About 350 Fort Bragg soldiers left for Afghanistan late Sunday, bolstering local forces in the country.

The soldiers, with the 4th Brigade Combat Team and the 18th Airborne Corps, were waiting for their deployments at Pope Field's Green Ramp, after having spent some of the final hours in country with family and friends.

Some of the soldiers gathered around televisions tuned to Sunday night's NFL playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers. Others rested or spoke with friends about the deployment.

"We're just ready to get down range and do our jobs," said Maj. Brenda Spence of the 18th Airborne Corps.

Spence, from Florida, said she bid her family farewell over the holidays. She was spending her final moments before the flight chatting with her colleague, Maj. Chris Gibson.

Gibson, also from Florida, said he said goodbye to his family earlier in the day.

His children, ages 9 and 7, are old enough to understand that he will be gone, he said. But that doesn't make the deployment any easier.

"I'm ready for it," Gibson said. "I want to get it over with."

Both Spence and Gibson will be making their fifth combat deployment. They were part of a 150-soldier contingent from the corps that left Sunday.

In all, about 500 soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps will serve in Afghanistan, establishing the core of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command.

The other 200 or so soldiers deploying Sunday were part of the first wave of troops to deploy from the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

By week's end, an estimated 450 troops from the battalion will have deployed, officials said. The battalion will provide base and convoy security for U.S. and NATO forces.

LAKE IN THE HILLS, Ill. — The gruff man with the worn face squeezes his puffed eyes closed.

Ted Biever's mind tries to focus on the anxiety, the deep-seated feeling brought on by a story he has never stopped telling himself. Of war. Of death. All packed in that same dang dream.

That story, the therapist will repeatedly tell him and the others on this Thursday night in an open, upper room of the Lake in the Hills American Legion, is not the boss. The story is a story. Biever is the boss. If he — if all these men — focus on the feeling instead, first welcoming the anxiety or anger or sadness before allowing it to dissipate, the stories can't maintain their choking grip.

"You are not your thoughts and feelings," said David Welch, the therapist who runs the group. "You simply have them."

It can sound, at first, like metaphysical nonsense. But in this upstart group, leaders are presenting a therapy that strays — successfully, they say — from the techniques traditionally applied to treat war-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rather than continuously drudging up old memories of war in an effort to learn to think differently about them — a process called cognitive processing therapy — the very small number of vets who have so far opted for the alternative therapy don't share stories at all. In large part, they don't know what the others in the circle have seen or what nightmares plague them.

Instead, vets learn to mentally and physically "just let it go," that phrase they have heard for years without actual direction as to how, Welch said.

The group sprang up from a couple McHenry County veterans who recognized a need for more local efforts.

Having spent decades in therapy himself since his Vietnam War deployment as a Marine in the late 1960s, Biever had grown skeptical of traditional therapy methods. But his standing as a veteran in the community meant he would sometimes get asked by the mothers of younger veterans about how to combat PTSD.

He directed one young guy to Welch and heard rave reviews. Having to relive those painful war moments is a factor that can keep veterans from seeking therapy. Welch's technique felt safer.

And, that first guy told Biever, it worked. So he sent another young veteran, and after another positive response, Biever decided to see what Welch's therapy could do for himself. He, too, felt the results.

Biever sought out Tammy Stroud, a well-connected veteran, to help formally create a veteran therapy group around Welch.

"I was telling Tammy there are so many young kids out there that need this help," Biever said. "If they can get ahold of them now, they aren't going to be screwed up the rest of their lives."

After initial setbacks, the group received funding to start the program through the Mental Health Board and from a portion of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grant that has been designated to transform the way local agencies provide for McHenry County veterans, Stroud said.

The program has no formal tie to the Department of Veteran's Affairs, but Stroud said she thinks it's the kind of community-based effort the VA wants to see.

"They recognize they can't treat all the veterans that are going to be returning," she said.

...Berry knew Peralta, who was in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, but the two were not especially close. On Nov. 15, 2004, Berry learned that Peralta had been killed in a house-clearing mission, and reports of his heroism — that he had grabbed a live grenade and covered it with his body to save the Marines who were with him — quickly circulated through the ranks.

But he didn’t handle his weapon until, in 2005, it was placed in his care at the 31st MEU armory.

He was told to clean it, that it was going to the Marine Corps museum.

“There was definitely shrapnel all through the hand guards, still blood on it,” he said. “I spent a few hours cleaning that thing ... I took a lot of care with it.”

As years passed, Berry said he visited the museum and was saddened that he never found the rifle on display. He began to suspect the weapon had never completed its journey.

So in his jail cell in 2010, he mailed the letter to the museum, including a poem he’d written about cleaning the weapon, and the emotion he felt, knowing its owner had died with it by his side.

Though Berry said he understands the complexity of the Medal of Honor process, he said he still believes Peralta deserves the nation’s highest combat valor award. It’s bigger than just one Marine and his family, he said.

“It would definitely represent Fallujah and all the Marines who served there,” Berry said. “Us Fallujah vets, man, it’s one thing we’ll never forget. It sort of haunts you, it really does.”