Category: War Stories

Back home I kept checking my watch as if Iraq still owned my hours, wrestling to set down anger and pride so I could ask the only question that matters: what moral ground must we stand on before we spend blood again.

Russia’s war in Kherson has descended into a sport of civilian hunting; a moral collapse broadcast online for the world to ignore.

Writing is the long, bloody slog between inspiration and execution, but when it hits—when the scene fires clean—it’s like kicking in a door and finding the whole damn world on the other side.

Homecoming is the quiet recognition that we were never apart, that in the trials and the light alike we move within the same divine pulse binding my family, my service, and the turning of the galaxies.

When the guns pause and the ash settles, the men who learned to live at the zero line will drift outward like sparks on the wind, carrying paid skills, unpaid debts, and a quiet promise that the war is not finished with us yet.

In seventeen days of September 1918, Frank Luke burned a path across the Meuse, torching hydrogen dragons under flak and fighters, dropping three more in flames on his last mission, and dying with a .45 in his hand.

At one point during the service, a friend led Hawkeye, JT’s faithful chocolate Lab, to the military casket sat draped with its American flag.

As the steppe turns to mud and the skies to low cloud, Russia trades men for meters while Ukraine adapts, holds its hubs, and waits for the freeze.

In McGarvey’s, the jukebox glowed like a field altar, each slot a dog tag on a guitar string, and Marcus realized the living keep the dead in tune.

I didn’t teach Kamal to swim; I taught him to harness fear until it pulled him across ten feet of water like a tide he commanded.

When the line broke at Unsan, Father Emil Kapaun moved toward the fire, pulled the wounded to life, and showed men that leadership starts at the point of impact.

Visualizing what life will look and feel like after you do something is a powerful experience. I wanted that T-shirt.