Obama calls on nation to take care of veterans

Jiffy Helton Sarver of Monroe, Ga., puts flowers at the grave of her son, 1st Lt. Joseph Helton Jr., at sunrise Wednesday at Georgia National Cemetery in Canton. Helton was killed in Iraq in 2009. “This was his favorite time of day,” Sarver said. “He loved sunrises.”
Jiffy Helton Sarver of Monroe, Ga., puts flowers at the grave of her son, 1st Lt. Joseph Helton Jr., at sunrise Wednesday at Georgia National Cemetery in Canton. Helton was killed in Iraq in 2009. “This was his favorite time of day,” Sarver said. “He loved sunrises.”

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama focused his Veterans Day remarks on the growing ranks of former troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now searching for new ways to serve their country at home.




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President Barack Obama and Maj. Gen. Bradley Becker pause Wednesday for the national anthem after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Former 1st Lt. Margaret Brigman, 96, who served as an Army nurse in France in 1944, bows her head Wednesday during a rededication ceremony for a veterans memorial at a cemetery in Kalamazoo, Mich.

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President Barack Obama lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., during a Veterans Day ceremony.

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Marine Staff Sgt. Michael Reynolds of Houston, accompanied by his girlfriend Ashley Voyles, visits the grave of Army Cpl. William Amundson Jr., who died in 2004, Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

"We're in the midst of a new wave of American veterans," said Obama, referring to a generation of men and women who have weathered the longest stretch of war in U.S. history. Those veterans have struggled in recent years to get care from an overwhelmed Department of Veterans Affairs. They've faced a higher unemployment rate than their civilian peers and an increase in suicides.

At Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and urged the nation to keep veterans in their thoughts long after Veterans Day.

Obama spoke of progress in reducing wait times for veterans and a plummeting unemployment rate among vets. He stressed the country's continuing obligation to do more to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs and help veterans find work.

The tenor of the president's visit to the cemetery this Veterans Day offered a striking counterpoint to past trips. On his first Veterans Day as president, Obama made his way somberly through Section 60 of the cemetery, where the dead from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are buried. Wearing a black overcoat, he spent time with families of the deceased who had arrived to stand vigil in the cemetery despite a cold rain. Back then, Obama was weighing whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

Six months ago, appearing at Arlington to mark Memorial Day, Obama touted the end of an era -- the first Memorial Day in 14 years in which the United States was "not engaged in a major ground war."

"We'll continue to bring them home and reduce our forces further, down to an embassy presence by the end of the year," Obama said at the time.

Since then, Taliban gains in Afghanistan and the largely stalemated fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have forced Obama to backtrack on plans to bring home U.S. troops. U.S. soldiers are no longer involved in daily ground combat, but the wars continue.

The president barely mentioned today's wars in his Veterans Day remarks. Instead, the focus was on service members returning home. More than 1 million veterans of the post-9/11 wars have returned to civilian life over the past decade, and 200,000 more will leave the military this year to start civilian lives.

Obama described improvements at the VA since last year's scandal over fabricated records and long waits for health care.

"We have made historic investments to boost the VA budget, expand benefits, offer more mental-health care and improved care for our wounded warriors, especially those with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury," Obama said. VA has added 1,400 doctors and seen more than 7 million more patients than it did in the year before the crisis.

"We've now slashed the disability claims backlog by nearly 90 percent," Obama said, referring to the time it takes for veterans to begin receiving their veterans benefits. The president also praised the VA for helping tens of thousands of homeless veterans find places to live.

Obama's remarks largely touched upon veterans' employment. For years, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered from a higher unemployment rate than their civilian peers. The improving economy and falling jobless rate have lessened the problem. Just two years ago, nearly 10 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were unemployed. Today, their jobless rate stands at 4.6 percent.

Still, the president made the case that the country must continue to do more to help veterans find steady jobs. "They're exactly the kind of people we need to keep America competitive in the 21st century," Obama said. "That's why more and more companies are hiring veterans. Not out of charity, not out of patriotism or some moral obligation -- although they do have those obligations -- but because they know it's good for their bottom line."

The federal government announced that Louisville is the first city in Kentucky to eradicate veteran homelessness. The city housed more than 400 veterans in the past year. And in Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe says the state has found permanent homes for 1,400 veterans in the past year.

Washington state's Kitsap County also is aiming to end homelessness for veterans by next Veterans Day. A coalition of agencies has created the "Homes For all Who Served" project to house dozens of former service members. The county has also started a program that pays landlords who rent to veterans.

Marking end of WWI

Across the country and around the world, parades and other celebrations marked the anniversary of the end of World War I.

Church bells tolled and officials laid wreaths across Europe to pay tribute to the millions of soldiers killed during World War I.

Thousands of people lined the Champs Elysees boulevard in Paris to see President Francois Hollande lay a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe, where an eternal flame burns beside France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Smaller ceremonies were being held across France, where church bells toll to mark the hour when the armistice was signed Nov. 11, 1918, to mark the end of hostilities on the war's Western Front, and memorials list the names of each village's dead.

An estimated 10 million soldiers and other servicemen were killed in the 1914-1918 war, of whom 1.3 million were French. Millions, of many nationalities, lie buried across France's north and east along the war's Western Front.

In the United Kingdom, crowds paused to observe two minutes' silence at 11 a.m. in streets and town squares, offices, churches and railway stations. Hundreds stood quietly in London's Trafalgar Square and around the Cenotaph memorial in central London as the bongs of Parliament's Big Ben bell sounded the hour.

Among those marking the day -- which commemorates all those killed in war since the outbreak of World War I in 1914 -- were the widow and son of Fusilier Lee Rigby, who was killed by al-Qaida-inspired attackers outside a London army barracks in 2013. They laid a wreath at St. George's Chapel, near where Rigby died.

In the U.S., New York City hosted its 96th annual parade, the largest celebration of service in the nation. "America's Parade" featured more than 20,000 participants, including marching bands, floats, veterans and military units.

Wisconsin honored Hmong-Lao Vietnam War veterans with a monument in the northern city of Wausau, where the first Hmong families arrived nearly 40 years ago.

Groundbreaking was Tuesday at the Marathon County Courthouse. The bronze and granite statue is expected to be finished by May.

Hmong American Board President Kham Yang says Hmong veterans were known as the secret soldiers because few knew what they did for the United States during the Vietnam War. They fought surreptitiously for the CIA in Laos and faced persecution.

More than 7,000 Hmong now live in Wausau, a city of about 40,000.

In New Jersey, the family of a World War II veteran was returned missing military medals, thanks to another veteran who was rummaging through a flea market.

Nicholas Del Prete, of Toms River, bought the medals last month and contacted the Purple Hearts Reunited organization in a bid to find Army Maj. Anthony Sordill. He was a medical officer who earned the nation's third-highest decoration for valor, the Silver Star, in North Africa in 1943.

The group was able to contact relatives, and the medals were returned to the family during a ceremony Tuesday in Toms River.

Purple Hearts Reunited has returned medals and artifacts to more than 150 families and museums.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post and by Greg Keller and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 11/12/2015

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