THE nine men who climbed to the summit of the Colorado mountain were combat veterans who had fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Several knew the pain of bullets tearing through flesh. Others couldn’t gather memories blown away by an explosion. Some had seen combat so close they killed with their knives.
They were a wary group of strangers, guarded and slow to trust, who had arrived at the Outward Bound Wilderness school in Leadville, Colorado, a few days before, wondering how a one-week course in the wilderness could help them heal. But on the fourth day of their five-day journey in mid-July, after more than three hours of tough climbing up steep, moss-covered scree fields and beyond the tree line, these hard military men, ranging in age from 23 to 52, mourned in silence, 13,000 feet above sea level on the summit of Virginia Peak. Stripped of life’s routines, they stood under an iron-gray early morning sky and finally allowed the tears to fall for friends who would never see this place.
“Look around this countryside: you guys deserve this,” said Bob O’Rourke, a 62-year-old retired marine and one of the instructors for the Outward Bound course. “Don’t forget this moment.” O’Rourke, a Vietnam veteran, choked back tears of his own. The men with him were silent as they looked out across vast granite bowls speckled with old mine entrances among the evergreens. The imposing silhouette of Huron Peak stared back from the southwest.
[blockquote] “I think if there’s one message I could get across to the public, it’d be to not give up on us,” he said as the group walked through the mountain sunshine to the trailhead. [/blockquote]
I used to be in a vets group a few years back; some Gulf War vets, but mostly Vietnam vets – this was a common sentiment expressed. I think too many combat veterans have been treated as ‘damaged goods’ or ‘wanton killers’ rather than as normal men who had to do a very abnormal job.
The process described here is effective in many different settings from addicted teens to burned out and beat up priests.
I’ve long been a fan of outward bound, and think it great that its appeal spreads across so many boundaries.
One of my “outward bound” experiences occurred during my SERE (survival,evasion,resistance,escape) prior to my deployment to South Vietnam.
The training truly tested me, physically and emotionally, and it helped me to discover depths of character which have served me well to this present day.