With the passage of the PACT Act, our nation can rewrite veterans’ stories with a happier ending

I wanted to tell about the injustice of serving your country only to be denied the most basic of care. I wanted to tell about a soldier who knew he was going to die but only cared about what would happen to his wife and family. I wish I could describe in precise words the unmistakable glint in his eyes as we talked, both of us knowing that his diseases were a death sentence, and that the long tentacles of the Vietnam War had let him survive the jungle but not the war. His name won’t be written in granite on some memorial wall, but his death was no less poignant.