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 …
Read More »When Things Went Wrong On the Road to Al Asad
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 …
Read More »Extortion 17: Raise a Glass to Those Lost, and Continue Looking for Answers
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 …
Read More »A Contractor Heads Back Into the Fray: ‘I Went to Touch the Elephant’
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 …
Read More »‘T is For Trinity’: A Visit to the Real Life A-Bomb Site Depicted in Oppenheimer Film
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 …
Read More »Death From Above: When the Medevac Huey Crashed Hard in Alabama
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. …
Read More »When ‘Concrete Bob’ Kicked the Ghouls Off the Front Gate at Walter Reed 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 …
Read More »A Winning Documentary: The Life of CIA Shadow Warrior Ric Prado
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 …
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 »Legendary Pararescueman Wayne Fisk Receives Prestigious ‘Bull Simons’ Award
During his 27 years in the Air Force, Chief Master Sergeant Wayne Fisk took part in some of the most daring and critical missions of his time. As an elite pararescueman (PJ), he was involved in the raid on Son Tay Prisoner of War camp in North Vietnam, for which …
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