The alarms had gone off—again—at Cement City near Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in late January. The air war had just begun, and we’d spent the day filling sandbags and digging a hole, the wet sand leaching all moisture from our frozen fingers. The Scud ...
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 ...
This article was originally published Feb. 10, 2021, on Sandboxx News. Follow Sandboxx News on Instagram. We had a one-eyed tank gunner supporting our unit. She lost an eye at Tikrit, Iraq skirmishing there with the Mujahidin. She was on the ...
Super Bowl Sunday is a day of parties, drinking, and chicken wings for most Americans. For me, it’s a day I gamble on a sport I don’t follow (nor care about) and craft an extremely creative wager with whoever is dumb enough to agree. Some of you ...
The other day I received one of those compliments that makes a reporter uneasy. An Iraq war battle buddy called me "the only newsman he ever trusted." Happens the Army brother was a National Guard soldier, and a good one. His day job outside the ...
Editor’s note: T.L.K. is a pseudonym for a national guardsman whose identity is being withheld to protect the soldier from retaliation. T.L.K.’s service and presence at the Capitol has been verified through photographs and military records. Ask a ...
KYIV, Ukraine — I walk alone on a gray winter day. The bare branches bend in the cold wind. Beside the path through Kyiv's Babyn Yar memorial park, melted snow has turned the earth to black mud. I pass an old woman sitting on a bench. She has two ...
“Patriot” is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Probably too much, actually. If you check various major dictionaries, they all basically say some version of the same thing: “one who loves and supports his or her country.” But if you look at the ...
When the George Floyd homicide and subsequent civil unrest began earlier this year, police violence and its social implications were already on my mind. The 11th anniversary of my own experience using deadly force as a police officer was quickly ...
Too many dead friends. Some died in combat. Others died from suicide after they came back home. Not long after I was discharged I attempted suicide and was hospitalized. There were no easy answers. In the hospital, we had group therapy. Some ...
Days before President Donald Trump signed into law a $900 billion bill that provides financial aid to millions of struggling Americans, he decried the legislation on Twitter, citing several line items he objected to in the omnibus Consolidated ...
The Navy recently issued its 30-year shipbuilding plan. It’s extremely ambitious. From a current force of 296 ships, in 2045 the Navy will field 403. Unmanned ships will make that 546. That’s nothing short of a transformation for the Navy. It has, ...
Having been in the Army for almost 25 years and separated from my wife and/or children for much of that time, one of my greatest pleasures these days is telling stories to them during our family dinnertime. And when I say “stories,” I mean outrageous ...
In about a month’s time, President Donald Trump will transfer power to Joe Biden, launching a new administration with new policies. How will that impact the lives of veterans and the active-duty military? Undoubtedly, after four years of bombastic ...
This article was originally published Nov. 4, 2020, on Sandboxx News. Follow Sandboxx News on Instagram. The Delta Force, like so many other organizations, is the answer to a problem. If you can consider that our country’s civic police force is ...
Dense clouds filled the sky, suffocating all the light trying to break through. The February air that morning was cold and uninviting. He was standing in front of me in the parking lot at the flight line. Like the typical Mainer he is, everything ...
I remember feeling the sun’s warmth on my face, my neck growing sweaty thanks to the headscarf I’d wrapped in careful layers around my head. It didn’t help that our Afghan hosts kept feeding us boiling-hot chai milk. Not one to shirk customs, I ...
Nobody in my unit knew I was there. I think I told a random captain I was going to Munich, but that was a good three hours north of Arco, Italy and the cliff where I stood. Work was the furthest thing from my mind as I triple-checked my parachute and ...
The body was lying on an army field stretcher, nestled between the olive green metal bars, drooping lifelessly on the black mesh fabric. I could see black tufts of hair sticking out from the blue tarp they’d used to cover the body. Congealed blood ...
There is an unspoken caste system among veterans—one that no one talks about. The people who wind up in these castes have no choice about which group they end up in. It’s all a matter of luck and geopolitics. You either went to war or you ...
It was time to say goodbye. We both got out of the truck and circled around back to give each other a hug. It was hard to see his face in the dark black of night — they kept most of Bagram Air Base blacked out after the sun goes down as a defense ...
By mid-November 2004, my platoon had been clearing houses from dawn to dusk for more than a week in the city of Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar Province. It was tiring and monotonous work. The sounds of distant gunfire and explosions were incessant, but ...
It is 2017, a few months after you returned from combat in Afghanistan. You are on the phone planning your wedding with a caterer but need to hand the phone off and excuse yourself because you cannot stop that nagging, hacking cough you’ve had since ...
My name is Mike McGuinness. At one point in my life, I was a staff sergeant in the United States Army. I spent 12 of my 16 years in as a paratrooper, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was also an infantryman, and I drank all the Kool-Aid that ...
I was the only one sitting at the bar, my back to the entrance and a beer in my hand. But I saw him walk in, through the mirror that hung on the wall behind the rows of liquid courage and bottled vice. He sat to the left of me, with one chair ...
Effective leadership, and in fact all relationships, must be built upon a foundation of trust. If we have real trust, we can do many things wrong and still succeed. If we lack trust, we can do almost everything right and still fail. Trust creates ...
Third squad assembled into our proper order of formation for our dress blues inspection. It was Nov. 10, 2005 — the 230th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, aka the world’s finest fighting force. Humidity was common aboard Marine Corps ...
By January 2005, I had lived in Baqubah, Iraq, for nearly a year. In a month, I would return home. Well, sort of home, as I would head back to a small village in southwestern Germany that hosted the headquarters for the Third Brigade Combat Team of ...
Clad in dress blues, the six Marines sidestepped in perfect unison, working together to support the weight of the flag-draped casket held between them. The brass of their buttons gleamed in the early morning light of Nov. 20, 2019. Rows of white ...
April 21, 2005. Seven Blackwater contractors die today. This is the day I lose all compassion for Iraq. The day I realize I’m not a soldier in war. I’m a single-serve Starbucks coffee cup, useful for a time and easily discarded with no second thought ...
