The Fire Pit

MOVIE REVIEW by Navy SEAL Commander Dan O’Shea (ret) Editor’s note: The newly released WARFARE follows a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission gone wrong in November 2006, during a battle against insurgents in Ramadi Province, Iraq. The film from A24 is based on true events. It …

Book Review by Heath Hansen John Lechner’s Death is Our Business is an intense, no holds barred journey through the history of the most notorious Private Military Companies (PMC) in the world. Yevgeny Prigozhin, once a small time criminal, selling hot-dogs on a street corner and in time growing his …

by Hooligan I hoped to shoot the first VC I saw who poked his head over the wall, and at least get his AK to defend myself.  All this while the enemy machine guns were firing and mortars going off. It started out as just another boring Ash & Trash …

by David Chetlain, The War Horse In spring 1987, the Soviet Union launched Operation Atrina, scrambling five Victor III-class submarines from their Kola base that raced toward U.S. Naval installations along the Atlantic coast. The USSR claimed its submarines were undetected. It was a lie then and it remains a …

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 …

by Heath Hansen It was 0530 hours the morning our first sergeant kicked open the door to our tent, and told us to “get the fuck outside and form it up!” Late the previous night, we returned to base from a 10-day mission in Afghanistan. I could see through a …

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 Susan Katz Keating The portrait of a military working cat is part of a display honoring police dogs at the Pentagon. The portrait, a dignified portrayal of “Minou,” shows the gray tabby wearing a collar with a badge labelled “Feline Unit.” The badge contains the image of a paw. The …

BOOK REVIEW by Ric Prado As an avid reader and now a New York Times Bestselling author of Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior, I have learned to truly enjoy historical fiction. These are most often stories based on real life experiences, composed to both instruct and …

by Cliff Wade It was the kind of place where a man earned his name on a bracelet for all eternity.  Iraq, September 2007 In an attempt to win over hearts and minds, we would sometimes be tasked with delivering humanitarian assistance (HA) to local villages or neighborhoods. We would …