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 …

An American multi-purpose canine (MPC) Belgian Malinois was honored for heroism under fire while serving four tours of duty with the U.S. Marine Corps.  Shimanski was deployed to Jordan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia during his seven-year career and received the Animals in War and Peace Medal of Bravery for his service, an …

by Austin Lee It was one of the ballsiest clandestine ops in history: Project Azorian, the CIA mission to snatch a Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean’s crushing depths. The haul from the Golf-II-class K-129 was a priceless score for the Americans. The mission also prompted a rare act of …

by Marvin J. Wolf, The War Horse On the third day of a weeklong field exercise at Fort Lewis, our company XO drove me back to the garrison for an appointment to fit me for a temporary dental prosthesis. Afterward, he picked me up and we headed back out to …

By Heath Hansen We entered the base between the HESCO barriers covered in concertina razor-wire, unprepared for a betrayal from one of our supposed allies. On November 9, 2005, as the convoy snaked its way into the safety of the base walls, I could see Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers …

by Jose Campos Turns out it’s okay to eat TNT – if you’re a starfish. The Baltic Sea is a war grave. Rusted shells, V-1 flying bombs, chemical caches, unexploded munitions – the relics of two world wars – litter the seafloor. They are toxic, deadly, abandoned, and now, astonishingly, …

by Greg Chabot Editor’s note: This story contains some very raw, violent material that could bring readers back to their own stark experiences at war. ~SKK It had been quiet in Baqubah with some IEDs going off and some occasional small arms fire in the city. This was about to …

by Hooligan I wasn’t sure the man was real. Was he a hunter? The hunted? Out there in the woods, I was starving and on the brink of hallucination, so it could have been Bigfoot himself, for all I knew. When a man gets desperate, the thought of a good …

by Marvin J. Wolf Tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, with a full head of white hair, Brig. Gen. John M. Wright Jr. scrambled up a termite mound, some 30 feet wide at the base and seven or eight feet high, and gestured for us to draw into a semicircle. “Gentlemen, I give …

by Austin Lee The prototype 6.02×41 isn’t just a cartridge – it’s Russia’s middle finger to NATO’s gear grind. The Russians are at it again. Their new 6.02x41mm prototype is designed to punch through NATO body armor like paper – a modern evolution of the infamous 5.45x39mm “poison bullet” that …