Breaking News

Tag Archives: Featured

Scam at 17,000 Feet: The Helicopter Rescue Racket Inside Nepal

Investigators say false emergencies in the Himalayas had little to do with survival. by Gatimu Juma The radio call came in around noon from the approach to Everest Base Camp in Nepal. The tour guide spoke in urgent, desperate tones. A trekker was down. He was a British man in …

Read More »

The Guns of 1916: Ireland’s Easter Rising Was Fought With Smuggled Rifles, Stolen Revolvers, and Improvised Weapons

by Susan Katz Keating The Asgard came in low, riding heavier than it should have for a vessel of its size. Below deck, rifles were stacked four feet high. The ship sailed into Dublin Bay, through one of the most consequential gun-running lanes in modern military history.  THE ARMS SITUATION …

Read More »

Silenced in the Streets: What the No Kings Protests Left Behind

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 »

How Gas Masks Evolved From Trenches of WWI

Since its development during the First World War, the military gas mask has turned into the modern-day respirator. But what the steps did it take along the way? The advent of chemical warfare saw the German army deploy chlorine gas against British soldiers at Ypres, killing more than 1,000 troops and injuring over …

Read More »