Matt Gallagher

Matt Gallagher spent 15 months in Iraq with the U.S. Army as an armored cavalry officer. He is the author of the war memoir Kaboom and coeditor of the forthcoming short fiction collection Fire & Forget.

Articles from Contributor

Battleland Battleland

Summer Reads

It’s the dog days of summer, which means the sun is en fuego and bodies are sweating en masse. Which, pardon my Greek, sucks. Yes, I know it’s hotter in Baghdad and more sweltering in Kandahar with 80 pounds of gear on. Spare

Battleland Battleland

Another Face of Multiple Deployments

It’s been nearly two months since the Kandahar massacre – some time and distance, but not much. Some things are clearer, some things still aren’t. We don’t know why Staff Sergeant Robert Bales did what he did. We do know the American public’s confidence in the war effort plunged post-Kandahar. We don’t know if that …

Battleland Battleland

Signature Wound

“Trust me, the first thing you do is check your [junk.]”

This is how a rehabbing Army soldier describes the immediate post-IED blast scene in Bob Drury’s new piece “Signature Wound,” available through Amazon’s Kindle Singles. Drury, a contributing editor and foreign correspondent for Men’s Health, explores the …

Battleland Battleland

The Labyrinth

William Swenson. It’s probably not a name many recognize, something that could change in the next few months.

Earlier this month, as the military prepped for Sergeant Dakota Meyer’s Medal of Honor ceremony, the Military Times published an article about the unrecognized valor of former Army Captain Swenson, who fought at the …

Battleland Battleland

A Ranger’s Life Between Combat Tours

In February, I traveled to Fort Lewis, Washington to write about the redeployment experience of the 2nd Battalion of the fabled 75th Ranger Regiment, just home from Afghanistan. Conventional Army units deploy for 12 months at a time before returning home for another year or so, but the Rangers’ rotations tend to last only 3–6

Battleland Battleland

Vets Aren’t Victims

Vets aren’t victims.

Like many people of Celtic descent, I don’t just have a temper – I have an Irish temper. (Hooray genetic enablers that double as rationalizations!) And one of the things that consistently stokes those mind-flames is the “vets are victims” fallacy.

We volunteered. In some cases, we volunteered …