The Fire Pit

by Susan Katz Keating “The Taliban are behind my door.” The whispered words came through the phone in the pitch of night, hours after Kabul fell on August 15, 2021. My friend “Hakim,” a man I had been trying from afar to help leave Afghanistan, called me from inside his …

by Harry Ramsbottom In late October 2005, my team and I had been dropped off in a terrible little place on the Baghdad-to- Amman highway called Ar Rutbah, to coordinate supply convoys coming out of Jordan with the Marines who controlled this sector. The convoys mostly carried fuel and supplies …

by Susan Katz Keating Twelve years ago today, 30 American military servicemen and a U.S. military working dog were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, was shot down in Afghanistan. Within hours of this shocking event, I began searching for whatever I could learn, for an …

by Mitch “Taco” Bell Sometimes you never know who your neighbors are and I don’t mean that in the ax murderer scenario way, but in the sense that you have true heros hiding out in plain sight. Take Tommy King, for instance. One weekend we had a giant wind storm and …

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 …

  by Babatim  I couldn’t take being out of the game anymore, so off I went to touch the elephant. I had just cracked open the first beer of the afternoon when I heard the rockets coming in. Wise now to the ways of war I stayed in my lawn …

Summer moviegoers who are curious how the world became so dangerous might consider Hollywood’s big-screen depiction of the first A-bomb test in the new film Oppenheimer. A good portion of this movie is set at Trinity Site, a restricted area in New Mexico’s high desert. In his nonfiction book Plow …

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 Susan Katz Keating 2006 The traffic along Georgia Avenue going south was sparse throughout the stretch of Maryland road. The bus proceeded unhindered, ferrying wounded warriors strapped into gurneys or propped up with i.v. lines attached, and belted into seats. Many were profoundly changed men and women with missing …

Our friends at America TeVe have won a coveted award for their documentary about shadow warrior Ric Prado, a member of our board at Soldier of Fortune. Producer Miguel Cossio earned a Telly Award for “El Guerrero de las Sombras,” a narrative that traces Ric’s career and also highlights the …