Thousands of military families rely on food pantries to meet basic needs.

This month, the U.S. military announced the Air Force had delivered more than 110,000 meal rations to stranded Yazidi refugees in Iraq. Also this month, a new report found the nation’s food pantries serve 620,000 families with a member in the military.

The stunning figure, which represents roughly a quarter of the households of military members on active duty, the Reserves or National Guard, shows that even as the U.S. purports to wind down its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and soldiers return to civilian life, they are resettling into a hostile economic climate, on a precarious landscape of joblessness and debt.

The data comes from an extensive quadrennial report published by Feeding America, a national network of tens of thousands of food aid groups and programs. The study also found one-fifth of the households served by the food pantry network had a member involved with the armed forces, either currently serving or a veteran.

Feeding America spokesperson Maura Daly tells The Nation the numbers reflect trends that local partner organizations have been observing. “What we’re seeing in the data… is indicative of many working poor families in America, where one income is supporting an entire household and multiple needs,” Daly says. For the client population generally, over half the households served have at least one member who is employed, yet nearly three-quarters live in poverty. They’re caught in a knot of impossible choices: As they stretched their monthly budgets, about two-thirds were torn between paying for either utilities or for food, or food and medical care.

For military families, constantly moving from station to station may feed into the hardships undergirding food insecurity, especially if families end up stuck in, say, a more expensive city, and struggle to secure a long-term job. (Military spouses typically suffer higher unemployment rates and earn less than non-military peers, according to federal surveys.)

The Pentagon has disputed Feeding America’s methodology, suggesting its statistical definition of military households was imprecise, but everyday tales of wrenching family struggle keep bubbling to the surface.

Mike Hernandez, a 37-year-old veteran in San Antonio who left the Navy in 2006, tells NBC News that after struggling with PTSD disability and chronic unemployment, with three young daughters to feed, he reluctantly resorted to the food pantry: “It’s pure embarrassment. I hate it. I hate to say it, but it makes you feel like you’re begging for food.”

With so many risks weighing on low-income military families, not even a decent meal can be taken for granted. Soldiers are no more deserving of basic food security than anyone else, of course – no one should have to suffer food insecurity. But it’s tragic that so many people commissioned to secure the country must fight for survival in their own communities.

MICHELLE CHEN is a contributing editor at In These Times and associate editor at CultureStrike.