By Robert Britt, Staff Writer
Every military veteran who’s served since the Reagan years
is familiar with the MRE, the pre-packaged Meal, Ready-to-Eat.
Inside the nearly indestructible brown bag, among the
packets of crackers, jalapeno cheese and entrées as savory as
chunked-and-formed chicken patties, is the lynchpin item: a green bag
containing a mixture of powdered iron and magnesium.
The instructions are simple. Place the food packet in the
bag, add water, fold over the top and lean the whole assembly against a rock or
something while the water oxidizes the powdered metal, creating heat.
No matter where you are, a hot meal — a connection to
civilization — is only minutes away.
It’s from these instructions that Oregon National Guard
veterans Sean Davis and Miah Washburn found the name for their newest endeavor.
A Rock or Something Productions is their creative venture aimed at connecting
veterans with the arts and to help their fellow veterans heal through writing.
“It’s to get their demons to escape through their pens or typewriters,” Davis
says.
“Not everybody can get fixed by talking about their problems
with counselors,” Davis says. “Everybody heals differently. If it’s the arts
that helps them heal, then I want to be there to help make sure that happens.”
Last month, A Rock or Something published its first written
anthology. “Rough Men Stand Ready” contains poetry and prose written by local
veterans, their spouses and veteran’s supporters.
Davis and Washburn, who served together in different
platoons of the Oregon National Guard’s Bravo Company, 2-162 Infantry, each
bring to the A Rock or Something table a different aspect of the arts. Davis is
the writer and Washburn the actor.
Davis paints and is working on his war memoir, an online
literary journal and writings of all sorts. Washburn studies theater arts at
Portland State and has appeared in a Foo Fighters video, an episode of NBC’s
“Grimm” and an Oregon Lottery commercial.
Their partnership can be traced beyond the bounds of
military service and to their work with the one-act play “Quixote Club,” for
which Davis wrote the script and Washburn acted a lead role. After realizing
that nearly everyone involved with the project was a veterans, and that acting
and writing was helping ease their transition home, the need for A Rock or
Something was apparent.
“It turned into this thing where we can get vets running
set, doing props and stage and set building, acting and writing,” Washburn
says.
Davis adds that the renewed sense of accomplishment and
purpose helps the veterans know that they can do other things. “They don’t have
to think that the only thing they’re good for was that one year of their life
when they deployed,” he says.
Davis, 39, grew up in McKenzie Bridge, Ore., and joined the
National Guard on Sept. 12, 2001, after having already spent six years in the
active Army in the 1990s. He served in Haiti, mobilized to New Orleans for
Hurricane Katrina relief, and deployed to Iraq as a squad leader.
It was on that deployment that Davis earned the Purple Heart
for injuries received during a complex ambush outside Taji, a city about 20
miles north of Baghdad. The attack killed his gunner, Spc. Eric McKinley, to
whom the “Rough Men Stand Ready” anthology would later be dedicated and much of
its content devoted.
“This whole project for me was to help veterans write about
what they went through, because that’s really what helped me out,” Davis says.
“I went through a deep depression and I was a really bad alcoholic for a long
time. I didn’t have my life together.”
Davis stresses the need for combat veterans to get their
stories out. “It’s like venting,” he says. “If someone sees a car crash,
they’re going to want to tell you about it.” Combat deployments, where death
and destruction are the norm, are a long series of car crashes.
“They say a lot of the Vietnam and World War II veterans
wouldn’t talk about their time,” Davis says. “Maybe it’s a difference in
generations, but I wanted to. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I talked about
it to the point that people didn’t want to hear it.
“It helped me to write it down.”
Washburn, 38, grew up in Tigard and joined the Marines before
enlisting in the Guard after he returned to Oregon. In his nearly 20-year
military career he has been stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, deployed to
South America, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2014, he is scheduled to return to
Afghanistan as first sergeant of his infantry company.
In addition to helping veterans express themselves through
art with A Rock or Something, Davis and Washburn also look to fix the
disconnect between the civilian and veteran populations.
“The intent behind the overall project is not to just to do
everything by vets for vets, but to interface the veteran community with the
local theater, film and writing communities as well — to get our work in front
of the community,” Washburn says. “One of the biggest perceptions in the veteran’s
mind when they come home is, ‘I no longer belong to the society for which I
went to war.’ That’s why getting us out in front of the community and showing
that you do have a place here, that’s going to be more beneficial to vets by
and large than going to a PTSD clinic at the VA where you’re in a little room
with a doctor, and when it’s done you go back out to the world you came in
from.”
“Rough Men Stand Ready” is in its second print run and the
plans for a second edition are already underway, as is the paperwork to make A
Rock or Something a nonprofit organization. Davis says they are working with
the idea that the new edition would be devoted to humor, possibly sharing some
of the gallows humor that commonly serve as a coping mechanism during deployments.
Robert Britt is a writer, photographer and U.S. Army veteran with two deployments to the war in Iraq. He is currently serving a six-month fellowship with Street Roots and The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that connects post-9/11 veterans with service work in their communities.
This article appears in 2013-01-18.