Karin Brulliard
The dozen men and women gathered in a Loudoun County hotel conference room yesterday morning hardly knew each other. But all had served in the U.S. military in Iraq or Afghanistan, and all seemed to agree that few people in their lives — relatives, colleagues, friends — were willing to listen to their stories, to know about traumas they carried home.
“They don’t want to hear it,” said Teresa Rogers, 38, who went to Iraq as an Army truck driver.
And that is why they had come together — to tell and listen to those stories. The group was participating in a weekend-long peer support workshop offered by Vets4Vets, an Arizona-based organization that aims to get veterans talking to one another, on the theory that they understand each other best.
They gathered at the posh Lansdowne Resort, a setting far removed from the dusty streets of Iraq or the minefields of Afghanistan. Yet it was clear that the veterans’ emotions remained raw, even in a place surrounded by an emerald golf course.
“The whole thing has been a source of sorrow for me,” said square-jawed Marine Corps veteran Jed Tocci, 25, now working as a carpenter in Charlottesville, as he told the group about the horror of watching one of his comrades die in Fallujah in 2004. “He wasn’t able to live out his life.”
Vets4Vets was founded in 2005 by Vietnam veteran Jim Driscoll, who said he was helped greatly by peer support when he returned from war. The group has held 30 workshops across the country, reaching about 600 veterans. Talking about the wars they fought helps them deal with the “war” of readjustment they face here, he said.
“Being together with their contemporaries is a huge thing,” Driscoll said. “We’re trying to encourage that.”
Yesterday morning, Driscoll explained some rules: There would be no interruption. Each person would have a certain amount of time to speak, to be monitored by small timers given to each participant.
Sitting in a circle, the veterans started with one-minute introductions. One said the Air Force had helped him meet new people. Rogers, a petite woman with a ponytail, said her deployment was “one of the worst experiences of my life.” One Army veteran in a baseball cap blinked back tears while explaining that he had been switched out of a unit that went on to lose several soldiers in combat.
“Sometimes I feel guilty,” he said, his arms on his knees.
That is typical, Driscoll told them.
“Nobody’s come to any workshop so far and said they did enough,” he said.
The workshops, including lodging and airfare, are free to participants, who can apply on the organization’s Web site, http://www.vets4vets.us. Vets4Vets is funded by the Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, one program of a California charity that gives grants to nonprofit groups serving U.S. military members and their families.
Not all parts of the workshop were serious. A musical-chairs-like game had the veterans in stitches. There were plans for basketball and water volleyball during an afternoon break.
But the point was bonding, which would lead to trust, Driscoll said.
After the morning session, the veterans broke into groups. Rogers and Alexandria resident Euneka Joseph, 27, the two female participants, moved to a smaller room.
Joseph, who served as an executive secretary to Air Force generals in Kuwait and Iraq, told Rogers the stress of her tours and guilt over a close friend’s death had led to four years of struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia. She is no longer with her husband and lost custody of their two daughters. She had been unable to work. She said that she still puts on her uniform for a few minutes each day, to feel like she has a purpose.
Rogers said she remained haunted by memories of small-arms fire and roadside bombs, of the faces of Iraqi children whose deaths she said she blames herself for. Now, she said, she hardly leaves her Fort Belvoir home. If not for her husband and four children, she said, she is not sure she could keep going.
They listened to one another, nodding as the other spoke.
“I commend you, because you’re fighting,” Joseph told Rogers.
“You’re a fighter, too,” Rogers responded. “Everybody who’s been to Iraq and come back is a fighter.”
