In Boston blasts, veterans shift into combat mode They were approaching Boylston Street as members of a national nonprofit group that promotes healing among veterans, Team Red, White & Blue. And then suddenly the tables turned, and they found themselves helping to heal and comfort a city that had never experienced a roadside bomb. "The real crazy symbolism here is that this was essentially an IED, an improvised explosive device," said Army Maj. Mike Erwin, who founded the team in 2010 to help veterans heal and re-integrate into their communities through running and other physical activities. What runners and the community experienced in Boston is the exact same thing that hundreds of thousands of service members have experienced since 2002, when they started using IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. As smoke wafted across Boylston Street and maimed marathon spectators lay across a bloody sidewalk, one veteran, an Army colonel and runner, shifted into combat mode as he crossed the finish line. He turned back into the chaos, peeled off his Team Red, White & Blue T-shirt and tied it as a tourniquet on the limb of a bombing victim. A combat veteran who served in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart, the colonel later refused to allow a team spokesman to release his name after snippets of his actions were caught on video. Turning T-shirts into tourniquets is not something most spectators along the marathon course would have had much experience with. "When we're deployed, we all carry tourniquets - nice ones," said Mullaney, 30, of Cumberland, Md., now a graduate student at Tufts University. When you see missing limbs, the first thing all of us know is to tie a tourniquet. There are more than 485,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are thought to be suffering from "invisible wounds" - PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other psychological and emotional maladies, said Larry Olson, a spokesman for Team Red, White & Blue. The physical and emotional benefits of exercise have been exhaustively studied and documented. Exercising in groups brings veterans isolated by their combat experience back into their communities, Erwin said. More than 10,000 veterans and supporters in 36 states have signed up to be part of the organization, running, trail running, training for triathlons and doing yoga. Exercise is therapeutic. It allows you to think and process. And it's a hell of a lot better than sitting across from a shrink," Erwin said. Running is such a more natural and organic way for veterans to share things on their minds. So the Boston Marathon became a maximum therapy session Monday for 17 Team Red, White & Blue participants, running the rolling hills from Hopkinton, through Natick, Newton and Wellesley, and then into Boston until, by the time Mullaney and Collazo approached, it became a war zone.