Every year on Veteran’s Day I think of my brother Ezra, who served among the Marines in Iraq and thankfully carries no bodily wounds from that war. I look at smiling pictures from his time in uniform and wonder about the many unpictured moments that he and other veterans carry inside. We have a sense from news coverage of Ukraine and Gaza of the terrible, ungodly cost of war, but what we see is only a fraction of what is done. What wounding have American veterans caused and witnessed? What wounds do they carry—within and without—from their time of service? How can a country express lifelong caring mercy to veterans and their families, while also committing our whole selves to the causes of peace?

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