“We're the biggest littlest non-profit you never heard of," jokes Robert Blanton when speaking to Connecting Vets about his charity organization called Warfighter Made.
Blanton joined the Marine Corps and had an impressive career starting off as an Infantry Marine who was deployed to Somalia in the aftermath of Operation Gothic Serpent, commonly known as the Black Hawk Down incident.
Afterward, he went to the Marine Force Reconnaissance indoctrination course and served as a recon Marine, scout-sniper, and instructor throughout the rest of his career which included three more combat deployments to Iraq.
But by 2009, he was beginning to have a lot of problems. He'd been blown up by a terrorist wearing a suicide vest in Iraq which resulted in Blanton being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
“I was having a lot of issues. My issues with post-traumatic stress centered around anger. I was creating a lot of hate and discontent," Blanton said.
Thankfully, a peer in the Marine recon community pulled him aside one day and convinced him to seek out treatment. That was a long difficult process as Blanton was sleeping only two hours a night in fragments, and “I am also drinking my face off,” he said. Feeling that he was a massive burden on his family, he had thoughts of suicidal ideation. Recovery was an uphill battle.
A year later, Blanton founded Warfighter Made with another former Marine.
"We took that negative and turned it into a positive," as he described it. At the time, he could only afford to lease their building for a year and as he would enter in the morning and hear his footsteps echoing inside he couldn't help but think, “Man, I think I just made the biggest mistake ever."
At that point, Warfighter Made got to work. Their mission as a not-for-profit is to reintegrate veterans using teamwork and camaraderie. It is, “designed to replicate like you're back in a team, a platoon, a section, wherever you came from and having that sense of belonging while coming together to do something positive for someone else," Blanton said.
To this end, Warfighter Made pursues three main efforts that include all veterans of all branches of all eras.
Adrenaline Therapy: Warfighter Made puts veterans behind the wheel of high-performance vehicles and conducts off-road races. The idea is that the focus required for this type of driving takes the mind off the stressors and triggers that are bothering the veteran, offering temporary relief. They also have a number of decommissioned military vehicles that they race and are currently preparing for the Mint 400 race outside of Las Vegas.
Camaraderie Therapy: Involves working in the Warfighter Made shop, building and maintaining different automotive projects. Some of these are for adrenaline therapy, but others are to help disabled veterans. For instance, Warfighter Made recently built a fully customized Polaris Expedition for 75th Ranger Regiment veteran and triple amputee Ryan Davis.
Recreational Therapy: involves veterans, their spouses, and their children bringing them all together for events. This allowed veterans and family members to meet one another, and build out a larger support network.
Today, Blanton works full-time with Warfighter Made as a volunteer, “because I know how it feels and want to give guys a different feeling.” He says the best way to get involved with Warfighter Made is to simply stop by their shop in Temecula, California. They can also be found at warfightermade.org.