Category: War Stories

I missed my family terribly, yet as we set the conditions for others to carry on, I felt bound to Iraq by hard-won trust and wondered if leaving would betray the mission and the family of man we had become.

We hire writers who drop the truth like a breaching charge , then stand in the smoke and own it.

Marcus Luttrell was the lone survivor of Operation Red Wings, an operation that went sideways, resulting in the loss of 19 servicemembers.

On Saint Michael’s Day in Ramadi, Mike Monsoor chose the blast so his brothers could breathe, proof that character is built in quiet reps long before history calls your name.

A day after the Mogadishu firefight, Delta’s A Squadron lifted in to bolster a bloodied Task Force Ranger—17 Americans killed, 106 wounded, and Gary Gordon and Randall Shughart earning the Medal of Honor.

After the winter rains, the Shia south unfurled like a green flag—desert lakes flashing in the morning sun, children in new clothes racing our convoys, vendors offering kabobs, and every smile saying the same thing: Saddam is gone.

And now here I was, just days away from graduating boot camp, trying to figure out how the hell to get myself on the track to BUD/S.

The war of terror is not fought with bombs or bullets, but in the human heart, where fear seeks to claim ground that only we can choose to surrender.

When the courtyard turned into a killing ground at Baghdad Airport, Paul R. Smith climbed into the turret, took the fight on his shoulders, and made damn sure his men walked away alive.

Vegas may be a city that never sleeps, but that day, standing in front of Chainsaw with his broken cane and unwavering grin, I knew that some connections run deeper than any lights, noise, or the ghosts we carry in our heads.

Chainsaw took that round like he took everything in life—head-on, with a laugh and a quick curse, pushing forward while the rest of us wondered how he was still standing.

Years of envy and humiliation had hardened into a poverty of consciousness, where cruelty was mistaken for devotion and crime disguised itself as holy war.