identification forms.
• Medical paperwork.
• Military passes/chits/liberty cards.
• Anything else, including postmarked envelopes, etc.

Remember, never submit the original documentation; always send copies and keep the originals for your own files.

If the Navy determines that a DD-214 should be issued, it will also forward the information to the awards and decorations office to determine whether any ribbons should be awarded, so include as much documentation as possible.

Check out the Federal Register notification for more details.

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National Book Award-winning author Tim O'Brien is best known for his stories about the Vietnam War, including the 1990 novel, The Things They Carried. But he says he'd give up every book he's written if it meant more time on earth with his two young sons.

Now 74, O'Brien didn't become a father until his late 50s. He says he was initially worried that having children would curtail his ability to write.

"I always identified myself as a writer even from the time I was a little boy," he says. "That's what I wanted to be and do and that's what I valued — making graceful sentences. And I thought that with a child in the house — and then two children in the house — that would end."

Having children made him want to step away from writing, which he did for many years. But eventually O'Brien started up again — this time focusing on fatherhood. His 2019 book, Dad's Maybe Book, was his first since his sons were born.

"Much as Vietnam did, [parenthood] gave me a body of material, that kind of context to write about," he says. "Maybe it's biology just keeping the species going, but I feel that I'm part of something age-old that's going to continue long after I'm gone."

O'Brien reflects on writing, mortality and his experiences in Vietnam in the new documentary, The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.

Interview highlights

On speaking openly about mortality with his sons

I talk to them pretty bluntly when they say, "Dad, you're old, you're going to die." I said, "I know. Sad." I don't say, "No," and I don't deny it, because it's a lie and I don't want to leave them with a lie. The reality is the reality, and they've adjusted to it over time. The crying is stopped, especially my older boy Timmy would really weep about it. He'd come out in the middle of the night and wake me up and say... "You're going to die, Dad, and I can't stand it." And we would talk about my age and what a great gift it had been to spend time with them already. Now, when my older boy is 17 and my younger, Tad, is 15, they still think about it. I still think about it. My wife still thinks about it. But it's not in a macabre kind of way. It's not grim. It's growing comfortable with reality. And we have a happy house, I think, partly because we don't deny reality.

On how his own childhood experiences made him reluctant to become a father

I had a tough childhood. My dad was an alcoholic and sometimes he wasn't physically present, but he also was not emotionally present much of the time. He was a great man in many ways — he was funny, he was fun to be around when he was sober, but when he was not, life was hard.... And I feared that I may have inherited whatever chromosome caused that, and I did not want to be a bad father. That was a huge, huge part of it.

On how his father, who wanted to be a writer, felt about his son's books

Jealousy was one component of his attitude toward it. I think he was also proud in a sense.... Humans are such complicated people. He never expressed himself on the issue one way or the other verbally to me. He never said he liked my books. He never discussed with me the content of the books, the events that happened in the books. I don't know why. I'm not completely sure he ever read them all the way through. Maybe he did. Maybe not. It's a mystery to me, as so much of my life is a mystery to me.

On not feeling traumatized by the war

I don't dream about it a lot. I certainly, in my waking life, don't think about it a lot. And the reason is... for my whole life, it felt like it wasn't real, even in Vietnam. "This can't be happening. This can't be happening. You're not a soldier." There's this constant sense that the war didn't feel real to me, even as it was happening, and that's been compounded now that it's over. I'll sometimes look at my hands and think, "God, these hands were in a war. You're not a violent guy and you couldn't have pulled the trigger." And I know I did. And I know I was violent, that I shot at people and it just doesn't feel real.

On his nickname "College Joe" during the war, and the burden of fighting in it

I hated Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. I didn't like bugs and sleeping in the rain and none of that. And I didn't know anything about weapons. And a lot of the guys I served with were outdoor types, and they did like and know that stuff. So I think the "College Joe" thing was maybe not derogatory, but it meant that I wasn't cut out to be a soldier — and I wasn't. I did the one thing I could do, which was... I just kept my legs moving. I didn't fall to the ground. I didn't quit. I didn't say, "Take me to some insane asylum and lock me away." I did keep going. And I look back on that as the only kind of source of pride out of it. Somehow I endured it all. That's something.

And the problem for me really is that I questioned the rectitude of the war, period. I thought I was doing the wrong thing by being there. And it ate at me constantly, where most of the men around me thought we should invade North Vietnam and put a big Iron Curtain around Hanoi and then bomb the hell out of it.... It's been a source of continuing guilt and shame that I actually went to that thing and participated in it. If there's a single burden that I have to carry through my life, that's the heaviest. It's that sense of: I shouldn't have done it.

On the title The Things They Carried

The word "they" is meant to encompass not just soldiers, but the mothers of soldiers, the fathers, but to go even beyond that to things you carry as a broadcaster and an interviewer to worries you carry. Did I do a good enough job? Did I ask the right questions? Did I elicit what I was after? You know how you take those things home with you?... We all carry physical stuff that represents who we are. But we also carry the emotional aftershocks of our lives — the joys and the sadness and everything else.

On visiting the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C.

It was a tearful experience. I broke down and wept. I found the names of people that died in my presence and put my fingers on their names and leaned against that wall. It makes me cry now, just remembering that moment, I was near dusk, almost dark, and the shadows of the wall were shadows of the war over me and my friends. It was an emotional time, and it's a beautiful elegiac monument to human suffering.

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Congress in recent years has expanded disability benefits for Veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during fighting in Vietnam, but a pair of lawmakers is pushing now to make sure U.S. troops who faced the same poisons while deployed to nearby countries receive similar help.

On Thursday, Pennsylvania Reps. Matt Cartwright (D) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R) introduced new legislation to expand the presumption of exposure to Agent Orange for disability benefits to Veterans who served in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia during the conflict.

“Many of those who have been exposed are living with cancers, heart disease or Parkinson’s disease,” Cartwright said in a statement. “They deserve relief for the pain and hardship this has caused for them and their families.”

Staff could not say exactly how many Veterans may be affected by the change. More than 50,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Thailand alone at the height of operations there, but it is unknown how many of those individuals later deployed to Vietnam and are already eligible for presumptive benefits status.

But Veterans advocates for years have pushed for Congress to close the gap in Agent Orange benefits for individuals exposed to the chemicals in the 1960s and 1970s but never set foot on Vietnamese soil.

Presumptive benefits status is significant for Veterans filing for disability benefits because it avoids a host of paperwork and documentation usually required for the payouts.

In most cases, Veterans seeking the benefits must prove (typically through medical exams and service records) that their injuries and illnesses are directly connected to their time in the military.

However, in conflicts like Vietnam, where the chemical defoliant Agent Orange was used across the country with little clear documentation of when U.S. troops were exposed, federal officials have made exceptions to those standards of proof.

Individuals who served in the country and later suffered from a list of illnesses connected to chemical exposure — things like prostate cancer, lung cancer, and Parkinson’s disease — can qualify for benefits simply by showing they served on the ground during the war there, or in the waters nearby.

Even though Agent Orange was widely used in nearby countries, Veterans who spent time in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia are not granted that presumptive status. That means they must prove direct exposure to the chemical during their deployments, proof that advocates say is nearly impossible due to incomplete, aging military records.

Fitzpatrick said the new legislation will “ensure our Vietnam War Veterans who served in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia receive the care they deserve now.”

The bill would include Veterans who served in the following locations:

— at Army Bases or Royal Thai Air Force Bases between Jan. 9, 1962, and May 7, 1975;

— at the Pranburi Military Reservation in Thailand between Jan. 1, 1964, and April 30, 1964;

— anywhere in Laos between Dec. 1, 1965, and Sept. 30 30, 1969;

— in Kompon Cham Province in Cambodia in April 1969.

Veterans would be granted presumptive benefits status regardless of the military occupation. Similar legislative efforts to improve the benefits to countries beyond Vietnam have stalled in Congress in recent years, despite expanded benefits for troops who served in the country.

Congressional staff did not have an estimate for what the benefits expansion may cost. Last year, lawmakers added three new illnesses to the list of presumptives for Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, a move that is expected to help about 34,000 Veterans and cost about $8 billion over the next 10 years.

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After a yearlong delay, Veterans from World War II through Vietnam who need around-the-clock care from a loved one can apply for the Department of Veterans Affairs' family caregiver program, starting Oct. 1.

The VA announced Friday in the Federal Register that the program's expansion to include Veterans who served on or before May 7, 1975, will begin with several changes that affect all who are enrolled, including current Veterans and caregivers.

Under the new rules, Veterans with a single or combined service-connected disability rating of 70% or higher, who also meet certain criteria and served before the 1975 date, are eligible to apply in October.

The VA will determine whether the applicant fits into one of two categories: Level 1, those who need substantial caregiving but are more capable than the most disabled cohort; or Level 2, those who are not able to "self-sustain in the community," meaning they require continuous supervision and help with three or more daily activities.

According to the VA, the stipend amount for the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregiving will be dependent on geography and level. A caregiver in Dallas, supporting a Level 2 Veteran, for example, would receive a monthly stipend of roughly $2,803.17. For someone caring for a Level 1 Veteran, it would be $1,751.98.

Those currently enrolled in the program and those with a pending application will be reassessed under the new eligibility criteria over the next year, according to the VA.

If a reassessment results in an increased stipend, the Veteran and their caregiver would receive the new amount, as well as a lump sum of retroactive pay back to Oct. 1, 2020. If the assessment determines the Veteran is eligible for a decreased amount, the VA will give them notice by Oct. 2, 2021, and the decrease would go into effect "no earlier than 60 days" after they receive the notice.

For Veterans who are currently enrolled but deemed during the reassessment to be ineligible under the new criteria, the VA will inform the Veteran at or around Oct. 1, 2021, and their benefits would continue for 90 days following discharge from the program.

As part of the assessment, the VA will examine the level of activity Veterans can do themselves each day, taking into account whether they can dress themselves, bathe, groom themselves, adjust a prosthetic or orthotic device on their own, go to the bathroom without assistance, feed themselves or need help moving around their homes.

The 2018 VA Mission Act required the department to expand its caregiver program to include combat Veterans from previous wars. The current program, which was established in 2011, serves combat-wounded Veterans of the post-9/11 era and has helped 38,000 former service members at a cost of roughly $900 million annually.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said Friday that the new regulation allows the most "vulnerable Veterans to stay home with loved ones for as long as possible."

"The expanded regulation addresses the complexity and expense of keeping Veterans at home with their families who provide personalized care," Wilkie said in a release.

Under the Mission Act, the program will undergo another expansion on Oct. 1, 2022, to include combat Veterans who served between 1975 and Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition to expanding eligibility beyond those who are combat wounded, the new regulations define new procedures for discharging former service members from the program, standardize operating procedures and provide new training for staff and caregivers. The changes also will give caregivers access to financial planning and legal services.

The program was the target of a VA Office of Inspector General investigation in 2018 that found problems with how the department managed the program, accepted applicants and monitored the health of those who were discharged from the program.

The IG found that the department also paid out $4.8 million to caregivers of Veterans who weren't eligible for the program.

Last year, four spouses and two fiancees of Veterans eligible for the program sued the VA for allegedly improperly revoking their benefits or denying them.

More information on the VA's caregiver program can be found on its website.

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President Trump signed the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 on March 28, 2017, to recognize and thank our Vietnam Veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice during one of the longest wars in our country’s history. This Act designates every March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day—a day for all Americans to come together to remember and honor the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam Veterans and their families.

We remember 9 million American men and women—more than 6 million living today—who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces during our involvement in Vietnam from November 1, 1955, to May 7, 1975. Whether they were stationed in-country, in-theater, or elsewhere during those two decades, they answered the call to duty.

I am the son of a Vietnam Veteran and career Army officer. One of the most traumatic days of my life was being told that my father had been gravely wounded in the invasion of Cambodia in 1970. I was six. After three long years of recovery, he returned to the 82nd Airborne Division. So, my family and I experienced first-hand the enormous sacrifices this generation of Americans made in courageous service to our Nation.

This year, VA again joins more than 11,000 organizations across the country as a commemorative partner supporting the Department of Defense in this Vietnam War Commemoration. The commemoration program was launched in 2012 and continues to 2025. I invite all VA leaders to either host ceremonies or participate in community events from March 25 to March 29.

Additionally, help us reach those Vietnam Veterans who may be living in remote locations, those who are physically unable to attend commemorative events, and those in assisted living, geriatric, rehabilitative, or palliative care. It is our duty to show our deep gratitude to this generation of warriors and their families.

Please visit https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/ to learn how your organization or facility can be a commemorative partner and participate in this important tribute. Official commemorative partnership offers historical media and opportunity to request lapel pins and other recognition items to present to Vietnam Veterans.

Thank you all for your service to VA and your devotion America’s Veterans.

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Telehealth video appointments have increased by more than 1,000%

William Vaughn didn’t know his Huey helicopter was sharing airspace over Vietnam in 1969 when a plane overshadowed him and his crew and sprayed them with a powerful herbicide that packed a lifelong punch.

“We had a military aircraft fly no more than 50 feet over our helicopter. It covered us with Agent Orange,” recalled Vaughn. Vaughn, pictured above, is an Army Veteran who enlisted in 1968 and spent about eight months flying in Southeast Asia. “It covered the entire aircraft and our crew.”

From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed more than 19 million gallons of tactical herbicides to remove the dense tropical foliage that provided enemy cover in Vietnam. VA has linked numerous diseases to Agent Orange exposure.

“We were heavily dosed with those types of herbicides throughout the war,” Vaughn said. “Combine these exposures with a couple crash landings, and my health was never the same.”

PTSD, back pain, peripheral neuropathy

Today, Vaughn is 90% service disabled and diagnosed with PTSD and chronic back pain. He also has peripheral neuropathy. The treatment causes numbness, sharp pains and muscle weakness in his extremities. It also causes aphasia, which impedes his ability to speak clearly.

“When I first began receiving treatment at VA, I was prescribed painkillers. Eventually, I began attending in-person chronic pain classes and appointments,” said Vaughn. “These classes were helpful, but the process of attending in-person classes and appointments was often as stressful as finding a safe landing zone in Vietnam.

“Battling Seattle traffic on the way to the VA Medical Center was always a challenge. It amplified the pain, since many of my symptoms are brought on by stress.”

That’s when Vaughn was referred to Dr. Erika Shearer. Shearer is a TeleMental Health psychologist within the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. She offers virtual visits through VA Video Connect. The app enables Veterans and their caregivers to meet with VA care providers through live video on any computer, tablet, or mobile device with an internet connection.

Vaughn and Shearer now meet online once every two weeks.

“Brings me back into focus.”

“Dr. Shearer is able to help me from her office in Portland in a comfortable, private setting. And I’m able to receive the help I need in a comfortable setting without the stress of traffic and hospital waiting rooms. She brings me back into focus and helps me deal with a very dark time.”

Vaughn also credits virtual visits and VA telehealth technologies with helping him stay healthy while following COVID-19 social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders. Vaughn is an early adopter of My HealtheVet. The online platform lets Veterans send secure messages to their VA care teams, refill VA prescriptions and download their electronic health records. Together, My HealtheVet and VA Video Connect allow him to receive care without risking exposure to the coronavirus.

The number of telehealth video appointments held in one week through VA Video Connect has increased by more than 1000% since February 2020. Data shows that VA providers conducted approximately 10,000 appointments a week in early February compared with more than 120,000 appointments a week in May.

Veterans interested in starting VA telehealth services should talk with their VA care teams.

Visit the VA Video Connect webpage to learn more about using the app to enhance your care.

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A traveling replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall holds thousands of names of people who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the Vietnam War.

It spent the weekend in Southwest Florida, but Veteran Terry Kehoe says there are names missing.

We found him sitting in front of the wall holding this homemade sign for “Prince.”

Prince was a scout dog who detected bombs and enemy fighters. Kehoe says after Prince’s service he was euthanized along with 4,000 other scout dogs.

“I had him for 9 months and we walked point for the infantry,” Kehoe said.

That means every day, every mission, Kehoe and Prince risked their lives to lead their unit through the Vietnamese jungle. “He kept me alive,” he said.

In the air, in the field, and at the base. In the middle of a war – a soldier and a scout dog became best friends.

“I wish this was a picture today, that would be nice,” Kehoe said. “I’m fortunate my name is not on this wall so I can look back on the memories.”

The photo he held up is the last picture they took ever together.

With a half-smile, Kehoe didn’t know he was leaving Prince and just about every war dog behind to die, “They were euthanized at the end because they were excess equipment.”

4,000 war dogs served in Vietnam and a large majority of them never came home.

His emotions welled up as he recalled that moment, “I just needed more time to… excuse me… I just needed more time to say goodbye to him. And that’s a very difficult thing cause I said goodbye to Prince in Vietnam, but I didn’t realize he was going to meet that fate. So I really never got a proper goodbye.”

So Kehoe sits in the grass, oblivious to the crowds. He does what it takes to give his partner a proper goodbye – 49 years later.

“I would tell him that I love him… miss him… I’d love to cuddle him right now. It would be… I’d like to pet him. That would be nice.” 50 years later — that bond is still as strong as ever.

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There’s a longstanding thread woven through each and every person who has ever worn a military uniform: to never forget those who’ve sacrificed their life in battle for this country. US Army Veteran Chris Green knows that and that’s why he took on a mission to ensure a Vietnam War Veteran killed in action will forever be remembered.

“It’s been 52 years they’ve been waiting. That’s long enough,” Green said.

He was referencing a metal plaque in his hands featuring the name I.V. Bourrage, who was killed in an ambush during his second tour in Vietnam on Feb. 21, 1967.

Green knew of a plan to get a plaque and have it placed on a concrete block at the base of the flagpole at Houston Elementary. He decided to follow-up this past Memorial Day.

“I came up here,” he said. “And it wasn’t done.”

That’s when Green decided to put the wheels in motion -- he’s the president of the Colerain Veterans Memorial and through the memorial donated the funds and ordered the plaque.

The concrete block at the base of the flagpole was dedicated to I.V. Bourrage and other service members who fought in the Vietnam War. The plaque put in place at that time by Girl Scout troop 980 read, “In honor of our soldiers in Vietnam.” That service was held Nov. 11, 1968, and Bourrage’s daughter vaguely remembers the ceremony as a student at Houston elementary.

“At the time I didn’t really know, didn’t really understand, and it’s more so now,” said Deborah Daniel.

She doesn’t remember much at all of her father, and neither does her sister, Hartense Ahmed, because they were so young when he was killed. However, they both give much credit to their mother, who took on dual roles.

“Mom did a great job," Ahmed said. "It still hurts inside and that’s why this is really awesome for me right now to see all that Chris has done to get this started."

I.V. Bourrage and his wife, Evertie, had five children, and you might say their courtship started in elementary school in Mississippi.

“He used to send his sisters with a note for me,” said Evertie Bourrage. “He liked me from the beginning.”

She says the childhood crush continued through several school years. But after grade school they went their separate ways. Eventually I.V. Bourrage went off to the Marine Corps and Evertie took on her own path in life until Dec. 28, 1953.

“I was at my dad’s house on a Sunday. He came and he wanted to marry me,” said Bourrage. “So he asked my dad for my hand in marriage.”

She says they went to the courthouse on the next Wednesday and I.V. was off again with the Marine Corps by that following Saturday.

I.V. served from 1953 to 1967, and after his death, Evertie says, she wanted to best serve his family by having his body flown back to Mississippi.

“It was ten of them in the family and I knew if I had him buried in Washington they’d never be able to attend the gravesite,” she said.

After his funeral, Evertie loaded up the kids and headed to the Cincinnati area to be closer to her brother. She put money down on a home that she still lives in today. She enrolled her kids into Houston Elementary and that brings us back to the original ceremony on Veteran’s Day in 1968.

It’s been decades since that ceremony, and the family is looking forward to the ceremony on July 31.

“I’m thankful it’s finally happening,” Deborah Daniel said. “I regret my father's death, I’m thankful we still have my mom and I just look at God, what he does at this particular time being this is going to happen on July 31st, on my father's birthday.”

“It means a lot to me to get it done for the family,” said Green.

The plaque is more than a marker for Green, who hopes children and their parents along with the staff at Houston Elementary will take away a serious message from the tribute.

“The main thing I hope they take away is that freedom isn’t free," he said. "Freedom costs and I.V. gave his freedom for all of us.”

For Evertie, getting the chance to see her husband’s name permanently placed in tribute to his sacrifice means the world to her. She said Green and his efforts to get it done is nothing short of a higher power sending her an angel.

“That’s why I call him my brother,” Evertie said. “We have different skin color, but we all bleed blood, red blood. So that’s the way I look at – he’s my friend and I thank God for him.”

The ceremony to place the plaque to honor I.V. Bourrage will take place at 7 p.m. on July 31 at the flagpole at Houston Elementary School. Everyone is invited to come out to honor I.V. as well as other Vietnam War era Veterans and service members.

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About 14 months after Congress and the president passed into law a measure to grant Veterans Affairs benefits to sailors who served on ships off the coast of Vietnam, VA has granted about 22,500 of those claims.

The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act required the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide disability benefits to Veterans who served in the waters off of Vietnam. The measure was just one more provision in a decades-long fight to guarantee the same benefits to thousands of Navy Veterans who served in the waters offshore of Vietnam that their land and brown-water comrades were already entitled to after potentially being exposed to Agent Orange.

Since then, the department has received 66,853 Blue Water Navy disability claims as of Aug. 31, VA Press Secretary Christina Noel told Connecting Vets this week, more than 8,300 per month since VA began processing the claims. From that total, VA has processed 31,774 (48%) and granted 22,524 of those (71%), denying about 29%. The claims granted represent about 34% of all claims filed so far.

Those awarded claims amount to about $641 million in benefits to those 22,524 Veterans or their survivors, according to VA.

This week, VA announced it had completed digitizing deck logs, aiming to expedite Blue Water Navy Veterans' disability claims. The effort was a partnership between VA and the National Archives and Records Administration to digitize Navy and Coast Guard deck logs to help validate Blue Water Veterans' claims.

“The team at NARA recognizes the importance of this effort making it easier for BWN Veterans to receive the benefits they’ve earned without burdening them with paperwork,” VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said in a statement. “Since Jan. 1, VA has processed thousands of claims and encourages every Veteran, dependent and surviving spouse who is eligible to file a claim as soon as possible.”

VA provided digital images of the deck logs to NARA, available through the National Archives catalog. Navy logs were finished in December 2019 and Coast Guard logs were completed this month.

“Through this scanning project, VA contractors digitized declassified Navy and Coast Guard deck logs from 1956-1978 in NARA's holdings, including the log of the hospital ship USS Sanctuary, which I served aboard during the Vietnam conflict,” Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said in a statement. “As a Veteran from this era, I recognize the unprecedented value this provides to Veterans making these logs easily accessible online.”

In June, about a year after the bill passed into law, VA had approved 17,401 claims out of more than 58,300 filed and has increased the number of approved claims by about 29% since then.

Both the House and Senate passed the bill granting Blue Water Navy Vets benefits unanimously and the president signed it into law in June 2019.

About a week after the president's signature codified those benefits, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie delayed all claims processing until Jan. 1, 2020, as first reported by Connecting Vets. That stay effectively stalled the benefits many aging and ill Veterans thought they had finally gained with the passage of the bill in Congress.

Pleas from Veterans, their families and advocates over the following months rendered no change or response from VA, and those who reached out to the president told Connecting Vets they received no response.

At the time, Wilkie said the department was "working to ensure that we have the proper resources in place to meet the needs of our Blue Water Veteran community and minimize the impact on all Veterans filing for disability compensation."

Veterans were allowed to file their claims, but they were not processed until Wilkie's stay lifted on Jan. 1, 2020.

Veterans, dependents or surviving spouses can contact approved Veterans service organizations for help filing claims, according to VA. For more information, call VA at 800-827-1000.

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Veterans, families, friends and the general public have several options to see Vietnam memorial walls in 2020 with the release of traveling wall schedules.

Before visiting one of the traveling walls, a doctor from the National Center for PTSD said Veterans with PTSD should consider their expectations for the visit and how the visit fits into their recovery goals.

“Think through, ‘What do I hope to get out of this?” said Dr. Sonya Norman, director of the center’s PTSD Consultation Program. “Know what you expect so you’re not disappointed or overwhelmed. That can help the visit be a rich and meaningful experience.”

Norman said how the visit may impact someone’s PTSD is varied and complex, so there is no one way to approach it. She added that, even though people with PTSD share common symptoms, people have different experiences and feelings regarding their trauma. Getting an evidence based treatment for PTSD helps Veterans in recovery.

Below are the different options.

The Wall That Heals

The Wall That Heals is operated by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, who unveiled the replica on Veterans Day 1996. Since then, more than 600 communities have seen the traveling display.

The Wall That Heals exhibit features a three-quarter scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The replica is 375 feet in length and stands 7.5 feet high at its tallest point. Visitors experience The Wall rising above them as they walk towards its apex, a key feature of the design of The Wall in D.C.

The 53-foot trailer that carries The Wall That Heals transforms to become a mobile Education Center. The exterior of the trailer features a timeline of “The War and The Wall” and provides additional information about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

VVMF’s 2020 schedule starts in Florida on Feb. 20 and includes stops in more than 20 states.

More information on its schedule is at https://www.vvmf.org/The-Wall-That-Heals/2020-Tour-Schedule/.

American Veterans Traveling Tribute

American Veterans Traveling Tribute shows an 80% replica Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. It measures 360 feet long by eight feet high at the apex. Displays also fly flags over the wall.

These events start March 4 in Arizona and include 15 different states. More information on their schedule is at https://www.americanVeteranstravelingtribute.com/schedule.

AV Wall

The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall has two events planned for 2020. Volunteers run the organization. Its schedule is:

March 26-30 at Bucklin Park, 1350 S 8th St, El Centro, CA 92243

50th Commemoration Vietnam Veteran Lapel Pin Presentation Ceremony on 3/29/19

Nov. 6-12 at Sun Valley Community Church, 6101 S River Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283

The organization keeps up-to-date information on its website at www.avwall.org and on their Facebook page.

The Moving Wall

The Moving Wall is a half-size replica, touring since 1984. Two replicas now travel the U.S. from April-November, spending about a week at each site.

The schedule for The Moving Wall is not yet out, but is located at http://www.themovingwall.org/current_schedule.html.

Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall

The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall is a 3/5 scale that stands six feet tall at the center and covers almost 300 feet from end to end. Vietnam and All Veterans of Brevard, located in Brevard County, Florida, manages the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall.

Its schedule should be released soon. It will be located at http://www.travelingwall.us/schedule_of_appearances.htm.

Vet Centers

Outreach specialists and counselors will be on hand at many locations to meet with Veterans and families wanting to learn more about how Vet Centers aid in the readjustment of a Veteran or service member after deployment or trauma. Vietnam Veterans originally established Vet Centers and still hold true to keeping that promise today.

Vietnam War Commemoration

Many sites will also hold Vietnam War Commemoration events. To find an event, go to https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/events/. To learn about the lapel pin ceremonies, see https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/67922/vietnam-Veterans-families-honored-thanked-program/.

Washington,D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., is the most well-known of the memorials. Set on two acres on the National Mall, the public may visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 24 hours a day. Rangers are on duty to answer questions from 9:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily and to provide interpretive programs throughout the day and upon request.

Source

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HANOVER TWP. — It’s been 55 years since Sidney Katz borrowed fifty dollars from Frank Glowiak, but the debt has finally been repaid.

However, this is about much more than repaying the loan — it’s about honoring a hero.

Glowiak was a young soldier in 1966 when he went off to war in Vietnam, never to return: He was 20 when he was killed in action, and his family has mourned his loss ever since.

Glowiak’s sister, Rosemary Gawat, related a story about her brother that showed the kind of person Frank Glowiak was and how highly regarded he was — he was far more than the first resident of Plymouth to be killed in Vietnam.

Gawat said her brother was killed in Vietnam on Oct. 27, 1966. She said she has been in touch with several of the men from his platoon. But recently, Gawat was contacted be one of the men in her brother’s unit.

The man’s name is Sidney Katz, who shared an amazing story with Gawat about Glowiak.

It seems Katz had borrowed $50 from Glowiak before he went out into the field for the last time. Katz never got to re-pay the debt to Glowiak.

And that bothered Katz for years — decades passed before he decided he had to make good on the loan.

A few years ago, Katz attended a reunion of the U.S. Army’s 5th Battalion 7th Cavalry and met a fellow soldier who had visited Glowiak’s grave in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Plymouth Township and had connected with Glowiak’s sister, Mrs. Gawat.

Katz met up with Ray Dowdy, who was in the same unit, who had previously reached out to Glowiak’s family. Dowdy gave Katz Gawat’s phone number. Dowdy, who now lives in southern New Jersey, has visited Glowiak’s grave twice and is planning a third visit soon,

“Frank was the perfect soldier,” Dowdy said. “We went through basic training together and we were in Vietnam together.”

Soon after the reunion, Katz decided to reach out to Gawat.

“Mr. Katz contacted me and said he was on a mission to return the money he borrowed from my brother,” Gawat said. “He said he wanted to give it to Frank’s family. Mr. Katz told me he had been carrying this burden for over 50 years.”

Gawat said her brother’s anniversary of his death will be 55 years this October.

“And Mr. Katz told me he needed to pay the money back and that he wanted me to do something in Frank’s name,” Gawat said.

Some weeks later, Gawat received a card in the mail from Sid Katz. Enclosed was a check for $500 — $50 for the initial loan and, as Katz said, $450 in interest over 50-plus years.

Gawat said she is deciding where to donate the money, but it will be given to help Veterans. “I think it’s important to do the best we can for our Veterans,” she said. “I have volunteered for several Veterans’ organizations over the years. It’s very important to me that Veterans get everything they deserve. they earned that.”

Gawat said she wanted to tell the story and she wanted people to know about her brother. She hopes the story will receive national attention.

Here is what Sid Katz wrote in the card to Gawat:

“More than thanks”

To Frank’s family:

Peace has victories, but it takes brave men like Frank to win them.

My heroes are like Frank, who risked their lives for something bigger.

A hero is something bigger than oneself.

Thank you, Frank, and rest in peace.

Katz now lives in Yelm, Wash. He retired after serving for 30 years in the Army.

Asked why he borrowed the $50 from Glowiak, Katz said he needed the money just to buy things at the Post Exchange.”

“Frank was the first guy killed in our battalion,” Katz said. “In training, we were told to never go down the same trail twice. On that day, we went down a trail and came back the same way and we got hit.”

Katz and Glowiak went through basic training together. Katz was from upstate New York. He said he and Glowiak became friends and would eat together every day while training.

“Frank was very soft spoken,” Katz said. “He was a real nice guy, very quiet.”

Katz said the debt he owed Glowiak stayed with him throughout life and he had to get it resolved.

“I wanted to pay it back and I wanted Frank’s family to do something in his memory and honor,” Katz said.

Mrs. Gawat said she will finally be able to close the book on her brother’s military service.

“This is the final chapter,” she said.

* * *

About Frank Glowiak

Bio: He was born Jan. 3, 1946, and he was killed Oct. 27, 1966. His rank was SP4.

Family: Sisters Rosemary Gawat, Barbara Brandon, Joan Bohinski (deceased.) His parents were the late Frank (Sr.) and Mary Dowgiert Glowiak.

Rosemary Gawat said her father, Frank Sr., died from injuries he sustained when he fell off the roof of the family home on Gardner Street in June 1966 — the year of Plymouth Borough’s Centennial. She said her brother came home from the Army to attend his father’s funeral. The family requested that Frank be honorably discharged from the service, since he was the only mail child in the family, but that request was denied. Glowiak was killed just four months later.

Military service: Glowiak was drafted into the Army. He entered the service via Selective Service and he served during the Vietnam War.

He began his tour on Aug. 2, 1966. Glowiak had the rank of Specialist Four. His military occupation or specialty was Light Weapons Infantry.

Killed in action: Military records state that Glowiak was killed on Oct. 27, 1966 in South Vietnam’s Quang Tri province.

Memorial: Glowiak is honored on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. His name is inscribed at VVM Wall, Panel 11e, Line 118.

Commendations: Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, Marksmanship Badge, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Army Presidential Unit Citation, Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Army Good Conduct Medal

Source

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Law students from the UNC School of Law’s Military and Veterans Law Clinic fought to restore John Spencer Jr.'s Veteran status

A Vietnam War Veteran – stripped of his dog tags and uniform after returning home from battle roughly 50 years ago – finally had his honor restored earlier this month.

John Spencer Jr., now 73, was seen dabbing his eyes with a napkin during a Purple Heart Ceremony at the University of North Carolina School of Law. It was a big moment for the Veteran who was finally being awarded a Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross for his sacrifice and service to this country, according to the university.

The Nov. 4 ceremony included a presentation of the colors by the UNC Army ROTC and rendition of the National Anthem and remarks from Martin Brinkley, dean of the UNC School of Law, according to the Daily Tar Heel.

The honors came after a band of students from the UNC School of Law’s Military and Veterans Law Clinic fought to restore his Veteran status after it was unfairly taken from him roughly five decades ago, according to the UNC School of Law.

The pro-bono clinic provides legal support to former service members seeking an upgrade or correction to their military discharge status. After hearing Spencer's story, the students decided to take on his case.

In 1969, Spencer was just 20 years old when he was sent overseas to South Vietnam where he served as an Army armored reconnaissance specialist in the infantry for over a year, according to the UNC School of Law.

During that time, the African American serviceman faced both physical and emotional distress from getting stuck in the neck by shrapnel and battling racism and discrimination from his own command, according to the university.

Eventually, he was given a less than honorable discharge for minor infractions, and when he returned home, his uniform and dog tags were taken away, according to the university.

"I was given civilian clothes and sent to the airport and waited for a standby flight," the Veteran told UNC. "When I had gotten to Washington, I began to feel like I was some kind of criminal."

He was denied Veterans benefits and was never awarded a Combat Infantryman Badge, Vietnam War Cross and Purple Heart, honors to which he was entitled, according to the school.

Spencer hadn't spoken about his other than honorable discharge ever since. However, for the last three years, the UNC law students were determined to help.

John Brooker, a clinical associate professor of law and the director of the program since 2018, said Spencer's story wasn't uncommon.

"We try to get those former service members Veteran status," Brooker told the school.

In doing so, "it restores the honor that they felt was taken from them. They were separated with a type of discharge that literally says they don’t have honor," he continued.

The good news finally came earlier this year when they were notified that Spencer will have federal Veteran status and full health care benefits. All of his honors were also restored.

It "opens the door to life-saving Veteran’s benefits that many should have had all along," Brooker added.

Source

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At a Glance

Veterans who served during the Vietnam War—including those who were deployed to combat zones and those who served elsewhere—constitute the last cohort of service members that was subject to a draft. More than 6 million of the nearly 9 million people who served on active duty during the war are still living.

The Congress and those Veterans themselves have expressed concern about the lifelong effects of that military service, but little is known about their financial security now that most have left the labor force. The Congressional Budget Office compared the income of male Vietnam Veterans with the income of male nonVeterans the same ages. (Very few Vietnam Veterans were women.) CBO found that:

• On average, Vietnam Veterans in 2018 had roughly the same income as nonVeterans their ages: $63,300 and $65,000, respectively. For Veterans and nonVeterans age 71—the modal, or most common, age of Veterans­—average income was also about the same.
• About 1.3 million Vietnam Veterans, nearly 25 percent, collected disability compensation from Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2018; their average annual payment was $18,100. Those payments boosted average income for all Vietnam Veterans by $4,300. When those payments are excluded, Veterans’ income averaged $59,000, 9 percent less than nonVeterans’ income.
• The gap between the average income of Veterans and nonVeterans was largest for men in their mid-60s. It was smaller for older men: Veterans older than 71 had, on average, more income than nonVeterans of the same age. That was true whether or not disability payments from VA were included in income.
• In general, Vietnam Veterans received more money from Social Security and retirement plans than nonVeterans; nonVeterans had more earnings and more investment income. Those differences probably arose from differences in the types of employers and jobs that members of each group had over their working lives.
• Income was distributed more evenly among Vietnam Veterans than among nonVeterans. In other words, the percentages of Vietnam Veterans in the highest and lowest income categories were smaller, and the percentages in the middle categories were larger, than those for nonVeterans.

Summary

In this report, the Congressional Budget Office looks at the income of male Vietnam Veterans now that most of them have reached retirement age.1 (Very few Vietnam Veterans were women.) More than 6 million of those men—some of whom were drafted and others who volunteered—are still alive. Previous research showed that Veterans earned less for a decade after the war ended because of their military service but caught up to nonVeterans by the early 1990s.2 But since then, as Veterans have left the labor force, their sources of income have changed, including compensation and benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and little is known about Veterans’ current financial status. Lawmakers and others have expressed concern about their well-being.

What Did CBO Find?

In 2018, the average income of Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans was roughly comparable: For Veterans, who were 63 to 78 years old at that point, it was $63,300, slightly less than the $65,000 average for nonVeterans. The Veterans’ average includes the disability compensation that some receive from VA. With that disability compensation excluded, Veterans’ average income was $59,000, 9 percent less than nonVeterans’ average income.

The income gap between Veterans and nonVeterans was largest for men in their mid-60s; on average, Vietnam Veterans who were age 72 or older in 2018 had more income than nonVeterans, whether or not VA’s disability compensation was included. For Veterans and nonVeterans age 71—the modal, or most common, age of Veterans—there was little or no gap in average income (see Figure 1).

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides tax-free disability compensation to Veterans with medical injuries or conditions that were incurred or aggravated during active-duty military service. Other income sources may be subject to taxation.

VA = Department of Veterans Affairs.

Veterans age 72 or older had more income than younger Veterans because those older Veterans probably earned more during their working years. Older Veterans generally had spent more years in the military, had higher levels of education, and probably differed in other ways that are harder to measure—such as skills learned in the military or sense of purpose. Those characteristics could affect their income in retirement.

In general (and at age 71), Veterans received more income from Social Security and retirement plans than nonVeterans, and nonVeterans had higher earnings and more income from investments. The differences probably arose from the types of jobs Veterans and nonVeterans held.

With VA’s disability compensation excluded, income was distributed more equally among Vietnam Veterans than among nonVeterans. In comparison with nonVeterans, a smaller share of Veterans’ income was in either the lowest or highest quintile (fifth) of income, and a larger share was in the middle three quintiles, for all men ages 63 to 78. For Veterans who received VA’s disability payments in addition to their other income, the average annual payment was $18,100. Those disability payments made their income higher than other Veterans’ income, on average.

Whose Income Did CBO Examine?

CBO looked at male Veterans who served on active duty during the Vietnam War and were between the ages of 63 and 78 in 2018, about 5.4 million Veterans. That group included most of the Veterans who served during the peak years of the war. Only those members of the National Guard and reserves who were activated during the war—roughly 25,000 men—were considered Vietnam Veterans. CBO excluded women from its analysis because they were a very small share of Vietnam Veterans in 2018 (4 percent). Veterans who did not serve during the Vietnam War were excluded from the samples that CBO analyzed.

Of the nearly 9 million people who served, 3.4 million were deployed to Vietnam or to other countries in Southeast Asia where the war was waged. (The rest were located in the United States or on overseas bases outside the war zone.) Less than one-quarter of those who served were drafted, but a disproportionate share of draftees served in Southeast Asia. In many aspects, the makeup of the military reflected the young male population in the United States at that time: Most service members were White and had a high school education.

How Did CBO Analyze Income?

CBO used data from the Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) to estimate income from different sources for Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans ages 63 to 78. The ACS is one of the biggest surveys that the Census Bureau administers, reaching roughly 1 in 40 U.S. households each year. CBO relied on the ACS because it samples a large number of Veterans, and its data on income information are about as accurate as data from other national surveys that also report Veteran status.

CBO examined the selected group of Veterans and nonVeterans at two points in time: 2008 and 2018. In 2008, most were still working but near the end of their careers. CBO calculated earnings in that year because earnings are closely linked to retirement income. At the second point, 2018, most of the group were no longer working. CBO did not quantify the potential effects of different factors such as education and work experience that strongly influence the amount and sources of income.

At the second point in time, 2018, CBO focused on four sources of income common to Veterans and nonVeterans—earnings, Social Security, investments, and retirement plans. For Veterans, the agency also calculated income with and without disability compensation paid by VA. In 2018, about 1.3 million Vietnam Veterans ages 63 to 78 received that compensation because of medical conditions or injuries incurred during their military service. CBO’s estimates of VA’s disability payments relied on data from both the ACS and VA.

What Are the Limitations of the Report?

CBO’s study has limitations that are common to any analysis based on survey data. Some income is reported incorrectly, and CBO used statistical methods to improve the accuracy of results. In addition, the report is an incomplete picture of Veterans’ overall finances because CBO did not examine all types of income. But in describing Veterans’ regular sources of income in retirement, it contributes to a greater understanding of their financial security and can inform Congressional decisions about support for Veterans.

The Vietnam War and the U.S. Military

Although America was involved in Vietnam for more than 10 years, the conflict itself is often considered to run from August 1964 to January 1973.3 On August 7, 1964, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the President “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to prevent further attacks against the United States. On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, including a cease-fire and a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Within 90 days of that agreement, U.S. ground troops had withdrawn from Vietnam. South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam in April 1975, and the last Americans were evacuated.

More than 8.5 million men, or about one-third of those eligible for military service, served in the U.S. armed forces during the Vietnam War.4 The first ground troops were sent to Vietnam in March 1965; their number peaked in 1968 at nearly 550,000. In total, 3.4 million men were deployed to Southeast Asia on combat tours that typically lasted for one year.

As military operations escalated, the annual number of new enlisted personnel roughly doubled in the first two years of the war (see Figure 2). In all, more than 6 million service members joined the military during the Vietnam War.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the Department of Defense and the Selective Service System.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973. The Department of Defense estimates the number of new enlisted personnel (accessions) it will need each year to maintain specific force levels. The values shown here apply to new enlisted personnel without prior military service.

Less than 25 percent of the personnel who served during the Vietnam War were drafted; the others were volunteers. Service members generally reflected America’s young male population. In 1965 and thereafter, a majority of the armed forces were White males with high school diplomas, age 35 or younger. Men who had joined the military before the war began and served during the Vietnam conflict were likely to be more educated than the average service member and to complete a military career.

Composition and Quality of the Military

As in previous eras, men had to meet physical, moral, and mental standards to enter the military. Performance on aptitude tests and high school attainment were the two primary ways the Department of Defense (DoD) measured the quality of the enlisted force—the mental attributes that contribute to productivity and capability in the military. Aptitude tests predicted whether recruits would complete training and receive promotions in the service, and educational attainment was shown to predict later job performance.

Accessions (new enlisted personnel) were at neither the top nor the bottom of their generation in terms of measurements of ability, although the need to pass a medical examination meant that they were healthier. Fewer accessions scored among the top 10 percent on aptitude tests than young male adults generally, and the military did not accept applicants who scored in the bottom 10 percent. About 70 percent of accessions held a high school diploma or higher, compared with slightly more than 75 percent of all men ages 20 to 29.5 Accessions were likely to be more physically fit than nonVeterans their age; in calendar year 1970, for instance, nearly 10 percent of potential volunteers who completed a comprehensive physical examination were disqualified for medical reasons.6

The overall quality of the enlisted forces differed depending on when they had joined the military. In 1965, about half of all active-duty personnel had already completed at least four years of service and were more likely to stay in the military for a full career (20 years) than wartime accessions. Members of the former group received more training than new enlisted personnel over their careers, had more qualifications, and probably differed in other ways as well, such as in their desire to serve in the military. For instance, in 1965, about 82 percent of all enlisted personnel (careerists and new personnel) held at least a high school diploma, higher than the average for accessions.

The officer corps was both more educated and better paid than enlisted men: All officers commissioned during the war held high school diplomas, and the vast majority had earned college degrees. However, the corps was much smaller than the enlisted force: Fewer than 500,000 officers were commissioned during the war, CBO estimates.

The Draft

About 1.9 million men were drafted during the Vietnam War, less than one-quarter of all those who served and less than one-half of accessions. Most draftees went into the Army and were deployed to Southeast Asia. The most common length of service was two years.

In the early years of the war, the draft followed the same basic system used since World War II, relying on local draft boards to select candidates. Men who registered for the draft were typically granted deferment if they had children or other dependents, were in college, or held jobs that were in the national interest. Exemptions (disqualification for medical or other reasons) were common.7 Draftees were 20 to 21 years old, on average.

As the population of young men grew in the early 1960s (because of the post-World War II baby boom), the use of deferments expanded: By 1968, one-third of men who registered for the draft received deferments, up from just 13 percent in 1958. The largest category of deferment (4.1 million) was for men with dependents, followed by those who were enrolled in college (1.8 million).8

As the war escalated, opposition to the draft intensified and concern about the fairness of deferments and exemptions increased. Educational deferments for college, in particular, were thought to favor the affluent.

A national commission in 1966 recommended replacing the existing system with a nationwide lottery, among other changes. The first lottery, in December 1969, was for men born between January 1, 1944 and December 31, 1950 (ages 19 to 25). In the early 1970s, occupational, agricultural, new-paternity, and new-student deferments were largely eliminated. Nevertheless, an individual’s chance of being drafted declined, both because draft calls decreased substantially in the 1970s and because later lotteries only considered men who would turn 20 years old in their enlistment year. In December 1972, the Selective Service System held its final lottery; on July 1, 1973, legal authority to draft men into the military expired.

Volunteers

Volunteers made up the remaining three-quarters of service members during the war. Some of those who enlisted during the war did so to avoid being drafted: Unlike draftees, volunteers could choose a service branch that might reduce their risk of being deployed (although volunteering also increased the length of an enlistment). Others joined in part because the pay and benefits were reasonable compared with civilian options. For enlisted careerists, pay was typically about 85 percent of the median pay (the midpoint value in the pay range) of White high school graduates of comparable ages for most of the war. In the 1960s, junior enlisted personnel were paid much less than most of them could have earned elsewhere, but pay raises in the early 1970s brought their income into rough parity with the private-sector wages of young high school graduates.9 Officers’ pay was consistently above the median pay of White college graduates. The military also offered additional pay to some men with special skills or who were in occupations with shortages.

Nor was income the only inducement to serve. The military offered occupational training and educational benefits. Additional benefits that were typically not found in the private sector included free medical care, low-cost groceries and merchandise from commissaries and exchanges, and on-base bowling alleys, movie theaters, and gyms. Other, less quantifiable aspects of military service—such as patriotism—also attracted volunteers.

Characteristics of Vietnam Veterans in 2018

Various characteristics—including age, education, and health—influence the type and amount of income adults have during their working years and in retirement. Vietnam Veterans differed from nonVeterans in several ways.

CBO examined male Veterans ages 63 to 78 (mostly born between 1940 and 1955) who served during the Vietnam War, about 85 percent of the more than 6 million Veterans of that era who were still alive in 2018. Veterans born before 1940 probably spent a substantial portion of their careers serving in the peacetime era before that war, and those born after 1955 would have been part of the all-volunteer force. Members of the National Guard and reserves were not considered Vietnam Veterans unless they served on active duty during the war. Veterans who did not serve during the Vietnam War were excluded from the samples that CBO analyzed. Women were excluded because they composed just 4 percent of Vietnam Veterans in 2018. Because the ACS does not ask whether the Veterans were drafted or where they served, CBO did not incorporate those factors in its analysis.

The average Vietnam Veteran was more likely than the average nonVeteran to have a high school degree, to be White, to be a U.S. citizen, and to report a serious impairment in his ability to function (see Table 1). Such functional disabilities did not necessarily qualify Veterans to receive disability compensation from VA.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Data for Vietnam Veterans were weighted to match the age distribution of nonVeteran men. The median age of Vietnam Veterans in 2018 was 70 and of nonVeterans was 68.

1. Includes men who completed grade 12 but received no diploma.

1. Includes men who received a general equivalency diploma or alternative credential.

1. Includes anyone who reported Hispanic ancestry; the other three categories exclude that group.

1. Men were considered functionally disabled if they reported serious difficulty hearing, seeing, remembering, moving (such as walking or climbing stairs), or problems with self-care or independent living.

Age

Vietnam Veterans were, on average, older than men in the same age group who did not serve. Veterans’ age distribution was bell-shaped because a large number of 18- to 23-year-olds entered military service during the height of the war (1966 to 1969). Fewer service members joined before 1965 or later in the war, so Veterans in 2018 were most commonly in their late 60s and early 70s (see Figure 3). Veterans’ modal age was 71. Nearly 45 percent of all men age 71 were Veterans.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

In contrast to Veterans’ age distribution, the distribution of nonVeterans was highest at age 63 and tailed off. Through 2000, the mortality rate for all Vietnam Veterans in the sample was similar to the mortality rate for nonVeterans, according to the limited evidence available.10

Education

Vietnam Veterans had a different pattern of educational attainment than nonVeterans. Although enlisted personnel were a little less likely than nonVeterans to have a high school diploma when they entered military service, by 2018 Vietnam Veterans were much more likely to have completed a high school education or some college. That was partly because DoD and VA offered financial assistance to help service members and Veterans further their education. For instance, more than 200,000 soldiers in the Army earned a high school diploma or its equivalent (a general educational development credential), many under the Pre-discharge Education Program.11 In addition, almost five million Vietnam Veterans used the GI Bill for further education or training.12 However, a greater share of nonVeterans than Veterans completed a postsecondary degree (36 and 27 percent, respectively). The Veterans’ share was even smaller for those younger than 72. Although some evidence shows that many men enrolled in postsecondary programs partly in an effort to avoid military service, the draft had little effect on whether they completed those programs.13

Ethnicity and Geographic Distribution

Vietnam Veterans were more likely than nonVeterans to be White and less likely to be Hispanic. Roughly equal percentages of Veterans and nonVeterans were Black. However, a slightly larger share of Black men than White men joined the enlisted ranks in the early 1970s.14 (In today’s military, the share of non-Whites who enlist is bigger than in the Vietnam era, partly because a larger share of U.S. youth are not White.) Like Veterans of other eras, Vietnam Veterans have tended to live and retire in the South, where large active-duty populations are located. Only a small share of all men, both Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans, lived in rural communities.

Health

Vietnam Veterans were more likely than nonVeterans to report functional disabilities—impairments that restrict someone’s ability to work or undertake daily activities.15 Although Veterans would have had to meet the military’s health and physical fitness standards, serious injuries and medical impairments may be more common among them because of intense physical training or experiences during deployment and combat. Research has confirmed that Vietnam Veterans have more health problems and functional disabilities than nonVeterans, including hearing loss, hepatitis C, and post-traumatic stress disorder.16 Some evidence suggests that those differences in health are increasing as the population ages. It is not certain, however, to what extent health problems are the result of military service.17

Just over 40 percent of the Veterans who reported functional disabilities on the ACS received disability payments from VA, which may be awarded to Veterans with a medical condition that developed or worsened during their service.18 VA determines whether Veterans qualify for such service-connected disability payments and the amount of payment they receive. Service-connected disabilities are not necessarily functional disabilities—they may not substantially affect a Veteran’s ability to work or perform day-to-day activities.

Compared with other men the same age in 2018, Vietnam Veterans were less likely to work. In a recent study, researchers at CBO and the Urban Institute determined that older workers with little education, poor health, other income sources (besides earnings), or with health insurance were the most likely to retire early.19 Several of those categories apply to many Veterans.

CBO’s Approach to Analyzing Veterans’ Income

To quantify the income of Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans, CBO analyzed ACS data from 2008 and 2018.20 The ACS is among the largest of the Census Bureau’s surveys, reaching about 2 million households each year, and is designed to represent the entire U.S. population. Households in the ACS survey provide information on demographics, employment status, education, disabilities, and military service, among other topics. More than 75,000 male Veterans who said they served during the Vietnam War were interviewed for the 2018 ACS.21 (CBO used the ACS’s survey weights to estimate data for all male Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans.)

CBO chose the ACS after examining the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The ACS covers more Veterans than those surveys and is about as accurate, CBO concluded.

To determine VA’s disability payments, CBO analyzed administrative data from VA, partly because VA’s disability compensation is mingled with several other types of income in a residual category on the ACS.

CBO examined five sources of regular income: earnings, Social Security, retirement plans, investment income, and disability payments from VA. Onetime payments such as inheritances or home sales were excluded.22 The first four income sources CBO studied were common to all men; the fifth, disability compensation, could only be received by Veterans.

• Earnings. Earnings were defined as money an employee received in the form of wages and salaries (including tips, commissions, and bonuses) and self-employment income from a business, professional practice, or farm after subtracting business expenses from gross receipts. (No distinction was made between incorporated and unincorporated businesses.)
• Social Security. ACS included retirement, disability, and survivors’ benefits, and payments made by the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. (Railroad workers who qualify for retirement benefits do not participate in the Social Security program.)
• Investments. The category included income from assets: interest, dividends, royalties, rents, and income from estates or trusts.
• Retirement Plans. ACS defined retirement plans as pensions in the form of defined benefit and defined contribution plans from companies, unions, and federal, state, and local governments (including the military); individual retirement accounts; Keogh plans; and any other type of pension, retirement account or annuity. Pensions paid to survivors and disability pensions were included.
• Disability Compensation from VA. That compensation went to Veterans with medical conditions or injuries that were incurred or aggravated during active-duty military service.

CBO did not include income from other sources reported in the ACS, such as alimony, public assistance, Supplemental Security Income, or VA’s pensions for low-income wartime Veterans. Those sources accounted for less than 5 percent of total income for the men in this analysis. For instance, less than 3 percent of Vietnam Veterans collected pensions from VA, according to that agency. In addition, the accuracy of reporting on those other sources of income was unclear.

CBO focused on broad trends and did not quantify the net effects of education, race, ethnicity, workforce experience, and other characteristics that exert a strong influence on the amount and sources of income people receive. Similarly, CBO did not examine other financial measures such as debt or expenses. Other studies have examined Veterans’ wealth and financial well-being.23

Survey data vary from year to year, so reporting of income fluctuates annually. However, CBO conducted a sensitivity analysis that indicated the results for 2017 and 2018 did not differ substantially from each other.

Vietnam Veterans’ Earnings in 2008

To help understand Vietnam Veterans’ income in retirement, CBO examined their earnings in 2008, when well over half of all men in that group were still working (as measured by the percentage who reported wage, salary, or self-employment income). Earnings before retirement are closely linked to income after exiting the labor force. For instance, employer-sponsored pensions are based on a percentage of the employee’s annual pay and the number of years worked at that employer.

In 2008, Vietnam Veterans ranged in age from 53 to 68; CBO examined earnings only for men 53 to 65 because a majority of those older than 65 no longer worked. CBO looked at earnings by age because earnings can differ substantially by age. In addition, comparing Veterans to nonVeterans by age accounted for the disparity in the two groups’ age distribution.

Vietnam Veterans earned an average of $50,000 in 2008, 20 percent less than nonVeterans in the same age range, who earned an average of $62,200.24 Veterans younger than 63 earned less than nonVeterans their ages, but Veterans age 63 or older earned about the same. At age 61, Veterans’ modal age in 2008, the difference was smaller, $6,500. Average earnings at that age were $52,600 for Veterans and $59,100 for nonVeterans (see Figure 4, top panel).

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Vietnam Veterans (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Earnings refer to wages, salaries, and self-employment income. Working individuals are those with nonzero earnings.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

When CBO looked only at men with wages, salaries, or self-employment earnings in 2008, Vietnam Veterans earned, on average, $71,200, 12 percent less than nonVeterans, who averaged $80,700. At age 61, Veterans who worked earned 9 percent less, on average, than nonVeterans.

Veterans’ earnings may have been lower than nonVeterans’ earnings for several reasons: because their military experience did not fully substitute for the labor market experience it replaced; because they chose jobs with lower pay but more generous retirement benefits; because they had difficulty transitioning to civilian life; or because they had fewer job opportunities in the civilian sector, and that disadvantage might have persisted throughout their working years.

Other factors, such as employers’ preferences and legislative actions to assist Veterans, surely played a part in Veterans’ work history and income, although the magnitude of those effects is unknown. Employers’ views of Veterans could have influenced their decisions about hiring and wages. Some employers may have believed that Veterans had physical or emotional difficulties as a result of military service; others that Veterans had special skills or attributes such as a sense of leadership, teamwork, or commitment. Federal legislation may have been a factor as well. Federal law prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of past, current, or future military service.25 In addition, a law enacted in 1944 (and amended many times since) grants a hiring preference to Veterans who apply for jobs in the federal government. Vietnam Veterans might have had the occupational skills to fill many positions in the federal civilian workforce.

Compared with nonVeterans, a markedly smaller share (5 percent smaller) of Vietnam Veterans younger than 60 worked in 2008 (see Figure 4, bottom panel). The reason that a different share of Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans worked is unclear. Higher rates of functional disability among those Veterans may be part of the explanation, although 43 percent of Veterans with those disabilities worked.26 Some researchers have suggested that disability payments from VA to some Veterans allowed them to leave the labor market early.27 Among men who held jobs, about the same share of Veterans (88 percent) worked full time as nonVeterans (89 percent).

The sector of the economy in which workers were employed affected their retirement benefits. A larger share of Vietnam Veterans (7 percent) than nonVeterans (2 percent) worked for the federal government. Veterans (of all wars) made up 25 percent of the federal workforce in 2008, and 40 percent of DoD’s civilian employees. Similar shares of Veterans and nonVeterans worked for state or local governments (13 percent for both) and the private sector (64 percent of Veterans and 63 percent of nonVeterans). However, Veterans were more likely than nonVeterans to have blue-collar jobs in fields with a significant union presence, such as transportation and construction. In addition, fewer Veterans, 16 percent, were self-employed, compared with more than 20 percent of nonVeterans.

Most government workers and two-thirds of union members in the private sector had access to a traditional pension (a defined benefit plan), unlike many other workers. Those who were self-employed probably only had access to individual retirement accounts. Although it is difficult to compare the earnings of Veterans and nonVeterans in different sectors because of differences in jobs and employee qualifications, the types of jobs Vietnam Veterans held in 2008 meant that many could expect a steady stream of income from a retirement plan.

The gap between the earnings of Veterans and nonVeterans, and likelihood of being employed, differed by race. Among all working men ages 53 to 65, White Vietnam Veterans earned an average of $73,700, about 17 percent less than White nonVeterans. The same was true to a much smaller degree for Black Vietnam Veterans, who on average earned $51,200, about $2,200 (4 percent) less than Black nonVeterans. Black men—whether or not they were Veterans—were less likely to work than White men. For example, 72 percent of White male Veterans age 61 worked, compared with 55 percent of Black male Veterans that age; results were similar for White and Black nonVeterans.

The earnings gap between Veterans and nonVeterans also differed by educational level. There was almost no difference (1 percent, or $600) between the average earnings of Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans who held high school diplomas. At higher levels of education, however, earnings differed. Veterans with college degrees earned less on average (11 percent, or $13,600) than nonVeterans of the same age with college degrees.

Vietnam Veterans’ Income in 2018

By 2018, most Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans were no longer working. At that point, CBO measured four sources of income for men ages 63 to 78 that probably composed the vast majority of income for most men: earnings, Social Security benefits, investments, and retirement plans. For Veterans, the agency also considered disability compensation from VA. That compensation, however, was paid only to certain Veterans. Therefore, CBO calculated total income for Veterans two ways: by averaging all five sources of income and by averaging four sources of income, excluding disability payments. CBO then compared both those measures with nonVeterans’ total income.

The disability compensation VA provides is unlike other sources of income because it is only available to Veterans, who may have faced special risks in the course of their military service. That compensation can be viewed as a work-related benefit, a lifetime indemnification that the federal government owes to Veterans with a medical condition that was incurred or worsened while they were in the military. If those disabled Veterans are out of the workforce for a long time, their Social Security benefits will be less than they otherwise would be, and they might not accumulate much personal savings. VA’s compensation mitigates such effects. The amount of that compensation can be sizable: CBO calculated that for Vietnam Veterans who received it, average annual disability compensation was nearly as much as they received in Social Security benefits.

Total Income

Veterans’ average income, including disability compensation, was $63,300, whereas the average for nonVeterans was $65,000. CBO found that disability compensation from VA increased Veterans’ income by $4,300, on average, bringing it close to nonVeterans’ income. Excluding disability income from VA, Vietnam Veterans’ average income was $59,000.

Differences by Age. When including disability compensation, Veterans at the modal age (71) had an average income of $65,500, $200 less than the average for all nonVeterans that age ($65,700). Whether or not disability income was included in income, Veterans younger than 71 had less income, on average, than nonVeterans, and Veterans older than 71 had more income, on average, than nonVeterans (see Figure 5, top panel).

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Vietnam Veterans (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Except where noted, average income is from five sources: earnings (wages, salaries, and self-employment); Social Security; investments; retirement plans; and disability compensation from VA. Median income excludes VA disability compensation. That disability compensation is untaxed and is provided to Veterans with medical injuries or conditions that were incurred or aggravated during active-duty military service.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

VA = Department of Veterans Affairs.

Certain dissimilarities between younger and older Vietnam Veterans make it doubtful that younger Veterans will ever have the same amount of income as older Veterans. In effect, there were two sets of Vietnam Veterans, rather than a single group. Older Veterans probably earned more than younger Veterans while working. They entered the military before the war escalated in 1965, were less likely to have been drafted, and were more likely to have had careers in the military and to collect military retirement pay after a 20-year career. As previously observed, a greater share of older Veterans had college degrees than younger Veterans. In addition, the share of older Veterans with low test scores upon entry into the military was smaller than the share of younger Veterans.28 They also probably differed in other ways that affected their income in retirement.

Income Distribution. To exclude extremely high and low values that might have skewed income findings, CBO also examined median income (the midpoint value in the income range) for Veterans and nonVeterans. Excluding disability payments, at age 71, median income for Veterans ($44,200) was higher than for nonVeterans ($41,800).29 (See Figure 5, bottom panel.)

Comparing Veterans’ and nonVeterans’ income distribution (excluding VA’s disability payments) confirmed that fewer Veterans had low or high income (see Figure 6). When income for all men ages 63 to 78 was grouped into quintiles, only 15 percent of Veterans fell into the bottom quintile, compared with 22 percent of nonVeterans. Even in the bottom quintile, Veterans’ income was 10 percent higher than nonVeterans’ income. In addition, disability compensation and other benefits like free health care and special pensions for poor Veterans (neither of which were included in CBO’s calculations) probably helped support the neediest Veterans. On the opposite end of the income distribution, 17 percent of Vietnam Veterans and 21 percent of nonVeterans had income in the highest quintile; nonVeterans in that quintile had average annual income that was more than 10 percent higher than Veterans’ income.30

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Includes income from earnings (wages, salaries, and self-employment); Social Security; investments; and retirement plans. Excludes income from disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bars for Veterans add up to 100 percent, as do bars for nonVeterans.

Common Components of Income

Although Vietnam Veterans and nonVeterans relied on many of the same sources of income, some sources were more important for Veterans. On average, Vietnam Veterans had a greater share of annual income from Social Security and retirement plans than nonVeterans, who remained more reliant on earnings even in old age. That was also true when men at Veterans’ modal age of 71 were examined (see Table 2). CBO looked at income by age because the sources and amounts of income differ by age.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Income refers to income from five sources: earnings (wages, salaries, and self-employment); Social Security; investments; retirement plans; and disability compensation from VA. Disability compensation is untaxed and is provided to Veterans with medical injuries or conditions that were incurred or aggravated during active-duty military service.

VA= Department of Veterans Affairs; n.a. = not applicable

Earnings. On average, working Vietnam Veterans ages 63 to 78 earned $52,800 annually, 23 percent less than other working men ($68,700). For men at age 71, the difference was smaller: Veterans earned $50,500, and nonVeterans earned $62,200 (see Figure 7, top panel). The earnings gap was larger for younger men than for older men.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Veterans who served in the Vietnam War (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Earnings refer to wages, salaries, and self-employment income. Working individuals are those with nonzero earnings.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

The gap between Veterans and nonVeterans’ earnings for those who worked occurred partly because a large share of less-educated nonVeterans—who probably had lower-wage jobs—had left the workforce by 2018. Their departure raised the average wage for nonVeterans who kept working. In addition, just half of working Veterans were employed full time, compared with 62 percent of working nonVeterans.

Because most men between the ages of 63 and 78 were not working, the average earnings among all of them were much lower: $14,900 for Veterans and $28,200 for nonVeterans. For men age 71, the difference was smaller: those averages were $12,400 and $18,800, respectively. However, earnings were becoming a smaller share of total income for all men in retirement.

Part of the difference in average earnings arose because there was a gap in the share of Veterans and nonVeterans who were employed at age 63 or older (see Figure 7, bottom panel). The gap in employment was largest at age 63, indicating that Veterans left the workforce at younger ages than nonVeterans. Veterans may have stopped working earlier for several reasons, including their higher disability rates or the possibility that VA’s disability compensation enabled them to leave the labor market earlier.

Among men with self-employment income in 2018, nonVeterans were a little more likely than Vietnam Veterans to report such income, and on average they reported more: $47,800, compared with $36,600 for Veterans. Self-employment was the main source of earnings for about 30 percent of all men with earnings income.31

Social Security. Participation in Social Security was extremely high for all men CBO studied. Almost all Vietnam Veterans (94 percent) and nonVeterans (90 percent) received payments at age 71 (see Figure 8, bottom panel).32 The share of Veterans that collected Social Security benefits grew with each year of age until age 71 and then remained flat.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Veterans who served in the Vietnam War (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Social Security payments include retirement, disability, and survivors’ benefits, as well as payments made by the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

Veterans’ average annual Social Security payment was $17,900, much higher than nonVeterans’ $13,900 average payment. That is generally explained by the fact that more Veterans than nonVeterans received Social Security benefits. A larger share of Veterans (88 percent) than nonVeterans (69 percent) had turned 66 by 2018, the age at which they were eligible for full Social Security benefits.33 In addition, many Veterans claimed Social Security benefits earlier than nonVeterans (in general, however, claiming benefits early decreases the monthly payment for that recipient).

When only men who received Social Security payments were considered, a small difference persisted, but only at certain ages and levels of income. Veterans who received payments collected, on average, $20,800; nonVeterans collected $20,000, about $800 less.

At age 71, Social Security income was about the same for Veterans and nonVeterans (see Figure 8, top panel). Veterans younger than 71 collected slightly less in Social Security benefits, and Veterans older than 71 collected more. Strikingly, even those older Veterans with lower earnings in 2008 collected more Social Security benefits than nonVeterans, on average.

CBO examined special earnings credits toward Social Security that Vietnam Veterans received. But those credits probably do not explain older Veterans’ bigger Social Security payments. (Those additional credits were not added to Veterans’ Social Security payments; rather, they increased the total amount of income Social Security considered when setting monthly benefits.) Veterans on active duty from 1957 through 1977 were credited with $300 in additional earnings for each calendar quarter in which they received basic pay. For Veterans who continued serving after 1977, the calculation for the credits changed but the maximum remained $1,200 per year. (In January 2002, the extra earnings credits ceased.)

CBO concluded that the formula used to calculate benefits was the most likely explanation for the difference between average Social Security payments for older Veterans and nonVeterans.34 NonVeterans were more likely to have had very low or very high earnings than Veterans during their working lives, which might have generated a disparity in average Social Security benefits. Benefit amounts for very high earners—more of whom were nonVeterans—replace a much smaller share of earnings than for others; benefits for low earners—more of whom were also nonVeterans—more closely reflected their lower earnings. Thus, the group of nonVeterans qualified for a slightly smaller amount of Social Security benefits, on average.

Investments. About 30 percent of Veterans and nonVeterans received investment income, and it was a small share of total income for all recipients except the wealthiest. The share of all men with investment income increased from less than 10 percent in the lowest income quintile to more than 50 percent for those in the highest quintile. Men in the lowest income group received an average of less than $500 annually; those with total annual income in the top quintile collected roughly $30,000.35

A slightly smaller share of Vietnam Veterans younger than 71 reported investment income compared with nonVeterans. Among men 71 and older, a bigger share of Veterans had such income than nonVeterans. Among all recipients, average income from investments was $19,900 for Veterans and $26,800 for nonVeterans. At age 71, Veteran recipients reported $19,200 in investment income and nonVeteran recipients $28,000, a difference of $8,800 (see Figure 9).

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Veterans who served in the Vietnam War (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Investment income is from assets: interest, dividends, royalties, rents, and income from estates or trusts.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

Average investment income was smaller when the average includes people who did not receive such income. It was less, on average, for Veterans than for nonVeterans. For 71-year-olds, investment income averaged $6,400 for Veterans and $9,200 for nonVeterans. In general, amounts were greater for older men regardless of their Veteran status. Investment income for older households—generally, those with at least one person age 65 or older—has been declining since the 1990s because fewer and fewer adults own financial instruments.

Retirement Plans. Employer-sponsored retirement plans were an important source of income for older Americans. On average, Vietnam Veterans had about one-third more income from retirement plans in 2018 than nonVeterans, ($20,300 and $15,300, respectively), probably in part because Veterans were much more likely to have held jobs that offered such plans. At age 71, Veterans had, on average, more income from retirement plans than nonVeterans: $21,000 and $18,000, respectively (see Figure 10, top panel).

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Veterans who served in the Vietnam War (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

Retirement plans include defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans from companies, unions, and federal, state, and local governments (including the military); individual retirement accounts; Keogh plans; and any other type of pension, retirement account, or annuity.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age and Veteran status.

A much bigger share of Veterans than nonVeterans received payments from retirement plans. The gap was about 30 percentage points for the youngest men but shrank to about 17 percentage points by age 66 (see Figure 10, bottom panel). The finding suggests that, in addition to having greater access to retirement plans, Vietnam Veterans began drawing income from their retirement plans earlier than other men.

As CBO’s 2008 analysis of earnings showed, more Veterans than nonVeterans were likely to have held jobs that included a defined benefit or defined contribution plan. For example, about 20 percent of Vietnam Veterans had a government job, compared with 15 percent of nonVeterans.36

Federal workers have access to both defined benefit and defined contribution plans. State and local government workers commonly have access to only a defined benefit plan, and private-sector workers typically have access only to a defined contribution plan. Access to and participation in any type of retirement benefit is much greater for government workers; in 2008, about 85 percent of government employees participated in a retirement plan compared with about 50 percent of private industry workers. In addition, more nonVeterans than Veterans were self-employed and were less likely to have defined benefit retirement plans.

The military offers separate retirement plans (including a defined benefit plan that is usually available after 20 years of service). In 2018, a little over 10 percent of Vietnam Veterans collected a military pension, CBO estimates. Although relatively few Vietnam Veterans qualified for retirement benefits from the military, those who did would typically have been in their late 30s or early 40s when they separated from service; they could have joined the civilian labor force and had second careers, adding to their retirement income.

When income from retirement plans is averaged only among those who received it rather than among all men, average annual payments were a bit smaller for Vietnam Veterans ($26,800) than for nonVeterans ($28,200). At the modal age of 71, Veterans collecting retirement income also received less ($27,500) than nonVeterans ($29,500). Vietnam Veterans older than 73, though, received about $1,500 more, on average, than nonVeterans. The payment differences can probably be explained by the nature of the jobs each group held while working.

Disability Compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs

In addition to the four sources of retirement income that could be collected by all men, some Veterans also collected disability payments from VA for injuries or medical conditions they received or developed during active-duty service. (See Box 1 for detail on VA’s disability program and other benefits for Veterans.) The average payment for recipients in 2018 was $18,100, so VA’s disability payments were a substantial part of income for some Veterans. About 24 percent of Vietnam Veterans received disability payments, CBO estimates.

For Vietnam Veterans ages 63 to 78, including those who did not receive disability payments, the average annual disability payment was $4,300; the average payment at age 71 was $4,900 (see Figure 11). Those payments make up much of the average difference in other income between Veterans and nonVeterans, increasing Veterans’ average income by about 7 percent to $63,300.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the American Community Survey.

The Vietnam War ran from August 1964 (fiscal year 1965) to January 1973.

Shaded area denotes the largest three-year cluster of Veterans who served in the Vietnam War (one-third of total). Veterans in that cluster probably served from 1966 to 1969, when forces were largest.

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides tax-free disability compensation to Veterans with medical injuries or conditions that were incurred or aggravated during active-duty military service.

CBO did not adjust the data to account for characteristics other than age.

Vietnam Veterans who received disability payments from VA were likely to be in the lower half of the income distribution for all men in the age range that CBO analyzed. In addition, they had less income from other sources than Veterans who did not receive VA payments, mainly because they were less likely to be employed and because those who were employed had lower earnings. However, on average, their disability payments made up that difference, increasing the average total income of Veterans who received those payments above the average income of Veterans who did not.

The incidence and amount of disability payments from VA varied by age. A greater share of Vietnam Veterans who were 68 to 71 years old in 2018 received disability payments (28 percent) than Veterans of other ages (22 percent). Furthermore, partly because those 68- to 71-year-olds were also likely to have higher disability ratings (70 percent or more), CBO estimates that the average payments for that age group were about $19,400 a year, $1,300 more than the $18,100 average payment for all Vietnam Veterans receiving VA disability compensation.

Because Vietnam Veterans ages 68 to 71 were likely to have served in the mid- to late 1960s, when deployments to Vietnam and surrounding countries were largest, they may have been more likely to experience combat-related injuries and medical conditions, some of which did not show up immediately. Although Veterans claim far more disabilities than the number of combat injuries reported at the time (about 150,000), many medical conditions can take years to develop (such as limitations on joint movement) or may not be identified at the time (such as mental illnesses).

In addition to such late-onset or previously unrecognized conditions, VA has declared that several medical conditions can be presumed to have been caused by the service member’s deployment to Vietnam. Those presumptive conditions substantially increase the number of Veterans who receive disability payments.37 Among such presumptive conditions are diabetes, certain cancers, and other problems that may have arisen from exposure to Agent Orange or other herbicides during the war. A sizable share of Vietnam Veterans receive VA disability payments for presumptive conditions. For instance, VA administrative data showed that nearly 375,000 Vietnam Veterans received disability compensation for diabetes in 2018; nearly all of those cases were considered presumptive conditions.

Limitations of CBO’s Study

CBO’s study has limitations that are common to any analysis based on survey data. Survey data may be inaccurate because of misreporting. Some people may not answer certain questions or underreport the amount they receive from particular sources. Both problems have been extensively noted.38

The Census Bureau uses a statistical approach to estimate the values of missing responses. CBO also used statistical methods to assign Social Security and retirement-plan income to some respondents. About 95 percent of men ages 60 or older in the ACS correctly responded that they received Social Security benefits, according to administrative data. However, nearly 20 percent underreported the amount of Social Security benefits they received. CBO therefore imputed additional Social Security income to those who reported that they had received it. Some of those who receive income from retirement plans do not report it at all, so CBO imputed such income to some respondents. For a discussion of CBO’s approach to imputing retirement-plan income, see the appendix.

CBO did not adjust ACS’s data for earnings or investment income. Information about wages and salaries is generally reported correctly. The exception is self-employment income, which is subject to nonresponse and underreporting.39 Likewise, investment income is subject to nonresponse and underreporting. For those income sources, there is no consensus on how to account for those problems. However, the consequences of nonresponse and underreporting in those two categories probably had a minimal effect on this report: In the United States, self-employment and investments are a small portion of total annual income for most retired men.40

CBO also used VA’s data to estimate the amount of disability compensation Vietnam Veterans received. That was necessary because ACS data only included the number of people receiving VA disability compensation, not the amount of that compensation. CBO adjusted ACS’s profile for those Veterans on the basis of VA’s aggregate data. It then used VA’s data on total spending and average payments by disability rating to estimate the average amount of payments to Vietnam Veterans by age.

Appendix: How CBO Imputed Income from Retirement Plans

The quality and usefulness of survey data depend on the accuracy of responses from the people questioned. Misreporting is a common problem—typically, nonresponse (people not answering a question) and underreporting (people reporting less of an amount than they actually receive). A large body of literature discusses the quality of household surveys and the type and extent of measurement errors they contain.1

The reporting of income from retirement plans is a particular problem. According to researchers at the Census Bureau, respondents to the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS) who were age 65 or older failed to report income from retirement plans 44 percent of the time.2 (In this Congressional Budget Office report, retirement plans encompass defined benefit and defined contribution plans from companies, unions, and federal, state, and local governments [including the military]; individual retirement accounts; Keogh plans; and any other type of pension, retirement account or annuity, including survivors’ pensions and disability pensions.)

There are a number of reasons that income from retirement plans in surveys is subject to greater measurement error than other income sources, and some methods have been developed to account for such errors.3 Recipients of such income might perceive it as a form of deferred earnings rather than contemporaneous income. Survey respondents may also find it difficult to recall irregular income payments over a long reference period.

To account for misreporting of retirement income, CBO took steps to impute income from retirement plans and validate those results.4

Imputing Income from Retirement Plans

For its analysis, CBO used a regression-based method with three steps. First, CBO developed targets for the total number of people receiving income from retirement plans by age group and by year, using administrative data. Second, it selected respondents for imputation by using a regression-based method while matching the targets set in the first step. Third, CBO used predictive mean matching (PMM) for the selected data: The agency imputed income amounts by borrowing values from donors (respondents who were observationally similar to those who did not report retirement-plan income).

Developing Administrative Targets

CBO developed targets using administrative data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Those data showed the number of people who received retirement income, by survey year and age group. The two age-based targets for receipt of income from retirement plans were ages 55 to 64 and age 65 or older. Both were derived from estimates reported in a working paper published in 2017 by the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division. The authors linked respondents in several national datasets, including the 2013 ACS, to Forms 1099-R filed with the IRS in 2012 by banks and other entities to report disbursements they made from retirement accounts.5 About 60 percent of respondents 65 or older received a distribution reported on a Form 1099-R.

By using the linked Current Population Survey and Survey of Income Program Participation, authors Adam Bee and Joshua Mitchell showed that the share of respondents to those surveys who received retirement income had remained roughly constant for that age group since 2004. Therefore, CBO estimated that 60 percent of respondents 65 or older received income from retirement plans in 2013 and 2018. For respondents ages 55 to 64, only 26 percent received 1099-R distributions in 2012. Bee and Mitchell did not provide estimates of how that proportion had changed over time. CBO estimated that the share of respondents in that age group who received retirement-plan income was constant at a rate of 26 percent.

Imputing Receipt of Income

CBO used the targets it developed to derive the number of respondents in the survey for which imputation was needed. To allocate those imputations, CBO used a probit regression to predict each respondent’s probability of receiving income from retirement plans.6 Separate regressions were estimated for two age groups (55-to-64-year-olds and those 65 or older) and two survey years (2013 and 2018). The regressions tended to assign higher probabilities to individuals who were male, older, more educated, White, and Veterans.

Each person’s predicted probability of receiving income was compared with a random number (uniformly distributed between zero and 1). If the respondent’s probability of receiving income exceeded the random number assigned to that probability, CBO designated that person to receive an imputation. The random-number comparison was repeated for each individual in the survey until the sum of the respondents with retirement income and the respondents designated to receive an imputation matched the administrative target. A random component was included in the procedure to incorporate heterogeneity in the imputed data. A feature of that method is the assumption that the distribution of respondents in the survey data for whom imputation was needed was similar to the distribution of other respondents, which may not be accurate.

Imputing Amounts of Income

CBO assigned income values to respondents using PMM.7 Under that method, respondents who had been designated to receive retirement income were matched with observationally similar cases (donors), and the amount of income the respondents was assigned was determined by the amount the matching donors reported. PMM has a number of desirable properties. In contrast to standard regression imputation, which is deterministic, PMM includes a random component to introduce heterogeneity into the imputed values. Further, PMM’s semi-parametric imputation process is less vulnerable to model misspecification than a fully parametric imputation model. Relative to hot-deck imputation within adjustment cells, PMM allows for more predictors and for the use of continuous variables as predictors.8

Using PMM involved several steps. First, a linear regression model was used to predict the amount of income from retirement plans for each person (including those who would receive an imputation). Retirement income was regressed on the same covariates used in the probit model four times, using different combinations of the two age groups and the two survey years. Second, predicted values were computed by using a set of coefficients randomly drawn from a posterior predictive distribution. That procedure aimed to introduce sufficient variability in the predicted values by incorporating the residual variance from the regression model. (Without that adjustment, the range of the predicted values would probably have been smaller than the true range.) For those respondents with income values of zero who were selected for imputation, five donors were selected who reported positive income from retirement plans and whose predicted income values were nearest to the target. One of those respondents was then randomly selected to serve as the donor. The previous two steps, obtaining predicted values and selecting donors, were repeated four times to produce five sets of imputed values. The final assigned amount was the average of those five values.

Validating Imputations

Only imputations for respondents to the 2013 ACS who were 65 or older were validated. There are no comparable administrative benchmarks to evaluate CBO’s estimates for 2018 or to evaluate its estimates for the 55-to-64-year-old age group. CBO’s results were similar to Bee and Mitchell’s.

Validating Imputed Recipients

Differences between the characteristics of CBO’s imputed sample and those of Bee and Mitchell’s linked ACS sample were small (see Table A-1). CBO’s procedure imputed shares of all men receiving income from retirement plans and shares of Veterans receiving that income that were slightly larger than those in Bee and Mitchell’s sample—by 2 percentage points and 3 percentage points, respectively.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the ACS and from C. Adam Bee and Joshua W. Mitchell, Do Older Americans Have More Income Than We Think? Working Paper SEHSD-WP2017-39 (Census Bureau, July 2017), Appendix Table 7, https://go.usa.gov/xfzx7.

To create its sample, CBO imputed retirement-plan income to some ACS respondents. The ACS asks respondents to report income from defined benefit and defined contribution plans from companies, unions, federal, state, and local governments (including the military); individual retirement accounts; Keogh plans; and any other type of pension, retirement account, or annuity.

For the Census sample, Bee and Mitchell linked ACS data with IRS Form 1099-Rs, which record gross distributions that were made from employer-sponsored plans and individual retirement accounts and that were permanently withdrawn from tax-preferred retirement plans. (Distributions to people who do not file tax returns are not included.) Bee and Mitchell excluded certain kinds of distributions that the authors did not consider income, primarily direct rollovers and conversions, which move money from one tax-preferred retirement plan to another.

ACS = American Community Survey; IRS = Internal Revenue Service.

Validating Imputed Amounts

CBO compared aggregate totals in the ACS with the tabulations from the IRS’s Statistics of Income (SOI) division (see Table A-2). The SOI division publishes estimates of aggregate amounts of income from retirement plans by age.9 Those estimates include taxable distributions from individual retirement accounts, taxable and nontaxable pensions, and annuity income.10 CBO’s imputed values for 2018 matched (for ages 65 or older) or exceeded (for ages 55 to 64) SOI’s taxable amount of income but were below the aggregate amount of income. CBO also found that the ACS’s aggregate income from retirement plans in 2013 for those 65 or older was greater than the SOI taxable amount and smaller than the aggregate amount; similar results were reported by Bee and Mitchell. Those results may be partly explained by differences in the types of income included in the two sources of data. For example, the ACS does not include nontaxable direct rollovers, which are included in the aggregate retirement amount reported by SOI; the ACS includes income from people who receive retirement distributions but did not file tax returns, which is not included in the SOI tabulations.11

Source: Congressional Budget Office, using data from the ACS and the IRS’s Statistics of Income—2017 Individual Income Tax Return.

The ACS data understates retirement-plan income because many people fail to report it. CBO’s sample includes retirement-plan income both for those who reported such income and those to whom CBO imputed income. The IRS’s taxable and aggregate income figures do not include distributions to people who did not file returns. The IRS’s aggregate income figure includes distributions such as direct rollovers and conversions, which move money from one tax-preferred retirement plan to another.

ACS = American Community Survey; IRS = Internal Revenue Service.

1. a.The IRS publishes taxable income and aggregate income from retirement plans annually in its Statistics of Income—2017 Individual Income Tax Return. Because the IRS data for 2018 had not been published when CBO began its analysis, the agency projected taxable and aggregate income from retirement plans for that year by using IRS data from 2007 to 2017. To make the IRS data more comparable to data reported in the ACS, CBO averaged its projection with IRS data from 2017.

Unlike Bee and Mitchell’s IRS data, CBO’s imputed income amounts were subject to intensive margin underreporting; in other words, among those who correctly reported receiving income from retirement plans, the amounts listed were smaller than the amounts actually received.12 Research has shown that although underreporting in the ACS was primarily driven by the extensive margin (that is, respondents failing to report any retirement income when such income was in fact present in the administrative records), some intensive margin underreporting was also present.13 Because the PMM procedure borrows income values from other respondents in the data, which were also underreported, the imputed values were underreported as well.14 Given that most underreporting was along the extensive margin, and lacking an appropriate target, CBO did not make further adjustment for intensive margin underreporting.15

About This Document

This Congressional Budget Office report was prepared at the request of the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. In accordance with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the report makes no recommendations.

Heidi Golding and Elizabeth Bass prepared the report with guidance from David Mosher and Edward G. Keating. Jimmy Chen (formerly of CBO) and John Kerman contributed to the analysis. William Carrington, Xinzhe Cheng, Molly Dahl, Bilal Habib, Rebecca Heller, Nadia Karamcheva, Noah Meyerson, David Newman, and Julie Topoleski provided useful comments.

David S. C. Chu of the Institute for Defense Analyses and analysts at the Census Bureau provided helpful comments on the draft. (The assistance of external reviewers implies no responsibility for the final product, which rests solely with CBO.)

Jeffrey Kling, John Skeen, and Robert Sunshine reviewed the report. The editor was Elizabeth Schwinn, and the graphics editor was Jorge Salazar. An electronic version of the report is available on CBO’s website (www.cbo.gov/publication/56679).

CBO continually seeks feedback to make its work as useful as possible. Please send any comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Vietnam-era and other pre-9/11 Veterans are one step closer to accessing a program designed to pay their spouses or other family support for in-home care even as rules tighten for who can enroll, as part of a highly anticipated proposed rule release from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Among the changes laid out in the 231-page proposal is a shift in the level of care Veterans must require to qualify; a change to monthly payment amounts and how they are calculated; a downsizing of benefits tiers; and a benefits grace period for caregivers who leave the program due to domestic or intimate partner violence.

No start date was given for the proposed changes. Their rollout, however, is tied to an already delayed IT upgrade needed to handle the anticipated influx of applicants. That update is expected by late this fall, VA officials said in a release. From there a two years must pass before the benefit is expanded to Veterans who did not serve after 9/11. The program also only serves those providing care for a service-connected disabled Veteran -- not a Veteran providing care for someone else.

The VA's caregiver stipend program has long been available only to caregivers of post-9/11 Veterans. The program currently pays stipends to about 18,000 caregivers, with dollar amounts based on a three-tiered system tied to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) rates for in-home health aids.

But the program is notoriously inconsistent, with enrollment standards varying widely by region. To curtail that problem, VA officials have repeatedly closed and reopened enrollments as they worked to tighten guidance on what injuries require such care.

Meanwhile, some advocates for Veterans decried the program as unfair because it did not allow pre-9/11 Veteran access at all. A 2018 law, known as the VA Mission Act, laid the groundwork to open enrollment for the program to Veterans of other eras. The law requires the VA to first complete an IT overhaul for administering the program, a process that is still ongoing, and issue new policy rules governing its administration.

The proposed rules, released March 4, are the VA's response to that policy requirement.

While newly qualifying Veterans will benefit from the expanded access, the changes could drastically impact those who are currently enrolled. And while the proposal includes a grandfather clause that would protect their enrollment for a year, some caregivers may find they no longer qualify under the new, tightened regulation.

Currently, Veterans qualify for the program by needing assistance with "activities of daily living" identified by the VA. Those include dressing and undressing; bathing; grooming; adjusting special prosthetics or orthopedic appliances; toileting; feeding; and mobility. But the current rules do not specifically dictate how often that assistance is required.

The new policy would instead require that the Veteran need assistance with the identified activities each time they are completed. That change would in effect block Veterans who only need periodic help from the program.

Those who qualify under the old rules would be grandfathered into the program for a year, during which time they would be reassessed for enrollment.

Rather than a three-tiered system currently in place with payment amounts based on estimates of time spent providing care, the revamped program would instead include only two tiers. They would be divided into those who need assistance with at least three of those daily living activities and those who need help with no more than two.

Monthly stipends would then be based purely on those tiers and tied to the government's GS-4, step 1 rate plus locality pay, instead of the BLS calculated rate for home health aids currently used. The proposal estimates that, in most cases, the change will result in a slightly increased caregiver payment.

For example, the proposal states, the 2020 GS-4 step 1 rate is about $27,000 annually, while the BLS rate in use as of December was about $25,000.

Caregivers in tier one of the proposed scale would receive about $2,250 monthly before locality pay, while those in tier two would receive 62.5% of the full rate, or about $1,410.

Caregivers who currently receive a higher payment than the proposed change to GS-4 gives would be grandfathered into the old payment system for one year, the proposal states.

The new proposal also expands protections for caregivers who are victims of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. Currently, those who drop from the program because of those issues are given a 30-day grace period. But how that is actually implemented depends on a wide variety of factors, including the local program administrator and whether the Veteran immediately designates a different caregiver.

But the new rules add specific, broad protections for domestic and partner violence victims, granting a 90-day payment grace period for caregivers who report violence or abuse. By doing so, the authors state, they hope to encourage caregivers to keep themselves safe.

"We have found that oftentimes, a caregiver may remain in a [domestic violence]... situation due to financial concerns," the proposal states. "They may choose to not leave such a situation because doing so would result in financial insecurity, including loss of caregiver benefits such as the stipend payment and health care benefits. We propose to extend caregiver benefits for a period of 90 days after discharge in such instances..... We do not want to encourage caregivers to remain in such situations."

The rules will be published to the Federal Register on Friday and are subject to a 60-day public comment period.

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March 29 will mark the sixth anniversary of National Vietnam War Veterans Day. It took more than 40 years after the Vietnam War ended to establish a national day for these heroes, a reminder of the struggles Veterans faced long after leaving Vietnam.

While serving in the Army as an infantry platoon leader in the early 1970s, I witnessed many of my Soldiers returning from Vietnam broken, met by an American public that didn’t fully understand their service. Despite their tremendous sacrifices, these Veterans did not receive the warm welcome home of those who returned from war both before and after Vietnam.

National Vietnam War Veterans Day recognizes that these heroes did not receive a proper homecoming and seeks to right that wrong. It is a privilege for Team Exchange to do its part, in partnership with The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration, to celebrate the distinguished service of our Nation’s Vietnam Veterans.

It’s not only our shoppers who are heroes. Many Exchange teammates served in Vietnam with distinction. If you have the honor of serving with Vietnam Veterans, please take a moment to thank them for their service. And please remember the family members of our Vietnam Veterans on Team Exchange. Let them know that the sacrifices they made for their Veteran and our Nation are deeply appreciated.

The Exchange is privileged to celebrate the service, valor and sacrifice of Vietnam Veterans and their families. We are truly honored to serve heroes like them.

Veteran for Life!

Tom

Tom Shull

Director/CEO

Army & Air Force Exchange Service

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