It was a cold, snow-covered night, and I was alone tied to a light pole by my suspenders. I was the new kid at Andrus Children’s Home, and I was the unfortunate victim of childhood bullying at the hands of the older boys who lived there. Looking back at that…

I wrote this essay and submitted it to the Writer’s Digest 2019 Competition. Surprisingly, I won 8th place in the Memoir/Personal Essay Category. This story is dedicated to all those who served. However, I wanted to honor those veterans who passed on their wisdom to the younger generation of veterans…

by Chad M. Pillai

Amidst the ruins of the city, the poverty, the fear, and the despair of war; there was one boy unique among them all. …

Every so often, I think back to my time to the castle in the Iraqi City of Tal’Afar. Tal’Afar is a small city that strides along the route between the city of Mosul to the East and the Syrian Border to the West. It is a unique place for someone…

A mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, the United States bombed Nagasaki. The bombs, nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man, killed a combined 129,000–246,000 people and ushered in the nuclear…