The Havok Journal | Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

• What is the Pain of the Living Compared to the Sacrifice of the Dead? August 19, 2026
  Somewhere in a forgotten war, over a decade ago, he died. His eight-day struggle ended. Somewhere, in this window of time, my brain takes hold. I can recite their every date. Yet I can never remember that fateful date. I can never remember the day it started, only the day it ended. Yet, my body […]
  Jake Smith
• Clausewitz Never Had to PCS August 18, 2026
  The United States military can put a carrier strike group wherever it wants, refuel aircraft in midair, deliver ammunition across an ocean, and locate a lieutenant who wandered six feet outside the approved PowerPoint template. Give it a dining-room table, however, and suddenly we’re Magellan. Every year, the Department of Defense arranges roughly 300,000 personal-property […]
  Tammy Pondsmith
• Part of Him Is Still in Iraq August 18, 2026
  I was sitting on the back porch of Hans’ double-wide, soaking up the Texas heat and listening to Hans talk about his time in Iraq. Hans had a Lime-A-Rita in one hand and a Pall Mall in the other. As was his wont, my son started telling a tale about his deployment. It went like […]
  Frank Pauc
• Why You Should Enlist in the National Guard Before Commissioning August 18, 2026
  By James B. · National Guard Infantryman · ROTC Cadet · Ranger & Sapper School Graduate Of all the routes to a commission, writes Army veteran Eric Milzarski at We Are The Mighty, “only one in-road immediately garners respect, admiration, and loyalty.” He’s talking about Mustangs, officers who were enlisted before they commissioned. This is […]
  Special Guest
• The Costume We Wear: Kafka, Identity, and the Illusion of Authenticity in War and Life August 17, 2026
  Franz Kafka is often credited—though perhaps apocryphally—with the observation that “I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.” While the exact wording is difficult to source definitively in Kafka’s corpus, the sentiment is unmistakably consistent with his body of work. Across The Trial, […]
  Charles Faint