Stars and Stripes Veterans News

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March 2, 2022 | View in browser

 

Biden includes veterans as one of four policymaking areas in new ‘unity agenda’ President Joe Biden introduced an agenda that includes four seemingly uncontroversial issues on which he believes Congress can agree. Read more >

'Center of the veteran homelessness universe': VA resumes homeless count with focus on vets in Los Angeles Teams of Department of Veterans Affairs employees, wearing reflective vests and carrying flashlights, assembled at each corner of the VA campus in West Los Angeles on Wednesday night with the mission to find and count every homeless veteran within the 388-acre site. Read more >

WWII heroism, Cold War weirdness, love lost and found: Long-forgotten Oregon photo brings it all back One of the photos shows a wintry scene, with shovel-wielding neighbors digging out a red 1957 Lincoln Premiere belonging to World War II veteran Charlie Gattman and Lillian Gattman. The vehicle was ordinary enough for its time. The couple inside it, however, was anything but. Read more >   Black female WWII unit recognized with congressional honor The House voted Monday to award the only all-female, Black unit to serve in Europe during World War II with the Congressional Gold Medal. Read more >   Congressional Gold Medals for groundbreaking wartime service awarded to two Philadelphia brothers Alfonzia and Timerlate Kirven were Montford Point Marines, the first African Americans allowed in that branch of the U.S. military, starting in 1942. Read more >

‘More than a bell toll’: Air Corpsman who survived Iwo Jima thanks Marines who laid down their lives Immortalized first in photographic film and then in bronze, the flag being hoisted by six men atop Mount Suribachi became the symbol of perseverance amid one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. Marine Corps history. Read more >   ICU-level care, in the air: It takes a team to keep hospital’s Nightingale helicopter flying A decade ago, Scott Nance was flying OH-58 Kiowa helicopters barely 200 feet over Afghanistan, concentrating on finding hostile fighters on the ground. Now, as one of the military veterans flying Sentara Norfolk General Hospital’s Nightingale air ambulance, he says “I’m doing graduate-level flying.” Read more >   Retired Army Master Sgt. Jerry Green was first African-American to run Presidential Emergency Operations Center U.S. Army Master Sgt. Jerry Green was the first African-American and the first non-commissioned officer to hold the position of operations officer in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Read more >   California veteran turns 100 with a little help from his high-tech heart A foundry worker in the Navy for more than two decades, Velvin Bill of La Mesa, Calif., often cast metal parts for broken ship pumps. It’s fitting, then, that this World War II veteran arrived at his 100th birthday last week with a little help for his own personal pump. Read more >   Biden to use State of the Union to announce plans for easing access to care, benefits for vets exposed to toxic burn pits The Department of Veterans Affairs will soon initiate a federal rulemaking process to add nine rare respiratory cancers to the department’s presumptive list. Read more >   Texas family waits to memorialize an Army veteran fallen to COVID-19 Robert and Carmen Achée want to give Army veteran Sidney Achée a proper military burial but the waitlist for burials at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., is so long that the ceremony likely won’t take place until next winter. Read more >

 

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