Here at FREESKIER, we post a lot of lighthearted content—stuff that’s often laid-back, but encourages you to live a happy and healthy life. Today, however, we bring you something a bit different: a short film produced by The North Face and Stept Productions about three Iraqi War veterans who returned to the country with ski gear in tow.

It’s difficult to provide worthy commentary on a video of this magnitude, so instead we’ll leave you with a quote from Captain Stacy Bare, who can comprehend this topic better than we ever will:

“When I left 10 years ago, I felt like there was a lot of unfinished business; I wanted to stay and keep working with the community and the soldiers that I had been working with. I had to leave behind a lot of friends in Iraq, and there was a tremendous amount of guilt in leaving. And that guilt turned into fear and it turned into frustration when I got home. I struggled with depression and adjustment and alcoholism and addiction. I was really suicidal; it took me a couple years to figure out even what path I wanted to start down on.

I found that getting outside and spending time outdoors was incredibly healing for me, so I came up with this concept to come back to all the places that I’d been to war to climb or ski or mountaineer. We wanted to see if Iraq could be a place that could hold beautiful memories for us.”

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