Category: War Stories

The legend of Grigori Rasputin, commonly referred to as simply, “Rasputin,” has a significant reach.  Even before I was aware of the tsarist government in Russia that allowed his rise to power, before I know who Tsar Nicholas II was, pop-culture had left me acutely aware of the Russian mystic that proved so difficult to […]

Although immensely popular elsewhere in the globe, rugby didn’t start gaining any real traction in the United States until fairly recently.  It’s similarities to some of American’s favorite sports, namely football and soccer, may have kept many from embracing what seems like a brutal bastardization of the two – but I think it has more […]

When I was a kid, my dad didn’t talk much about Vietnam.  I knew that he served as a combat medic, and thanks to his customary plastic bottle of Black Velvet after dinner, I heard him mention the horror and trauma associated with treating American soldiers that had been caught in napalm strikes once or […]

Flying over Panjwai in early March was an apocalyptic image. No signs of vegetation or life, just barren fields for miles, consisting of deep farm rows, bordered by thick mud walls, with grape huts jutting out unnaturally from the landscape every few hundred meters. When I landed at VSP (Village Stability Platform) Belambai, the ODA […]

Read Part One here. Rumors were going around within a week of being on the job that we were deploying to Afghanistan that winter, only four months away. Right before we loaded up for a month-long rotation to the National Training Center (NTC), it came down the pipe that our battalion would be given the […]

“Wait…you were his platoon leader?” I’ve received this particular question probably about a hundred times over the last five years, and roughly 95% of the time, it’s followed by a particular look of recognition, doubt, and horror, all combined into one washing over the asker’s face. As I recall the details of the story, and […]

I am located on Kandahar Air Field (KAF). KAF is the biggest military base in Afghanistan. Coalition forces include: Romanians, French, Canadians, Dutch/Netherlands, and United States. The majority of soldiers here are U.S. military. I have learned during my experiences from traveling in desolate places that it greatly benefits you to make friends quickly. My […]

We have been sitting inside this hot and smelly van for almost six hours, we were waiting for the green light to go into one of the towns in the West Bank and snatch a leader from a local terrorist cell. All of us were ready to explode, summers in Israel are hot. 110+ hot […]

(Cover photo: my good bud Robert Horrigan, KIA in Iraq) Close Quarters Battle (CQB), or Close Quarters Combat (CQC) is to the effect about 75% (maybe higher) testicles, and then 25% technique. I don’t like to over complicate things, especially CQB, one of the most absolutely horrifying things a human may ever do. It is […]

Has anyone else picked up on how every movie portrayal of Special Operations personnel that they always got our guys wearing a kafiya?  You know those local neck scarves that they sell in the souk but people don’t actually wear that often in the Middle East?  The look has become so ubiquitous that I’ve even seen […]

Check out this excerpt from “Never Quit” by Jimmy Settle, former Pararescueman.  Chapter 9 Operation Green Feet For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to jump out of an airplane. It was the parachute on the PJ logo that initially caught my eye. The para in “pararescue” puts parachuting right in the […]

From former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb’s memoir, a New York Times Best Seller, The Red Circle. I was just finishing my platoon training at SEAL Team 3 and was trying to keep a secret…it didn’t work out very well for me. Enjoy… Probably the most memorable “training” I received during the entire eighteen months of […]