Off to War (11 page)

I remember that Dad was a little different when he finally came home. At first he was really, really tired. He'd been through a lot and he wanted to just relax. Then, after a week, he got really hyper and energetic. He usually has a lot of energy, but this was a strange kind of hyper. He'd talk a lot, really fast, and we weren't able to figure out what the heck he was talking about. Then he'd stop talking and wouldn't talk at all for awhile. It was hard because we didn't know how to make him happy. I thought he was mad at me. It was a hard time.

But we got through it. Praying helped. We're big believers in prayer in my family.

Mom was given the opportunity to go to Iraq, but she said no for now. She knows people who are over there, so she might go when they get back and she hears from them what it's like.

I know she's more worried about leaving me than about whatever danger she might face in Iraq. She's the sort of person you can always talk to and has an answer for everything that you can think of to ask her about. She can be very personal
and private, and she can also be very open and welcoming, whatever you need. It would be hard on me if she goes to Iraq, but I don't want to stop her from going.

Mom loves the military. She likes working hard and being challenged. She talks to a lot of soldiers as part of her job, finds out how they're doing, if there's anything they need. She says that we should always remember and recognize the work done by women who went into the military before her. It hasn't always been easy for women, because some men in the military are not very nice or fair. So the women before her really had to struggle, and she talks about that with me. It's important to respect that.

I don't know if I'll join the military or not. I'm thinking instead of being a teacher or a nurse. With everything that's going on in the world, I don't know if I want to be in the army.

The good part about being in the army is that you sometimes get to save people. There was a helicopter crash at Fort Indiantown Gap, and my father was there to pull people out and save their lives. His father — my grandfather — was there with him, and they saved the people together. That's pretty special.

The not-so-good part is that you might have to experience war, and sometimes in war, you don't make it back, or your friends don't make it home, or they make it home but they're hurt really bad. You never know what's coming in a war. You have to be ready for everything, but is that possible?

I've seen on the news where people in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually having protests against our soldiers. They believe in different gods than we do, and they worship in different ways, so maybe they don't like the way we believe and worship. I'm a Christian, and we believe in the one true God, and maybe those people don't like that.

I understand about them being upset that their president
was killed. I'd be upset if our president was killed. But some of the things they protest about don't make sense. Like, their president was not a good man. Before Saddam Hussein got killed, he was hiding in an underground cell. I heard that he'd peer up from the ground, and when little kids walked by, he'd reach out and grab the kids and put them in the cell with him. I don't know whether that's true or not, but the American president would never do that.

There are protesters against the war in the United States, too. I believe that if you live in America — I'm not trying to put down anyone's religion or opinions — but if you're going to be an American you should believe in the military and in what the military is doing. It's because of the military that America hasn't been taken over or blown up.

If terrorists see the protests, they might think our country is weak and try to blow us up.

If we were attacked, who would protect us if not the military? Random people? Random people might be good people, but that doesn't mean they can protect the country. They'd need weapons and someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. That's what an army does.

I can understand being angry with the president. When I was six, I wrote a letter to President George W. Bush. I asked him, “Why did you send my daddy to Afghanistan?” I asked Mom to mail it, but she didn't. I was just angry because I didn't want Dad to leave.

So you can be angry, but you should still support the president, and the army, because that's how you support America. I know a lot about being a military kid because I came from many generations of military kids. My dad was in the army, and my grandfather and my great-grandfather and my mom, and maybe my sister will be. I know of some military kids whose parents didn't make it back. Even if parents just stay in
the United States and don't go overseas, it can still be dangerous. To get into Fort Indiantown Gap, you need a special ID badge, but terrorists could copy those, and then there would be a lot of people in danger, right here in America!

My advice to other military kids? A few things. One is don't send your parents stuffed animals. We sent one to our dad — a bear in a uniform — but he sent it back to us because it would have gotten dirty in Afghanistan. Send them practical things like pencils and notebooks so they can write to you. And pray, of course. Prayer can be your best friend.

When your parents go away, you have to believe in yourself, and believe in your parents, and believe you can all get through the ups and downs together.

Before the invasion of Iraq, military families had lower rates of child abuse than civilian families did. But a 2007 study funded by the military and published by the American Medical Association showed that after the invasion, rates of abuse rose to become higher than in civilian families. Children were at greater risk when their military parent was overseas. The stress on the remaining parent — often a combination of financial and child-care worries, combined with exhaustion and constant anxiety about their partner's well-being — is seen as the reason behind this rise.

Matthew and his mother live on base at CFB Petawawa. They have a good relationship, and have learned how to work through the difficulties they had while Matthew's father was in Afghanistan, where he commanded a tank crew in Kandahar and was involved in direct combat, including the 2006 attack on a building called the White School, a Taliban headquarters, which resulted in several Canadian casualties.

I'm in grade five. My father is a sergeant. He's been with the army for eighteen years. I have one brother. He's six years old.

Canada has always been one of the world's main peacekeeping countries. We're part of the United Nations, and we've helped out in Israel, Croatia, Bosnia, Egypt. Lots of places. We've kept the peace there and prevented people from fighting. We've also helped to stop wars before they even start to happen. No one wants World War One or Two again.

The Taliban is causing a lot of trouble in Afghanistan. We're trying to stop them, through being there with our tanks and through aggressive negotiations.

Dad had a rough time in Afghanistan, a very stressful time. He was right in where all the heavy fighting was. We all knew that there was a strong possibility that he could be hurt or killed. Mom in particular was really stressed. She kept hearing on the news and from her friends about all the fighting that was going on, and that made her very jumpy and upset. I guess it made me get that way, too. Dad was close to dying a few times over there. We knew he was in trouble, and Mom and I didn't always handle it well.

She was stressed so she'd yell a lot, and I was stressed and I'd yell back, and the whole thing was really a mess. What was really going on was that we were both worried about Dad, and there was nothing we could do about that. We couldn't go over to Afghanistan and make him come home with us. So we didn't have any power to make our worry go away. We were scared and frustrated and angry, and we yelled at each other because we didn't know what else to do.

It's hard for me to talk about that time. It wasn't good, with Dad being away and with Mom mostly really angry or really sad. I tried to keep myself away from conflict and bad emotions, but I wasn't always successful.

One of the things Dad was involved in over in Afghanistan
was the attack on the White School. It was a bad time. Dad got shrapnel in his shoulder, really close to a vein. He could have died from blood loss.

Two of his commanding officers have died in Afghanistan. Lots of other soldiers have died there, too. Lots from Petawawa.

There was one time when they were in a battle with the Taliban. The Taliban had a makeshift base, maybe in an old prison or something, right beside a big marijuana field. The Taliban grows opium and marijuana to help them fund the war. It was a big battle, and five soldiers died.

Dad doesn't talk about the war very much. He talked just one time about it, but since then he's basically just kept quiet. I don't really like to ask him. I don't want to let my mind go to it. I'd rather focus on things I like, such as reading, video games, normal eleven-year-old-kid things. I don't want to think about Dad walking in the desert, maybe having someone shooting at him.

He would phone every three weeks or so when he was away. That's how we learned he'd been wounded, because he didn't call for awhile, so we figured something was wrong. He was in the hospital and couldn't call us.

Dad seems a little quieter now than he used to be. I kind of missed him when he was gone, and I kind of didn't, because he would yell at me a lot when he was around, and I get kind of tired of that. But he's been a little quieter since he got home. I think he saw real things wrong in Afghanistan, so the things that I do wrong don't seem like such a big deal anymore. Anyway, he doesn't yell as much.

I know he felt pretty sad because of his guys who got killed. They were his friends, but even if they weren't really close friends, you all want to look out for each other in a war. Even
if you don't know the person who gets killed beside you, it's still hard.

Mentally, there is a lot of stress on some soldiers. They've been hurt, or even if they weren't hurt physically, their minds have been hurt from being shot at and bombed. It's really affected them, and then they go home and it affects their families. They all need help to get through it.

I don't think I'll join the military. I just don't want to be part of a war. I would stand up for my country, but I hope there's a way to do that without being part of the military. My ambition is to become a teacher.

My advice is to try not to focus on the bad things. Keep your mind on the good things. You'll get through it easier.

The role of the US Special Forces is to put people secretly behind enemy lines, to gain an advantage over the opposition. Special Forces groups include the Rangers, Psychological Warfare Operations, Civil Affairs, Special Operations Aviation, the 82nd Airborne, and others. Formalized during World War II, they are branches of the service that conduct secret military operations around the world. Many of these Special Forces train in Fort Bragg. Their work is celebrated in the JFK Special Warfare Museum on the post.

Darby is the youngest child in a military family, and she was even named after a colonel. Based in Fort Bragg, her father is a major who works in the area of military intelligence, which means she can never really know what he's doing. He has been deployed to Iraq five times
.

My father is in Iraq again. I have a photo of him here, with a smile on his face. Mom says this was the last glimpse she had of him before he left. That was three months ago. This time is going to be his longest deployment ever, for fifteen months.

I'm holding up pretty good. I try not to think about it, really. We get a call from him pretty much every day. He's an F2, a senior military intelligence officer for the Headquarters Company of the 1st Brigade Combat Team.

When he phones we don't talk about his work, because that's secret, so we talk about what's been going on here, how school is going, what sports I might join, how he liked the last care package, how our pets are doing. We have a Spanish terrier named Colonel and a cat named Major. We call him Major Brat Cat. And we have a Russian hamster named Hagrid. I don't know how he's different from a regular hamster, except maybe in the looks he gives us. He has a very evil look.