Speaker 1: Multiple people in my family clean my father are veterans.
Speaker 2: Troops that have been to war and now they're.
Speaker 3: Back and think and be grateful for their service, sacrifice,
Speaker 3: love for their country, just unselfishness, all that they do
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 4: There are some people in this country who take extraordinary
Speaker 4: steps to provide for the freedom and security.
Speaker 2: We forget that those people exist.
Speaker 1: We know them as the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,
Speaker 1: and Coast Guard. They call themselves soldiers, seals, rangers, airmen, sailors,
Speaker 1: devil dogs, and so much more. We call them fathers, brothers,
Speaker 1: sons and husbands, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives. We call
Speaker 1: them friend and neighbor. These veterans answered the call. Now
Speaker 1: we answer theirs, and they are the best our country
Speaker 1: has to offer, and we love them. Today, we honor
Speaker 1: them and we serve them. David Malsby is your host,
Speaker 1: and he welcomes you to this community of veterans. As
Speaker 1: together we are building the road to.
Speaker 3: Hope, and indeed we are glad to have you along.
Speaker 3: On a Sunday afternoon, kPr C nine five O and
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Speaker 3: the year. Very generous. These folks have been great friends
Speaker 3: to the PTSD Foundation of America and Camp Hope for
Speaker 3: a number of years through Texas Grand Ranch originally now
Speaker 3: through Republic Grand Ranch. But it's not just about that.
Speaker 3: You're going to buy that piece of Texas where you're
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Speaker 3: by people who share your values and support our veterans.
Speaker 3: Speaking of veterans, we got a couple of veterans in
Speaker 3: the studio with us today. Tyrone, you want to reintroduce
Speaker 3: yourself to the world. You got to have you back,
Speaker 3: by the way, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 5: I'm Tyrone Brown served in the US Army. I went
Speaker 5: to Somalia ninety three. I am now a mentor at
Speaker 5: the PTSD Foundation, and I just love what where I
Speaker 5: came from and where I am now and serving veterans
Speaker 5: is h I think I believe I found my purpose.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Larry.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, I'm here from Alabama. Uh.
Speaker 3: We can hear it in this, We can hear it
Speaker 3: in the voice. Yes, sir, go ahead with the cause.
Speaker 4: And Uh, Camp Hope has really been good to me.
Speaker 4: I was looking for a place to go and seems
Speaker 4: like home now I've been here a couple of months,
Speaker 4: no complaints. Everything here is free for us to heal.
Speaker 4: And I had a what branch did you serve in?
Speaker 4: And I served in the US Army Vietnam?
Speaker 3: What years were you there?
Speaker 4: Nineteen sixty seven, six and eight. I fought in the offensive.
Speaker 4: A lot of lives lost in that time of frame. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and uh, a heavy ar terry. We killed a lot
Speaker 4: of probably innocent people. That's one thing that I have
Speaker 4: lived with throughout my life. As the fact of we
Speaker 4: were in a situation where that we could not win
Speaker 4: the war. So we did our very best and we
Speaker 4: came back. Some guys did not. So I think about
Speaker 4: those that did not make it back. Sometimes they call
Speaker 4: us the heroes, but to me, the heroes are the
Speaker 4: guys didn't make it back.
Speaker 3: Sure, we'll get into a little bit of that story.
Speaker 3: We're not the we're not the war story show, but
Speaker 3: we'll get into a little bit of that. For many
Speaker 3: who are going to listen to this, they're familiar at
Speaker 3: least to some degree of the tet offensive, but probably
Speaker 3: not much those who weren't alive during that time. And
Speaker 3: I was alive but young to know it and have
Speaker 3: a clue what was going on. I remember, I remember
Speaker 3: the Vietnam War to me as a kid was Walter
Speaker 3: Cronkite on TV black and white and a map of Vietnam,
Speaker 3: and they'd have some star or something on some particular
Speaker 3: place of Vietnam that they were talking about that day,
Speaker 3: that it happened the day before. It's so much different
Speaker 3: than what happened in the post nine to eleven and
Speaker 3: then or we were watching it while it was happening Vietnam,
Speaker 3: we were hearing about it the next day, and you're
Speaker 3: hearing just bits and pieces. But anyway, we'll get into
Speaker 3: a little bit of that and about what brought you
Speaker 3: camp Hope. But big thank you to those who are
Speaker 3: supporters of the PTSD Foundation of America. We just came through,
Speaker 3: of course a Memorial Day weekend. A lot of great
Speaker 3: things happening around the organization, some things happening at Camp
Speaker 3: Hope over the weekend that we're very grateful for. We
Speaker 3: cannot do what we do without you. We certainly could
Speaker 3: not serve our veterans at zero cost with out a
Speaker 3: community that understands it takes more than a bumper sticker
Speaker 3: to support our troops. So for everyone who's a part
Speaker 3: of that, a big thank you. I'd life for you
Speaker 3: to take out your phone put in our crisis line
Speaker 3: phone number. You may not need it, you may not
Speaker 3: be a veteran, but you may run across somebody who
Speaker 3: needs it, and then you're gonna wish you had it.
Speaker 3: Eight seven seven seven one seven seventy eight seventy three.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of sevens eight seven seven seven one
Speaker 3: seven seventy eight seventy three. Please put that in your phone.
Speaker 3: You run across a veteran that's struggling, maybe you're the veteran,
Speaker 3: Maybe you're a family member of the veteran who's struggling.
Speaker 3: Here's what they need to know. When they call that number,
Speaker 3: a combat veteran is going to answer the phone. Eight
Speaker 3: seven seven seven one seven seventy eight seventy three. We're
Speaker 3: going to take a quick break and be right back
Speaker 3: with more of Road to Hope.
Speaker 2: Radio, don't nails a foot.
Speaker 3: And we're walking back roade to Hope. Are you glad
Speaker 3: to have you.
Speaker 5: Along, Tyrone?
Speaker 3: I think one of the cool things about our organization,
Speaker 3: which on paper began two thousand and five, on mission,
Speaker 3: it began two thousand and nine. But either way, Post
Speaker 3: nine to eleven is was our beginning. A lot of
Speaker 3: the Post nine to eleven nonprofits that stepped up to
Speaker 3: support our veterans support only the Post nine to eleven veterans,
Speaker 3: and that's fine. I get it to understand why they
Speaker 3: do it. But I think one of the great things
Speaker 3: about what we do, and one of the powerful things
Speaker 3: effective things in what we do is we have veterans
Speaker 3: from every era of war. So you mentioned you served
Speaker 3: in Somalia, Larry's Vietnam. That war is war, trauma is trauma.
Speaker 3: We never compare. Your trauma is your trauma. So that's
Speaker 3: what it is. And you know, my trauma is worse
Speaker 3: than yours. That's a stupid argument, right, But it's so
Speaker 3: important for people to understand. We do serve veterans of
Speaker 3: every era of war, and most folks, if you ask
Speaker 3: them to start delineating America's war as they skip over
Speaker 3: Samoia for instance, Yes, Korea is known as the forgotten War.
Speaker 3: How important is it to you to see, like when
Speaker 3: you were in the program and what year did you
Speaker 3: come in? Okay, so three years ago when you came
Speaker 3: into the program, how important was it as you went
Speaker 3: through to see guys both who served previous to you
Speaker 3: and post to you.
Speaker 5: It was actually wonderful. The thing that I noticed was this,
Speaker 5: no matter where we had been, our trauma had so
Speaker 5: many similarities, you know, and even mister Larry, like mister
Speaker 5: the Vietnam vets that come, you know, I give them a.
Speaker 4: Lot of.
Speaker 5: I respect them so much because they suffered for longer.
Speaker 5: You know, I've been I got out of the military
Speaker 5: of ninety four and I came in twenty two, So
Speaker 5: that's a less amount of time than what mister Larry
Speaker 5: went to the war and then he came here. But
Speaker 5: it just let me know that it didn't matter where
Speaker 5: we came from. It didn't matter what warre we in.
Speaker 5: The symptoms were the same, no matter what state we
Speaker 5: came from or anything like that. Trauma is trauma regards nothing,
Speaker 5: It will affect anyone. So yeah, that's what That's what
Speaker 5: was great for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Larry, I'm sure for any veteran coming into camp hope.
Speaker 3: You know, especially coming from out of state, You're going
Speaker 3: to some place you've never been before, going to a
Speaker 3: place when people you've never met before, not really sure
Speaker 3: what you're in for. I mean, you can see the brochure,
Speaker 3: you can see what's online and read all that. That's
Speaker 3: and that's all fine and good, but you don't really
Speaker 3: know where you're going or who you're about to meet,
Speaker 3: what you're about to walk into. But coming in as
Speaker 3: a Vietnam vet, someone who's time in combat was more
Speaker 3: than five decades ago, what was that like for you?
Speaker 4: Excuse me? The combat that I was involved in was
Speaker 4: in sixty seven or sixty eight, And for a long
Speaker 4: time after I came back home, no one really respected us.
Speaker 4: We were forgotten. We were called baby killers by some
Speaker 4: of the people. And it's not that they didn't really care.
Speaker 4: They didn't really know what we were doing, you know,
Speaker 4: so no one really welcomed me back or really thanked
Speaker 4: me so for my family. And so I worked and
Speaker 4: raised a family and did pretty good. At times. I
Speaker 4: would have some things that were haunting me. But the
Speaker 4: VA back then wasn't very much help to us, if any,
Speaker 4: at that time when I came home in sixty eight.
Speaker 4: So as time progressed, it took me. Well. I was
Speaker 4: forty three years of age when I first got help
Speaker 4: from the Vestre's administration. That was my hearing by little
Speaker 4: hearing loss and and then ten nights, so we were
Speaker 4: As time grew on, they started taking care of us more,
Speaker 4: and it took me about twenty five years to get
Speaker 4: my one hundred percent disability because of PTSD. I had
Speaker 4: been caring with me all these years, even though I
Speaker 4: realize how bad it was getting on me. But as
Speaker 4: I retired in two thousand and eight, I have a
Speaker 4: small farm that I worked with cattle and uh family
Speaker 4: back home, and I did pretty good for a couple
Speaker 4: three years, but then time got all the work done,
Speaker 4: it started coming back. I had these nightmares, you might say,
Speaker 4: and I saw those guys a little BC as we
Speaker 4: call them coming up on the back deck one night
Speaker 4: and went out. It wasn't real. So as time grew on,
Speaker 4: I started to get more help from the VA, and
Speaker 4: they put me on meds and really helping me today
Speaker 4: and I appreciate what to do today. They kept up
Speaker 4: for US vesters in needs. So I am so thankful
Speaker 4: and so thankful for Camp Hope what they've done for
Speaker 4: me as I came in from out of state, like
Speaker 4: Pastor Moser said, and I have really been grateful. It
Speaker 4: didn't take me too long to adjust because I have
Speaker 4: done a lot of different things in my life. I've
Speaker 4: taught classes and I've done a lot of different things,
Speaker 4: So I have fit right in I Hope and trying
Speaker 4: to do the very best I can my stay here
Speaker 4: at Camp Hope.
Speaker 3: When were you When were you diagnosed by the VA.
Speaker 4: I was diagnosed with the VA in about two thousand
Speaker 4: and six. Is really having the PTSD. It took me
Speaker 4: about twenty five years by going through thus the VFW
Speaker 4: and American Legion helped me, and so it took that
Speaker 4: long for me to get what I really needed, started
Speaker 4: seeing therapist and psychiatrists and the things that I need.
Speaker 4: And now I am progressing well and trying to do
Speaker 4: those things that make me heal, you know.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, of course I think it was nineteen eighty,
Speaker 3: I believe within a year or two of when the
Speaker 3: diagnosis of PTSD was officially a thing. And of course
Speaker 3: it's not a new thing, it's just a new name.
Speaker 3: People love to talk about the name. It should dropped
Speaker 3: the d so because it's not a disorder. There used
Speaker 3: to be thousand yards stare, all kinds of different things
Speaker 3: that names that have been given to it, but very
Speaker 3: similar issues, all recurrences or responses to war. And yes,
Speaker 3: I think it's very obvious to everybody who's paid any
Speaker 3: kind of attention that the VA certainly dropped the ball
Speaker 3: for our veterans coming home from Vietnam. But it's not
Speaker 3: just the VA. The entire nation failed miserably because of
Speaker 3: what was going on in America at the time. And
Speaker 3: I've talked to many Vietnam vets who have when they
Speaker 3: came home, they made sure nobody knew they had ever
Speaker 3: been there. They didn't want anybody to know that they
Speaker 3: were there because of those things that you mentioned being
Speaker 3: called baby killers.
Speaker 4: If I might say this, when I got out of
Speaker 4: the military in sixty eight, about around April at Oakland
Speaker 4: trash Fair Base. They told us we're probably best if
Speaker 4: we put on Seville in clothes and not have her uniform.
Speaker 4: All that was really a blow to be.
Speaker 3: No, no, no doubt. I mean, I one, I can't
Speaker 3: imagine it. I mean I can pretend to imagine, but
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't imagine what that must have been like.
Speaker 4: Were you drafted, yes, sir?
Speaker 3: Okay, so you know, first of all, you take some
Speaker 3: eighteen year old kid or whatever and draft them, just
Speaker 3: pluck them out of their life and train them up
Speaker 3: for war and send them over to a jungle for
Speaker 3: a year and expect them to come home and everything
Speaker 3: be okay. There's just nothing about any of that that
Speaker 3: makes sense. Which war doesn't make sense. There's no way
Speaker 3: to make sense of war. I hate all the fallout
Speaker 3: of it. It's just there's so much tragedy, and there's
Speaker 3: so many people that just seem like they just want
Speaker 3: to go to war over everything. Like, man, somebody's making
Speaker 3: money off it. I get it, But man, you are
Speaker 3: destroying so so so many lives eight seven seven seven one, seven,
Speaker 3: seventy eight, seventy three again, that's our Combat Trauma Crisis Line.
Speaker 3: Our website's PTSD USA dot org for information both on
Speaker 3: Camp Hope and all of our support groups both for
Speaker 3: veterans and for family.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Welcome back, Roade to Hope Radio. David Malsby along with Tyrone,
Speaker 3: United States Army veteran mentor at Camp Hope, the Interim
Speaker 3: Housing Program the PTSD Foundation of America got Larry United
Speaker 3: States Army Vietnam veteran Tyrone Somalia. I should have mentioned
Speaker 3: that Larry United States Army Vietnam VET, both with PTSD
Speaker 3: Tyrone having come through the program at Camp Hope completing it,
Speaker 3: and now I'm serving as a mentor in our program,
Speaker 3: which is so cool. I just, I just I think
Speaker 3: all those stories are just so inspiring, Like the struggle
Speaker 3: you get through of you know, a battle itself and combat,
Speaker 3: but then the struggle of coming home and dealing with
Speaker 3: that for you know, like in Larry's instance, you're talking
Speaker 3: about five plus decades over you know, overcoming that, learning
Speaker 3: how to work along with that and cope with that
Speaker 3: and then help your fellow brother. That's just to me,
Speaker 3: that's just such an inspiring story Larry again in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Vet. Let's go back.
Speaker 3: When were you drafted?
Speaker 4: I was drafted in May of sixty six, nineteen sixty shicks.
Speaker 3: How old were you?
Speaker 4: Nineteen?
Speaker 3: Nineteen years old? And then where what city in Alabama?
Speaker 4: I was? I was actually grew up in at Tennessee,
Speaker 4: you know, Okay, a little town called Pulaska, Tennessee. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Giles County, just right on the Alabama northern border.
Speaker 3: So you're nineteen. I'm guessing you probably had an idea
Speaker 3: it was probably coming well.
Speaker 4: I didn't have too much of an idea, but I
Speaker 4: knew that.
Speaker 3: What were you doing?
Speaker 4: I was working as a sharkings over planned in Plashka, Tennessee.
Speaker 4: Just had graduated high school and was working there and
Speaker 4: got my draft notice and went to Nashville, Tennessee. There.
Speaker 4: From there, I came back home and then I ended
Speaker 4: up in Benning, Georgia for my military basic training.
Speaker 3: Do you remember how you felt when you got that
Speaker 3: draft notice?
Speaker 4: I remember very well this one night. We got there
Speaker 4: later in the afternoon, and we still had our civilian
Speaker 4: clothes on, and I remember uh walking around that night,
Speaker 4: had to pull a firewatch two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: I looked up and I said, what if I got
Speaker 4: into You know, I was homesick, never been anywhere much
Speaker 4: in my life other than maybe one hundred miles from home.
Speaker 4: Grew up in really the countryside, farming, working to raising
Speaker 4: cattle and milk and cows, just the things that life
Speaker 4: at that time. It was pretty tough. You know. I
Speaker 4: was born in nineteen forty seven, so if you think
Speaker 4: back on that, it was just really different, different time.
Speaker 3: I'm a little I'm about twenty years younger than you are.
Speaker 3: And yes, even that was a different time than from day.
Speaker 3: Today is a very different world we're living in.
Speaker 4: I know this computers stuff we have. I'm way behind
Speaker 4: on all that. So my son can do that for
Speaker 4: me when I'm home, but I ain't got him around now,
Speaker 4: so I make it pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always kind of laugh at people's like man,
Speaker 3: when I was in college, it was a IBM typewriter
Speaker 3: and whiteout.
Speaker 4: I know that. I remember I went through a lot
Speaker 4: of white out. I remember the white out from high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no such thing as a cell phone or backspace.
Speaker 4: Never had a cell phone.
Speaker 3: A very very different world.
Speaker 4: I remember our first phone we got on our first
Speaker 4: TV in about nineteen sixty two, We've got a black
Speaker 4: white TV. So times have really changed for me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you get drafted and it's like, what what's
Speaker 3: going on? What's about to happen? You end up at
Speaker 3: Fort Benning. When did you step foot into Vietnam?
Speaker 4: Okay, took the basic train at Fort Benning that I
Speaker 4: in the In June of that same year, I went
Speaker 4: to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, took a T and Fort Fort
Speaker 4: Seill and we uh after Ai T we deacted. We
Speaker 4: reactivated the first Brittagion twenty seventh Field Archarry, second Field
Speaker 4: Force in Vietnam. And there's one five or five artillery
Speaker 4: guns which some may know or not know about it,
Speaker 4: but anyway, we trained all those guns and we went
Speaker 4: over a ship in the in the spring of that
Speaker 4: year April May April to be exact, April fourteenth, and uh,
Speaker 4: we sailed over by the USS General Walker, first time
Speaker 4: that I've been on board ship and the last. So
Speaker 4: we sailed bout eighteen days in Vietnam to get to
Speaker 4: Vietnam and a port of Von Tau, Vietnam, and we
Speaker 4: received our weapons there and carried them in the country
Speaker 4: and built a base camp at a place called Fuloi, Vietnam.
Speaker 4: And uh, what I mean by a base camp. We
Speaker 4: had to build up barriers, sandbash protect our ammunition and
Speaker 4: powder that was involved in shooting a one five five
Speaker 4: Arteria weapon and uh from there we uh, we were
Speaker 4: over there during the time there was a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff going on sixty seven or sixty eight. Uh, like
Speaker 4: brother Molty said, many people don't really know about the tent,
Speaker 4: but that was that was when the North invaded the
Speaker 4: South Vietnam using the viet Cong that were already there
Speaker 4: and infiltrated cities and all this, and that that's when
Speaker 4: we really we fired. I looked at some history on that.
Speaker 4: Before the Tet Offensive, there were about nine hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty something rounds fired for this twenty seventh Artier Group,
Speaker 4: and then after during that it was like fifteen hundred
Speaker 4: rounds fired during the Tet Offensive.
Speaker 3: Where were you What were you doing during tent? What
Speaker 3: was your job on.
Speaker 4: The Artaria gun? Okay went over there as an assistant
Speaker 4: gunner on the arterier weapon was the one five five
Speaker 4: shellways ninety six pounds, So my job was assistant gunner.
Speaker 4: I had to figure on the scope the elevation of
Speaker 4: the bear was and I stayed that position for about
Speaker 4: six months and Vietnam then, Uh, one night we got
Speaker 4: hit by mortars and rockets that hit a fire direction center,
Speaker 4: wounded some of those guys pretty bad and hit our
Speaker 4: number six gun. Six guns in an artillery battery, and
Speaker 4: number six gun was hit. Two of the guys were hit.
Speaker 4: The round hit the powder bunker and it burned them
Speaker 4: pretty bad on their legs. I never saw those two
Speaker 4: guys again. They never come back. But uh, the very
Speaker 4: next morning, as a as a E four in the
Speaker 4: sixth slot where on a sleeve, I was put in
Speaker 4: charge of that gun crew. I read that gun crew
Speaker 4: for about six months, and uh, I had to become
Speaker 4: a man pretty quick. Uh. That's all it was. Running
Speaker 4: that war was young people such as me, poor boys
Speaker 4: from the country, poor guys from the inner cities, and
Speaker 4: of course you had your life first. We called them
Speaker 4: the enlisted men that had been there for several years,
Speaker 4: that were had trained. They went with us, and then
Speaker 4: as uh we progressed in our learning abilities, we were
Speaker 4: put in various positions.
Speaker 3: You were there for a year, pretty sure year year. Okay,
Speaker 3: so when you're done, you come home, coming home to
Speaker 3: a nation that's really on fire. Uh, split in what
Speaker 3: they believe about pretty much everything. Uh you go back
Speaker 3: to Tennessee.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was. I was living in Tennessee. So I
Speaker 4: went back home to my mother and dad's place, and
Speaker 4: I went back to work with the chacra rover plant briefly. Uh.
Speaker 4: Then I I married this young lady that I had
Speaker 4: known before Vietnam. But the marriage failed. It didn't last
Speaker 4: less than a year. Uh. She decided she wanted to
Speaker 4: go back home to Dyersburg, Tennessee, where she was raised.
Speaker 4: Her dad was there a job, and we thought we
Speaker 4: should get married, but she just decided she wanted to
Speaker 4: go back home. So for no reason, that marriage failed
Speaker 4: pretty quick. So I continued to work in a soccer
Speaker 4: roller plant, and I met my wife, Nancy. We've been
Speaker 4: married now for fifty five years, and so we've had
Speaker 4: a good life together. She had a daughter when we
Speaker 4: were married. I adopted Kimberdy and those kids, I say kids,
Speaker 4: I'm seventy eight, the oldest was fifty eight. My son's
Speaker 4: fifty four, and we have raised a family and done
Speaker 4: well in life. I didn't realize until coming here how
Speaker 4: much I had it made at home, you know, not
Speaker 4: mourning for anything. We've worked by nasty. We're secure. But
Speaker 4: it had always been good ups and downs for this
Speaker 4: and that. And the really reason I ended up here,
Speaker 4: and my wife had had some disagreements, uh that day
Speaker 4: and my PTSD was working over pretty good, and uh,
Speaker 4: I grabbed her brother arms and she had had a
Speaker 4: broken help back last year, last say, last September, but
Speaker 4: she was healed from that. But home healthcare worker or
Speaker 4: nurse was coming to see her and he was looked
Speaker 4: in the window and he exaggerated. I just was holding
Speaker 4: a rist, he exaggerated, and Uh, I went to jail
Speaker 4: for ten days. Uh. And then.
Speaker 3: We'll we'll we'll pick up on that here in just
Speaker 3: a second. Give you a chance to catch your breath.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: Eight seven seven seven seven seventy eight seventy three is
Speaker 3: our combat Trauma Crisis line. If you know someone, if
Speaker 3: you are that's someone you've experienced something like what you're
Speaker 3: hearing about right now, it's not the first eight seven
Speaker 3: seven seven one seven seventy eight seventy three will be
Speaker 3: right back. I know movies don't compare any shape war
Speaker 3: form to reality, but over the memorial. The day weekend
Speaker 3: I watched I watched a movie. It was Vietnam related.
Speaker 3: It was based on a true story of someone they
Speaker 3: were that eventually did receive the Medal of Honor but
Speaker 3: initially was denied that, and some who had served with
Speaker 3: that veteran with that individual fought for decades to get
Speaker 3: that posthumously awarded to that individual. And they did a
Speaker 3: pretty good job. I think of kind of showing just
Speaker 3: how some of our Vietnam veterans, as you did, went
Speaker 3: through life. Larry got a job, got married, had a life,
Speaker 3: but there was still that inner struggle of dealing with
Speaker 3: what happened to them, what they did to others.
Speaker 2: War, and.
Speaker 3: So many try to just pack it away and you know,
Speaker 3: kind of lock it up in a box, never to
Speaker 3: be remembered again. And it's not really how it works.
Speaker 3: We can be effective of that to some degree for
Speaker 3: some period of time, but over time just doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: So you've been telling us the last few minutes about
Speaker 3: what led you to Camp Hope, and some arguments and
Speaker 3: someone over exaggerating what happened there, which is not unusual. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: ten days in jail, what happened after that.
Speaker 4: Okay, excuse me. After that at a Vietnam excuse me,
Speaker 4: a VA person got me out of at jail and
Speaker 4: she was looking for a program back home, so couldn't
Speaker 4: find exactly what we needed. So she put me or
Speaker 4: we went to a facility in Hostel, Alabama, and they
Speaker 4: helped me build my meds and I stayed there for
Speaker 4: about fourteen days. Then after that, I stayed at a
Speaker 4: motel for about fifteen days and this lady, same lady,
Speaker 4: I found out or knew someone that knew about Camp Hope,
Speaker 4: so we uh by doing that, some calls were made
Speaker 4: and uh first person I talked to here at Camp
Speaker 4: Hope was doctor George, and uh he welcomed me on
Speaker 4: the phone, and uh so I ended up coming here
Speaker 4: on March twenty six of this year, and uh, I
Speaker 4: couldn't ask for a better place to be to provide. Uh,
Speaker 4: I mean, they provide us with anything we need, you know, clothing, food, shelter.
Speaker 4: I'm so thankful for that. The tat actually saved me
Speaker 4: from probably doing the jail stint. Who knows if they
Speaker 4: couldn't have found anything there. So here I am and
Speaker 4: I'm so thankful.
Speaker 3: Do you remember day one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember day one. I came in an afternoon
Speaker 4: and I put all this stuff up and uh met
Speaker 4: some of the staff the next day. I didn't do
Speaker 4: much the first day, and of course here at Camp
Speaker 4: Hope they do a lot of it's structured on prayer
Speaker 4: and the Bible, so I didn't have a Bible with me.
Speaker 4: I got a Bible the next day and I've been
Speaker 4: in my Bible ever since. And that's what it's all about,
Speaker 4: to get my life back with the Lord. I was
Speaker 4: baptized age twenty three, as I told doctor excuse me,
Speaker 4: Pastor Moltis the other day at church. That part of
Speaker 4: the story. And so I just want to do the
Speaker 4: program and to get back home to my family. That
Speaker 4: should happen hopefully by the end of September.
Speaker 3: They're supportive of what's going on right now, sir. Your
Speaker 3: family supportive of what's going on right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, My family's very supportive. Before I left, I actually
Speaker 4: made my son oraternity for me. But I have no
Speaker 4: contact deal with my wife that they have put on
Speaker 4: me out there. I had been talked to my wife
Speaker 4: and over three months, and that's hurting me a lot.
Speaker 4: So my son is working on that to try to
Speaker 4: say if we can cure that up, but hopefully it
Speaker 4: can be. I don't know how long it's gonna be,
Speaker 4: but I won't know my life and I won't talk
Speaker 4: to her. So it's been a stressful.
Speaker 3: Oh, it would have to be. Yeah, having been at camp,
Speaker 3: now let's see me a couple of months. You've seen
Speaker 3: some of those stories come to pass and go both ways,
Speaker 3: no doubt, some families where people would describe it as miracles,
Speaker 3: things that have happened that they didn't think could ever
Speaker 3: possibly happen. And there's also those that they just can't
Speaker 3: They just can't repair it, and that, you know, that's life,
Speaker 3: that's just the way it goes. But when you see
Speaker 3: that happen, when you see some of those things happen,
Speaker 3: one of the guys getting to see his kids for
Speaker 3: the first time, and however long perhaps didn't get a
Speaker 3: chance to see that, what does that do to you
Speaker 3: when you watch that?
Speaker 4: I understand.
Speaker 3: So when you see, for instance, another guy in alphabet
Speaker 3: and he hadn't seen his kids in three years, doesn't
Speaker 3: think he's going to see his kids in three years,
Speaker 3: but then his kids show up on Sunday for visitation.
Speaker 3: When you see something like that, what does that do
Speaker 3: to you?
Speaker 4: It makes me feel sad that I can't say my
Speaker 4: wife and if they're about seven hundred something miles from
Speaker 4: me and I'm not allowed to even talk to her.
Speaker 4: The system somewhere is letting me tell you and my
Speaker 4: wife even though I did act out of anger, I
Speaker 4: didn't really hurt her, and this guy blows it out
Speaker 4: of proportion, and uh, it's just a ship a shamed
Speaker 4: of what are you? Sister? Are our sister works as
Speaker 4: far as.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's one of the reasons why we not
Speaker 3: only run warrior groups, but we also run family groups.
Speaker 3: Got to help the family understand what's going on. And
Speaker 3: just like in that situation, I've seen it a thousand times.
Speaker 3: It feels very personal, and certainly when it gets physical,
Speaker 3: it feels very very personal. But that's not what it's
Speaker 3: necessarily about. Tying you've seen it how many times? I mean,
Speaker 3: who knows?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: You just at some point you can't keep track, right.
Speaker 5: So even even when I came to Camp Open twenty two,
Speaker 5: I had no relationship with my two children. My son
Speaker 5: is a corman, he was in the Navy. My daughter
Speaker 5: he lives in Jacksonville, Florida. My daughter lives in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 5: When I came to Camp Hope had disappointed them so
Speaker 5: bad that I did not have a relationship at all. However,
Speaker 5: God can do miracles. What I did was focus on me.
Speaker 5: I didn't focus on anyone else's problems. I didn't focus
Speaker 5: on what was what I felt was done to me.
Speaker 5: I focused on getting myself better. And it's amazing how
Speaker 5: the one thing I did. I was telling mister mister
Speaker 5: Larry when we were coming up here, I said, I
Speaker 5: did one thing in my life. I surrendered to God,
Speaker 5: and he did everything else for me. I did one thing.
Speaker 5: I surrendered to him, and my children came back, and
Speaker 5: my family came back. And so I need mister Stovewall
Speaker 5: to know he has this in his hands. Larry, hold on,
Speaker 5: work on you. These things will get will get everything
Speaker 5: we lost in more and it'll be such, it'll be
Speaker 5: so much more better.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm working on this right now, back into the studies,
Speaker 4: and it's really helped me. I study every day. I
Speaker 4: got a fashist. Every morning I read, and I'm studying
Speaker 4: Matthew right now, trying to understand a lot of things.
Speaker 4: I knew a lot of it. I've read the Bible
Speaker 4: a lot in my life, but I'm really trying to comprehend.
Speaker 3: It now and grateful that you're here, Grateful that you're
Speaker 3: doing the work. Unfortunately, our time is up. The clock
Speaker 3: just doesn't have any kind of leeway to it. But
Speaker 3: thank you Larry for sharing some of your stories. Very
Speaker 3: very grateful, Tyrone. Always good to have you with us.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you Cape.
Speaker 3: Ptsdusa dot org for information not only on Camp Hope,
Speaker 3: but also our warrior groups and our family groups. PTSD
Speaker 3: USA dot org. Thank you for listening. Please share the
Speaker 3: podcast wherever you listen. Road to Hope Radio to being
Speaker 3: with you again next week for more of Road to
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