Category: War Stories

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told members of Congress this week in a letter that SFC Alwyn Cashe’s actions “merit the award of the Medal of Honor.”

You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face Ian Fleming the intelligence operative of World War II, and accomplished author of the James Bond series died on this day in 1964.   Fleming was nearly as fascinating a character as his James Bond alter ego. He […]

Warning, strong opinions expressed. Putting solid leadership and policy in place across American police departments seems like a good idea, rather than blanket defunding or taking away law enforcement’s right to serve and protect the public. I also believe in equality, and that one can support the movement of BLM and still support good first […]

William “Chief” Carlson came to Delta Force from one of the Green Beret groups around 1995. He was a Siksika warrior from the Blackfeet tribe of Montana. He was man whose reputation preceded him wherever he went in our community; no matter where you were at, there would be guys in your organization who had heard […]

You can read part II here. Chalks-02 and -03 were touched down with their assaulters already collapsing on Mullah Omar’s walled compound, where they quickly blew a large breach. Chalk-04 with the Falcon and his men had already slammed into the side of a mountain trying to evade ground fire en route to Gecko. Then […]

You can read part one here and part two here.  D-Day in Afghanistan! America’s first house-call after the 9-11 attack by extremist Islam. As with most countries that come to garner American G.I. contempt, the country was kindly awarded the nom de guerre “Asscrackistan” lest any of the G.I.’s be accused of any faux respect […]

Several years ago, I had just gotten out of the hospital after having my knee scoped — another wonderful reminder of the joys of carrying a rucksack with 100 lbs of “lightweight gear” around for years. A torn meniscus, all kinds of loose cartilage and junk floating around in there made Steve a very unhappy […]

Just a few days ago, Stavros did a great writeup on how conducting airborne operations in the Third World, with some of our partners and allies who aren’t very well trained, can be… interesting. Many of these soldiers had never even been around aircraft before joining the military, and most of those on their first […]

Read part I here. A few hours later we were allowed back onto the range, cleared hot to commence our night shoot. There was still fire in the valley and it had spread across the terrain, but it was considered under control. As before, we shot into the night, firing all of our weapons, including […]

It was Summer 2012, and I was in the Crewman Qualification Training (CQT) phase of the SWCC training pipeline. Part of CQT included going to Camp Pendleton, CA, to partake in two weeks of weapons training; the first week was dedicated to small arms and the second week to heavy weapons. The first week went […]

The officers ran into baggage claim and yelled, “run for your lives, there’s an active shooter in the terminal!” Talk about a wake-up call. I had just landed from France in Terminal 1 at JFK. It was the same year as the Paris attacks. Imagine the reaction of 400+ people from France and Germany flying […]

Sometimes it is weird how a picture or something you see on television can trigger a memory. The odd thing is that many times, these things can be totally unrelated to the memories that they trigger and yet, they all come back in a flash. And this one memory about being a student in the Special […]