2025 S3D VETERANS RETREAT :

This campaign will support Veterans to attend the FOURTH Annual S3D Veterans Retreat in Montana over the weekend of 21 June 2024. Based upon responses after the '22, '23, and '24 retreats, easily 30 Veterans said, "I will absolutely be there next year!"  But, not surprisingly "life happens."  Our attendance in 2022 was 7, and in 2023 and 24, we had 10 (many of whom were returnees). In one case, the collision of life and finances had us prepared to spend over half of that year's donations to fly one Veteran in, but "life" prevailed.

Nonetheless, we made great use of the enormously generous donations in very eventful retreats in all three previous years. Please read our backstory below.  We hope we can count on your support for 2024, so we can continue to provide such important and valuable healing to the Veterans in S3D.


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 OUR  BACKSTORY :
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We are a group of Combat Veterans who have come to “know” each other in the most unlikely of ways.

We came to know each other through a mindless mobile game called “Sniper 3D.” The game boasts over 11 million players from around the world, and tens of thousands of 50-player squads. Our saga begins with one of those squads, named “Combat Veterans.” While being a Veteran is not a strict requirement, we are about 80% Veterans, but we are 100% Patriots. As a result of our name, and what we represent, we are perhaps the most revered and respected US Veteran-themed squad in the game.

Parallel with the game app, the vast majority of US and English-speaking squads use a messaging app called “LINE” to communicate on the side. Each squad establishes its own “chat” for its own internal group to communicate among themselves, and in which social bonds are created. In addition to the squad chats, various large-group chats tend to spring up. These might involve alliances between squads, perhaps to coordinate “tributes” to sick or deceased players, or topic-related chats like the “VETERANS” chat.

The VETERANS Chat is over 100 total strangers, from all walks, civilian and Veteran alike, but it is about, and for, Veterans. Like all large group chats, it is just having fun, sharing nonsense about ourselves, our lives, the military, and of course the Sniper 3D game. With rare exception, we don’t know each other’s names. We might know generally how old the other is, and we generally know what city and state we live in, but few have ever met in person. We know the Dogfaces from the Flyboys, and which color Crayons are the Jarheads’ favorite flavor, but we are enormously proud that our camaraderie is impenetrable.

Like everything, “it’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt.” While we know plenty of the minutiae about each other, all too often we learn each other’s pains and struggles as well. It is from the VETERANS Chat, that another far more serious chat was born out of sheer necessity. We named it “LISTEN,” and it was established in a frantic late-night moment, in which one of our Veterans was in distress. This chat is strictly reserved for Combat Veterans fighting the invisible demons. Unfortunately, this group has not been spared the visible physical maiming that also comes with the profession, and is missing five limbs.

By all indications, this chat has achieved what its creation intended. It is a place where these Veterans can air it out, in the gritty, and graphic, and gory detail that they sometimes so desperately need to convey. Troubled Veterans have broken down, only to be built back up by the others. Veterans share positive strategies and outcomes, and those behaviors are then copied by their comrades.

The leader of the LISTEN Chat is a Marine Veteran with demons of his own. We truly believe he was placed in our midst by the very hand of God, because he also holds a PhD, is a licensed and certified counselor, and is the founder of a 501c3 non-profit called “T-6” (https://off-shift.com) which is dedicated to treating Veterans and First-responders. His T-6 program is principally geared around outdoor activities and immersions for small groups in the mountains of southern Montana.