Something Wasn’t Right | Delvin Bourn (US Army Veteran)
Delvin Bourn, U.S. Army Veteran, 82nd Airborne paratrooper, Gulf War, tells their story to Vegas Veteran Voices, a Veteran-led nonprofit in Las Vegas.
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- In this story
- Delvin Bourn, U.S. Army Veteran, 82nd Airborne paratrooper, Gulf War
- Service branch
- U.S. Army
- Published
- Running time
- 1 hour 17 minutes (1:17:34)
- Production
- Filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Veteran-led nonprofit in Las Vegas
“Especially in the Veteran community, because if you don’t have something to do, our minds wander.”
About this story
What happens when a Veteran realizes that pushing everything down for decades finally catches up?
In this episode of Vegas Veteran Voices, Delvin Bourn, a US Army Veteran and former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, shares a raw, honest story about military conditioning, emotional suppression, loss, and the moment he knew something wasn’t right.
Delvin served in the United States Army, including service during the first Gulf War, where he was part of the 82nd Airborne. Like many combat and airborne Veterans, he was trained to suppress pain, fear, and emotion, to push everything down and keep moving. Over time, that mindset followed him long after the uniform came off.
In this conversation, Delvin opens up about losing his mother to cancer during his service, carrying that grief silently through his military career, and how years of physical and emotional strain eventually led to a life-changing realization that he could no longer ignore what he had buried.
This episode is not about trends or quick fixes. It’s about the reality of military service, airborne culture, and what happens when Veterans are conditioned to endure without processing loss, trauma, or identity after service.
Delvin talks about:
• Serving in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne Division
• Being trained to suppress emotions in military culture
• Losing his mother to Cancer during the first Gulf War
• Living with serious physical and long-term health challenges
• A perspective-shifting experience that changed how he views life, death, and purpose
• Letting go of fear, failure, and the need to have everything figured out
This episode is part of Vegas Veteran Voices, a Veteran-focused podcast and nonprofit platform dedicated to sharing real, unfiltered stories from Veterans across all branches, without sanitizing the realities of service or life afterward.
If you’re a Veteran, a family member, or someone trying to understand what life after the military really looks like, this conversation matters.
In their words
“When you get back from combat and things like that, they don’t teach you how to do it. You got to figure it out yourself.”
“The military, they tell you to suppress. Push it down, push it down. Well, I got a lot of stuff I pushed down.”
