🧵 4/4 The work continues today. The American Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency operates with over 100 million dollars in annual funding to find lost servicemen. They cross reference dental records. They run DNA tests on living relatives. The work gets harder every year. Most of the men who never came home were 18 or 19 years old. They had no children to pass DNA to. The Japanese government, families, and private organizations search for their own missing pilots. The wrecks of Mitsubishi Zeros are sometimes recovered, restored, and placed in museums. Some are returned to the families of the pilots who flew them. In 2025 there are likely thousands of WW2 aircraft still out there. American and Japanese. In the jungle. On the seabed. In valleys nobody has walked since the war. The boys who flew them are still waiting to come home. I post a story like this every single day. Most people never see them. Follow so you don't miss the next one.

14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff never got to grow up. Soccer player. Debate team. Freshman. Shot multiple times hiding under a desk at Marjory Stoneman Douglas on Valentine’s Day 2018. 17 murdered that day. She was one of the youngest. Say her name. Don’t let them fade. 🇺🇸

I remember it being about .90 cents in Texas in the late '90s.

Today, on National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we honor the American service members who endured captivity and remember those who never returned home. Their courage, sacrifice, and service must never be forgotten. We also recognize the families who have carried the burden of uncertainty and loss across generations. The U.S. Naval Institute joins the nation in remembering our prisoners of war and those still missing in action.

My new T-shirts 🫡⚓

My faith in America restored. I’m at Terminal 1 at Reagan National in DC, and a couple of Honor Flights just arrived. No loudspeaker announcement, but the info spread by word of mouth, and there were spontaneous and sustained standing ovations for the veterans as they deplaned.

Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military — USNI News news.usni.org/2026/08/26/fis…

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Disgusting and Disrespectful Who agrees? ✋

A buddy from USPS, was on one of the carriers, major fire. Can’t remember which. He said you can see me in a video running across the carrier deck. I think Ron received a valor medal

Before Vietnam, she was the girl who bandaged her brothers' scraped knees and never flinched at the sight of blood. After Vietnam, her family said it felt like a stranger had come home wearing her face. She was one of thousands of young women — some barely out of nursing school — who volunteered to serve in field hospitals across Vietnam. Most were in their early twenties. Many had never lost a patient before they arrived. In-country, they worked shifts that stretched past twenty-four hours straight, stabilizing soldiers with wounds no textbook had prepared them for, then loading them onto helicopters bound for Japan — often without ever learning whether the boy on the stretcher survived the flight. There was no time to process any of it. Rockets fell on their hospitals at night. They wrote final letters home for men who couldn't hold a pen. They held hands as young soldiers, some barely older than teenagers, took their last breaths — then scrubbed in for the next patient minutes later. "We did what needed to be done," one nurse recalled decades afterward. "All those young, healthy, perfect bodies, injured — that was tough to deal with. There was nothing to counterbalance that stress." Research would later confirm that roughly one in five of these women developed PTSD at some point after their service, and many still carry symptoms of it today. They were not soldiers by the military's definition. But they carried the weight of war home all the same. #WomenServedToo #Military #TheVietnamWar #PTSD

He killed four enemy soldiers with an entrenching tool, a shovel, after they ripped his rifle out of his hands. And that was just his first day. The next morning Benjamin Wilson went out and did the whole thing again. Wilson was a first sergeant in Korea in June 1951, during a UN counteroffensive, when his company ran into a strong Chinese position near Hwach'on and the attack bogged down under heavy fire. Wilson did not wait for it to get worse. He charged the enemy line alone, up the hill, straight into a numerically superior force, using his rifle and his bayonet, killing several of them in a one man assault that got his stalled company moving again. Later, when the enemy counterattacked in strength and his unit was forced to give ground, Wilson stayed behind to cover the withdrawal. He fought until the enemy was right on top of him, and in the close in struggle they actually wrenched his rifle out of his hands. Most men are finished at that point. Wilson pulled out his entrenching tool, the small folding shovel every soldier carries, and killed four enemy soldiers with it in hand to hand combat, then kept fighting until his company was safe. That alone earned him the Medal of Honor. But here is the part that makes people shake their heads. The very next day, June 6, First Sergeant Wilson did it all over again. In another one man assault, he waded into the Chinese with his rifle, his bayonet, and grenades, and this time he killed thirty three of the enemy by himself. Thirty three. In a single action, the day after the action that already made him a legend. The Army looked at that second day and recommended him for a second Medal of Honor. But the rules did not allow any man to receive it twice, so for that second incredible feat they gave him the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest award, almost as a consolation prize for being too heroic too often. And Benjamin Wilson lived through all of it. President Eisenhower gave him the Medal of Honor in 1955. He stayed in the Army, retired as a major, and moved to Hawaii to live out his days in peace. The man who cleared hills with a shovel and a bayonet, and did it two days running, got to grow old, which after everything he walked through feels exactly right.

She was born into money. He was a broke young Army lieutenant. Her father warned her plainly: marry him, and the family fortune will not support you. Mamie Doud married Dwight Eisenhower anyway. Denver, Colorado. July 1, 1916. Mamie was nineteen years old, raised in comfort as the daughter of a successful businessman. She had grown up with servants, security, and every expectation of an easy life. Dwight had none of that. He was twenty-five, a West Point graduate living on a modest Army salary, with ambition, discipline, and little else. They had met only months earlier at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Mamie noticed him across the lawn at a gathering. Dwight noticed her too. He pursued her with determined patience. When she went out with other young men, he sometimes waited on her parents’ porch until she returned. Eventually, she chose him. On Valentine’s Day 1916, Dwight gave her what he could afford: a miniature version of his West Point class ring. It was not expensive. Mamie treasured it anyway. When Dwight asked her father for permission to marry her, Mr. Doud did not hide his concerns. Army life would mean small quarters. Constant moves. Limited money. No servants. No guarantee that Dwight’s career would ever become anything remarkable. And Mamie would have to live on whatever her husband earned. She understood. She said yes. Their wedding was simple. No enormous ballroom. No extravagant display. After a short honeymoon, Mamie left the world she had known and moved into military housing with her new husband. The difference was immediate. The rooms were smaller. The budget mattered. Everything had to be managed carefully. Mamie adapted. Wherever the Army sent them, she created a home. She learned to cook, stretch money, pack entire households, make new friends quickly, and start over again every time orders changed. They jokingly called their home “Club Eisenhower.” It became known for warmth rather than wealth. Then came heartbreak. Their first son, Doud Dwight, called Icky, died of scarlet fever at three years old. The loss never completely left them. They raised their second son, John, while Dwight’s military career slowly advanced. Years passed. Posts changed. Wars came. Dwight rose from an obscure officer to Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. Mamie remained beside him through the long separations, uncertainty, and demands of military life. Then, in 1953, thirty-seven years after their modest wedding, Dwight D. Eisenhower became President of the United States. Mamie became First Lady. The young woman once warned that marrying an Army lieutenant meant giving up luxury now lived in the White House. But the story was never really about arriving there. It was about everything before it. The tiny quarters. The moving boxes. The tight budgets. The grief. The waiting. The faith that the person beside you matters more than the comforts surrounding you. Mamie and Dwight remained married for fifty-two years, until his death in 1969. She never treated her youthful decision as a sacrifice. She had chosen the life she wanted. Not because she knew Dwight would someday become president. She could not have known. She chose him when all he offered was character, ambition, and partnership. Mamie Eisenhower could have chosen security. Instead, she chose belief. And together, they built something no inheritance could ever guarantee. A life.

Part of the Soldier's Creed is never to leave behind a fallen comrade. On the night of March 13, 2006, then-Sgt. Wilzcek, Sgt. Row, then-Pfc. Alvarez, then-Pfc. Pushkin, and the rest of their squad risked life and limb to live up to that promise. Row, the point man, was leading the soldiers through dark, narrow alleys in the city of Ramadi as the squad headed back to base. Suddenly two men darted into a nearby house – and at that hour, Row saw that as a clear sign of imminent danger. He stopped the team, but within seconds the street exploded with an onslaught of machine-gun and small-arms fire, RPG explosions, and hand grenades. The squad dropped to the ground and directed fire at the enemy's position. Alvarez moved to a covered position to reload his weapon, and he noticed one of his comrades had been hit and was lying in the middle of the firefight. Without hesitation, Alvarez rushed into the kill zone to check the soldier's vital signs – but it was too late. He covered the soldier's body with his own and continued firing on the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, Alvarez stood up and started dragging the soldier out of the line of fire. Row, who was pinned down nearby, provided cover fire as Alvarez struggled to move the body. When Wilzcek and Pushkin saw Alvarez's difficulties, they ran into the open to help. But as the three moved back toward cover, two RPGs exploded 10 meters away, knocking them down and sending a volley of shrapnel into Alvarez's right knee. The men stood up and continued dragging their comrade to the safety of a nearby courtyard. After establishing a safe area for the injured, Pushkin and Wilzcek ran back and forth several times from the courtyard into the line of fire to rescue trapped soldiers. Meanwhile, the RPG explosions had also injured Row's elbow with shrapnel. Even so, he continued firing on the enemy position to help the others reach safety. Once everyone was clear, Row, who was alone in the middle of the street, called for help. As Row remembered later, “I was trapped in the street, and [Pushkin and Wilzcek] pulled me out of there.” The squad was now in the courtyard and medical assistance was being administered – but their work was not done: enemy fire continued to light up the area. When the squad started planning the next phase, Alvarez refused to be moved with the other injured soldiers, staying to help in the fight. The insurgents, seeing the evacuation in progress, focused their fire on the rescuers. Wilzcek, already on the roof, began firing back. After clearing the rooms below, Pushkin and his team hurried up to the roof to help Wilzcek. Row grabbed a Bunker Defeat Munition – a shoulder-launched explosive for use against fortified positions – but his injured elbow prevented him from using it. He ran up to the roof, handed the weapon to Pushkin, and helped guide Pushkin toward the targets. With Row and Wilzcek providing cover fire, Pushkin took aim and fired – destroying the enemy's position and killing a number of insurgents. With that, the squad was able to leave the area safely. On Feb. 15, 2007, Wilzcek, Alvarez, and Pushkin were awarded the Silver Star for their bravery and actions; Row was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor. #TheIraqWar