Off to War (15 page)

I'm not saying the protesters want people to get killed. They probably don't even think about that. A lot of them are maybe
family members of soldiers who have died or been injured, and they just want all the soldiers back safe.

The advice I have for other military kids is to concentrate on what's good, and to do good things while your parent is deployed, so they'll be proud of you when they finally come home.

Kevin
— Our father's in the National Guard, not the regular military, so we don't live on a base and don't know other military kids. My friends don't really understand what we're going through, and they don't know much about Iraq, so it's hard to talk to them.

Not every kid always has their parents with them. A lot of parents get divorced, but even when that happens they usually get to see their mom or dad on visiting days, even if they don't live with them anymore.

We won't see our dad for a whole year, and that's a long time. We'll see him at Christmas, in Germany, and that will be awesome, but that's a long time from now.

I watch the news with my mother and brothers, and sometimes the news from Iraq isn't good. People die. Soldiers die. Dad's safe in the Green Zone, but we still worry. I actually worry a lot. Dad could get attacked, terrorists could shoot in rockets or climb the walls and get him, or he could be out driving and hit a roadside bomb.

My teachers know that Dad is over there, but they don't talk with me about it, and we don't discuss the war in school. What would it help? What could they say that would matter?

I try to spend my time doing things I enjoy because it keeps me from getting too worried. We live by a forest, so we're back in the woods all the time, building little bridges and walkways across the creek, and forts and things. And we play soccer and go fishing a lot. Those are all great things to do.

My advice to other military kids is just don't freak out about it. Get on with your life and don't freak out.

Collin
— The hardest time for me is when we're out some place where there are a lot of dads with their kids and our dad isn't there.

Mom copes well, though. I haven't seen her cry once. She keeps us really busy. She says if we're busy, our minds will stay positive, and not just be missing Dad all the time.

We're very proud that Dad's serving the country. Everyone supports him and thinks he's a hero. Somebody had to fight the people who attacked us on 9/11, so my dad is doing that job. He only has a pistol, though, not a big machine gun or a flame-thrower or anything like that. He's not allowed to go out of the Green Zone, so he probably won't have to kill anybody, unless somebody sneaks in over the wall. I'd rather not think about him killing someone.

I don't know if I'll join the army, but I would like to travel. I want to see Greece, Hawaii and Mexico.

My advice to other kids with parents in Iraq is to try not to let your parents being gone hold you back. You still have to live your life. Just look forward to them coming home, but don't dwell on it. You have other things to do.

Deployment changes people. Sometimes those changes move people forward so that families grow closer and their ties become stronger. Sometimes marriages and families are not able to hold it together. The break-ups might not be caused by the deployment, but the deployment doesn't help.

Ashley and Deserée live in Maine. Their father is a staff sergeant in the Army Reserves and is serving in Iraq.

Ashley
— Our dad's been in Iraq now for a long time, since last year. It's his first time there. He's supposed to be home in a month.

I can hardly wait for him to come back. It's been hard with him away because I don't get to do the things I usually do with him, like play video games. Our favorite is Star Wars.

We're able to keep in touch a little bit, mostly through email, but it's not all that good. We send him parcels, too. Mom puts in Oreos because he likes them. Mom finds it hard that he's gone. Sometimes she's a little bit happy, sometimes she's a little bit mad, but she takes care of us.

Even when Dad is here, he's not here. He works a lot, I mean. He has to leave the house really early and comes back really late. In Iraq he fixes trucks, and when he's here, he fixes trucks that have come back broken from Iraq. So it's all about Iraq.

I can't think about anything that's good about being in a military family. I know I won't join the army. Why would I want to do something that would take me away from my family?

I have no idea what I'll do with my life. My hobbies are playing sports and aggravating my older sister, but it's not really possible to make a career out of that.

Deserée
— Our father joined the military a year before I was born. I have no idea why he joined. Our mom isn't with the army. She was a postal worker for awhile, but now she's looking for a job.

It was pretty sad the day Dad left for Iraq. We drove him to the Reserve center for the farewell ceremony. Three people gave speeches. I don't remember now what they said. I wasn't really listening that hard. I had other things on my mind. Then the speeches ended, and everybody told their soldiers goodbye. Then my dad got on a bus with the other soldiers, and my sisters and I and my mother went home. Some of the families stayed to visit with each other, but we didn't. There was too much crying.

I really miss him. I miss doing things with him, like playing video games and going to the park. It's harder on my five-year-old sister, though, who doesn't really remember him much at all. When he comes home, he'll be a stranger to her, almost.

The thing that's harder even than missing him is that we're all now used to him being gone. We cried a lot when he first
left, and the house really felt empty, but now we're used to him not being here. It will be great to see him, but it will also be strange, too, to have him back again. We'll have to get used to that.

But we were happy when he came back on his break. That was much more happy than strange. We were able to do stuff with him that we hadn't done in over half a year. He came home for two weeks and we all went on a little holiday together. We even got to leave school because he came home from the war while school was still on. We couldn't go very far because we didn't have a lot of money for gas. We live in Maine and we went just over to Massachusetts. But it was great. We saw the ocean and a lot of other things.

Dad came home on break two-thirds through his war time, so when he left to go back, we didn't cry, because we knew that the longest time was over, and he'd be back soon. Also, he came back safe once, so he'll come back safe again. We don't have to worry so much.

We have other things to worry about, though. Mom and Dad have been fighting a lot, and they might get divorced. They fight when he's away and they fight when he comes home on leave. I think it's because he's away that they fight so much. It takes time to get along with people. It takes time if you disagree with someone to work through what you disagree about, and Mom and Dad never have time. They really try, but they don't have enough time.

When Dad was home on leave, Mom wanted him to fix the pipes in the basement. He's a mechanic and he knows how to do things like that. But there were a lot of other things to do, to fix, plus we went on a holiday, plus he was really tired. He doesn't get much sleep in Iraq. So he tried to get to the pipes but he ran out of time and energy and they were still not working. And now they've really broken and our basement is full of
water. So Mom's angry with Dad about that, because she's got three kids to look after and pipes that are a mess, and it's really hard for her. That's the kind of thing they fight about.

To make it worse, Dad's mother is always going at my mom, blaming her for Dad having to go to Iraq. That's really hard on my mom, because it wasn't her decision to send Dad over there! And it's not her decision when he comes back! But my father's mom is too upset to really believe that. It's easier for her to blame my mother than the government, because she can get to my mother and the government is far away.

I just came home from a summer camp that was all military kids. It was great because I usually don't get to spend a lot of time with other kids like me. Our dad's in the Reserves, not in the full-time army, so we don't live on a base. We did a lot of fun stuff at the camp — ordinary kid stuff, but we also did things just meant for military kids.

They told us at the camp that we should be proud of ourselves, because we are also serving the country, even though we are just kids. We're serving by being proud of the people we love who are fighting to keep us free.

It means a lot to me to be proud of my country, and to be happy about Americans being good people and doing good things in the world. Not that all Americans are good. Some people here think we should go back to the days of slavery. But most people here are good.

Probably most people in Iraq are good, just like we are. They're not all trying to bomb us. But a few people are not as good as we think they should be, and I guess that's why we're in Iraq. Although I don't really know what we're doing there.

Truthfully, I don't understand 9/11, either. We hear about it all the time, and we have tapes and DVDs about it at home, but I was really young when it happened — five or six — and I really don't understand why we were attacked, or who did it.
People talk a lot about it, but it doesn't make sense to me. Plus, it was a long time ago.

I don't know if I'll join the military or not. I guess it would be a job, but all my friends think I should be an artist or a writer. I write awesome stories, and I'm writing a novel now. I've got three chapters done. It's all about magical tricks. I think it's pretty good. My friends think so, too. Plus, I draw.

The good thing about being a military kid is we get to see military things close up, which most people don't get to do. A regular person couldn't go up to a tank or a helicopter and look around inside, but we can because of our parents. Plus I got to go on a holiday when all the other kids in my class had to sit in school, because of when my dad got his war break.

The bad thing is having my dad leave for a long time. Even when he's here, he's not here a lot. He works a really long shift so that he'll get paid a little more money. When we first moved here, we weren't doing all that well financially, so he worked a lot. We're doing a bit better now. He gets paid extra for being in Iraq. I think it's called Danger Pay, although I don't think he's in danger. He works on a base with a high fence and a lot of guards, and he sleeps in a hut. It's not fancy, but it's not dangerous.

Some of the kids at the camp who have had their parents come back from Iraq said their parents have changed. They talk differently, like with a different accent almost, and their attitude is different because they never get enough sleep. I worry a little bit that Dad will be different when he comes home, but he was fine on the break, so I don't worry too much.

I worry more about the divorce, that my parents won't have the time they need to work things out, so they'll just give up. As soon as Dad gets home, he has to report to the Reserves in Pennsylvania to join the unit there. So he'll be living far away. Well, not far like Iraq, but still away. We might stay in Maine,
or we might move back to Alabama to be with my aunts. We might visit him in Pennsylvania, but it's not the same. People need time, and it doesn't look good.

To other military kids, I'd say it helps you get through it if you can be proud. I know it's hard when someone they really love is far away for a long time, but they need to be proud that their parent is overseas fighting to be sure that everyone is free. Then it feels like it's all worth something. And I'd say you can learn to calm yourself down when you're upset. When I get worried, I take a lot of deep breaths and say, “He's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay.” Most of the time I can make myself believe it.

In Canada, people who want to join the military must be Canadian citizens. But there are tens of thousands of non US citizens currently serving in the US military. Among them are 1,500 from Mexico and 5,000 from the Philippines. Recent rule changes have created a fast-track citizenship process for those who serve in the military.

Sigrid's family comes from the Philippines, where the US has a number of military bases. For her family, the military was a way out of poverty. It has also been a way for them to see different parts of the world. They now live in Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg, where her father is a staff sergeant serving in Iraq.

My dad has been in Iraq for four months, and he has a year left to go. He's also been to Afghanistan.

I was sad the day he left. I stayed home. We didn't go with him to watch him leave. He thought that would be too hard for us. I wrote him a letter before he left that he took away to keep with him. It said, “I miss you,” and I let my sister draw on it.