Raquel Riley Thomas isn’t your typical veteran. After joining the Army in 1990 as an enlisted photojournalist, she became an ordnance officer through the Green to Gold program; she left the service as a captain in 2002. Fewer than eight years later, she was crowned first runner-up as Mrs. America.

The show has long been a trusted place for kids to explore serious issues. Deployments, combat injuries, and PCS moves are no exception.

Servicemembers can usually get them at no cost while in uniform.

Concerned Veterans for America, a group of policy advocates funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who want to shrink the size of federal bureaucracies including the Department of Veterans Affairs, appears to have won a major victory with President Trump’s firing of Dr. David Shulkin as VA secretary.

More than 750 Americans servicemembers — the majority of them officers — were taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. Here are the stories of four of those servicemembers and how they made the most of their lives in the years