War

by Ronald Winter, The War Horse Ask any Marine if they can remember the first day they actually became a Marine and you likely will be told it was boot camp graduation day. Whether it was Parris Island or San Diego, only when the senior officer in the graduation program proclaims the graduates …

by Susan Katz Keating “I lie awake at night, filled with regret. I deeply regret that my bombs didn’t kill more people.”  That’s what the so-called “Terror Priest,” Father Patrick Ryan, told me when I asked what he wanted people to know about him. A fierce Irish nationalist, he was …

by Susan Katz Keating The Soviets called it Chernaya Gora: Black Mountain. That is where a unit of elite Spetsnaz forces met their deaths in Afghanistan, atop a remote observation post overlooking Kunar. I learned about the treacherous place in 2015, while researching an article for the Army National Guard.  …

by Friedrich Seiltgen  During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force’s Forward Air Controllers (FACs) became critical to the war effort, serving as eyes on the battlefield and marking enemy targets. The overall mission began during World War II with Air Liaison Officers directing close air support from the ground …

by Susan Katz Keating America’s fight in Southeast Asia began before our country knew that a war was unfolding, on a single night when two men were the first to die by enemy fire in Vietnam. It happened on July 8, 1959, in Bien Hoa, some 20 miles outside Saigon. …

by Hooligan My logbook called it a routine troop lift. My gut told me otherwise. I was still green – a “Peter Pilot” in Army slang – flying right seat in a Huey. The Aircraft Commander sat to my left, cool and unshakable, though his name has long been lost …

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 Susan Katz Keating It was a horrific event in the annals of Naval Special Warfare. On Aug 6, 2011, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, was shot down in Afghanistan. In the process, 30 American military servicemen and a U.S. military working dog were killed. Within hours …

“Be ferocious in battle and magnanimous in victory.” The British Army’s Col. Tim Collins gave this eve-of-battle speech to 1 Batt., Royal Irish Regiment, on 19 March 2003, immediately before they went to war in Iraq. Men who were there say they never will forget it. “There may be people …

by Gene Pugh One of the darkest days in Special Forces history occurred on a summer morning in 1968 in Vietnam. In the early hours of Aug. 23, the Da Nang MACVSOG camp known as FOB4 was attacked by approximately 167 soldiers from the combined units of the 22nd VC …