Victory Day Tribute
My name is Captain Omar Al-Hassan, Iraqi Army, 5th Division, Infantry. I say it proudly today, though there was a time I carried that rank like a weight heavier than the rifle strapped to my shoulder. I have stood in cities the world wrote off as lost, watched smoke rise from homes that once smelled of morning bread, and I have held the hands of comrades as life slipped away from them beneath skies that did not deserve such a moment. Victory Day means many things to many people. To me, it is the day I count their names.
There are days the world celebrates with loud music. But the days that truly matter… they begin in silence. Iraq’s Victory Day is one such day; a celebration wrapped around a wound. A day when the flags wave high, but beneath them, some of us stand with eyes that remember too much.
I still remember the morning we heard that Mosul had fallen. We weren’t briefed with grand speeches. Someone simply whispered it in the barracks, the way you whisper terrible news you hope is not real. “They took Mosul.” Three words that changed the heartbeat of a nation. The so-called Islamic State had not just captured territory; they tried to seize our identity. They raised black flags that claimed God, but all they worshipped was cruelty. And we, tired from previous wars, exhausted from promises of peace, tightened our boots once again.
In June 2014, I gathered my men, my brothers, and we stared at a map of our own country as if it had turned into a stranger. I still see their faces: wisecracking Corporal Haider who dreamed of opening a garage when the war was over; quiet Private Kareem who wrote letters every night to the mother waiting back in Basra; Sergeant Fares who believed fate never took a man before his time. Fate, I learned, can be impatient.
War didn’t greet us with trumpet fanfares. It met us with dust, with the metallic taste of fear, with intel reports that blurred together: “Enemy movement in the western sector… civilians trapped… high likelihood of booby-traps.” And we moved anyway. Not as heroes, heroes are made in movies. We moved as soldiers because someone had to.
Every security briefing, every checkpoint, every risk assessment scribbled on a map; it was more than just strategy. It was a desperate bid to keep our people from slipping into the abyss, a relentless fight to pull them back towards the light, one precarious block at a time.
At night, when commanders slept and radios buzzed quietly, I sat among my men. We shared stale biscuits and stories to remind ourselves we were still human. The moon above didn’t care who lived or died beneath it, but we cared. We saw fear in each other’s eyes, and we pretended not to. We laughed in whispers so the night wouldn’t hear how scared we were.
Sometimes, I still wake up smelling smoke; the memory so strong, it feels real. I hear my own voice through the radio: “Stay alert. No one breaks formation.” I hear my sergeant respond, “Roger that, Captain.” His voice echoes in my dreams because in my dreams, he is still answering me.
But war is a thief. It steals voices first.
The first time I lost a man under my command, the world narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat. A sniper’s round; one shot. Haider fell, the one who wanted to fix cars. I remember dropping to my knees beside him, calling his name as though volume alone could drag him back. His body was still warm. His eyes were still open. He was there, and then he wasn’t.
There is no training that prepares you to zip a friend into a body bag.
We continued forward, not because we were fearless, but because fear loses meaning when grief becomes the fuel.
We fought street to street. House to house. Tunnel to tunnel. The enemy used children as shields, and I saw horrors that words refuse to hold. In Mosul’s Old City, the ground itself seemed to bleed with history. Minarets shattered. Books burned. A civilization tried to be erased.
But we learned that resilience is also a weapon.
There was a day, I replay it often, when a group of displaced families emerged from a broken building during a lull in the fire. A little girl with dirt-streaked cheeks looked up at me and whispered, “Is it safe now, uncle?”
That sentence alone was worth every bullet I carried.
Still, bravery has a cost. Kareem, the boy who wrote letters, didn’t make it home to send the final one he’d sealed inside his pocket. Fares, the sergeant who believed in fate, proved himself wrong on a rainy night in Anbar when an IED lit the sky brighter than lightning. There were others, so many others, whose names the public will never chant, whose graves the news will never film.
By the time we reached the turning point of the war, when our momentum felt stronger than their terror, I had already memorized the faces of the fallen more than the map. We pushed on because turning back meant admitting their deaths were meaningless. And nothing about their sacrifice was meaningless.
When the official announcement of Victory came, I stood among crowds cheering so loudly that the ground shook. Fireworks painted the sky. Children ran with flags. People cried, danced, and embraced strangers. Iraq felt alive again.
But in that celebration, I found myself looking around instinctively for the ones who should have been standing beside me. Haider should have been laughing at the fireworks. Kareem should have been calling his mother to say he was coming home. Fares should have been bragging that he knew we’d win all along.
Victory is bittersweet when counted in empty chairs.
I smiled for the cameras. I saluted the officers. I congratulated civilians. But privately, inside, I whispered the names of every soldier whose boots would never hit the ground again. I whispered them because someone must. Because the world is quick to celebrate the win, and too quick to forget those who made winning possible.
Even today, as a veteran now working in security consultancy, analyzing threats and writing risk reports in comfortable rooms, instead of crumbling buildings, the war lives in everything I do. Every recommendation I write, every patrol I help plan, every policy I propose, they are promises to my fallen brothers that Iraq will never again fall asleep while danger gathers at the door.
Security is no longer my profession. It is my oath.
Victory Day is not simply a holiday. It is a memorial written on the inside of a soldier’s heart. A reminder that peace must be guarded just as fiercely as it was won. The enemy we defeated may not march openly anymore, but threats evolve, in hidden cells, online propaganda, foreign meddling, and ideologies waiting for cracks.
And so, we remain vigilant. Because ghosts don’t rest unless the living protect what they died for.
When I stand at the cemetery, row after row of headstones aligned with the precision of soldiers still standing in formation, I feel each breath as a borrowed privilege. I kneel beside the graves, run my fingers over names, and I apologize for surviving. Survivors always apologize in silence.
I tell them:
We did it.
We took back our land.
Your sacrifice is the ink of our freedom.
And I promise them that my voice will forever carry their story so they do not disappear into footnotes.
So, on this day, I speak to those who bore the heaviest burdens:
To the soldier who left home but never returned,
To the medic whose trembling hands saved lives in darkness,
To the families who lived with unanswered questions,
To the displaced who carried Iraq in their hearts until they could return to it,
To every Iraqi who refused to give fear the final word,
This day belongs to you.
May the country we defended continue to grow stronger, safer, wiser.
May we honor the fallen not with sadness alone, but by living the peaceful life they fought to restore.
May every young Iraqi look at the flag and see hope, not warning.
May the sun rise every morning over a nation that remembers its scars not as wounds, but as testimony.
Iraq rose from the ashes before. And if ever tested again, Iraq will rise again.
This is our tribute.
This is our salute.
This is our story.
Tonight, after writing this, I will hold a cup of tea on my balcony. I will watch children play in safety. I will listen to laughter unafraid of the sky. And I will allow myself to feel joy, a joy I once thought I would never feel again. Because this joy is theirs. They paid for it.
To the people celebrating, remember this:
Victory Day is not the end of the story.
It is the beginning of our responsibility.
To the world that may forget, we remember.
To the brothers who didn’t return, we remember.
To the mothers who waited, we remember.
To the soldiers who still wake to the sound of nightmares, we remember.
Iraq did not survive because of miracles.
It survived because men like Haider, Kareem, and Fares who laid themselves down like stones on a bridge so the rest of us could cross.
So, raise your flag high.
Celebrate loudly.
But leave room for silence too.
Because in that silence…
you can hear the footsteps of those who marched into victory but did not march back.
Happy Victory Day.
From a captain who lived,
and remembers.
