- Hello, and welcome to Living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

Veterans often find it difficult to ask for help.

They might not even realize they need it.

And if they do recognize that they need some kind of support, many times they don't know where to turn to get it.

That's why Battle Borne, a non-profit veterans resource organization, was created.

Here to tell us more about it is our own Grover Silcox.

Grove, it's always great to see you.

- Good to be here.

- So tell us a little bit about Battle Borne.

- Well, Battle Borne was created by Chris Yarnell, a veteran and his wife, Cadence Yeatman.

It now serves as a major resource in the region, the Lehigh Valley region, for vets who need help, have a problem, have a question, whatever.

Even if they just want to meet up with other vets, Battle Bone is there for them.

- Great, so where is it located?

- They have multiple centers, but Allentown is where their main center is located.

- Sure, it sounds like a great place for veterans who may need a little bit more resources and need to find people who understand what they're going through.

- Absolutely.

And, as the folks at Battle Borne told me, they will never turn away a vet.

According to the veterans I met at Battle Borne, it's not uncommon for members of the military to serve their time, come back home, and feel out of place.

They can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues.

Battle Borne helps vets with housing issues, medical and health needs, and so much more.

Many veterans need assistance.

navigating through the applications and hurdles at the VA. Battle Borne guides them through it.

Often, however, vets simply seek the camaraderie they once shared in the Military, and Battle Borne provides that, too.

These veterans share their stories at an informal get-together at Battle Borne, the nonprofit Veterans Resource Center, headquartered in the basement of Saint John's United Church of Christ, in Allentown.

- I could never properly express the gratitude for Saint John's allowing us to create this center here.

Battle Borne is a collaborative effort among like-minded individuals and organizations that are intent on restoring well-being to veterans and their family members completely free of charge.

We know we're not capable to handle every need of every single veteran or family member.

- Chris Yarnell, a Marine Corps veteran, and his wife, Cadence, co-founded Battle Borne nearly five years ago, According to Chris, vets find it tough asking for help.

- You see, we don't advocate for ourselves.

- We're not used to saying, "I need, I need."

So it's organizations like us that are being that voice for the veterans.

- I saw what you do with Battle Borne, Chris, and it's phenomenal.

The resources that the veterans have now, they just need to put away their pride or whatever and come in and ask for help.

- It took Michael Salabsky, an Army veteran who served in Desert Storm, many years, to finally seek help for post-traumatic stress disorder.

- My wife now said, "You've got problems.

"You need to go get help, or you need to get out."

I was lucky enough she saw mental health problems.

Then I started with the VA, and stuff like that.

- Mike's buddy John Kukitz, a vet who served as an infantry squad leader in Vietnam, was wounded twice in March of 1969.

- Thank God for organizations like Battle Borne, because when we came back from the service, we didn't have any support.

I worked at PPL for 43 years.

There's a couple of guys that I worked with there, every day for 43 years, and we never knew we were Vietnam vets.

We never talked about it, you know, we just kept everything inside.

And that's not uncommon among Vietnam vets.

- Oh, sure.

- Anthony Renaldi spent 21 years in the Army and considered it like family.

But deployment in Iraq traumatized him.

- The first night there, laying my bunk... And, I mean, I had my 9mm under my pillow.

And then, I had my M4 right next to my bed, and we get hit with my first mortar attack.

And I just, like, my whole bed shook, the whole - I mean, it felt like the whole earth was shaking.

Knowing somebody is trying to kill you is one of the scariest feelings.

- What Anthony didn't know was how that experience would haunt him.

- But when I got back, I was such a mess.

Like, I couldn't think straight.

My mind would slow down.

I was having nightmares.

Basically, the only way to describe it was I couldn't function.

- Anthony suffered a crisis.

But thankfully, with help from the VA, rehab, Battle Borne and Tails of Valor, a service dog organization, he made it through.

Now he copes with help from his service dog, Luke.

- Luke is just the reason why I'm able to go out of the house.

Good boy.

Sometimes before I even get upset, he's able to smell the chemical change in my body, and then, he knows, "OK, let me tap his hand."

Pressure's a big thing, so he'll lean against my leg.

Or when I'm sitting down and I'm upset, he'll come up on my chest, and just the pressure of him will just bring me back down and relax, and let me reset.

Good boy.

That's a good boy.

- Although groups such as Tails of Valor and Battle Borne are veterans, core support still comes from the Veterans Administration.

- I've had two major back surgeries.

They hooked me up with a great neurologist, neurosurgeon.

I have nothing but good things to say about VA. - The Philadelphia VA over the last, I'll say six years, has made such a difference, especially for the females.

- Christina Oyola, a veteran of the Army Reserves and Pennsylvania National Guard, has a budding coffee company called That Day.

She aims to use the company to especially support female vets and first responders.

On this day, she comes from her home in Bucks County to see how she might partner with Battle Borne to help vets with MST and other issues.

- Hi, how may I help you?

- Hi, it's Christina.

I'm here to talk to Chris from Battle Borne, the Veteran Resource Center.

- Come on in.

- Thank you!

- Because a lot of people hear MST and they go, "What's that?

I don't know."

MST is military sexual trauma.

Okay?

It's three out of every eight females that have been affected, and one out of every ten males.

That's just who report it.

So, we know the numbers are higher.

- The VA gave MST its acronym, like, it wasn't a thing, and then, it started showing up on all these posters and everything in the Philadelphia VA.

I mean, they have MST Yoga, they have MST groups, the Philadelphia VA, while it has its problems, for me as a female, has come so far.

So far.

- Battle Borne also aims to help vets with MST.

- We saw this huge need for MST programming, and our two clinical female veteran case managers spent a whole year developing in this curriculum for MST.

- The MST program, like most of Battle Borne's programs, will depend on teaming up with others.

- I speak very highly of the partnerships.

They are one of the biggest components of how we operate.

We partner with Northampton County to run the center in Easton.

We work with Monroe County, in the center - in Pocono area, Monroe.

We work with Second Harvest to take care of the food insecurity.

We have an MOU partnership with Valley Health Partners and they end up taking care of the vets' physical needs, because some things, the VA may not do.

Obviously our partnership with St John's, which is where we have our center, our partnerships with Clearbrook Treatment Centers, we provide the veteran peer support groups, then there's also a whole host of community partners.

- These veterans turn to other vets and veteran groups when they needed help.

Now they're helping vets who turn to them.

- Our motto is, "Together we rise."

That's not something we say because it sounds cool.

It's what we believe.

- As showed in the story quite often, vets who come to Battle Borne for help wind up as volunteers helping other veterans.

And, as the vets often say, "I've got your six" - military slang for "I've got your back."

And from what I learned about Chris and his colleagues, they really do have the veterans' backs, and they do it in collaboration with lots of other veteran organizations, including the VA to, as Chris would say, "Get the job done."

- Grover, it sounds like it's a lot of veterans helping other veterans through this program.

- It really is.

And Chris and his staff are all volunteers, and they are either veterans or strongly connected to veterans.

And, as they emphasized over and over, they will never turn a veteran away.

- It sounds like a really wonderful program for the people who stepped up to serve our country.

- Exactly.

- All right, Grove, thanks so much for that story.

And that'll do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.