Ethan E. Rocke is a senior editor for Coffee or Die. Born in Los Angeles and raised in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, he is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning photographer and filmmaker in Portland, Oregon. He served as an infantryman with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, deploying once to Kosovo for peacekeeping operations. After leaving the Army, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a “storyteller of Marines,” serving in Okinawa and the Asia-Pacific region with III Marine Expeditionary Force and at the Marine Corps Motion Picture and Television Liaison Office in Los Angeles, where he served as a consultant on dozens of television shows and documentaries and several feature films. His work has been published in Maxim Magazine, American Legion Magazine and many others. He is co-author of “The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper’s True Account of the Battle of Ramadi.”
“When you get good at doing hard things, it makes life a lot more rewarding.” That’s the idea upon which former Green Beret Jason McCarthy built GORUCK, the business that began as a startup backpack company at the height of the 2008 financial ...
The Afghan National Army is looking for a few good men. You may have heard that the US is, once again, playing the "should I stay or should I go" game in Afghanistan, so the ANA has an urgent need to fill its ranks and beef up its forces — perhaps ...
In a small ceremony aboard Camp Pendleton, 10 Reconnaissance Marines made history Friday, becoming the first graduates of the Marine Corps’ new Reconnaissance Sniper Course (RSC) and earning the title Recon Sniper. Marine leaders at Camp ...
The commanding officer of the California-based Marine expeditionary unit that suffered the deaths of nine members during an amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) training mishap last summer was removed from his post Tuesday, Marine officials announced in ...
"My mother was a patriot. She was proud to have served in the Marines," Stephanie Gilliard-Sheard says in an interview, describing Sgt. Annie Graham, the first African American woman in the Marine Corps. "She was courageous to decide to go and do ...
Considered the most advanced attack helicopter in the Army’s arsenal, the AH-64 Apache has racked up 4.2 million flight hours and counting since Boeing delivered the aircraft in 1984. “This is the most survivable safest aircraft in the Army’s ...
Yesterday, Coffee or Die Magazine broke the story that the Marines have developed a new course to train snipers for the Corps’ elite Reconnaissance units. That means we can now reveal that Coffee or Die staffers have been embedded with the Marines ...
Marines in the service’s elite Reconnaissance community have developed a new training course to develop snipers for the Corps’ Reconnaissance units, Coffee or Die Magazine has learned. “Recon Marines understand the importance of being a sniper and ...
As I leaned in to shake retired Col. Dave E. Severance’s hand, the small white shapes polka-dotting his navy-blue tie came into clear relief as the iconic image of Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. When we met in 2002, Severance was in ...
It was around dawn on Feb. 19, 2012, when the phone rang in an apartment in Oceanside, California, rousting retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr. from a deep sleep. Capers looked for the sound, his 73-year-old brain still soaked ...
“Bullets don’t have no color,” says Master Gunnery Sgt. John Spencer, recalling the history of the Black Marines who blazed a path toward equal treatment long before President Harry Truman desegregated the US military in 1948. Spencer is one of ...
Last week, I traveled to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego to document the arrival and start of recruit training for the first platoon of female recruits ever to train at the West Coast installation. In a way, the assignment was a homecoming. I ...
Around 2:30 p.m. Friday, the women of Platoon 3241, Lima Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, moved into their squad bay aboard Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and met their drill instructors for the first time. The recruits of Platoon ...
In a historic first for the Marine Corps, 60 female recruits stepped off buses and onto the iconic yellow footprints alongside hundreds of male recruits in front of the receiving barracks at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego on Tuesday. The ...
Kevin “Dauber” Lacz was a new-guy Navy SEAL sniper on his first deployment to Iraq when he served alongside Chris Kyle as one of the infamous "Punishers" of Cadillac Platoon, Task Unit Bruiser, in the 2006 Battle of Ramadi. Kyle, whose teammates in ...
On Thursday, the Camp Lejeune-based 8th Marine Regiment became the latest Marine Corps unit to case its colors and deactivate. The 2nd Marine Division unit joined a still-growing list of Marine units that have been deactivated as part of Marine ...
United States Marine Corps Scout Snipers are legendary for their tactical proficiency, physical and mental toughness, and extraordinary abilities as reconnaissance and surveillance professionals and force multipliers on the battlefield. Unlike ...
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Monday overturning the Trump administration's ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. The executive order immediately prohibits discharges and denials of reenlistment or continuation of ...
Some American veterans can receive the COVID-19 vaccine even if they don’t qualify under one of the high-risk or priority categories, according to Veterans Health Administration officials. In light of certain constraints of the available vaccines, ...
Marine Corps scout snipers are legendary for their tactical proficiency, physical and mental toughness, and extraordinary abilities as reconnaissance and surveillance professionals and force multipliers on the battlefield. Intelligence, extreme ...
When a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol building Jan. 6, conservative hip-hop artists Christopher “Topher” Townsend and The Marine Rapper (TMR) were a mile away on stage at a Veterans for Trump rally, ...
The more than 25,000 National Guard soldiers that have deployed to Washington, DC, to bolster security for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony Wednesday are operating under stringent rules for the use of force. Coffee or Die Magazine ...
After a mob of rioters dragged him out of the west front entrance and onto the steps of the US Capitol building Jan. 6, DC Police Officer Mike Fanone thought he was going to die. As the angry crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters dragged ...
On Wednesday — the same day the House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump for the second time, the president put out a video message via the White House’s official Twitter account, condemning the violent attack on the Capitol and ...
After retired Navy SEAL Adam Newbold bragged Jan. 6 in a since-deleted Facebook video about rioters breaching the Capitol, the FBI reached out to him with questions. “There was destruction breaching the Capitol, our building, our house,” Newbold ...
In the wake of last week’s violent assault on the US Capitol, the nation’s top military leaders put out an unambiguous message to military members: President-elect Joe Biden will become the commander-in-chief Jan. 20, and “any act to disrupt the ...
The 33-year-old costumed man who became a viral sensation after images spread in news reports of his participation in the siege of the US Capitol Jan. 6 is a Navy veteran, according to Military.com. Arizona resident Jacob Anthony Chansley, who ...
The Army’s 1st Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is investigating the involvement of a Fort Bragg-based soldier in the Jan. 6 rally in Washington during which a mob of rioters breached the US Capitol. Capt. Emily Rainey, a ...
As 2020 came to an end, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston reached out on Instagram for help improving leadership and morale going forward. “Seeing a lot of pages on here that don’t seem to think we are talking to or actually caring about our ...
Most days, Marine veteran Jake Cowan proudly displays the American flag on his favorite camouflage ball cap. The day after protesters clashed with police and stormed the US Capitol building, Cowan turned his flag patch upside down. “Yeah ... yeah ...
