'I don't forget those days'

Sharon Burrell covered her windows with cardboard when she got home to Culpeper after spending six months in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm.

It’s been 20 years since she served her country in the Navy, but some days it feels like she’s still in the war zone, Scud missiles flying overhead.

“One of my worst memories was the fear of the unknown, not knowing if we were going to be able to get home, were we sent there to die,” said Burrell, a 1987 graduate of Culpeper County High School.

A hospital corpsman, she witnessed death and dying up close and personal; even now, the thought of it elicits almost immediate tears.

“It is still emotional,” Burrell said in a recent interview, her eyes watering. “I’m going to hold that napkin right here,” she said, dabbing her face, “because I put on some makeup today.

“I don’t make it every day in makeup, but I put some on today.”

Like many servicemen and women who spend time in combat, Burrell lives with an often unrelenting stress that does not exist in the civilian world. With support from the Virginia Wounded Warrior program, she is on the mend.

“They know what I’ve been through. They understand me when I talk,” she said of the multilayered support program run by veterans for veterans. “It’s healing.”

Wounded Warriors event

Established three years ago by the Virginia General Assembly, Wounded Warriors provides treatment and support for all veterans, including those with combat-related stress, brain injuries and post-traumatic stress syndrome. Community service boards statewide support the program, and there’s an active group that meets weekly in Fredericksburg.

Last May, Wounded Warriors branched out into Culpeper, holding meetings every month in the Daniel Technology Center.

Hoping to make contact with and help more veterans in the five-county area, Wounded Warriors — in conjunction with the Department of Veteran Affairs Rural Health Division and the Virginia Employment Commission — will host a free outreach event today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Culpeper VEC in Meadowbrook Shopping Center.

All veterans and their families are welcome. Assistance will be provided related to disability payments, employment, mental and physical health, substance abuse, finances or other life issues.

The local Wounded Warriors group will also hold its regular meeting today at 6 p.m. at the Daniel Center. Again, all veterans and their families are welcome.

“There are a lot of veterans out here in Culpeper who don’t know we exist,” said J.R. Fondren, a Marine who is a crisis intervention clinician with the program through Rappahannock-Rapidan CSB. “We are trying to reach out to them and get them the services they deserve.”

Levels of stress

Every veteran deals with some sort of adjustment stress when returning to the civilian world, said Kevin Williams, retired Navy Gulf War and Operation Enduring Freedom veteran, a peer support specialist with the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program in Fredericksburg. The level of stress varies from person to person, he said.

Acute stress fades after a short time, while chronic stress lingers longer than two months, he said. PTSD goes on for longer than six months.

Burrell knows about the latter, recalling the din of war, missiles roaring overhead.

“Our alarms would go off, and I clearly remember that thing saying, ‘Attack is imminent. Attack is imminent.’ My sister teases me about that now — they told me when I came home I was shell-shocked,” she said. “I don’t forget those days.”

And Burrell doesn’t forget the time when, alarm blaring, a fellow servicewoman got stuck in her sleeping bag.

“We were all trying to get that zipper open and everybody was screaming and crying,” she said. “It may not seem like a lot, but it was awful.”

A different kind of warzone

Howard Hardaway, 41, of Culpeper lived through a horrifying experience of a different sort a year after he joined the Navy in the late 1980s. Serving stateside, he was brutally beaten in a seemingly random attack.

Hardaway suffered a brain injury, limiting his ability in the Navy and continuing to challenge him today. He faces memory and sequencing issues, and it takes him longer to learn new things. Depression is a reality as well.

Even with permanent brain damage, Hardaway went on to complete hospital corpsman school. But he experienced great frustration, as his original goal of doing special warfare — like his grandfather had done — slipped further and further away.

“Every time I would fail at something, it would create more and more anger — anger at the people who attacked me, anger at the Navy,” said Hardaway, who served nearly five years. “I felt like I was letting myself down and letting a legacy down that I wanted to fulfill.”

Because the brain injury never made it into his official military medical file, Hardaway did not receive disability benefits until recently. It’s still a challenge for him to find work, but the Navy vet stays active caring for his children, volunteering in their schools, helping his parents, working out and running triathlons.

‘I am still here’

More than 20 years after he was attacked, Hardaway said living with a brain injury has not gotten any easier.

“It actually got more difficult because after I got married there were a lot of expectations that I wasn’t living up to as a husband and a father,” he said.

The support from Wounded Warriors helps, Hardaway said, though he still struggles with feeling like an outsider because he didn’t sustain injuries in a traditional combat zone.

“It took a while for the others to convince me that I still deserved the same help they get,” he said.

Regardless of what branch of the military or what conflict you served in, Hardaway added, the bond is unbreakable.

“Once you’re out of the service, we’re all the same,” he said. “We’re all veterans.”

PTSD never fully goes away, said Williams, but there is help out there.

“Once you have it, you will always carry a piece of it with you, but like anything else it can be managed,” he said.

For Burrell, her 17-year-old son keeps her going.

“He is the light of my life,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “I know he’s the reason I’m still here, because there were so many times I wanted to give up and just didn’t want to be around. Because of him, I am still here.”

Support for Wounded Warriors

The Virginia Wounded Warriors Program, in conjunction with the Department of Veteran Affairs Rural Health Division and the Virginia Employment Commission, will host a free outreach event today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Culpeper VEC in Meadowbrook Shopping Center. All veterans and their families are welcome.

Assistance will be provided related to disability payments, employment, mental and physical health, substance abuse, finances or other life issues.

The Culpeper Wounded Warriors group will also hold its regular meeting today at 6 p.m. at the Germanna Community College Daniel Technology Center. Call J.R. Fondren at 825-5656 ext. 117 or Kevin Williams at 540-373-3223 ext. 3085.