Tag: Luke Ryan

Springville, Utah — It was 1:57 p.m. when a police officer (who has not been named) stopped to investigate a donation box used primarily to distribute food and supplies to those in need. A man named Paul Anderson got out of the box with his hands in his pockets. The officer directed the man to […]

“The greatest teacher, failure is,” said Yoda. Or if Winston Churchill is more your speed: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” When I was a gun team leader in the 3rd Ranger Battalion, I felt like I knew what I was doing. I struggled from switching from a position […]

The Burma/Myanmar government has officially denied the existence of the mass graves reported by the Associated Press recently. In a press release only accessible by the state-owned media organizations, officials said that they launched an investigation in Gutar Pyin and quickly found no such mass graves. Instead, the military says that they came into contact […]

It was February 3, 1780 out in rural Connecticut. Barnett Davenport, a veteran of the American revolution, beat a man and his wife to death, and then burned their home with their three grandchildren inside. The grisly homicides captivated the minds of a brand new America, horrified at the actions of one of their own. […]

Spc. Devin James Kuhn, 24, was killed after a shot was heard on Camp Rilea in Oregon. He was on the way to the Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria when he succumbed to his wounds. Right now, officials say that the shot was due to training, though the facts are still coming in and the investigation […]

I recently found myself traversing the American countryside once again, cruising 1,140 miles from Tampa, Florida to Gary, Indiana right up to Lake Michigan (pictured above). Travelling in this country has never ceased to amaze me — the seamless movement from state to state, the richness and variety of cultures in the peculiar corners of […]

What do you think of when you think of war music? Maybe you think of the civil war style snare drum with an accompanying trumpet, maybe you think of an orchestra of brass and strings that could be put to a war movie about brave soldiers in harrowing circumstances — there’s a good chance you […]

Memoirs are important for two reasons: for the author, so they don’t forget those precious details that threaten to get washed away with the waves of time; and to the public, who ought to know exactly what goes on. I hear complaints about the number of veterans writing memoirs, and I understand it, but the […]

Burma/Myanmar — Mrauk U is a town in eastern Burma, in northern Rakhine State, where the violence with the Rohingya has taken place in recent months (though Mrauk U has been largely spared, until now). Somewhere between hundreds and thousands (depending on who you talk to) gathered in the town in remembrance of the Kingdom […]

On Jan. 31, 1945, Pvt. Eddie Slovik, 24, was led out by an armed detachment in the late morning in eastern France. He wore his uniform, though it was stripped of all insignias, rank and other designations; a green military blanket was draped over his shoulders. The members from the 109th Regiment put a black […]

KSHB’s 41 Action News reported it first from Kansas City, Missouri. An organization by the name of the Veterans Community Project has made substantial progress in their latest endeavor: building 30 “tiny homes” for 30 homeless veterans. They have completed the first 13 and hope to move in homeless vets soon, and have now even […]

This isn’t a story about combat heroics. It’s just about doing what needs to be done, in the very essence of the phrase. It was the middle of the Afghan night; the air was hot and my sweat was cold, matting my clothes to my body under my kit. I breathed heavily as the NODs […]