I needed to accept the fact that
I was never going to get over what I went through.
I loved protecting Marines.
Being a sergeant of Marines was an honor.
Journalism is another means to protect democracy,
just like the military is.
And journalism is another opportunity to serve.
So in 2010, I was a squad leader
that was leading 13 Marines and one Navy corpsman,
and we were assigned to a little outpost called Kunjak.
Living on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan is pretty tough.
We only had one tent.
We were sleeping under the stars.
It was pretty bare bones.
One day
we were carrying, like, hundreds of pounds of stuff,
just miserable for miles.
We throw our stuff down.
I look over in the corner and there's this scruffy,
skinny dude with this weird-looking gear.
And I think I wanted to throw him over the side of the hill.
When we met,
his first question was, like,
"Uh, yeah, who the hell are you?"
And I explained that I was a journalist.
He kind of strategically positioned himself between me and his squad.
When I was a young Marine,
my perception of the media was that they couldn't be trusted at all.
We viewed and treated the media almost as an enemy.
Thanks.
You need me to wear that thing, or?
I think for the most part, the military is kind of ingrained
not to trust the media, and suddenly this stranger is introduced with a camera.
There was a lot of suspicion.
Finbarr was really the first time that a journalist
got to know who we were and really listened to our stories.
He wasn't afraid to do something dangerous right alongside us.
Any time that you're under fire with someone, it brings you together.
On Nov. 1, the mission
of that patrol was to push the enemy deeper into the city.
I didn't really have the best feeling about the mission.
We knew something was coming.
I was toward the front of the patrol.
We came around the corner.
I see a guy who's got a weapon.
In that moment leading up to the firefight,
all you hear is your heartbeat.
No cover, no concealment, just bullets ricocheting off the walls.
I haven't found any type of adrenaline that hits you
the way that a bullet whizzing By your head does.
The Marines are up ahead,
and I was taking pictures of an Afghan policeman,
who was lining up an RPG to fire in the direction of the Taliban.
I look back, and I saw that football coming toward us.
It took me a second to realize what was going on.
And then I heard the booms and the machine guns and the rockets,
and my guys ran through a wall of bullets and grabbed us
and pulled us back there.
Four of us had been wounded.
He was dizzy. He was nauseated.
He was vomiting.
I just kind of hooked my hand under his armpit to walk beside him
and make sure he didn't, like, stagger off the route toward the vehicles.
And that's when Finn really went from being a reporter
to being a fellow human.
Within hours of the firefight,
Finbarr's photos were published online.
What wasn't immediately known
was that my Marine Corps career was over.
I came home and I realized that just things were different
and that was really hard.
I'd get my migraines
and what I now call, like, my bad brain days.
I was pushing my wife and daughter away.
It was easier for me to just disengage and not talk.
Summertime, went out with a few of my friends,
like, wife was there too.
And by the end of the night, after drinking, like, I was threatening suicide,
like begging to go find a gun, um...
Being wounded and losing my career
really robbed me of my sense of purpose.
And I feel like my sense of purpose was to lead Marines.
Being a sergeant of Marines was an honor.
I loved it.
When I started therapy, I was just having trouble talking at the time.
So my therapist handed me a notebook
like, "Start writing so we have something to talk about when you come in here next time."
So I just kept writing and writing and writing, and it eventually turned into
a thank-you letter to Finbarr, really, for his photos
and how much they meant to me and how they were helpful in my therapy.
But I didn't have anybody to proofread it for me, so I sent it off to the editor
at the Times that Finbarr had worked with when he was embedded with us.
And I really fired it off into the dark, not even really expecting a response.
And, uh, the response
I got back like a few hours later was, you know, "Can we publish this, please?"
I just suddenly got an email
from the editor at The New York Times.
So I clicked on the link, opened it up, and there was this article.
It was really touching, really moving.
I was impressed by his writing skills.
Journalism was never on my radar as something that I thought I wanted to do.
But I realized there's not well-executed effort
within the journalism community to actually deliver
reporting that helps to bridge the military and civilian divide.
Trust of military officers has declined year over year over year.
That's not good for U.S. national security.
That's not going to ensure that the cream of the crop rise through the ranks
and are the ones leading our young men and women into battle.
There weren't many other outlets that were covering the military
at the depth and scope that he wanted to do.
I told Finn I need to start some kind of a blog to make this bigger than just me.
I launched the War Horse in 2016 on Kickstarter and raised
just over $50,000 from a little over 500 individual donors.
My name is Thomas Brennan and I'm the founder of the War Horse.
All of them made my idea feel so much less crazy.
Right now, the War Horse is an award-winning,
nonprofit newsroom that focuses on the human impact of military service.
Some of our most recent stories have been focused on burn pits,
the criminal justice system, gender issues in uniform,
toxic exposures, health care issues.
And then what I think is the emotional cornerstone for our work
is the first-person reflections that we help veterans write.
Almost every generation of veteran has written for us.
I think we've published over 250 of them to date.
We've won top industry awards.
We've copublished with some of the best newsrooms in the country.
We're still a small full-time staff.
We've got a robust team of part-time reporters.
When I think of where I want the War Horse to go,
I want to be seen as an irreplaceable part of the news ecosystem
and just having a tremendous impact on veterans all around the country,
whether it's through policy
or changes in the way that the military conducts itself.
Journalism gives me an opportunity
to still look out for Marines, to still look out for service members.
Reporting has restored my hope.
It has given me a sense of purpose.
Finbarr has been an incredible mentor.
He was my inspiration for getting into journalism.
Every project that I work on, I want to make him proud.
When we met
on top of this dusty hill, he describes himself as a dumb grunt.
And if I'm honest, that's kind of what I saw him as.
And to see the trajectory that he's traveled,
I'm really, really proud of him and what he's done.
At the end of the day, the military's job is to win our wars.
And if we can help hold people accountable in a way
that makes sure that our experiment in democracy survives,
that's what I see our mission as.
Journalism is another means to protect democracy.
That's what drives me.