The sirens started at midnight.

I’d been asleep in my hotel room in Jerusalem when I was jolted awake by the piercing blast of sirens screaming into the night. Not the distant warning we’d heard days earlier when Houthi rockets flew toward Israel, but the full-throated city-wide alert that meant one thing: incoming.

My phone erupted with alerts from the Home Front Command app. My heart pounded. For a moment, I wondered if this was real. I’d felt fear like this before—in Iraq, leading a Marine fire team through Anbar Province—but I didn’t expect it here. Not on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Then my training kicked in, and I moved.

Within 90 seconds, I and 32 other American veterans on a spiritual journey were packed into the hotel’s bomb shelter, a utilitarian room with fluorescent lights, folding chairs, and concrete walls. Israeli civilians, some armed, and hotel staff crowded in alongside us.

Our guide, Barak, a major in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reserves, delivered the news: Israel had just conducted surprise strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Retaliation was coming.

We waited in the shelter for almost an hour before getting the all clear. I returned to my room and tried to sleep. Sirens again. Back to the shelter. All clear. Back to bed. Sirens again. Back to the shelter. All clear. The cycle repeated throughout the night, my heart pounding each time. My mind kept going to my kids—if I die here, I might never see them again.

It was June 13, 2025—the beginning of what would be called the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and my peaceful pilgrimage for spiritual healing had just become a war story.

A Journey for Healing

I came to Israel seeking to mend old wounds and draw closer to God. Three years earlier, my life had come apart. A brutal divorce, custody battle, DWI arrest, and panic attacks had left me beat up and shaken. Trauma from Iraq that I thought I’d buried came ripping back. I’d just recently stopped smoking marijuana, a crutch I’d leaned on for too long, and now I was trying to rebuild my life.

The Heroes to Heroes nonprofit program promised a 10-day spiritual journey to the Holy Land for combat veterans, a chance to walk in Christ’s footsteps and process trauma in a place where suffering and redemption had intertwined for thousands of years.

The trip started beautifully. On Monday, June 9, our group arrived in Tel Aviv. After a short tour of the city, we drove north to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, visited the Church of the Annunciation, stood at the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, and toured Christian sites I had only read about in scripture.

By Thursday, June 12, we were in Jerusalem. I walked the Via Dolorosa, the path on which Christ is believed to have carried the cross. I stood in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place where tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried, and prayed at the Western Wall, all that remains of the ancient Jewish temple.

Hours later, I would be running to a bomb shelter.

What Iraq Taught Me

This wasn’t my first war zone. In 2005, I was a vehicle commander for a quick reaction force in Ramadi, Iraq. My Humvee was hit by IEDs on three separate occasions. My platoon took 30 altogether. We drew small arms and sniper fire every day. On another deployment, mortars rained onto our position daily—the same helpless feeling of incoming fire: you can’t do anything but hunker down and hope you don’t get hit.

It’s not just the explosions. It’s the waiting before an attack you know is coming and the anxiety that comes with it.

Standing in that Jerusalem bomb shelter, the old feelings came back. But this time, I had no rifle, no unit, no mission. Just the helplessness of being a civilian in someone else’s war.

Preparing for Retaliatory Strikes

The next morning, we gathered for an emergency meeting. Barak delivered the update: Iran had launched about 100 armed drones. Expected arrival: five hours.

We waited in suspense. The sirens came. We sheltered. Israel’s Iron Dome and allied forces intercepted the wave. But Friday night brought more attacks, and between alerts, I stood at my hotel window and watched streaks of light arc across the Jerusalem sky—incoming rockets being shot down overhead.

The old instincts from Iraq stirred. I wanted a weapon. I wanted to fight back. We’d already stripped our bus of the Heroes to Heroes banners to avoid identifying us as Americans. Days earlier, before the strikes began, some men in Jerusalem’s Muslim quarter had been photographing our group, and it had put us all on edge. I told one of the IDF soldiers traveling with us that if he went down, I’d pick up his rifle. He didn’t argue.

Inside the shelter, I watched my roommate edge toward a panic attack. He had to borrow anxiety medication from another veteran.

I had a few emergency pills in my own bag—a safety net I’d packed just in case—but I didn’t take them. I kept telling myself: if it gets really bad, they’re there. But I didn’t reach for them. Instead, I talked my anxious roommate down. One day at a time. Trust God.

By Saturday morning, the reality was stark: airports were closed, Israeli airspace was shut down, missiles had gotten through, Israelis were dead, and 33 American veterans were trapped in a country under attack.

Into Palestinian Territory

Our leaders made an unexpected decision on Saturday: we would attempt to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, even though it meant crossing into Palestinian Authority territory in the West Bank. Our Israeli guides couldn’t accompany us. We would cross alone with our Muslim bus driver and meet a Palestinian Christian guide on the other side.

Some veterans stayed behind, too nervous about the risk. But I volunteered. Something had shifted from panic mode to high alert mode—and with it came a clarity I hadn’t expected. I felt stronger after making it through two nights of attacks. This is where I was supposed to be.

What happened at the checkpoint surprised me. Palestinian police protectively surrounded our bus and escorted us through the nearly empty city to the Church of the Nativity. I knelt at the silver star marking the birthplace of Christ and touched it. Candles flickered in the 1,600-year-old church. I prayed the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary (the Nativity), one Our Father, 10 Hail Marys.

For 20 minutes, men who had been talking nervously fell silent, heads bowed in prayer. In the middle of a war zone, peace.

Leaving proved harder than entering. At the checkpoint back into Israel, barriers came down. We were stuck in our bus for over 90 minutes while our guides frantically called military contacts. The fear started creeping back in; I didn’t want to be trapped in the West Bank.

Finally, a high-ranking IDF commander authorized our crossing, and we drove back into Jerusalem as the sun set.

The Safest Place Was the War Zone

By Tuesday, June 17, a strange irony emerged: the safest place in Israel was the Gaza envelope, the ring of Israeli communities and kibbutzim within miles of the Gaza border. Iran wasn’t targeting that area.

We toured the sites of the October 7 massacre: the car graveyard at Kibbutz Tekuma, the Nova Music Festival memorial where photos of 364 faces stared back at me. From a hilltop, we watched smoke rise and felt the concussion of explosions from IDF operations.

The irony wasn’t lost on me: I was touring a massacre site while dodging Iranian missiles, and finding safety at the edge of an active war.

Evacuation

That last night, the sirens blared again. We were up all night. With Israeli airspace still closed, Project Dynamo, a nonprofit that evacuates people from crisis zones, arranged our exit through Jordan. The drive to the King Hussein Jordanian border crossing took hours—checkpoints, detours, gridlock in the desert heat. I hadn’t slept in days.

Inside the bus, nobody was calm. Thirty-three American veterans, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, were about to cross into Jordan. A Muslim country. Nobody said it, but everybody thought it.

At the airport, I saw what looked like distant streaks in the night sky, missiles arcing over Jordan toward Israel. Or maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks, my mind still wired for war.

Either way, I was going home.

What I Carried Home

I came looking for peace. I found war. I came to heal from combat, and I ended up back in a combat zone. But sitting in that bomb shelter—watching my roommate struggle while I talked him through it; choosing to go into Bethlehem when others stayed behind; volunteering for the Gaza border instead of hiding in the hotel—made me realize that instead of finding peace, I found strength and courage.

They weren’t the kind you find in a firefight. They were the kind you find in your own head. I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t surrender to the panic attacks that had been running my life back home. I held it together. I didn’t use the emergency meds in my bag. I chose faith over fear, again and again, in a place where fear had every right to win.

Despite the trauma, or maybe because of it, I felt God had sent me there. A quiet retreat, a comfortable pilgrimage, wouldn’t have shown me what I needed to see. God didn’t send me to Israel for rest—He sent me into the fire so I could walk out of it and know I was whole.

The missiles and prayers, the shelters and sacred places, were all woven together to uncover the strength buried underneath my pain.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.