A New Veterans Group Aims To Bridge Generation Gap

One Saturday afternoon in September, some 40 men and women gathered at the Fort Wadsworth military base in Staten Island to discuss their common bond as veterans of modern-day war.

Seated around a U-shaped table was a disabled Gulf War veteran, Keith Schafer; a New York City police officer who served in Iraq, Louis Maniscalco; a Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf, Jane DaCosta, and a veteran of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, Michael Porcaro, among others. As they snacked on light refreshments, the members of the eclectic group shared tips for obtaining veterans' benefits, then quickly began planning the next meeting. Unlike veterans groups that focus on a particular conflict, Veterans of Modern Warfare, which emerged within the past year, seeks to bridge the generational divide among veterans.

Older veterans said they understand what today's returning veterans went through.

"I served in the same theater they did. I went after the same enemy. I ate the same sand," Mr. Schafer, who is spearheading the Staten Island division of VMW, said. Mr. Schafer, a lance corporal in the Marines who served in the Middle East between October 1990 and May 1991, suffers war-related ailments, including respiratory problems, a seizure disorder, and post-traumatic stress.

"I remember what it was like coming back from deployment, and how difficult it was," the group's national president, Julie Mock, said. "How alone I felt, and how much it meant to find people who were experiencing the same thing." Ms. Mock served as an Army corporal during the Gulf War.

To date, the group has 600 members in seven states, including New York. Three weeks ago, a Queens chapter became incorporated and a Long Island branch is forming. There are 258,000 veterans living in New York City, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Queens and Brooklyn have the largest veteran populations, 73,000 and 64,000, respectively. Of the total veteran population, nearly 21,000 are women.

Officials could not provide data on the number of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Statistics from a survey conducted in 2006 indicate that there are 30,000 veterans of the Gulf War and 70,000 veterans from the Vietnam era living throughout the five boroughs. Citywide, there are 32,000 Korean War veterans and 47,000 World War II veterans.

In all, 30,200 veterans in New York City receive compensation and pension benefits, including 25,271 who receive service-connected disability pensions.

Officials from the V.A. health system estimated that the New York Harbor Healthcare System treats 55,000 unique patients annually, with the system logging 650,000 outpatient visits each year. More than 4,000 veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq are signed up for veterans' health benefits.

For years, groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars have catered to millions of veterans nationwide.

"We have a support system in place. It's tried and true," a spokeswoman for the American Legion, Ramona Joyce, said. To date, the American Legion operates 14,000 posts and counts 2.7 million members nationwide. "When you have that kind of clout, it says something," Ms. Joyce said.

Increasingly, however, returning veterans are seeking changes in the services available to them, including upgraded medical care to keep pace with specific ailments such as traumatic brain injuries. "The V.A. needs to be changed to handle the new needs of a new generation," the founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Paul Rieckhoff, said. "A lot of people are surviving that would have died," Mr. Rieckhoff, a veteran who served in Iraq and launched IAVA in 2004, said. Mr. Rieckhoff is an infantry officer in the New York Army National Guard.

Indeed, the Veterans of Modern Warfare seeks to address returning veterans' issues, and is modeling itself after Vietnam-era groups. Currently, VMW shares office space in Washington, D.C., with the Vietnam Veterans of America. The two groups also share space in Queens.

The bond comes from the older veterans' desire to preserve their legacy of advocacy and camaraderie, several said in interviews. In July, the Vietnam veterans' group voted down a proposal to accept members from modern wars, but it decided to help foster the new veteran's group, the VVA's national president, John Rowan, told the Sun. "We have an existing infrastructure that they can take advantage of," Mr. Rowan, a linguist in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, said.

Overall, the older veterans and the younger ones are concerned with how returning veterans cope with post-traumatic stress, and with their ability to move forward with their lives.

"They come home, and they look at life completely differently than when they left," Mrs. Maniscalco, a VMW associate member whose husband served in Iraq for 12 months, said.

According to Mrs. Maniscalco, who helped found a support group for military families on Staten Island in 2004, the wartime experience is one few civilians can understand. "You kind of feel like your entire world is just crumbling around you," she said. "You stop watching the news."

Her father, a Vietnam veteran, helped to prepare her for the rollercoaster of emotions she would experience during the war, as did speaking with older veterans who put things in perspective. "We had Webcams, we had microphones," Mrs. Maniscalco said. "I couldn't imagine how women or families during World War II coped with saying goodbye to a loved one. They would wait months to get a letter."

Indeed, veterans from the Korean War and World War II are reluctant to discuss their experience.

"What's there to talk about?" an Army corporal during World War II who is not part of VMW, Dr. Harold Rosenberg, said. He recalled the first time his son-in-law, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, saw his bronze star and purple heart medals. "He said, 'You earned that?' I said, 'Yeah.' That was the end of the conversation," Dr. Rosenberg, a retired physician, said.

At 86, memories of the war come at unexpected moments, such as earlier this week at an Upper West Side restaurant when a stranger's question about the war brought back images of his fallen comrades. "My eyes welled up with tears," Dr. Rosenberg said.

VMW members said they are attempting to ease that kind of anxiety in their peers. "I'm not there to be their parents. I'm there to be their equal," Mr. Schafer said. "I'm there to stand next to them and say, 'Come on, I'll go with you.'"