A Volunteer Army of Military Veterans Brings Aid to Shattered Communities and Helps Heal the Wounds of War

A volunteer army of military veterans brings aid to shattered communities and helps heal the wounds of war By Steven Hill KIRK JACKSON, TEAM RUBICON KIRK JACKSON, 20 | KANSAS ALUMNI ISSUE 2, 2016 | 21 Previous page: Team Rubicon member Chris This is what we saw every day in Haiti. Crush wounds. Com- Ryan cradles a newborn—delivered hours pound fractures. It was an experience no one will ever forget.” TEAM RUBICON WILLIAM MCNULTY, before on a desk that served as a makeshift On their second day in Port-au-Prince, the team was triaging operating table—as the disaster-response patients at a collapsed school, sending those needing high-level COURTESY TEAM RUBICON COURTESY group prepares to medevac survivors of care to a local hospital. Word came back that the hospital was full Operation: Typhoon Haiyan on the Philippine island of of wounded, but there was no medical staff to treat them. Haiti Relief Leyte in November 2013. Left: William McNulty and his team moved in, re-establishing emergency care Port-au-Prince McNulty in the Manresa camp in Haiti, where and staffing the ER for two days. Earthquake Team Rubicon’s first mission brought badly In their secure compound on the grounds of a Jesuit novitiate at 2010 needed medical aid to victims of the 2010 the end of one long day, McNulty turned to Wood and said, “We have a model here. No one else is engaging veterans in this type of earthquake. service, but it makes so much sense because of the skills we have.” That realization spurred the two men to grow Team Rubicon treat the most critically wounded first. into a thriving disaster-response organization that taps the unique They improvised supplies, prying doors off skills of combat veterans to perform under pressure in crises. The ruined houses to use as stretchers and 60 volunteers who joined them in Haiti in 2010 have since swelled MILES PEPPER, TEAM RUBICON rigging splints from window frames and to a volunteer force of 35,000 (75 percent of whom are veterans), tree branches. And they were doing it with a full-time staff of more than 50 that provides back-office without being shot at. support for the dozens of disaster deployments Team Rubicon “It was actually a little bit cathartic for mounts each year. The nonprofit has attracted backing from the the team, knowing they were operating in likes of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Starr Foundation and the this environment and yet they didn’t need Drue Heinz Family Foundation, which last year awarded McNulty Operation: Tenzing to carry a gun, didn’t need to worry about and Wood the $250,000 Heinz Prize for the Human Condition. Kathmandu, Nepal anybody trying to kill them,” McNulty Along the way, the organization that initially focused its Earthquake says. attention on disaster victims began to realize that among those 2015 “They were just there to help people.” benefiting the most from Team Rubicon’s missions were the In the course of their 18 days in Haiti, a military veterans themselves. team that began with four grew to 60 and treated more than 3,000 wounded. It hortly before graduating from KU with a degree in com- gained a name—Team Rubicon—and a munication studies in December 2000, William McNulty mission: Take the crisis management skills walked into a Lawrence recruiting office and enlisted in the and passion for service of returning war Marine Corps Reserve, requesting infantry duty rather than TEAM RUBICON DOYON, KYLE veterans and apply them to disaster-relief officer training. He was following a long family history of service: “Port-au-Prince looked just like Iraq agencies mobilizing large-scale relief efforts around the globe. Unlike many Both of his grandfathers served in World War II, and his father after the war,” says McNulty, who spent efforts. international aid organizations, which can was a Green Beret, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic. nearly two years in Iraq working in But for McNulty, c’01, and the military take days or weeks to fully mobilize, the McNulty’s unit was not deployed to Afghanistan; it was put on Operation: counter-terrorism. “It looked a lot like veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who veterans of Team Rubicon would strike standby but never sent to Iraq. He found another way into the Factory One Fallujah.” joined the seat-of-the-pants relief effort quickly—within 24 hours, in most war, taking a civilian job in Anbar province. Flint, Michigan Destruction was widespread and that he organized with his friend and cases—bridging the gap between the “I thought it was going to pass me by, and I wanted to be there, catastrophic. Some 250,000 homes fellow Marine Jake Wood, Haiti’s “post- immediate aftermath of disaster and the wanted to be part of the solution,” he says. Contaminated collapsed, tens of thousands were killed chaotic environment” felt like familiar arrival of large-scale relief operations. Growing up in suburban Chicago, he was an Indian Guide, a Water Emergency and millions more were displaced. The ground. The urgent need for a humanitarian Cub Scout, a Boy Scout. He attended a Catholic high school, 2016 nation’s already shaky infrastructure was “There was a calmness the veterans had quick reaction force was particularly stark Loyola Academy, where the Jesuit teaching emphasized action in devastated, complicating efforts to bury in dealing with a lot of the same issues in Haiti, where McNulty soon realized that addition to intellect. Service had always given him a sense of the dead and bring supplies and medical [faced in war], the unstable populations, experience in a combat zone did not purpose. attention to the wounded. Power and limited resources, the unfamiliar sights, prepare the veterans and emergency first In Iraq, he pinpointed high-value targets for military units to communication grids were down, vehicles sounds and smells,” McNulty recalls. responders on his team for everything kill or capture. “At the end of the day it felt like playing whack-a- and fuel were in short supply, and the While people and aid had begun piling up they would encounter in Port-au-Prince. mole, because there’s always another,” says McNulty, who, between Port-au-Prince airport was closed. Media at the airport, “no one was operating in “In Iraq I had seen lots of fresh his Marine Corps service and his civilian job, worked on counter- TEAM RUBICON KIRK JACKSON, reports claimed that armed mobs were town,” he says. “We realized that we were wounds—gunshot wounds, shrapnel terrorism for eight years, from 2001 to 2009. “What is the end roaming the streets, and the Red Cross out there alone, and just naturally falling wounds,” he says. “I had never seen game? What does winning look like? That was never clearly Operation: and the U.S. State Department advised back on our military training.” wounds that had been left to fester defined. against travel to the country, further The ad hoc “medical militia,” as the untreated for five or six days. I had never “Eventually, I lost my sense of purpose,” he says, “because I Starting Gun slowing the arrival of international disaster group called themselves, set up triage to seen gangrene. Nor had our ER doctors. didn’t see any progress with the war.” Moore, Oklahoma Tornado 2013 22 | KANSAS ALUMNI ISSUE 2, 2016 | 23 Staff, found that 92 percent of veterans returning from war value community service. The top three issues they want to volunteer for are wounded veterans, other veterans and military families, and disaster relief. Yet only 13 percent reported their transition from military to home life was going well. By 2009, nearly 2 million Americans had served in the wars in Afghanistan and Hunt, who had been diagnosed with of serving a mission that is larger than self. Iraq, and they faced significant hurdles in post-traumatic stress disorder and ... The second is the sense of community: their return to civilian life. Veterans struggled with depression, panic attacks You’re doing this mission larger than self experienced higher unemployment rates and sleeplessness. “When he committed with others who are performing a mission than civilians and relied on food stamps at suicide it brought to light this reality that larger than self and feel privileged to do nearly twice the civilian rate. One in five 22 veterans a day commit suicide here in that. And then there’s the sense of service members had filed for divorce the United States, and there’s no silver- identity.” since 2001. Veterans aged 20 to 24 years bullet answer to why this is happening.” Petraeus, commander of multi-national old were two to four times more likely to Hunt’s death jolted McNulty and Wood, forces in Iraq in 2007 and of U.S. forces in commit suicide than their civilian peers— making them take a hard look at Team Afghanistan in 2010, was speaking at a a rate that, if it continued, the study Rubicon’s mission and what the volunteer luncheon in London last June to build warned, could eventually outpace the work they were organizing meant to the international support for the recently KIRK JACKSON, TEAM RUBICON KIRK JACKSON, combat death toll. veterans themselves. launched Team Rubicon Global. The idea McNulty went through his own difficult “After Clay’s death, we decided we’re behind Team Rubicon Global, which What he did see was a lot of violence secure letters guaranteeing free passage A few of the 100 volunteers deployed to the readjustment. going to change our mission, we’re going McNulty leads as CEO and Petraeus serves and mayhem.

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