VA Secretary Eric Shinseki's chief of staff will leave that post Sunday, saying "my wife and I decided it was time to retire," but the Department of Veterans Affairs honcho exits amid the sound of Capitol Hill criticism. 

John Gingrich, a retired Army colonel who commanded a field artillery battalion during the Gulf War, told VA staffers in a note that after 37 years of combined military and federal service, he had discussed his "transition" with Shinseki earlier this year, as the Obama administration began its second term. During that conversation, Gingrich and Shinseki "agreed to ensure a smooth transition and to set the conditions for an interim chief of staff, which will be completed by March 31," he wrote. 

"Over the last four years, I have had the tremendous honor to serve the Nation's Veterans, their families, and survivors as VA's Chief of Staff," Gingrich wrote to VA employees. "I will always be grateful for the opportunity that the Secretary afforded me. After a long career in the Army, and after four years of balancing my dedication to the department with my other responsibilities, it is time for me to shift my focus."

Word of his departure comes six days after members of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America met with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the chronically long claims-benefits backlog, which is managed by VA. The leader of that veteran's group, Paul Rieckhoff, called on President Obama to find an immediate fix for the backlog, adding the time had come "to go above the VA" on the problem. 

'Lack of judgement'
Also last week, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told NBC News "the president needs to take a personal interest" in the backlog. Miller, additionally, had called for Gingrich to resign in October after revelations surfaced detailing improper VA spending. Last fall, Miller condemned Gingrich’s approval of an $8 million budget for a pair of VA human resources conferences held in Florida during 2011. 

“Even though I deeply respect John Gingrich’s time in uniform and public service, the fact remains that his lack of judgment in approving a number of lavish VA events cost taxpayers more than $6 million and cast a lingering shadow over the department’s reputation," Miller said Tuesday in a statement.

"The task at hand for the department is finding a replacement who will avoid repeating Gingrich’s past mistakes," Miller said. "In addition to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars, Gingrich’s successor must be willing to have an honest conversation about the challenges VA faces and its ability to overcome those challenges — qualities that are absolutely essential for every VA leader to have.” 

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The benefit-claims backlog that has ensnared nearly 600,000 younger veterans — many with war wounds — has reached a crisis point inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the hour has come for President Barack Obama to become personally involved in unclogging the quagmire, two of the nation's leading veterans advocates told NBC News Thursday. 

"It’s time to go above the VA. If you think of VA as a broken down car, it’s hard for us to know how to fix it if we can’t see under the hood. The president can see under the hood. And the president can send people in to fix it," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which represents more than 200,000 people.

"When you have so many men and women that are waiting years to see their claims adjudicated, there is a problem and it's somewhere within VA. And the president needs to take a personal interest," said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. 

Rieckhoff contends that Obama must answer a key question: With the overall claims tally surpassing 900,000 cases earlier this year and with 34,000 troops soon returning from Afghanistan, should VA Secretary Eric Shinseki be replaced? 

In a meeting Wednesday with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Rieckhoff said he told Obama's top advisor: "We need to hear it from the president" as to whether Shinseki should remain atop the VA.

During a press briefing Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "It is absolutely the president’s position that we need to aggressively address this problem, and he has made clear to Secretary Shinseki that he wants this addressed. He is getting weekly updates on the backlog."

Responded Rieckhoff: "We’re focused on ending the backlog. What we need from the president is a plan to end the backlog. If (Shinseki's removal) is a part of that plan, we’d love to hear about it. The easy thing to do is fire some people. But that won’t necessarily fix things.

"Yes, we need a cultural transformation (at the VA). We need new blood, new ideas," Rieckhoff added. "But three VA secretaries have been there and three VA secretaries have failed. That’s why we’re focused on the president. This is bigger than Shinseki."

IAVA file

"The backlog is the place where veterans end up feeling betrayed. When your claim is delayed 600 days, which is the case if you live in New York or L.A., you feel like your president and your country are letting you down," said IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff, photographed Thursday speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C.

VA official urged to step down
On Tuesday, Miller called for the resignation of Allison Hickey, the VA's under secretary of benefits. Miller is frustrated with Hickey, in part,  because she can not project where the backlog will stand in 12 months while she is simultaneously promising that no veterans will be waiting 125 days or more for their benefits by 2015. Miller said he fears that high-ranking VA officials have failed to reveal to Shinseki the real depth of the claims challenge and the scope of the financial hardships faced by hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — many who are unable to work due to battle injuries.

Asked Thursday if he believes Shinseki should resign, Miller said: "I am not prepared to ask the same of the secretary. He has a strong desire to do what is right. My fear is his leadership (team) has not been transparent with him to the point that he knows the true picture that exists out there." 

This week, four other prominent veterans' groups — Student Veterans of America, The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans (DAV) all voiced support for Shinseki and for the work being done by the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), which has handled claims for millions of veterans. Those groups argue that the VA's plan to cut the backlog should be given a chance to work.

"DAV believes that VBA is on the right path, that they have set the right goals and that they have leadership committed to transforming and institutionalizing a new claims processing system to better serve veterans," DAV national legislative director Joe Violante testified Wednesday before a Senate panel examining veterans issues. 

During 2012, the VA paid $58.6 billion in benefits to 4.3 million veterans or their survivors, according to the VA. The agency reported Thursday that its total "claims inventory" stands at 859,396. The VA defines its "backlog" as claims that have been pending for more than 125 days — that number stands at 592,222, according to the VA. 

"Secretary Shinseki believes it is unacceptable that veterans are waiting too long to get the benefits they have earned," read a statement emailed by Josh Taylor, a VA spokesman. "That is why VA is implementing an aggressive plan that will solve this decades old problem for good and transform how VA processes claims for decades to come."

But according to Miller, one factor fueling the backlog is that VA claims handlers are not working as efficiently as they did before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1997, the average VA field officer processed 138 claims a year while, in 2011, with three times as many overall employees, the average VA field officer processed 73 claims a year, Miller said. 

"I have confidence at this time that (Shinseki) has a desire to move in the right direction. He leads an organization of 300,000 people that delivers some of the best health care in the world as well as educational benefits," Miller said. "But this benefits backlog, unfortunately, is going to be a stain that will stay with VA for years to come."

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The unemployment rate among younger veterans continues to outpace the share of out-of-work civilians with nearly one in 10 ex-service members from the Iraq and Afghanistan eras hunting for jobs, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Younger male veterans are dragging a collective unemployment rate of 9 percent, compared to 7.6 percent in February 2012. Younger female veterans, who have faced far stiffer challenges grabbing civilian paychecks, posted an unemployment rate of 11.6 percent last month versus 7.4 percent at this time last year, the BLS said. 

In raw numbers, 203,000 post-9/11 veterans were unemployed in February. One year ago that number totaled 154,000. Their overall unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in February. The U.S. unemployment rate last month was 7.7 percent, the Labor Department reports.

“The problem of veteran unemployment should be seen as a national disgrace,” said Cleve Geer, national commander of AMVETS, a nonprofit veterans' organization.

Many of those men and women possess — literally — battle-hardened skills, if not the ability to work under fire, yet some employers seem unable or unwilling to transfer those strengths into civilian jobs, veterans groups say.

“It’s hard for me to believe that a guy can drive a truck in combat but he can’t drive one on the highways. I mean, what the hell is that all about?” said John E. Hamilton, commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “You’ve got a (medical) corpsman out there in field with Marines doing everything short of open-heart surgery but he can’t be an EMT when he gets home. Are you kidding me?”

Yet the veteran-jobless rate soon may spike as sequestration forces federal agencies to hack budgets.

“That's definitely sending shockwaves around our community,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit advocacy group representing more than 200,000 members.

“One third of our members work in government some place. A lot are at the TSA, the Pentagon, and Homeland Security, working as civilians,” Rieckhoff said. “We also have a lot working in the contracting space.”

'Everybody's worried'
Among the 20 U.S. companies that hire and retain the most veterans — as ranked by G.I. Jobs — seven of those businesses cater strongly or even entirely to military personnel or federal agencies, including Booz Allen, a management consulting firm that holds contracts with the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation.

“Those (contracting) jobs for veterans are definitely going to be cut back some,” said Bob Tanner, a federally employed systems analyst and former Marine corporal who served in Iraq. He was unemployed from August 2006 until February 2007 after leaving the military. “There’s still a huge gap (in veteran-versus-civilian employment). But I think that gap is going to continue to grow if there’s a lot of layoffs.”

Added Rieckhoff: “In our population, everybody’s worried.”

In late February, however, his organization partnered with Futures Inc. and Cisco to launch an online employment tool called Career Pathfinder, which Rieckhoff vows, “can be the fuel injection that gets us to deeper impacts.” The free site helps translate specialized military skills to civilian jobs. It provides thousands of active job listings from employers who want to hire veterans as well as resume-building help and a career-mapping tool.

For months, though, the employment landscape has become increasingly laced with online tools meant to connect veterans to jobs, including VetNet, rolled out last November by Google and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Hiring Our Heroes” program. Is this the innovation that finally breaks the stubborn logjam?

“We hope so. It’s definitely got tremendous potential," Rieckhoff said.

The blueprint, he added: “is taking what normally happens at a career job fair and using technology to do all that at greater scale. If you think about the overall numbers (of post-9/11 veterans), you’re talking about a couple hundred thousand people who are unemployed. So if we can get a couple thousand employed from this program, we can make a real dent.” 

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An estimated 22 veterans committed suicide in America each day in 2010, according to a report released Friday by the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs.

That rate has edged higher from 1999 when an estimated 20 veterans took their lives every day, the report noted. In 2007, the veteran suicide pace temporarily dipped to 18 per day. 

Nearly 70 percent of all veteran suicides were among men and women aged 50 or older, the VA said.

"The mental health and well-being of our courageous men and women who have served the nation is the highest priority for VA, and even one suicide is one too many,” VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said in a news release. “We have more work to do and we will use this data to continue to strengthen our suicide prevention efforts and ensure all Veterans receive the care they have earned and deserve.”

The report notes that while the numbers of veterans who die by suicide each day "has remained relatively stable over the past 12 years," the overall percentage of people who die by suicide in America who are veterans has decreased slightly. The share of all suicides reported as "veterans" on state-issued death certificates was 25 percent in 1999 versus slightly more than 20 percent in 2010, according to VA researchers. 

"This provides preliminary evidence that the programs initiated by VA are improving outcomes," read an accompanying "executive summary" signed by Dr. Robert A. Petzel, the VA's under secretary for health. "As long as veterans die by suicide, we must continue to improve and provide even better services and care."

Also Friday, the U.S. Army released its monthly suicide report, offering a preliminary tally for 2012 in that branch: 325 "potential" suicides among active and reserve troops — the highest number in history, Army officials noted. More than 50 of those deaths remain "under investigation," awaiting a final ruling. If that bleak total remains at 325, the toll in 2012 would have risen by 15 percent over 2011 when the Army sustained 283 suicides. 

Meanwhile, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit advocacy group representing more than 200,000 members, said the nation should be "outraged" by rate of veterans who are taking their own lives — nearly one per hour. 

“This VA suicide report is the most important piece of data to be released since 2007,” said IAVA founder and CEO Paul Rieckhoff. “Our leaders in Washington need to accelerate efforts to shrink wait times for mental health care and find more creative solutions like the Veteran Crisis Line" — 800-273-TALK. 

"The country should be outraged that we are allowing this tragedy to continue The trends are headed in the wrong direction,” Rieckhoff added. “As veterans, we at IAVA understand the spectrum of challenges facing veterans transitioning home, including the struggle with invisible wounds. One thing is clear, we need more research and more collaboration.”

VA leaders vowed "immediate actions" to curb the suicide rate among former service members. The top strategy on the agency's list: A task force — already established — that will "provide recommendations for innovating mental health care" within the VA system," VA officials said. 

That panel also has been tasked with "reassessing the value of traditional suicide risk assessments at screening" and "adding ways to identify life stressors and concerns earlier," read Petzel's summary. 

Friday's report also identified female veterans and Vietnam-era veterans as two demographic groups that require extra urgency when it comes to suicidal behaviors. VA officials said they will be developing "additional training programs" to help better target those segments of the U.S. veteran population. 

The veteran-suicide statistics are likely to become a topic on Feb. 13 when the U.S. House Committee on Veterans' Affairs holds a hearing to explore whether veterans are "overcoming barriers to quality mental health care." 

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Nearly half of eligible ex-service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are snubbing free, federal health care they earned in uniform because many harbor “huge mistrust” of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, contends a leading veterans advocacy group.

About 1.5 million men and women who served in those wars have since separated from the U.S. military. Among those eligible to access VA medical help, only 55 percent of veterans have done so through the third quarter of 2012, VA figures show.

“It’s because the VA has a branding problem, an image problem,” said Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA), which has more than 200,000 members.

For many younger veterans, Tarantino said, the issue that has most sullied the VA’s reputation is the average time it takes to complete the disability-compensation claims submitted by wounded veterans. The average wait for that money has grown to 272.3 days, or about nine months, a 10-day increase from early December, according a federal website.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki last year vowed to shrink the so-called “VA backlog” to 125 days by 2015 as the agency finishes transitioning to a digital processing system.

“Any time we ever hear about the VA, what do we hear? That the backlog is astronomically high. Or, that the VA is late in providing GI Bill (tuition) checks. It’s not an antagonistic relationship. It’s: ‘Oh, there goes the VA again; they still don’t have it together.’ Meanwhile, the VA is pathologically incapable of telling its own story,” said Tarantino, who uses a VA medical center. The former Army captain spent time in Iraq, earning the Bronze Star. “The problem is there is a huge mistrust of the VA.

“And what’s unsettling is the VA is an outstanding health care system. But they have not done a good job to explain to the American people what it is they do or offer,” Tarantino added. “This is business 101. You can have the greatest product in the world but if people don’t know about or trust your product, you have a bad product.”

Asked if Tarantino’s assessment is fair, a VA spokesman responded to NBC News with an email listing the agency’s latest work: bolstering mental-health staffers by 49 percent, opening 80 additional clinics, enticing clients through social media, and launching initiatives that allow ex-troops to chat with doctors online or talk with “peer-to-peer specialists” with combat experience.

“Although we have made many improvements, there is still work to do,” read a response emailed by Mark Ballesteros, a VA spokesman. He also cited the VA’s shift to “a new model of health care” called Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT), a “patient-centered, team-based” and “data-driven” system.

Advanced tactics, modern buildings and clever acronyms aside, the VA faces a long, tough sell with its youngest audience, according to interviews with several post-9/11 veterans. 

Pete Chinnici, 26, personifies the type of a public-relations damage VA officials must patch before forging deeper inroads within the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran communities.

After completing Marine Corps duty in Iraq from 2005 to 2007, Chinnici applied for VA health care in Phoenix. He’d been diagnosed with post-combat stress and hearing loss. But six months after stepping inside the pipeline, Chinnici said a VA employee told him his entire medical file was missing and that he’d need to start over.

“After having two friends who went through the VA process – it took one 9 months and the other almost a year (to gain entry) – and then being told they’d lost the paperwork, I never went back,” Chinnici said.

Three time zones east, another Marine, Alex Hill, visited the VA medical center in Brockton, Mass. after exiting Iraq in 2009, he said, “without a scratch.”

“The VA just wasn’t for me: the unmotivated staff members, the piles of bureaucracy,” said Hill, 26. “I also have objections with how they treat veterans by solving every problem they come across with a bottle of pills.”

The VA hopes to win back veterans like Hill and Chinnici, in part, via its 151 Facebook pages (which have more than 623,000 combined “likes”), its 581 posted YouTube videos, its 75 Twitter feeds, and its VAntage Point blog, which offers 500-plus articles authored by VA employees, veterans and family members, said VA spokesman Ballesteros.

“We’re reaching out to provide veterans with more options for care and more access to health care providers than ever,” Ballesteros wrote in the emailed statement. “Now patients can choose to come in for a face-to-face appointment with their doctor or avoid driving long distances, and instead interact with a provider through our (secure, online) telehealth programs.”

More than 380,000 veterans received “telehealth” services during the 2011 fiscal, he added.

But on the primary VA Facebook page that Ballesteros touted, there are many unhappy hints of the agency’s steep climb to win fresh hearts. On Jan. 19, Janet Woodworth Jennings posted there: “Hire VA doctors who actually care and know what they are doing.” Her comment was promptly “liked” by Luanne Pruesner-Van De Velde, who added: “I AGREE...Hire EMPLOYEES that care about Vets - Period!!!”

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Mark Rankin / U.S. Army file

A bulldozer dumps a load of trash into a burn pit just 300 yards from the runway at Bagram Airfield. A law signed by President Barack Obama will create a registry of U.S. service members who may have been sickened or killed by burn pits used throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

An American flag dangles from the Torres home, the sign of a long battle won: a new law — signed Thursday by President Barack Obama — creating a registry of U.S. service members perhaps sickened or killed by burn pits used throughout Iraq and Afghanistan to destroy waste ranging from batteries to body parts.

But amid occasional smiles over the first step to formally identify the toxic effects of what’s called “this generation’s Agent Orange,” there were tears, too, in that house near Corpus Christi, Texas. Resident Le RoyTorres, 40, a former Army captain, is one of the ill veterans who will land on that list.

“It was a big victory. It justifies the need for health care. And now we know we’re not alone,” said Rosie Lopez-Torres, Le Roy’s wife, who said she “knocked on a lot of doors” in Congressional hallways to push the bill, which passed Dec. 30. The law requires the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to assemble the registry and report back to Congress. 

“But because of (our) finances, because my husband can’t work, today was also one of the toughest days for us,” Lopez-Torres said Wednesday. “Today, he was in tears. I’m not going to sugar coat that. How do I convince this once-strong, 6-foot-tall man who never missed a day of work: ‘You are the same man.’ But as the head of the household, he said: ‘You don’t understand what this has done to me.’ So it’s hard. But we still hang that flag on our porch. This has nothing to do with the military. This has to do with the contractors.”

After a lung biopsy, Le Roy Torres was diagnosed in 2010 with constrictive bronchiolitis, an irreversible disease that squeezes off airways. In 2007 and 2008, he was stationed in Balad, Iraq — home to what may have been largest military burn pit — the size of 10 football fields. Torres, for a time, performed his daily calisthenics near the dark plumes emitted by the smoldering crater.

Forced by breathing problems to later retire from his post-Army job as a highway patrolman, Torres is one of thousands of veterans who have filed more than 50 lawsuits against defense contractors hired to handle waste management in the war zones. The Motley Rice law firm is representing Torres and other veterans and their survivors in one of those class-action suits.

Attorneys allege the contractors — including KBR, Inc. and its former parent company, Halliburton — mismanaged the burns and exposed American troops to poison fumes. Last July, KBR’s lawyers argued that 55 such cases should be dismissed, in part because employees from the Houston-based company served “shoulder-to-shoulder” with service members, which should grant KBR the same immunity given to government entities and personnel, such as soldiers.

Service members, however, have complained for a decade that burn pits scattered across Iraq and Afghanistan were making them sick with cancers and other diseases, and were killing some young troops. In 2007, Army and Air Force health inspectors went to Balad and measured airborne, cancer-causing dioxins at 51 times the “acceptable levels.” They determined the cancer risk for people serving at the base for more than one year was eight times higher than normal. In 2008, the Military Times reported that single burn pit might have exposed tens of thousands of troops to dioxins and toxins such as arsenic.

What has been the health toll on U.S. troops? That’s what the new registry is designed to calculate, said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and chief executive officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a group representing more than 200,000 former service members.

“This is something we’ve been fighting for, for years. It will be one database where doctors can go and look at the common symptoms. It also will help verify the problem quicker so vets can get the care they need,” said Rieckhoff, who served as a first lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq during 2003 and 2004. He has experienced respiratory problems, although he cannot pinpoint the cause. “I don’t know too many people who weren’t exposed to a burn pit sometime during their deployment. They were constant.”

The smoking landfills typically contained damaged Humvees, unexploded ordnance, gas cans, mattresses, rocket pods, plastics, medical waste and amputated body parts, and they often were ignited by jet fuel.

The act does not mandate new VA benefits for veterans who chronically inhaled the vapors, Rieckhoff said. But the registry is expected to help private and government doctors document health conditions potentially related to burn pits, and perhaps hasten many diagnoses.

“It will help us get to the bottom of what’s causing so many vets to be sick,” he added. “We don’t know what toxic exposure is going to be (shown). It could be our generation’s Agent Orange (the defoliant used in Vietnam, later shown to be carcinogenic). But it’s important that you start with data. Data will be a critical part of identifying the problem and then creating good treatment. I’m glad we didn’t have to wait decades like the Vietnam veterans did around Agent Orange.”

Le Roy Torres, for example, has been given a 10 percent disability rating by the VA, said his wife, who calls that ruling “a joke” because “he served for 22 years, lost his childhood dreams, his career, just turned 40 and is unable to work because of his lung disease which also has affected his heart.” The Torres family is fighting the VA for a higher disability rating and, thus, higher compensation for his service-related symptoms. 

Before the lawsuits and the law, a handful of military families launched their own, online registries for service members, veterans and their survivors so they could report their symptoms and mark how closely they had served to one or several of the burn pits. 

As Le Roy Torres struggled harder to breathe, he and his wife launched BurnPits360.org. The site lists 11 service members who descended from full health to terminal cancer after serving near a burn pit. That roll includes Air Force Sgt. Jessica Sweet, who died of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 2009 at age 30. She served in Afghanistan. Also listed is Army Staff Sgt. Steven Ochs, who died from AML in 2008 at age 32. He served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

One of the registry's primary goals is to determine if there are tangible links between the deaths of service members like Sweet and Ochs and their exposure to the burn pits.

“How many have been affected? Every week I get an email from someone who has passed,” Rosie Lopez-Torres said. “We started our registry because we weren’t going to wait on the Department of Defense and VA. Our list of people who have self reported their data — whether it’s the loved one of a fallen hero who lost the battle with toxic exposure, or someone who is fighting the battle — is well over 1,000 people. They are from all over the country.

“The hardest thing for us is trying to figure out the finances day to day, and hearing (from the government) ‘just wait’ on your retirement check,” she added. “He’s hearing, ‘wait, wait, wait’ but he’s having to provide for his family. And he’s looking at his life and saying: “What am I going to do now?’”

Jason Reed / Reuters

Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., U.S. representative-elect for Illinois' 8th Congressional District, is pictured with other female members of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 14. Duckworth, a helicopter pilot in the Iraq war who was shot down and lost both her legs in the attack, is the first disabled woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.

When Tammy Duckworth steps into Congress this January for her first term, she’ll be carried by two prosthetic legs – and the potent notion that if she can survive a grenade blast while piloting a chopper, she surely can endure any political flak on Capitol Hill.

“The worst day for me in Washington on the floor of the House is never going to be as bad as me getting blown up. So bring it,” said Duckworth, a Democrat who represents Illinois’ 8th Congressional District, the suburbs north of Chicago.

One of the first women to fly combat missions in Iraq, Duckworth’s Black Hawk was hit by enemy fire in November 2004 as the aircraft skimmed tree tops at about 135 miles per hour. The explosion vaporized her right leg, smashed her left leg into the instrument panel, sheering it off, and tore away most of her right arm. Before losing consciousness, she used her remaining arm to try to land the sputtering chopper. On Nov. 6, she won election to the U.S. House.

“There’s nothing anyone can say to me or do to me — short of actually pointing a gun and shooting at me — that’s going to be as bad as it was in Iraq and that year I spent recovering. So it’s really freeing,” Duckworth told NBC News. “Had you talked to me 10 years ago, before I served and got hurt in combat, I would not have the courage to do what I’m doing now.”

The sudden violence of her final mission — followed by months of surgeries, (doctors reattached her arm), and rehab at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — imbued Duckworth, 44, with an intimate understanding of warfare’s true cost, a sensibility that’s fast vanishing from both chambers of Congress.

**

In 1977, the 435-seat U.S. House of Representatives contained 347 veterans (almost 80 percent of that body) while 65 former service members filled the 100-seat U.S. Senate.

In 2013, 84 fellow veterans will join Duckworth in the House (19 percent) while the Senate’s cadre of ex-military personnel has dwindled to 18, according the American Legion.

“That’s incredible,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group with more than 200,000 members. “The volunteer military has been great for our military, but maybe it’s not great for our democracy.”

The rapidly shrinking corps of congressional veterans threatens to dampen the attention Washington pays to tens of thousands of men and women yet to return from Afghanistan and, Rieckhoff added, to more than 2 million post-9/11 veterans — many of them tormented by combat-related stress and troubled by sluggish hiring rates, Rieckhoff said.

Click here for more military-related coverage from NBC News.

“A low number of veterans in Congress is bad for everybody. It’s bad for the veteran community. It’s bad for the active-duty military. It’s bad for America,” Rieckhoff said. “I am concerned that as the number continues to decline, we will have fewer advocates.”

At the same time, however, Duckworth’s election gives what Rieckoff calls the “new veterans movement” a truly historic moment and some vital momentum.

“That’s not just because she is a woman and it’s not just because she is a disabled vet,” he said. “It’s because she’s become such an important spokesperson for our entire community — beyond politics.”

**

Inside the cockpit of the crippled Black Hawk, all internal communications were dead.

Duckworth wasn’t sure if she was the lone survivor. Smoke swirled. The floor of the helicopter had been ripped open by a rocket-propelled grenade. She spotted a field where she thought she could ease the aircraft down. She tried to work the controls. She didn’t know that Chief Warrant Officer Dan Milberg was alive as well, had glimpsed the same clearing and was steering the Black Hawk toward safe ground.

Duckworth also believed she was uninjured. She could still feel her legs. 

Before losing consciousness, Duckworth remembers completing a final task after the chopper had come to rest. She raised her left arm to perform an emergency shutdown of the electronics. She worried about a fire consuming the other five soldiers still strapped into their seats.

She has no recollection of arriving at the emergency room in Baghdad where — Duckworth later was told — she demanded that medics give her a full update on her crew. Her remaining memories are some of her worst, coming at Walter Reed, during a slow surfacing from her induced coma.

Before anybody near her bed realized Duckworth could again see and hear, she watched and listened for two days as doctors and nurses mentioned “a helicopter crash.”

"To a pilot, a crash is very different from a forced landing. At the time, I didn’t know Dan was OK. But I did know my crew chief was badly hurt and had almost lost his leg. I had been told I’d lost my legs,” Duckworth said. “But I kept hearing talk about a helicopter crash. I thought: ‘Oh my God, I crashed the helicopter. I didn’t do my job.’ I spiraled into a depression, laying there in that intensive care unit where I just thought: ‘I deserve to lose my legs. I must have crashed the aircraft. I am a complete and utter failure and I hurt my men.’ ”

Her husband, Maj. Bryan Bowlsbey, a fellow Army National Guardsman, was by then at her side. He noticed she was crying. He tried to cheer her with descriptions of amputees running atop artificial legs. She told him her misery was rooted in the crash, not her devastating injuries. Bowlsbey gently corrected her: She had been on the controls as Milberg had managed to settle the aircraft onto the Iraqi field. She had done her duty.

“I’ve been fine ever since,” Duckworth said. “Nothing you can do to me now can ever negate that. I just have this freedom in my life because of that day and what I’ve been through. In a very weird way, it’s a gift.”

**

The 2012 presidential election marked the first since 1932 in which no veterans held spots on the Democratic or the Republican tickets. The last time: When Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But that trend has been speading inside the legislative branch for 40 years. 

“The declining population of veterans in Congress creates an even wider divide between our veteran community and the majority of the American public,” said Louis J. Celli, Jr., national legislative director for the American Legion.

“Congressional members who have worn the uniform of our nation tend to have a better understanding of the unique challenges and needs faced by the veteran community, especially those veterans who return with medical needs that extend beyond their active service period,” Celli added.

While veterans groups like IAVA acknowledge that civilian politicians can become champions of military and homefront causes, Celli said, however, “it is usually a long process educating them regarding the difference between earned benefits and sympathy legislation.”

**

As the highest-ranked amputee at Walter Reed, then Maj. Duckworth began handling personal issues for other wounded soldiers in 2005, including salary snags and the potential losses of their homes. 

She called Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin so often to ask for his help, he eventually gave her his business card scrawled with his cell phone number. Through her advocacy for other veterans, she also met then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Paul Beaty / AP

Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, representative for Illinois 8th District seat, talks to the media in Elk Grove Village, Ill., Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012.

“I was just doing it because it was my job,” Duckworth said. “In August of ‘05, I get a call from Senator Durbin who said: ‘You know, if things are as bad as you say they are for veterans, then you need to do something about it.’ I said, ‘Well, yes sir, I’m calling you.’ He said, ‘No, you need to run for office.’ Barack and I think you should run.’ ”

She narrowly lost her first bid for Congress in 2006.

Days ago, as she and other freshman congressional members gathered for a group photo on Capitol Hill, Duckworth met former Marine Col. Paul Cook — the new Republican representative whose district covers Highland, Yucaipa, the San Bernardino Mountains, the entire High Desert.

“He’s a Vietnam vet. We just hit it off,” Duckworth said. “There’s a subset of us who have seen direct combat action. He started talking about walking into a trip wire in Vietnam and wanted to know what hit me. He asked: ‘What that was like?’ When you’ve both seen combat action, you have this common place.”

Simply put: War stories can trump political parties.

Duckworth lists two primary heroes: retired Republican Sen. Bob Dole and Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye from Hawaii, both disabled veterans.

“They are two men who recovered in the same hospital after World War II and who went on to pass legislation nationally,” she said. “They found a way to come to middle ground because of their shared experience. So I hope that with the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans coming into Congress, we also will be able to work together.” 

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Paul Beaty / AP

Tammy Duckworth, seen celebrating with husband Bryan Bowlsbey in Elk Grove Villiage, Ill., on Tuesday night, defeated challenger Rep. Joe Walsh for Illinois' 8th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A record 16 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were elected to Congress on Tuesday night and two more veterans remained locked in races Wednesday that were too close to call.

The winners included nine first-time officeholders and seven incumbents.

All but two of the victorious veterans seeking U.S. House and U.S. Senate seats represent the Republican Party. They included Brad Wenstrup, who deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a combat surgeon. Wenstrup will represent Ohio’s 2nd congressional district which sits east of Cincinnati.

For the Democrats, Tammy Duckworth captured Illinois’ 8th congressional district, which spans Chicago’s northern suburbs. Duckworth, who served as a captain in the Army National Guard, lost both of her legs and partial use of her right arm when her helicopter was shot down over Iraq in 2004. She becomes the first female veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan to serve in Congress.

“It’s a very powerful moment. She also became the first severely wounded veteran to be elected,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and chief executive officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the largest nonprofit, nonpartisan group representing veterans of those two wars. “We are looking to her to really reach beyond politics and lead us all forward. She can be our generation’s John McCain or Max Cleland.”

McCain, an Arizona senator and the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, breaking both arms and a leg and becoming a prisoner of war. Cleland, a former Democrat senator from Georgia, earned the Silver Star and Bronze Star during the Vietnam War, losing both legs above the knee and his right forearm to a grenade explosion.

The 16 veteran victories — the largest single wave of former service members heading to Congress since the 1980s, according to IAVA — represent “a huge step forward for the new veterans movement and a huge step forward for America,” Rieckhoff told NBC News. He called those collective outcomes "historic." 

“What we’ve seen from this community is an extraordinary focus on country as well as some pragmatic solutions. We believe these folks can work together across party lines and be a shot in the arm in Washington — exactly what America needs right now,” said Rieckhoff, who served as a first lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq during 2003 and 2004.

“People think all we’re really doing over there is pulling triggers and dropping bombs. We’re also rebuilding schools, rebuilding infrastructure,” he added. “There’s no better testing ground for a political career than, say, helping the people of Fallujah (Iraq) get their water running again. Think about Staten Island right now — that’s (looking) like Fallujah.”

Overall, post-9/11 veterans competed for 42 Congressional seats on Tuesday night.

One of the most notable younger veterans to lose was Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts who had served in Afghanistan. He was beaten by Democrat Elizabeth Warren.  

Related: In costliest-ever Senate race, Warren beats Brown for Mass. seat

Rieckhoff predicted that at least one future U.S. president will emerge from the group of post-9/11 veterans who now hold congressional seats or who soon will head to Washington — “and maybe multiple presidents.”

“These aren’t professional politicians,” he said. “These are folks who served overseas who came who and wanted to continue to serve. This has happened all the way back to George Washington and was true of (John) Kennedy, (Harry) Truman and the first President (George H.W.) Bush. As George Washington said, ‘When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.’ ” 

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Franz De Leon

Veteran Julie Weckerlein and her family are shown last weekend in the Washington, D.C. area. She served in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 with the Air Force. While in Iraq, she was a few yards away from another female service member who was killed by incoming mortar round.

Julie Weckerlein vividly recalls the horrid sounds that filled her base - and her head - after the incoming shell exploded: the radio call summoning the chaplain, the whirling blades of the chopper evacuating the burned remains of the Army sergeant killed in Iraq

Five years later, she still remembers the name of that dead soldier: Trista Morietti. 

“Females died over there, too,” said Weckerlein, who served in Afghanistan as well. She works today as a full-time federal employee in Washington, D.C. “But there is a cultural disconnect in our society. People don’t know: What is a female veteran? What does she look like? What does she bring to the table? What did we do over there?”  

Women compose 15 percent of homecoming U.S. troops and 15 percent of the U.S. armed forces, yet many Americans are unsure how to accept or view them, female veterans say. That applies to the job market, fueling a 19.9 percent unemployment rate among post-9/11 female veterans, while some VA hospitals seem unprepared to handle the heavy influx of women returning from war, contends a leading veterans group.

"I’m the first female veteran that a lot of people know personally, and I’m becoming more aware of this lack of understanding of who we are," said Weckerlein, who spent nine years in the Air Force. Now, 31, she is married with three children and, as an Air Force reservist, she also works part-time at the Pentagon. "There is no real example in society of a female veteran. In Hollywood, there's just the 'GI Jane' version – you know, like Demi Moore shaving her head. But that’s about it.

Jim Varhegyi

Julie Weckerlein waits for the all-clear in a shelter during a 2007 mortar attack at a U.S. post south of Baghdad. A moment after this photo was snapped, Weckerlein and others heard the radio call go out for a chaplain. A female sergeant was killed in the explosion.

"We are a normal family. My husband is addicted to (the TV series) 'Pawn Stars.' My 9-year-old and I, we struggle with homework. I struggle with DC life and the commute. This is a female veteran." 

Last week, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group with more than 200,000 members, called on President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney to cast at least some of their attention on the mounting and - as IAVA sees it - unaddressed needs afflicting female veterans. That heightened focus, IAVA said, should begin with how the Department of Veterans Affairs provides health care to female ex-service members. 

"There aren’t enough female health professionals in the VA system. There aren’t enough folks specialized in female health, especially around reproductive health. We’ve got to push the system to work harder for them," said Paul Rieckhoff, chief executive officer and founder of IAVA

"The bottom line is you need someone who recognizes that female veterans are a critical part of this population and that they have unique needs," added Rieckhoff, who served as a first lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq during 2003 and 2004. "We’ve got women on our staff who say that a lot of times, when they walk into the VA, they get treated like a candy striper instead of like a returning warrior. As a country, we've got to go through a huge cultural shift." 

VA officials maintain, however, that their agency has launched multiple initiatives to cater to the rising number of female veterans using its hospitals. Last Friday, NBC News asked a VA spokesman to lay out some of those programs. On Wednesday, that spokesman emailed NBC News a series of Internet links describing the strategies, adding: "Nearly all of these programs are new in the past few years (2-4 years), and some have simply been enhanced. Of course, women vets are eligible for VA programs just as males would be too."

For example, the VA's Women Health Services "addresses the health care needs of women Veterans and works to ensure that timely, equitable, high-quality, comprehensive health care services are provided in a sensitive and safe environment at VA health facilities nationwide," says the VA website. "We strive to be a national leader in the provision of health care for women, thereby raising the standard of care for all women."

In 2007, the VA broadened the scope of Women Health Services to include the use of mammography machines, ultrasound and biopsy equipment, the VA reports.

'Didn't know what to do with me'
But Air Force veteran Terri Kaas, 29, said that after being seen at two VA hospitals near her home in Pasco, Wash., for knee problems she said were sustained during overseas service, she felt the staff at those VA facilities "didn't know what do with me." Kaas, who received a 20 percent disability rating after leaving the Air Force, said the VA also recently admitted to her that it had lost her medical records, leaving her pension and disability package pending, and allowing her to use VA facilities to receive only "some care that's service related."

courtesy of Terri Kaas

Terri Kass, an Air Force Veteran who lives in Washington State, has been job hunting for a year since leaving the military. She has more than 100 rejection letters to show for her effort.

When she did go in for treatment, Kaas described the VA visits this way: "Here you have a young woman – who is not old – who mostly likely will have another child or two. But I think they’re always amazed to see me. They’re like, 'Oh, is your husband here?' I’m like, 'No, it’s me. You're seeing me.' I’m used to being the only female in the lobby."

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Kaas, who served for 10 years, spending time in Bahrain and Germany, also has been snared by the second critical pitfall facing one in five post-9/11-female veterans: unemployment. She said she has more than 100 rejection letters to show for her job hunt during the past year. More troubling, she said, numerous hiring managers have asked if she is "service disabled." 

"Every job I've applied for that required both my resume and their corporate application asked that question. Are we discriminating against our wounded warriors? Starbucks, Walmart, Macy's, Amazon, Target, and Lockheed Martin are just a few who asked," Kaas posted on Facebook. Amid looking for work, she is attending college with hopes of becoming a math or science teacher. 

"That question astounds me - and it's always the follow-up question to: Are you a veteran?" Kaas said in a phone interview. "If Walmart won’t hire me at Christmas, when they're advertising, I kind of wonder what the reason is. I’m not trying to dime out Walmart. I’ve applied for work at many major department stores. But when I can’t get work at Walmart, I wonder: Why not? There’s other people getting hired there during the holidays."

The disability question, Kaas suspects, is asked because some hiring managers "assume that most veterans have PTSD."

"I don't know if it's legal to ask that but it certainly doesn't seem appropriate," said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus, a nonprofit that has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. He agrees that such a query by hiring managers "is being driven by mental health concerns."

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Said Walmart spokeswoman Tara Raddohl: "That question is not standard practice or a part of our company interview process. We’re looking into this specifically" (at the Walmart store where Kaas applied for a job).

A number of Pickens' female-veteran clients have told him that although they served in war zones, they don't seem to earn the same level of prestige - or employability - as do U.S. male combat veterans, "and they don't carry home that same mantel as a warrior."

'Hey, I'm a female veteran'
Yet many carry home combat tales equally as harrowing as those being told by male veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just ask Julie Weckerlein. 

Courtesy of Julie Weckerlein

Veteran Julie Weckerlein and her husband, Martin. After nine years of active duty in the Air Force, she now works at the Pentagon.

After the insurgent shell detonated at the coalition base in Nasir Lafitah, Iraq, Weckerlein didn't know the name of the casualty - Trista Morietti, 27 - until she returned to her own post in Baghdad and read the incident report. Several U.S. service members were wounded as well when that mortar round landed on a sleeping quarters just a few yards from Weckerlein's position. 

"I also spent a lot of time reading up all the hometown articles and blogs her friends wrote about her. Hers was the first death I experienced on my deployment, and that she was also a 20-something female NCO really affected me," Weckerlein said. "I felt so sick for the family members back in the states who had no idea what was going on at that moment. Later, actually seeing those family members and their pain ... it tore out my heart.

"I think of all the awesome women who served alongside me, who are struggling to find work, and it just baffles me because they are so qualified," she added. "It just motivates me to want to go out there and say, 'Hey, I’m a female veteran.' "

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A leading veterans group, seeking to muscle any mention of military issues into the first presidential debate, published an online voter guide Tuesday listing five criteria on which service members past and present can judge the two candidates and ultimately cast their votes. 

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan and nonprofit group with more than 200,000 members, released "Vote Smart For Vets" on its website with hopes that its five stated benchmarks — along with some mathematical prodding — will prompt Republican candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama to tangle on topics that include the military suicide epidemic or the high veteran unemployment rate. 

"Our goal is to obviously make progress on these issues but also just to get the candidates talking about them," said Paul Rieckhoff, chief executive officer and founder of IAVA. "We get a lot of pandering. We get a lot of pleasantries. We get a lot of ceremony. But let’s get down to specifics.

"We’re trying to force just a conversation of any kind (about veterans) when economic issues are front and center," added Rieckhoff, who served as a first lieutenant and infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq during 2003 and 2004. 

The five-point checklist drafted by the IAVA for veterans and vet-friendly voters "to evaluate your candidates' platforms" is placed in this order:  

• Ensuring Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have the tools they need to succeed in the civilian work force;
• Ensuring every veteran has the right to the education benefits they have earned;
• Improving mental health programs in the military and VA to prevent further suicides among troops and veterans;
• Modernizing the claims process at the VA so that veterans have access to the benefits and resources they have earned;
• Improving VA healthcare facilities and claims processes for female veterans. 

How have Romney and Obama fared — in the eyes of veterans — in their attention to or work on those five points? 

"The reality is that neither one has been judged on them yet because these issues really haven’t been a focal point in the campaign," Rieckhoff said. "You’re not hearing about plans to lower veteran unemployment."

Related: NBC/WSJ poll: Obama holds lead over Romney in key battleground Ohio

Partly due to the lagging U.S. economy, joblessness has dogged thousands of men and women who have returned after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. During 2011, the veteran unemployment rate was more than 12 percent — far above the national median. In August of this year, that number was 10.9 percent — still higher than the rest of the American work force. 

"We view this as not just a social issue but an opportunity for investment. If you invest in these men and women coming home it’s going to produce a tremendous return," Rieckhoff said. "This is might be the one thing  Romney and Obama could agree about on the stage. But we’ve got to force the questions.

"Just one question about veterans during the debate makes everybody remember that we’re out there," he added. 

If either campaign needs more convincing that winning the military and veterans vote could tip the election, IAVA is armed with the sorts of stats that make pollsters drool. 

More than 2.4 million veterans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three battleground states are packed with veterans: 60,000-plus in Ohio, and more than 150,000 in both Virginia and Florida. The organization also reports that 90 percent of new veterans are registered to vote, and many remain undecided.

In fact, according to a membership survey IAVA conducted last year, more than 40 the group's participants don't identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats.

"If you look at the broader military and veterans population, that’s an incredibly influential voting bloc. And not only are they strong in numbers and not only are they registered to vote in a high percentage, they’re also very influential," Rieckhoff said. "They have an opportunity to be force multipliers — not only influencing their families but influencing their communities.

"They're also incredibly nonpartisan," he added. "They’re patriotic and pragmatic and they just want to see people who can get things done. They are much more dedicated to their country than they are their party. They are a political jump ball."

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