The Fire Pit

Editor’s note: Retired Green Beret Greg Walker has joined the Soldier of Fortune team as Contributing Editor for Veterans Issues. Here is the next installment of Greg’s column, VetCare 2023. Greg begins with the thoughts of a Nez Perce elder, and interweaves this warrior’s observations throughout. VetCare 2023 by Greg …

by Tim Patterson, The War HorseIn the moments immediately after the collision—after an alarm had sounded at 2 a.m.; after the boat had rocked violently to starboard, rolling 45 degrees and back again; after many of USS Philadelphia’s sailors were thrown from their beds; after a DVD player had flown …

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. …

by Susan Katz Keating In retrospect, it seems fitting that I met Viktor Belenko in Reno. He was a gambler hanging out in a gambling town, surrounded by pilots in their fast moving aircraft, barreling wildly around pylons. I went there many years back, looking for stories to be found …

by Ed Meagher, The War Horse When I returned from Vietnam in February of 1969 I had a bad attitude—a very bad attitude. I joined the Air Force to escape college and a broken heart (another story entirely). It turned out that the discipline, order, and focus the Air Force …

by Greg Chabot The Left Right Left podcast is a new program hosted by retired Marine SGM Marc Chabot – who happens to be my brother. He started this project with the goal of helping and inspiring others. In this intense three-part episode on the 20-year anniversary of the battle …

by Carl Hancocks For the past four years, the city of Agadez has been what could barely pass as home for a woman without a name. Nigerian, she fends for herself as a sex-worker, but that was not how she arrived in this place. Her story is that of a …

Editor’s note: Retired Green Beret Greg Walker has joined the Soldier of Fortune team as Contributing Editor for Veterans Issues. Today is the second installment of Greg’s column, VetCare 2023. VetCare 2023 by Greg Walker, U.S. Army Special Forces (ret) I worked at the Portland VA hospital with the Operation …

by Fred A. Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) “I just got shot in the head!” It was September 25th, 2006, and we weren’t in the country for over a month, and one of our own, Sergeant Don Morgan, got hit. It was just another day in Iraq, hot and hazy, and …

by Jan Scruggs As you readers may know, I started what is now known as The Wall.  The wall gets 5 million visitors a year, according to the National Park Service.  The idea was not complex. We would get a site and build a memorial engraved with the names of “..the men …