Off to War (2 page)

Matt
— Mom found out through an email that he'd been hurt. It just said that he'd been wounded. We were in Florida on vacation — it was over the holidays — and we drove back to North Carolina right away. The army set up a video teleconference so we could see Dad. His deployment had just started and he had another six or eight months to go, so they didn't want to send him home if he could heal there. A suicide bomber drove a car onto Dad's military installation. Dad got some cuts on the face and shrapnel wounds.

It helped that we could see him and see that he was okay, even though he was wounded.

Allison
— Daddy had a lot of hair then. He's bald now.

Matt
— We're certainly aware of what could happen.

Lewis
— When I was little, I'd see Daddy get on the plane and the plane would fly away and I thought Dad was in the plane for the whole deployment. I kept looking up at planes in the sky, in case he was on one of them.

Allison
— We have a map where we can keep track of where Dad is. And we have a box where we can put in our school papers and report cards we want him to see. When the box is full we send it off. He's going to miss our whole school year this year, but we'll send him our papers so he'll know what we're doing. Mom videotapes our school plays, too.

He's leaving in a few days and he won't be back until next year.

Matt
— Dad's work is so secret that we don't know what he does. We don't even ask him about it because we know we're not allowed to know. Mom is the leader of the readiness group, so she gets information and knows more than a lot of people about what's going on, but even she's not allowed to know what Dad does.

She says it's sometimes a good thing that she doesn't know everything. She'll hear on the news that we've lost another soldier and they'll give the location, and if she knew Dad was there she wouldn't sleep for days until she heard that he was all right.

She gets notified whenever a soldier from the battalion is killed because it's her job to help the families.

Allison
—We all help with that. We'll cook meals and take them over to the family of the fallen soldier, or spend time with the kids so their mother can make phone calls and plan the funeral.

Matt
— There's a casualty team that helps plan those things, too. Mom says the battalion is like one big family, and we have to take care of each other. We don't have blood family here. The army moves people around the world. Our nearest blood relative is thirteen hours away. You have to rely on your military family. There are six hundred soldiers in the battalion, and it's Mom's job to look after all their families. It's a big job, so we help her out with that.

Allison
— Sometimes other kids will come over to our house for the night for a sleepover because their mom needs a night off. And we put together fifty care packages a month to send over to the soldiers.

Lewis
— We get it all set up on the living-room floor. We send lots of candy, mini-footballs they can play catch with, sock puppets, card games, books, magazines. Mom finds things at the dollar store she thinks the soldiers would like, and we send it all off.

Allison
— I have no idea what the United States is doing in Iraq.

Lewis
— They don't tell us.

Matt
— A lot of people say our country is just after the oil. I personally don't believe that's completely true. Iraq does have oil, but we're not over there to steal it. We're simply trying to clean up a mess that's been around for awhile. We're trying to liberate the Middle East, one area at a time. It may seem like a slow process, but I think we're getting somewhere.

Lewis
— I want to join the military when I grow up to be like the rest of the family and carry on the tradition. I haven't thought about what job I'd want to do, though.

Allison
— He doesn't really know much about the military. He just wants to be like his dad.

Matt
— The army life is all I've ever known, so I might as well stick to something I'm used to. I'd probably go completely insane if I had to stay in one place for too long. The military has the best benefits out of any job, and it's a guaranteed job. No layoffs. Every country needs a military, and the United States is never going to be without one. It comes with risks, but I don't really think I'll want to do another job. And the military is not just one job. It's thousands of jobs working together.

Allison
— I'm not joining the military. I'm going to be a veterinarian.

It wouldn't change my opinion of Dad if he had to kill somebody. One of my middle school teachers was in the military for twenty-two years, and she said that killing somebody is the last resort of defense. So if you're defending yourself, it's okay.

Lewis
— That's what I think, too.

Matt
— It wouldn't change my opinion of him at all. In the army, even in the infantry, the aim of things is never to kill the subject, but keep it so they don't attack. If they attack you, then you have the right to attack back.

It's not like the army is telling you, “Aim for the head.” They're telling you, “Aim for the center of mass,” which is the body. If the enemy dies, it's because — I don't want to say they
deserved it — but it was called for. They attacked you, you simply retaliated to defend your life. And if someone dies in the process of that, it's kind of one of those things that is in a sense out of your hands.

Allison
— Dad is always a little different when he comes back from deployments because he has to get used to America again, and the sleeping times are different, too, so he's really tired.

Matt
— He's always overjoyed that he's in the States where no one is trying to shoot at him.

There's always the one-hour time period after he first gets off the plane. That's the only time I ever hear him cuss. He never swears around us, except when he's just come back from being out in the field for eight months with a bunch of grunts. He has to make his language family-rated again, but that usually takes him only about an hour.

Mom does counseling with families, and sometimes there are problems with coming back together after being apart. Sometimes people have nightmares. And sometimes a soldier will come back after a year of making others follow orders, and now he's living again with a wife and kids who don't want to be ordered around! And it's sometimes hard for him to know how to fit in, because the family has managed fine without him for a year and a half.

Allison
— Dad leaves for six or eight months. He comes home for maybe two months, then he's off again for another eight months. We just start to get used to him being around when he leaves again.

Lewis
— We've gotten used to it. He misses most holidays. He misses everyone's birthday, even his own.

Matt
— But you can't blame anyone for that. That's just the job. And it makes us want to make the most of the time we have together.

You have to want to make it work. This is the life my family's always known, but we still have to work at it. Mom has very strict rules. She doesn't allow anyone to raise their voice. We have to be respectful to one another. There are moments when we're not, but we always come back to that.

Time is short. When we say goodbye next week, it might really be goodbye.

Allison
— My advice for other army kids is don't overdramatize when your parents are going overseas. If you do, you'll just make it harder for yourself because you'll be so worried you could actually make yourself sick. Find someone you can trust if you need to talk to someone, like your mom, or your pastor, or a friend, or a school guidance counselor. Find some way to relieve your stress. You have your own life to live.

Jordan lives on the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario. CFB Trenton was opened in 1931 as a base for the Royal Canadian Air Force. It is still primarily an air base, where giant cargo planes take off for war zones, and where soldiers killed in battle first land when they return to Canada.

All three of Jordan's parents are in the military. He lives with his mother, a corporal, and his stepfather, who is a master corporal. His father is at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

My dad and stepdad have been in the military as long as I've known them. My stepfather teaches the new people how to be in the army. He gives a lot of lectures. My mom joined when I was seven. She's an airplane mechanic.

My dad just came back from Afghanistan, I think. I don't see him very often. He came to visit us before he left for Afghanistan. I don't really know why Canada is there.

I have one older brother. He's seventeen and he really likes to beat me up. He's joking when he does it, though. My step
brother is eleven or twelve. He lives in Greenwood with his mom. My folks got divorced when I was seven.

I'm pretty used to my parents being in the military. It's weird seeing so many uniforms at one time, though. Every year there's a family get-together at the base. Anyone in the military can bring their family into their work area, which is usually not allowed. They tell their kids what they do, and then there's a barbecue and games. I saw the place where my mother repairs the Hercules transport planes.

The good thing about being a military kid is that it's a little more organized around the house. There's less stuff to worry about, less clutter. Before my mom joined there was hair all over the place because she was a barber. Now the house is cleaner.

My mom and stepdad were both overseas, I think in Afghanistan. My stepdad was there long before the war, so it may not have been Afghanistan. My mother was over in United Arab Emirates a couple of years ago. I hope they don't get hurt when they go overseas. I get kind of worried about them. I don't watch the news, but my stepdad turns it on a lot, so I hear what's going on.

Before they go overseas they tell us they're going and we can state any problems that we think about. We can ask them questions, like why they have to go. Mom said she had to go repair planes so they could fly to Afghanistan with supplies. Dad said he was there to help out.

Mom called every few weeks while she was away. Our step-father stayed home with us. There were a lot more bruises when Mom was gone because he and my brother like to UFC a little too much. UFC is Ultimate Fighting Championship. When Mom's home, she makes them settle down.

We eat more pizza when Mom's away, too. She was gone for
around six months. We didn't get any free haircuts while she was gone! It also got kind of boring around the house because we had to do more chores. When Mom's around, she does a few chores and I do a few chores, but when she's not here, I have to do her chores as well.

My favorite things are video games — fighting games where you get to blow stuff up. They're fun. I like going to the pool and jumping on the trampoline. Throws don't hurt so much on the trampoline. My brother throws me all the time when he's playing at WWE — that's World Wrestling Entertainment. He's the biggest one in the family. Everyone else is tiny.

I've got a lot of friends and I like to hang out with them. We usually just go around in our little community. There's a park across the street and we usually go there. Now that we've got the trampoline set up, we go on that a lot as well.

There are a few arguments, too. That gets on everyone's mood. My parents argue all the time about things that happen on their little vacations, like small date vacations. They've only been married a few months. They got married in Jamaica. My brother and I stayed with my grandparents. They were part of the military, too. My grandmother quit when she got pregnant with my mom. They moved all over the place.

The pay is what attracts my family to the military. We need a lot of money. My brother goes through a lot of food. My brother might go into the military, or he might be a chemist. I'm thinking of becoming a veterinarian. I love all animals. Dogs. Cats. When I was younger I used to say if a bear would come up to me I would hug it. The military is too violent for me. I enjoy blowing stuff up on my games, but not in real life. In the video games, no one gets any bruises or burns. In real life, people pretty much turn into black skeletons.

My dad's been in the military for twenty-two or twenty-three years. He's a fun guy. He knows what we like and he takes
us to the movies. I'll probably see him this summer, and at Christmas. My parents got divorced because they had their disagreements. They told us that. It happens. They still like each other, but not as much as when they first met.