Stephen McAllister served as a pilot and staff officer in the United States Air Force for over twenty-five years retiring in 2006. He participated in the 1991 war against Iraq and was stationed for eight months in Afghanistan during 2003. It was from this last deployment that he drew the experiences that formed the genesis of a lengthy diary. Two stories from that diary were collected with other military writing by the National Endowment for the Arts and published through Random House with the title Operation Homecoming, released on September 12, 2006.
