by Austin Lee In the pre-dawn haze of June 13, 1933, a quiet field near Magenta, Italy erupted into chaos. A bell-shaped craft, 10 meters wide, tore through the night sky. Its metallic hull glowed like molten starlight before slamming into the Earth and leaving a smoldering crater. Locals whispered …
Read More »War Predators in Ukraine: They Come to Study the Killing Fields
by Susan Katz Keating China and other foreign actors are using Ukraine as a testbed, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets to gather real-time data on drones, intelligence sources told Soldier of Fortune. The grainy figures moved across the screen, creeping through murky terrain like shadows come to life. A blip …
Read More »The Warning: Fancy Bear, Boston, and Bombs in the Hedgerows
by Susan Katz Keating The investigation into Fancy Bear and Boston’s hidden seams continued with a meeting, a sealed envelope, and an old warning from Northern Ireland. It’s not a bomb. It can’t be a bomb. I stood by the window, watching the envelope from across the room. It lay …
Read More »In Iraq, We Rolled In to Feed the Village – and Everything Was Oddly Quiet
by Cliff Wade It was the kind of place where a man earned his name on a bracelet for all eternity. Iraq, September 2007 In an attempt to win over hearts and minds, we would sometimes be tasked with delivering humanitarian assistance (HA) to local villages or neighborhoods. We would …
Read More »The Warning: Fancy Bear and the Boston Pattern
by Susan Katz Keating It wasn’t the bombs that kept bringing me back. It was the warnings. “It’s an old story,” I said. “It’s not.” He wasn’t arguing. He was correcting. “The Boston office is working it,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m telling you.” We had been talking for 20 …
Read More »The War After the War: Vietnam Veterans Won the Fight at Home
by Susan Katz Keating The war did not end when Saigon fell. It moved home, where those who fought in the jungles, skies, and waters of Southeast Asia reshaped American law, medicine, and culture. Fifty-one years ago today, the last American helicopters lifted off a rooftop in Saigon. The war …
Read More »Massacre at Bien Hoa: These Americans Were the First to Die at War in Vietnam
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. …
Read More »‘The Deer Hunter’ Came to Town on a Cold Night in Denver
Depressed over the April 30, 1975 fall of Saigon, this Army veteran went to see a new movie. by Jack Hawkins Released in Los Angeles in 1978, The Deer Hunter was already becoming a legendary film by the time it hit “flyover country” a few months later. I was between …
Read More »Captured in the Desert: A Soldier’s Misfortune With the French Foreign Legion in Algeria
The French Foreign Legion these days is more exclusive than it used to be. If there is an Interpol notice against you, for example, you won’t get through the gate. A century ago, however, a man who wanted to escape his past and assume a new identity could disappear into …
Read More »Rangers in the Congo: A Deadly Fight Against Mai Mai Militiamen
by Heath Hansen Everything became eerily still, until… it blinked. “ENEMY!” Fils screamed. Then all hell broke loose. The sun was just setting on the thick canopy of trees and bushes surrounding their position. It was a long day of humping through the dense growth; but it had been productive. …
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Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers

