By Elizabeth Haag
It was supposed to be a celebration dinner.
My 22-year-old husband was home from war after six excruciating months during which we’d had virtually no contact.
We headed to a restaurant with friends—fellow Marines and their... Read More
By Mike Betts
Memorial Day used to be just another holiday. Then I served in the U.S. Marine Corps. The change wasn’t overnight. But as another Memorial Day approaches, I find myself seeking solitude and personal challenges—striving to do... Read More
The stars seem to shine brighter in the desert. Even in war. Perhaps especially in war. I still remember the way they flung across the vast sky as we rolled across the line of departure into Iraq in the early morning hours of March 20,... Read More
Andrew and I called ourselves “nub buddies.” We met at Walter Reed around the time we both received our prosthetics. After more than a year of limb salvage, endless doctor appointments, and a mountain of pills, the doctors decided to amputate,... Read More
By Christopher Bowers
Hidden wounds take the longest to heal. Of course, we know this. It’s why we founded Leashes of Valor more than six years ago. But knowing a thing — being certain of it — cannot prepare you for losing a friend to the... Read More
By Jason Haag
Turn on the TV.
It was barely 6 a.m. on the West Coast when the phone shattered the early morning quiet—Dad calling from back home in Virginia.
I’d just come off a 48-hour shift at Camp Pendleton, my first duty station as a... Read More
For years, my service dog Axel rarely left my side. Whether taking a quick trip to the gas station or boarding a plane bound for halfway across the country, Axel was there, a steady and steadfast presence who often recognized my symptoms of... Read More
The year I turned seven stands out as my most memorable childhood birthday. I was afflicted with chickenpox—a hard thing to forget. I remember running around outside my grandparents’ house on the Patuxent River in an oversized T-shirt with... Read More
“Only the dead have seen the end of war,” General Douglas MacArthur famously said in a speech at West Point nearly a decade and a half after the Allies defeated the Nazis.
Although the quote’s origins are still debated—maybe Plato said it... Read More
Hidden wounds take the longest to heal. Of course, we know this. It’s why we founded Leashes of Valor nearly six years ago. But knowing a thing—being certain of it—cannot prepare you for losing a friend to the unseen wounds of war we talk so... Read More
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