Veterans Day: Ft. Riley Operation Recovery Outreach

This Veterans Day a contingent of vets and supporters of Operation Recovery descended on Ft. Riley to talk to soldiers face to face about the campaign.  Often what we hear when telling others about this type of work is "How did you get on base?"  Most civilians think that military bases are closed to the public.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Entering base was relatively simple and required us only to present identification.  I encourage everyone to do a dry run before doing this kind of work to see what requirements are necessary to enter their local base.  Once on base we decided on this occasion to skip the PX where the potential to be asked to leave on the basis of soliciting material seems to be much higher and instead hit up the barracks.  You can have a more personal engagement in this environment doing this or just talking to people walking around on post.  This time around we ran into members of a unit deploying the next day to Iraq.  As absurd as that might seem they were also on lock down on Veterans Day until they could have their rooms cleared by inspectors, now the job of civilian contract workers instead of their direct chain of command (another example of military waste).  Here we had all the time in the world it seemed to talk to them about the campaign, what they should not put up with from their leaders, and their right to heal. We inquired about how their unit handled cases of trauma from their experience and observed suicide prevention material throughout our the buildings. This scene was replicated several times in the mostly empty barracks around post as more and more units from Ft. Riley continue to be deployed to Iraq.  We were pleased that many soldiers who were still present appeared to be hearing something for the first time and were thankful for the information.  This was our second time in a couple weeks testing the waters of the base community at Ft. Riley and surrounding areas.  We are able to talk to supporters about the work and dissolve misconceptions about base work. We hope to continue spreading the message and identifying problems as they surface.