Honoring Vets

VA’s Office of Public Affairs' Digital Media Engagement (DME) team is expanding its Virtual Volunteer program to invite new volunteers to help create content that honors Veterans and helps them learn more about their benefits. The Virtual Volunteer program will be open to currently enrolled college students and college graduates who have skills in various forms of digital content creation, social media management and accessibility.

For the third year in a row, Carry The Load is partnering with VA’s national cemeteries to honor and remember America’s heroes during Memorial May.

Then-Army Air Forces pilot Warren Halstead flew missions daily out of Coulommiers, France, during World War II. On May 8, 1945, he was at his duty station, on break from dropping supplies and transporting wounded to hospitals in England. The news came in: the war in Europe was over. Seventy-six years later, the retired Air Force colonel still remembers the mixed emotions of Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day.

Operation Gratitude invites you to help pay it forward to our troops this May for Military Appreciation Month.

Following the success of a Memorial Day video in 2020, the Air Force Band was back at Culpeper National Cemetery in Virginia April 26 to shoot a video for Memorial Day 2021. The band returned to the site to pay respect and film a tribute to those who lost their lives in war.

The virtual First Colors event paid homage to World War I Veterans and opened the National World War I Memorial April 16.

Visitors to Washington, D.C., pass many memorials during their trips. Among those are memorials dedicated to wars throughout the nation’s history. The black granite of the Vietnam War Memorial. The fountains and columns of the World War II Memorial. The 19 stainless steel statues of the Korean War Veterans Memorial. One war—dubbed “The Great War”—has been the only one missing. That changes April 16, 2021, with the First Colors ceremony unveiling the National WWI Memorial.

Dr. Donald Custis died in March 2021 at the age of 103. As Chief Medical Director for what was then the Veterans Administration from 1980 to 1984, he helped shape today’s VA health care system.

World War I Veterans will be honored during First Colors, a 90-minute virtual, free broadcast 10 a.m. Eastern April 16. Actor Gary Sinise hosts the inaugural flag raising at the Memorial site and virtual program, held only online at https://firstcolors.worldwar1centennial.org/.

Veterans from the U.S. Army’s 65th Infantry Regiment—known as the Borinqueneers—received special recognition during an event at the National Press Club April 13.

On this 2021 MLB Opening Day, we remember WWII Navy Veteran and New York Yankees legend and MLB Hall of Famer, Lawrence "Yogi" Berra.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III honored Vietnam War Veterans during a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., March 29, 2021.