Why Gallipoli was successful

*Note: This essay was published in the Sydney Morning Herald print edition on April 25, 2020. An image of the column is included below (“On the grim arithmetic of war, Gallipoli cannot be dismissed as a colossal waste”), as well as the text of the essay.   On this solemn day, when Australians pause to reflect on…

Hellfighters’ heroism

*Note: This essay was published in the Los Angeles Times print edition on February 15, 2019. It can also be found online here. A century ago, on Feb. 17, 1919, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, nearly 3,000 African American soldiers and known as the Harlem Hellfighters, returned from World War I and marched up Fifth Avenue…

Why Veterans Remember

*Note: This essay was published at Military.com on October 31, 2018. It can also be found online here. Being an army officer in the park with my kids down the street from our home in Manitou Springs, Colorado, it was pretty hard to miss the enormous World War I-era “Doughboy” statue. But there was no plaque,…