Combat vets pass through Morgan City on a healing journey

Military service ends. Wars end. The memories don’t.
Denny Dehnert’s service in the Marines included tours in Iraq and, more than 30 years ago, in Somalia. Dehnert was working in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. A friend died in the 9/11 attack 30 minutes after Dehnert had been talking to him.
But, as Dehnert sat at a table in a Lake End Park cabin Tuesday, the memory that made him choke up was of a little Somali girl struck and killed by a Marine vehicle. He had a daughter about the same age.
When his combat duty was over, “I held everything in,” Dehnert said. “I didn’t talk to anyone. I got angry easily. Noises scared me.
“I didn’t think I had trouble adjusting,” he said. “But I obviously did.”
Dehnert and fellow veterans Richard Sandefer and Jonathan Herald were in town on their way to the Gulf of Mexico — the hard way. They paddled canoes down the Mississippi River, hanging a right into the Atchafalaya to avoid the commercial traffic south of Baton Rouge, and stopped in Morgan City before the final leg of their journey.
It’s a grueling journey of more than 2,100 miles that started in June in Minnesota. It’s a healing journey, too, part of a program called Warrior Expeditions, designed to help veterans “transition from their wartime experiences through long distance outdoor expeditions,” according to the organization’s website.
Participants may paddle down the Mississippi, or hike the 2,000-mile Appalachian trail. The journey on that trail inspired Marine veteran Sean Gobin to found Warrior Expeditions and the therapy it can provide vets wrestling with their own memories.
Sandefer made the Appalachian hike. He carried the ashes of a friend who had committed suicide.
Sandefer had served in Iraq and Afghanistan by then.
“I was in total denial when I got back,” said Sandefer, who has a Marine tattoo. “People asked me about my tattoo, and I said it was because my grandfather was a Marine.”
Sandefer became a self-described “drug head — any means to escape or numb out.”
He wasn’t alone. After a suicide attempt in 2010 — “That was my defining moment,” he said — he discovered Camp Hope, a program of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Foundation. It’s a six- to nine-month program in Houston in which “we aim to relieve the effects of combat trauma through a whole person approach.”
Among the members of Sandefer’s class, 14 committed suicide, he said.
Herald served in the Navy during Operation Southern Watch off Iraq after the first Gulf War.
Coming home, “I did OK for a little bit,” Herald said.
But stress and depression caught up with him.
“I just couldn’t get out of the house any more …” Herald said. “A lot of us lose our families because of it.”
He lost a 23-year marriage that had begun when he was 19.
As with Sandefer, he found Camp Hope.
“It’s a place where you’re around other veterans who had the same experiences,” Herald said.
Dehnert saw a 35-year marriage end. He married again, but his second wife “noticed I was more agitated.”
He began drinking heavily and fighting before he discovered Warrior Expedition.
The trip down the Mississippi provided some of the best aspects of military service, including the camaraderie and a sense of purpose.
Dehnert’s trip down the river was interrupted by a bout of Lyme disease.
“They told me that once you’re off the river for a week, you won’t go back,” Dehnert said.
But after three weeks, he was back in his canoe.
“Accomplishing the mission — that’s what kept me going,” Dehnert said.
“To me,” Sandefer said, “it’s the closest thing to military service … when you get in the trenches with your brothers.”
The trip helped Dehnert ease his mind.
“It’s taught me to have a little more patience,” he said. “I think I’m calmer than when I started. .. You miss the things you take for granted.”
The veterans were impressed by the welcome they received in Morgan City.
The St. Mary Sheriff’s Office Marine Unit escorted them in. City officials set them up with the cabin at Lake End Park. And they received goodie bags from Cajun Coast Tourism.
“The whole town has rallied around us,” Sandefer said. “It’s been a special experience.”