War Never Quits

Not all soldiers come home, but for those that do, War Never Quits.

The war drums bang in our heads. A not-so-distant clapping and popping still ringing in our ears.

A solider finds that home is not the same after war. The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of peace become shrouded in some different sensation. Something foggy, dusty, bloody.

Even when a solider comes home, War Never Quits.

War sticks to soldiers, a foggy, dusty, bloody sensation present every day after combat ends. Once you’ve lived it, it never stops. It can’t be undone.

The enlistment, the oath, the training, the deployment, the actions, the battles, the friends...

There is no backward.

Only forward.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wouldn’t go back, undo my service, my friends’ sacrifices, and the actions and battles that shaped my future. I can’t rinse this smoke and dust from my hair. There is blood under my nails that cannot be cleaned away.

I have felt the toils of war long after I came home.

Still, my future is shaped daily by combat and sacrifice, by steel and lead, though I have not crossed a hostile road in a long time.

But those hostile roads—those fields, doorways, marketplaces, and intersections—I crossed so many times still show up in my life.

I may not enter them unblinking, breath held, white knuckled, but still today I do hard fucking things. Still today I pass through difficult places. Still today I dedicate my life to challenge.

War was the hardest of them all. The feelings of those difficult places, those hard fucking things, have not left me.

NFQ x War Club | 08.02.2024

And now, I am well-equipped for the rest of life’s hard fucking things, difficult places. Action, decision, and execution are in my breath and blood. By War I know how to carry myself around snakes, take aim under pressure, and create outcomes. By smoke, dust, and blood I fear no enemy, back there and here at home.

War Never Quits.

And for the battles we face throughout the rest of our lives—disease, disaster, and misfortune—War’s lingering emotions and skills keep us ready.

The war drums are still banging, the popping and ringing still in my ears.

Every day we fight. For many, the fight is in our heads.

For all of us, we fight in health, fitness, careers, communities, families and finances.

Life is not a walk in the fucking park.

But that’s not what we signed up for.

We signed up for War, many of us at eighteen years old.

War Never Quits. We know that now.

And we Never Fucking Quit, shaped by everything we saw, heard, and did while in uniform.

The Flag still flies, the war drums still bang, and still we step into hostile places, ready for the hard fucking fight.

Relentless, relentless, until our final breath.

Never Fucking Quit.

For those that didn’t come home, and for those that did.

War Never Quits goes live Friday, 08.02.2024