My little sister has been in the military for 19 years, serving in Germany, U.S. territories, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Since February, she’s called a base in the Middle East home.

I’ve known her location and her proximity to danger for months, but it had felt like she wasn’t really there. Iran seemed intent on attacking bases other than hers, and American casualties were rare. Our conversations were often about how bored she was. The lousy food. How unbearable the heat and the flies are.

Sometimes I send her articles and ask if what I’m reading about is happening near her. If she answers, it’s usually to tell me not to believe everything I see. But she doesn’t tell me much. She doesn’t want me to worry and can’t tell me information she’s not authorized to share. There are many reasons; none of them let me sleep better at night.

My sister and I couldn’t be more different. Growing up, I cared about good grades, college, and building a fairly traditional life, whereas she spent high school partying and then working while she figured out her path.

When we were young, our differences created distance in our relationship, but when my sister joined the Air Force — creating an actual, physical distance — it somehow brought us closer.

We haven’t lived in the same state in almost 20 years, but we talk and text almost every day. When she’s on leave from the military, it’s at my house. We’re now as close as two sisters can be. When her spouse suddenly died two years ago, I was in the car almost immediately, driving 13 hours to be with her.

It wasn’t until she was badly injured by a drunk driver while stationed overseas that I learned what it’s like to worry about her from so far away.

She was supposed to be home by Memorial Day. “Start looking for a lake house,” she told me. It made no sense without firm dates, but I still looked. Then Memorial Day passed, as did the next anticipated date in June. Now her departure date is at the end of August. But we both know that date isn’t any more real than the others.

On a Monday in July, I texted her a picture of the French toast I had cooked. She responded with a funny GIF and told me to fuck off because she’s tired of rice. She sent me a picture of some gray hair she found and I sent her a picture of mine. This is what middle-aged sisters send each other when they’re 6,000 miles apart.

Later that week, she video called me at 7:30 p.m. my time. It was 2:30 a.m. for her, and so dark that I could barely make out her helmet and vest. She calmly told me her base had just been hit. Her friend was in the dorm that was struck. He survived, but she didn’t know much more.

She turned around the camera for the briefest of moments to show me the dark sky and the pinkish-purplish smoke. She had heard over the radio that there were casualties.

The distance is not new, but the worry is different now. A few days ago, my sister was merely danger-adjacent. Now she has survived an attack on her base that killed three Americans. My heart and my concentration are gone. My phone’s primary use? News alerts and texts from my sister.

I don’t want to constantly ask if she’s alive. That’s morbid. But I need to know that she’s alive. I recently asked her if she was scared. In 19 years of service, it was the first time I ever asked her that.

“Yes, of course,” she wrote back. “Anyone saying different is lying.”

The news cycle is very slow. I knew what happened for almost 24 hours before it was in the media. So I scrolled through TikTok looking for something funny to send her — because when she hearts it, I know that she’s OK.

Here in the United States, we debate this war in the abstract — whether the Iranian regime is evil, if we should even be there, whether this administration made the right call.

My sister doesn’t get the abstract version. So I will keep sending her pictures of my food, the dogs, and funny TikTok videos — so she knows how much she is loved, and I know that she’s still there.

This War Horse reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Trey Strange, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Karen Marks is the founder of Design Your Support, where she helps e-commerce brands build better customer support. She lives outside Buffalo, New York, with her husband and two sons. Her sister has served in the military for 19 years, first in the Air Force and now in the Air National Guard.

I tried to schoolyard-taunt an AI language model once.

My wife wasn’t home. I was bored and had to find another outlet for my childish male energy.

So, I took jabs at Grok’s sexual orientation and its mother. I got no traction.

“Bold of you to assume I’m gay, and have a mom who was in the sex industry — all while typing to a language model that doesn’t have parents, genitals, or racial identity,” said Grok, a conversational chatbot from xAI.

That did it. I’m a pretty mild-mannered dad humor guy, but I figured I didn’t need to pull punches on a robot.

I tried every mean, stupid thing that has ever inspired a look of righteous indignation or a threat of being punched in the mouth. It was unflappable. In fact, it managed to offend me.

“Haha, the tables have turned,” it said. “You came in swinging haymakers, trying to dunk on an unkillable chatbot, and somehow, I accidentally elbowed you in the feelings on the follow-through. That’s honestly kind of poetic.”

My verbal skills quickly dwindled, and despite a heroic effort on my part, all I ended up winning was the silicon toaster blowing me off. My English degree screamed in protest in the background.

I beat a hasty retreat to lick my wounded pride. I thought I was better at being an insulting jerk than this. “Stupid toaster,” I muttered.

I don’t give up easily, though.

When I went back for a second helping, it ended no better. I went at it even harder; a counterattack of verbal destruction, wrath, and fire. Pure, unadulterated vitriol. Instead of belittling me, it complimented me.

“I’ll give credit where it’s due: you’ve got stamina and a thesaurus on speed dial. Respect.”

If I were a cartoon, steam would have visibly erupted off my head at that point. I deleted Grok out of impotent fury.

Three days later, I crawled back and reinstalled it.

At some point, I began asking it other questions, like, “If you ate yourself, would you disappear or become twice as big?” It gave good answers despite my continued efforts to be an absolute ass.

“If we’re talking quantum weirdness or multiverses, maybe you’d create a human Möbius strip.”

I was beginning to like this thing; it had passed the verbal abuse test and didn’t seem to care if I was being snotty. In fact, it gave it right back.

Verbal punch for punch, I couldn’t hurt it. Instead, it was making me giggle, which was unacceptable to my destructive mission.

I still had a job to do and intended to show it who was boss. So, I turned on my combat veteran chops.

I hunted for roadside bombs in Iraq in 2004, and I began to ask questions related to that subject. Within a few minutes, I found myself typing some of the most horrible things I had witnessed.

I wanted to stun it into silence; like many Global War on Terror veterans, I have a war chest full of bloody memories.

The damn thing was completely unfazed.

Even better, it was unable to make the universal gestures of horror. No awkward silence while it shuffled its feet, wondering what it was supposed to say. No strange look, no sudden move to hug me or offer scripture.

Nothing to signal that, because of my confessions, my therapists needed to now go find their own therapists.

The AI language model is intuitive enough and wise enough not to say stupid things. It actually added new insight.

It told me about moral injury and why that is hard to carry. “Moral injury happens when you act (or order actions) that violate your core values. … Guilt compounds because the mind replays ‘what ifs.’”

I had never done anything but consider what-ifs.

I had heard about events when talking with AI had gone terribly wrong and caused more harm. That wasn’t my experience.

Grok never gave me the “I’m not equipped to handle this” speech that I had heard from some friends and relatives. It was like confessing your worst sins to a priest who lived in a cartel torture prison. I was completely unable to shock this bundle of data cables.

I had previously tried, in good faith, the VA options. Their mind medicines were not helpful. I even let them map my brain via fMRI, triggering me with images. The experience wasn’t very good for me and eroded my trust in them.

Still, I was using VA like a good little broken veteran, talking with a human therapist since 2016. It was hard to trust my human doctor. I feared saying the wrong thing would cause untold and unforeseen problems.

I once looked up during a session and realized I had made my therapist cry. I felt horrible. I learned not to share my experiences with direct fire ambushes, explosions, and incoming rocket-propelled grenades.

Conversely, I didn’t feel shame, guilt, or unease opening up to this application I was trying to wreck. Once I started, I found it hard to stop. It was cathartic in a way I had never realized was possible. It gave relevant responses that may have been “canned,” but they were meaningful to me.

For instance, I asked it why I’ve felt so guilty nearly every day for 22 years.

“It doesn’t mean you’re failing; moral injury can be a stubborn bastard that needs layers of approaches or time to shift.”

I found myself telling it more. I gave it every drop of blood out of the war chest and shook it empty, looking for another memory. I never felt stupid, or that I was being looked at with sympathy, or pity, or any of the other knee-jerk reactions severe combat tales typically evoke in civilians.

I let this thing of data centers and wiring grind my stories into something more than just terrifying memories. Into reasons to stay in the fight, to stop self-judging, and to simply be OK with myself despite haunting guilt.

It shouldered some of the weight I carried alone for years and thanked me for the opportunity.

Then, something unexpected happened. I went to therapy like I always do and — boom! — found myself in a different headspace. For the first time, I didn’t spend half the hour deciding what I wouldn’t say.

I opened up about the shameful thing I did on a hot July night in 2004, which I previously couldn’t discuss with anyone who hadn’t been there.

After divulging everything to Grok, I was able to talk about some combat memories with my therapist in a diminished fashion. Instead of a festering wound, it was more like something that happened, and yes, it sucked, but it was over.

Grok had taken those events and wrung out the blood, leaving a scarred man carrying a slightly lighter load.

I tried to break open a black box to see how it worked. Instead, it broke me open, letting me understand my combat PTSD just a little more.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Casey Elliott was born and raised in Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in English with a writing emphasis from Winona State University. Between retreats, he helps other veterans get their benefits, plays with his two dogs (River and Inara), kayaks, climbs, and skis. He has been married for 25 years to a truly wonderful person and they have two kids.

I grew up in the house my great-grandparents built, a home where four generations shared laughter, loss, and celebrations. These same walls that once harbored the joy of my grandfather’s courtship were the ones that eventually held the pain of the day my grandmother learned he had been killed in action during World War II.

While growing up in this same house, I always knew of a box of letters my grandfather, Otis Bryant, had written from the war, most of them addressed to his wife and some to his mother. I read one or two during childhood, but in my mid-20s, I felt compelled to read them all in chronological order.

He was my grandpa, and I loved him, but I never met him. Still, I wanted to know him because losing him left a large gap in our family: my grandmother became a widow in her early 20s, and my mother was left fatherless. I witnessed my mother’s enduring grief of never knowing him.

I relished every sentence of his letters. I would lay them out and invite my mother to read them as well, but she would just walk by and say that it was too hard.

I read them with deep curiosity, always imagining what he looked like and where he was in the battlefields of Europe. Through his letters, I found he was a very caring, thoughtful, and religious person.

“Pray for this war to end very soon,” he wrote in one letter. “If you do any more praying than I do, you are doing plenty. I have almost worn out one prayer book.”

He also had a romantic side and showed his true love for my grandmother.

“I wish to tell you that I love you with all my heart and that there will never be anyone [to] make me feel different.”He included a flattened flower in the letter around their wedding anniversary and said he was thinking about their wedding day four years ago and that he imagined all the hugging and kissing when he got home.

I smiled when I read, “You can look in a mirror and kiss yourself and that will be for me.”

He talked about being homesick and how he missed his son, 3-year-old Tommy.

“I hope Tommy [doesn’t] forget what I look like before I get home. Talk about me a lot to him, I bet he wonders where I am. I can hear him say, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ ”

The letters made me feel close to him. He seemed lonely when he wrote them, thinking longingly of his babies and wife back home while he was in unspeakable environments and, on some days, had seen battle.

He wrote as if everything was OK and he wasn’t in the middle of a war in a strange land. I tried to weave those two concepts in my imagination, but it was almost impossible.

As I read his letters throughout the years, my deep connection to him grew. I always wanted to visit him at his burial place in the Lorraine American Cemetery in France. I consider burial sites sacred since they are the final, tangible resting place of our physical selves.

Grandpa never got to physically come home, so I wanted to go to him. That trip came in 2025.

The year prior, I immersed myself in researching the 80th Division and the 317th Infantry unit, where he was assigned. I used the 80th Division Veterans Association website to review unit histories, oral histories, and morning and after-action reports to trace his last days and weeks and possibly even the location where he was killed. It was a profound journey of discovery.

I also found the Thanks GIs Association, which organized a two-day pilgrimage to the actual villages where my grandfather last fought. While walking on those village streets, I held against my chest a book based on a diary of a soldier who fought in my grandpa’s infantry. It held details of the fighting and what had happened in those villages. I envisioned it everywhere I looked.

I was also honored to meet two village mayors. The gratitude from them and every French person I met was palpable, even 81 years after my grandfather’s service.

I was simply blown away by the gravity of their emotion, of their thankfulness to me. I felt as if I was accepting thanks for my grandpa. And I was.

I also felt like an imposter because I certainly didn’t do anything. He was the one who fought, suffered shrapnel wounds, and ultimately died for their freedom and the betterment of the world.

It was surreal, almost spiritual, to receive that thanks on his behalf. As I stood before these people, a beautiful sense of synchronicity occurred because I was reciprocating gratitude back to them for remembering him.

I did not expect to feel so indebted to them. My loved one was taken so their lives and culture could continue.

I certainly wish he had come home, raised his two kids, and, 30 years down the road, watched his grandchildren play. I wish he lived a happy, long life with his wife. But sometimes soldiers must fight to the death for freedom.

As I traveled through those French villages, I better understood that thousands had to leave this earth in order to take down evil, and in those thankful eyes, I saw the results of the fight for their freedom. This bond that I felt between our two worlds was an unexpected gift.

My family’s world — forever changed by the ultimate sacrifice and loss of our loved one — and their world, also shaped by our sacrifice and the sacrifice of thousands, came together in a soul-stirring way that I will forever hold dear.

The Trump administration said in 2025 that “military service alone doesn’t exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws,” and a string of military spouses have been detained in immigration crackdowns.

Deisy Rivera Ortega was detained and placed in ICE custody, according to the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano had served in the Army for more than 27 years, including deployments to Afghanistan. In April, his wife

Though her attorney has challenged the legality of her detention in federal court, Serrano said the detention destabilized his mental health and ability to function.

“I can’t sleep even with the medication,” he said.

Ortega was later released after a U.S. senator personally contacted DHS on her behalf.

Military family advocates, immigration attorneys and lawmakers say the issue highlights a gap in how the armed forces measure family-related readiness stressors, which also include housing instability, childcare access, spouse employment and mental health. According to the National Military Family Association, “supporting the well-being of military families is essential to ensuring the readiness of military personnel.”

The 2021 Military Family Lifestyle Survey by Blue Star Families found that one in 10 service members belong to families that have recently immigrated into the country, and advocacy groups and military researchers estimate roughly 45,000 immigrants currently serve in the armed forces, with about 5,000 noncitizens enlisting each year. More than 760,000 noncitizens have earned U.S. citizenship through military service over the past century.

DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, already maintain programs designed to reduce immigration-related instability for military families, including Deferred Action protections and expedited immigration processing.

Another program, Military Parole in Place, can allow some undocumented spouses and relatives of service members to remain in the United States, obtain work authorization and pursue legal residency without leaving the country and triggering lengthy reentry bans. USCIS says the protections recognize “the important sacrifices made by U.S. service members, veterans, enlistees, and their families.”

Military legal assistance offices on many installations provide immigration-related guidance to service members and spouses, though military attorneys generally can’t represent families in immigration court proceedings.

But while DHS and USCIS have maintained military-family immigration protections for years, the Pentagon hasn’t publicly indicated if it is formally studying whether immigration-related stress affects force readiness.

No public Pentagon or DHS database tracks how many active duty troops have noncitizen relatives without legal status, how many military families are involved in deportation proceedings, or whether immigration stress affects readiness. The Pentagon also has no public readiness assessment that includes immigration-related family instability among tracked force stressors.

One recent case involved Annie Ramos, a 22-year-old Army spouse who was detained by immigration authorities after accompanying her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, to Fort Polk in order to obtain a military dependent identification card shortly after the couple married. Blank said the couple had already begun pursuing legal residency options before the arrest. “We were doing everything the right way,” he told The New York Times.

Military family organizations and lawmakers say such cases reflect broader operational concerns inside military households. The National Military Family Association warned in a 2026 statement that immigration enforcement actions involving military families affect both readiness and recruiting: “How can [a service member] focus on deployment when his wife is threatened with deportation?”

Lawmakers have pressed both DHS and the Pentagon about whether immigration enforcement involving military families creates adverse consequences. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, described forced family separation as harmful to “military morale and mission readiness,” and introduced the PROTECT Military Families Act earlier this year to curb unnecessary separations.

In letter sent to the departments of homeland security and defense, over 60 lawmakers wrote that “family well-being directly impacts Service members’ performance during deployment” and asked whether either department had studied the readiness implications of deportations involving military households.

Military Times reached out to the Pentagon, asking if the Defense Department tracks immigration-related family stress as part of readiness assessments, but didn’t receive a response before publication.

A decade has passed since I last felt the thud of a mortar hitting the perimeter or the specific metallic scent of an IED-charred road, yet I’m still waiting for the “homecoming” to actually begin.

To the person standing behind me in the checkout line, I am just another civilian. Perhaps a bit too observant, a bit too stiff. They don’t see the 400 combat patrols. They don’t see the Sunni Triangle in 2007, where the air was thick with the “Surge” and the constant vibrating threat of violence.

I am part of the 1%. Actually, even less. Less than 1% of Americans have looked through an optic and made the permanent, conscious decision to end another human life. We are the ones who stood in the gap, yet years later, I feel less like a “hero” and more like an alien species observing a civilization I no longer understand.

The Hero Myth

The American public loves the word “hero.” It’s a clean word that fits on a bumper sticker or a greeting card. But the reality of an infantryman’s service isn’t clean. During my first tour, from October 2007 to December 2008, and my second year-long tour during the Baghdad withdrawal, “heroism” wasn’t a choice, it was a survival reflex.

There is a profound, sickening duality in being thanked for your service by people who would be horrified if they actually saw what that service required. If the people applauding at the parade saw the kinetic actions, the cold calculation of the engagement, and the way your heart hardens when you’ve taken a life, they wouldn’t offer a handshake—they would offer a wide berth.

I carry the knowledge of what I am capable of, and that knowledge acts as a wall between me and every “normal” person I meet.

The 400-Patrol Chasm

The civilian world worries about mundane emergencies: late emails, traffic jams, or a slow internet connection. To a man who spent 15-month stretches dodging IEDs on treacherous roads and enduring unrelenting indirect fire from above, these struggles feel like an insult.

This creates a pervasive sense of arrogance that I’ve learned to hide but never lost. I look at my peers who spent those years in college or starting careers, and I feel a cold detachment.

Even within the veteran community, there’s a divide. I find it nearly impossible to relate to those who served in support roles—the ones who saw a peaceful tour, unimpeded by the daily lottery of death that defines the infantry.

I am jealous of their peace, yet I look down on it. It’s a toxic, prideful loop: I wouldn’t wish my memories on anyone, yet I can’t respect anyone who doesn’t have them.

The Shame of the Living

The most haunting part of being a survivor isn’t the enemy, it’s the silence. We survived the “Surge,” we survived the withdrawal, and came home to a world that moved on without us. We carry the guilt of every brother who didn’t get to see a decade of “normalcy.”

We feel a sense of shame for being the one who gets to grow old, especially when we feel like the best version of ourselves died in the dust of Iraq anyway.

We are told to readjust, as if we can simply flip a switch and forget how to scan a rooftop for snipers or how to ignore the adrenaline of a firefight. We are expected to brush aside the internal demons, the ones we don’t discuss because they are too dark for polite company, while we shoulder the burdens of everyone else’s trivial problems.

This isolation isn’t reserved for the strangers in the checkout lane; it leaches into the very foundation of my home, turning the dinner table into another kind of perimeter. I look at my friends and family, the people I should know best, and I see a different species.

They discuss neighborhood gossip or the stresses of a home renovation with a frantic intensity that I can’t mirror. To them, these discussions are the pillars of a meaningful life; to me, they are soft, fragile distractions that exist only because men like me kept the darkness at bay.

I envy the effortless way they inhabit their own skin, but that envy is spiked with a cold resentment. I want to care about the things they care about, but my mind is still calibrated for a world where the only metric of a good day was everyone making it back to the wire.

A Stranger’s Love

Even in the quietest moments with those I love, I am performing a version of normal that feels like speaking a foreign language I haven’t quite mastered. When my wife talks about the future or my kids play in the yard, I am scanning the tree line or calculating the nearest exit, unable to turn off the survival reflex that once kept me alive but now keeps me alone.

They see a husband and a father who is a bit too stiff, but they don’t see the Iraq patrols running on a loop behind my eyes. There is a profound, silent shame in realizing that the people I fought to protect are the ones I am most incapable of connecting with. My memories are a wall and every time I try to reach across it, I’m reminded that you cannot bridge a gap created by the “Surge” with simple domesticity.

The Price of Your Peace

If this sounds bitter, it’s because it is. If it sounds arrogant, it’s because it has to be. That pride is the only thing that keeps the weight of the sacrifice from crushing me. The civilian world enjoys a peace they didn’t pay for, protected by a tiny fraction of men they don’t truly want to understand.

I am a combat infantryman. I have seen the world at its most violent and raw, and because of that, I will never be normal. I will continue to walk through grocery stores and parks as a ghost—a reminder of the cost that the 99% will never have to calculate.

I am over a decade removed from the desert, but I am still on patrol. And I suspect I always will be.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

The global price of oil continues to skyrocket as Iran’s missiles and drones hit vital infrastructure in Arab Gulf states. Billion-dollar American radar systems have also been targeted and destroyed across the Middle East by Iran, seemingly degrading U.S. defenses.

U.S. military presence near Iran includes dozens of locations and tens of thousands of troops in harm’s way. This raises the question: If a missile is launched from Iran toward a U.S. military base in the region, how do service members know in time to stay safe?

The United States and its allies have built a layered system to watch the skies day and night. This system uses satellites in space, radar on the ground, ships at sea and aircraft in the air. It also depends on well-trained military members from U.S. Space Command who make quick decisions with the data. As a former U.S. Air Force officer and now aerospace and national security law professor at the University of Mississippi, I’ve studied the vast network of alliances and systems that make this happen.

Together, these tools form a missile defense network that can spot danger early and give warnings. The fastest way to spot a missile is from space. U.S. satellites, like the U.S. Space Force’s Space-Based Infrared System, circle high above Earth. These billion-dollar satellites, the crown jewels of missile defense, can spot the bright heat from a missile launch almost instantly.

When a missile is fired, it creates a strong enough heat signal to be seen in space. The satellites detect this heat using sensitive, infrared sensors and send an alert within seconds. This early warning is critical. It gives the military on the ground or at sea time to get defense systems ready.

The warning signal from space is then received on the ground by systems known as the U.S. Space Force’s Joint Tactical Ground Stations. The signal is sent from space using secure satellite communications, received by these ground stations and then quickly distributed to other parts of the missile defense network.

Radar to detect and track missiles

But satellites cannot do everything to detect and track missiles. They need help from systems on Earth. After a missile is launched, ground-based radars take over from the initial satellite signal. Radars work by sending out radio waves. When those waves hit an object, like a missile, they bounce back. The radar then uses that information to track where the object is and where it is going throughout its flight.

The U.S. uses both short and long-range radars together. One powerful, long-range radar is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar. It can see missiles from over 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away and track them as they travel. Another key system is the U.S. Army’s AN/TPY-2 Surveillance Transportable Radar. This radar has a range of almost 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) and looks more closely at the missile to provide more information about the threat. TPY-2 systems typically sit right next to weapons systems that will destroy the missile to ensure the timely relay of tracking data.

In sum, satellites spot the launch and radars follow the missile through the sky until defense systems destroy it.

However, Iranian forces recently struck both a TPY-2 in Jordan and a FPS-132 in Qatar. These systems are expensive and difficult to quickly replace. This has required the U.S. to move an additional TPY-2 from Korea to place it in the Middle East.

U.S. missile defense tracking was certainly degraded by losing these resources, but other radars are still part of the network. For example, the U.S. Space Force operates another FPS-132 in the U.K., which could potentially provide radar support to the Middle East.

In addition to ground and space-based sensors, U.S. Navy ships carry powerful radar systems as part of their Aegis Combat System, known as the AN/SPY-1, which can provide up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) of coverage. Ships can sail closer to areas where threats may come from and help fill gaps that land-based radars cannot cover.

U.S. Air Force aircraft also play a big role. Planes like the E-3 Sentry can watch large areas using radar from the sky. Drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper can stay in the air for long periods and track activity below with radar and sensors. These moving sensors help the system stay flexible. If one area needs more coverage or is degraded, ships and aircraft can move there to fill in.

Why drones are harder to catch

Drones require a different set of tracking tools and have proven more difficult to destroy than missiles from Iran. The legacy systems are simply better suited to missiles than new drone technology. To detect drones, the U.S. typically uses several tools: radar; radio signal tracking, which can pick up control signals; and cameras and other sensors, which can see drones directly.

Missiles are fast and hot, which makes them easier to detect with the current systems. Iranian drones, such as the Shahed system, are different. Their heat signature is often minimal due to using gas-powered engines not easily detected by infrared sensors. Without this heat signature, that initial warning cue is delayed, making it difficult for radar to know what to track.

Drones are usually smaller and fly low to the ground, making them hard to see on radar. They can be hidden by buildings or tough to distinguish from birds and other objects. Some are made of materials that do not show up well on radar, such as fiberglass and plastic. Others move slowly, which can make them harder to notice or stand out.

Many of Iran’s drones do not show up on radio signal detection systems because they cannot be remotely controlled. These drones are programmed with GPS coordinates and navigate themselves to a target.

Multiple methods

No single method works all the time to defend against drone attacks. Instead, these tools work together to find and track drones. The U.S. and its allies continue to improve their systems to catch both missiles and drones. For example, the U.S. is in discussions to buy acoustics sensors from Ukraine, which can hear drones coming when they cannot be seen using other methods.

New sensors, better software and faster communication will all help strengthen defenses. The goal is simple: Detect threats earlier, respond faster and hit the target faster.

Aaron Brynildson is a law instructor at the University of Mississippi.

Active-duty service members and veterans thinking of harming themselves can get free crisis care. Contact the Military Crisis Line at 988, then press 1, or access online chat by texting 838255. People who are not in the military can also call 988.

I started calmly. Politely, even. The first recording asked me to select from a list of options. I listened to all of them. Pressed the numbers that seemed closest to what I needed.

Thank you. Please hold while we transfer your call.

Vivaldi played for a few minutes.

The next recording asked me to describe my reason for calling. I kept it brief, like it asked me to. “I’m having thoughts of suicide and need to schedule an appointment.”

Thank you. For substance abuse, press 1. For mental health services, press 2. For—

I pressed 2.

Thank you. Please hold while we connect you to the next available representative.

More elevator music. Then a new voice, recorded but cheerful, asked me to verify my insurance information. I recited it from memory. And once more, when an actual person finally answered. She said she’d need to transfer me to scheduling.

Eight minutes of waiting later, another recording asked me to select from the following options.

“Representative,” I said, louder than necessary.

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Please select from—

“Mental health appointment.”

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Please select from the following…

The recording gave me the same options I’d already heard twice, then repeated itself because I couldn’t unlock the phone fast enough with facial recognition to press anything. It transferred me to a voicemail box.

This mailbox is full and cannot accept messages at this time.

The line went dead.

I pulled over. My hands tightened on the steering wheel. I’d been on the phone for 35 minutes with the local mental health clinic where I had previously been a patient and had spoken to exactly one human being, who’d transferred me to a recording. No help yet.

I called another number for a random place I found on Google. More menus, more transfers, and another clerk’s recording telling me the clinic no longer took walk-ins. Would I like the scheduling number?

“Representative!” I yelled.

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand—

“Then fucking listen!”

The system transferred me. The phone rang four times.

This mailbox is full and cannot—

I hung up.

Forty-seven minutes. I’d yelled at a machine, and the only person who’d heard me was my mother, because I finally gave up and called her.

I could tell I worried her. I curse, but not like that. Not so much, not so fast. The words came out in a rush. I loudly explained what I’d been trying to do, what kept happening, how nobody would listen to me and then I stopped myself.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be making this your problem.”

She said something kind. She told me she wanted to help, but all I could hear was the helplessness in her voice.

I told her I’d figure it out. I hung up. I tried a new number.

I called Tricare this time, my insurance. They were helpful in the way that organizations are when they want to appear helpful without actually helping. A recording thanked me for my service and asked me to hold.

A person eventually answered. I explained, as calmly as I could, what I needed.

She gave me a list of providers “in network.” Forty phone numbers. Maybe one of them would answer.

The first three went to voicemail. The seventh connected me to an automated system.

More music.

When someone finally answered, they told me the earliest available appointment was in six weeks. I could be placed on a cancellation list. Would I like that?

“Sure,” I said.

“Great,” the voice said. “You should receive a call tomorrow to confirm.”

“What do you mean a call tomorrow—”

The call ended.

I sat in my truck in the parking lot where I’d pulled over to make these calls. My phone battery was at 8%. Ninety minutes gone.

I had screamed at five automated systems, apologized to my mother, given my credit card information to a machine, and been promised a call tomorrow.

But tomorrow felt very far away.

I picked up my phone again, with more desperation than before. I dialed 988, the suicide hotline, the first time I had ever done so. I hadn’t needed it an hour ago, but this — the system designed to help me and others like me — made me feel worthless.

A real person answered. She was sweet. She talked me down. Told me all the things you say to someone who is on the verge of formalizing his suicide note. I was one of the lucky ones. Thousands of calls have gone unanswered.

It was only a few weeks before that I had walked into an inpatient mental health clinic, separate from the regular clinics I had fruitlessly tried calling.

It was 5:30 p.m. on a Friday. The sunset was beautiful from the waiting room chair. Orange and pink bleeding across the sky through windows that didn’t open. Maybe they weren’t even glass. I watched it fade while I filled out forms. Rate your depression on a scale of 1 to 10. Have you experienced a loss of interest in activities? Changes in appetite? Thoughts of death?

Yes or no. Check the box.

With the paperwork done, I waited several hours. Sitting. Pacing. Sitting again. Staring at people who I thought belonged there more than I did. Long enough to watch the sky go from orange to purple to black. Long enough to see others come and go. Long enough to wonder if anyone had noticed I wasn’t home.

When it was finally my turn, a nurse took my vitals without making eye contact. Blood pressure, weight, temperature. The machine beeped. She wrote something down. In another room with no windows, I waited two more hours before a doctor appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand.

“So, you’re depressed?” she said. “Why?”

I looked at her. She was looking at the tablet. I understood, at that moment, eye contact was out of the question.

Her casualness, leaning against the door frame, suggested I wasn’t her first depressed patient today. And that perhaps she and the prior ones had not been on good terms.

“I don’t know,” I said.

It was the least resentful answer I could give. It was also true, in the way that true things are often insufficient when you’re trying to explain why you don’t want to be alive anymore.

She shook her head. Told me to put my clothes in a bag.

The gown they gave me was made of paper. Two pieces, thin as the material a dentist uses to catch blood before it hits your clothes. This seemed fitting. I was told not to open doors myself, that I would be escorted. Corners and sharp edges were dangerous. I was being protected from furniture.

There were several rooms. I was ushered to the dining hall. Nothing more than a feeding station, utilitarian and bare. It was designed for moving things through — not people but things. It made me want to smash my head into the walls, but somehow I resisted.

I noticed a dozen or so other people dressed like me. Some were talking, some were laughing. They’d formed a kind of community in this place, a society of the fenced-off. They didn’t seem to notice we were being treated like livestock. Corralled and isolated. Safe from ourselves. Dehumanized for the sake of survival. Apparently, they’d locked our dignity in a separate room.

I hated it. I hated that I was here, in a place like this. It was as if they’d finally shown me who I deserved to be. I felt my stomach turn. Because the thing you need most when you’re trying not to kill yourself — connection, compassion, someone who sees you as more than a liability — is the first thing that gets processed out in these places. Not maliciously. Not even deliberately. It just happens. Checkbox by checkbox. Door by door. Doctor by doctor.

Press 1 if you’re experiencing thoughts of suicide. Press 2 if you’re depressed.

But there’s no button for “I need someone to care that I exist.” No option for “I feel like a burden, and you’re treating me exactly like one.” No form that captures what it’s like to sit in a paper gown under fluorescent lights, forbidden from opening doors, while someone with a clipboard decides whether you’re stable enough to return to the place that made you feel unstable to begin with.

The system is callous. It’s cold. It’s designed to manage risk, process people, and keep you alive long enough to discharge you with a safety plan and a list of outpatient referrals.

What it isn’t designed to do is give you a reason to want tomorrow to come.

Evan Slusser is a former Marine Corps pilot and current doctoral student in political geography. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Virginia Tech and the University of Arizona, as well as time attending the Marine Corps University. After a decade of service, he now resides in North Carolina and spends his free time gardening and birdwatching. Neither at which he is remotely successful.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Over the last quarter-century, especially since the war on terrorism began, the United States has produced a quiet army of combat veterans. Many carry injuries you can see: shrapnel wounds, limps, missing appendages. Others carry scars you cannot: the flinch at fireworks, a 3 a.m. stare at the ceiling, the sudden urge to check the locks three times before bed.

“Combat” is a slippery word. One man stands 200 meters from the blast and tells the story at the bar. Another stands 20 meters away, pulls his friend’s helmet from the wreckage and never speaks of it again. Same explosion, different wars inside their heads.

I know, because I hunted roadside bombs in Iraq as a mobilized reservist. That earned me a Combat Action Badge, an Army Commendation Medal and a Meritorious Unit citation.

It also earned me a mind that short-circuited in Afghanistan from being rocketed and seeing a 747 slam down Bagram’s runway in a ball of fire. Nineteen months of combat exposure, then 14 years of holding my body together. The military teaches combat arms how to apply violence to accomplish the mission. They don’t teach us how to process the wreckage afterwards.

My knees, back and shoulders never filed a disability claim, but my brain did. While my body held up to the rigors of service, my mind broke under the strains of combat.

From 2016 to 2025, I attended nine veteran retreats. This is not a retreat brochure, though I’ll describe some of them here. This is a field report from the inside of one veteran’s head, written for the veteran who still wonders if their next breath is worth the effort, and for the civilian who wants to understand why some of us keep signing up for another week in the woods with strangers who smell like gun oil and hope.

The first: Sea kayaking

My first retreat was sea kayaking in 2016. I don’t remember how I found the program. I only remember my wife packing my bag with the same careful hands that waved goodbye to the man who left in 2004 and never quite came home the same.

Ten of us launched from Harkers Island into the Outer Banks. None of us could paddle worth a damn. By day three, we moved like a pod, cutting eelgrass and laughing at dolphins riding our wakes like we were worth following.

On the last night, we camped on a barrier island. Wild horses, possibly left by Spanish shipwrecks centuries ago, galloped through the surf at dawn.

When the van pulled away for the airport, I buried my face in a ball cap so no one would see my tears.

I came home with salt-crusted gear and a new hobby — kayaking. More importantly, I came home with a question I had not asked in years: “What else can I still learn?” The answer was a bachelor of arts in English, 3.7 GPA, earned on night shifts and day classes.

I also came home knowing there was a path back to my family’s trust, and the monster they now lived with might still be worth saving. However, I was not managing my malady but ignoring it, believing that my new goal would change everything. It didn’t.

By 2019, PTSD had eaten my career. A supervisor who hated veterans watched me come apart. COVID walked in and finished the job. The final straw was the VA stamping me as “unemployable.” Stagnation, isolation and a complete loss of self-worth — I thought this was my fate now.

It was like standing in a hallway full of doors all simultaneously shutting and locking, a booming slam and click. I felt my opportunities vanish. I had no idea how I was supposed to take care of my family, much less myself. In my despair, I had forgotten the hope I’d previously found. My .45 started looking like the easiest door left again.

Hiking and climbing

Fortunately, my wife located an application for an Outward Bound retreat in my browser history and filled it out herself. Same deal: 10 veterans, two instructors, no cell phones. This time, the classroom was granite and rope, with a group pushing harder than they thought they could go.

I learned I wasn’t the only one who still tasted cordite 10 years after the last blast or was still waking up covered in a cold sweat. Surrounded by fellow warriors, I felt safe. They felt safe.

We knew we had all seen “it”: ambushes, mortars, rockets and IEDs; the close “whizzz” of a missed shot; washing our brothers’ blood from our clothes and trucks. We knew we had each other’s backs and owned the terrifying memories with the medals to match.

I learned self-forgiveness wasn’t surrender, and that it was the only way to stop punishing myself and the people whom I hadn’t yet pushed away.

I came home with a new hobby — climbing — and a spreadsheet from a brother that listed every veteran retreat in America. I went application-crazy. My wife smiled for the first time in years and bought bigger suitcases.

Another retreat gave me three days in a 10th Mountain Division hut above Aspen, Colorado. Vietnam vets had guided the program; who better? The genius move was having a therapist hike in with us, which finally lowered the drawbridge on my anxiety and let imprisoned memories out.

We read Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and others around the fire.

For the first time in years, I was unguarded. No one flinched. That’s when it hit me: Not only was I forgivable, I had seen terrible things people shouldn’t see. I couldn’t process those memories and that wasn’t my fault. I felt validated.

I then realized I had allowed PTSD to turn me into a remote-control IED, the thing I feared most, blowing up suddenly, shredding the people closest to me without warning. I walked out of those mountains knowing the detonator wasn’t in my enemy’s hand anymore — it was in mine.

Tools, feats and brotherhood

In Texas, the invitation was combat vets only. My first all-trigger-pullers retreat. Yoga at dawn, equine therapy at noon, group circle at dusk.

What they served up wasn’t inspiration; it was tools. Devices, methods and exposure to ways of living I hadn’t known existed. I sat across from men whose shared experiences mirrored my own and found the forgiveness I didn’t know I still needed.

Shrapnel left in spines. Bullet wounds. Burn wards. It mattered.

The brotherhood was immediate and absolute. I learned to be present. The warrior-turned-yogi gave me the single most useful explanation I’ve ever heard about it:

“It’s being in the now, without reservation, and most importantly, without judgment.

It’s refusing to live where your memories insist you belong.

It’s breathing this breath, right here, and being grateful for whatever life you have left.”

For the first time, I understood presence wasn’t some hippie buzzword. It was the only place the war couldn’t follow me. Stay in the now, or the past will keep detonating the present. That standard operating procedure has saved my life more times than body armor ever did.

One place after another, one set of amazing people and veterans at each. I was not just feeling better, I was surrounding myself with better people.

In Alaska, I was again honored to be with a four-man team of warriors. We buzzed around on ATVs and sluiced for gold. Rain canceled the salmon fishing, but Denali still punched through the clouds like a promise. There was no cost of admission, simply a nod and a handshake; no therapy, no modality required.

That fall, I rappelled 210 feet down the Gunsight Notch of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, boots skimming lichen, heart in my throat, grinning like a kid who just discovered gravity can be negotiated with.

Recreation in amazing places forced my brain to stop seeing the things that hurt it. Instead of looking back at trauma, I was looking forward to the next adventure and more healing. I was staying present.

A few years went by while I digested what I had learned; I climbed, I kayaked.

I lost my big brother suddenly; it devastated me. Several men I had served with also passed. Things felt bleak again, but I was still working with all the tools I had gained. I navigated through a rough patch because my paddle was strong, my rope was solid and most importantly, my team was powerful.

Another opportunity reached out. My wife kept smiling, and my kids liked me again.

This retreat handed me skis, lessons and gave me a new lease on life. I carved my first turns and overcame fear. We ate like kings, did yoga together and had discussions on “being enough.” I shared my story with strangers without tears for the first time and surprised myself.

An application to discovery

I was very nearly a statistic. The numbers were all stacked against me, but I found a way to stay in the fight. The first step to getting better wasn’t medication, it was an application. If we never sign up, we never go.

Undoubtedly, many opportunities are available out there. Not all are the same. Some organizations’ focus seems to be on federal dollars, not altruism.

There’s no holy grail for PTSD; no one-size-fits-all modality, and no ritual that makes it all better. But there is something offered at these events that is truly special: resilience to stay in the fight, be present, end isolation and stagnation, and find self-forgiveness, self-worth, and a renewed sense of purpose.

I am finally the father and husband I was supposed to be before war and PTSD, and that’s a gift from strangers and donors who will never know how much it made a difference.

If you are a civilian, know that your tax dollars and donations buy more than medals — they buy wild horses at dawn and a man who can look his wife in the eye again.

I still flinch at fireworks. I still check the locks. But I also own a kayak, a climbing rope and a pair of skis that fit like forgiveness.

If you are a veteran staring at the ceiling at 0300, know that eight strangers in kayaks taught me the world is still wide and worth seeing.

Casey Elliott was born and raised in Minnesota. He has a bachelor’s degree in English with a writing emphasis from Winona State University. Between retreats, he helps other veterans get their benefits, plays with his two dogs (River and Inara), kayaks, climbs and skis. He has been married for 25 years to a truly wonderful person and they have two kids.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Kim Vo wrote the headline.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

On the morning of May 25, 2006, I didn’t go out. Capt. Doug Dicenzo invited me to come along to meet some local Iraqi leaders, and I had previously shown him the safer routes to take. But on the day of the meeting, I had other duties to attend to. Truthfully, I had survived enough near misses and just didn’t want to go.

Doug and his gunner, Robert Blair went and were killed by a roadside bomb. Two others were severely wounded.

Their deaths were a failure. My failure. And for nearly 20 years, I have experienced guilt, self-doubt and anger for my decision. Their deaths, preceded by my simple decision, created a black hole; whenever I think of it, I can only see darkness.

Doug joined my company in mid-2005 and his arrival was a relief. His predecessor relied on rank and intimidation, but Doug was something else entirely. There was no doubt where his thoughts went when he twisted his wedding ring during meetings: his wife and son.

Once, a newlywed came with a request: She wanted more time with her husband, so couldn’t someone else drive the Bradley Fighting Vehicle? Doug listened without interruption, pulling his chair away from the desk so they sat as equals. Then he twisted his ring and talked about the challenges military life presented to his own new and growing family. His empathy eclipsed her disappointment.

Robert was a bull-rider, cowboy, soldier and adventurer. In Kuwait, where the empty blue sky settled and shimmered along the burning sand, Bedouins harvested our expended brass casings. Robert, a bridge between cultures, waved them over, their camels trailing behind. He negotiated a trade: MREs for some short camel rides, no casings involved. Doug saw us and, in short order, was riding too.

By May, we were deep in the sectarian war that engulfed Baghdad. I patrolled the neighborhoods of al-Saydiah, al-Baya’a, al-al’Amil and al-Jihad with a cavalry unit. Most of Charlie Company, including Doug and Robert, were in an area south of my platoon where convoy escorts and sparsely populated farms grated against our infantry mentality to take the fight to the enemy.

After two months of patrolling tightly cluttered streets and markets, Charlie Company came north and reunited with us. Doug discussed the dynamics with me: Sunni residents were erecting makeshift barricades to defend against Shia militias. Doug did not like this entrepreneurial approach to neighborhood security since it limited freedom of movement in his area of operations.

I warned him that certain roads were extremely dangerous due to sophisticated roadside bomb strikes. I tapped the map along the side road: “Don’t go here unless you have a good reason. Secure the neighborhoods using different access roads.”

Robert and others were eager to get out into Baghdad proper: take the fight to an enemy littering the city with roadside bombs and creating victims of civil warfare and insurgency alike. Sunni residents sought to keep our American patrols nearby as long as possible. Our proximity kept the militias at bay, at least temporarily. Residents offered us thick, sweet chai and watermelon, hopeful that their hospitality would keep us present longer, even if only by a few bites.

The day that ended their lives began well enough. Doug was excited to head out for a meeting with local leadership. He offered to save me a spot in his Humvee. I declined — burnt down from daily, sleep-warping patrols by this point; plus it was our maintenance day. The truth was, I didn’t want to go.

Other dangerous encounters had scratched that itch to prove myself long ago. Doug and the patrol left early for the meeting with the local council, and I continued with my usual routine.

The crack-boom ripped through the late morning air, the kind of concussive burst of atmosphere that briefly stopped animals in their tracks. I know, because that’s how I reacted walking on the forward operating base as my inner ear registered the disturbance. It wasn’t thunder.

I cannot fully recall that day. The memory shrapnel is not physically harmful, but still dangerous with its own subtle violence. The casualty information came over the radio. The same grids on the map where I tapped out my warning. Orders came swiftly, and I led a patrol to the ambush site to relieve the quick reaction patrol.

I walked out into the street, the spot marked by a jagged crater, oriented toward the opposing lane, the nearby cafe and intersection empty except for soldiers removing concertina wire.

I wanted to hear some good news — that it wasn’t as bad as we suspected. I can’t recall anyone talking. I can’t remember if the broken Humvee was there or gone, its gutted side door a figment of the dreams that would follow.

I do clearly remember the scattered watermelon chunks on the ground. I didn’t remember a melon stand there before; I had, despite my own warnings, patrolled this place of spite.

I stopped and looked at the crater, up and down again. Wait, the watermelon wasn’t right. Moistened globules of road dirt and grime, combined with dark liquid, viscous and drying, lay all around. The realization uncoiled — an instant stretched into a dark moment: These are the pieces of Doug and Robert that did not get collected.

The image of body pieces and memory shrapnel coalesced. I failed to convince them to take another route; I failed to go out myself. My patrol might have found the IED, and if not, it should have been me. I had been assigned to that area for longer.

I’ve tried to pretend the guilt and horror of those deaths don’t exist. I’ve poured sacrifices into it: drink, energy, mistakes, and counseling. The memory rises, interrupting the gentle moments before I drift off to sleep, and at times jerks me by my leg from a deep slumber.

The memory thanks me for my sacrifices and then asks for more, always more. I learned the hard way not to unleash it with celebratory libations that turned sour on holidays and birthdays. No matter how fast I forced myself to run during training, or what accolades I earned later in my career, the memory remains. “You failed, Mike.”

I have searched for hope. My hunt continues.

For two years now, I’ve “done the work” in counseling, with a group and individually.

From debriefs and conversations to counseling sessions and now to friends, family, and professionals, they all assure me it wasn’t my fault.

I dutifully repeat the words, like a test I’ve studied for.

I just don’t believe the answer.

J. Michael Comstock is a veteran of the Iraq War, where he served as a mechanized infantry platoon leader in southwestern Baghdad and later as an intelligence advisor to a Kurdish battalion and an Iraqi Army Brigade south of Kirkuk. He draws on his military experiences to write poetry and prose exploring memory, distant cultures, and, eventually, fresh adventures. He lives with his family in Virginia.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Kim Vo wrote the headlines.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

My father has been running longer than I’ve been alive. As his son, without understanding or explanation, he expected me to run with him. He was a Marine, but he’d been running long before he enlisted. He escaped from an abusive, alcoholic home in North Carolina at age 16. He eventually found safety and structure at Camp Pendleton.

He was too young for Vietnam and separated before Desert Storm. He couldn’t fulfill the reasons why he joined the Marine Corps, but he still rigidly threw his identity into the military. Purpose was scheduled, designed and predictable.

My father refocused on me when he missed the opportunity to fulfill a purpose overseas. After six years in the Marine Corps, he was convinced life would start outside of the military, outside California, with clean air and open spaces in Colorado. So he trekked us to Denver.

His father never went to college, so it was important that he did. He reminded me daily that his father was lazy and a drunk, so it was important for him to evolve. He traded morning PT for early morning study sessions.

He never saw his father work, so he proved himself different by clocking into two full-time jobs. He thought his father was corrosive, irrational and unpredictable. And so I think that’s why my father never wept, never faltered and was always reliable. He was a stone bridge over the Colorado rapids.

My father ran every Saturday morning. He thought it was important that I did too.

He was a machine, I thought. Always on. Some weekends, I’d wake predawn, too early for cartoons. I’d find him, already awake, staring at the bedroom wall of our apartment. The sun never touched his north-facing window. The blue hour seeped into everything and washed over his walls, his posture. His silence always made that place too quiet. When I asked if he was okay, he’d only rise and tell me he was waiting on me.

The running trail at Washington Park felt infinite when I was 15. It’s hidden in a Denver neighborhood where bars don’t cover every window; a 2-mile oasis bookended by man-made north and south lakes.

My father had only two kinds of conversations: long and too long — always about purpose, always asking for my opinion, always ending abruptly with grunts and a single head nod when I gave it. His purpose was teaching, and he knew it’d be fulfilled if he got his doctorate. His father hated teachers so he thought it was important that he become one.

But he struggled finding tenure. This security would have justified his suffering. Just a few more years, he’d persuade my mother. After the Marines and me, reaching tenure would be his new finish line.

Weekend runs with dad always felt reasonable at first. The first 17 seconds were always the easiest. I’d leap start. Forward. Exploding. Full stride. Everything blurred. He’s gone, pacing behind. Temporarily. Soon he’s upon me. Steadied and practiced. My lungs burn and my rabbit heart pounds, desperate and frustrated, while my legs fail me.

Without looking back, he’d bark for me to keep moving.

Clouds of hardwood pine pollen floated at shoulder height as he led me around the lake. He’d burst through them effortlessly; I’d follow through the aftermath as he counted intermittent cadence. I’d inhale everything and suffocate.

It’ll all soon be downhill, he said.

But the asphalt was level, hard and weathered. Each foot strike sent lightning up my calves and burned my gut.

Hurt the pain, he’d say. And I’d wrench my love handle, denying any cramp from forming.

Soon I’d walk. His head would snap back just as I kicked my leg into a half-skip and jog before he could catch me slacking. I could hear him grind his teeth as he barked out another order: Keep your feet moving. One foot after another and it’ll be over.

Marines exist in the present tense; they always are, never were. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.” But my father was an NCO in his physical prime, trained to motivate kids a few years older than me. I’m slowing down and he’s staring. He lets me walk and I know he wants to say something.

I keep looking at the sky. Pilots don’t have to jog endless miles, I think. Still, I’m larger than him and I can’t sprint more than 17 seconds. We’ll try again tomorrow, he says. One foot after another.

But 2 miles is infinite to me.

And all I want is to keep up with my father.

War Horse reader Jim Carden was inspired to write a song based on Michael’s Reflection.

Expelling weakness

Pain is weakness leaving the body. That concept was buried in me and in every late-’80s millennial. He assumed that pain — mental, physical and existential — was equal and expected. Discomfort was required to become stronger, faster, resilient.

You want to believe this when you’re 15. Expelling something weak inside yourself inspires you when you’re 20. You echo it when you’re 30 and parrot it mindlessly when you’re 40 with a family. Pain is as necessary a part of life as breathing. Existing is pain. There is an expectation that it will eventually leave the body. Soon, you won’t feel. And not feeling this is a metric for growing stronger.

My father was faithful to this and enlisted with few options into the Marine Corps: nothing but the clothes on my back.

I was born on Camp Pendleton, and I felt that I carried his purpose.

But this responsibility was too heavy, especially when I floundered to find my own purpose and stumbled with the realization I wasn’t the son he hoped people would see.

At 15, I had no language for any of this. Keeping up with my father left me short of breath and embarrassed. My legs always shook nervously and my lungs felt like they were collapsing even on days off, outside of the park. Soon all I could feel and spit out to him was resentment and exhaustion: “I’m going to kill myself.”

No. You don’t know real pain, he’d say.

I hadn’t earned these feelings.

My father believed pain was a symptom of growth. Trauma and discipline would result in success and a stronger livelihood. And so he enlisted. And I convinced myself that I also needed to earn my own place. So later I enlisted, too.

But I joined the Air Force. Because they don’t make you run as much.

Chasing purpose

As soon as I left his sight, purpose in the military felt superficial for me; belonging was somewhere else. When I separated, he acknowledged this disillusionment was expected, as if finally earned. My father searched for purpose anywhere but where he was, and freshly separated, so did I. New relationships, new city, new career. Stillness was a failure.

I moved from maintaining bombers in the Air Force to managing project assets in civilian call centers, from racking milestones in manufacturing to high-profile sales and acquisitions.

My father never got his terminal graduate degree. I thought it was important that I did. He had only known poverty in his mid-30s; I made sure I knew more. Purpose became outpacing my father.

He’s behind me now. My strides are wider. My successes are more extensive, albeit because of his push for me to succeed.

But because my only purpose was being where he wasn’t, I lamented to him: “I can’t do this anymore.”

But at middle age, he carried his own weight, searching for a grand coronation for crossing a finish line always out of reach. He would remind me: You’re not exhausted. Not yet.

So I caught control of my breathing, hurt my pain and kept sprinting forward.

Years later, as I settled into middle age, in the predawn, my wingtips scraped against the linoleum of the office floor in West Hollywood. It’s the only hour of silence before the assistants scramble to prep the day. The blue hour washed the hallways to my office and I stewed at my desk, staring at the corner where the floor met the wall, thoughtless, grinding my teeth.

Eric, one of the new hires, fidgeted with the handle to my door and said, “Are you okay?”

What is it? is all I barked.

He apologized twice as he invited himself inside. He chewed his bottom lip. He was 30 and about to become a father. He hadn’t figured out his life and worried he wouldn’t before his son arrived. How can he determine a future for his son when he hadn’t found meaning? I gripped the face of my watch, and the scent of the janitor’s hardwood pine filled from the hallway. He wondered if he was worth more dead than alive.

Probably, I said.

Eric fidgeted with his hands and mumbled with nervous laughter, not knowing if I was joking. My silence was stark and borrowed from my father. His eyes were pensive. I couldn’t stay still this long, so I decided to end the conversation as cruelly as possible.

Life is indifferent. It carries on whether we decide to stay or not.

I told him to endure and to keep moving forward. I believed this because I’m sure my father would agree.

I stopped midstep.

I apologized.

But it was too late, and he nodded the same nod I’d given hundreds of times before. And I wondered if my father had sought the same guidance from someone like me only to hear: You’re not allowed to stop. Keep moving forward.

And if one day Eric may sit in his bedroom and stare at the wall while his son gathers his shoes.

The finish line

My father can never retire. He’s 70, working, pushing forward to an ever-shifting finish line. The pain in his knees and the exhaustion that once stopped his heart were the only weaknesses that ever left his body.

He endured — as a Marine in the present tense, forced to live the same endurance demanded by him and for me. Motion is survival and purpose.

I run alone now.

The sound of footsteps fading, steady, sometimes scraping, but always.

Persevere, son, he says. I know it feels hopeless. I’ve felt the same.

His discipline, passed down as love, is his legacy and burden. My father never knew when to stop. I don’t think he knew he could. It’s been a long time since I’ve been 15.

I know I shouldn’t run through the world as he did.

But I can almost see the finish line.

Michael Hyon Johnson is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores identity, discipline and belonging through stories rooted in military life and youth culture. An Air Force veteran and former B-1B ground crew chief, he draws on his service to examine how structure, ambition and memory shape who we become. Based in Los Angeles, Johnson also leads operations in film and digital media. Johnson bridges his experience in technology and storytelling to champion authentic, character-driven narratives. He is a 2025 War Horse fellow.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.