by Fred A. Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) The departure point was LZ Washington in downtown Baghdad, which stayed busier than the Atlanta airport. The pilot in command was a Chief Warrant 4 who was well-trained in his aviation duties. He saw a convoy of five U.S. army vehicles come under …
Read More »SEALs in Vietnam: The Bitter Loss of a Friend at War
by Capt. Larry Bailey, USN (Ret) As recounted in the average personal memoir, war is most frequently depicted in combinations of heroic actions, cowardly misdeeds, triumphs of the human spirit, and the like. It ain’t always so, however; fact is, much of war is not dramatic – it’s just sad, …
Read More »‘The Mother’: A Soldier’s Haunting Encounter in Iraq
by Cliff Wade Iraq, 2006 We found ourselves in the home of an Iraqi family during a massive clearing operation in an area characterized by terrain varying between urban landscape, farmland, palm groves, and small villages. We had been clearing routes of improvised explosive devices all morning. We had been …
Read More »We Worked Through the Night to Fix a Helicopter Engine Sensor – and Then Came the Crash
by Brian Dykeman, The War Horse The funny thing about memories is that your brain will let most of them drift off into a place where they only make an appearance if you see a picture, smell a smell, or if a certain song comes on the radio. Then there …
Read More »Psychedelic Therapy: These Combat Veterans Say It Turned Their Lives Around
by Greg Chabot Politicians have no clue what the true cost of war is. For more than 20 years, warfighters have been deployed to hot spots around the world in the fight against terrorism. We now have an entiregeneration of warfighters who have known nothing but combat deployments. This takes …
Read More »The Enemy Lay Bleeding in Iraq – and the Spanish Photographer Was Watching Our Every Move
by Cliff Wade Iraq, 2007 Every now and again we’d get an outsider attached to our unit on missions. Sometimes they were enablers who proved to be assets, other times they were regarded as interlopers who got in the way. One such instance sticks out in my mind over others: …
Read More »You Shot Down a Spy Balloon? Here, Hold My Beer: A Pilot’s Story
by Mitchell “Taco” Bell So you shot down a spy balloon, huh? Here, hold my beer… Somewhere back in 2002, I was flying from LGA to Toronto Canada on the daily shuttle in the F-100 Fokker Barbie Jet. It was a typical cold rainy and miserable winter time day in …
Read More »At War in Iraq, I Faced One Last Incident Before I Went Home
by Greg Chabot The beginning of February 2005 was a busy time in Baqubah. Insurgent activity had picked up considerably, keeping all of us at the Police HQ on our toes. With the end of the deployment coming, I had tried multiple times to extend my tour but was denied. …
Read More »The Bachelor Party: A Marine Raced Against Time to Detach a Stripper From His Camaro
by Al Hagan In the early 1980s, I was in the Marine Corps, and a friend of mine who had gone into the Armywas getting married. We’d grown up together, and so I and others – lots of military – journeyedback home for the occasion. Naturally, this required a combination …
Read More »The Dark Side of a Soldier: A Battle Buddy Remembers a Fallen Friend
by Fred A. Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) My wife and I decided that we were due for a much-needed vacation. Our home was less than a three-hour drive to the beach; that was the destination we were headed for. As we were driving, I received an unexpected phone call from …
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