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Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin indicated Sunday night that he did not want offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva to stand for the national anthem, instead of sitting it out with the rest of his teammates. Villanueva, a former Army Ranger who served three tours in Afghanistan, was the only Steelers player to stand for the anthem. While Villanueva stood in the tunnel, hand over his heart, the rest of the team remained in the locker room in protest of President Trump’s comments that players who kneel during the national anthem should be fired. (RELATED: Former Army Ranger Is Only Steelers...

Alejandro Villanueva was the lone Steelers player to come out during the national anthem

A US serviceman has been killed by an improvised explosive device while fighting against so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria, officials say. The soldier, who has not been named, died after the device detonated in Ayn Issa, north of the IS stronghold Raqqa. It is the first such death since US special forces deployed in Syria in October 2015.

The newly crowned Miss USA is a 26-year-old Army officer from the District of Columbia who gave perhaps the strongest answer of the night when asked about women in combat. "As a woman in the United States Army, I think ... we are just as tough as men. As a commander of my unit, I'm powerful, I am dedicated," Deshauna Barber said. "Gender does not limit us in the United States." The winner of Sunday's 2016 Miss USA competition held at the T-Mobile Arena off the Las Vegas Strip will go on to compete in the Miss Universe contest.

FOLLANSBEE, W.Va. - It has been 66 years since Roy Henderson has been on American soil. We live in an unrecognizable United States to the one the private first class left, but he has never been forgotten. And he has finally been welcomed home to the Ohio Valley after going being killing in action, declared MIA in July of 1950. "It's closure for the family, and not only for the family, but for the veterans who fight on a daily basis," said casualty assistance officer SFC Bradley Maston. "We want to see our brothers and sisters come back home and...

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base. “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s...

Bleeding from both legs and his arm, Ryan Pitts kept firing at about 200 Taliban fighters, even holding onto his grenades an extra moment to ensure the enemy couldn't heave them back. On Monday, President Barack Obama draped the Medal of Honor around his neck, in a White House ceremony that also paid tribute to his nine platoon comrades who died that summer day in Afghanistan. Pitts, a 28-year-old former Army staff sergeant from Nashua, New Hampshire, is the ninth living veteran of America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to receive the nation's highest decoration for battlefield valor. In a...

“She's a redneck boy's dream come true. Theresa Vail is a bowhunter, an M-16 sharpshooter, skydiver, national guard soldier, grease monkey, and also Miss Kansas. She's been a motorcycle racing queen and can skin out a deer with the best of them. And if that wasn't enough to melt your heart, she is also devastatingly beautiful. She is not, to say the least, your typical beauty queen contestant. She will also differ from past and present contestants in another way. She intends to let the whole world see her tattoos, which include the Serenity Prayer and the army's medical insignia....

Just a day after receiving the Medal of Honor by the president of the United States, former Army staff sergeant Clinton Romesha has declined an invite by the first lady to be her guest at the State of the Union address Tuesday night. He said that after some soul searching he decided he’d rather spend the evening with friends from his former unit, his wife Tammy — with whom he celebrates a wedding anniversary Tuesday — and their families, CNN reports.

KABUL - The family of a U.S. soldier captured in eastern Afghanistan more than five months ago pleaded for the release of their son Friday and urged him to "stay strong." Lt. Col. Tim Marsano of the Idaho National Guard issued a statement from the family of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. airborne infantryman who was taken by the Afghan Taliban in Paktika province June 30.

An Army private first class from southwest suburban Bolingbrook was one of the 13 people killed in the rampage at Fort Hood, his family said. Michael Pearson, 21, joined the Army slightly more than a year ago and was training to deactivate bombs, said his mother, Sheryll.

SPANAWAY, Wash. - A Spanaway grandfather is the latest casualty of war from Washington state. Fifty-nine-year-old First Sergeant Jose Crisostomo was killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb Tuesday. He is believed to be the oldest U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan. Crisostomo, who was known to friends as "Joe Sinbad," was well aware of the risks of combat. During a 24-year military career he served in Vietnam and Kuwait before retiring from the military in 1993. After 9/11, Crisostomo decided to re-enlist in the U.S. Army. "He insisted going back and serving his country," said Crisostomo’s wife of 39...

WASHINGTON, July 9, 2009 – The fifth Army Reserve soldier to earn the Silver Star since the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 spoke about his experience in a “DoDLive” bloggers roundtable July 6. Army Spc. David Hutchinson receives the Silver Star medal from Army Col. James Doty on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, June 6, 2009. Hutchinson earned the award for valor during and following an ambush in Afghanistan on May 21, 2008. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Army Spc. David Hutchinson of the 420th Engineer Brigade discussed...

> Now that he's home in Fort Worth he said his boxers will be displayed in the 1st Infantry Division museum at Fort Riley, Kansas. >

A U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan has become a media sensation after he was photographed fighting Taliban forces while stripped down to his skivvies. Army Spc. Zachary Boyd, 19, who hails from Fort Worth, Texas, said he was in his sleeping quarters at Firebase Restrepo in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar province when the Taliban attacked, forcing him to take up a defensive position while clad only in his helmet, protective vest, a T-shirt and his pink "I Love NY" boxer shorts, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Thursday.

hockingly positive views of our forces in Afghanistan are revealed in this translation of a post by a French OMLT (Operational Mentoring Liaison Teams) infantryman working with our toops there. A couple of brief excerpts: Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans. [....] Each man knows he can count on the...

“We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”....

LAKE CITY - Spc. Jason Dean Hovater was much more than a soldier stationed in an outpost in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. "He was a brother and a son and a husband,'' said Hovater's sister, Jessica Davis of Norris. "Most of all, he was a man of God. He was a light to other people around him." Hovater, a Clinton resident, was one of nine soldiers killed last weekend in the deadliest assault in Afghanistan against the U.S. military in three years. Some 200 militants with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked the outpost but were beaten back...

Shahad Abbas, 11, lost her legs to a roadside bomb blast Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas. The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair Falcon stopped to talk. He came back the next day and the day after that, then every day for six months, bringing her toys, gauze for her legs, a new wheelchair. Anything she asked for, he would bring. Shahad became his mission. So when she asked for legs, that became his mission, too. On Friday, his dream and hers came...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2007 – Serving in the military was something Jose Munoz always wanted to do, but it wasn’t until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that he was spurred to enlist and fulfill that dream. Army Sgt. Jose Munoz is telling the military’s story to the American people at community and business events, veterans organizations and other gatherings as part of the Defense Department’s “Why We Serve” public outreach program. Defense Department photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Munoz, now a sergeant with five and a half years in the Army, said a lack of...