Bar X Project helps vets heal in pristine Montana landscape See HEAL on Page 10
The driver should have known better. He was getting too close. The U.S. Marines in Iraq’s Anbar province watched warily as the vehicle crept up on their convoy.
They’d seen comrades killed by suicide bombers, IEDs and snipers during tours of duty there and in Afghanistan, so they were on guard, ready to defend themselves.
With the driver ignoring a sign in Arabic that warned motorists to stay back 200 feet, the order was given. The turret gunner unleashed a storm of gunfire, killing the man at the wheel.
No bomb or weapons were found. All the Marines could do was place the driver—a local student—in a body bag and take him home to his family.
The tragic death in 2006 was one of many that has haunted Sgt. Matt Bailey of Medford, N.J. The infantryman also recalls a suicide bomber who detonated an explosives-laden truck onto his forward operating base in Karabilah, Anbar, killing several Iraqi National Guard soldiers. Bailey was detailed to clean up the body parts—more grim images to carry inside.
And he remembers other deaths, close calls in firefights and IED explosions in Afghanistan in 2004 and Iraq two years later that left him with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I felt proud and happy to be home at first, ready to take on the civilian world as a hard-charging infantry Marine,” Bailey said of the days after his departure from the service in 2006. “Surprisingly enough, the civilian world wasn’t the place for me. … I had a hard time adjusting.”
Bailey considered suicide and was “at the end of the barrel of my Glock 17 several times, contemplating pulling the trigger.” After later appearing on an episode of TV’s Dr. Phil Show to talk about PTSD and 90 days of counseling at a private facility in Texas, he felt “much better but incomplete.”
His fuller recovery came over the last three years with the intervention of comrades he served with and a program that’s been lauded by veterans: the Bar X Project, which helps heal Marines suffering from the mental and physical wounds of war in an idyllic Montana setting.
Far from urban confines and life’s everyday stresses, they reconnect at the Bar X Ranch near Big Timber, Mont., to face another battle together, this time overcoming the lingering pain and regrets of war.
Marines who haven’t seen one another in years relax, decompress, drift in boats along the peaceful Yellowstone River, go fly-fishing—and talk about experiences and feelings that can be understood only by their combat “brothers.”
“When I got home, I thought everything was great, but you do feel isolated,” said James Moran, a Marine major and Berlin, N.J., resident who established the nonprofit Bar X Project in 2011 with a Marine captain, Wade Zirkle of Woodstock, Va.
“It is our belief that reestablishing the special bond forged in combat overseas is an untapped avenue of combating PTSD and helping Marines return to normal life,” said Moran, who was Bailey’s former executive officer in Afghanistan. “We reunite combatveterans with members of their old units.”
He and Zirkle—partners in StrongPoint Holdings, a nationwide ATM business—pay the airfare, usually for four or five Marines, to fly to Montana and accompany them as facilitators. They also pick up the tab for the meals.
Their friend and business associate Rob Lowe, who supplies their ATMs, has opened up his family’s 300-acre ranch at Big Timber and enlisted the aid of other Montana residents. A Billings car-rental businessman at National Alamo provides a free 12-passenger van, and a local outfitter, Wild Fly Angler, offers rods at cost that are purchased for the veterans by a local man (J.R. Reger). Boats, guides and a final dinner at a Big Timber hotel also are donated.
The Bar X organizers will keep busy for the foreseeable future, judging from the number of casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 38,000 members of all of the military services have been diagnosed with PTSD during the wars, according to a Congressional Research Service report in August. Thousands of suicides by veterans have been recorded; some reports say as many as 18 to 22 a day take their own lives.
About 327,000 service members have traumatic brain injuries; 1,600 have had major limb amputations; 52,000 have been wounded; and nearly 7,000 have been killed, the congressional report said.
Helping the survivors heal is the annual mission of the Bar X Project, started by Moran, Zirkle and Lowe after seeing sporadic efforts by other groups to connect military veterans and the outdoors.
“I read about treating wounded warriors in a fly-fishing magazine, and we talked about creating a program using the Bar X Ranch,” said Lowe, 41, of Billings. “There is a therapeutic quality to nature.
“If you’re from a congested area like New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York, you don’t understand that you can come here and see miles of river without seeing another person,” he said. “You can hang out, fish and look at the snowcapped mountains—without hearing any jet or traffic noise.”
Around a fire pit at night, the Marines “rekindle friendships,” Lowe said. “They talk about combat experiences, just daily life, the things they’re going through. I don’t have trouble sleeping or wake up in a cold sweat, so it’s hard to relate to a guy like me; I’m just a facilitator.
“They sit up until 1 or 2 in the morning,” he said. “They do a great job of talking to one another about what they’re going through.”
The annual trips—running Thursday to Sunday—usually include four or five Marines along with the facilitators and other volunteers. Five came on the last outing in September, and about 25 have been to the ranch since 2011. The program—which the organizers hope to expand as more funds become available—helps the veterans realize that their comrades are also processing the same memories and feelings.
“When bad guys get killed, that doesn’t bother them,” said Moran, 38. “But when they see a Marine or innocent person killed, that bothers them. Dead kids haunt everybody.”
At the ranch, “we reintroduce (the Marines) to their battle buddies and the sense of brotherhood they had,” said Zirkle, 37, who had two tours of duty in Iraq, including one at Fallujah in 2004 when his troop transport was hit by a suicide bomber, seriously injuring him and killing seven Marines and three Iraqi soldiers. “In a generation where fewer than 1 percent have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a feeling of being alone.
“People don’t understand what you’ve gone through,” Zirkle said. “These wounded warriors understand each other.”
The Montana experience gave one of the participants—Marine Sgt. Ryan Holt—ideas for his own program in Maine, where he purchased 42 acres and has spent $200,000 on a building where he’s planning to start the Peaceful Warrior Project. It’s a “human-nature hostel,” said Holt, who visited the Bar X Ranch in September. Earlier, he hiked 2,184 miles along the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine and successfully competed on the Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid.
“We’ll have backpacking, canoeing, yoga, meditation classes, sweat lodg-