Combat

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

All French combat troops will pull out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, France's new president said in Kabul Friday, but some trainers will remain to help Afghanistan's nascent security forces. Francois Hollande said that France's troops have carried out their mission in Afghanistan and it is time for them to leave, an early pullout that will be coordinated with the United States and other allies. "There will be no combat troops" after the end of the year, Hollande said during a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, said a Marine whose grandparents live in Westbrook has died in combat in Afghanistan. Officials say Lance Corporal Mark Goyet was killed in Helmand province, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. The governor’s office said yesterday that Goyet’s maternal grandparents live in Westbrook and his mother and father were born in Maine. The 22-year-old Goyet, who was from Sinton, Texas, was assigned to Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, based in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

Food stamp recipients are ripping off the government for millions of dollars by illegally selling their benefit cards for cash — sometimes even in the open, on eBay or Craigslist — and then asking the government for replacement cards. The Agriculture Department wants to curb the practice by giving states more power to investigate people who repeatedly claim to lose their benefit cards. It is proposing new rules Thursday that would allow states to demand formal explanations from people who seek replacement cards more than three times a year.

There's a fine line between staginess and theatricality, and it shifts with changing times and tastes. What struck an earlier audience as stark and powerful drama may leave us shaking our heads at its stereotypes and melodrama - just as, no doubt, some acclaimed works of our own time will come to seem like risible cliches. It's painful to report that these thoughts are provoked by the Huntington Theatre Company's staging of David Rabe's "Streamers," one of the play's few major revivals since its 1976 Broadway success.

The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan says American troops will still be involved combat next year even as the U.S. officially shifts to a support role. The U.S. and its NATO partners will move into a supporting role in 2013, with Afghan security forces taking the lead in fighting. But Gen. John Allen says that doesn't mean U.S. forces won't still see combat. Allen says U.S. forces won't fully disengage from combat until the end of 2014, the date NATO has set for ending the war. U.S. officials describe next year's shift to Afghan security...

LONDON - Britain's female soldiers could soon battle enemy forces in face-to-face combat, if a ban on women serving in the most dangerous warfare roles is lifted for the first time. In keeping with an overhaul of equality laws in Britain, military officials are considering whether to allow female troops to be deployed with previously all-male units on perilous missions behind enemy lines. Bob Ainsworth, Armed forces minister, said a new study will decide whether to lift a longstanding ban on female soldiers, sailors, and air force personnel taking part in close-quarter combat.

US and other international forces in Afghanistan aim to end their combat role next year and switch to training and advising Afghan forces through 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday. Panetta's remarks to reporters traveling with him to a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels represented the Obama administration's most explicit portrayal of how the foreign military role in Afghanistan is expected to evolve from the current high-intensity fight against the Taliban to a support role with Afghans fully in the lead.

LONDON - The secret is out: Prince Harry has been serving on the front line with his British Army unit in one of Afghanistan's most lawless and barren provinces. Harry is the first royal to serve in a combat zone since his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters during Britain's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982. British officials had hoped to keep the 23-year-old's deployment secret until he had safely returned, but they released video of Harry serving in Helmand Province after a leak appeared on the US website the Drudge Report.

A new study suggests that when parents are deployed in the military, their children are more than twice as likely to carry a weapon, join a gang or be involved in fights. And that includes the daughters. "This study raises serious concerns about an under-recognized consequence of war," said Sarah Reed, who led the research of military families in Washington state. Last year, nearly 2 million U.S. children had at least one parent serving in the military. Deployment can hurt a family in a variety of ways.

The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan says American troops will still be involved combat next year even as the U.S. officially shifts to a support role. The U.S. and its NATO partners will move into a supporting role in 2013, with Afghan security forces taking the lead in fighting. But Gen. John Allen says that doesn't mean U.S. forces won't still see combat. Allen says U.S. forces won't fully disengage from combat until the end of 2014, the date NATO has set for ending the war. U.S. officials describe next year's shift to Afghan security lead as a "midway point" in...

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - Female soldiers are moving into new jobs this week in once all-male units as the Army breaks down formal barriers in recognition of what has already happened in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The policy change announced earlier this year is being tested at nine brigades, including one at Fort Campbell, before going Army-wide. It opens thousands of jobs to female soldiers by loosening restrictions meant to keep them away from the battlefield. Experience on the ground in the past decade showed women were fighting and dying alongside male soldiers anyway.

The same type of brain damage identified in 14 deceased professional football players has been pinpointed in veterans who endured bomb blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan - a finding that raises concerns that numerous other military personnel may be vulnerable to similar long-term impairments. An international team of researchers led by Boston scientists said in a study published Wednesday that they discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brains of four veterans after their deaths, including three who had survived explosions from improvised explosive devices.

Richard Mourdock , the Indiana state treasurer who ousted 36-year incumbent Senator Richard Lugar in Tuesday's Republican primary, is entitled to run on an extremely conservative platform, advocating for sweeping budget cuts, additional tax cuts, and a fundamentally smaller government. But his avowed refusal to compromise, in a body whose day-to-day functioning depends on it, is an affront to the American approach to government. Everyone who abhors the combative state of politics, the rejection of obvious solutions in order to maintain partisan purity, should be deeply...

NEW YORK - As chief of photo operations for the Associated Press in Saigon for a decade beginning in 1962, Horst Faas didn't just cover the fighting - he also recruited and trained new talent from among foreign and Vietnamese freelancers. The result was "Horst's army" of young photographers, who fanned out with Faas-supplied cameras and film and stern orders to "come back with good pictures. " He and his editors chose the best and put together a steady flow of telling photos: South Vietnam's soldiers fighting and its civilians struggling to survive amid the maelstrom.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson says the Obama administration plans to take further action to combat climate change. She said the administration plans to further exploit natural gas while also investing in renewable energy, has provided the necessary permits to facilitate offshore wind projects, and lauded Massachusetts for taking a leading role in trying to reduce the dangerous greenhouse gases that trap heat in...

WASHINGTON -- They go to war, they get shot at, and they see their friends die. But members of the military say they are more likely to think twice about reenlisting because of the consistently long work hours, not the prolonged deployments or life-threatening combat duty, a new RAND study says. The study released yesterday found that active duty troops who often put in longer work hours than normal -- either at a desk or in combat -- feel greater stress. And it said that as those stress levels about their workdays rise, their inclination to reenlist slips.

WASHINGTON - The Marine Corps is taking its first steps toward integrating women into war-fighting units, starting with its infantry officer school at Quantico, Va., and ground combat battalions that had once been closed to women. The moves, announced by General James F. Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, in a message to all Marines on Monday night, are intended largely to study how women perform in formerly male-only units and reflect new Pentagon rules released in February allowing women to serve closer to the front line.

The documentary "Bully," which comes to Boston theaters on Friday, portrays the all-too common scenario of kids getting brutalized by their peers at school with their parents none the wiser. For one 12-year-old boy with Asperger's, the school bus became a torture chamber: He repeatedly had his head bashed into seats, was stabbed with pencils, and had his life threatened. When his parents were shown the film footage, they were shocked since their son hadn't opened up to them about the bullying and relieved, in some way, to finally understand the reason...