Off to War (3 page)

The hard part about having all my parents in the military is on days when there's no school, both my parents are at work, and there's nothing to do. You don't get to see your parents too much. When you're young, you like to know your parents are around, but in the military, they don't stick around too often. That's the hardest part.

My advice really is to just roll along with it. Pretend it's a normal part of your life.

Seventy percent of American military families do not live on a military base. Families of the National Guard live in towns and cities across the country.

The National Guard was founded in 1903 from the various state militias that had been formed when the United States was still a collection of colonies. It differs from the regular military and the Reserves in that Guard members swear an oath to their state as well as to the nation. They can also be called out to assist in the case of floods, fires or protests. There is no Canadian equivalent.

Although overseas duty has always been a possibility for those who join the National Guard, the current wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq have seen the highest number of overseas deployments of National Guard members since World War II — making up as many as half the combat soldiers in Iraq.

Unlike children living on base, who are surrounded by others going through the same experiences, children of parents serving overseas with the National Guard are often the only ones in their school dealing with deployment. These families have found ways to
come together, in part through organizations like the National Military Families Association. The NMFA runs summer camps and websites and provides education resources and support for military families.

Santana and her family live in Roswell, New Mexico, where her father is a staff sergeant with the New Mexico National Guard.

We don't live on a base. The nearest military base is hours away — New Mexico is a big state. There used to be an air force base here in Roswell, but not anymore. We just have a regular airport now.

This past May we were chosen as the Military Family of the Month by the National Military Family Association because my whole family is involved with the military. My mother, Lorena, is the Southeastern Family Assistance Co-ordinator. She also created New Mexico's Youth Council Program. That's a program to help kids in military families. I volunteer on the youth council.

A lot of National Guard kids don't know any other military kids, so when their mom or their dad has to go overseas or gets sent somewhere else in the United States, they can feel very alone. It helps to have other kids to talk to — kids who know what they're going through.

My father was posted to Washington, DC, for awhile. He had to leave his work here in Roswell to work with the air defense artillery. His job was to protect the president. If any planes came into his air space that weren't supposed to be there, his job was to shoot them down. He didn't have to shoot at anything while he was there.

He could still get sent to Iraq, or to Afghanistan, or somewhere else. Lots of kids I know through the youth council have parents deployed overseas. Mom says the next big deployment
coming up is for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Maybe my father will end up going there. I hope he stays home, though.

I hated it when he went away to Washington, even though he wasn't in danger. We got to go visit him while he was there — me, my mom, my older stepsister and my little brother. My brother had never been on a plane before. When we got off the plane, Dad was right there! It was so great to see his face light up as soon as he saw us.

Now that he's home, we go fishing a lot, play ball, just do regular things together.

Dad was also a leader at the GI Joe Camp we had here in Roswell. It's a camp for military kids, ages seven to nine, to give them a taste of what it's like to be in the military. We all got to help. It's held over a couple of days and there were all sorts of activities, like grenade toss, rock-wall climbing, PT, marching in formation, sleeping in tents. It was cool.

Some of the little kids there had parents who were in Iraq. It was hard for them. They didn't talk much. We had to go over to them, reach out to them. They really needed a friend. They're worrying, wondering about what might happen, and they're scared. A lot of the time they don't know any other kids like them. The GI Joe Camp helped them feel not alone.

I get to travel around a lot with the youth council. They elected me area secretary for my state. One of my jobs is to send out birthday cards when one of the kids has a birthday. The youth council helps us to meet other kids in our situation. We stay in a hotel and have a roommate, but your roommate is a surprise, someone you don't know. You stay with them during all the activities, like games and scavenger hunts. It's fun, and it helps. A lot of the kids are so lonely and they don't know how to express themselves.

I won't be joining the military when I get older, even
though I support the troops. I'd rather be a pediatrician. I like kids, and I like doctors' offices.

There are other reasons I don't want to join. My mom works with military families and she sees what happens to them — things like divorce, and people coming back from the war injured, or not coming back at all. I do not want to be a part of that.

My mom and dad are my heroes. We're a very close family. My dad's always right there when I need him — except when the National Guard sends him away. I'm a good basketball player, and that's because of my dad.

My mom really looks after everyone, and it's hard to look after people in the military. Sometimes she looks after their kids, sometimes they come to her when they're having a bad day and they just need to talk. People lean on her.

She's part of the Family Readiness Group, which helps families get ready for deployment. There are meetings and briefings and paperwork, and she helps with all that. She helps after the family member leaves, too, and when they come home again. She tells families things they can do to make it easier for someone coming home from a war, like don't have balloons at the Welcome Home party, because if they break they'll sound like guns, and don't have fireworks because they sound like bombs.

Sometimes the soldiers don't come home. There was someone from Roswell who was killed in Iraq. He and his wife had two small children. The Guard called my mom and told her what happened. Then they went to the wife's house to tell her. Mom went over about an hour later and spent all day with her. Mom arranged for her and her kids to go on Operation Holiday Express, with other families who'd lost someone. They went to Disneyland, and to a Yankees game in New York City.

What does it mean to be an American? I think it's an honor.
I owe my country respect, because of the war and 9/11. The soldiers need us to be behind them, throwing them welcome home and goodbye parties, and letting them know we'll always be there for them.

I don't like to watch the anti-war protesters on TV. I think they are betraying our soldiers. One of them spat on my father in Washington.

We have it made here. We can go outside, breathe fresh air, go places in the car, watch movies. We have all these freedoms. The soldiers are fighting over there so we don't have to fight the war at home. If our soldiers are not over there, there could be another 9/11.

At the same time, I wish they would end the war and bring the soldiers home.

My advice for other military kids? Your family is everything. No matter what other people do, they will be there to support you, and you have to support them, even if you fight.

Tara's father is a lieutenant colonel based in Petawawa, Ontario — a small town in the Ottawa Valley that is home to one of Canada's largest military bases. Named after the Petawawa River that runs through it, the base was opened in 1904 for the Royal Canadian Horse and Garrison Artillery. It housed German and Austrian prisoners of war in World War I, and in World War II it was an internment camp for civilians of Italian, German and other national descents. There are now 5,100 soldiers and 1,000 civilians working on the base, plus nearly 8,000 family members who live there.

My dad is a construction team commander. He started in the army when he was eighteen. He was always interested in joining up because his father was also in the army. My grandfather died before I was born so I didn't get to meet him.

I have a twin sister. Her name is Libby.

My dad went to Kandahar in Afghanistan. He was helping to build schools. I saw him a couple of times on the TV news. People were interviewing him, but I didn't get to watch the
whole thing because it was on when I was just getting up and I had to get ready for school. Sometimes my dad sat and talked with the president of Afghanistan, and Dad ate dinner at the palace once. He ate Afghan food.

I think Daddy left for Afghanistan on June 25. He was supposed to leave in August, but he had to go in June instead. I think he went for about nine months. He dropped us off at school, then he left. I was really sad to see him go because I knew he was going to be gone for a long time.

I don't know much about Afghanistan. I know the women there wear a burqa — it kind of rhymes with parka. Daddy went there to help the people be safe. Not many of the little girls get to go to school, so he's helping to build schools so more of them can go.

There weren't as many people in the house when Dad was away. I wasn't sad all the time because we have a deployment group at my school that we went to every second Wednesday. We make things there to send over to Afghanistan. Once we made a pillow with drawings on it of our dad, and then we sleep with it. I still have it.

I normally got nightmares every night after Dad left, but then when I slept with the pillow I remembered better things that I used to dream about, and didn't have so many nightmares. The pillow was actually helpful. It helped me to think of things that are not so sad. And sometimes Mommy would spray Daddy's perfume on the pillow.

(Tara's mom – You mean Daddy's aftershave.)

Oh, yeah. I couldn't remember what you called it. So the pillow smelled like Daddy.

My sister acted differently from me. She didn't say anything, really. She didn't even talk to me about it.

I talked about it a lot. I talked to Mommy because Libby didn't want to talk much. The deployment group helped me
understand things better, like what the soldiers are doing. The group taught me it was okay to feel things, too.

We played this really fun game where we got to act out feelings. It was perfect for me because I like drama and acting. We all got pieces of cardboard and everybody wrote down a feeling. There were eight people in my group, and most of them were my age because they have it divided by ages. The leader shuffled all the cards and she held up one, and everybody had to act out the emotion that was on the card. We had to watch her closely because we'd have to stop acting as soon as she put the card down. The last person to stop acting would be out.

The sad one was really funny to act out. We pretended to cry. There was also angry, happy, excited, and tired, and scared, too.

Dad came back on February 4, I think. I wasn't used to having him around so I had to get used to that again — him being in the house, I mean. When he's away, I like to play on his bed in the guest room, but when he's home he usually sleeps in it, because he snores a lot and bothers Mommy. I'm not used to him sleeping in it.

I'm also not used to him being up at five or four in the morning. It's part of his job to get up early, and he's also probably used to the timings in Afghanistan. There's a time difference there.

As soon as he comes home he usually sleeps because it's hard for him to sleep on the airplane. I can't sleep on airplanes, either. I don't even try to anymore, because I know I can't.

When my dad came home for his holidays we went to Disney World for two weeks. It was really fun and we got to see a lot of things. Since my dad missed our birthdays in September he said we could each pick a day in Disney World to be our birthday and we could get everything we wanted. I chose a Friday. We went to Sea World, which is just outside of
Disney World. They have dolphins there. When I grow up I want to be a teacher or a dolphin trainer.