Retired National Guards Iraq Veteran looking for lost soul

Orange veteran looking for lost soul during hike
The Recorder
By ANITA FRITZ
March 28, 2014

ORANGE, Mass. (AP) — It was 1948, three years after the end of World War II, when Earl Shaffer, a U.S. Army veteran from Pennsylvania, hiked the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, something no one else had done to that point.

More than 14,000 people have hiked the entire trail since Shaffer, and U.S. Army National Guard veteran Joe Young of Orange says he hopes to be one of the next.

Many have attempted the 2,180-mile trek — some have finished, some have not. They've done it for many reasons: the challenge, the sheer exhilaration or just to be able to say they did it.

Others, like Young, decide they want to do it to find the piece of their soul they lost somewhere along the way — Young says he lost his in Iraq.

The 61-year-old veteran retired after spending 42 1/ 2 years in the National Guard. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a type of anxiety disorder that occurs after someone has gone through an extreme emotional trauma that involves the threat of injury or death.

It’s obvious that he doesn’t like to talk about the specifics of what he saw in Iraq when he was deployed from 2003 to 2004 and again from 2005 to 2006. He served at Abu Ghraib prison and says if someone tries to push him too hard into talking about it and he starts to feel too uncomfortable, he simply leaves the room.

‘‘I hope that sometime during my six-month hike with 13 other veterans I find that piece of my soul I'm looking for,’’ he said just days before he left for Georgia on March 14.

Recognizing the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of long-distance hiking, Warrior Hike has partnered with the conservancy, the Continental Divide Trail Coalition and the Pacific Crest Trail Association to create the ‘‘Walk Off the War’’ program, which takes place all over the United States.
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