by Greg Chabot For Halloween, Greg Chabot leads us down the rabbit hole in search of the legendary Giants of Afghanistan. So gather ’round in the dark and hold your flashlights under your chins, while Greg tells the tales. ~SKK Throughout history there have been phenomena and sightings of things …

by David Chetlain, The War HorseI spent 18 months in training before reporting to my first submarine. I learned a lot about damage control, sonar, electronics, and how to distinguish a sperm whale from a humpback whale. But nothing prepared me for the disconnection from Earth that distorted my perception …

Specialist Ezra Maes and his two armor crew teammates were jolted awake by their M1A2 Abrams tank as it rolled downhill at nearly 90 mph with them inside. The sheer force of the vehicle hitting an embankment threw Maes from his position, and his right leg was immediately pinned down …

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 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 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 Jose Campos Explosions ripped through the Baltic Sea in 2022, far from any battlefield, silencing pipelines that carried Russian gas to Germany. Beneath the waves, vital arteries of energy and communication had been transformed into weapons. A Ukrainian man, identified only as Serhii K., is suspected of orchestrating the …

by Royce de Melo Some meters ahead of me on the left side of the street, two soldiers armed with M16 A1/A2 rifles approach a young man. He definitely caught their attention. As the soldiers in El Salvador calmly walk up to him, the man stops and puts down the …

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. …