by Susan Katz Keating The No Kings protests advocate for people who live on the margins. We found the ones they pushed aside. The bomb went off on a Saturday afternoon in a town center full of shoppers. Omagh. August 1998. Twenty-nine people and two unborn children who had nothing …
Read More »No Kings, No Credit: Lenin’s Old Playbook Gets a Reboot, Without the Byline
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating I’m told that Vladimir Lenin has been spotted again racing through American streets with fire in his eyes, trying to make it to the revolution – but they started without him. Poor Vlad. He dragged himself out of the mausoleum, dodged Teslas and taco trucks, only …
Read More »A Jeep, a Soldier, Some Booze, and One Very Rough Night in Camp
by James Woods Editor’s note: Reader James Woods sent this story about his father in law, who had an interesting time one night after dark during WWII. My father in law was assigned to the HQ company of an engineer unit as a driver during WWII. The unit was going …
Read More »Soldier of Fortune Was Forged in the Fires of Vietnam
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Fifty-plus years of Soldier of Fortune brings one question repeatedly to my inbox: Where did this all begin? The answer is not a mystery; it’s history. Soldier of Fortune grew from Vietnam, and its legacy still drives us today. To understand Soldier of Fortune, you have to …
Read More »We Knew They Weren’t Coming Back: Vietnam’s Brutal ‘9 Days in May’
by Susan Katz Keating“We weren’t Special Forces or Airborne. We were mostly just a bunch of draftee grunts who turned out to be damn good soldiers.” The soldiers proceeded cautiously through the jungle highlands west of Pleiku, near the Cambodian border, on the morning of May 18, 1967. The men …
Read More »Creating The Vietnam Wall Was ‘A Minor Miracle’: Jan Scruggs
by Jan Scruggs As you readers may know, I started what is now known as The Wall. The wall gets 5 million visitors a year, according to the National Park Service. The idea was not complex. We would get a site and build a memorial engraved with the names of “..the men …
Read More »Rhodesian Bush War: The Altena Farm Attack
In the predawn hours of 21 December 1972, a guerrilla unit cut the phone lines to the remote farmhouse. Then they attacked. by Gatimu Juma The night was quiet along the northeastern frontier of Rhodesia. Altena Farm, a tobacco property, lay near the Mozambique border, where far-flung farms were connected …
Read More »‘We Shoot Fascists’: A Soldier of Fortune Correspondent Was Threatened Before He Asked One Question
by Susan Katz Keating My correspondent called me from downrange on assignment in Minneapolis. I cut him off when I heard the threats. “Get out. Now,” I said. I am not printing his true name in this article. That decision is mine — one I made as his publisher, and …
Read More »Comrade Cup Shooting Match: Cold War Rifles Compete in Florida
by Austin Lee The word is out, and it’s moving through the ranks like a radio call in the dark. The first annual Comrade Cup is coming; a one-day shooting match celebrating the timeless battle rifles of the Eastern Bloc and their Western counterparts. On March 28, the rifles of …
Read More »‘You Think They’d Shoot Us Down for This?’ A Gulf War Refueling Gone Haywire
“Hey knucklehead. See these gold wings? I’m a God damn Naval Aviator. I know how to fly this plane.” by Mitchell “Taco” Bell Dear Gang, While I was channel surfing the other day, I stopped on a news clip about two battle groups in the Persian Gulf off the coast …
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