DALTON, Ga. — At first glance, the Military Vets Motorcycle Club looks like any other band of bikers: leather vests, bald heads or bandanas, goatees, nicknames like “Li’l Red” and “Bigwood.” But this motorcycle club has mission.

“We try to help the veterans not to be forgotten,” said James Westmoreland, president of the Dalton Chapter of the U.S. Military Vets Motorcycle Club. “That’s the biggest thing for us ... the brotherhood that we have.”

More than 100 motorcycleloving veterans rode in Saturday to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post. They biked from as far away as Birmingham, Ala., Nashville and Savannah, Ga., for the Dalton Chapter of the Motorcycle Club’s annual fundraiser.

“The brotherhood in this club is like no other place you can find brotherhood,” said Carl Arrowood, president of the Alabama Chapter of the motorcycle club, who travels around the country for Motorcycle Club fundraisers.

The vets’ bike show raised money for the club’s activities, which range from organizing veterans events to bringing care packages to World War II vets living in nursing homes.

The VFW hosted the event with an eye to recruiting new members to replenish its dwindling base. George McArthur, the VFW’s chief executive officer, said membership has dropped from 400 in recent years to 270 members.

He joined the VFW in the 1960s, recalling meeting World War I vets back then. Now even most of the VFW’s World War II vets have died: 15 in the last year.

“If all of these are not members,” he said, referring to the bikers, “we want to recruit them.”

On Saturday, vets used similar words to describe the VFW and the bike club: brotherhood, camaraderie, common bonds.

Mr. Westmoreland, the chapter president, said the bike club recreates that kinship soldiers and marines share in the military. War changes people, he said.

“You come home,” he said, “and you’re kind of lost and you don’t know what’s happening.”

Mr. Arrowood, a Desert Storm vet, explained, “People who never served don’t know what we know, and can’t share what we share.”