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The War Horse
If There’s One Thing That Keeps Me Up at Night, It’s All the Ways What’s Inside Can Betray Us
That question came up often in the first few months on the ambulance, and it was an understandable one. I worked part-time for the county’s 911 emergency response system while I completed a master’s degree in creative writing in Charleston, South Carolina. Every time that question came up, I gave a different answer—my thoughts ever-shifting. To be honest, I did not have a good enough answer at that time. I was an unpublished writer with a string of failed and abandoned careers behind me. What the hell was I doing on an ambulance?
Booted From the Army, He Spiraled. Now He Works to Solve the Veteran Homelessness Crisis.
On a foggy December morning, Dennis Johnson parks his Toyota Tacoma beneath an overpass in downtown Oakland, California. To his left is a homeless encampment so dense it spills off the sidewalk and into the streets. To his right is the Oakland Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic, and outside the clinic,...
The Day the Marines Asked the Army for Help, the Sun Rose in the West, and Hell Iced Over
On an October day in 1966, the sun rose in the west, a man was seen biting a dog, Hades reported ice storms—and the U.S. Marines asked the U.S. Army for help. Okay, the first three things didn’t happen. Normally, the Marine Corps is the most self-sufficient of the armed services: Their infantry units, down to the squad, are larger than similar Army units; they can take more casualties but continue to fight effectively. The Corps has its own air element, both to establish air supremacy over the battlefield and for close support.
I Wanted My Life as a Mom Separate From My Work With Death. I Had to Make Room for Both.
The sun clung to the horizon at four p.m. that November day in Alaska. From my office, I quickly did the calculations—if I left now, I would have just enough time to scoop up my children from daycare and fit in 20 minutes of sledding before darkness fell. I...
A Soldier Found Healing Outdoors. Now He Wants to Break Down Barriers for Others.
In 2013, U.S. Army Maj. Aaron Leonard led 12 soldiers from Fort Bliss on a five-day backpacking trip in the Davis Mountains in Texas, nearly 200 miles away from their home base. “We were laying out one night on a mesa,” Leonard, a former artillery officer recalled, “staring at the...
No One Makes It Through Underwater Demolition Team Training, They Said. They Were Wrong.
I grew up in Richland, Washington, and enrolled at Washington State University in the fall of 1959. By my junior year, I really wasn’t too happy there and didn’t think I was going to finish. Meanwhile, guys I knew were getting drafted left and right. You could get college deferments, but I didn’t think I would qualify because my grades were not very good. So I quit school and spent a few months in the U.S. Forest Service in northern Idaho over the summer. And then in the fall, I joined the Navy—mostly because I didn’t want to get drafted into the Army.
VA Hospitals Vulnerable to Extreme Weather as Climate Changes, Report Finds
On July 19, 2022, a soupy, relentless heat smothered Muskogee, Oklahoma. By four in the afternoon, the temperature spiked to 106 degrees. While the weather wasn’t completely unheard of, researchers say extreme heat events like this will only grow more commonplace in Muskogee and elsewhere. The heat index—how the...
I’d Never Fly the Osprey Again. My Heart Was Broken, Yet Somehow Full at the Same Time.
June 9, 2022, started like any other day—I was up at five a.m. to get ready for work at Marine Aircraft Group 36 in Okinawa, Japan. At the end of my drive, I checked my phone and found a message from my good friend Teedha, my first flight doctor in the fleet.
In That Moment I Learned My Service to This Country Could Not Transcend My Skin Color
I still remember the blinding glare of police lights in my rearview mirror. My heart began to race as the white officer approached my vehicle. I knew I did nothing wrong, but still I clenched the wheel tightly to signal I was not a threat. I was unsure what would happen next.
Trump Sketches Future of US Military—Hunting Cartels, Quelling Unrest, and Immigrant Detention Camps
Military officials, Donald Trump told a crowd at a rally in Iowa this past October, are “some of the dumbest people I ever met in my life.”. It wasn’t the first time the Republican front-runner and former president offered his opinions on those who have served. During his first presidential campaign, Trump famously belittled John McCain, who was shot down during a bombing mission over Vietnam in 1967, and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.
My Family Took the Straight-and-Narrow Path. Why Was I the One to Diverge?
“You know what’s crazy?” I said. “I’m turning the same age you were when you went to war.”. “Oh wow,” my mom said, nodding thoughtfully from the couch. Then, “Wait, you’ll be 35?”. I laughed from where I reclined on the floor, stretching...
VA’s Work to End Veteran Homelessness Is a Nationwide Model. Can It Translate for Civilians?
In late January, groups of volunteers around the country set out on foot and in vehicles in search of individuals experiencing homelessness. The goal: Get a sense of how many people are living outdoors or in shelters in their own communities and the nation at large. Jon Johnson, a social...
Mac Was My Hero. I Never Told Him. I’m Sure He Never Knew.
William (Mac) McKissick was my hero. I never told him that. I am sure he never knew. We were not friends. The best that can be said is that we served together in the Air Force in Vietnam for about nine months. He was a technical sergeant at the time,...
Aging Veterans Are in Crisis. This New Program Aims to Help With Housing.
On a recent morning, four veterans who served in the 1960s and 1970s gathered at tables at the Jon W. Paulson Veterans Community in a common room that smelled of strong coffee. Eric Hill, an Army veteran with thinning gray hair, spent almost eight years living in his van, often staying the night in the San Francisco Veterans Affairs hospital’s parking lot.
My Yia Yia and I Both Endured War. This Is How We Carry It.
Every family has their secrets. Some big, some small. One of ours was that Yia Yia was a bit crazy. And where to begin: One could point to her sudden and animated outbursts of anger in awkward places. Her decades of pill popping that made her loopy and fall over. Her seemingly random religious proclamations. Her lifelong gambling obsession. Her propensity to nick items from stores without paying for them and sometimes get caught.
US Territories Have High Rates of US Military Service, but Battle for Veterans’ Benefits
Before Alex Ortiz’s wife gave birth to their son, she left the couple’s Caribbean home and traveled some 1,600 miles to Rhode Island, where she had family, to deliver the baby. Ortiz had grown up in Puerto Rico before he joined the Army, and after he left active duty, the couple lived in Arizona before returning to his roots.
The USSR Called Operation Atrina a Triumph. We Knew It Was a Failure.
In spring 1987, the Soviet Union launched Operation Atrina, scrambling five Victor III-class submarines from their Kola base that raced toward U.S. Naval installations along the Atlantic coast. The USSR claimed its submarines were undetected. It was a lie then and it remains a lie today—and I can attest to this firsthand.
US Military Can’t Sustain Arctic Operations, ‘Let Alone Dominate,’ Experts Say
Missile launchers illuminated under the glowing green fingers of the northern lights, white-and-gray camo with fur-lined hoods, Green Berets perched two to a snowmobile—these were the scenes from Arctic Edge in 2022, a biannual joint training exercise first convened in 2018 to train troops to operate in the marginal conditions north of the Arctic Circle.
It Took a Lifetime to Learn My Father’s War Story—and How It Shaped Us Both
This is Part II of a two-part story. . My mother had told me that Dad handled payroll for his ship, the USS Hughes, and its sister ship, the USS Hammann. I imagined that he had somehow sailed through the Battle of Midway performing an administrative role and, therefore, safe from danger; I did not understand that officers had many nonmilitary duties that kept the business of these ships going. But if there was a battle, they were all in “battle stations,” not at a desk and a ledger.
No One Ever Connected the Dots of Our Boating Life and the Nightmare of My Father’s War
Editors note: This is Part I of a Two Part Story. I wanted nothing more than to be on a boat with my dad, motoring around the dazzling blue waters off the coast of Massachusetts while he taught me how to work the gears, set an anchor, make a dock landing, and, oddly but persistently, rescue sailboats. As a Navy man, water safety was paramount, his mantra: “Always keep an eye on the weather because things can change quickly on the water.” It was an admonition freighted with the ghosts of seafaring stories.
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