A group of disabled veterans dominated an international hockey tournament in Denmark last week, though the win wasn’t the greatest part of their journey. Rather, it was the opportunity to reconnect with a part of themselves they’d thought they’d lost since leaving the military.
Team USA took home the win during the international hockey tournament, Battle of Jutland 2024, over the weekend. This is the tournament’s second iteration and Marine Corps and Army veteran Justin Rose’s second time competing, but he said it’s not just about hockey.
“You don’t realize sometimes how much you need to reconnect with your past life, even if it’s in a different environment like a hockey rink,” Rose said. “During this past week, we rarely, if ever, talked about our military careers or our deployments — but there’s a common language among vets that’s without borders. Just being around those who know without needing to be told can be so healing.”
Team USA is staffed by 15 American disabled veterans from the USA Hockey Warrior Program. Teams from Denmark and Germany also competed.
Team USA won four of the five games, only losing to a younger “all-star team of Danish players and semi-pros,” Rose said. By comparison, Team USA is made up of those in their 30s, 40s, and some in their 50s.
“As much as this was a hockey tournament, the hockey was secondary to reconnecting with old friends, making new friends, and creating bonds that will last past the battlefield and the hockey rink. But most importantly, we won the whole damn thing,” Rose said.
Rose, who served in the Marine Corps, Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve to boot, is about to retire after 22 years of service. He deployed to the Horn of Africa in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2010.
Rose is on the Boston Warriors hockey team, and the rest of the Team USA players are from other states with their own Warrior Programs.
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All players competing in the tournament are disabled veterans of their respective military services. Having played in the tournament last year, Rose said he and the other players from around the world stayed in touch. After last year’s game, Rose said that a group of players from Denmark came to the U.S. for a friendly game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“A hockey locker room is really no different than, like, any, any team room or any squad bay that you’ve ever been in the military,” Rose said. “It’s just a group of people who are talking shit to each other, telling jokes. There’s that sense of camaraderie and team building that is very similar. So hockey is naturally a great sport for veterans to reconnect.”
The teams spent ample time outside the hockey rink, including a friendly competition on Wednesday, during which the teams shot World War I and II-era rifles like the Carl Gustaf Swedish Mauser, a legacy sniper rifle. Rose said the shooting range was more of a way for them to connect off the ice and was more of a family event than anything.
“The infantry officer in me was talking incredible amounts of shit when I did this with a 1944 Carl Gustaf,” Rose said.
Hockey and trash talk go hand in hand, as do fistfights. According to Rose, he and Steve May, with the German team, decided to “put on a show for the Danes” during Sunday’s Team USA versus Wiesbaden Vikings game. May lives in Germany, and the two know each other from their years growing up in the Boston area.
“Hockey is a violent, beautiful sport. Sometimes separately, and sometimes at the same time,” Rose said. “Plus, what’s more hockey than two kids who grew up in the shadow of the Boston Garden and the Big Bad Bruins getting into a friendly fistfight after a few beers.”
Players started arriving in the Denmark area on Tuesday, and they hit it off over beers and group meals before visiting other historical sites that week.
The Danes hosted the teams with group meals and attended multiple Winter Olympics qualifying hockey games. On Friday, all the players from the different teams put their names in a hat, and scrimmage teams were decided by pulling their names out. Rose said it’s a way for them to get to know each other better by playing on the same team ahead of the tournament.
“Any time you’re getting veterans together, you’re doing so with the intent of alleviating that feeling of abandonment you can experience when you leave the military, and a feeling of loneliness, like you maybe don’t fit in,” Rose said. “So there’s no stated goal where, ‘Hey, this tournament is to alleviate veteran suicide or alleviate veteran PTSD.’ But like any time veterans get together, even if it’s unspoken, that’s the goal. It’s to remind each other that we’re not alone.”
CORRECTION: 9/4/2024; This article has been corrected to note that Justin Rose served 22 years in the military; that the Team USA players are drawn from a range of states with their own Warrior Programs; and that the Danish hockey team visited the Team USA players for a game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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