Veterans, Alone Together, Share Stories They Can’t Tell You

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The war on terror, which has now lasted longer than World War II, is producing a growing family of combat veterans. It’s a disconnected family, large and far-flung, but close in ways that battle-tested soldiers always are.

I saw that for myself the other day in Stony Point, N.Y., at a church conference center as tranquil and green as Iraq and Afghanistan are not. It was a weekend workshop run by Vets 4 Vets, a Tucson nonprofit that is setting up peer support groups around the country for a new generation of veterans.

Most of those attending — two dozen men and two women — had never met, but they immediately opened up to one another, sharing war stories that some said they had never told anyone. These were not disabled vets — not visibly, anyway. But after two days, listening from a chair outside their circle, it was clear this was a wounded group.

Michael Rudulph: “A lot of times my anger, my frustration, feels totally, 100 percent justified. But in the back of my head I know that’s messed up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/opinion/06mon4.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin