Survival

by Heath Hansen “I sent the grids; we’ll be heading out by noon on Thursday,” Tim Foley informs me over the phone, before I hit the road. Foley is a grizzled former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division, and leader of the volunteer group Arizona Border Recon (AZBR). For more than a …

Specialist Ezra Maes and his two armor crew teammates were jolted awake by their M1A2 Abrams tank as it rolled downhill at nearly 90 mph with them inside. The sheer force of the vehicle hitting an embankment threw Maes from his position, and his right leg was immediately pinned down …

by Marvin J. Wolf, The War Horse On the third day of a weeklong field exercise at Fort Lewis, our company XO drove me back to the garrison for an appointment to fit me for a temporary dental prosthesis. Afterward, he picked me up and we headed back out to …

by Jose Campos Turns out it’s okay to eat TNT – if you’re a starfish. The Baltic Sea is a war grave. Rusted shells, V-1 flying bombs, chemical caches, unexploded munitions – the relics of two world wars – litter the seafloor. They are toxic, deadly, abandoned, and now, astonishingly, …

by Fred Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) The pilot in command reached up and grasped the rescuer’s shirt. “Hey asshole,” he growled. “That’s not what you say to the ones you are trying to help!” The medevac mission had ended, and the burn patient was dropped off successfully at the hospital. …

by Martin Kufus Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from  Plow the Dirt but Watch the Sky, a memoir by Martin Kufus, a former editor at Soldier of Fortune. This chapter shows Martin’s experience at the Special Forces SERE Instructor Qualification Course, where he encountered the legendary Col. Nick Rowe – …

Soldier of Fortune In a daring mid-winter mission, a Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130J Hercules crew braved total darkness, ice, and sub-zero temperatures to rescue three Americans from Antarctica’s remote McMurdo Station. One American required urgent medical care, while two others needed medical assistance. Officials did not disclose the …

Deep in the jungle, there’s no medevac, no backup, and no room for mistakes. At the Marine Corps Jungle Warfare Training Center, instructors teach Navy corpsmen to be the light in a dark time. For 10 relentless days, they learn to survive, treat the wounded, and move through terrain that wants …

by Martin Kufus Author Martin Kufus was a volunteer firefighter in Texas, and participated in disaster ops there. He embarked on a tense mission in 1998, after flash floods wreaked havoc along the southern border. The following is based on a chapter from his book, Plow the Dirt but Watch the …

One of the rules in the Yukon Territory is that hunting guides must always be within hearing distance of their hunters. This is a good rule, as we soon shall see.  It was the first day of an early September expedition when hunting guide David O’Farrell brought an archery hunter …