Ann Rodgers
Matt Randle is a burly bear of a man, an Army medic who tended wounded troops during the invasion of Iraq, making sure he showed courage to give them courage.
But when he came home to Tucson, Ariz., it all fell apart. He found himself unable even to stand up in a crowded classroom. He couldn’t explain his inner demons to those who had never been to Iraq, because it was as if they lived in different worlds with different languages. He thought seeking help was a sign of weakness, and he didn’t trust the Veterans Affairs bureaucracy.
Then someone pointed him to Vets4Vets, a peer support group for veterans of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Being able to talk to another veteran has made all the difference,” said Mr. Randle, now the institutional outreach coordinator for Vets4Vets. It is holding a support workshop for veterans this weekend at the Franciscan Spirit and Life Center in Castle Shannon, and hopes to organize an ongoing local support group.
Mr. Randle later sought VA services to help with his readjustment to American life, “but I needed a fellow veteran to say ‘Hey man, wise up’” and seek help, he said.
“This is not counseling. This is not a therapist … This is one veteran looking in the face of another veteran who was over there with me.”
The workshop, which started last night, is the 26th that Vets4Vets has offered nationwide to about 500 veterans. All expenses, including transportation and lodging, are covered by a grant from a private California-based foundation, the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, which underwrites a network of services for veterans, said Jim Driscoll, founder of Vets4Vets. Local veterans who missed the Pittsburgh workshop can apply at www.vets4vets.us to attend one elsewhere, and their expenses will be covered, he said.
Despite Western Pennsylvania’s large military population, only 10 veterans applied for the local workshop, he said.
“The problem is finding the vets,” he said.
Fred Johnson, 39, of East Liberty, is taking on that challenge.
Mr. Johnson served in Iraq for 15 months in 2004 to 2005 providing dental care. But after trying to ease others’ pain over there, he couldn’t shake his own at home. He’s hesitant to discuss his difficulties in public, but they were severe enough to make him check into the VA. And it was the VA that connected him to Vets4Vets.
“I attended my first workshop and I was hooked,” he said.
“I had a lot of issues that I couldn’t discuss with the people from my family. My mother has never been in the Army, and neither had my sisters or my aunts … If I talked to them about it, they looked at me googly-eyed.”
Mr. Johnson hopes to start an ongoing Pittsburgh support group. He already runs an organization to aid homeless veterans in Allegheny County, and can be contacted through its Web site: www.heroestoday.org.
“Without Vets4Vets, even though I went to the VA and got the necessary things I needed, there was still something missing,” he said.
And that ate at Mr. Driscoll, the founder, who was an infantry platoon commander in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.
“When I came back from Vietnam, there wasn’t much support for us,” he said. “I don’t want to see what happened to our generation happen again.”
One of the most important things that veterans can assure one another of is that “they are not crazy,” he said.
If someone has spent a year dodging roadside bombs, it’s a perfectly sane reaction to suddenly swerve when you see an anomaly in the street. “Stress is a normal reaction to serving in a combat situation,” he said.
But so is resistance to seeking help, he said. Vets4Vets is a place to start because it’s unofficial. No records of meetings are kept. There’s no membership.
“It’s an easier step to take,” he said.
He encouraged families of veterans to guide them to www.Vets4Vets.us if they sense a problem that the veteran is unable to talk about.
Vets4Vets is starting specialized groups, including some for concerns that are especially difficult to take to the military, Mr. Randle said. A group for female veterans includes discussion of sexual assault in the military. Plans are under way for a gathering of veterans with alternate lifestyles in San Francisco. Groundwork also is being laid for a workshop for officers and one for medics.
“The goal is to set up a peer support community that is run by themselves, for themselves,” Mr. Driscoll said.
