Speaking to soldiers about firearms, no matter what their individual views are on gun control, one thing becomes clear: they take them seriously.

Traumatic brain injury is among the so-called invisible wounds of war, and in September, the Pentagon announced it is devoting $10 million to new efforts find better ways to treat and prevent mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers and veterans. Col. Jamie B. Grimes, National Director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, and Dr. Ross Zafonte, Clinical and Research Leader for Traumatic Brain Injury at the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program, discuss the effects of traumatic brain injury among soldiers and veterans and new research and treatment.

Since the drawdown of troops began last summer, the American mission in Afghanistan has been clear: train Afghan troops. But after a string of deadly attacks on NATO personnel by rogue Afghan security forces, that mission, at least temporarily, has changed.

Just as our views of war in general have changed, so has our relationship with our soldiers and our veterans. James Wright is a former marine, the former president of Dartmouth College, and the author of “Those Who Have Borne The Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them.”

This Sunday marks three months since the last U.S. military convoy left Iraq. Few places were better witnesses of the effects of the war on citizens than Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone, which is perhaps most familiar to Americans for its emergency room, known as Baghdad ER. Each day, the American-run Baghdad ER treated anyone who came to its door with life-threatening battle injuries. On October 1, 2009, the U.S. government returned management of the hospital to Iraq.

William Doyle tells the story of Captain Travis Patriquin and his role in turning the tide of violence in the Iraq war. An Arabic linguist, Patriquin set out to establish a crucial network with tribal leaders.  In 2006, he unleashed a diplomatic and cultural charm offensive—the Sunni Awakening, the tribal revolt against Al Qaeda that led to a dramatic drop in violence. A Soldier's Dream: Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq is a tribute to him.

Gari-Lynn Smith was instructed not to open the casket that held the remains of her husband, Sergeant First Class Scott Smith, who was killed in 2006 by a roadside bomb in Iraq, so she ordered an autopsy report to get closure.

On Friday, President Obama announced that all U.S. troops will withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year. The U.S. had a long-standing agreement to withdraw its combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, but officials from both countries had discussed the possibility of maintaining a residual force of tens of thousands of troops to train Iraqis and fulfill other duties. Those plans fell through when Iraq refused to grant American troops legal immunity in Iraqi courts.

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center will close its doors, after more than a century of care. The historic medical center first opened it's doors to offer care to soldiers and their families in 1909. The hospital treated Presidents Nixon and Eisenhower. and housed a number of other Washington notables. But it also had its share of scandals. In 2007, a Washington Post investigation uncovered appalling conditions there, including neglected patients, unsanitary living facilities, and what the paper described as "a messy bureaucratic battlefield."

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide has found work for his new company, Reflex Responses, helping to build a mercenary army for the United Arab Emirates. There are questions about the legality about such a project — an American training foreign soldiers without the U.S.'s approval. Kateri Carmola, an associate professor of political philosophy at Middlebury College in Vermont, explains why this is such an explosive move.

David Finkel, national enterprise editor of The Washington Post and author of The Good Soldiers, talks about spending time with U.S. soldiers in Iraq and upon return after their service.

An estimated 20,000 people, including about 3,000 active duty servicemen and women, marched up Fifth Avenue to mark Veterans Day. Participants included veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the conflicts in Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

Patrick Hennessey, Jr., gives an account of his coming of age as a young enlistee, staving off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by creating a book club. In The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic violence, frequent boredom, and overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience.

David Finkel, national enterprise editor of The Washington Post and author of The Good Soldiers, talks about spending time with U.S. soldiers in Iraq and upon return after their service.

As many as two thousand members of Gold Star families – families who lost members while serving our country – convened at Arlington cemetery's “Tomb of the Unknowns” this weekend, to pay tribute to military men and women killed in action. This weekend’s events mark the largest gathering of such families in the country’s history.

In June, 32 members of the U.S. Army took their own lives. That's a sharp uptick compared to the first five months of 2010, when the number of suicides in the Army was actually down thirty percent, from the same months in 2009. What happened in June? 

The Senate Armed Services Committee meets today to discuss prevention of suicides within the U.S. armed forces. Suicide is the second-biggest killer of U.S. Marines; this year, 55 Marines have been killed in combat, while 21 have taken their own lives. The U.S. Army faces an equally large problem, with 245 members taking their own lives in 2009. We're looking at efforts to drive those numbers down and the devastation wrought by the suicide of a loved one.

In 2009, the Pentagon lifted a ban that forbade members of the news media from covering the dignified transfer of the remains of U.S. servicemen and women at Dover Air Force Base. On April 5th, 2009, around forty reporters and photographers were present for the return of the remains of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Virginia.

But these days, there's often only one member of the news media present. Steve Ruark is a freelance photographer with the Associated Press. He has been to Dover for dignified transfers more than ninety times.

William Finnegan and Sergeant Troy Haley talk about the strains that deployment puts on marriages and families.