At lunchtime on a recent afternoon, dozens of fresh-faced soldiers descended on the McDonald’s on Rancier Avenue, a boulevard of pawnshops, tattoo parlors and takeout restaurants just outside this massive Army post. At that same moment, Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused in the deadliest shooting rampage ever at an American military installation, was leaving a Fort Hood courtroom after a pretrial hearing in a legal saga that has stretched on for more than three years. Though the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting left a deep scar on Central Texas, Fort Hood is a far different place from what it was on that autumn morning, when 13 were killed and another 32 wounded. Except for roughly 5,500 soldiers, all those...
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