‘This has been a godsend’: As Invictus Games end, participants feel sense of belonging

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It was a week of darkness and light and another, in-between quality of radiance shed by unusual kinds of bravery at the Invictus Games, Prince Harry's Olympics-style event for ill and injured military personnel and veterans held in Toronto from Sept. 23-30.

There were mascots struggling through subway turnstiles and there was a hotel lobby downtown in which prosthetic legs started going unnoticed.

There was, at the closing ceremonies on Saturday, Bruce Springsteen, dedicating his song "The Promised Land" to the athletes and their families. And there was a bowtied interpreter for the hearing impaired interpreting the song with feeling on the Jumbotron.

Prince Harry saluted the Georgian sitting volleyball team, improbable gold medalists after learning the game recently. And U.S. athlete Randi Gavell, competing while four months pregnant.

"You have done it," he said. "You are invictus." The Latin word from which the Games take their name means unconquered.

On Friday, Warren Brace was looking forward to seeing Springsteen.

He had raced in the 50m freestyle swimming heat on Thursday and finished "middle of the pack" but set a personal best time. "That was my gold medal," he said.

Mr. Brace, retired from the Air Force in June, reluctantly, on doctor's orders. The 45-year-old had suffered herniated disks in his back while escaping a rocket attack on Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan around 2009 (he was working on the engine of a plane at the time) – his back got better and then worse.

The day he retired was the hardest day of his life, including the day he got shot at, he said, with tears in his eyes. "Big family, you know?"

The Games have kept him "grounded," providing the military comradery he misses. "This has been a godsend," he said.

Doug Brown provides peer support for all 90 Team Canada athletes (there are 17 countries and about 550 athletes total competing in this year's Invictus Games). Many of them are living with mental illness brought on by their military service; the Games have helped many of them feel confident handling new, difficult situations, Mr. Brown said.

"For some people this is the biggest thing they've done in years," he said. "They're gaining control again."

That describes Ryan Voll, who is unlike his colleagues in other ways. He suffers from PTSD brought on by what he describes as a campaign of harassment at the hands of fellow service members at CFB Trenton beginning in 2015 and ending with his medical discharge last August.

Mr. Voll says his co-workers repeatedly made up stories about him to their superior officers, making him feel paranoid and lose trust in other people. The misttreatment he alleges made him depressed and anxious, conditions he continues to suffer from.

"I ended up having six overdoses of my medication, where I was attempting to commit suicide, because it felt like a living hell every time I had to go to work," he said this week.

Bullying "is very common in the military," Mr. Voll said. "It tends to be the people who are on the outside. The military is very similar to high school. There's your in-group and then there's those who don't really fit." Mr. Voll has Asperger syndrome, a form of autism.

Lieutenant-Colonel Leighton James, Commanding Officer of 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron, said in a written statement that he and the base leadership "take any and all accusations of abuse against our members extremely seriously."

"Abuse cannot and will not be tolerated in any form, as it has no place in our military community," he said. "While the details of Corporal Ryan Voll's case are confidential, I can confirm that he was employed at 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron before his voluntary release and that we have no record of allegations of abuse."

The CADPAT camouflage uniform still triggers his anxiety, Mr. Voll said, but the former search and rescue squadron member he's proud of his military service and believes in the military. He says he's grateful for his experience in the Invictus Games, where he met other veterans with his condition, and learned that "not everyone is a bad person."

Mr. Voll's event was cycling, a sport he only took up in April to combat the weight gain his medication brings on. He finished third from last in the time trial but completed the race "without crashing or anything," he said.

This spring, he got the Invictus Games motto tattooed on his forearm: "I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul."

"It was to remind me that I was part of something bigger and that I'm stronger than my illness," he said.

By finishing his race, he feels that he proved it.

"It's one of those feelings that everyone will you tell you about but you could never actually believe it -- how proud you could be of yourself," he said.