War

by Alex Quade Diyala Province, Iraq — Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (A-Team) 072 rolled into the village. It was dead quiet. Nothing moved. Suddenly, “squirters”—people running away from the village and cars leaving at a high rate of speed. Clearly, something of interest was in that village. A-Team Commander …

by Jose Campos They knew the enemy was coming. On that day in March 1971, Army 1st Lt. Brian Miles Thacker and his seven-man team braced for the inevitable. But when the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their assault, it was not a question of whether the firebase would fall …

by Martin Kufus If Hezbollah’s rocket barrages into northern Israel seem to be a recent phenomenon, they aren’t. As former Soldier of Fortune magazine editor Martin Kufus writes, deadly cross-border attacks from southern Lebanon began decades ago. The following is an excerpt from chapter “L is for Lebanon” of his nonfiction book. Despite …

Trench fortifications, reminiscent of World War One, have become an integral part of the war in Ukraine. Both sides have dug vast networks of fortifications, signaling to Western forces that the old style warfare is very much in play. In the United Kingdom, British forces have dug a series of …

by Mark Krutov, RFE/RL The elderly and sick died quietly. Crowded with hundreds of others held captive by Russian soldiers for four weeks in an airless, unsanitary school basement in Yahidne, a village in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine, the ill and the frail were particularly vulnerable. Several could …

Donald Raasch is one of the few men alive who fought in the fiercest battle in Marine Corps history. by Lance Cpl. David Brandes and Lance Cpl. Ethan Miller MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. – The corporal dragged his body up the obsidian sheet of sand speckled with other water-logged Marines. He clambered …

by Gatimu Juma The last anyone saw of Celestin Bakoyo and Elie Ngouengue, they were stepping into a police station in Bangui, in the Central African Republic. That was on January 24. Since then—nothing. No official charges, no explanations, just silence. And in a country where men vanish and never …

by Mohamed Olad Hassan Nearly 100 people were killed and up to 60 others wounded when members of the Islamic State terror group launched a deadly attack on a military base belonging to security forces from Somalia’s Puntland region, officials said Tuesday. At least 27 Puntland soldiers and more than 70 …

A look back at operations in Now Zad, Afghanistan. No jokes, no talking, just business. The stern-faced Marines in the six-wheeled armored vehicle, known as the “Cougar,” listened intently to the chatter over the radio. “The Afghan army just got their first kill in combat,” said a Marine on the …

The fight became a cauldron that forged both heroism and tragedy, and produced the first-ever video recording of actions that resulted in the posthumous Medal of Honor for one participant, Air Force Special Tactics Combat Controller John Chapman. In March 2002 a joint military operation was mounted to surround and …