In 2018, Army veteran Vince George was at one of the lowest points of his life.
While living in Kittery, Maine, and his wife deployed with the U.S. Coast Guard, Vince believed ending his own life was the answer to many years being affected by symptoms of post-traumatic stress. He took eight Percocet along with a handle of Jameson whiskey and sent goodbye texts to a few close people.
Soon after, his phone was flooded with calls, and, thankfully, the Coast Guard was notified and able to locate his address to send help. Recalling being handcuffed to a gurney after being narcanned in the ambulance, Vince becomes emotional when talking about it.
“I can’t believe I did that to my family,” he said. “I thought their life would be easier if I wasn’t there. Who is it easier for, though? Not them. It might have been easier for me, but that’s not how you deal with stuff.”
“It’s not part of the path,” Vince added.
In fact, the Perry, Maine resident was already on his path to reclaiming his life when he enrolled in the Warrior PATHH training at the Travis Mills Foundation. Progressive & Alternative Training for Helping Heroes is based on the science of Post-Traumatic Growth and that a positive psychological change can occur after experiencing significant trauma or crisis. It begins with a 7-day, in-person initiation at the Veterans Retreat in Rome, Maine.
The training is offered in only 10 locations throughout the U.S., including the Travis Mills Foundation.
Vince, 49, completed initiation in April, followed by 90 days of virtual follow-up.
“I don’t know where I’d be without Warrior PATHH,” Vince said.
Since graduating from PATHH he’s also become an ardent advocate for the training and encourages others to explore it.
Learn More >>> https://www.travismillsfoundation.org/pathh/
Military Service
Vince joined the military in 1997, and said his first deployment to Albania in early 1999 was relatively uneventful. The next year, however, was anything but. Vince had met his wife, Darla, an Army intelligence analyst, before he went to Albania in 1999; they married and she became pregnant.
It wasn’t long before Vince left on his second deployment, this time to Kosovo, in 2000.
A satellite communications operator/maintainer with the Army, Vince was one of 10 Americans stationed on a Russian compound near the Serbian border. When not doing the SATCOM work, he supported a U.S. Special Forces Team in the same village.
“I absorbed into them to fill roles where they needed me,” he said.
Vince experienced two blast injuries during this deployment, though non-combat related. The first happened when a 50 caliber machine gun exploded in his lap during weapons familiarization training. The second incident came while on R&R at a different base in Kosovo when a 155 howitzer muzzle blast went off while Vince was passing it nearby on foot.
After the 155 Howitzer blast, he went on like business as usual. However, he now understands that the incident contributed to a traumatic brain injury. In fact, it took years for Vince to remember the explosion at all.
“I was nauseous for about a week or two,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep but would randomly wake up not remembering having gone to sleep. I would be really hungry, then I’d vomit when I did eat. I had no idea that I had a brain injury.”
There was no one around to witness the blast and how it affected him, and while his illness was observed, he downplayed how he was feeling and kept working until Vince redeployed back to Germany.
Service in the National Guard
Vince chose early separation from the active duty Army in 2001 after his daughter was born. Shortly after, his wife completed her enlistment and they moved back to the U.S. as civilians. After a failed attempt working in New York’s corporate world, working in construction for three years, and leaving the California Highway Patrol Academy, he and his wife moved to Alaska in 2005 when he joined the Army National Guard and Darla joined the U.S. Coast Guard.
“I was doing pretty good at this point – I compartmentalized well enough that I wasn’t letting anything I saw on deployment bother me,” he said.
As Vince waited on orders to flight school, he filled various roles, including working in the recruiting office and as flight crew for Blackhawk helicopters. On the day that orders finally came through, Vince accidently shattered his leg. After a long delay, however, and a waiver, he had the opportunity to attend flight school.
When he looks back at this time, Vince remembers how distant he was, especially toward his wife.
“I was pushing her away,” he said.
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Deploying to Afghanistan
After completing two years of helicopter and airplane flight school, Vince deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 as a fixed wing pilot. Meanwhile, his wife continued to serve in the Coast Guard full time while raising their daughter.
That year, Vince was chosen to be sent home from Afghanistan during a special initiative by President Obama in which 10,000 troops would be sent home by Christmas of that year.
On his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, Vince and a friend from flight school had dinner together and they both agreed they should eat together more often and they made plans for the following day.
“He was going to bed and I was getting ready to go out and fly – it was my breakfast, his dinner,” Vince said. “Instead of having a meal with him the next day, I circled his aircraft burning on the ground.”
The next afternoon, Vince received word of a “fallen angel” near the base and was tasked with overwatch duty that night.
“I didn’t know it was him until we landed,” Vince said.
Once back at the base, Vince almost knocked on Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Suresh Krause’s door, but hesitated and knocked on his neighbor’s door – Suresh’s death was confirmed by another friend from flight school who was in Krause’s unit.
“He reached out and picked me up into a bear hug and we just cried,” Vince said.
Because more new pilots were arriving for the Task Force in which Vince was in, Vince was taken off the flight roster for the next five days for training purposes; he used the time to attend ramp ceremonies for fallen U.S. servicemembers and other funeral events for the fallen flight crew.
“I started going numb then,” he said, adding he had also become aggressive, mean and short tempered.
“There were pilots that didn’t want to fly with me anymore,” Vince said. “I’m glad I’m not that guy anymore – I have PATHH to thank for that.”
While Vince flew fixed-wing missions in Afghanistan, they were on planes that he described as “aged.” As a result, he developed a pinched nerve, resulting in numbness in his lower legs from being in uncomfortable positions for hours at a time.
After traveling back to the U.S. and talking to a doctor at Fort Benning, Georgia – now known as Fort Moore – about the numbness and previous injuries, it was decided that Vince would spend time in a Warrior Transition Unit in Alaska. At the time, Vince lived at home with his family. However, after the second deployment to Afghanistan, he brought negative feelings home with him.
“My wife and daughter were afraid of me,” he said, adding that nightly episodes included waking up screaming and intense night sweats.
“One day I woke up with my hands on my wife’s throat,” Vince said, adding that his wife would wake him by tapping on his feet, so he wouldn’t attack her or their daughter.
“I was a bomb waiting to go off,” he added.
One day as Vince drove to the Warrior Transition Unit, he experienced a psychotic break.
“I completely unraveled,” he said, adding that during this time, he was about to be sent back to work as a pilot.
Vince went to the Vet Center in Anchorage where he was diagnosed with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and a related dissociative disorder. A month later, it was an episode where Vince punched a concrete floor repeatedly, breaking his hand so badly that it needed surgery, that led to the end of his career in the service.
When staff at the Warrior Transition Unit saw what he had done to his hand, Vince told them it was from an episode brought on by post-traumatic stress, but they didn’t believe him. He didn’t want to, but he showed them the paperwork outlining his diagnosis.
“I handed them the paperwork that ended my career,” Vince said, adding that as a result, he would never serve again, refusing a medical retirement. He continued to New York where his wife and daughter were now living.
The Next Chapter
On Thanksgiving Day 2013, Vince joined his wife and daughter at Coast Guard housing in New York. During dinner, someone made an insensitive remark about Vince’s post-traumatic stress diagnosis, casting a shadow over what should have been a joyful gathering.
“It put me in a deep depression,” he said. “I wanted to leave.”
Within a year and a half, Vince did leave, but it was back overseas serving in Afghanistan as a private contractor.
“I couldn’t serve in the military anymore, so this was my way of still serving,” he said, adding that he’s never slept better than when he’s on deployment.
Vince’s work took him to Afghanistan for 65-day rotations, followed by 55 days at home. When training, he’d be away for up to 85 days at a time.
“The neighbors never even knew when I was home,” he recalled. “I didn’t leave the house.”
After six deployments as a contractor, Vince began to feel frustrated, especially with changes to the rules of engagement.
“I didn’t see the point anymore,” he said.
At the same time, his daughter had joined her high school robotics team, and Vince wanted to be more involved in her life.
“The money wasn’t worth being away from home anymore,” he said, adding that working with his daughter on the robotics team pulled him out of his shell.
Coming to Maine, Finding Warrior PATHH
When Darla was assigned to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the family relocated to Kittery, Maine. However, a personal conflict between Vince and Darla left him fearing he might lose their relationship. It was this overwhelming sense of loss and despair that led Vince to attempt to take his own life.
“She’s been the immovable force that kept me as stable as I could be,” he said. “I relied on her.”
After years of trying to push through the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, Vince finally sought help from the VA where he received a 100 percent disability rating.
After the attempt, Vince began seeing a mental health clinician weekly, where they worked on his issues with post-traumatic stress.
Darla was stationed in Portland, Maine, and Vince started seeing a new therapist.
In one session, repressed memories of the howitzer blast came back.
“They came out of nowhere,” he said. “I got immensely violent really quick.”
It didn’t make sense to Vince why he was feeling the effects of a blast, but couldn’t remember it.
“I started having nightmares and flashbacks about it,” Vince said, describing how the incident, once buried, had resurfaced.
“I even looked back at videos from Kosovo and saw a distinct change in my personality around the time of the blast,” he said.
When the pandemic hit the United States, Vince stopped seeing the therapist. It wasn’t until his wife retired in 2021, and when they moved to Perry, Maine, that a veteran that Vince talked into getting help, suggested he see a different therapist.
Once a month Vince drove to the Vet Center in Bangor, where he saw the therapist his friend suggested. Vince started to sense that he was distancing himself from friends and family – a feeling that was familiar from his prior suicide attempt.
“I told my therapist that something needed to change,” he said. “That’s when I applied for Warrior PATHH at the Travis Mills Foundation.”
During PATHH training, Vince found it therapeutic to open up to fellow students and PATHH Guides, admitting he felt undeserving of the training.
“I didn’t think I’d done enough to earn a slot at PATHH,” he said.
He also gained insights into his need for control and learned to put trust in others. One of the most eye-opening moments came during a family tree exercise, where Vince explored generational patterns of addiction and abuse within his family.
“It didn’t start with me,” he said.
Coincidentally, Vince had already been abstaining from alcohol for two weeks due to a medical procedure and continued his sobriety throughout PATHH’s initiation week, a decision that aligned well with his journey in the program.
“I think without PATHH, I would have gone back to drinking heavily,” he said.
Looking Ahead
Now 25 years into their marriage, Vince and Darla are looking forward to having their first grandchild and healing aspects of their marriage affected by Vince’s service. They recently attended a music festival where Vince performed a song that he and his fellow warriors wrote during Warrior PATHH training, with Darla accompanying him on guitar. Though they both admit they’re not professional musicians, the experience was unforgettable.
Song lyrics, with permission:
May 15, 2024, Travis Mills Foundation-Warrior PATHH
_________
For anyone considering Warrior PATHH, Vince urges them to try it, not only for themselves, but for their families.
“After PATHH, I feel like I’m standing taller. I’m seeing the best version of myself for the first time in over a decade.
“I must say the words ‘Warrior PATHH’ 50 times in a week,” Vince said. “When I see brothers and sisters in arms who are struggling, I tell them it’s the one thing that will work.”
Vince aspires to become a PATHH Guide, helping others on their own healing journeys. He also envisions a broader shift, hoping that the Veterans Administration and organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, and the American Legion will adopt some of the PATHH principles into their approaches.
Though Vince struggles with both feeling and expressing his emotions, he’s learned that it’s okay.
“Everyone struggles,” he shared. “Warrior PATHH helped me understand how to ‘Struggle Well