Reflections

A Delta Force unit zipped over the barren desert. Two Black Hawks contained assault forces. Four Little Birds carried riders and artillery. It was a perfect blue sky in Taji, Iraq. The operators stalked a high-profile target. All went…

It is March of 2023. I am in a cafe watching the Iraq War’s early stages play out in short clips on a television mounted on the wall in front of me. Marines barge through doors in Fallujah, unsure if it is violent death or an empty room…

I steered the jeep off the dusty, rutted main road and rattled down a well-worn track until I beheld a bizarre juxtaposition of images: the silhouette of a thousand-year-old Hindu temple cheek by jowl with something resembling a porcupine…

“Sean, can you go assist that gentleman outside? He was in the Marines too, so I figured you’d have something to bond over.”I rolled my eyes. This was my first job post-college, and I didn’t like advertising my service in the civilian…

The fireplace crackles, just starting to warm the lodge’s lower-level living room on a quiet autumn evening in upstate New York. Someone lets loose a sigh, prompting me to look up and observe my company. Three others are cozied into their…

In the summer of 2015, some six months after exiting the Marine Corps, I took a run, not unlike hundreds before it. This time, though, I heard something snap in my back and collapsed to the ground. After five, maybe 10 minutes, I stood and…

Her fate was sealed before she even stepped off the plane at Agana Airport (Guam) in 1979. That’s a fact. The officers and chiefs had decided that the ensign was going to fail—they were not going to let a female line officer tell them what…

I remember it like it was yesterday. Receiving live ammo for the first time. It reminded me of when my dad would deal out .30-06 rounds the morning before a hunt. I never got over how similar those two feelings are.I remember landing and…

My calendar stood wide open that Saturday as I drove around listening to the local country radio station. So when I heard an advertisement for a resource fair for veterans at my favorite local brewery—Service Brewing Company—I figured I’d…

In the days after the planes struck on that cloudless, sun-soaked Tuesday morning, a pack of military recruiters descended upon a South Florida high school.The recruiters’ mission-focused gaze cut through the early afternoon humidity like a…