Post-9/11 Veterans Now 50+ Share Their Service, Struggles and Strength

Two decades of war left lasting marks. These veterans show how treatment and support are helping them rebuild

15-minute read

Sari Harrar and A.J. Baime,

AARP

Published November 06, 2026

an collage with images of post nine eleven american veterans

Ryan Olbrysh (Portraits from left: Jared Soares (2), Matt Nager, Jared Soares, Edward Linsmer; Personal photos courtesy individuals)

Key takeaways

Many post-9/11 veterans are now in their 50s and beyond, carrying pride in their service along with visible and hidden wounds.
PTSD, traumatic brain injuries and toxic exposure have created lasting health challenges, but newer treatments and support are helping veterans rebuild.
The PACT Act expanded health care and benefits for millions of veterans exposed to toxins, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was Gen. John Jumper’s first day as chief of staff of the United States Air Force, and it was shaping up to be a tough morning. “I was already imagining a busy, stressful day,” he says. Then came reports of two planes hitting the World Trade Center in New York. Soon after, Jumper’s workplace, the Pentagon, was struck by a jetliner flown by terrorists.

In this series

On that day—Sept. 11, 2001—“all Americans, in or out of uniform, felt a call to duty,” recalls the general, now 81 and retired. “Our nation represented a greater good we were all prepared to defend.”

In the year after 9/11, more than 181,000 Americans signed up for active duty, and thousands more joined reserve and National Guard units. By the time the wars that followed the attacks ended, more than 1.9 million Americans would serve a total of over 3 million tours of duty in combat zones.

How post-9/11 service differed from earlier wars

In some ways, the members of the generation that served during what came to be called the global war on terror were like those from the Vietnam or World War II generations who answered the call of duty.

But in other ways they were unique. For one thing, everyone who served after 9/11 volunteered for the mission. The draft that filled the ranks in World War II and Vietnam was not reinstated. More than 400,000 National Guard members and reservists were pressed into duty in combat zones. The period during which they were asked to sacrifice time away from home stretched over nearly 20 years for some, with many rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan. New health challenges emerged from deployments in harsh environments, from crashes and roadside explosives, and from prolonged psychological stress.

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A total of 7,073 American service members were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and over 50,000 more were wounded. Many thousands more suffered lasting psychological pain. Many of the men and women who served in the conflicts triggered by 9/11 are reaching their 50s, 60s and beyond, carrying the visible and hidden wounds of conflicts that stretched over two decades, and in many cases whole families have been called upon to support them. In interviews with AARP, a number of those veterans have demonstrated they are enduring with grace, resilience and courage.

Lingering psychological damage

Robert Heinssen, 69, a clinical psychologist, was at his office in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, when he got a call from his sister in Manhattan about the terrorist attacks in New York.

“We had grown up in Queens, and many people I knew from my childhood were directly impacted, either as first responders or were working in the towers and either narrowly escaped or died,” he says.

Heinssen, then 44, thought he was too old to join the military, but he wanted to get involved.

“For two years after 9/11, I worked with the Red Cross as a disaster mental health volunteer,” he says.

Then he made a critical decision. “Around 2003, I learned that the Army was waiving certain age limitations on people joining the military. I joined the Maryland Army National Guard in 2004 and worked in a medical company, leading a behavioral health section.”

In that job, he helped veterans reintegrate into the civilian world and deal with the trauma of their combat experiences overseas.

That transition was difficult for many. Take the example of Rod Moore, 60, a retired Navy captain from Windsor, Colorado.

Moore is among those who brought post-traumatic stress disorder home with him from a combat deployment—in his case, during a second, 13-month tour of duty in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD estimates that 29 percent of post-9/11 veterans will have PTSD at some point in their lives. (Studies cited by the VA suggest that is a higher rate than those of Vietnam and World War II, though analysts caution that reporting methods and other factors have changed through the years.)

“It was the closeout of the multibillion-dollar Iraqi reconstruction program, and I was the program management chief,” Moore says. “I was constantly taking trips outside the wire—off the base—at a time when troop levels were being drawn down. There were lots of mortar and rocket attacks and one IED [improvised explosive device] attack on our convoy.” Though not physically wounded by the attacks, Moore, like hundreds of thousands of others, was traumatized by his experiences.

Once home, he downplayed his symptoms of lasting trauma—road rage, anxiety and the feeling of always being on alert. “I was in the running to be a unit commander,” he says. “Why risk that by admitting I had problems?”

Then a freak accident showed him just how much trauma he had been suppressing. While he was out to dinner with his wife in Hawai‘i, a glass door at the restaurant shattered on the couple, striking his head and knocking him out. As he went in and out of consciousness, he says, “suddenly I was back in Iraq.”

Moore retired from the military soon after and says he barely left his house for the next seven years as his rage and anxiety symptoms persisted. He did lots of therapy during that time, but what finally helped him manage his PTSD was adopting a specially trained service dog. “She regifted my life,” Moore says.

Service dogs are just one of the relatively new forms of therapy being used to treat PTSD with encouraging results.

Philip Held, director of research and innovation for the Road Home Program at the National Center of Excellence for Veterans and Their Families at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, says preliminary research at Rush shows that virtual, at-home programs that deliver sessions one or more times a day for a week or as little as two days can be as effective as standard, once-a-week treatments. They also have higher completion rates.

“The more options you have that are evidence based, the more likely you’re going to find something that works for you,” Held says. But it is critical for those feeling the symptoms to seek help, he adds. “There are still a lot of individuals who, due to stigma, logistical or time barriers, are not able to get help.”

Brain injuries, an ongoing crisis

Another matter that distinguished the wars after 9/11 from earlier ones was the enormous number of injuries to the brain, caused by the ubiquitous IEDs and other things, like the need to supply troops over vast areas with truck convoys, which has caused hundreds of road accidents. The good news is that advances in medical science meant service members had a much better chance to survive traumatic head injuries than in earlier wars. But survivors face the challenge of lifelong brain trauma.

More than 500,000 veterans and service personnel were diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) between 2000 and 2025, according to the Department of Defense.

They are people like U.S. Army Sgt. Lisa Crutch, 59, of Jacksonville, Florida, whose life was changed forever on a desert road in Iraq in 2005.

Standing on the back of an armored truck with a powerful .50-caliber machine gun, Crutch guarded convoys crisscrossing the Iraqi desert for 13 months. But Crutch was in the passenger seat one day when the 5-ton gun truck slammed into the back of a fuel tanker that had stopped short. “The road was just sand that causes all this smoke when you’re driving,” she says. “You can’t really see in front of you.”

Crutch’s head slammed into the windshield. Her legs hit the dashboard hard. “If I didn’t have my helmet on, my head probably would have split in half,” she says. She blacked out but remembers a helicopter airlift to a hospital and weeks of recovery. There was no thought of going home early. “I stayed and healed and went back on the gun truck” after the crash, she says.

Crutch lost her sense of smell and most of her sense of taste. Her knees would swell and cause severe pain afterward. But only after her deployment ended and she returned home did she start having panic attacks, anxiety and severe, chronic migraines. Crutch didn’t want to leave the house. Then there was the puzzling memory loss. “I remember everything from Iraq but not my happy family memories from before that,” she says.

In 2005, tests showed Crutch had a TBI, which is considered a signature injury of post-9/11 conflicts. It took 15 years of counseling and medical treatment to find a migraine prevention therapy that worked, plus family support and help from a nonprofit veterans service organization, the Wounded Warrior Project, before she felt she was healing.

“Transitioning from Sgt. Crutch back to Lisa, I didn’t even know where to start,” she says. “I had to learn to like the new Lisa.”

Signs of an undiagnosed brain injury

Emerging brain research suggests another common cause of significant, but under-recognized, mild TBI: repeat exposure to low-level blasts, such as from heavy artillery, and from firing high-caliber weapons during deployment or training. This may cause memory loss, headaches, fatigue and anxiety.

Eighty-two percent of military TBIs are classed as “mild,” according to the Pentagon. Yet even these can cause life-changing symptoms that may be overlooked as veterans like Crutch and their health care providers focus on more obvious injuries.

Symptoms of an undiagnosed TBI that someone might notice aren’t limited to memory problems, difficulty controlling anger and irritability, anxiety and withdrawing, says Jeffrey R. Hebert, director of research and physical therapist at the Marcus Institute for Brain Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz. His research shows that trouble processing visual information—words on a computer screen or product labels in the grocery store, for example—is a less recognized sign.

A TBI can have long-term effects on thinking, memory and sleep, as well as on relationships, daily activities and working. And if it is never diagnosed, veterans may miss out on brain health care that can reverse mental processing problems, help people work around memory loss, reduce risk for related problems like depression and anxiety, and ease physical symptoms such as painful headaches.

Those who suspect they are dealing with an undiagnosed brain injury can get help. TBI screening is available for veterans at VA health appointments and is a mandatory part of first-time checkups for those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, a U.S. study that plans to enroll more than 800 veterans with mild TBI is underway that will track their symptoms and brain imaging biomarkers before and after they participate in an intensive, three-week program. The study includes behavioral counseling, physical therapy, brain rehab and treatment for symptoms like dizziness, memory loss and concentration problems—all personalized for each participant.

And the good news for vets who suspect they may have an undiagnosed TBI is that it’s never too late to benefit from treatment. “For lifelong health of the brain, earlier identification and treatment of TBI is best, but getting help at any time can still result in improvements in symptoms and function,” says Hebert, a researcher on the new TBI study.

As with many veterans of the past 25 years, the difficulties Crutch experienced revealed she held a deep underlying strength, as did her family and friends in confronting them. Crutch credits her husband with convincing her to join a support program for veterans with combat-related injuries, including TBIs, run by the Wounded Warrior Project.

She has since earned a college degree, graduating at the same time as her oldest daughter, and has taken part in plenty of support programs, done volunteer work and traveled. And she hosts a podcast with her best friend, also a veteran of the Iraq conflict.

“I have these amazing people around me,” Crutch says. “They hold me up; they hold me accountable. They make me smile.”

Poisonous environments

Along with the TBIs, there was another unique and extremely dangerous aspect of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan—the poisons in the air. Long exposures to toxic environments would affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women, like retired Army Capt. Le Roy Torres of Robstown, Texas.

Torres took a deep breath as he stepped off a shuttle at sprawling Joint Base Balad in Iraq in late 2007. “I was, like, ‘Oh my goodness, what is that stench in the air?’ ” he recalls. “It smelled like burning plastic.”

Torres had enlisted in the Army Reserve at age 17, inspired by his father’s service during the Korean War. “He was my childhood hero,” he says. Soon after, Torres went to work as a Texas state trooper. But the 9/11 attacks changed life for him and hundreds of thousands of other reservists. Since then, thousands like him have been activated.

Torres was deployed to Iraq, where he served for a year as a personnel officer and then in logistics, to support a massive 2007 troop surge. But exposure to airborne toxins from what the VA calls the biggest military burn pit of the Iraq War quickly led to a lung infection, then abdominal pain, severe headaches and chronic respiratory infections.

“Medical providers said it was just ‘Iraqi crud,’ ” he says. “It became routine.” While he was deployed, his main worry was being hit by fire from mortar attacks, he recalls. His base was enveloped daily in toxic burn pit smoke. “Little did I know this culprit would be detrimental to many of us till this day.”

Environmental toxins were threats in earlier wars, like the Agent Orange herbicide used to kill foliage in Vietnam. But they became a unique problem near the American bases in Iraq, and to a lesser degree Afghanistan. Some of the pits were massive, and they operated around the clock for years, incinerating hundreds of tons of material daily. What was being burned included medical waste, insecticide containers, plastics, Styrofoam and tires, all doused with jet-propellant fuel to keep it blazing, creating an ever-present chemical smog emitting known carcinogens.

How the PACT Act expanded care for toxic exposure

Le Roy and Rosie Torres helped make that happen. In 2010 they started Burn Pits 360 as a forum for veterans experiencing illnesses possibly tied to burn pit exposures. Their nonprofit advocacy group played a key role in pushing for passage in Congress of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act in 2022, a law that expanded VA health care eligibility and benefits for millions of veterans with toxic exposures.

The act lists more than 300 medical conditions the VA presumes were caused by service exposure. Veterans do not have to prove a link to get help.

Under the PACT Act, veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan can enroll for a checkup at VA health care centers, even if they don’t feel ready to file a disability claim. Those enrolled get a toxic exposure screening and can be screened thereafter at least once every five years.

“The list of conditions associated with burn pit exposure will expand,” Szema says. For the present, he adds, “it’s important for veterans with environmental exposures to file a claim.”

Ongoing challenges, lasting pride

The recent wars imposed other challenges, like those family caregivers are still facing.

In Crutch’s case, her active duty status required her husband and their extended families to care for the couple’s four children, then between the ages of 4 and 15, during her 13-month deployment. “It takes a village to raise a family, and I have an amazing village,” she says.

Other recent veterans are facing the challenges of social isolation, a June 2026 AARP survey found. Loneliness is a constant companion for 38 percent of U.S. veterans age 45 and older, with social isolation linked to chronic health conditions, depression and anxiety.

“What we hear from veterans is that loneliness is tied to a feeling of disconnection from the camaraderie, shared experiences and shared purpose they had in the military,” says Juanita Jimenez-Soto, AARP national veterans and military families manager.

But many others have found purpose in getting involved with helping fellow veterans.

“Several years ago, I joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which has given me new opportunities to help veterans of the War on Terror, as many are now reaching 50 and over,” Heinssen says. “My hope is that they bring the leadership and experiences they learned over there back home and that they are honored for it.”

He adds, “I felt strongly about being there, because if previous generations of combat veterans had had more access to mental health professionals, think about how that might have changed the trajectories of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

While certainly facing extraordinary challenges, the veterans of the post-9/11 era have shown remarkable fortitude.

“All the veterans who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan understood the sense of purpose Americans have always had,” Jumper says. “That is something we must never become numb to or forget.”

From his position helping veterans transition to civilian life, Heinssen saw that courage.

“The most positive thing I experienced was to see the dedication and heroism of our service members,” he says. “One of my jobs was to talk to groups of soldiers and Marines to get a sense of how they operated. I interviewed one group of Marines who had returned from a 50-day recon mission. These guys were the tip of the spear, had taken casualties and were busted up.”

Heinssen says he was moved by the Marines’ sense of duty, even when it wasn’t clear to them what the sacrifices were for. “I told them, ‘You have given your country a great gift. Your country respects and values what you’re doing. It’s meaningful, and there will come a time when you are able to more clearly see that.’ ”

The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Sari Harrar is an award-winning journalist who writes about health and fraud prevention for AARP.

A.J. Baime is the author of five books and a frequent writer for AARP covering military issues.

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Post-9/11 Veterans Now 50+ Share Their Service, Struggles and Strength