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 ...
Feb 21, 2021
Features
Dec 06, 2020
‘You’re Saving Lives With This’ — How a Hunting Trip for Veterans Could Be a National Model for Better Health
Steve Houghton’s rugged face shone orange in the firelight as he pulled in a deep breath of the frigid Montana backcountry air and shifted in his chair before taking his turn at a personal story. The stress lines of an ...
Nov 19, 2020
Gunfights & Coffee: Why Black Rifle Coffee Tastes So Good
Gunfighting made Evan Hafer a coffeehead. The future Black Rifle Coffee Company founder and CEO had separated from the US Army Special Forces as a noncommissioned officer with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had ...
Nov 15, 2020
‘From Cradle to Career’: Special Operations Warrior Foundation Leaves No Child of America’s Fallen Special Operators Behind
Alicia Sims was at her neighbor’s house to get some Tylenol when she heard a knock at the front door. At first she thought it was one of her five children. “Come in,” she hollered. There was no reply. “It’s unlocked, come ...
Nov 11, 2020
From South Dakota to War, Van Life, and Journalism: The Many Adventures of Marty Skovlund Jr.
As a member of the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment, Marty Skovlund Jr. completed five combat deployments. But the only time he ever got shot was in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was a hot July afternoon on the ...
Oct 18, 2020
Delivering Pizza and Coffee to the Front Lines, One Ukrainian War Veteran Uses Business Success To Fight for Freedom
Those who have been to war never truly leave it. Even in peace, the war is always there, like a chasing moon you can’t outrun. For some, the inescapability of war’s aftereffects leads to their destruction. For others, like ...
Oct 11, 2020
The Shooter: How One of America’s Top Combat Photographers Lost Her Way and Found It Serving Veterans
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 ...
Sep 07, 2020
The Demise of a US Air Force C-121G ‘Super Constellation’ — and the Arizona Trail That Honors It
Just before 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28, 1959, in the clear sky 5 miles north of Prescott, Arizona, something went wrong aboard an Air Force C-121G Super Constellation aircraft. The pilots, Navy Lt. j.g. Theodore Rivenburg and ...
Aug 30, 2020
The Untouchables: After a Roadside Bomb Tore Them Apart, Brotherhood Brought Them Back Together
The last time Tim Jeffers was on Okinawa, he had legs. That was in February 2006 when Jeffers, then a corporal assigned to 3rd Transportation Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, as a motor transport operator, left the island for Iraq’s ...
Aug 29, 2020
Scars Are Not Forever: How Operation Mend Helped Make a Marine Whole Again
“Scars are not forever” was conceived for one Marine in the months of rehabilitation that followed an IED blast in Iraq, which left him badly burned and disfigured. Since then, the spirit of that ideal has evolved into an innovative partnership ...
Aug 02, 2020
A Recon Marine Claims Self-Defense After Strip Club Murder, Has One Last Chance to Prove Innocence
Too many drinks and a Wyoming snowstorm will make anyone reconsider driving home from the strip club. It was just after midnight when John Knospler Jr. was jolted awake in the driver's seat by what sounded like someone trying to ...
Jul 26, 2020
Operation Red Wings Through the Eyes of the Night Stalkers
The sun was fading behind Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains the evening of June 27, 2005, as a team of four U.S. Navy SEALs walked up the ramp and into the back of U.S. Army Captain Matt Brady’s MH-47 Chinook helicopter on Bagram ...
Jul 12, 2020
One More Wave: The Navy SEALs Helping Disabled Veterans Heal With Custom Surfboards
Alex West threw his wetsuit and surfboard in the bed of his truck. He had spent the morning surfing off Del Mar on a picturesque Southern California day. After 15 combat deployments, injuries, and relentless stress, the only place ...
Jul 05, 2020
Utopian Dreaming in Seattle’s Autonomous Zone: My Weekend Inside the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest
I had seen the Fox News report June 10: “Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ ‘autonomous zone,’ shake down businesses.” Above the headline, superimposed on a banner image of a protester running past burning cars and ...
Jun 07, 2020
Marines in Anbar: What Does Their Departure Mean for Iraq?
What’s he doing?” asked Staff Sergeant Alfonso Paniaugua. “He’s just standing there talking on the phone,” Lance Corporal Trung Cao replied. The young U.S. Marine was looking at an Iraqi wearing camo fatigue pants on a hill in ...
May 31, 2020
One Man’s War on Terror in Pakistan’s Badlands
At first light on a quiet morning in March, Howard Leedham found himself crouching near an austere compound in a hilly area near the unremarkable village of Ziarat, typical of this part of Pakistan’s impoverished and lawless ...
May 17, 2020
The Lost Batt Boys: Three Former Foster Children On Finding Family as Army Rangers
Some families are born in the loving care of two parents, and some are built through friendships in college or work. Still others are born out of shared hardship — the military, for example, often uses the word “brotherhood” to ...
May 12, 2020
The War Against ISIS is at a Crossroads
It was a drizzly night at the end of March when members of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (1-24) arrived in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Semi-Autonomous Kurdish region. They had driven from Mosul, where ...
Apr 26, 2020
The Feres Doctrine Denies Rights to Sexual Trauma Victims — How One Soldier is Fighting It
Erin Scanlon never expected to become the face behind a proposed Congressional bill. All she did was attend a party in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Sept. 9, 2016. “There was this nonprofit that had this event,” said Scanlon. ...
Apr 19, 2020
Life and Death at K1: Inside America’s Last Days in Kirkuk
These are the nights that they hit us,” said Specialist Nathaniel Zimmerman, a young and energetic cavalry scout known affectionately as “Zim” by his fellow soldiers. “When it’s overcast and there’s not a high breeze or anything ...
Feb 23, 2020
In the Face of Uncertainty, US Infantry Expands Traditional Role in Iraq
Feliz Navidad! Feliz Navidad!” Specialist Hester belted out the lyrics to the Christmas song as he and fellow soldiers sat waiting for their mission to start. It was a sunny November morning as soldiers with the 1-24 Infantry ...
Feb 23, 2020
Meet the Marine Combat Veteran Making a Difference Through Tattoos
You know, we were supposed to numb you.” The thought had clearly just occurred to him. I started to panic. “Has that not happened?” He laughed. “That has not happened.” Shit, I thought. It’s officially too late. Andre ...
Feb 09, 2020
How U.S. Artillery in Iraq Regained Its Status as ‘King of Battle’
A handful of soldiers looked up at a screen showing a group of mysterious figures moving through a field. Their shapes and movement were unusual, and with the angle of the sun, they were casting very large shadows. The soldiers had ...
Feb 08, 2020
How Navy SEALs Are Using Skateboards and Art Therapy to Help Gold Star Families and Their Community
Stereotypes exist for a reason. When special operators leave the military, they often choose new career paths that stem from their service. This usually involves some form of government contracting, shooting or tactical ...
Jan 29, 2020
Disappointment and Defiance in Northeast Syria
I feel disappointed because we fought side-by-side with the Americans against ISIS, but when Turkey decided to attack these areas, they just left,” said Ario Syriani, a fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the ...
Jan 19, 2020
Embedded in Iraq: What Life Was Like for US Troops in Mosul Before Soleimani’s Death
This would be a really badass fighting position,” said an American soldier admiring the architecture of a heavily bombed palace in Mosul, Iraq, that once belonged to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. “It was a fighting ...
Dec 29, 2019
Rockets and Revolution: American Troops Navigate Complicated Political Realities in Iraq
“What do we do if we run into the PMF?” asked Sergeant Corbin Mason during a briefing for a mission outside of Q-West Airbase in Iraq. The soldiers being briefed are members of the U.S. Army’s 1-25 "Arctic Wolves" out of Fort ...
Nov 22, 2019
The Untold True Story of How Black Rifle Coffee Got Its Start
Evan Hafer, the founder and CEO of Black Rifle Coffee Company, was suspicious. He was holding staff meetings every two days, being told that their in-house fulfillment center was only a few shipments behind, and yet customer ...
Sep 15, 2019
From the Tundra to the Desert: Alaska’s 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division Deploys to Iraq
A gathering of soldiers waited for the bus on a cloudy and chilly late-August morning at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. As members of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team — the Arctic Wolves — they are ...
Sep 08, 2019
Trojan Footprint: How U.S. and Allied Special Forces are Training in the Face of Russian Aggression
As the sun sank behind the hills just a few hours outside of Budapest, Hungary, a ragtag group of militiamen milled around a dilapidated building in a small clearing amid the Hungarian forest. With AK-47s slung on their shoulder, ...
