Ethan E. Rocke is a contributor and former senior editor for Coffee or Die Magazine. Born in Los Angeles and raised in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, Ethan is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning photographer and filmmaker. He served as an infantryman with the 101st Airborne Division, deploying once to Kosovo for peacekeeping operations. After leaving the Army, he joined the US 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.”
Since President George W. Bush declared a Global War on Terror in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, three Marines have received the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. Two GWOT Marines earned the Medal of Honor for ...
Zachary Bell was nine months out of the Marine Corps the first time one of his veteran brothers took his own life in November 2011. Now, almost a decade later, the former infantry rifleman says he’s lost more people after war than he did during two ...
As the 245th Marine Corps birthday draws near, Gen. David H. Berger reminds us how the Corps' legacy lives on in every Marine. The inspiring video features Chief Warrant Officer 4 Hershel "Woody" Williams, who earned a Medal of Honor in World War II; ...
Tom Davin didn’t exactly need the job when he stepped up to lead Black Rifle Coffee Company alongside CEO Evan Hafer in January 2019. The former Marine reconnaissance officer and Harvard MBA took the position as co-CEO because, after three decades of ...
On the fifth and final day of the 2020 Lightning Challenge, Staff Sgts. Aaron Conway and Brandon Cooke of the 14th Air Support Operations Squadron out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, emerged victorious, earning top honors in the competition and the ...
On an exhausting day full of seemingly endless training tests stretched across miles of Texas Hill Country on the Reveille Peak Ranch, just 13 of the original 14 two-man TACP teams remained in the 2020 Lightning Challenge. After one team dropped from ...
Day 2 of the Lightning Challenge kicked off at 4 a.m. Tuesday under a blanket of bitter cold and darkness as 14 two-man teams of Tactical Air Control Party airmen heaved roughly 65-pound packs onto 7-ton trucks and headed for Fort Hood’s back ...
Move over, one-and-done AT4 launcher. The new and improved 84mm M3E1 Carl Gustaf Multi-Role Anti-Armor/Anti-Personnel Weapon System (MAAWS) will be the Army’s anti-armor weapon of choice in the future. The Army has awarded Swedish aerospace and ...
Thanks to new legislation signed into law Saturday, anyone distressed with thoughts of suicide will be able by next fall to dial 988 to reach a national crisis line similar to 911 for mental health emergencies. President Donald Trump on Saturday ...
You can learn a lot about war from books. While there are plenty of American veterans who might scoff at the idea that book learnin’ can effectively convey the experience of soldiering and combat, former US Secretary of Defense and decorated ...
The commander of a California-based Marine Corps unit that suffered the deaths of nine members during an amphibious assault vehicle training mishap July 30 has been removed from his post. Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, commanding general of I Marine ...
Twelve Naval Security Force (NSF) personnel involved in neutralizing a terror attack on Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in May were awarded for their lifesaving actions during a ceremony on the base Oct. 8. Acting Under Secretary of the Navy ...
Two Air Force pararescuemen assigned to the 48th Rescue Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor on Oct. 1 for missions supporting Army Special Forces teams in Afghanistan in 2019. Master Sgt. ...
On Oct. 12, 2000, al Qaeda terrorists carried out a suicide-bombing attack on the guided missile destroyer USS Cole (DDG 67) while the ship was refueling in Yemen’s Aden harbor. Seventeen US sailors were killed and dozens injured in the ...
In 2007, I drank cobra blood from the bloody stump of the snake’s neck, and now I’m invincible. At least the first part of that sentence is true. The rest is an embellishment on an ancient belief in some Asian cultures that consuming snake flesh ...
On a recent warm fall afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina, Stacy Pearsall struggled to wind herself down from the daily bustle of ranch life. Flustered from her regular stream of chores and nursing a broken hand for which she recently underwent ...
After rock god Eddie Van Halen died of cancer Tuesday, Army Staff Sgt. Austin West processed the loss of one of his musical influences in the best way possible — by strapping on his guitar and absolutely shredding through a tribute on Facebook. In a ...
Black Rifle Coffee Company founders Evan Hafer and Mat Best recently took a ride inside Joe Rogan’s “red pill” studio, appearing on the comedian’s massively popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. The JRE, which has 9.7 million subscribers and ...
Texas Rangers arrested a police officer from a small town northeast of Dallas and charged him with murder Monday in the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Jonathan Price, a Black man who was reportedly intervening in a dispute at a gas station. The ...
When Matthew Callahan was first introduced to the movie Top Gun at 2 years old, the film became an instant favorite. So when the award-winning video producer for the Navy’s All Hands Magazine was tasked with producing a series of videos for Naval ...
A body-camera recording obtained by The Associated Press caught a Louisiana State trooper talking about severely beating a Black man after a car chase in May 2019, the AP reported Thursday. The AP did not publish the 27-second audio clip, but it ...
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Doris “Dorie” Miller was serving aboard the USS West Virginia as a Navy mess attendant 2nd class when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. As his battleship was sinking, the powerfully built 22-year-old ...
If you pay attention to Glengarry Glen Ross — the 1992 film best remembered for its incredible acting, gorgeous cinematography, and iconic, meme-generating "coffee is for closers" scene — it’s hard to miss the fact that the whole movie is a thinly ...
In the Marines, they called him POG. The grunts in Iraq would size him up and see another gangly reporter, grinning under a crooked Kevlar helmet and rocking an overburdened kit of body armor, M16, notepad, pen, and bulky camera with extra lenses ...
Two police officers were shot Wednesday night in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, after protests decrying the killing of Breonna Taylor turned violent. Protesters took to the streets in cities all over the country after Kentucky Attorney General ...
News of Gunnery Sgt. Steve Stibbens’ passing on Saturday spread fast through the ranks of current and former military journalists and war correspondents for whom Stibbens was a legend, friend, and role model. “The retired ranks of the Marine Corps ...
Winston Groom, the Vietnam veteran and Southern writer best known for his 1986 novel Forrest Gump, which became the beloved 1994 film starring Tom Hanks, died in his sleep Thursday at his home in Fairhope, Alabama. He was 77. Groom’s stepson, ...
For its latest recruiting commercial, the Marine Corps got an Oscar-winning filmmaker to draw a dramatic contrast between the often-isolating online world and the Corps’ pitch to Generation Z that service in its ranks offers a path toward a life of ...
Americans regard the National Guard as a United States-based force, but, in truth, it's hard to go anywhere in the world and not see a soldier wearing an Army National Guard patch. Over the past few months, there were 77,000 Army Guardsmen and over ...
Senior Chief Petty Officer Jayme Thomas Pastoric comes from a long line of artist-warriors. As one of the Defense Department’s few dive-qualified, underwater photographers, the Navy mass communication specialist and Cleveland, Ohio, native is a ...
