Read New War and Military Essays

Little Boys Lost

February 28, 2022

After all these years, I still remember the briefness of my youth. Stolen before I could savor and relish moments and memories of innocence. Vietnam changed everything, including me. "I remember the night I arrived in Saigon, Vietnam. A soldier boy, not yet a man. Lost among the crowds of… Read

Louder Than Bombs

Louder Than Bombs

by Jobe Rubens

February 27, 2022

My essay, my rules - been waiting to say that for sometime! Please don't get on your high horse and quote what I already know. Like all my work - it's satirical. Read

Did Putin Pull A Hitler?

Did Putin Pull A Hitler?

by 88 fingers

A Veteran's Day of Remembrance and of Private Tears

February 22, 2022

Comments: 7

A Veteran's Day of Remembrance and of Private Tears

November 09, 2021

I would never wish upon my fellow Americans the distinction of becoming a Veteran of this new war in our own land. For the heart, the mind, the soul of a Veteran never heals and never seals the wounds of war -- any war, anywhere, even here in America. Read

Tortured Faces

Tortured Faces

September 27, 2021

Fractured glances at tortured faces, reveal the scars of foreign places. . . . . A veteran of war can never hide the wounds that war bestows on human souls. The scars too deep. The pain impressed on listless eyes that do not speak or seek to see beyond the… Read

Intimate Betrayal

Intimate Betrayal

September 04, 2021

War is the intimacy of interrupted lives and disrupted and suspended dreams. War dislodges the solidity and strength of character and temperament, and exposes the brutal beast that lurks within the tempered heart. Read

Remembrance of You

Remembrance of You

August 28, 2021

Comments: 3

Shelves: 2

How cruel the memory of you. How brutal the days, and merciless and endless the nights. To dream again, and not wake in the middle of the middle of the night. Sweet sleep betrays and deceives me. Read

Remember to Forget

Remember to Forget

Now Only A Medal With a RIbbon

June 22, 2021

How does one erase a year in your life? How does one censor or edit a portion of your youth? How do you explain away the gnawing memories that materialize in the middle of the night, that make a grown man shudder in the dark? The easiest way is simply… Read

Now Only A Medal With a RIbbon

June 19, 2021

Looking back at my tour in Vietnam in the late 1960s, I now realize that as American soldiers there, we were perceived like “bowling pins,” to be knock down to win a kewpie doll at a carnival. And when we were knocked down, a Mom or Dad somewhere back home,… Read

Where Have All The Young Men Gone?

June 05, 2021

Where have all the young men gone? I see only shadows in the light. Where have all the brave men gone? Read

Forever Gardens

Forever Gardens

Memorial Day - A Time to Remember

June 02, 2021

Gettysburg. Bull Run, Gallipoli, Antwerp, Anzio, Pearl Harbor, Hu? (Vietnam), A S?u Valley (Vietnam), Baghdad, Kabul, and the list goes on and on. Battlefields and killing fields, and fields of shattered dreams. Fighting and dying. Crying and shouting. Moaning and whimpering. And silence. Always the silence came. Read

Memorial Day - A Time to Remember

Memorial Day - It Became Personal

May 30, 2021

There is a profound sadness and sorrow within me on Memorial Day. For to have known my friends you would have seen the promise and the passion that they had. To have known my friends you would have seen the sparkle in their eyes and the radiance of their hearts. Read

Memorial Day - It Became Personal

The Distant Sound of Christmas

May 28, 2021

Memorial Day is our day to honor and mourn our soldiers – ordinary men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice – laying down their lives, mostly without choice or option, other than to walk through distant and silent valleys to certain death, in places far from their humble roots… Read

The Distant Sound of Christmas

In the Belly of the Beast

May 26, 2021

Church bells ring, and a new born day rises in the east. It is the dawning of Christmas Day. It is the birth of new hope in the midst of the unaccustomed disquiet that plagues the American spirit. It is the ghost of the distant sound of Christmas past, wrapped… Read

In the Belly of the Beast

May 25, 2021

I saw the creature that is war, and I saw it devour and consume the innocence that was me. It was ruthless and pitiless, brutal and unfeeling. It was the hidden fiend within the hardened heart of the human beast within. Read

A Thanksgiving Leftover

A Thanksgiving Leftover

May 25, 2021

Thanksgiving. A celebration of our blessings and our bounties, but also a celebration of courage and of the struggles and tribulations that helped to make America. . . . . I remembered one particular Thanksgiving Day celebrated, or rather, simply tolerated, . . . Read

Once, When We Had Ethics

Once, When We Had Ethics

How Do I Explain This Feeling?

May 25, 2021

Comments: 1

Shelves: 1

As a Veteran who served in Vietnam, and as a military journalist who saw the best and worst of our service men at war, I must take exception to the meddling of a draft dodger into the military system of justice, discipline, punishment and most of all, the undermining of… Read

How Do I Explain This Feeling?

May 24, 2021

Have you ever been lost in a dream, wondering endlessly through the corridors of time, glimpsing images in mirrors of unremembered faces and places? Have you ever felt the coldness of a stare or an unwanted glance that told you more than words could ever say? Read

Dark Victory

Dark Victory

May 24, 2021

There is a darkness that consumes the human mind. It languishes and festers in the seeds of deceit and treachery that spurts the seedlings of chaos and confusion that blossom within the heart and soul of man. Read

Shallow Graves

May 24, 2021

I found it painful and profound to visit Arlington Cemetery when I returned from Vietnam. There, I saw the shallow graves that time could not conceal, and I saw and felt the brevity of life, as I recalled the atrocities and cruelties of war. Read

Touched

Touched

May 23, 2021

A physical sensation, an appreciation, or simply a state of mind. Touch defines our human existence with every sense that we possess and even some we don’t even understand. Read

Magnificant Obsession

Magnificant Obsession

May 23, 2021

There is an obsession within me – a magnificent obsession – to remember the voices now silenced, and to recall the unrealized dreams of those plucked from existence, without resistance – needless mortalities, brutal, barbaric, cruel and insane. Read

Forgotten Dreams

Forgotten Dreams

May 23, 2021

So long ago, when I was young. When I still had innocence in my soul. I saw the face of war up close, and it destroyed the boy in me, and the dreams once dreamt that burned inside of me. Read

Summer of Our Discontent

Summer of Our Discontent

May 23, 2021

The year 1967 is remembered as the 'Summer of Love.’ The hippie phenomenon was in full bloom, the youth culture had finally blossomed and found its voice, and people were wearing flowers in their hair. It was the long hot summer of love and peace and finding one’s self. Read

Dear John

Dear John

May 23, 2021

War unites confusion and delusions and destroys dreams and aspirations. Vietnam was no exception, and the boys and men who found themselves in the middle of the chaos and madness of war were not immune from the loneliness and heartache of separation from a world of promise and prosperity left… Read

I'll Cry Tomorrow

I'll Cry Tomorrow

To Walk Upon A Field of Dreams

May 23, 2021

I remember when I was a boy and then a young man, with promise, and with potential. I was idealistic. I was a poster boy for America – a Valley boy from the Rio Grande -- bright, strong, determined. Those were the days of my innocence. Read

To Walk Upon A Field of Dreams

May 23, 2021

Memorial Day is approaching again. For me, it is one of those days that makes me look back in time to moments, to people, to places that touched my life in some way or awoke an emotion in me. Read

March of Broken Soldiers

March of Broken Soldiers

May 23, 2021

Mourning the loss of friends and total strangers, American GIs serving in the wastelands and vastness of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam are quickly confronted with the reality of war. Read

Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing

May 22, 2021

In the mist of the fading wisps of smoke that drapes the darkening expanse of jungles and swamps along the desolate road to hell, he stands alone, grasping his M-16, depleted of rounds and hot to the touch. He is alone. The last man standing. Read

Brave Young Soldiers

Brave Young Soldiers

We Were Supposed to Be the Good Guys

May 22, 2021

Looking back in time I remember all the fallen soldiers – husbands, fathers, sons and friends. Brave young soldiers each and every one. Afraid to die, and afraid to cry. Brave and innocent, and too young to die. Read

We Were Supposed to Be the Good Guys

Unable to Leave My Story Behind

May 22, 2021

We were supposed to have been the Good Guys! Yet I feel tainted somehow, and have for far too long. We were the guys in the white hats coming to the rescue. So why do I feel guilty? Read

Unable to Leave My Story Behind

How Do You Touch A Human Soul?

May 22, 2021

Being a military or combat journalist in Vietnam in 1960-1970 was a unique experience. . . . We saw and experienced the war differently than the regular GI or “grunt” who labored and merely existed from day-to-day in the hot humid jungles, forests and rice paddies of Vietnam. Read

How Do You Touch A Human Soul?

May 22, 2021

How do you touch a human soul, how do you capture the fleeting instant of a life? How do you explain a feeling that evades you, or a vision that eludes you? Read

March of Broken Soldiers

March of Broken Soldiers

May 22, 2021

I felt much like Jimmy Olsen, the fictional young photojournalist working for the Daily Planet, but I was in Vietnam, roaming the backlands and bush of the Mekong Delta as a combat journalist. Read

The Response to Tyranny

by Gail-D-Prentice

December 28, 2020

Comments: 2

Today's politics is far more than Republican versus Democrat, left versus right, Conservative against Liberal. Today's politics are what defines America's history. As our rights and freedoms are stripped away, as our morals are destroyed and as our patriotisms is abolished, is there any grounds for recovery? Is there any… Read

Stolen Victory or The Soviet Monuments and the VE Day in Eastern Europe

by slava zarubin