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 ...
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 ...
Throughout my life and in my writing I have used movies to remind me of particular places and times. As I have grown older, my values and opinions have been shaped, polished, shattered, and rebuilt by my experiences. But as my own life and the ways I ...
I fired my first machine gun on an air base in Utah when I was 12 years old. A pair of teenagers had come strutting down the quiet, tree-lined street of the base housing development, flaunting long belts of spent shells like arrogant facsimiles of ...
War is murder. War is survival. War is suffering. War is funny. War is chaos and noise and fear. War is boring. War is hate. War is love. War is hell. War is glorious. War is all these things because, above all, war is human. And ...
On my second deployment to Afghanistan, the base Morale, Welfare and Recreation facility, which consisted of a few computers with an internet connection, allowed open (though monitored) communication with loved ones back home. We had a lot of ...
When my dad was in college, he took a Pennsylvania history class, prompting him to delve into family history and genealogy. This is what he learned: His Great-Uncle Wally had served in World War I in France. There was a monument to his regiment and ...
On Sept. 7, President Donald Trump responded to a question about his popularity among the troops — a recent poll pegged his approval rating among the military at 38% — by making a characteristically bold statement. "I'm not saying the military's ...
The enemy fire was withering, pinning down the small team of Green Berets under a scorching desert heat. Hemmed in from all sides, the team took its first casualty as the desert sun meandered over the horizon. Nightfall brought reprieve from the heat ...
This article was originally published Aug. 16, 2016, on The War Horse. As a Marine infantryman I wanted to kill like I’d been trained to do. The fact that I haven’t weighs on me. It’s a different burden than that of soldiers who have been trained ...
Desiree had been seeing Aaron “Jay” Danielson for about a month when he sent her a text on the afternoon of Aug. 29. “On my way to film the rally,” Danielson wrote. Danielson and Desiree had known each other for about a year but only recently ...
The night before 9/11, it rained. It rained for hours, from late afternoon until well after darkness had fallen. I remember this because I was at Yankee Stadium, hoping to see Roger Clemens notch his 20th win of the season against the Red Sox. The ...
This article was originally published Aug. 26, 2020, in The War Horse. He wanted to be a man with a story. He wanted to do things, see things, to have a history. He wanted to be like his grandfather, a hero of the Second World War who flew dozens ...
rain travel is an ordinary experience. In Ukraine I went to war that way. It was the end of August 2014 and the Russian military had invaded eastern Ukraine. Following the battle for Ilovaisk, in which hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers had been ...
Explosives, like communication, are a mix of art and science. As a US Army Ranger, one of my special duties was master breacher. This means that I was an expert in the use of explosives with the purpose of breaching walls, doors, and other barriers ...
This article was originally published July 29, 2020, in The War Horse. We’re piled on top of each other 15, sometimes 20, at a time, in a vehicle that feels like it’s built for 12. Our weapons and gear double our volume. Once in, we can’t ...
In his opinion for the Jacobellis v. Ohio Supreme Court ruling in 1964, Justice Potter Stewart offered his famous definition of hardcore pornography. “I know it when I see it,” Potter wrote. Used to be you could say the same thing about war and ...
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 buildings, was the ...
t’s May 30, 2020, and my gun is by my side, loaded, ready. I hope I don’t have to use it, but more than a few scenarios have crossed my mind where I might have to squeeze the trigger. This is not what I would call a typical Saturday night in my ...
ear sunset one evening in the summer of 2016, I was on the rooftop of a Kurdish Peshmerga fort in the front-line town of Gwer, just south of Mosul, Iraq. I stood behind a sandbag berm beside Kurdish General Omar Hama Ali Farag, and we watched through ...
Editor's Note: Adam Bercovici is a 30 year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. The opinions expressed in this article are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Coffee or Die Magazine or Black Rifle Coffee Company. To submit ...
They call it the “Island of Death.” At this spot on the western side of the Dnieper River in central Ukraine, some 30,000 Soviet soldiers died under Nazi artillery during World War II. Yet, on this hot June day, there’s nothing to suggest that ...
