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

• The Recruiter Found Me in a Doghouse June 2, 2026
  No joke, there I was… slacking off at my pet store job, taking a little nap on the clock. We were slow, and I only made around six bucks an hour. Then I heard it. Knock knock knock. Someone was rapping on the outside of my preferred hidey-hole, the Dogloo brand igloo-shaped doghouse for large […]
  Stan Lake
• Cunningham’s Law: Why the Fastest Way to Get the Right Answer Is to Post the Wrong One June 1, 2026
  There is an old rule of the internet that every soldier, analyst, and armchair strategist eventually discovers the hard way. It’s not in any field manual, and it definitely wasn’t covered in any professional military education course. It’s called Cunningham’s Law. And once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere. Cunningham’s Law states: “The […]
  Charles Faint
• Departing Awards: “We Don’t Do This Alone” June 1, 2026
  I’m the kind of guy that wins all his arguments three days later in the shower. When I haven’t had an argument in a while, I dig up the past and say all the things I was supposed to but didn’t. I have a library of apologies, thank-yous, perfectly timed insults, and goodbyes that I […]
  K.C. Aud
• Why Would an Army Brat Drop Out of High School? June 1, 2026
  I dropped out of high school when I was 16. I don’t necessarily start all of my conversations this way and I tend not to advertise it but not for the reasons you would expect. It was 2020 and we all know what was happening in 2020. Prior to that cataclysmic shift of a pandemic, […]
  Jenna Warnock
• The Hidden Scars May 31, 2026
  We are the tales of A. A. Milne’s “Hundred Acre Woods.” We are forever seeking to explain the bipolar results of war. How can we so rapidly shift from Tigger to Eeyore? From manic to depressive? How can we sway from Piglet to Rabbit? From childish innocence to obsessive logic, in a single breath.  Only a fictional world could seek […]
  Jake Smith