Category: War Stories

Veteran humor Some people see that phrase, get all amped up and are ready to hear some sick, vulgar stuff. Things that will make most people’s stomach’s turn, but they roll over laughing their asses off.  Others, instead of rolling their asses, roll their eyes and think that dark humor is certainly not relegated to […]

I’m not a fan of Hollywood, their glorification of seemingly anyone for no particular reason, and I don’t like a good deal of their values. So forgive me for the tenuous link to the Marine Corps, which to me is represented by Camp Pendleton, approximately 70 miles South of Hollywood. Unfortunately, geography is not the […]

It was 2009 in Iraq when one of my teammates decided to initiate an impromptu combatives match with half of a SEAL platoon, never a great idea under any circumstances.  He was the senior Special Forces medic on our team and we had been doing some joint operations with a SEAL platoon in Mosul.  Now […]

Rapidly changing demographics across Africa will necessitate the addition of 11 million doctors, nurses, and educators by 2030 to prevent a widespread humanitarian disaster, particularly for children, according to a report published by UNICEF on Thursday. According to UN statistics, Africa as a whole is expected to gain 170 million children within the next 13 […]

London—Royal Marines break the speed march world record. A team of eight Royal Marine Commandos managed to cover the 26.2 miles distance in 4 hours 16 minutes and 43 seconds, breaking the previous record by two minutes.  Each man was carrying more than 40lbs.  And for the attempt to be valid, all the team members […]

“Want to see a dead person?” My translator casually asked me during my last day working at a rural medical clinic in Haiti after the quake. “How do you know he’s dead?” I asked seriously. My Haitian translator considered this question for a while, “Well… he isn’t moving much”. I booked it the half mile […]

Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz says that President Trump’s hard-line approach to Iran and the nuclear agreement signed by his predecessor is “historic” and “dramatic.” Katz — who has ambitions to become Israel’s next prime minister — compared the landmark nuclear accord reached in 2015 between Iran and world powers to a modern-day equivalent of the […]

One of my favorite aspects of Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down was the departure from unrealistically long machine gun bursts and grenades erupting into ridiculous fireballs, and a distinct lack of overly-dramatic crying and shaking of fists to the sky.  It has a visceral, primal tone to it as the quiet protagonists are firing single […]

“I always had good ideas – at least I thought they were very good ideas. And one day, walking out of my operations officer’s office, I noticed ‘chaos’ written on this whiteboard. I said, ‘What’s this about?’” James Mattis said before attendees at a recent conference. America’s Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, is perhaps the […]

On October 8, 1895, Empress Myeongseong was killed in her palace by assassins at the age of 43.  She was the empress to Emperor Gwangmu, ruler of the Kingdom of Joseon in modern-day Korea.  The empress had encouraged and fostered a relationship with the Russians, thereby stunting Japanese influence within Korea.  This was highly controversial, and […]

Being a Marine doesn’t mean the same thing for everybody.  Despite being the smallest military branch employed by the United States, a wide variety of occupational specialties, combat theaters, and operational requirements assures us all that our time in boots will be a unique conglomeration of pride and misery, custom tailored to fate and our […]

It was the second Monday of the eighth grade when terrorists came to my school and killed six people.  They came with AKs, fully expecting to slaughter as many children as they could. I was walking from a classroom to the library when the first shots went off.  My initial thought was that someone was […]