Team RWB fosters sense of community for vets

PALMER — On Sunday afternoon in the Palmer Train Depot, Luke Bushatz talked about his years serving in the 17th Infantry Regiment from 2006-2010, and his transition to civilian life.

He talked about the 13,000 service men and women who have committed suicide since 2009 in his unit alone, and others who have struggled with addiction after coming home.

“It truly exhibits itself, not in the grand explosions of life,” he said, “But truly in the quiet moments of desperation that we face as individuals.”

Bushatz related his own difficulties that resulted from “burying my experiences in Afghanistan,” and the way in which those experiences started to eat away at his mental and physical health, even as on the surface, he presented as a rising star in a military career that included a widening circle of responsibilities.

An older veteran in full uniform nodded his head as he listened to Bushatz’ retelling of his own journey in regaining a positive sense of self and reconnecting with his identity as a soldier after coming home.

That’s what Team Red, White and Blue, or Team RWB for short, hopes to give veterans who participate in the group’s events. Amy Bushatz, who volunteers with Team RWB in Alaska, said the group provides a series of social and community engagement events for veterans. The by-vets-for-vets approach was evident at the group’s first town hall event in Alaska, where veterans were the only speakers and the 60 or so people in attendance connected with them in informal conversation afterwards rather than having a question-and-answer period after each speech.

“That cathartic feeling that you got there, that’s exactly what we were running for,” Bushatz said. “What we saw is that it worked, and absolutely we will be doing it again next Veterans Day.”

Another speaker, Laurali Riley, a former Army Staff SGT, said she was invited to speak to give “a woman’s perspective” on service and coming home.

She said that after 9/11, a lot of people signed up to be infantry, but fewer signed up to be combat medics, which is what Riley served as for nearly eight years. Her father had been a combat medic in Vietnam. Riley signed up when she was just 17.

“It was no different,” Riley said. “As a combat medic, a lot of my opportunity was to work with local communities, families and kids.”

Riley said it was a type of work that, even while saving lives, could leave soldiers with feelings of guilt and grief.

“When you would see children with their parents walking from very far away villages to your post, because we had liberated them,” Riley said. “They had been liberated by the U.S. government. And insurgents had started to blow up their town. And they walk to you for help. And your SOP (standard operating procedure) is to turn them around. And send them back. We lost of people. We watched communities trying to survive, parents trying their best to take care of their children. And I watched my brothers fall apart. A lot of grief and a lot of guilt. Because what do you do?”

Riley said coming home means not just reintegrating into civilian life, but losing the powerful bond that develops among soldiers on the battlefield.

“And so these experiences made sense when we talked to each other,” she said. “And then everyone goes home, and these conversations go from this is my day-to-day, this is my environment, these are the people around me I can share things with. Every once in awhile you get a call at two o’clock in the morning. Because the only time you can feel or speak is after five or six beers and you’re alone, and the only people you want to call are your friends, and they’re drunk, too.”

Riley said that, like Bushatz, she’s learned to reclaim her identity as a soldier as part of a new identity as a veteran, and accept her experiences instead of pushing them away.

Civilians always want to know things like how many tours did you do and whether you killed anybody, she said. But those surface facts don’t get at what many soldiers experience. She talked about trying to explain how she felt about watching what local families went through during the war to civilians, only to be shut down with comments that they were “terrorists – oh, they’re all terrorists, so who cares.”

Team RWB hopes to be a way for veterans to connect and be part of a community that understands them, and a lot of that comes down to simply hosting social events two-to-three times per week on a consistent basis, Amy Bushatz said. Members go to the movies, attend coffee meet-ups, do outdoors activities and work together on community service projects.

She said the Team RWB Anchorage chapter is one of two Team RWB chapters in Alaska, boasts 500 members and climbing, and serves the Anchorage, Eagle River, Chugiak, and the Mat-Su Valley.

Team RWB was founded in 2010 and has 115,000 members worldwide. Roughly 60 people attended the Veterans Town Hall on Sunday, with five veterans speaking.

The next Team RWB social event will be a coffee meetup at Sleepy Dog Coffee Co. in Eagle River on Saturday, Nov. 19 at 1 p.m. For more information about Team RWB Anchorage chapter, go to their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/TeamRWBAnchorage/.