Senate Veterans Affairs Committtee chairman Daniel Akaka speaks with The American Legion Magazine about the committee's approach to the second half of the 110th Congress.
Second Lt. Doug Pringle was stunned when a group of disabled World War II veterans walked into his room at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco in November 1968 and invited him to go ski-ing. With one leg severed and the other leg shattered by a North Vietnamese grenade just five months earlier, Pringle quickly refused.
He reconsidered after his buddies came back from their first outing with stories of hanging out in bars with beautiful women.
As the 23rd commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen has borne the burden of change, most pro-foundly by steering his massive fleet and force out of the Department of Transportation and into new and unwieldy seas in the global war on terrorism under the Department of Homeland Security.
As both Atlantic-area and Maritime Defense Zone Atlantic commander, Allen earned praise by directing the Coast Guard's East Coast response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
A college senior from Michigan will soon spend another winter break without his father, a staff sergeant whose life was taken in a mortar attack in Baqubah, Iraq, on Christmas Day 2003.
Two teen brothers in California will take a moment this holiday season to remember their Marine-pilot stepfather who was killed in an air crash in Pakistan; the oldest boy was only 12 when he tearfully described their late parent as "a hero, especially to me" at the funeral five years ago.
Two students at the University of Illinois, a brother and sister, are about to complete their college degrees and lau
