Evan Vucci / AP file

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on April 18, before the House Appropriations subcommittee on Military Constructions, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies hearing on the Veterans Affairs Department's fiscal 2014 budget.

The U.S. Veterans Affairs department says it has hit a “tipping point,” cutting its monstrous backlog of disability claims by 74,000 since late April, yet agency critics contend that growing throngs of ex-troops waiting for injury compensation in America’s biggest cities show the VA is “over-promising and under-delivering.”

Amid scrutiny from Capitol Hill and the White House, a top VA official reaffirmed last week the agency will meet its goal to process all disability-benefit claims within 125 days by 2015. Three of the VA’s 56 regional offices — St. Paul, Minn., Sioux Falls, S.D., and Providence, R.I. — have achieved that threshold, and VA officials told NBC News they will pluck lessons from those “pockets of success.”

“We can get those best practices, (and) shine the light on some of our problem areas,” said Beth McCoy, who oversees 14 VA regional offices in the country’s midsection, including St. Paul, where benefit claims are typically processed in 100 days. 

But those “problem areas” — where some duty-injured veterans wait 16 to 19 months for disability checks to stay financially afloat — are coloring the national mood regarding the VA.

Jonathan Goodman, 29, a Marine veteran from Tulsa, Okla., and his wife, Shannon, say the delay in his disability-benefit claim has been putting a strain on their finances.

“It's sad to see so many veterans come back and apply for this, and it just takes so long. It can send a lot of guys into a downward spiral,” said Jonathan Goodman, 29, a Marine veteran from Tulsa, Okla. who earned a Purple Heart Medal for wounds sustained in a 2004 suicide-bomb blast. He's been waiting 11 months for the VA to process his disability-benefit claim.

“I just want to see guys get the (financial) help they've earned. I don’t want to see veterans put on the back burner," he added.

Veterans in 12 cities now face delays of more than 400 days, on average, for their regional VA offices to handle their disability claims. One year ago, no cities posted VA backlogs surpassing 400 days, according to the agency’s online benefits dashboard.

As of May 30 this year, the average backlog wait for veterans in New York City was 496 days, up 34 percent from a year ago, the dashboard shows. In Los Angeles, the average wait is now 568 days, up 63 percent since last year.

In May 2012, the VA reported a national “rating claims processing time” of 250 days. As of May 30 this year, that national average was 302 days. 

“VA has been over-promising and under-delivering for decades under both Democrat and Republican administrations,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “While VA leaders seem confident they’re on track to break the backlog by 2015, they haven’t provided us with any evidence to support that projection. That’s why the closer we get to 2015, the more I’m convinced that ending the backlog by then will require a commitment from the only person with the power to ensure VA lives up to its word: President Obama.”

And veterans are challenging President Barack Obama to act. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), which represents more than 200,000 men and women, posed five questions about the backlog to Obama on June 5. They asked, for example, how the White House is coordinating efforts between the Department of Defense and the VA to slash wait times.

Other VA watchdogs want to know: Does the quick work executed at VA regional offices in St. Paul, Sioux Falls (where it typically takes 115 days to process claims) and Providence (117 days) foreshadow the dawn of a larger fix?

“It’s worth looking at the leadership climate and the procedures used at those regional offices to see what they are doing differently,” said Tom Tarantino, IAVA's chief policy officer. “You also have to consider ... you only have 831 claims pending at the Sioux Falls office. When we solve those problems in L.A., then we will see progress.” 

In Tulsa, where Marine veteran Goodman waits on a disability claim he filed with the VA in July 2012, life means managing wounds and ailments he sustained during two Iraq tours: a traumatic brain injury, back problems, and migraines plus memory and anxiety issues — all of which make working and going to school difficult, he said.

While he appreciates the medical treatment he gets from his local VA hospital, he said, the job that best suits his symptoms is night bartending: dark and calm.

The benefit-compensation delay, meanwhile, forced his wife, Shannon, to pull extra work hours. Goodman had to grab additional bar shifts.

“It’s put a lot of stress on our marriage. It’s been rough financially. She works full time. I work nights. We spend a lot of time just seeing each other in passing,” Goodman said, adding that tax-free VA compensation for his combat wounds “would help us actually enjoy a normal life."

As 30,000-plus troops return from Afghanistan by 2014, the VA is completing a wholesale transformation.

Workflow is being redistributed to cities with available hands and reorganized from an “assembly-line system” to a network of “express lanes” for simple claims and “special-operations lanes” for complex claims like brain injuries, said VA’s McCoy. New employees are being trained to work more efficiently.

And the biggest overhaul: VA is switching to digitized benefits claims, replacing “thousands of tons of paper on shelves,” McCoy said. The electronic system is considered the lynchpin to reducing all backlog waits to 125 days or less. Meanwhile, the VA says it has processed more than 1 million disability claims during each of the past three years. 

“We have a sense of urgency,” McCoy said. “We don’t have the luxury of shutting down the shop, building a great system then opening the doors back up,” McCoy said. “We’re flying the plane as we’re changing it.” 

Related: 

• Unmasking the agony: combat troops turn to art therapy
• Obama urged to step in to fix VA backlog
• As VA backlog grows, Congress, veterans grow weary of excuses 

Bell County Sheriff's Office via Reuters

Maj. Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people in a November 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in an undated Bell County Sheriff's Office photo.

A military judge barred Army Maj. Nidal Hasan on Friday from arguing at his court-martial that he was legally acting to protect Taliban leaders when he killed 13 people and injured 32 others in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Hasan, who's representing himself, has said the shootings were a premeditated "defense of others" to safeguard Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban leaders in Afghanistan from attacks by the U.S. military.

Hasan, 42, a Muslim-American Army psychiatrist, faces the death penalty if he is convicted in the Nov. 5, 2009, shootings.

The judge, Col. Tara Osborn, said Friday that Hasan's argument "fails as a matter of law" and barred him from alluding to it in any way because the legitimacy of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is "a non-justiciable political question not before the court," the Killeen Daily Record reported.

Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com

"None of (the victims) in Fort Hood, Texas, posed an immediate imminent threat to those in Afghanistan," she said.

Hasan is seeking a three-month delay in his court-martial, which would be held at the same base he shot up 3½ years ago. Although he fired his three defense attorneys, Osborn has ordered them to assist him anyway — an order they've objected to.

Rulings on those two matters were still pending Friday afternoon. Hasan's next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Related:

Judge rules Fort Hood suspect can represent himself

IntelCenter via AP

An image from video made available by IntelCenter shows a video frame grab from the Taliban propaganda video released Friday Dec. 25, 2009 purportedly showing U.S. soldier Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl of Ketchum, Idaho.

The Idaho parents of a U.S. soldier held prisoner by Taliban allies since 2009 said on Thursday they have received a letter from their son that gives them hope that he is well despite his captivity. 

Bob Bergdahl, father of 27-year-old Bowe Bergdahl, said in a statement that he was confident the letter recently received through the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross was from his son. 

"Our family is greatly relieved and encouraged by this letter, which gives us hope that Bowe is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances," he said. 

Bergdahl asked the captors to free his son, who disappeared from his base in southern Afghanistan in June 2009 and is believed to be being held by Taliban militants in northwestern Pakistan. The last update of any kind the family received was video released by the Taliban in May of 2011.

"We hope Bowe's captors will again consider his parents' plea to release him, but in the meantime, we ask that you please continue to keep him in good health and allow him to keep corresponding with us," Bergdahl said in the statement. 

Col. Tim Marsano of the Idaho National Guard, who acts as the family's media liaison, said all indications were that the handwritten letter was authentic. A copy was not made available to the media. 

Marsano said the U.S. military was working toward the release of America's only prisoner of war.

"We have not forgotten Bowe Bergdahl for one moment and we never will. Our goal is to get him safely returned back to the United States and to his parents," he said. 

He said even though talk of Bergdahl's possible release through the efforts of U.S. negotiators has not been in the news of late "that does not mean the work has slowed down, even for a moment." 

Bergdahl was stationed in Paktika province, a hotbed of militant activity, when he disappeared under unclear circumstances on June 30, 2009, about two months after arriving in Afghanistan. 

Related stories:

U.S.-Taliban talks on prisoner swap falter

Frustrated dad of taliban prisoner takes matters into own hands

Ian Horn / for NBC News

New York National Guard Spc. Kyle Chen, center, meets potential employer Amrit Singh during the Hiring Our Heroes military job fair held in March in New York City.

Younger veterans who served during the recent wartime era posted a 7.3 percent unemployment rate in May — down from the 12.7 percent rate recorded during the same month in 2012 — better news for a group that has struggled to find work since coming home, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday. 

"This is an extremely positive step," said Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), which has more than 200,000 members. "It's the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people both in and out of the government. But this isn't the time to take our eye off the ball." 

The promising May figures follow a federal report that showed the April jobless rate among post-9/11 veterans stood at a 7.5 percent — down from the 9.2 percent rate that group posted in April 2012.

And far more telling: two straight months of welcome workforce news for younger veterans come on the heels of a comprehensive annual assessment by the Labor Department, released in March, that showed a steady downward dip in the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans between 2011 (12.1 percent) and 2012 (9.9 percent). 

When viewed in sum, experts say, the chronically icy job market for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan finally may be showing signs of a thaw. Overall, the pace of younger veterans on the job trail remained only slightly higher than the 7.0 percent unemployment rate in May for non-veterans, according to the latest labor figures. 

"The good news is corporate America is improving its effort to educate itself. Businesses are training their hiring managers how to read a military resume. They're consulting veterans who are already on staff about hiring new veterans," Tarantino said.

"This just reinforces that with a little bit of concerted effort by the public sector and private sector, we can fix the immediate problem," he added. "But it's going to take a much larger effort to solve all the structural problems that caused this in the first place: We still have to shore up how to translate military skills (into civilian jobs), and we still have to make sure that we're training veterans to enter the workforce properly."

Ian Horn / for NBC News

Ruty Rutenberg, a former U.S. Army medic, has two part-time jobs to pay the bills as he searches for his "mainstay career."

A warmer reception among U.S. hiring managers coincides with a bevy of aggressive, veteran-employment initiatives launched during recent years within the private sector, the nonprofit world, and at the federal level. That includes first lady Michelle Obama's "Joining Forces" campaign, which has helped escort nearly 300,000 ex-military members from careers in uniform to civilian jobs, the White House reported April 30.

"This is good. It's a positive trend," said Kevin M. Schmiegel, founder and executive director of the Hiring Our Heroes program at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Through hundreds of jobs fairs, that push has helped more than 18,400 veterans and military spouses find work. Schmiegel also lauds both Joining Forces and the JPMorgan Chase "100,000 Jobs Mission" for helping reduce the number of unemployed veterans. 

"We have had a positive effect over the last couple of years. People should emphasize that," added Schmiegel, who served 20 years in the Marine Corps, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. 

But winning the job war at home remains far from a rout for tens of thousands of veterans, especially for many who served in combat zones — like Ruty Rutenberg, an Army medic in Iraq. He's been searching for his "mainstay" career for about a year.

Presently, Rutenberg fills his workweeks through a pair of part-time jobs: one hosting media events, the other doing outreach through a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs program called "Make the Connection", which encourages veterans who need mental-health care to come forward and get it. 

"I've got multiple outlets of part-time work that's helping me pay the bills but still nothing permanent," Rutenberg said. 

"I do know a lot of veterans I've talked to are having a hard time getting work, especially if there's any type of medical situation attached," he added. "Even if it's a small injury. Or, let's say it's (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) but it's a manageable amount: Employers are still afraid to take the initiative to hire those people. PTSD is very manageable if the veteran is actively getting counseling, taking meds, or if it's just not that high an amount (of anxiety symptoms)."

Among veterans who served during the post-9/11 era and who have a service-connected disability, the unemployment during 2012 was 8.0 percent, the Labor Department reported in March. 

But the veteran group scuffling hardest to land steady paychecks: men and women between the ages of 18 and 24 who, during 2012, posted an unemployment rate of 20.4 percent, according to federal figures. 

And their ranks are about to swell exponentially, particularly as American troops exit Afghanistan by 2014. 

"The fact is there are another million service members and their families who are getting ready to leave the armed forces over the next five years," Schmiegel said. "Many of them are going to be 24 and under, and many of them will have military spouses who also face high unemployment.

"So even though we see positive trends year to year, we need to remain vigilant," he added. "We really need to push the programs that are working."

Related:

• White House-backed jobs-for-vets program crushes goals
• Unemployment among post-9/11 veterans still running heavy
• Companies honored for hiring and supporting veterans
• Pentagon looks to cut up to 50,000 civilians over 5 years
• Hiring Our Heroes job fair part of week-long, national hiring push

This story was originally published on Thu Jun 6, 2013 12:01 PM EDT

A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Wednesday to executing 16 Afghan civilians  — many of them women and children — and said he couldn't explain why he did it.

"I've asked that question a million times since then, and there's not a good reason in the world for why I did the horrible things I did," Staff Sgt. Robert Bales told a military judge.

Bales, who struck a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, admitted he aimed to kill during two rogue raids on family compounds in Kandahar province in March 2012.

"I formed the intent as I raised my weapon," he said.

He recounted grappling with an older woman as he entered one compound.

"Upon completion of that struggle, I did form the intent to kill anyone in that compound," he said.

Asked whether the woman was armed in way way, Bales replied, "No, sir, she was not.'

Bales spoke in a clear, emotionless voice as he went through each of the 16 killings, describing how he left his base, went to the village and systematically gunned down defenseless civilians with an M4 military assault rifle and 9mm handgun.

He ended each chilling confession with the statement, "This act was without legal justification."

He said he did not remember setting a compound on fire, but did not dispute it.

"There was a kerosene lantern in the room, and based on the evidence ... that lantern was used to set those people on fire," he said.

"I remember there being a lantern in the room, remember there being a fire, remember there were matches in my pocket," he added.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP, file

Mohammed Wazir, seen here with his only surviving son, Habib Shahin, 3, lost 11 family members in the attacks by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

"But to say I remember throwing it on those people, I don't recall that. But I have seen pictures and it's the only thing that makes sense, sir."

The judge, Col. Jefferey Nance, asked if Bales believed he was "authorized or justified or acting in self defense" when he shot and burned the civilians.

"No, sir," he replied.

"Do you believe you conduct was wrong?" Nance asked.

"Yes, sir," Bales replied.

His recounting of the atrocities in a military courtroom in Washington state came after he pleaded guilty to premeditated murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault. He pleaded not guilty to a charge that involved a stolen laptop.

In August, a jury will determine if his life sentence will include the possibility of parole. Bales requested that one-third of the panel be comprised of enlisted members, not just officers.

Bales' lawyers have said the married father of two suffered from PTSD and brain injury after four combat deployments and was under the influence of drugs and alcohol the night of the raids on family compounds in Kandahar province.

Prosecutors have said the massacre was preplanned and that Bales was angry about a bomb blast near his outpost that wounded a fellow soldier.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 5, 2013 8:41 PM EDT

Spc. Ryan Hallock / DVIDS via AP, file

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales

SEATTLE  - Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in two rampages from his Army post last year, has reached a plea deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, one of his lawyers said on Wednesday.

Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is accused of gunning down villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds in Kandahar province in March 2012.

Lawyer Emma Scanlan said in an email that Bales would plead guilty to premeditated murder charges and would then go before a military jury for sentencing to determine whether a life sentence for his crimes would include the possibility of parole.

"There will be a jury for the sentencing phase beginning in August," Scanlan said.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP, file

Mohammed Wazir sits with his only surviving son, Habib Shahin, 3, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. 11 members of his family were killed.

Army prosecutors, who had sought the death penalty, have said Bales acted alone and with chilling premeditation when, armed with a pistol, a rifle and a grenade launcher, he left his base twice in the night, returning in the middle of his rampage to tell a fellow soldier: "I just shot up some people."

The shootings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further eroded strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.

Defense attorneys have argued that Bales was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury even before his deployment to Afghanistan.

During a nine-day pre-trial hearing in November, witnesses testified that Bales had been angered by a bomb blast near his outpost that severed a fellow soldier's leg days before the shootings.

Prosecutors presented physical evidence to link Bales to the crime scene, with a forensic investigator saying a sample of blood on his clothes matched a swab taken in one of the compounds where the shootings occurred.

Bales is to enter a guilty plea on June 5 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a military installation in Washington state. The presiding judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, and a commanding general must still approve the deal.

Victor Hansen, the vice president of The National Institute of Military Justice, said Bales' multiple deployments and diminished mental state raised "some extenuating and mitigating circumstances" that may have made both sides amenable to such a deal.

"The government saw there was some risk in their case," Hansen said. "From the defense standpoint, every capital litigator has one primary objective, which is to avoid death. They can say they succeeded in that objective even if he gets life without parole."

Under the deal, the Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Washington, is to provide a full account of the attacks, notwithstanding his patchy memory, to demonstrate that he understands and accepts his guilt. Nance will then decide whether to accept his plea.

Bales' deal mirrors a similar agreement struck last month at Lewis-McChord, where Sergeant John Russell pleaded guilty to killing two medical staff officers and three soldiers at the Camp Liberty combat stress clinic, near Baghdad's airport in a 2009 shooting spree.

Russell, who was spared execution for one of the worst cases of violence by an American soldier against other U.S. troops, was sentenced to life in prison without parole following an abbreviated court.

Read more coverage of the Robert Bales case on nbcnews.com

President Obama marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery and urging Americans to remember the soldiers still fighting, and dying, in Afghanistan.

After a ceremony steeped in solemn tradition, the commander-in-chief said he fears the men and and women of the military are fading from the public consciousness because many people don't know anyone serving in the all-volunteer fighting force.

"The truth cannot be ignored. Today, most Americans are not directly touched by war," Obama said at the hallowed burial ground, where rows of headstones were topped by small flags and cannon fire could be heard in the distance.

"As a consequence, not all Americans may fully grasp the depths of sacrifice, the profound costs, that are made in our name."

With troop withdrawal under way, the commander-in-chief noted that next year should mark the final Memorial Day of the war in Afghanistan.

Until then, he said, Americans have a duty to remember there are still 60,000 troops serving in Afghanistan, "still risking their lives to carry out their mission."

Slideshow:

David Goldman / AP

Those who lost their lives in service to their country are honored during both private and public moments.

Launch slideshow

He mentioned by name three who went to Afghanistan, died in action and were buried at Arlington: Capt. Sara Cullen, a Blackhawk pilot killed in a training mission last April; Staff Sgt. Frankie Phillips, killed by a roadside bomb this month; and Staff Sgt. Eric Christian, who was gunned down May 4.

Obama also quoted a letter from a North Carolina mother of two Marines, who beseeched the public not to "forget about my child."

"On this Memorial Day and every day let us be true and meet that promise," he said. "Let us never forget to always remember.”

Brendan Hoffman / for NBC News

Frank Stultz, a 91-year-old veteran of World War II, poses for a portrait at his home on Friday in New Carrollton, Md.

On the day America remembers lost heroes, the memories of many of those who survived combat remain forever laced with the harrowing sights, sounds and smells of war — recollections still crisp and vivid many decades after the fight.

For some, like Vietnam veteran John Hamilton, sensory triggers from past skirmishes can never be shaken, no matter how much he’d like to forget. When night falls, he sees the blackness as “a bad time, Charlie’s time,” a reference to his enemy 45 years ago, North Vietnamese communists. 

For others, like World War II veteran Frank Stultz, the close calls in the South Pacific are recollections he refuses to surrender. He can close his eyes and put himself back inside his turret aboard the USS Biloxi, a Navy light cruiser, nearly 70 years ago, as Kamikaze pilots buzz above and his hands vibrate from the shells he’s firing into the blue sky.

“I forget a lot of things, or so my wife tells me. But I don’t forget those things,” said Stultz, 91, from his home in New Carrollton, Md. “It was rough, in a way. I got through it. We did our job.”

Whether it's 20-something Afghanistan veterans scratching out the progression of 2011 firefights in the dirt or men more than four times their age recounting battles in the South Pacific from 1945, there are stark parallels in their tales — similar noises, scents and visions, kindred feelings and emotions. War has a way of getting tattooed onto the brains of troops, no matter the conflict or the era, scientists say.

John Hamilton/VFW

John Hamilton served as a Marine Corps rifleman from 1968 to 1970, including a tour of Vietnam. Today, he is Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. At left, Hamilton in Vietnam where he earned a Purple Heart medal.

“There are commonalities with guys from World War II and Korea, or Afghanistan or Iraq, with what we saw and heard. They affect us all — forever. They affect your soul — forever,” said Hamilton, 62, a Marine rifleman from 1968 to 1970 who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam.

“To this day, if I’m walking through a city and see a tree line, I’m thinking: Don’t go that way; there are bad guys hiding there,” added Hamilton, who today heads the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Such permanent memories — and sensory triggers — are pure biology. The most indelible images usually are retained from our most horrific experiences or from our happiest days, said Dr. Sydney Savion, a Texas-based behavioral scientist and Air Force veteran who studies post-traumatic stress disorder.

The centerfold in our mental scrapbook is the amygdala, an almond-shaped portion of the brain tasked with processing unique moments into long-term memory and choosing which emotional events get stored away for good.

“When the brain experiences something, whether it’s beloved events or bad events, it assigns an emotional value to it. Those memories are imprinted,” Savion said.  

The most gruesome or most beautiful moments we experience cause the brain to become “awash with adrenaline,” she said. “That intensity over time, whether it’s graphic memories of the war or the birth of child, continues to self-perpetuate in memory.  

“In these combat instances — in part because the veterans' brains have assigned such a high emotional value to them, they just can’t ever get these experiences off of their minds.” 

Or, like nonagenarian Stultz, they simply don’t want to lose them.

Even if they were downright frightful.

There was the night be opened fire unknowingly on an American plane, which he was ordered to do because it was flying in from the direction of the enemy. A fellow sailor had to pound on Stultz's turret with a hammer to tell him to stop shooting. The plane and pilot were spared. 

Brendan Hoffman / for NBC News

A photo of Frank Stultz from his days in the U.S. Navy, as well as a diary he kept during World War II and a souvenir booklet from USS Biloxi, the ship on which he served.

There was the day a shell dropped from a plane onto the Biloxi’s fantail. It struck 50 feet from Stultz’s turret. But it was a dud. Stultz and his shipmates were saved.

There were days when Japanese suicide planes circled above, some hurtling down and crashing into nearby U.S. ships, including the USS West Virginia near Okinawa, killing four sailors. 

"I could see them from the parascope in my turret. We were just shooting, shooting, shooting. They were all around our ship. We were just trying to put a shell right in front of them so they would hit it," Stultz said. "It was a good education for me. But I was young. 

"When you're young, you don't worry about those things. I like to remember because we were taught to do the right thing and I think we did. If worst came to worst, well, that's the way it was." 

Slideshow: Art therapy helps soldiers coping with trauma

Courtesy of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence

For soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injury and the psychological effects of war, a Department of Defense art therapy program hopes to provide relief.

Launch slideshow

The skull’s left corner is gone, leaving a jagged, diagonal edge drenched in red. The eyes are black and frantic. All of it resembles the Iraqi man who, in his final minute alive, stared up at Maj. Jeff Hall.

For five years, that face tortured Hall, once a sharp Army leader later shoved to his own ragged edge. Not long ago, a woman handed Hall a blank mask, brushes and paints. She asked him to see what may emerge on the surface.

“That image, seared into my mind, began leaking out of me,” said Hall, one of hundreds of active-duty troops who have created masks as part of an art therapy program at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “I almost needed to regurgitate it. To be honest, it helped me let it go.”

Many more masks, some resembling Hall’s violent creation, some depicting abstract demons, adorn walls at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICOE) on the Walter Reed campus.

They reveal scars once carried and cloaked inside the minds of men and women back from war — troops diagnosed with mild brain injuries and secondary psychological issues, including post-combat stress.

Hall, 43, who titled his mask “The Shock of Death,” served a pair of year-long tours in Iraq spanning 2003 to 2005. Ultimately haunted by violent events he saw and survived in Iraq, including the loss of friends, Hall eventually contemplated suicide and became more isolated. His commander noticed Hall's behavioral changes and guided him into counseling in 2008. Two years later, Hall was invited to seek treatment for a traumatic brain injury at then-new NICOE, a Department of Defense facility offering research, education and treatment focused on TBIs and psychological health. 

When service members initially enter the art-therapy studio, their faces often are blank and unyielding, hiding unwelcome war souvenirs within — the mental cargo they’ve lugged home but can’t shake. On their masks, they expose that secret turmoil: vulnerabilities, anger, grief or, often, fragmented identities.

“It’s intense. They get really invested in this. It becomes very meaningful for them,” said Melissa Walker, an art therapist who coordinates the masks program at NICOE.

Participants at NICOE must be active-duty troops who are dealing with a combination of TBI and psychological health concerns. Typically, they are referred by their primary health care provider or their commander. A designated team at NICOE determines which service members are most appropriate to receive treatment there. Attendees participate for four weeks. Art therapy is just one of the tools offered and the service members usually make one mask — done during their first week at the center. 

“I tell them: ‘Don’t worry about the finished product; worry about what you are symbolizing in the mask.’ That makes it more powerful to them. It gives them a way to express to us, visually, what they’re going through,” Walker said. “It’s a little less intimidating then handing them a blank piece of paper.”

Art therapy has become a staple in the treatment of a wide array of traumas, from child abuse to PTSD. Making art can help people unlock dark emotions or memories that they can't yet vocalize, pulling those buried anxieties from their subconscious and placing them onto a canvass or into a lump of clay, said Donna Betts, a professor in the art therapy program at George Washington University.

As a patients' pieces are taking shape, art therapists help them talk about what they believe they are trying to express in their creations, Betts said.   

"It's especially effective in the treatment of trauma in service members. When trauma is experienced, it tends to be stored in the nonverbal part of the brain," Betts said. "This is why so many of them can't even put into words what they've been through. Art therapy helps them retell their story through art. It translate that trauma from the nonverbal part of the brain to the verbal part so they can start dealing with it.

"They then become more aware of the trauma. This is where that healing starts to take place."

After the paint is dabbed and stroked at NICOE, many of those papier-mache masks offer chilling accounts of what it is like to live inside the minds of combat veterans.

One brown face with the mouth agape and with bloodshot eyes upturned is squeezed by a metal clamp that reads “TBI” on the left and “PTSD” on the right.

Another mask is coated by small chunks of amber bark — two tiny holes remain for eyes — symbolizing the outer camouflage the maker felt is necessary to blend back into the civilian world.

Some masks show mouths locked or sewn closed, whispering of an inability to speak of what they’ve witnessed. Many are divided down the middle — for example, one displays part of an American flag on the left and a skull on the right.

“There is a split sense of self. They feel like they’re one person when they’re deployed and one person when they return home,” Walker said. “Or, they do a really strong, warrior exterior with a vulnerable inside but they don’t feel like they can express that.”

The troops who come to NICOE for therapy can take their masks home. But many purposely leave them to hang from the walls to speak to — and perhaps even soothe — incoming troops trying to cope with the same thoughts and impulses.

The creations give service members a format “to say what they can’t say out loud — because it’s too painful or because we just don’t feel like anybody really wants to hear it,” said Hall, who remains on active duty, stationed at Rock Island Arsenal in northwestern Illinois.

“I absolutely believe it is a method to calm your mind.”

Jamie Brokaw was an experienced navigator who was no stranger to dangerous flying situations and had the skills to stay cool in the face of danger, according to close friend Chris Connerton.

"He was a very good person and very smart person," Connerton told The Associated Press by telephone from Rochester, Minn.

Brokaw, 33, of Monroe, Mich., was among seven Americans killed Monday when their National Air Cargo plane crashed near an Air Force base in Afghanistan. Six of the victims were from Michigan and a seventh was from Kentucky, said Shirley Kaufman, National Air Cargo vice president.

Connerton said Brokaw was a key reason he was able to make it through flight school in Jacksonville, Fla., where they met.

Connerton also described a harrowing flight two years ago from Toledo, Ohio, to an international flight expo in Lakeland, Fla. Connerton said ice had built up on the plane to the point that he could no longer get it to climb.

"If it wasn't for Jamie's navigation and know-how ... we wouldn't have made it," Connerton said.

Killed along with Brokaw in the Afghanistan crash were Gary Stockdale, 51, of Romulus, Mich.; pilots Brad Hasler, 34, of Trenton, Mich., and Jeremy Lipka, 37, of Brooklyn, Mich.; first officer Rinku Summan, 32, of Canton, Mich.; loadmaster Michael Sheets, 36, of Ypsilanti, Mich.; and maintenance crewman Timothy Garrett, 51, of Louisville, Ky.

Building model planes and working on real ones comprised Stockdale's passion, filling the family's basement with models in his youth, jumping into aviation as a career at age 16 — and later working at two Detroit-area airports.

Stockdale also knew the dangers of flying, his older brother said Tuesday.

"He always said it was dangerous," said Glenn Stockdale, 55. "He would always say, 'You either will die in a car crash or a ball of flame in a plane.'"

AP / Courtesy Stockdale Family

Gary Stockdale, 51, of Romulus, Mich., was killed in a cargo plane crash on Monday.

Lipka had flown in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and had close calls before, said his stepfather, Dave Buttman.

"There was risk there all the time. He knew the risks. He volunteered to take the trips," Buttman told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. "Basically, you're taking your chances flying in there and he was just happy to be one of the pilots to do it."

The Dubai-bound Boeing 747-400 — operated by National Air Cargo — crashed just after takeoff Monday from Bagram Air Base around 11:20 a.m. local time, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday.

The accident site is within the perimeter of Bagram Air Base.

The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but NATO said the claims were false and there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash.

The Afghanistan Ministry of Transportation and Commercial Aviation is leading the investigation. The NTSB is investigating the crash alongside the ministry. The team will be composed of three NTSB investigators, as well as representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the NTSB said.

Kaufman said the plane — owned by National Airlines, an Orlando, Fla.-based subsidiary of National Air Cargo — was carrying vehicles and other cargo.

Elena Garrett, of Jeffersonville, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Louisville, said ex-husband Timothy Garrett would have turned 52 on Saturday. They have two daughters together, ages 11 and 12.

"We're all devastated," Elena Garrett said about his death. "We were still best friends. He's the best father I've ever seen (and) ready to help anybody. He would give the shirt off his back for anybody."

Bill Hasler said his family learned Monday morning that his brother, Brad, was one of the crash victims.

"Brad was a wonderful father to two young children, a beloved husband to a wife who is expecting another child, a loving son, and the most loyal and supportive brother I could have ever asked for," Bill Hasler said in a statement. "His influence in the lives of all of us who loved him is immeasurable, and our grief is indescribable."

National Airlines was based until recently at Michigan's Willow Run Airport, west of Detroit. It carries cargo both commercially and for the military, Kaufman said. She said the company employs about 225 people.

Summan had worked 2½ years for National Air Cargo, said his wife, Rajnit Summan.

Rajnit Summan said she last spoke to her husband Sunday.

"I told him to be safe," she said.

This story was originally published on Wed May 1, 2013 4:31 AM EDT

American companies have hired or trained more than 290,000 veterans and military spouses since the White House announced its "Joining Forces" campaign two years ago, and U.S. employers now have committed to supplying jobs to another 435,000 veterans over the next five years, Michelle Obama announced Tuesday.

The hires to date mean that Joining Forces — led by the first lady and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden — has, with eight months to spare, nearly tripled its original goal to connect 100,000 unemployed veterans to paychecks by the end of 2013. 

"We know that today is not the finish line," she said. "Today is simply just a mile marker. And we’re not going to stop until every single veteran or military spouse that is searching for a job has found one."

"Across America and all around the world, our men and women in uniform and their families are standing up for us ... And in so many ways, all they’re looking for is another way to serve. All they need is that next mission. All they need is a job," she said. "You live in a grateful nation. And people will stand up." 

According to the Department of Labor, there were 783,000 veterans without jobs at the end of March. The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 9.2 percent at that time compared to the civilian unemployment rate of 7.4 percent, federal figures show. 

Companies vowing to churn up more jobs for veterans and military spouses during the next five years include: BNSF Railway (5,000 hires), UPS (25,000), Home Depot (55,000) and McDonald's (100,000), Michelle Obama said.

"Walmart is telling any veteran who has served honorably, if they want a job in the year after they separate from service, Walmart is going to hire them, and their goal is to do it within 30 days of the veteran’s application," she added. 

Complicating matters, however, are two military trends that soon may raise the current pace of veteran joblessness: More than 34,000 service members will be returning from Afghanistan during the next 12 months. In addition, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that "more than 1 million service members are going to be transitioning back to civilian life in the coming years," as the U.S. Armed Forces downsize. 

"Unfortunately, when they hit the job market, employers don’t always recognize the high-quality, high-tech skills our newest veterans have gained in the military," President Obama said. "They don’t understand the leadership they have shown under extraordinary circumstances. Too often, just when these men and women are looking to move forward in the next chapter of their lives, they’re struck in neutral, scraping together odd jobs just to paid the bills.

"If you can lead a platoon in a war zone," he added, "then I think you can lead a team in a conference center."

Related:

• Companies honored for hiring and supporting veterans
• Pentagon looks to cut up to 50,000 civilians over 5 years
• Hiring Our Heroes job fair part of week-long, national hiring push