On this Veterans Day, the military is struggling with a damaging new story about the mishandling of remains of fallen U.S. servicemembers, where officials at the Dover, Delaware facility are accused of sending some remains to local landfills.
"None of us will be satisfied until we have proven to the families of our fallen heroes that we have taken every step possible," said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who on Thursday ordered a full review of what happened at Dover.
Panetta also ordered an internal probe into allegations that the whistleblowers who revealed the landfill matter found themselves retaliated against by officials at the Dover facility.
The Defense Secretary said when he took over this job back in July, one of the first briefings he was given was on this investigation.
"This is one of the Department's most sacred responsibilities," said the Secretary at a Pentagon briefing.
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This Veterans Day marks 25 years since one of my most memorable interviews in my career as a journalist. It was a chilly November day as I headed to a small veterans memorial in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
I figured maybe I might find a vet to do a quick interview, and sure enough, there was a tall man there in front of the monument.
I started chatting him up and out poured his story.
His brother had died in World War II.
"He looked like Joe Palooka," the man said with a big smile.
But no more than a minute later, the man seemed to suddenly realize he was telling his story to a guy that he'd never seen before, and the interview was quickly over.
It reminded me of a few years earlier, when I had been sitting at the kitchen table of my Great Uncle Floyd's place in Montana, talking about his time in Europe with the 101st Airborne during World War II.
Just as I did at the veterans memorial in Maryland, I was quietly trying to squeeze some information out of Floyd about his experiences in D-Day, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge and more, mainly by asking gentle questions.
My mother had told me stories of how Floyd had come back from the war and stayed with them, still struggling with nightmares from his combat time - which one time led to him wrestling on the floor with the bear rug in the middle of the night.
On this day just down the road from the Custer Battlefield, Floyd was actually opening up about his time in Europe, when suddenly my great uncle looked up at me, stopped speaking and walked outside.
His wife told me it was the most he had ever spoken to someone about the war in decades.
A few months after that, I went to France, Belgium and Holland, bicycling, walking and hitchhiking my way to some of the places where Floyd had fought in Europe. It made him nervous; he called me on the telephone as soon as I got back to the U.S. to make sure my trip had gone okay.
A few years later, I tried to convince Floyd that he should go with me to Omaha Beach for the festivities marking the anniversary of the Allied invasion in France, but he wasn't interested - just too many memories that he didn't want to talk about.
The ultimate irony was that Floyd died almost 50 years to the day after D-Day.
Just a couple of stories to think about on this Veterans Day 2011.
