This is War

By Sword and Scale

Personal Journals Society & Culture History Social Sciences

What's This is War about?

A raw look at the combat and homecoming experience from American veterans who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This Is War” chronicles the trials of combat vets both abroad and at home.

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This is War episodes:

02.27.2023
Introducing - Sword and Scale Nightmares
Introducing Sword and Scale Nightmares! True Crime for Bedtime. Your nightmare begins now...The first three episodes will drop on 3.2.23 at 3:23pm EDT. In the meantime, please take a moment to subscribe on your preferred podcast listening platform...SUBSCRIBE NOW: https://link.chtbl.com/sasnightmaresApple...
12.11.2019
45 | Dunning
Justin Dunning wanted to tell the story of guys he cared about who were lost, as many of the people I’ve interviewed for this show have, because he wants it known.Google “Killed in Iraq” or “Afghanistan” and you’ll find thousands...
11.27.2019
45 | Sabins
Control often feels like safety. You have a weapon, some buddies and a mission and feel like the only difference between living and dying is execution, but there’s always also luck, or chance. For Jeffrey Sabins, learning to deal with...
11.13.2019
44 | Ardito
For someone who joined the Army specifically to get into combat dealing with an unseen enemy is more than merely frustrating, it can introduce the insidious notion of pointlessness into your life. When there’s no enemy to fight back against,...
10.30.2019
43 | Didier
There isn’t one factor that makes combat so transformative. Instead it is a combination of reactions. To external peril and internal aggression, to personal empathy in the face of the horrible, to your expectations in light of your experiences. For...
10.16.2019
42 | McConnell
We often think of endurance in terms of the physical, how much we can do before we’re out of our depth, but things like psychological and emotional endurance contribute so much to our experiences. David McConnell’s 20-year military career was...
10.02.2019
41 | Vande Hei
Joining the Marines seemed as unlikely as it seemed natural for Casper Vande Hei. He was a small guy who always had something to prove. The thing is, no matter how much fight you have in you, or how much...
09.19.2019
MONSTRUO SEASON II
MonstruoPodcast.comFrom the collective minds of Jack Luna (Dark Topic), Tyler Bell (The Westside Fairytales) and Mike Boudet (Sword and Scale) comes Monstruo, the most disturbing podcast ever made. Nine stories, carefully crafted, one year in the making. Each two part episode of...
09.18.2019
40 | Christiana
Sometimes, we want something so desperately that it colors everything we do. Sometimes we even get it. When you get down to it, getting what we want and keeping it probably drives most of us, makes us endure circumstances we...
09.04.2019
39 | Luetjen
Traversing the distance between what we think we want and what it will take to make us happy is a journey we often don’t know we’re on until it’s near its end. Even then, we often find it impossible to...
08.21.2019
38 | Horn
As a student, Dwight Horn felt called to enter the ministry but as a Navy Chaplain, he volunteered to follow the Marines to whom he was ministering into battle because he felt it was his duty. Just as Marines don’t...
08.07.2019
37 | Ohrstrom
We all have a little quit in us, it’s the practical voice of doubt, the one that comes up with perfectly acceptable reasons about why it just makes more sense to give up. Sometimes that voice can’t be argued with...
07.24.2019
36 | Hunt
Choices open and close doors to our futures, they both can help define who we are and hold us accountable to the person we want to be. Most important, though, they can’t be unmade. Once Andrew Hunt chose to join...
07.10.2019
35 | Pettijohn
When you’re responsible to make sure the mission gets accomplished, there’s no greater tool than cool-headedness. For Brandon Pettijohn leading Marines in Afghanistan provided the opportunity to coordinate big picture responses to very specific crises. Once he discovered that dispassionate...
06.26.2019
34 | Riess
There’s no question that combat changes a person, but the kind of change can be both subtle and far-reaching. You learn to internalize fear, angst and doubt but not necessarily to redirect them, and that’s exactly what can make a...
06.12.2019
33 | Ames
The transition into combat is a difficult one by any standard. No matter how sufficiently trained you are there is no substitute for reality to give you a sense of how you’re going to respond under fire, and how well...
05.29.2019
32 | Campbell
The endurance that the military teaches can be carried over into civilian life, but it’s tricky. In the military you have to endure because it’s life and death. Outside the stakes don’t seem as high on the face of it,...
05.15.2019
31 | B. Davies
Combat isn’t about glory, it’s about serving the mission and doing what needs to be done to achieve an objective, but there’s still something particular about the bond combat veterans form forged in circumstances that most people can’t really comprehend.
05.01.2019
30 | Jimenez
Ernie Jimenez joined the military because he saw it as the career opportunity of a lifetime. He joined the Marines because he wanted to fight. As an infantry assaultman during the Second Battle of Fallujah, he got a good hard...
04.17.2019
29 | Higens
Counterintelligence officer Davin Higens talks about his pre- and post-9/11 experience running assets, the difficulties of chasing down bombmakers in the early days of the war, and the complications for interrogators in the wake of Abu Ghraib.
04.03.2019
28 | Cheek
Steven Cheek joined that Marines specifically to train and have that training tested. During the eight years and five combat tours he served as an infantryman, he used every inch of that training and more. Because for him, there had...
03.20.2019
27 | Hice
Curtis Hice was one of the thousands of regular enlistees in 2001, people who were joining the military for the pursuit of personal excellence, social improvement and maybe adventure. Although combat deployments always are on the table, he joined at...
03.06.2019
26 | Moore
From the rescue of Jessica Lynch through the recovery of Extortion 17, Nicholas Moore’s Ranger career was punctuated by historic episodes of valor and endurance. The author of Run to the Sound of the Guns shares his story on this...
02.20.2019
25 | Graves
Long before he enlisted in the army, Samuel Graves developed a work ethic that separated him from his peers. He approached whatever job he was doing with exceeding his own expectations as the only goal. But when I arrived in...
02.13.2019
24 | Dang
After his brother was killed in the first battle of Ramadi, Anthony Dang joined the Marines in hope of getting revenge. But, as he found out for himself in the second battle of Ramadi, there is no satisfaction in killing,...
01.30.2019
23 | Waage
From leading soldiers in Afghanistan to kicking down doors as part of the Ranger regiment, Erick Waage’s career was marked by violence and close calls. He had the kinds of tours that can wear on your humanity if you take...
01.16.2019
22 | Davies
It’s possible to kill both without remorse and without malice, but it is impossible to kill without consequence. Even when the consequence is satisfaction or a sense of a wrong righted, killing is something that stays with a person for...
01.09.2019
MONSTRUO
The heart of a man is...
11.28.2018
21 | McPadden
Ray McPadden, a newly minted officer, takes command of an infantry platoon for deployment to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, where he discovers just how deeply your first deployment can influence the rest of your career, what he can endure and, most...
11.14.2018
20 | Buzard
Daniel “Doc” Buzard had been a working paramedic long before he deployed in his late 20s, but his first taste of combat medicine opened his eyes to the possibilities and meaning that providing aid has in a war zone.
10.31.2018
19 | Avalos
When you enlist and take the oath of service, you take the oath by yourself, but not on your own. The oath implicates not only your family and friends, but also your future spouse and children, it implicates people you...
10.17.2018
18 | Satterly Part 2
Tom Satterly fought in the Battle of Mogadishu and ran the “Mogadishu Mile” as part of his first deployment as a Delta soldier. It was the first in a special operations career that spanned into the War on Terror, including...
10.03.2018
17| Satterly Part 1
During one of the most storied firefights in recent U.S. history, nine special forces soldiers held a house in Somalia, guarding one of the Black Hawk helicopters that had crashed during a routine operation.In the first of a two part...
09.19.2018
16 | Jensen
Even when you spend the better part of your adolescence dreaming about warfare, and your teens preparing for it, there still is an unnavigable distance between theory and practice, especially when there isn’t even a war on. You attack enemies...
09.05.2018
15 | Knapp
Cowardice and recklessness are opposite reactions to the same inclination: putting your wants before the needs of the people you have promised to be faithful to. With Daniel Knapp it is more than that. There is an element of...
08.22.2018
14 | Mitalas
The flag-draped coffin is one of the most enduring symbols of war. It is a reminder of the cost and also of the responsibility that young men and women take on as part of their service to their country. Brandon...
08.09.2018
13 | Lyon
Most of the time when we do something, we’re either doing it for us or for someone else, but in the case of our duty, things can get a little less clear. You see, when duty is the thing we’re...
07.25.2018
12 | Baskett
Kristofer Baskett was 19 years old when he arrived in Iraq. He had enlisted in the Navy with his sights on underwater demolition but a little more than a year later he was a corpsman doing his best to fit...
07.11.2018
11 | Siren
From early on in her training, Vanessa Mahan learned that being an aviator is more than just a test of strength and stamina, it also requires an unrelenting will and focus. What it requires most of all is the ability...
06.27.2018
10 | Shelton
When Shane Shelton had to delay his entry into the special forces to go and fight in Afghanistan the only thing that buffered his disappointment was that he would get the chance to fight. He had joined the army with...
06.13.2018
9 | Jones
Training is a way of honing skills, of teaching your body to think without you, so you can concentrate on the crisis at hand, but you can’t train character, you only can amplify it. For Cody Jones the commitment...
05.30.2018
8 | Lydy
Fighting has to be somewhere in your nature if you want to be part of a warrior class. Notions about having the killer instinct probably are overstated because killing isn’t always what circumstances requires of a warrior. The will to...
05.16.2018
7 | Garcia
Violence is a necessary part of combat, and that is something every Marine understands when they step on the yellow footprints that first day of bootcamp. Few people crave it outright, but they all accept the very real dangers endemic...
05.02.2018
6 | Alotto
Duty is above the letter of the law. It’s a way of calibrating what you want to do with what you’re responsible for and matching that up against how you see yourself as a person. Joe Alotto had wanted to...
04.18.2018
5 | Post
Being under constant assault in a war zone wears a person down in both expected and unexpected ways. Sure, it wears you down physically, psychologically and emotionally, but it also can wear down your soul, taking chips out of your...
04.04.2018
4 | Freeman
What do you do with rage when you don’t have any place to point it but inward? When there is no satisfaction in revenge and no way to put things right? Marcus Freeman spent nearly a decade as a combat...
03.20.2018
3 | Stormeski
“My training just kicked in.” We hear that a lot. It calls to mind decisiveness and instinctual reactions to uncommonly dire circumstances. For an Army medic, it’s about worst case scenarios and hoping on some level that your expertise rarely...
03.13.2018
2 | Rumley
Many of the men and women who enlist in the armed forces do so knowing they might die, but somehow meeting death face to face still comes as an absolute surprise.
03.13.2018
1 | Mearns
Ian Mearns did two tours in Iraq. The first one was bad, the second one was worse, but his greatest challenge was dealing with the leftover fear, rage and anger once he got home.
02.27.2018
Introducing This Is War
This is Bravery. This is Heroism, This is Patriotism. This is War premieres on March 13th.

What's This is War about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

This is War episodes:

Introducing - Sword and Scale Nightmares

45 | Dunning

45 | Sabins

44 | Ardito

43 | Didier

42 | McConnell

41 | Vande Hei

MONSTRUO SEASON II

40 | Christiana

39 | Luetjen

38 | Horn

37 | Ohrstrom

36 | Hunt

35 | Pettijohn

34 | Riess

33 | Ames

32 | Campbell

31 | B. Davies

30 | Jimenez

29 | Higens

28 | Cheek

27 | Hice

26 | Moore

25 | Graves

24 | Dang

23 | Waage

22 | Davies

MONSTRUO

21 | McPadden

20 | Buzard

19 | Avalos

18 | Satterly Part 2

17| Satterly Part 1

16 | Jensen

15 | Knapp

14 | Mitalas

13 | Lyon

12 | Baskett

11 | Siren

10 | Shelton

9 | Jones

8 | Lydy

7 | Garcia

6 | Alotto

5 | Post

4 | Freeman

3 | Stormeski

2 | Rumley

1 | Mearns

Introducing This Is War

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