Military News

The latest military updates, tributes and memorials in around the New Orleans area

The Army Corps of Engineers will soon survey private property for levee encroachments along much of the 17th Street Canal in Metairie, according to official notices mailed Monday to 57 landowners.

Donald Stout/The Times-PicayuneThe Metairie side of the 17th Street Canal will soon be surveyed by the Army Corps of Engineers for levee encroachments.

U.S. Coast GuardTerry Carver, who was supposed to be piloting the Mel Oliver, testifies at a Coast Guard hearing Thursday.

The mariner who abandoned his post on a towboat involved in a summer oil spill on the Mississippi River broke his silence Thursday after initially refusing to testify at a Coast Guard investigation of the accident.

From a witness stand inside the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, Terry Carver, 38, told investigators that he left the Mel Oliver towboat three days before the accident after learning that his girlfriend had been spotted with another man.

The 25-acre federal site in Bywater now up for redevelopment, pictured here in 1960, was once a WWII Army deployment hub called The Port of Embarkation.

An 18-month study to recommend uses for a 25-acre federally owned site in Bywater is nearing a conclusion, though exactly what it will suggest remains in question.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneJames Carrington, 88, a highly decorated World War II veteran, had his life saved when a group young Philippines driving a horse and cart hid the escaped prisoner under hay. One of the young men, Jesus Gonzalez, now 76, was reunited with Carrington at the Ormond Nursing and Care Center on Nov. 24. Carrington died Sunday, just 11 days after the meeting.

Eleven days after his emotional reunion with a Filipino man who helped save his life during World War II, American veteran James Carrington died quietly Sunday at the Destrehan nursing home where he resided. He was 88.

• Read the story and watch a video of the pair's reunion

The no-nonsense general who directed federal troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina returned to the city Tuesday to call for residents and leaders to adopt a permanent culture of disaster preparedness, from installing generators on the second floor instead of the first to making weather radios a staple holiday gift.

Jonnie L. Stiles and three colleagues from the Louisiana Army National Guard set out sometime Thursday on a mission to check and clear the roadways of Jalalabad, a city in eastern Afghanistan.

During that mission, an improvised explosive device detonated near Stiles' Humvee, killing the 38-year-old career military man from Colorado, the 24th member of the Louisiana unit killed since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday that he would consider asking lawmakers to find money for a program designed to collect contributions to help the families of Louisiana National Guard and Reserve personnel called to active duty, but shied away from making a financial commitment to the program.