GEOFF BENNETT: Over the last 250 years, the U.S.

military has helped shape the nation's history from the fight for independence to its emergence as the world's leading military power.

But, as our military reach has grown, fewer Americans are serving in uniform.

This Veterans Day, Judy Woodruff explores what that means for the country in her series Crossroads: America at 250.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So this is your first deployment.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA, U.S.

Marine Corps: My wife had made these nice illustrations, and she listed right here all the things that I had missed.

Daniel being born was a big one.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jeremy Villanueva had been a U.S.

Marine for just a year when the 9/11 attacks happened.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA: The idea of being in the United States Marine Corps as an infantryman suddenly became very, very real.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He was newly married with a baby on the way.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA: They put us on a boat and we sailed out December 1, and my son was born December 17.

And I didn't get to see him until he was 6 months old.

ENSIGN DANIEL VILLANUEVA, U.S.

Navy: I always wanted to join the Amphib Navy, so Marines would be on board, and I could feel a little bit closer to my dad and what he went through when he was on board a Navy ship.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, that son is a Navy officer and has served aboard the same kind of ship that once carried his father overseas to fight the war on terror.

From the Revolutionary War, when Americans took up arms to fight for freedom to today's war with Iran, military service has helped shape what it means to be an American.

But today's military looks dramatically different.

From small localized forces that relied heavily on volunteers, it has grown into six branches with more than two million uniformed personnel.

COL.

GREG DADDIS (RET.

), Texas A&M University: We're moving from a regional power to a global power.

JUDY WOODRUFF: At the National Guard Memorial Museum in Washington, we talked about that history with retired Army Colonel Greg Daddis of Texas A&M University and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center For a New American Security.

KATHERINE KUZMINSKI, Center For a New American Security: While there was a U.S.

military, the concept was much more localized at the state level.

We shifted from a mixed force of conscripts and volunteers to the all-volunteer force.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But as the country expanded, so did its military reach.

COL.

GREG DADDIS (RET.

): I think, from a historical standpoint of thinking of Native Americans as being national threats, but, in fact, we were invading other nations, and that impulse continues after the late 1890s as we move into Spanish colonies and Cuba and the Philippines, and then just continue that outward expansion, especially with the two World Wars.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fighting wars on a much larger scale required more troops.

The draft brought millions of American men into military service.

KATHERINE KUZMINSKI: The beginning of World War I, we saw the first real melting pot of the entire U.S.

Army specifically thinking about the United States as a fighting force in the world.

We, of course, had to induce a draft to make that happen in World War I and then again in World War II.

We saw that draft take us through the Vietnam War.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, eventually, it went away.

KATHERINE KUZMINSKI: It wasn't politically tenable to the American population that we are sending our sons, because the draft was only for men, to fight the nation's wars without the broader public say in the use of those forces.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But after the war in Vietnam, there was a big shift.

The military became a smaller, all-volunteer professional force.

KATHERINE KUZMINSKI: We're able to have a smaller force because we rely on a number of factors of national power, to include our economy, our ability to raise and develop ambassadors and diplomats, and we lean on all of those measures of national power, and then we can leverage this professional military.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the backbone of that military is increasingly made up of families like the Villanuevas, who pass down the tradition of service from one generation to the next.

According to Pentagon data, more than three in four new Army recruits had a family member who also served.

COL.

GREG DADDIS (RET.

): Serving in the military itself has become a family business.

When I'm teaching at West Point and the cadets that I have in class, their mothers have gone to West Point, their fathers have gone to West Point, and there's just now a very strong tradition of those who are serving, that their sons and daughters will follow in their footsteps.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA: My dad worked until the day he died in a factory, so that I could go and I could serve my country, and I didn't have to worry about the same things that they had to worry about.

And I went and enlisted in the military so that my son could go ahead and commission into the military.

ENSIGN DANIEL VILLANUEVA: Family service was encouraged throughout my childhood, both from my father and my uncles and my cousins.

So joining the military wasn't that big of a question when I was a kid.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that tradition may be weakening.

A 2025 Blue Star Families survey found just 37 percent of active duty family respondents would recommend service to a young relative, down from 55 percent in 2016.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA: Unless you have lived through it, you can't fully appreciate what that sacrifice actually is.

The hardest thing for that parent is that we know exactly what that person is going to have to sacrifice.

And to see your own child make that same sacrifice, it's hard.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Villanueva family knows the cost of military service.

Just seven months after returning home in 2002, Jeremy deployed again, this time to Iraq.

His wife, Michelle, was left at home with their young son.

MICHELLE VILLANUEVA, Military Spouse: As a mom, as a wife, we don't get a lot of thank-yous for the things that we did, the sacrifices that we did.

We lost a lot.

We lost a lot of time because of the war.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now their son is experiencing some of those same challenges himself.

ENSIGN DANIEL VILLANUEVA: I'm going to have to miss out on Thanksgiving.

I will be missing out on Christmas.

Everything that's happened from February until August, I missed out on.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, fewer than 1 percent of people in the U.S.

serve in the military, and that means, for many, the wars these service men and women are fighting are far removed from their daily lives.

COL.

GREG DADDIS (RET.

): And I think many Americans, unfortunately, will just say thank you for your service, and that's where the conversation ends, and I don't need to do much more than show my gratitude in a public space.

And with that, then, I think Americans are more and more hesitant to question issues of national security.

If the armed forces become more insular, then those who are going off to war become more invisible to the larger whole.

And invisible wars then have a tendency to turn into forever wars, in my estimation, that the less that war is seen by American citizens, the less likely they are to ask questions about it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But for those who fought those wars, the costs are harder to ignore.

Jeremy Villanueva now works with the organization Paralyzed Veterans of America.

FORMER CPL.

JEREMY VILLANUEVA: For so many, the war never leaves, and that long after the headlines go away and America moves on and moves on to a different conflict, we're still in that same place.

And for many of us, we will -- we're still serving.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And on this Veterans Day, Daddis has a message for Americans who haven't served in uniform.

COL.

GREG DADDIS (RET.

): It's a moment to reflect on your relationship with those who are serving.

And that relationship comes with the responsibility, to be an American worth fighting for, to not get so hyped up about this politicization and realize that we're all bounded together in one way.

And that, to me, is one of the incredible benefits of military service.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington.