All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Katie is on assignment, I'm Dave Price.

There is an old Chinese proverb, "When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them."

It’s a very apt way to describe what Veterans Day is all about. There are around 24-million veterans in the United States including nearly two million men and women who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.

We enjoy freedom and liberty every day in the United States. We should remember the men and women who planted those seeds, not just today but everyday.

It is unacceptable that on any given night more than 100-thousand veterans sleep on the streets and a third of all homeless men in America are veterans.

It's unfair that more than a million veterans lacked health insurance last year too poor to pay for their own but not poor enough to qualify for certain V-A benefits.

The patriotism of our nation's servicemen and women doesn't end when they return home nor should our gratitude.

Thank you all for your service.

I'm Dave Price, CBS News.

(CBS)

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Since 2001, thousands of wives and girlfriends have been assaulted at the hands of the soldiers they loved. Tonight on the a special primetime edition of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric investigates a growing crisis in the U.S. military: the staggering numbers of military wives who have been beaten, raped or even killed since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

And behind those statistics are the faces of many survivors. Katie spoke with one military wife, Jessacia Patton, about how her husband changed in Iraq, the ensuing abuse … and how the military failed to help.

Last night, we posted a preview clip of one of Katie's interviews with a military wife who is a survivor of domestic violence. Below, a new clip, in which Katie asks Patton what she believes to be the military's greatest flaw in dealing with domestic violence.

Watch that clip here:

Anyone who's been to a VFW hall for a clam bake or a Christmas party will tell you the crowd generally consists of old men - guys who fought in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.

In a few years, that will change.

Women are the fastest-growing group of veterans in America. There are nearly 2 million of them already, and by the year 2020, 20 percent of the vet population younger than 45 will be female.

Clearly it's not your father's Army anymore.

But just like your dad or grandpa, those women return with the wounds of war, both physical and emotional. Some have even seen combat on the frontlines.

Today as we honor all of our nation's veterans, keep in mind the many women who have served as proudly and bravely as their male colleagues.

The image of Rosie the Riveter is as outdated as her pin-curled hair. But her message still resonates today: Ladies, we can do it.

Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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As my producer, Tony Maciulis, and I were on our way to cover the first camp exclusively for wounded women veterans for tonight’s piece on “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” I remember thinking, “Am I ready for this?” I wanted to prepare myself for what I expected would be an emotionally difficult shoot, spending time with women who’ve lost limbs and arms and women who were told they would never walk again. I couldn’t imagine what they have been through and were still going through. I assumed some would be bitter and feeling sorry for themselves, others angry. How wrong I was.

Consider this – the five women we met, brought together by the Wounded Warriors Project and the Adaptive Sports Foundation, were asked to demonstrate anger during a motion therapy exercise. They all looked at each other and laughed. That’s right. They laughed because they didn’t know what anger looked or felt like. They weren’t angry.

“I think it’s because you love life more when you stare it in the face,” said retired Army Sgt. Diane Cochran, a mother of three who spent three years in the hospital after her humvee rolled over in Afghanistan. Doctors never expected her to walk again.

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Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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As my producer, Tony Maciulis, and I were on our way to cover the first camp exclusively for wounded women veterans for tonight’s piece on “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” I remember thinking, “Am I ready for this?” I wanted to prepare myself for what I expected would be an emotionally difficult shoot, spending time with women who’ve lost limbs and arms and women who were told they would never walk again. I couldn’t imagine what they have been through and were still going through. I assumed some would be bitter and feeling sorry for themselves, others angry. How wrong I was.

Consider this – the five women we met, brought together by the Wounded Warriors Project and the Adaptive Sports Foundation, were asked to demonstrate anger during a motion therapy exercise. They all looked at each other and laughed. That’s right. They laughed because they didn’t know what anger looked or felt like. They weren’t angry.

“I think it’s because you love life more when you stare it in the face,” said retired Army Sgt. Diane Cochran, a mother of three who spent three years in the hospital after her humvee rolled over in Afghanistan. Doctors never expected her to walk again.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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Evan Aanerud is an engineering student with two quarters of classes left at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is also an Iraq War veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

At a rally today on Capitol Hill, Aanerud told his story and shared his struggles to about 100 veterans gathering to support legislation that would update the Montgomery GI Bill. Aanerud told the crowd that when he started school he received just $282 per month. And one year ago, his benefits completely ran out.

"I was proud of my service, but after putting my life on the line, it would have been nice to get the benefits we expected," Aanerud said.

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Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

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I was happy about being assigned to cover the annual VA/Disabled American Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass, Colo., for a few reasons. I'm more comfortable outdoors than indoors, (except when foul weather is my reason for being there). I relished the opportunity to get some crisp, clean, low oxygen, reminds-me-how-out-of-shape-I-am air in my system, but the one thing I looked forward to more was an opportunity to be inspired by the veterans.

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[Editor's note: Watch Hari's experience skiing with the veterans below!]

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Kimberly Dozier is a CBS News correspondent based in Washington.

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There's a war inside the military over how to treat a not-so-new enemy: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"I've never had a guy in my unit develop PTSD," one senior general from Iraq told me. 'It's nonsense."

"You're only scratching the surface," of cases from this war, another senior general told me. "Keep looking."

Simply put, PTSD is what happens when you put a combatant in the pressure cooker of Iraq or Afghanistan, and tell him or her, "No matter what you see or feel, tough it out. Lock it down. Keep it to yourself." After multiple tours living on high boil, with no relief valve, some U.S. troops are breaking. Make that thousands.

The largest military employer, the U.S. Army, has rolled out new programs to teach troops what PTSD is, to try to reduce the stigma. It can be as simple as asking a patrol that saw something traumatic to talk about it out loud. That way, the incident on the battlefield gets tamed by a jawing session with your buddies, instead of becoming a nightmare that wakes you sweating at 4 a.m. with visions of the dead and maimed that won't leave you.

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We've gotten a lot of feedback on Armen Keteyian's exclusive investigation into suicide among American war veterans.

And now Pia Malbran has blogged about it, over at Primary Source:

There’s been a lot of reaction to our story. For example, Senator Daniel Akaka (D), Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, released the following statement:

"The report that the rate of suicide among veterans is double that of the general population is not only deeply troubling to me but simply unacceptable. In light of the grim news in the CBS story, I hope that the sense of urgency which has guided the committee’s extensive action on mental health issues this session will continue."

A viewer whose husband served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and is scheduled to redeploy next summer sent us this note:

"My husband a California National Guard member … broke down and told me that he was extremely depressed and had been thinking of ways to kill himself. I just want to thank you for making America aware that this is an epidemic that the VA is doing nothing about."

There's more at Pia's blog, plus additional links and information.

Mary Walsh is a producer for CBS News based at the Pentagon.

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Corey Briest was an emergency medical technician in Yankton, South Dakota when he deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard. He was the unit medic and so when his convoy was hit by an IED he moved forward to treat the wounded. It was the second IED that sent shrapnel into Corey’s skull, damaging his brain so badly that doctors weren’t sure he would survive.

That was Dec. 4, 2005. Four months later, when CBS News national security correspondent David Martin and I met him in a VA Hospital, Corey could signal “thumbs up” to indicate great pain, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk. He was being treated at what the VA called a new “state of the art” poly trauma center -- but all Corey’s wife Jenny wanted was to get him out of there. There were staff shortages, she said. Corey wasn’t getting the therapy he needed.

Looking impossibly young, but drawn by fatigue and worry, Jenny wasn’t about to give up on the man she called the love of her life...

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