After that, it’ll be up to the rest of the committee to turn them into law.

The quality of life panel — led by Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa. — was formed in early 2023 as a way to evaluate military policies and shortfalls that may be discouraging individuals from reenlisting.

Over the last nine months, the panel held a host of roundtables with Pentagon leaders, military families and outside advocates on ways to address those concerns. That included a briefing in late November on base daycare options.

Better pay for junior troops will be top focus of new House panel

At a Nov. 15 event hosted by the political action group With Honor, Bacon and Houlahan said they are considering a host of proposals to add into next year’s defense authorization bill debate, including military sabbaticals for outside job opportunities or family care, more tax exemptions for military pay, and more flexibility for troops in their future duty assignments.

They also are upset over continued reports of housing problems at bases across the country. Bacon blamed some of the problems on a lack of accountability for the issue among senior leaders.

Just how many of those ideas can advance into actual legislation remains to be seen. Senior Republican leaders said the quality of life changes will be key in recruiting and retention efforts. But they also spent most of 2023 focused on social issues in the personnel section of the annual defense budget bill.

Bacon and Houlahan are likely to be key voices throughout the spring in hearings on the quality of life topics. A draft of the authorization bill — including any possible recommendations from the panel — is expected in May or June.

Russell Hamler, 99, died on Tuesday, his son Jeffrey said. He did not give a cause of death.

Hamler was the last living Marauder, according to a biography published by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in January.

Hamler had been living in the Pittsburgh area, where he was born in 1924, and enlisted in the Army at 18, according to the department’s biography.

In 2022, the Marauders received the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’ highest honor. The Marauders inspired a 1962 movie called “Merrill’s Marauders,” and dozens of Marauders were awarded individual decorations after the war, from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Silver Star. The Army also awarded the Bronze Star to every soldier in the unit.

The soldiers spent months behind enemy lines, marching hundreds of miles through the tangled jungles and steep mountains of Burma to capture a Japanese-held airfield and open an Allied supply route between India and China.

They battled hunger and disease between firefights with Japanese forces during their secret mission, a grueling journey of roughly 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) on foot that killed almost all of them.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to have the Army assemble a ground unit, the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional, for a long-range mission behind enemy lines into Japanese-occupied Burma, now Myanmar. Seasoned infantrymen and newly enlisted soldiers alike volunteered for the mission, deemed so secret they weren’t told where they were going.

Merrill’s Marauders — nicknamed for the unit’s commander, Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill — were tasked with cutting off Japanese communications and supply lines along their long march to the airfield at the occupied town of Myitkyina. Often outnumbered, they successfully fought Japanese troops in five major engagements, plus 30 minor ones, between February and August 1944, according to the department.

Starting with 3,000 soldiers, the Marauders completed their mission five months later with barely 200 men still in the fight.

Hamler was wounded in the hip by a mortar fragment during the battle known as Nhpum Ga, the department’s biography said. The injury immobilized Hamler in his foxhole for more than 10 days until rescuers arrived and evacuated him to a hospital in India.

Marauders spent most days cutting their way through dense jungle, with only mules to help carry equipment and provisions. They slept on the ground and rarely changed clothes. Supplies dropped from planes were their only means of replenishing rations and ammunition. Malnutrition and the wet climate left the soldiers vulnerable to malaria, dysentery and other diseases.

The Marauders eventually captured the Myitkyina airfield, the only all-weather strip in northern Burma, their key objective, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History. The unit was disbanded afterward.

Hamler was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He became an aircraft mechanic for Trans World Airlines and retired from it in 1985, the department said.

After passing a short-term budget extension in early November, lawmakers are again faced with the possibility of disruptions in military funding and government operations if they can’t come to an agreement over a full-year budget plan in the next few weeks. And their decisions in early January could cause problems for the fiscal 2025 budget before work on that spending plan even begins.

Fiscal 2024 began on Oct. 1, so federal agencies are already nearly three months into new spending cycles without appropriate changes in their funding plans. Pentagon leaders have said that means some new programs and purchases have been delayed until a new full-year budget plan is passed.

When that will happen is unclear. Congress actually faces a pair of potential shutdown deadlines in the next few weeks.

The short-term spending deal approved in November extended funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a few other agencies until Jan. 19. If a budget deal is not reached before then, only those offices would be forced into partial closure.

House votes to prevent a government shutdown

Meanwhile, VA does have advance appropriations to keep hospitals, benefits offices and most other operations going past that date. So, a partial government shutdown in late January may have a limited impact on military and veteran families.

But Defense Department funding — as well as Homeland Security and the rest of the government — only runs until Feb. 2. If a budget deal is not reached before then, troops’ paychecks will halt, non-essential base services will shutter and family moves will be postponed.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have said they hope to avoid that, but they remain far apart on a compromise.

House Republican leaders have insisted that spending limits must be part of any full-year budget deal. White House officials have insisted that lawmakers follow the budget outlines agreed upon early last summer, as part of the debt limit extension deal.

Typically, work begins on the next year’s federal budget plan in early February. In 2024, lawmakers may still not have last year’s work finished by that time.

Lawmakers earlier this year backed plans for a 5.2% pay raise for all service members on Jan. 1, the largest annual pay raise in 22 years. The boost is not a result of congressional or executive branch generosity, but instead reflects the federal formula tying military salaries to civilian pay trends.

By that formula, the 2025 pay raise for troops should be 4.5%, the third consecutive year of pay hikes above 4% for military members.

White House officials or members of Congress could change that increase in their budget battles over coming months, either raising it to make up for higher cost-of-living concerns or dropping it to save money for other military priorities. But that has not happened since the early 2010s.

Pay boosts for junior troops not yet a priority for Pentagon planners

Lawmakers are more likely to keep the 4.5% raise mark and instead focus on targeted increases for troops with high-demand skills and junior enlisted personnel, a group whose annual base pay typically does not top $30,000.

Last summer, House Republicans advanced legislation to guarantee that even the lowest-ranking service members make at least $31,000. But the legislation was opposed by the White House, in part because of questions surrounding the cost and the other compensation those troops receive — things like housing stipends and enlistment bonuses.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s special military quality of life panel, has said he plans to make the junior enlisted pay issue a key focus of the committee’s work on the annual defense authorization bill this summer.

Pentagon leaders have pushed to postpone the debate until they complete their Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, a periodic review of troops’ pay and benefits. But work from that group isn’t expected to be finished until January 2025. Bacon has said the issue needs to be addressed sooner.

Work on the authorization bill is expected to start in February, but delays in Congress passing a full federal budget for fiscal 2024 could delay some of those hearings and debates.

A charter for the nonprofit National American Indian Veterans, or NAIV, was included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The national defense policy bill passed through Congress last week and is headed to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it.

The charter will allow the organization to testify about veterans’ issues before Congress, said Joey Strickland, a retired colonel of Choctaw descent who works as the group’s chief of staff. It also provides a pathway for NAIV to have some of its members accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs, permitting them to log into VA systems and help veterans and their families with benefits claims — assistance that is currently lacking on tribal lands.

“It was a long, hard fight,” Strickland said. “When we found out it passed, it was euphoric. This has been denied to Indian veterans for so many years, and we’ve finally made a breakthrough.”

VA plans to waive medical copays for Native American vets

The organization was created in 2004 and is headquartered on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Reservation in South Dakota. That’s the home of its national commander, Don Loudner, a 91-year-old Korean War veteran who founded the group with the goal of providing more representation for Native American veterans who were fighting for VA benefits, Strickland said.

American Indians and Alaska Natives serve in the military at a higher rate than any other ethnic group, but they’re less likely than other veterans to have health insurance or a service-connected disability, according to VA data.

Some advocates blame the disparity on a lack of culturally competent representation, which NAIV now hopes to provide.

“Native veterans have served our country from Valley Forge to Afghanistan, and with this action, Congress has shown Native American veterans past and present the respect that is so well-earned,” Loudner said in a statement Friday.

NAIV has pushed to receive a charter from the time it was founded. The group struggled to gain support in Congress until Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., took up the effort in 2021. This year, Rounds and Luján were successful in adding the measure to the national defense policy bill, which is viewed as a must-pass bill by most lawmakers and has advanced through Congress for more than six decades.

In a statement Friday, Rounds noted that while many demographic groups have been granted a congressional charter, Native American veterans organizations had never been among them.

“This charter will help give the NAIV a larger platform to continue advocating for and serving the more than 140,000 Native American veterans living in the United States,” Rounds said.

With the charter, NAIV now joins the ranks of prominent veterans service organizations to be recognized by Congress, such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans.

The charter was endorsed by the National Congress of American Indians — a group that serves the broad interests of tribal governments and communities — as well as dozens of other tribal and veterans organizations.

“Representation is always a big thing, and having an organization that you can see yourself in … I think that’s really important as a veteran,” Courtney Steffen, the commander of The American Legion Department of South Dakota, told Military Times. “There’s not an American Legion Post in every community or reservation. There’s not a VFW post in every community. The more, the merrier.”

Overall, government recognition of Native American veterans has grown in recent years, with the VA now hosting an advisory committee tasked with taking more innovative approaches to serving the demographic. A national memorial honoring former Native American service members opened in 2020 in Washington.

Granting a charter, meanwhile, is a rare move by Congress. In the late 1980s, the House Judiciary Committee sought to limit the practice, believing that charters gave the perception that Congress was able to monitor and condone the operations of the dozens of federally chartered organizations in existence at the time.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the committee enacted a moratorium on congressional charters that lasted officially until 2019. However, lawmakers got around the moratorium on several occasions by not going through the House Judiciary Committee for approval. The most recent veterans organization to receive a charter was The Military Officers Association of America in 2009.

Dan King, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the former co-chairman of the veterans committee of the National Congress of American Indians, said the approval of NAIV’s charter could open the door for other groups to seek the same recognition.

“There were several Native groups that tried it, and they got turned down,” King said. “The understanding was that they weren’t issuing any national charters anymore. To me, that’s saying it would open it up for all those other groups who were trying to get a charter.”

While NAIV was eager to be granted the charter, its leaders know there remains no shortage of work ahead. NAIV is looking to better organize its efforts to help veterans, as well as grow its membership base to represent more of the indigenous community, Strickland said.

The group wants to train veterans service officers to handle VA claims for indigenous veterans across the country, he said. NAIV also plans to establish a yearly national meeting.

“We’re excited, but we now realize the hard work has to start,” Strickland said. “There’s just a lot of work that needs to be done.”

At a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said he issued the temporary injunction Monday after receiving an urgent phone call from the memorial’s supporters saying that gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being desecrated as contractors began work to remove the memorial.

He said he toured the site before Tuesday’s hearing and saw the site being treated respectfully.

“I saw no desecration of any graves,” Alston said. “The grass wasn’t even disturbed.”

Alston issued an 18-page opinion Tuesday evening to lift the injunction. He said the allegations that the removal efforts amounted to grave desecration “were, at best, ill-informed and, at worst, inaccurate.”

Cemetery officials sought to have the injunction lifted quickly. They said they are required by law to complete the removal by the end of the year and that the contractors doing the work have only limited availability over the next week or so.

In a statement Tuesday evening, the cemetery said it “will resume the deliberate process of removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery immediately. While the work is performed, surrounding graves, headstones and the landscape will be carefully protected.”

An independent commission recommended removal of the memorial last year in conjunction with a review of Army bases with Confederate names.

The statue, designed to represent the American South and unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot (9.8-meter) pedestal. The woman holds a laurel wreath, plow stock and pruning hook, and a biblical inscription at her feet says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

Defend Arlington, in conjunction with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, has filed multiple lawsuits trying to keep the memorial in place. The group contends that the memorial was built to promote reconciliation between the North and South and that removing the memorial erodes that reconciliation.

Tuesday’s hearing focused largely on legal issues, but Alston questioned the heritage group’s lawyers about the notion that the memorial promotes reconciliation.

He noted that the statue depicts, among other things, a “slave running after his ‘massa’ as he walks down the road. What is reconciling about that?” asked Alston, an African American who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.

Alston also chided the heritage group for filing its lawsuit Sunday in Virginia while failing to note that it lost a very similar lawsuit over the statue just one week earlier in federal court in Washington. The heritage groups’ lawyers contended that the legal issues were sufficiently distinct that it wasn’t absolutely necessary for Alston to know about their legal defeat in the District of Columbia.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who disagrees with the decision to remove the memorial, made arrangements for it to be moved to land owned by the Virginia Military Institute at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley.

At a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said he issued the temporary injunction Monday after receiving an urgent phone call from the memorial’s supporters saying that gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being desecrated and disturbed as contractors began work to remove the memorial.

He said he toured the site before Tuesday’s hearing and saw the site being treated respectfully.

“I saw no desecration of any graves,” Alston said. “The grass wasn’t even disturbed.”

While Alston gave strong indications he would lift the injunction, which expires Wednesday, he did not rule at the end of Tuesday’s hearing but said he would issue a written ruling as soon as he could. Cemetery officials have said they are required by law to complete the removal by the end of the year and that the contractors doing the work have only limited availability over the next week or so.

An independent commission recommended removal of the memorial last year in conjunction with a review of Army bases with Confederate names.

The statue, designed to represent the American South and unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot (9.8-meter) pedestal. The woman holds a laurel wreath, plow stock and pruning hook, and a biblical inscription at her feet says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

Defend Arlington, in conjunction with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, has filed multiple lawsuits trying to keep the memorial in place. The group contends that the memorial was built to promote reconciliation between the North and South and that removing the memorial erodes that reconciliation.

Tuesday’s hearing focused largely on legal issues, but Alston questioned the heritage group’s lawyers about the notion that the memorial promotes reconciliation.

He noted that the statue depicts, among other things, a “slave running after his ‘massa’ as he walks down the road. What is reconciling about that?” asked Alston, an African American who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.

Alston also chided the heritage group for filing its lawsuit Sunday in Virginia while failing to note that it lost a very similar lawsuit over the statue just one week earlier in federal court in Washington. The heritage groups’ lawyers contended that the legal issues were sufficiently distinct that it wasn’t absolutely necessary for Alston to know about their legal defeat in the District of Columbia.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who disagrees with the decision to remove the memorial, made arrangements for it to be moved to land owned by the Virginia Military Institute at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley.

A group called Defend Arlington, affiliated with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a lawsuit Sunday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, seeking the restraining order. A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.

Work to remove the memorial had begun Monday before the restraining order was issued, but the memorial remains in place on cemetery grounds.

A cemetery spokesperson said Monday that Arlington is complying with the restraining order, but referred all other questions to the Justice Department.

The cemetery had said on Friday that it expected to complete the removal this week. It said the removal was required by Congress, and that it was complying with environmental and historic-preservation regulations.

But the lawsuit accused the Army, which runs the cemetery, of violating regulations in seeking a hasty removal of the memorial.

“The removal will desecrate, damage, and likely destroy the Memorial longstanding at ANC as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places,” the lawsuit accuses.

The temporary restraining order issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said that a lawyer for the plaintiffs represented to the court that the work at the memorial involves the disturbance of gravesites.

In a footnote, Alston wrote that he “takes very seriously the representations of officers of the Court and should the representations in this case be untrue or exaggerated the Court may take appropriate sanctions.”

On Friday, the cemetery had said in its statement that “the area around the Memorial will be protected to ensure no impact to the surrounding landscape and grave markers.”

Last week, a federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed a lawsuit seeking to block removal of the memorial filed by the same plaintiffs. Alston, in his order issued Monday, told the parties to be prepared to discuss how that case affects his decision whether to extend his temporary restraining order beyond Wednesday.

David McCallister, a spokesman for the Florida heritage group, welcomed the judge’s order while acknowledging it is only temporary. He said the current case differs from the one that was dismissed because they now have evidence that the work is being done in a way that disturbs grave sites.

Generally, he said the memorial promotes reconciliation between North and South, and removing it erodes that reconciliation.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

Last year an independent commission recommended the memorial be taken down as part of a report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

More than 40 House Republicans wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently, arguing that the commission overstepped its authority when it recommended that the monument be removed.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.

Freelance photographer Kevin Wolf contributed to this report from Arlington.

The findings come as the Department of Veterans Affairs continues to see its annual disability compensation costs rise each year. In fiscal 2022, those payouts totaled $125 billion, almost 45% of all department spending.

Veterans with disability ratings can span a range of ailments, including physical wounds, illnesses linked to military toxic exposure, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2022, about 30% of all veterans in America had some compensable service-connected disability.

CBO researchers found that contrary to stereotypes, a veteran collecting disability payouts is more likely to be younger than the average veteran, be married, and to have a college degree. About one in five veterans with any disability rating are not in the American workforce.

Most Americans respect vets but would not recommend enlisting

Based on census reports and available VA data, CBO said the average earnings for male veterans with a disability rating in 2019 was $52,200 — roughly $10,200 (16%) below that of non-disabled veterans.

However, the range of earnings for those injured and infirm veterans varied widely. Veterans with low disability ratings (10% or 20%) averaged about $3,100 more than their non-disabled peers, a 5% increase. Those with ratings 70% or higher earned nearly 40% less than non-disabled peers.

The report found similar trends with women veterans. Non-disabled veterans averaged $42,900 in annual earnings. Women veterans with a 10% or 20% rating were about $2,300 higher (5%), while those with a rating of 70% or more were $16,000 lower (38%).

The difference typically comes down to an individual’s ability to work, according to the report. Veterans with low disability ratings average about $2,300 in payouts from VA over the course of a year, but have been able to maintain full-time jobs and keep pace with their peers.

“Veterans with a rating of 10 percent or 20 percent probably had relatively minor service-connected medical conditions (such as scars or tinnitus) that did not affect their ability to work,” researchers wrote.

Conversely, veterans with high disability ratings averaged $29,200 in payouts but “had the lowest labor force participation rate,” restricting them to part-time employment or no steady work.

Researchers found similar earnings trends among veterans attending college full-time or part-time, although income from other sources — such as the VA’s GI Bill benefits — played a large role in those financial totals.

Report authors did not draw any conclusions about whether any changes are needed in the veterans compensation system but said that the findings will “allow policymakers and others to compare the financial security of veterans receiving disability payments with that of veterans not receiving payments as a way to gauge the importance of that compensation.”

The full report is available online at the CBO website.

The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.

Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials anticipate completing the removal by Dec. 22, the Arlington National Cemetery said in an email. During the removal, the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected, the Arlington National Cemetery said.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.

In 2022, an independent commission recommended that the memorial be taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

In a recent letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, more than 40 House Republicans said the commission overstepped its authority when it recommended that the monument be removed. The congressmen contended that the monument “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity.”

“The Department of Defense must respect Congress’ clear legislative intentions regarding the Naming Commission’s legislative authority” the letter said.

U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, has led the push to block the memorial’s removal. Clyde’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday.

A process to prepare for the memorial’s removal and relocation has been completed, the cemetery said. The memorial’s bronze elements will be relocated, while the granite base and foundation will remain in place to avoid disturbing surrounding graves, it said.

Earlier this year, Fort Bragg shed its Confederate namesake to become Fort Liberty, part of the broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, to rename military installations that had been named after confederate soldiers.

The North Carolina base was originally named in 1918 for Gen. Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general from Warrenton, North Carolina, who was known for owning slaves and losing key Civil War battles that contributed to the Confederacy’s downfall.

The Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted nationwide after Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, coupled with ongoing efforts to remove Confederate monuments, turned the spotlight on the Army installations. The naming commission created by Congress visited the bases and met with members of the surrounding communities for input.

According to data released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday, officials saw an increase of more than 2,400 veterans without stable housing during their annual point-in-time count conducted last January.

That put the total number of veterans experiencing homelessness that night in cities across America at 35,574. Advocates for homeless veterans have noted that the actual number of veterans dealing with housing issues is likely even higher, given the limitations of the single-night survey.

The increase in homeless veterans, meanwhile, was less severe than the rise in homelessness in the general population (12%) and is still 4.5% below veteran levels reported in 2020. The 35,574 estimate is also less than half the 74,000 estimate in 2010, when the White House and Department of Veterans Affairs launched a series of high-profile initiatives targeting the problem.

VA again found homes for 38K struggling vets in 2023

But the point-in-time count took place several months before the expiration of pandemic programs offering extra assistance to veterans facing financial hardships, a move that advocates have warned may have driven up homelessness totals even further in the last half-year.

In a statement, VA Secretary Denis McDonough announced the White House plans to increase a pair of grant programs designed to prevent housing issues among veterans.

“One veteran experiencing homelessness will always be one too many, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that veterans get the safe, stable housing that they deserve,” he said. “These new grants are a critical part of that effort, empowering VA and our partners to provide more housing and wraparound services to more homeless and at-risk veterans than ever before.”

Last month, VA leaders announced that for the second year in a row they had met their goal of permanently housing 38,000 veterans facing financial problems and uncertain shelter options. However, those efforts in 2022 were not enough to help reduce the national numbers.

VA and HUD officials said they are still researching the reasons for the increase, including the rising cost of housing in communities across the country and the end of COVID-related support programs.

Earlier this week, HUD leaders announced the number of grants to homeless service organizations rose 15% from the end of 2022 to the end 2023. That translates into more than 330,000 individuals who sought assistance.

In a statement, officials from the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans called the new homelessness report disappointing but not surprising.

“These numbers reflect what many have long known, we are facing a crisis of housing affordability,” they said. “NCHV, our members across the country, and our national partners have long sounded the alarm regarding the seriousness of this crisis and the need for further and deeper federal investment in solutions.

“The administration and Congress should heed continued warnings that a lack of investment and programmatic change will continue to be disastrous for veterans facing housing instability. Congress must restore expired pandemic-era legislative provisions to improve veteran access to both transitional housing and supportive services.”

Veterans seeking help with homelessness or related financial problems can call 877-424-3838 for help or visit the department’s web site.

Those are the seemingly contradictory findings of a new report from the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute released this week. Researchers found that while most Americans had generally positive views of veterans and few negative stereotypes about them, they also were reluctant to recommend that others follow their example.

“It is one thing to hold military members in high esteem in the abstract, but it is something altogether different to recommend military service as a career path,” the researchers wrote. “Having an all volunteer force means that serving is an occupational choice, one that fewer and fewer Americans appear to be willing to make.”

The 2022 survey of more than 2,400 people found that roughly 54 percent said they would discourage someone they know from enlisting in the military, although more than 61 percent said they would encourage those same individuals if they wanted to attend a service academy or enter a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.

Most young vets think it’s time to retire ‘Thank you for your service’

Researchers said they did not collect clear data on the reasons for the split, but said that across all questions, about one-quarter of individuals surveyed would not recommend signing up for any military service.

That comes despite findings that “perceptions of veterans by the public are overwhelmingly positive,” according to the report. Roughly 67% of respondents stated that veterans are more hardworking and more reliable than the rest of society. More than half described veterans as self-disciplined, responsible, practical and self-reliant.

“There is a general feeling of deservingness of respect and policy support from the public and government among the public when it comes to veterans, stemming from perceptions of sacrifice,” the report stated.

“The survey data we examined suggest that fears about the public holding outsize negative stereotypes about veterans are unwarranted, and most stereotypes held are in fact overwhelmingly positive.”

The only negative stereotype with a sizable backing in the survey was the idea that veterans may be violent towards themselves. Of individuals surveyed, 46% believed that veterans were likely to cause self-harm, in part driven by public perception of post-traumatic stress problems among military members.

Authors of the study said the findings are significant now given the recruiting challenges facing the military. Army, Navy and Air Force officials all missed their recruiting goals for fiscal 2023.

“The public’s willingness to consider joining the military or recommending that others join is likely to be influenced to some degree by how they think of veterans,” the report stated. “Holding more-positive stereotypes toward veterans is associated with higher probability of recommending joining the military, and holding more-negative stereotypes reduces the probability.”

The full report is available on the RAND website.

High school students in the area were getting all kinds of accolades from the local community when they were accepted by top-flight colleges. Future college athletes got coverage in local news on “signing day” when they committed to play their sport at a top university.

But the teenagers who raised their right hand to enlist straight out of high school and serve their country? They got nothing.

“I discovered at the school board that the communities don’t honor these kids,” Hartman said. “I really do think the fact is no principal ever got promoted to superintendent based on how many kids enlisted.”

The Army, Navy and Air Force all fell short of their recruiting goals last year. That was the second year in a row for the Army. It was the first time since 1999 that the Air Force missed its recruiting target. Senior leaders in each of the military branches have noted the growing civil-military divide as fewer of the nation’s youth choose military service.

Hartman talked with some of the parents who were sending their sons and daughters off, many headed for war zones at the time. They felt like a kind of second-class group.

Many had little or no familiarity with the military system, he said. They didn’t know what to expect during basic training, holidays and when their kids went on deployment.

The former Army officer figured he could do something about this gap.

Hartman started small, he organized a banquet for all the recent enlistees and their parents in Camden County, New Jersey in 2009. He reached out to veterans, military retirees and recruiters, business leaders and educators for support. He then formed a nonprofit and named it Our Community Salutes.

Shortly after that first ceremony, people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania reached out to learn how Hartman had organized the event. In 2010, the organization held two events. Since then, the nonprofit has honored 250,000 new enlistees and their families in nearly 600 ceremonies across 31 states, according to OCS data.

In 2011, Patrick Covaleskie was an Air Force poolee — an unofficial term used to refer to those who have signed up to join the military, but have yet to leave for basic training — when his recruiter told him about an OCS ceremony. His parents were skittish about him joining, especially during the post-9/11 war period. They didn’t know what to expect.

When he arrived the event was filled with families, community members, recruiters and local veterans.

“A lot of high schools don’t do much to recognize people joining the military,” Covaleskie said. “When hundreds of people you don’t know attend a ceremony in your honor you really feel empowered.”

Airman 1st Class Jade Gibson had military members in her family, but none who had joined the Air Force. Fortunately, her parents helped her find currently serving women in the Air Force to talk her through some of what she would face before she headed off to basic training earlier this year.

But while waiting to join the ranks, it was her recruiter who told her she should go to an OCS banquet where she’d meet other poolees.

Gibson and the new enlistees arrived and entered a room filled with veterans from all the services. Each of them encouraged the new recruits, and told them how proud they were that they’d decided to join.

“They kept telling us what to expect and how important it is that we’re joining right now, it was not something to take lightly and we had people supporting us back in the community.”

That helped as she faced her own challenges in basic training.

“When it got hard, I just kept thinking back to everybody back home and everybody supporting me,” she said.

A few years after OCS began, Hilari Luck saw her first of three sons leave home for the Air Force. With her eldest son, who enlisted a decade ago, she was on her own. The West Deptford, New Jersey mother didn’t know about OCS and navigated the life of a new military parent as best she could.

But when her middle son joined two years later, she received an invitation to an OCS banquet.

“We had support, we had encouragement from the outside looking in,” Luck said. “We had no idea really what it was. It doesn’t just inspire the young people that are there, it really does touch the adults that are there.”

By the time her youngest son joined the service in 2022, she knew the process and was already helping other new military families.

“A lot of these people are making the choices to join straight out of high school and no one is supporting them, no one is celebrating them,” Luck said. “We as a community should be doing it, not expecting someone else to be doing it.”

She’s since joined OCS as a volunteer, connecting with parents and answering questions. She encourages the parents and the whole family to support their service member through the entire process leading up to and during the first years of service.

“If you don’t have someone you can talk to about that you can feel like you’re missing something rather than a part of something,” Luck said.

Army Brig. Gen. Kelly Dickerson knows firsthand what that experience can be like. He told Army Times that when he first enlisted 35 years ago the only people who knew he was headed to basic training were himself and his mother. And he didn’t tell her until right before being picked up by the recruiter.

Dickerson, is a vice president at PayPal in his civilian job and serves as the deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Reserve Command while in uniform.

He’s spoken at OCS events, using himself as an example. He enlisted and then became an officer. Since then he has risen in both his civilian and military roles to high positions. Each complements the other, he said.

“I don’t think I’d be an officer at a global 500 company if I didn’t join the Army,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson has looked at the rows of new parents, probably worried or even scared, asking themselves: what has my son, daughter, husband or wife done?

He reassures them, “They’ve done something amazing.”

The one star commended Hartman’s work, which he said has opened doors in communities across the country that previously saw little military engagement.

By connecting parents with OCS and the military community at large, Dickerson sees those parents becoming advocates in their communities for others who might not know much about the military.

“I think this connection is extremely important, we need to include these extended family members,” Dickerson said.

They’re also poised to write their biggest check ever to their sole wreath supplier, a Maine company owned by the founders of the charity whose main source of income is donations to the non-profit.

Wreaths Across America and the Worcester Wreath Company are open about the relationship, advertising for each other on their websites. Both have filed appropriate disclosures and tax forms and have received no pushback from the Internal Revenue Service or state tax officials.

But as the operation has grown from a regional volunteer effort to a nationwide campaign bringing in more than $30 million annually — more than double its 2017 total — so have questions about whether the close ties between the non-profit group and for-profit company undercut the charitable message of the effort.

“You often see a small charity where some of the insiders still work for a related company or the founders and get paid,” said Brian Mittendorf, the H.P. Wolfe chair in accounting at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business. “The unusual part here is the scale. That an organization of this size would still have such a large portion of its budget in the form of transactions with related persons raises questions.”

The idea for Wreaths Across America grew from a decision by Worcester Wreath owner Morrill Worcester in the 1990s to donate extra holiday wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery. As the tradition attracted more attention, the company split off the work into a charitable arm, still maintaining ties with its founders.

Over the years, major donors such as American Airlines, Chevrolet and Jersey Mike’s Subs have handed over hundreds of thousands of dollars. In contrast to the early years of the operation, today the two entities have flipped roles, with the charity drawing national headlines and the private wreath firm relying mostly on the organization for revenue.

“If it is the case that the for-profit vendor would collapse or need to significantly downsize were it to lose the business of the charity, it is a glaring conflict of interest to have owners of that vendor on the charity’s board or in key staff positions,” said Laurie Styron, CEO and executive director of CharityWatch, an independent charity watchdog group.

“The owners and their close relatives should either sell off their financial interests in the for-profit vendor, or the interested parties should resign from the charity and allow an independent board to recruit leaders in whom the public can have confidence in their capacity to act independently.”

Buying wreaths

The charity’s goals and operations are straightforward. The group has a stated mission to “remember the men and women who served our country, honor our military and their families, and teach our children about our freedom and those who protect it.”

Charity officials say they try to advance those goals through a series of education events throughout the year, but the wreath distribution every December is its highest profile initiative. Nearly 3 million volunteers are expected to take part in wreath laying activities this weekend.

The arrival of wreaths at Arlington Cemetery this week is a multi-day media event, with lengthy rules for an expected rush of news crews and photojournalists documenting the thousands of volunteers and wreaths.

Individuals and groups who participate in Wreaths Across America events each December receive all of their wreaths through the charity. Donors pay $17 for each one, with $5 going back to civic and youth groups helping with sales. WAA officials say that arrangement has raised $22 million over the last 15 years for local charities and civic groups beyond wreath laying activities.

In fiscal 2021, the charity sent nearly $21.5 million to Worcester Wreath. Company officials have said publicly that the Wreaths Across America contract makes up more than 75% of their annual revenue.

Worcester Wreath officials said they donate 30% of their profits to the charity and other local veterans groups, but much of that profit comes from the contract with WAA. This year, the charity expects to place nearly 3 million wreaths on gravesites at more than 4,200 locations nationwide, all bought from the Maine supplier.

Four board members of Wreaths Across America — including Karen Worcester, the executive director — are related to the owners of Worcester Wreath. Charity officials in tax filings say those members “recused themselves from discussion and vote of the agreement between the organization and Worcester Wreath.”

Amber Caron, director of communications for WAA, said the wreath production contract is handled by a third-party vendor and overseen by a special subcommittee of the board.

“This process is public and executed every three years,” she said. “It is open to any wreath company to submit a bid, nationwide. Up until this point, it has not been deemed necessary by the [subcommittee] and advisor to have more than one vendor to meet the needs of the program.”

Caron said if the charity’s third-party advisers recommend moving away from Worcester Wreath or adding other companies to help with the inventory, “we will consider all options that are in the best interest of the organization.”

But thus far, that has not happened. Wreaths laid in cemeteries as far away as California or Montana are shipped from the Worcester Wreath property in Maine through a series of donated and contracted shipping arrangements. Costs associated with the “Honor Fleet,” as WAA leaders call them, are factored into the sponsorship packages.

Charitable concerns

The financial relationship between Worcester Wreath and Wreaths Across America has been whispered about in the veterans community, but has not led to any public confrontations. The charity counts dozens of high-profile military and veterans support groups among their partners, and thousands of their members will be among the volunteers laying wreaths this weekend. The Military Times Foundation donated $15,000 in free advertising to Wreaths Across America in 2023.

Paul Streckfus, editor of EO Tax Journal, said the Internal Revenue Service does not require that a tax-exempt organization have an independent board or exclude employees whose family members may have related business interests. Such arrangements may draw extra scrutiny, he added, but in themselves are not improper.

Mittendorf, however, said a separate issue is the idea of groups breaking faith with donors who believe their charitable contributions are being spent to maximize the good done, and not to support for-profit ventures.

“They have an obligation to support their public purpose, and to avoid appearances of conflicts of interest in that,” he said. “Even if they’re operating in a way that doesn’t cross into something that’s impermissible, it may create an appearance of conflict of interest. And that makes it difficult in trying to maintain public trust.”

CharityWatch has written about concerns regarding WAA and Worcester Wreath. Styron, the CEO, said given the connections between the two, the non-profit should be following more rigorous auditing and reporting practices to prove it is operating responsibly.

“There is too much financial interest concentrated in one family’s company to inspire confidence that the charity’s board will act with true independence given the close family ties the charity reports among key staff,” she said.

A volunteer army

Wreath laying events connected with the charity are organized through local site officials, and not through the Department of Veterans Affairs or DOD as a whole. Officials at Arlington National Cemetery — the largest single site event — said they have no consultation with Wreaths Across America on their internal operations.

Arlington cemetery staffers do help publicize the annual wreath laying and coordinate with the WAA on logistics of the event. But in a statement, cemetery officials said that “the wreaths are not purchased by the Army, therefore the usual laws and regulations regarding Department of Defense procurements are not applicable.”

About 60,000 volunteers are expected at the cemetery on Saturday for this year’s wreath layings, making it one of the busiest days of the year at the hallowed site. Caron said another 4,217 sites have signed up to participate in the event as well, up more than 500 from 2022.

Ahead of this year’s event, Wreaths Across America sent 13 tractor trailers carrying wreaths, Gold Star family members and corporate sponsor signs through eight states and the District of Columbia.

The caravan, which launched Sunday from Harrington, Maine — home of Worcester Wreath — is scheduled to arrive at Arlington Cemetery on Thursday morning.

The latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is expected to pass through the House and Senate this week, includes a provision that would recognize previous military service in calculating family and medical leave for veterans working in the federal government.

“By crediting time in uniform towards paid parental leave for the federal government, we will help retain the best and brightest America has to offer,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., in a statement Tuesday. Lawmakers have said family-friendly policies help ensure the public sector has competitive benefits to attract and retain employees amid workforce shortages in cyber and HR.

Other supporters of the policy include Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., Don Bacon, R-Neb., Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Chris Smith, R-N.J.

With the defense bill teed up for passage in Congress, President Joe Biden has signaled he will sign the measure into law later this month. If it clears both steps with the provision, a federal employee with at least a year of active military service will have met requirements for the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The FMLA, which passed in 1993, provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave without pay for the birth, adoption or foster of a child, a serious health condition or caregiver leave. Health insurance coverage is also retained during that time. To access that benefit, federal workers have to be in their position for at least a year.

Previously, service members were not eligible to credit their prior military time for FMLA if they had transitioned to the government. However, active duty service by members of the National Guard or Reserves is counted.

Federal agencies employ more than half a million veterans, which is to say about one in every four civil servants has prior or existing military experience, according to the government’s HR agency. In a memo to agency leaders in February, the Biden administration urged the creation and support of policies that would grant leave during employees’ first year of work, when they may not yet have accrued enough time to be eligible for other benefits.

Last winter, legislation was also introduced to make FMLA fully paid, though that has yet to become law. A law passed in 2019 makes leave for parental duties paid under FMLA in certain circumstances.

“Every American worker deserves access to family and medical leave, and the provision we secured in the NDAA will recognize time in military service like time in the federal civil service,” said Rep. Beyer in a statement.

Military Times reporter Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

“We’ve been parked on more than 6,000 veteran deaths for 20 years now, and that’s way too many,” said Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, and a Navy veteran, during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing. “We’ve known the underlying factors. So why is it, 20 years later, we’re just now trying some new approaches?”

Last month, Department of Veterans Affairs researchers said the suicide rate among veterans rose slightly in 2021 despite continued focus on the problem from agency leaders and programming. An estimated 17.5 veterans died by suicide every day in 2021, which translates into nearly 6,400 preventable veteran deaths that year.

That total was the second lowest since 2007, a point that VA officials have emphasized in recent weeks to downplay concerns about the still-high numbers.

Veteran suicides rose in 2021 despite increased prevention efforts

But lawmakers said incremental improvements aren’t enough given the thousands of veterans being lost to suicide.

“You guys need to do more,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc., and a Navy veteran, told VA officials testifying at the hearing. “If that means we halve your staff, take those salaries and benefits and give it to outside groups, then that’s it. … I understand you’re trying, but if you’re not showing results, you have to go.”

VA officials defended department efforts, noting the complexity of the problem of suicide prevention and the significant effort focused on the problem.

“This is our top clinical priority and our top priority, period,” said Dr. Erica Scavella, VA’s assistant undersecretary for health for clinical services. “We’re committed to fixing this.”

Part of that work has been distributing $174 million in suicide prevention grants to community groups over a five-year period. In September, VA announced the $52 million in new grants to 80 community-based organizations in 43 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and American Samoa. These organizations receive up to $750,000 and provide non-clinical support to veterans and families.

Ken Falke, founder and chairman of Boulder Crest Foundation — a grant recipient — said the grant program is a step forward but remains too restrictive and too limited in its scope.

His organization runs 48 “post-traumatic growth” programs for veterans nationwide, but the grant limits mean that only 12 of them can be funded with federal support. Several lawmakers questioned whether money for other VA-run outreach efforts would be better spent in those kinds of established community programs.

But committee members warned that groups need to show they are producing results with taxpayer money to justify future funding.

“VA isn’t going to solve this problem by itself,” said Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif. “This program could be wildly successful, but it could be a financial failure as well. We have to approach this in a data-driven, continuous improvement model, to make sure every grantee is continually improving that program. And I don’t know if VA has the capability to do that.”

Department officials expect to issue a report on the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program early next year, ahead of congressional debates on whether to reauthorize — or increase — the program.

Veterans in need of emergency counseling can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and selecting option 1 after connecting to reach a VA staffer. In addition, veterans, troops or their family members can also text 838255 for help, or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net for assistance.

Golodoff was the last survivor among 41 residents imprisoned in Japan after Japanese troops captured remote Attu Island during World War II. He was 3 when the island was taken. He died Nov. 17 in Anchorage, his family said. His sister, Elizabeth “Liz” Golodoff Kudrin, the second-to-last surviving Attuan, died in February at 82. Three of their siblings died in captivity.

“The eldest generation has passed away to the other side,” said Helena Schmitz, the great-granddaughter of the last Attu chief, who died in Japan along with his son.

Attu is a desolate, mountainous slab of tundra, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) wide by 35 miles (56 kilometers) long, and sits between the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea on the volcanic Ring of Fire. It’s the most westerly island in the Aleutian chain — closer to Russia than mainland Alaska — and was one of just a few U.S. territories, along with Guam, the Philippines and the nearby island of Kiska, taken by enemy forces during the war.

The American effort to reclaim Attu in 1943 amid frigid rain, dense fog and hurricane-force winds became known as World War II’s “forgotten battle.” About 2,500 Japanese soldiers perished, many in hand-to-hand combat or by suicide; 28 survived. Roughly 550 U.S. soldiers died. Initially trained and equipped to fight in the North African desert, many suffered from frostbite and exposure due to inadequate gear.

Even after the surviving captives were freed at the close of the war, they were not allowed to return to Attu because the U.S. military decided it would be too expensive to rebuild the community. Most were sent to the island of Atka, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) away.

With the loss of their homeland, the Attuans’ language, Sakinam Tunuu, is now all but gone, spoken only by members of Schmitz’s immediate family. The distinctive basket-weaving style of the island is practiced by just three or four weavers, and not all are of Attuan descent. Schmitz runs a nonprofit named Atux Forever to revive the cultural heritage.

Much of what is known about the Alaska Natives’ time in Japan is chronicled in the book " Attu Boy,” written by Golodoff’s older brother, Nick, with assistance from his editor, Rachel Mason, a cultural anthropologist with the National Park Service in Anchorage.

Mason knew the three siblings. Gregory and Liz had little memory of Attu or Japan, and neither liked to talk about it, she said.

Nick Golodoff, who was 6 when he was captured, had a childlike innocence about his time as a prisoner, Mason noted. The cover of his book featured a photograph of him riding on the back of a Japanese soldier, both smiling.

That experience was far from typical. Of the Attu residents interned in Japan, 22 died from malnutrition, starvation or tuberculosis. Schmitz’s great-grandfather, Mike Hodikoff, died with his son of food poisoning from eating rotten garbage while in Japanese captivity, the book noted.

Japanese soldiers landed on Attu Island on June 7, 1942, when residents were attending services at the Russian Orthodox church. Some ran for their rifles, but Hodikoff told them, “Do not shoot, maybe the Americans can save us yet,” according to the book.

Instead, the village radio operator, Charles Foster Jones, was shot and killed before he could alert authorities, becoming the only U.S. civilian killed by the invading forces in North America, according to a tribute to Jones by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The other residents — all Alaska Natives except for Jones’ wife, a white teacher from New Jersey named Etta Jones — were kept captive in their homes for three months before being told to pack up and bring what food they could for the journey to Japan.

They first went to Kiska, another Alaska island; one Attu resident died on the way. Stuffed in the cargo hold of a ship, the others embarked on a two-week voyage to Sapporo, the largest city on Japan’s Hokkaido Island, where they were kept in four rooms in an abandoned dormitory. Only Etta Jones was separated from them and taken in a different boat to an internment facility in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

One Japanese guard complained the Attuans ate better than the Japanese, but conditions worsened when the Alaskans ran out of the food they brought.

The Golodoffs’ mother, Olean, and others were forced to work long hours in a clay mine. As their numbers dwindled, she also became the cook for the surviving POWs, though there was little to make. She was reduced to gathering orange peels off the street and cooking them on top of a heater, said George Kudrin, who married Olean’s daughter Liz in Atka after he returned from the Vietnam War.

“I fed them to my children, and only then would they stop crying for a while,” Olean once told an interviewer.

Her husband, Lawrence, and three of their seven children died in Japan. Nick Golodoff lived until 2013. Another son who survived captivity, John, died in 2009.

Kudrin said Olean didn’t speak of her experiences in Japan, and his wife, Liz, was too young to remember anything.

“She always knew that she was part of the history of World War II and she always said, ‘I am a survivor with my mama,’” he said.

American forces reclaimed Attu on May 30, 1943, after a brutal 19-day campaign. Much of the fighting was waged in dense fog amid winds of up to 120 mph (193 kph). Attu Island today is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and known more for being one of the top destinations in North America for groups dedicated to viewing birds, especially those from Asia.

Greg Golodoff’s wife of 50 years, Pauline, said he never spoke with her about his experience in Japan or about being the last living resident of Attu.

“I tried to ask him, but he didn’t want to talk about it,” she said.

He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun up above. He remembers being only 140 pounds (63.50 kilograms) as a 21-year-old, but somehow finding the strength to lift boxes weighing almost twice that.

“We were pretty startled. Startled and scared to death,” Schab, now 103, said at his home in Beaverton, Oregon, where he lives with his daughter. “We didn’t know what to expect and we knew that if anything happened to us, that would be it.”

Eighty-two years later, Schab returned to Pearl Harbor Thursday on the anniversary of the attack to remember the more than 2,300 servicemen killed. He was one of five survivors at a ceremony commemorating the assault that propelled the United States into World War II. Six of the increasingly frail men had been expected, but one got sick, organizers said.

The aging pool of Pearl Harbor survivors has been rapidly shrinking. There is now just one crew member of the USS Arizona still living, 102-year-old Lou Conter of California. Two years ago, survivors who attended the 80th anniversary remembrance ceremony ranged in age from 97 to 103. They’ll be even older this time.

David Kilton, the National Park Service’s interpretation, education and visitor services lead for Pearl Harbor, noted that for many years survivors frequently volunteered to share their experiences with visitors to the historic site. That’s not possible anymore.

“We could be the best storytellers in the world and we can’t really hold a candle to those that lived it sharing their stories firsthand,” Kilton said. “But now that we are losing that generation and won’t have them very much longer, the opportunity shifts to reflect even more so on the sacrifices that were made, the stories that they did share.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t keep statistics for how many Pearl Harbor survivors are still living. But department data show that of the 16 million who served in World War II, only about 120,000 were alive as of October and an estimated 131 die each day.

There were about 87,000 military personnel on Oahu at the time of the attack, according to a rough estimate compiled by military historian J. Michael Wenger.

Schab never spoke much about Pearl Harbor until about a decade ago. He’s since been sharing his story with his family, student groups and history buffs. And he’s returned to Pearl Harbor several times since.

The reason? “To pay honor to the guys that didn’t make it,” he said.

Thursday’s ceremony was held on a field across the harbor from the USS Arizona Memorial, a white structure that sits above the rusting hull of the battleship, which exploded in a fireball and sank shortly after being hit. More than 1,100 sailors and Marines from the Arizona were killed and more than 900 are entombed inside.

A moment of silence began at 7:55 a.m., the same time the attack began on Dec. 7, 1941.

Harry Chandler, 102, who was a Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class, raised the flag at a mobile hospital in Aiea Heights in the hills above Pearl Harbor in 1941. Gazing over the water from his front row seat on the ceremony grounds on Thursday, Chandler said the memories of the USS Arizona blowing up still come back to him today.

“I saw these planes come, and I thought they were planes coming in from the states until I saw the bombs dropping,” Chandler said. They took cover and then rode trucks down to Pearl Harbor where they attended to the injured.

He remembers sailors trapped on the capsized USS Oklahoma tapping on the hull of their ship to get rescued, and caring for those who eventually got out after teams cut holes in the ship.

“I look out there and I can still see what’s going on. I can still see what was happening,” said Chandler, who today lives in Tequesta, Florida.

The Dobbin lost three sailors, according to Navy records. One was killed in action and two died later of wounds suffered when fragments from a bomb struck the ship’s stern. All had been manning an anti-aircraft gun.

That Sunday morning had started peacefully for Schab. He was expecting a visit from his brother, who was also in the Navy and was assigned to a naval radio station in Wahiawa, north of Pearl Harbor. The two never did get together that day.

Schab spent most of World War II in the Pacific with the Navy, going to the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, and then the Mariana Islands and Okinawa.

He was never wounded. He told the Best Defense Foundation in an online interview three years ago that he must have had a guardian angel.

“You’re scared stiff, but you stagger through the events as they happen and hope everything’s going to turn out all right,” he said.

After the war, he worked on the Apollo program sending astronauts to the moon as an electrical engineer at General Dynamics. In retirement he volunteered as a state park docent in Malibu, California, explaining the migration patterns of monarch butterflies.

A tuba player in the Navy, Schab stayed close with his bandmates long after the war. For decades, they organized annual reunions, said his daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs.

Schab has slowed down in recent years. But he still gets together each week for cocktails over Zoom with younger members of his fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi. He drinks cranberry-raspberry juice.

These days, he’s happiest listening to big band jazz and audiobooks and going out to meet new people, Heinrichs said.

At his age, he’s thankful to still be able to return to Pearl Harbor. Heinrichs is going with him, along with caregivers. The family has a GoFundMe account to help them raise money for the pilgrimage.

“Just grateful that I’m still here,” Schab said. “That’s really how it feels. Grateful.”

Rush reported from Beaverton, Oregon. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

“You may not hear this a lot, but kids have something important to teach us grownups, especially military kids like you,” Jill Biden said. “You teach us how to be brave, even when we’re scared. You teach us how to make friends, even when we don’t know anyone. And you teach us how to reach out a hand to other people in need.”

It was the first year Biden has hosted her annual Toys for Tots event at the White House rather than at a local military base. It’s a longstanding tradition for first ladies to hold events with Toys for Tots around the holidays.

Biden, herself the daughter of a World War II Navy veteran, has made supporting military families one of her priorities as first lady.

Before her remarks, the children had the opportunity to skate on a small ice rink on the White House’s South Lawn. A few Marines clad in dress blues, with ice skates rather than corfam shoes, joined their kids.

Some kids appeared excited to meet another celebrity in attendance: Gunny Bear, the larger-than-life teddy bear Toys for Tots mascot who was generous with high-fives.

Following Biden’s speech, the children sorted presents for Toys for Tots.

Since 1947, Toys for Tots has distributed 652 million toys to 291 million children, according to its website.

Toys for Tots gave a toy bunny to a girl in need. She became a Marine.

Biden said the program brings “magic, wonder and joy to children in need.”

Marine Reserve Maj. Bill Hendricks came up with Toys for Tots in 1947 after his wife, Diane, told him she wanted to donate handcrafted dolls to an agency that would give them to children in need, according to the program’s website.

No such agency existed, so Hendricks and the Marines in his Reserve unit collected and distributed 5,000 toys themselves that year.

Toys for Tots became a nationwide Marine Corps Reserve project the following year.

Retired Marine Corps Col. Ted Silvester, vice president for marketing and development for Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, recently said there is much want in 2023, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

“The need is significant,” he said in a news release. “We’re getting a lot of requests to all of our chapters.”

“Growing up, many of my neighbors in Milwaukee were World War II or North Korea veterans, and I had an idea of what service meant because they always spoke to me,” said Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, head of Army Recruiting Command, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“That’s not the same today. I’ve served all over the world, and I’ve moved with my family. We’ve often been the only Army family in neighborhoods off post.”

Army, Navy and Air Force leaders missed their recruiting goals for fiscal 2023. The Marine Corps and Space Force met their targets, but acknowledged that matching those numbers for this fiscal year will again be a challenge.

Half of US would recommend military service to loved ones, report says

The slipping interest in joining the armed forces comes as public perception of the military continues to decline, according to recent national polling. Roughly 46% of Americans questioned in the annual Reagan National Defense Survey said they have a great deal of confidence in the American military, a near steady decline from 70% in 2018.

Survey respondents blamed politics creeping into military policies for part of the problem. Among Republicans, more than one-third (38%) said the institution is “too focused on social issues at the expense of a focus on warfighting.” About half of Democrats surveyed (53%) said the military is not appropriately balancing a focus on warfighting and social issues.

The military has been the center of a host of high-profile social debates in recent years, including fights over coronavirus vaccinations, diversity training, abortion access and transgender rights.

But pressed on the topic by senators, military representatives said they are not hearing complaints about politics invading the ranks from potential recruits.

“That does not resonate with the issues that are on the minds of our recruits or what we are hearing from our recruiting force,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commander of Air Force Recruiting Service.

Instead, service officials said, recruiters complain about inconsistent access at high schools and colleges, limiting their opportunities to explain military service to young men and women. And potential recruits have basic questions about military life, benefits and post-service career expectations that, if unanswered, shut down interest in enlisting.

“Forty years ago, if you had 10 dinner tables in a neighborhood, those dinner tables would each have a parent who served or a teacher who served or someone else who served. Today, it’s only one in 10,” said Rear Adm. Alexis Walker, head of Navy Recruiting Command.

“So, we are trying to fill that narrative space, talk about the positive benefits of service and get out that message that isn’t happening around the dinner table anymore.”

Officials said they are aggressively partnering with veterans organizations and other civic groups in an attempt to better spread that message. But they also acknowledged that other marketing and incentives will be needed to turn around the lackluster recruiting figures of recent years.

Officials said they are still working to correct those errors and process those claims as quickly as possible. But House lawmakers raised concerns about the scope of the problems, some of which date back more than a decade.

“Mistakes are bound to happen,” said Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s panel on technology, during a hearing on the topic on Monday. “But it’s unacceptable that some of these errors persisted for years before anyone discovered them.”

In late August, VA officials announced that roughly 32,000 disability claims had been lost in the VA.gov computer systems for several months or years. Two weeks later, department leaders found 57,000 more lost cases, most involving veterans who tried to add or remove dependents on existing disability claims.

More technical problems found with VA’s disability claims system

On Monday, Veterans Affairs Chief Information Officer Kurt DelBene said that further reviews have found about 81,000 dependency claims misdirected within the computer system, as well as several thousand other cases in other categories.

He promised fixes as quickly as possible.

“VA.gov is the digital front door, and veterans need to have confidence and trust that their benefits and services are available, accurate, and secure,” he said.

About 26,500 of the outstanding dependency cases have now been processed and completed, and 22,500 of the outstanding disability claims finished, he said.

The department’s VA.gov site fields more than 14 million inquiries each month. VA staffers have blamed the past mistakes on software errors compounded by a lack of regular monitoring for potential problems.

While individuals whose cases were processed late can be eligible for retroactive payouts back to the original date they tried to file, the delay of months or years for those cases to be processed could have caused significant financial hardship for some veterans and their families.

Rosendale said he intends to file new legislation forcing closer oversight of the online benefits systems to avoid similar problems in the future.

“We all need to be confident that errors in VA.gov and other systems will never again be allowed to compound undetected and impact so many people,” he said.

Meanwhile, DelBene said he hopes the department will be able to process most of the remaining unaddressed cases before the end of the month.

Conference committee members began their inter-chamber work on the massive military budget policy bill on Wednesday. By late last week, leaders from the House and Senate Armed Services Committee said only a few disagreements remained, and were expected to be worked out early this week.

Those conflicts largely revolve around fights over abortion access policies, diversity training in the military and other social issues inserted into the House draft of the authorization bill. Senate Democrats have been opposed to those changes.

But both Republicans and Democrats are focused on finding a way to finish the work. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., vowed ahead of last week’s conference work that “we will enact an authorization bill this year.” Despite partisan fights on Capitol Hill, the measure has advanced out of Congress for more than 60 consecutive years.

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Veteran Lance Cpl. Joel David Beal had been fighting for Ukraine with the volunteer group Chosen Company since February or March, company commander Ryan O’Leary told Marine Corps Times on Nov. 24.

While fighting in Pervomais’ke in Donetsk Oblast, Beal was hit by a mortar round after jumping out of his trench in an attempt to destroy a Russian infantry vehicle that was attacking his comrades, O’Leary said.

“He was just fearless,” O’Leary said.

Ukraine war has the Marine Corps revamping IED training

In response to a Marine Corps Times query about whether Beal had been killed in Ukraine, a State Department spokesperson on Nov. 22 confirmed the death of a U.S. citizen in Ukraine on Oct. 12 but declined to provide more details, out of respect for the family’s privacy.

Beal served in the Marine Corps from 2006–2010, leaving as a lance corporal, according to information provided by Corps spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock.

A rifleman, he deployed to Iraq from June 2008 to October 2008. His awards included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (twice), Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and National Defense Service Medal.

His final duty assignment was 1st Intelligence Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California.

Beal’s death was first reported by Task & Purpose. Marine Corps Times could not get in touch with Beal’s family.

In Chosen Company, Beal’s callsign was Gander, though O’Leary said he doesn’t know the origin of the name. Beal was close with fellow Marine veteran Lance Lawrence, who was killed in July, according to O’Leary.

Beal volunteered for every mission, O’Leary said. On one mission, when Beal was the driver of his team’s Humvee, he noticed one of his teammates had dropped a 40 mm grenade launcher near the Russian position.

Beal dismounted the Humvee and circled to the other side of it while shooting at the Russian position, according to O’Leary. The Marine veteran picked up the grenade launcher and lobbed rounds at the Russian fighters as he returned to the driver’s side, “and then just drove off like it was nothing,” O’Leary said.

“He had conviction in what he was doing, and he lived through that conviction,” O’Leary said.

Beal is at least the seventh U.S. Marine veteran killed in the war in Ukraine.

Other Marine veterans known to have died in the war are Lawrence; Ian Frank Tortorici, 32, killed in June; Cooper “Harris” Andrews, 26, killed in April; Pete Reed, 33, killed in February; and Grady Kurpasi, 50, and Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, each killed in April 2022.

In a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough on Thursday, the group of 51 House and Senate lawmakers urged the department to follow the lead of the Health and Human Services authorities who have already issued regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex.

The move was mandated under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, but VA officials have not put in place similar protections.

“We believe that our nation’s heroes are entitled to the same anti-discrimination protections as civilians using other federal health programs,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is of utmost importance that the VA act without delay.”

Transgender vets threaten to sue VA over delay in surgery options

The effort was led by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. In a statement, Cherfilus-McCormick said the change is an opportunity for VA leaders to “send a clear, resounding, and enforceable message that no form of discrimination is ever to be tolerated.”

Department officials did not have an immediate response to the letter. Since President Joe Biden’s inauguration, VA leaders have repeatedly promised to make department services accessible and welcoming to all veterans, regardless of their background.

The congressional letter follows a petition from 14 veteran and civil rights groups pushing for the changes, saying the anti-discrimination policies are long overdue.

“These rules should be diligently communicated, leaving no room for ambiguity, and enforced across all levels of the organization,” said Rachel Branaman, interim executive director of the Modern Military Association. “Veterans, regardless of their background, deserve health care experiences that are uniformly positive, accessible, and responsive to their unique needs.”

Blumenthal said that minority veterans are particularly vulnerable to refusal of care or discrimination in services.

In addition, medical options for transgender veterans and reproductive health care services for women veterans have faced renewed scrutiny from conservative lawmakers in recent budget bills.

“I don’t like to ask our employees to work mandatory overtime, but I like less to have veterans wait for their benefits,” said Willie Clark, deputy under secretary for field operations at the Veterans Benefits Administration. “So we are keeping mandatory overtime for now … Our hope is downstream we can rely on it less.”

VA officials said they are pushing to hire more staff and find ways to ensure current employees aren’t burnt out by the flood of cases coming in. Staffers processed a record number of disability claims in fiscal 2023 and appear to be on pace to break that high mark again this fiscal year.

Clark said that before Oct. 1, department workers three times processed more than 9,000 claims in a single day. Since Oct. 1, benefits specialists have handled more than 9,000 claims 18 times.

Vets tap businesses for VA disability claims help, but there’s a cost

Much of that increased workload are new military toxic exposure claims filed through the the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — signed into law in August 2022. More than 750,000 new claims on that topic have been filed in the last 13 months.

As a result, the number of backlogged claims — cases taking more than 120 days to complete — has risen steadily in recent months, to more than 319,000 this week, VA officials said. Clark said that figure is expected to rise “between 450,000 and 700,000 next year.”

The previous high in backlogged claims was set in 2013, when the overdue caseload reached 611,00 after a flood of claims from Vietnam veterans for illnesses related to Agent Orange exposure. It also prompted intense scrutiny from Congress and forced an overhaul of benefits processes, including digitizing the department’s records system.

Clark said he expects the backlog to be under control again sometime in 2025. But that will likely require keeping up the agency’s current processing pace.

Since early 2022, nearly all claims staff have been required to work 20 hours of overtime every month to help with the workload. Exceptions are made for employees with disabilities or other obstacles, and Clark said “respite periods” in the summer and winter have been put in place in an effort to avoid burnout.

Leaders are also hoping that new processing efficiencies will help deal with the workload. And VA Secretary Denis McDonough said officials are planning to continue their push to grow the workforce this fiscal year, although he acknowledged that budget fights on Capitol Hill could disrupt those plans.