Workshop Lets Veterans Share Their Stories

Those Who Served in Iraq and Afghanistan Meet to Bond, Give and Get Emotional Support

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.