Jessica Dawn Lynch is an American teacher, actress, and former United States Army soldier who served in the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and allied forces. On March 23, 2003, Private First Class Lynch was serving as a unit supply specialist with the 507th Maintenance Company when her convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces during the Battle of Nasiriyah. Lynch was seriously injured and captured. Her subsequent recovery by U.S. Special Operations Forces on April 1, 2003, received considerable media coverage; it was the first successful rescue of an American prisoner of war since World War II and the first ever of a woman.
Jason Mark Everman is an American musician and soldier who played guitar with Nirvana and Mind Funk, and bass in Soundgarden and OLD. He later served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the U.S. Army as an Army Ranger and Green Beret. As of May 2017, Everman plays the guitar in a military veteran band called Silence and Light.
The 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as Army Rangers, is the U.S. Army's elite premier light infantry unit and special operations force within the United States Army Special Operations Command. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia and is composed of a regimental headquarters company, a military intelligence battalion, a special troops battalion, and three Ranger battalions.
Patrick Daniel Tillman Jr. was an American professional football player in the National Football League (NFL) who left his sports career and enlisted in the United States Army in May 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and subsequent death, were the subject of national attention when he was killed in action as a result of friendly fire.
James Robert Kalsu was an American football player who was an All-American tackle at the University of Oklahoma and an eighth-round selection in the 1968 NFL/AFL draft by the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League. Kalsu joined the U.S. Army as an officer after the 1968 season and was killed in action in the Vietnam War in 1970.
Leland High School is a public high school located in the Almaden Valley in San Jose, California. Leland is one of the nine high schools in the San Jose Unified School District and is a STEM school.
Stan Goff is an American anti-war activist, writer, and blogger. Prior to his activism Goff had a long career in the U.S. armed forces, serving in the United States Army from 1970 to 1996 with two breaks in service. After retiring from the military he became a political activist, adopting anti-imperialist, feminist, and socialist/Marxist views, and is now a Christian. He is an active blogger and is the author of several books, including Hideous Dream (2000), Full-Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (2004), Energy War (2006), Sex & War (2006), Borderline - Reflections on War, Sex, and Church (2015), "Mammon's Ecology - Metaphysic of the Empty Sign" (2018), and "Tough Gynes - Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men" (2019). He has also been a contributor to CounterPunch and Huffington Post.
Jeremy Ray Staat is a former American football defensive lineman and offensive lineman who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1998 and the St. Louis Rams for two games in 2003. He also played for the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League. He is a United States Marine, and has served in Iraq. On September 17, 2019, Staat, a registered Republican, announced his candidacy for Congress in California's 8th District.
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were war crimes involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi child Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Bryan Douglas "Doug" Brown is a retired four-star United States Army general. He retired in 2007 after four decades of military service. In his final assignment, he served as the seventh commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), from September 2, 2003, until July 9, 2007. As USSOCOM's commander, he was responsible for all unified special operations forces (SOF), both active duty and reserve.
Women in combat refers to female military personnel assigned to combat positions. The role of women in the military has varied across the world’s major countries throughout history with several views for and against women in combat.
Jeffery Dean Struecker is an American author, pastor, and former United States Army Ranger who was involved in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. He also participated in the 1989 invasion of Panama and in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. Struecker has co-authored five published books. Struecker was portrayed by American actor Brian Van Holt in the 2001 film, Black Hawk Down, and in 2017, he was inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
Redacted is a 2007 American war film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It is a fictional dramatization, loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, when U.S. Army soldiers raped an Iraqi girl and murdered her along with her family. This film, which is a companion to an earlier film by De Palma, 1989's Casualties of War, was shot in Jordan.
LaVena Lynn Johnson was an E3 Private First Class in the United States Army. She was found dead in a tent. Her death was controversially ruled as a suicide but the evidence of rape and battery led many to believe the United States Department of Defense covered it up.
Stanley Allen McChrystal is a retired United States Army general best known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the mid-2000s. His last assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, United States Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A). He previously served as Director, Joint Staff from August 2008 to June 2009 and as Commander of JSOC from 2003 to 2008, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but also criticized for his alleged role in the cover-up of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident. McChrystal was reportedly known for saying what other military leaders were thinking but were afraid to say; this was one of the reasons cited for his appointment to lead all forces in Afghanistan. He held the post from June 15, 2009, to June 23, 2010.
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, a 2009 book written by Jon Krakauer, is a biography of Pat Tillman, an American football player who left his professional career and enlisted in the United States Army after the September 11 attacks. He subsequently was killed in 2004 in the US war in Afghanistan by friendly fire, an incident which the US government attempted to cover up. To write the book, Krakauer drew heavily upon Tillman's journals, interviews with the Tillman family, Boots On the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman by Mary Tillman, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan.
The Tillman Story is a 2010 American documentary film directed by Amir Bar-Lev. The film is about the death of football player turned U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman in the war in Afghanistan, the coverup of the true circumstances of his death, and his family's struggle to unearth the truth. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It was named 2010 Best Documentary by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association, and the Florida Film Critics Circle. The film is narrated by Josh Brolin.
A Second Knock at the Door is a documentary on friendly fire in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film follows military families after they are told their family member died in a "fratricide" incident. All the families profiled in the film only learned their family member was killed by a comrade, not an enemy, months after they first learned of their death.
The Yellow Birds is the debut novel from American writer, poet, and Iraq War veteran Kevin Powers. It was one of The New York Times's 100 Most Notable Books of 2012 and a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. It was awarded the 2012 The Guardian First Book Award, and the 2013 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.
United States 
United States Army 
Specialist 
2nd Ranger Battalion 
75th Ranger Regiment 
