These days, "after seeing the stuff I've seen," Dunn, of Missouri, said he deals with depression, uncontrollable shaking, anger, anxiety and guilt, over not being able to serve another tour in Iraq during the next year because of his own injuries.

"I won't be able to get rid of all of it," Dunn said about the negative feelings that dog him.

Sitting on logs in a circle, vets listened to Arizona resident Ken Banckwitz, a gray-haired Vietnam vet who walks with a prosthetic left leg. He urged the other men to not let anger control them. "When that anger turns in, it can kill you," he said.

The all-male group came to Utah to start a healing process or continue one, which on Thursday will include a ceremony conducted by American Indian tribal elders.

On Tuesday, retired Marine Capt. Chris Ayres, 36, took his turn at tying a knot in a long piece of skinny rope, each knot representing a goal that the vets wanted to tackle that day. Ayres, who was Dunn's platoon commander in Iraq, admitted he still scans the countryside — in this case, the mountains around Park City — searching for the enemy. With PTSD, the habit is called hyper-vigilance.

"It's just part of my training. I'll try to work on that," said Ayres, a Texan who is missing a large chunk of flesh from the back of his upper right leg.

Ayres said one of his goals is to regain some of the responsibilities his wife took on after he was wounded. "I need to get back into that capacity instead of being pissed off all the time," he said.

John Roberts, a Marine who helped organize this week's events, said he may set up something similar for an all-female group of veterans. Roberts was badly burned when his helicopter crashedoff the coast of Somalia on March 29, 1992. For Roberts, it makes sense that combat-tested troops help each other after a war.

"They all communicate on the same level," he said. "There's a trust thing built in with that — they all know what each other is going through."

---

Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com