Prologue - The Fall Artanna stood quietly on a hill and watched the great tower of Tan Kolar fall. Around the collapsing structure, smoke and flames rose from the Night Lord’s palace. A battle raged outside the high walls of black stone as the tattered remnants of the Army of Night fought the forces of the Great Alliance. She knew that the Night Lord’s army, a horde of corpses and suits of empty armour animated by dark sp...

  Back in 1961, I heard on the radio that Kennedy had sent 500 US Special Forces and military advisors to a place called Vietnam. I was just starting high school at the time. It was the first time I remember hearing about that country. We also had a war going on in the Korean peninsula. Things were pretty tense with the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. Kennedy and Khrushchev had just played “Chicken” w...

Our “mamad” (a protected room in an apartment constructed with reinforced concrete to withstand anything but a direct impact from a conventional projectile) doubles as a TV room and contains bookshelves and a work niche. On the second shelf above the desk is a small chest reminiscent of a pirate’s treasure chest. It contains most of the coins I had in my pockets while traveling through various countries. Our grandchildren...

Basic Training: 13 June to 7 July 1983 Monday, 13 June 1983 The bus took us from Tel HaShomer Hospital to the induction center. There we received our yellow cards, were photographed (front and profile), had our mouths x-rayed (deep throat), were vaccinated (both arms), issued uniforms, fed, and got dental checkups. We waited around for several hours until we were told to board a bus. Nobody knew where we would be sent. On...

***Another extremely short micro... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

I had radio watch. I usually did four hours a night. I wrote letters by flashlight. The letters all had a box in the lower left corner with tick-marks that I slashed into the notebook paper every time I saw a falling star. Mars marched angrily across the Iraqi sky. "ROAD KNIGHT ONE . . . THIS IS BLACK HORSE . . .RADIO CHECK, OVER." came a crackling voice on the radio. We were supposed to do radio checks every hour, but it...

The advance party led the way, Found the encampment, place to stay. Always you were one of the fewChosen to be part of the crew. Sent up ahead days in advanceSought out the best place for a chance. Recon terrain, scope out the lay.Chose that which doesn't give away. Bring up the 5 tons, drive in place,Join them together, leave no space. What is the first thing to be done?Set up commo, that's number one. Put up the copper...

Julianne finished loading the large moving truck and pulled the rear door closed. She walked down the rear ramp and glanced up at the only home she had known for the last twenty years. She glanced down the street to the rubble which was the house her first boyfriend and sighed. She allowed the memories of when she was thirteen years old flood her mind and then pushed them away. “What’s taking you so long?” she asked herse...