LAKEWOOD, Wash. (AP) -Joe Jackson takes one final puff from his yellow-labeled Dominican cigar before placing it gently on the tee, a few yards from where his ball is waiting.
In this moment, Jackson is simply another golfer. With a typical C-shaped whip swing, he cannons 300-yard drives down the middle of the fairway. Not bad at all.
His back story is what makes the drives amazing. The four times his vehicles were hit by roadside bombs in Iraq. The post traumatic stress disorder that clouds his thoughts. The medications he must swallow each day simply to function.
None of that matters here. When Jackson arrives at American Lake Veterans Golf Course - a haven for military veterans from World War II to Iraq that sits a short distance from Fort Lewis - Jackson is another hacker, trying to use his passion for smacking around a little white ball to help him cope with the aftermath of tours in Iraq.
"It's really nice having a place to go out and not be looked at as being different than anybody else," said Jackson, who goes by Spc. Jackson when he's on base at Fort Lewis, working in the Warrior Transition Battalion. "Ninety percent of the guys out here are wounded veterans from World War II all the way up to now. We all deal with similar limitations and just get out there and have fun."
The fact Jackson and his comrades have American Lake as a sanctuary is thanks to the yeoman's work of some determined veterans, who wouldn't let the tree-lined course about an hour south of Seattle become a pasture when Congress cut funding to all military golf courses in 1995.
Nearly every veteran who walks onto the course has an ailment of some sort: an amputated limb; a noticeable limp; those who are blind and those who cannot walk.
Here, they can relax and make friends, sharing their military experience as a bond.
"I prayed for death pretty much every day after I got out. I felt pretty much useless," said Dave Best, a veteran of the Iraq war who is now the operations manager at the course. He's also the treasurer for Friends of American Lake, the nonprofit that handles fundraising for the course. "(Then) I came out here to this support group."
Best and Jackson certainly aren't alone in seeking help on the course.
Take, for example, Staff Sgt. Travis Spradlin.
Spradlin was hit in the shoulder by a sniper in Iraq in August 2007. For a time, he lapsed into a coma.
Now he has turned to golf as a coping mechanism in his recovery. Once nearly a scratch golfer right-handed, Spradlin was forced to switch to lefty because of his injuries - relearning all the basic muscle movement that once came so naturally. With help from Pepper Roberts, a soon to be 77-year-old who has helped the course survive and thrive, Spradlin quickly picked up the game from the opposite side.
