An infantryman points out a suspicious shadow in a tree to his machine gunner as they move on patrol near the Cambodian Border in Vietnam in 1966.

Marines prepare to carry the body of a soldier to a MEDEVAC helicopter near Forward Operating Base Zeebrugge in 2010 in Kajaki, Afghanistan.

Women dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothes take photos in front of a U.S. military helicopter at the War Remnants Museum during a week of celebration for the 50th Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War on April 27, 2025, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Marines wait for helicopter transport as part of Operation Khanjar at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province in Afghanistan in 2009.

A U.S. Marine watches as an Osprey carrying Leon Panetta, the U.S. secretary of defense at the time, as he arrives March 14, 2012 at Forward Operating Base Shukvani, Afghanistan.

Former U.S. Army Spc. Chris Tomlinson, center, serves in a diverse honor guard at a change-of-command ceremny at Ft. Hood, Texas in 1984. The Army celebrated its diversity by observing Black History Month until new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cancelled it this year.

My U.S. Army recruiter in 1982 was telling me about college benefits when someone knocked a book off their desk. The sergeant first class flinched as his eyes darted toward his office door.

“That sounded just like an AK-47,” he told me.

On what troops call an “I love me wall” behind his desk, he had hung photos of himself in Vietnam alongside intricately carved plaques from his combat units. A decade after his last tour of duty, he was still processing a war that shaped his generation and would transform the Army in which I served.

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