Military & Armed Forces

Marine Jess Goodell spent eight months recovering and processing the remains of fallen troops in the Mortuary Affairs unit. "I don't think I ever stopped smelling death when I was in Iraq," she says.

Long before the policy barring gays from serving openly in the military ended, Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried started OutServe, a network of gay troops on Facebook. Seefried and his partner talk about what it's like being a gay couple in the military — and about new challenges facing gay troops.

New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger details how President Obama accelerated the use of innovative weapons to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sped up a wave of cyberattacks against Iran to destroy its nuclear centrifuges.

Keegan spent his life studying war, but he never fought in one and described himself as more or less a pacifist. The British military historian, who died last week at age 78, chronicled the history of warfare from Alexander the Great to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In the early days of the Iraq War, during a firefight in Baghdad, Lu Lobello's Marine unit mistakenly opened fire on a family of civilians, killing three. Years later, and after enlisting the help of reporter Dexter Filkins, Lobello reached out to that family for forgiveness.

Thomas Ricks' new book, The Generals, is about what he sees as a decline of American military leadership and accountability. He says that in World War II, generals were held accountable for their lack of success — but that started to change with the Korean War.

In his article for The New Yorker, journalist Raffia Khatchadourian tells the story of a secret program that tested nerve gas, LSD and other drugs on 5,000 American soldiers throughout the 1950s and '60s.

In his new book, The Double V, Rawn James Jr. argues that to understand race in America one must understand the history of African-Americans in the military. While the turning point came between the world wars, the struggle began with the American Revolution.

In a new book, Nick Turse says the pressure on U.S. forces to produce a body count during the Vietnam War led to mass civilian deaths. "The idea," he says, "was that the Vietnamese, they weren't really people."

In a new book about Gen. David Petraeus, author and journalist Fred Kaplan looks at how theories of counterinsurgency have shaped U.S. military policy in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recently, Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan found a letter from then-Secretary of War James Forrestal that had been sent to her father after he had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1945. In that letter, she found an expression of gratitude that could serve us well today.

A new investigative report from Reuters special enterprise correspondent Scot Paltrow details how the antiquated and error-ridden payroll system for the U.S. military is erroneously cutting soldiers' paychecks and causing terrible hardship.

In his short story collection, former Marine Phil Klay takes his experience in Iraq and clarifies it, lucidly tracing the moral, political and psychological curlicues of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As a bomb-detecting dog, Zenit the German shepherd never chased his tail or dug holes. Those are skills he learned after he was adopted by his former professional partner, Cpl. Jose Armenta.

Geoff Dyer spent two weeks aboard the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush for his book Another Great Day at Sea. He talks with Fresh Air about his book, and the carrier's latest position for possible air strikes.

Phil Klay served in Iraq from January 2007 to February 2008. He recently won a National Book Critics Circle award for his collection of short stories. Originally broadcast Nov. 25, 2014.

Tobias Lindholm's Oscar-nominated film tells the story of a Danish commander's error in judgment during the war in Afghanistan. Critic David Edelstein says A War will "leave you in pieces."

As the wife of a Navy fighter pilot, memoirist Rachel Starnes has had much of her life — including where she lives and how often she gets to live with her husband — determined by his career.

The protagonist of Sebastian Barry's new novel is conscripted right off the boat as the price of American citizenship. Eventually he finds love and companionship with one of his fellow soldiers.

In 2009, Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar was shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan while co-piloting an Air National Guard medevac helicopter. Though she was wounded in her rifle arm, Hegar managed to return fire while hanging onto a moving helicopter, which saved the lives of her crew and her patients.