When the War Hits Home.

A photo journal.

By: Tim Boivin

Leader, Writers Room, 50501 Veterans

When I was stationed with 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, I spent a lot of time up at the Demilitarized Zone. As the editor of the Division newspaper, The Indianhead, I covered soldiers at Outposts Alpha and Oullette, as well as the QRF – the Quick Reactionary Force – which would deploy the second word came that the North Koreans were on the move.

It was my first experience overseas away from the comfort of the suburban life I had enjoyed until I enlisted in the Army. When I looked across the no-man’s land past the barbed wire at the North Korean outposts, I gained a much more intense appreciation of our freedom.

It was freedom I hadn’t earned but had benefitted from all my life, by winning what was essentially a birth lottery.

Later in my Army career, I again covered soldiers patrolling the border between good and evil, this time in the Fulda Gap of what was then West Germany for European Stars and Stripes newspaper. It was a border that had been established at the end of World War II and then lined with barbed wire by East Bloc troops when the Berlin Wall went up.

Again, on every trip to the border around Fulda and Bad Kissingen, I had the same eerie feeling I had looking across at North Korea – wondering how I go so lucky to not be born on the wrong side of the barbed wire.

The nine years of my Army service – along with another three years in Germany after the Wall fell as a civilian Department of Defense employee – remained the seminal pivot point in my personal journey from a troublesome not-so-happy-go-lucky kid to an adult hyperactively engaged in trying to make a better community, country, world.

Until this month – the month the war hit home, as this photo essay illustrates.

Paratroopers descending from the dark sky onto the roof of an apartment building. Kids being zip-tied in the street. Government agents driving recklessly across residential neighborhoods and main streets...crashing cars, smashing windows, hauling terrified teens away into a deportation system that leaves no trace of their being.

Men of the cloth being shot point-black with pepper balls and tear gas. A goofy guy in a giraffe costume being surrounded by three SS thugs and then taken away for having the balls to sing parody songs about their Commander in Chief and his pedophile pals. A man being ridden like a horse in the middle of the street while passers-by plead with the goons to let him go.

A woman in a polka dot dress giving the one-finger salute with both hands to cosplaying Tour of Duty wannabes rumbling around the narrow streets of our nation’s largest city in a tactical military vehicle. An alderwoman being taken away in handcuffs for asking American SS agents for identification and warrants. Government hatchetmen descending on the tent of an opposition group in our nation’s Capitol at 5 in the morning and dragging everything away.

October 2025 was our Kristallnacht. Really, a Kristallmonat.

This month shatters any American illusion that our ideals of freedom and justice for all still exist…if they ever did. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been replaced by death, cages in a swamp, and the pursuit of anyone who isn’t white.

I’m an old man now. I don’t have that innocence that I left behind at 19 when I swore an oath to the Constitution to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Even when I was in the Army, I never thought I would run the risk of being harmed by people from my side.

But the fragging of American freedom is in full force now. The enemies are here – on our land, in our communities, roaming our streets, rampaging through parks and neighborhoods. And these enemies are domestically cultivated and deployed – their empty souls bought and paid for by oligarchs and tyrants who can’t get enough of anything to satisfy their rapacious appetites.

Meanwhile, poor children and elderly neighbors will hunger ever more for simple sustenance. The oaths of the men and women who serve our country are not worth the air that was used to utter them. Veterans lose benefits and life-saving services.

Science to advance the human condition and save our environment has been tossed away like rotten lettuce. Healthcare designed to care for those who need it the most among us is rendered null and void.

All in favor of filling the pockets of oligarchs and despotic rulers around the world.

I have not forsaken America. I still hold hope in my heart. I still possess the will to fight for right. I still stand tall in the fight against evil, as do many people I did not even know six months ago. People who are rallying everywhere to fight against these fascist demons.

But will America forsake me? Will America forsake all of us?

That is the question that remains to be answered as the war hits home. Hard.