Since 2001, Military Times has honored outstanding service members from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. We are looking for unsung heroes who have not only excelled on the battlefield and on the job, but those who have demonstrated service at home by the betterment of their communities.

Winners will receive an expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., along with a guest. The trip will culminate in a July 11 awards ceremony on Capitol Hill attended by high-ranking military leaders, members of Congress, fellow service members and other distinguished guests.

Anyone can nominate a service member. Nominate now by clicking here and filling out the required fields.

Eligible winners must still be in uniform through at least August 2018. Officers and enlisted are eligible to win. National Guard members and reservists are also eligible.

Being named a Military Times Service Member of the Year can have a huge impact on a service member’s career.

Maj. Chris Mercado, the 2017 Soldier of the Year, has seen an uptick in support for his non-profit, the Objective Zero Foundation. Mercado’s goals is to stop the suicide epidemic among service members and vets.

“Since the launch of our mobile application in early December, we have connected our app users to a trained ambassador over 2,600 times,” Mercado told Military Times. “… I can say without reservation that the recognition provided by Military Times has tremendously raised awareness of our life-saving tool, has opened new doors, and has connected us to new non-profit partners.

“Selection and recognition as a Service Member of the Year hasn’t just altered the course of my life; it has positively altered the outcomes of hundreds of veterans and service-members lives in the last few months alone,” Mercado said.

To assist you in maximizing your bennies, Military Times has created a free, downloadable e-book. To read it, click here. Download by clicking “Pages” in the right task bar and then click “Download complete edition” at the top of your screen.

The Military Benefits Guide includes details on:

• Your next pay raise.
• DoD child care.
• Tax-free shopping for vets at military exchanges.
• Tricare reforms.
• Retiree benefits increases.
• VA home loans.
• The ‘Forever’ GI Bill, and more.

For news affecting veterans of all ages, features on former service members succeeding in post-service careers and insight from military leaders spanning decades, bookmark www.militarytimes.com/vetsmonth to get the latest. We’ll also be filling our social-media feeds with #VetsMonth content.

Read it now:

• News on the tax-free veterans shopping benefit that will open the online military exchanges to millions of new customers come Veterans Day.

And coming later this month:

• Discounts active and former service members can get from regional and national businesses over the Veterans Day weekend, and throughout the year.

• All the latest photos, videos and more from Veterans Day events throughout the nation.

• Interviews with high-profile veterans, and commentary from troops and civilians on the importance of Veterans Day.

• Ways you can get involved, from entering contests to finding new vet-related nonprofits to helping promote veteran-owned businesses.

Have a story you think would make a good addition to our Veterans Month coverage? Email Executive Editor Tony Lombardo at tlombardo@militarytimes.com.

The address will take place 9 p.m. Eastern at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia. More information was not immediately available.  

The president’s speech comes at the end of a review of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan that has lasted several months and looked at options ranging from adding several thousand more U.S. troops to total withdrawal.

One option pushed by Erik Prince, the former CEO of the private military company known as Blackwater, involved having thousands of private security contractors to fight alongside Afghan troops and police in battle and using aircraft provided by his company Lancaster6 to fly intelligence and close-air support missions.

However, the contractor plan floated by the former Blackwater CEO appears dead in the water, according to a U.S. and Afghan defense official. That plan was rejected by the Afghan government, and was opposed by Secretary Mattis heading into Friday’s high-level meeting at Camp David. The two officials spoke to Military Times on condition of anonymity. 

On Aug. 14, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that President Trump was still considering both withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and relying on contractors to fight with Afghans. Mattis declined to say on Sunday which option Trump has selected.

“He really did come in with very different courses of action,” Mattis told reporters while traveling to the Middle East. “I think he now needs the weekend to collect his thoughts about how he’s going to explain it to the American people.”

One reason the decision-making process has taken so long is that President Trump often asked his advisers to refine the options presented to him, Mattis said. The president sought advice from a variety of officials, including the attorney general’s office, Homeland Security Department, State Department and Office of Management and Budget.

“The process was rigorous and it involved all members of the cabinet – of the national security staff, I would say, writ large,” Mattis said. “I’m very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous and did not go in with a preset condition in terms of what questions could be asked or what decisions would be made.”

The new strategy will involve the whole region, including Pakistan, Defense Secretary James Mattis said, adding: “It is a South Asia strategy. It is not just an Afghanistan strategy.”

Military Times’ reporter Shawn Snow contributed to this report.

On Nov. 29, 2004, Spc. Daniel J. Swift was traveling in a Humvee through Baghdad, Iraq, with fellow members of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York Army National Guard, when their vehicle was hit by an IED. Swift’s comrades, and fellow members of the New York Fire Department, Sgt. Christian Engeldrum and Pfc. Wilfredo Urbina, were both killed in the explosion.

Swift, a combat medic, quickly rushed to save the life of another soldier in the vehicle. For his life-saving efforts, Swift received the Bronze Star with V device and the Purple Heart. 

Swift received his medals in a powerful ceremony in New York City. In the mob of people following the event, Swift’s medals were lost and never seen again. On Aug. 7, Purple Hearts Reunited will present swift with a new set of medals, famed to pass on to his children.

Read the first entry in this series.

Read the second entry in this series.

Read the third entry in this series.

About Purple Hearts Reunited: This nonprofit foundation that returns medals of valor to veterans or their families in order to honor their sacrifice to the nation. Since its beginning, the organization has returned over 350 lost medals, traveled over 100,000 miles, visited over 42 States, and has directly affected the lives of 100,000 people. They were also recently highlighted on the popular History Channel Show American Pickers.

Learn more about Purple Hearts Reunited, which returns medals at no cost to the families.

About the Purple Heart: The original Purple Heart, designated as the Badge of Military Merit, was established by George Washington – then the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army – by order from his Newburgh, New York headquarters on Aug. 7, 1782. The Badge of Military Merit was only awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers by Gen. George Washington himself. Gen. Washington authorized his subordinate officers to issue Badges of Merit as appropriate.

Although never abolished, the award of the badge was not proposed again officially until after World War I. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened work of a new design and by Executive Order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart was revived on the 200th Anniversary of George Washington’s birth, out of respect to his memory and military achievements, by War Department General Order No. 3, dated Feb. 22, 1932. Today, the Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after April 5, 1917.

An estimated 1.8 Million Purple Hearts have been awarded in our nation’s history. Today, in addition to being awarded to those who fight overseas, the Purple Heart is also given to military personal who display bravery and valor as prisoners of war and while fighting certain types of domestic terrorism.

Pvt. Dan Lawrence Feragen survived the Bataan Death March during World War II, but later died while a prisoner of war. He was buried in an unmarked grave, his remains left undiscovered until after his parents passed away. His relatives never received his Purple Heart, but on Aug. 7, Purple Hearts Reunited will deliver the private’s medal to his nephew Lyle Feragen. This is Pvt. Feragen’s story, as told by Purple Hearts Reunited:

Feragen grew up on his father’s cattle ranch in Montana and at the age of 17 moved to Colfax, Wash., where his older brothers were working. At 19, he enlisted in teh Army at Fort Lewis. After training, he was selected to serve in the Philippine Department assigned to Service Company, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division stationed in Manila, Philippines.

On Dec. 7 1941, just hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the Philippines. For four months with little food or supplies, the men of the 31st along with other American and Filipino military forces held off the Japanese invasion. On April 9, 1942 with most of the fighting forces on Bataan sick and wounded, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King made the decision to surrender the Bataan fighting forces.

Just hours after Gen. King waved the flag of surrender,   the remaining 25 men of Service Company were ordered to form a line of resistance in their bivouac area and hold the enemy while 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry withdrew. Service Company was to follow, fighting a delaying action. The goal was to allow the 3rd Battalion to escape and make it to Corregidor Island where Gen. Jonathan “Skinny” Wainwright was still fighting.

 The 3rd Battalion moved out rapidly to Mariveles. After about two minutes of small arms fire from an unseen enemy on a hill to their front, a platoon of Japanese tanks drove into their position stopped and delivered heavy machine gun fire. Armed with only rifles and pistols, Pvt. Feragen and the rest of the men of Service Company, 31st Infantry were captured.

From the bivouac area, Pvt. Feragen and the other men were marched over 60 miles in 110-degree heat with no food or water to POW Camp O’Donnell, what is now known as the Bataan Death March. On the Death March, the men suffered brutal treatment from their Japanese captors. If a man would fall out of the column, he was either struck with a bayonet or shot. Pvt. Feragen made it through the Death March to POW Camp O’Donnell. He stayed there for a month and was then one of 100 POWs selected for a POW labor detail and was transferred to POW Camp Olivas, San Fernando, Philippines. Camp Olivas was an old Philippine military training barracks. The labor detail involved gathering up scrap metal around the Bataan Peninsula. All the scrap metal was then loaded on ships bound for Japan to be recycled into war materials. On June 17, 1942, Pvt. Feragen died from mistreatment at the hands of his captors, malaria and dysentery.

The soldier was buried in an unmarked grave without his clothing or identification surrounded by 14 other POWs who died there. In 1945, after the liberation of the Philippines by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the grave of PVT Feragen and the other men were exhumed by the US Army and transferred to Manila but the men could not be identified. In 1948, the Army hired an anthropologist to try and make identifications of the “Unknown” men. Through dental records and known information in PVT Feragen’s service records, he was identified and buried in the American Military Cemetery in Manila, Philippines. But by this time, Pvt. Feragen’s parents had died and never knew their son was found, therefore, a Purple Heart was never issued.

Read the first entry in this series.

Read the second entry in this series.

About Purple Hearts Reunited: This nonprofit foundation that returns medals of valor to veterans or their families in order to honor their sacrifice to the nation. Since its beginning, the organization has returned over 350 lost medals, traveled over 100,000 miles, visited over 42 States, and has directly affected the lives of 100,000 people. They were also recently highlighted on the popular History Channel Show American Pickers.

Learn more about Purple Hearts Reunited, which returns medals at no cost to the families.

About the Purple Heart:The original Purple Heart, designated as the Badge of Military Merit, was established by George Washington – then the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army – by order from his Newburgh, New York headquarters on Aug. 7, 1782. The Badge of Military Merit was only awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers by Gen. George Washington himself. Gen. Washington authorized his subordinate officers to issue Badges of Merit as appropriate.

Although never abolished, the award of the badge was not proposed again officially until after World War I. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened work of a new design and by Executive Order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart was revived on the 200th Anniversary of George Washington’s birth, out of respect to his memory and military achievements, by War Department General Order No. 3, dated Feb. 22, 1932. Today, the Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after April 5, 1917.

An estimated 1.8 Million Purple Hearts have been awarded in our nation’s history. Today, in addition to being awarded to those who fight overseas, the Purple Heart is also given to military personal who display bravery and valor as prisoners of war and while fighting certain types of domestic terrorism.

Staff Sgt. Kevin Coady discovered a Purple Heart in the 1970s, and has sought the rightful recipient ever since. On Aug. 7, with the help of Purple Hearts Reunited, Coady will reunite the medal with the family of Pfc. Jack Carl Kightlinger, a Marine killed in Korea. This is Kightlinger’s story:

Jack Carl Kightlinger was born Aug. 2, 1928, in Franklin, Penn. As a teenager, he and his large family relocated to Northern California. On July 16, 1950, Kightlinger enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and he departed for Korea four months later. He was assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He was killed during combat operations on May 29, 1951 at age 23, during the drive to Yanggu near the Soyang River. A news clipping reporting his death offers no further details.

On Aug. 7, Coady will present the Purple Heart to the daughter of the Kightlinger’s niece, Bernadine “Bernie” L. Ridgeway from Marysville, California.

About Purple Hearts Reunited: This nonprofit foundation that returns medals of valor to veterans or their families in order to honor their sacrifice to the nation. Since its beginning, the organization has returned over 350 lost medals, traveled over 100,000 miles, visited over 42 States, and has directly affected the lives of 100,000 people. They were also recently highlighted on the popular History Channel Show American Pickers.

Learn more about Purple Hearts Reunited, which returns medals at no cost to the families.

About the Purple Heart:The original Purple Heart, designated as the Badge of Military Merit, was established by George Washington – then the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army – by order from his Newburgh, New York headquarters on Aug. 7, 1782. The Badge of Military Merit was only awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers by Gen. George Washington himself. Gen. Washington authorized his subordinate officers to issue Badges of Merit as appropriate.

Although never abolished, the award of the badge was not proposed again officially until after World War I. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened work of a new design and by Executive Order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart was revived on the 200th Anniversary of George Washington’s birth, out of respect to his memory and military achievements, by War Department General Order No. 3, dated Feb. 22, 1932. Today, the Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after April 5, 1917.

An estimated 1.8 Million Purple Hearts have been awarded in our nation’s history. Today, in addition to being awarded to those who fight overseas, the Purple Heart is also given to military personal who display bravery and valor as prisoners of war and while fighting certain types of domestic terrorism.

Purple Hearts Reunited located Staff Sgt. Bernard Eldon Snow’s Purple Heart in a jewelry store in California. This is Snow’s story:

A native of Santa Barbara, Calif., Snow enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps on Oct. 6, 1942 and served as a B-17 Ball Turret Gunner with the 366th Bomber Squadron, 305th Bomber Group. On Oct. 14, 1943, his B-17,  nick-named “Mr. Jones,” was shot down by a German fighter near Hoorn, Holland.

Their mission was a bombing run on a Ball Bearing Factory in Schweinfurt, Germany. Bernard bailed from the aircraft from the rear hatch and safely parachuted to the ground, however, he was captured by the Germans and sent to several German Prisoner of War Camps, to include Stalag Luft 3 in Sagan-Silesia, Bavaria, Nurembert-Langwasser 49-11, and later Stalag 17B. Bernard was liberated from the camp on June 14, 1945 and released from service on Oct. 6, 1945.

Snow’s medals and decorations consist of the Purple Heart, Prisoner of War Medal, Good Conduct Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, WWII Victory Medal, and Aircraft Gunner Wings.

He lived a good life, marrying Nessia Rebecca O’Driscoll. They had a daughter, Rebecca Violet. Snow died on Nov. 5, 1981.

On Aug. 7, his Purple Heart will be reunited with this daughter, Rebecca Crofts, from Superior, Wisconsin.

About Purple Hearts Reunited: This nonprofit foundation that returns medals of valor to veterans or their families in order to honor their sacrifice to the nation. Since its beginning, the organization has returned over 350 lost medals, traveled over 100,000 miles, visited over 42 States, and has directly affected the lives of 100,000 people. They were also recently highlighted on the popular History Channel Show American Pickers.

Learn more about Purple Hearts Reunited, which returns medals at no cost to the families.

About the Purple Heart: The original Purple Heart, designated as the Badge of Military Merit, was established by George Washington – then the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army – by order from his Newburgh, New York headquarters on Aug. 7, 1782. The Badge of Military Merit was only awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers by Gen. George Washington himself. Gen. Washington authorized his subordinate officers to issue Badges of Merit as appropriate.

Although never abolished, the award of the badge was not proposed again officially until after World War I. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened work of a new design and by Executive Order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart was revived on the 200th Anniversary of George Washington’s birth, out of respect to his memory and military achievements, by War Department General Order No. 3, dated Feb. 22, 1932. Today, the Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after April 5, 1917.

An estimated 1.8 Million Purple Hearts have been awarded in our nation’s history. Today, in addition to being awarded to those who fight overseas, the Purple Heart is also given to military personal who display bravery and valor as prisoners of war and while fighting certain types of domestic terrorism.

Military Times and our other news sites (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times) have a new look, a redesign that will deliver more news, videos, reader polls and quizzes and the stories you care about.

Improved for both mobile and desktop, we hope you find the experience an improvement to our old sites. We’re also introducing several new features, including new channels like: 

Flashpoints. U.S. troops are deployed all over the world. Flashpoints puts a laser focus on areas of global conflict, terrorism and U.S. military action.

Veterans. A dedicated channel to all U.S. military veterans, with coverage including benefits, health care and Tricare, transition assistance and more.

Military Honor. A spotlight on U.S. military service and sacrifice, this channel includes Honor the Fallen, tributes to all U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the Hall of Valor, the largest database of U.S. military decorations and war stories in the world.

Other new features include: 

Deadly Skills video series: Retired Navy SEAL and best-selling author Clint Emerson (”100 Deadly Skills,” ”Escape the Wolf”), demonstrates life hacks for staying alive, staying safe and staying in control of any situation. These 90-second videos will entertain and educate.

Medals & Misfires: This reoccurring opinion feature will award “medals” to smart moves made by military officials. Leaders will hopefully avoid earning a “misfire,” a written jab for misdeeds, boneheaded decision-making and general mission failure. Produced weekly, this feature will be a must-read.

Our new tip line: Send us confidential tips or story ideas, direct to our team of editors, at tips@militarytimes.com.

In the days to come we’ll also be rolling out a number of special reports and projects. And in the meantime, bear with us. System transitions always bring unexpected hiccups, and we expect this one to be no different. Rest assured they’ll be addressed quickly.

We welcome feedback. Please send your comments to tellus@militarytimes.com.

Thank you for serving, and thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Tony Lombardo

Military Times Executive Editor

Created in 2001, the Service Members of the Year Awards honor service members who excel either on the job, in their communities, or both.

Remember, service members are some of the most humble people on the plant. They don’t brag. That’s why we rely on nominators like you to speak up and honor those who serve.

The editors of Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times and Air Force Times will select the winners, along with honorable mentions.