• Author Christian Knierim in San Francisco. Without work, I feel I don’t have a purpose, and I don’t fit into my country’s normal society. READ MORE
  • A lone U.S. soldier on a darkened street in Iraq (to illustrate war veteran's personal story about living with PTSD). To say that I got angry would not capture the intensity of the emotion. I would explode, reacting 100 times disproportionate toward the “wrong” that was committed against me. READ MORE
  • Mikko Carranza, author of a personal story about the Iraq war, slumped in a chair with his rifle by his side. Back home, a civilian might live from paycheck to paycheck; I try to stay alive from holiday to holiday. READ MORE
  • A statue of a crying woman (to illustrate MST rape victim's story). I was not worth the dark cloud that might hover over the unit if punishments were dealt. The Army’s apathy and betrayal, however passive, hurt more than J's attack. READ MORE
  • A pensive Chase Weston, author of a personal story about an IED attack in Iraq, sitting on a couch as he examines his helmet. Something doesn’t seem right. It is morning, and the local women are nowhere in sight. This does not help my gut feeling in the least bit. To be honest, it makes me quite nervous. READ MORE
  • Four U.S. Marines detain two Iraqi men, as viewed through the infrared scope of a 50-cal. I can’t explain why I made it home in one piece or what my purpose in life is now. I don’t understand what is left in life for me to achieve. Part of me feels like I should have died in Iraq. READ MORE
  • Aimee Chabot, author of a personal story about sexual harassment in the U.S. military, with other American soldiers at a Kosovo airstrip. I grip the Beretta like a security blanket, and the heavy magazine like my teddy bear. It's nights like this that I hear the Army again telling me that I'm “a girl in a man's world.” READ MORE
  • A Coast Guard petty officer makes final preparations for a memorial service for the crew of CG-1705. When someone you know dies, your heart sinks to your knees and your throat dries up. READ MORE
  • An exhausted looking Chris Clark, author of a personal story about an IED attack in Iraq, looks through the windshield of a military vehicle. I can’t help but think back to the year before. Will it be different this time? Will we see as much combat? I pray not.READ MORE
  • Jeremy Profitt, author of a personal story about living with PTSD, sits on a machine gun-mounted vehicle in Afghanistan. When I returned from Iraq, I was edgy and short-tempered. The smallest thing could trigger an outburst. I viewed everything from a life-or-death perspective. READ MORE
  • The author of a personal story about living with PTSD and survivor's guilt 40 years after the Vietnam war sits in a darkened hooch, 1968. I still wonder why I survived and those others didn’t. They seemed so much more heroic than I was. If they were so much more than me, why am I still here and they’re not? READ MORE
  • Greg Malloure, author of a personal story about the Iraq war, sits beside a heavy-caliber machine gun. The insurgents have left us to the strays who roam the night, and until this moment I believe I would have told you that I would kill anything if given the chance. READ MORE
  • A snippet of a handwritten poem of hatred and anger by an Iraq war veteran living with PTSD. The hate in my eyes, the blood on my hands. I don't regret any of this. I just wish my nightmares would go away.READ MORE
  • The author of a personal story about a car bombing in Iraq poses with a young boy outside the gates of Camp Taji. Thoughts were always there that one of us might try to adopt him, bring him home to the U.S., and give him a life that was so lacking in Iraq. None of us ever thought it would end the way it did. READ MORE
  • IED hunter Casey McFarlin, author of a personal story about getting a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, poses for the camera. I've lost a lot of what I've done. I've lost memories going a long way back, childhood memories. Even daily memories aren't there.
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  • The author of a poem about living with PTSD sleeping in a foxhole in Iraq. The war is over for me. I don't understand why I panic or break out into sweats or fits of anger.READ MORE
  • Empty bullet shell casings litter a street in Iraq. They say that God answers many prayers, but whose does He answer, ours or the enemy's? Both sides are equally loved by Him. This is what makes God's role in war so difficult to fathom.READ MORE
  • The author of a narrative about a question he was once asked between deployments looks into the camera, his arm resting on a machine gun. Can you feel the torment I suffer for the things I have done, things other men said was for a just cause? Can you see the faces that haunt me?READ MORE

An original series of first-person narratives on loss, service and recovery.

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