Veterans Know War Is Hell for Families

I hear that pundits predict war with China

Prologue

Dateline, America, 2023 —

A four-star Air Force general predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years. In a memo obtained by NBC News, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025.”

“I don’t believe conflict is inevitable. I don’t believe it’s unavoidable,” said Gen. Mike Minihan. “But I also believe that being ready now is what matters most.”

Therefore, in the Pacific, the Air Force is getting ready. So is the Navy.

I’m hyper-aware of these preparations, and I feel helpless, frustrated, and anxious. My heart and soul are catapulted back to Iraqi Freedom, a terrible time for families from 2003 to 2011.

Change is inevitable, and I was not prepared

It had never occurred to me that my children could die. I mean, I didn’t think about it; life was sweet. I loved parenting and the glorious days of sweet faces and scabby knees. Our small Midwest town was as safe as anywhere could be. But we all know that constant change is the only constant.

My kids became adults. They all worked for the U.S. Government — so odd to me, because their mother was a card-carrying hippy peace freak flower child of the 60s and 70s. My middle kid’s first real job was driving an Army Paladin, a self-propelled canon. Seriously. My daughter was a Navy Airman aircraft electronics tech who often worked inside P3 and EP3 Orion aircraft fuel tanks. My eldest son became an intelligence officer.

When they left home, all at the same time, emptying my soft, cushy nest, I was proud. They chose jobs they felt would somehow allow them to mitigate the taste of America’s September 11th. To me, small-town life suddenly seemed unlikely preparation for a war against terrorism. I was mildly apprehensive, as mothers are inclined to be.

Thinking back, I remember when, at 3 years old, my middle guy messed with a wasp nest and earned himself a dozen stings. Feeling righteously offended, I nursed his wounds, angry at the Universe for setting up pitfalls to endanger my little boy. Foreshadowing.

Two decades later, at his boot camp graduation in Oklahoma, I watched his unit play-act skirmishes of war, and I longed to be facing just those innocuous bee stings again. I knew in my soul, as did all the other parents there, that this exercise was also foreshadowing.

As the pyrotechnics left spots in my eyes and harmless explosions boomed in my chest, I struggled with tears and an eerie sense of something I couldn’t name. Those new soldiers’ average age was about 18. The Cosmos had a wake-up call for them that no mother on Earth could forestall.

That I couldn’t shield him anymore confused me. I hugged him, murmuring congratulations and cherishing the blessed knowledge that he was not bound for Iraq. For heaven's sake, his unit, the 2BCT, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, had been based in Korea since the 1950s. They were part of the culture there — indispensable now that the North-South thing was heating up. Whew.

Pie crust promises, easily made, easily broken

A few weeks later, my son called from Korea, where he was told he would serve out his hitch. I expected the usual slightly blue, rookie-screw-up stories and the pleasant back-and-forth chit-chat we usually enjoyed.

His voice was odd. I shrugged off a quick chill and listened to the silence of a long pause.

“So, Mom,” he said. “They’re moving us to another theater.”

That’s what they call war — a theater. Ironic visions of actors in grease paint danced through my head. Then I caught up.

“Iraq. Mom, I’m going to Iraq.”

The phone felt hot in my icy hands. My head raged, and I swear I stepped outside myself, watched myself pace a seven-foot expanse of ceramic tile, and stifled a primal scream.

With deliberate control, I said, “You’ll be fine. I know you will. You’re ok, right?”

Like a duck in a shooting gallery, I marched back and forth during the 10-minute conversation. Then the phone was back in its cradle, and bubbles of hysteria rose in me. I was sure I would vomit. I cried. It didn’t matter to me at that dizzy moment if the war was right or wrong. I didn’t care about Democrats or Republicans.

Four weeks to deployment. Too quick. One moment he was safe; the next, his 4 a.m. calls were backed by the racket of exploding mortars and filled with breathless descriptions of dead people, violence, and something called IEDs. Improvised explosive devices. Exploding. Devices exploding all around my son.

I needed television news to be on all day long. It was an obsession. I wouldn’t go anywhere in case he called — or God forbid, the ARMY called. Later, as the casualty lists got longer, I wouldn’t allow news on at all. Couldn’t bear photos of solemn-faced youngsters who would never come home. Every vehicle rolling down my block bred anxiety in me. Even the mailman. I knew he’d rumble down the street every afternoon, but my mind made the sound of his Jeep unbearable. Was it an Army van bringing soldiers to tell me what no parent ever wants to hear?

Hooking up with other military families, I hashed and rehashed anything I had heard from the “theater” to anyone who would listen. Sending care packages was my all-encompassing mission; selecting exactly the right contents. A holy protection. One mom sent a microwave oven to the desert camp — she needed her boy to have popcorn. If he had popcorn, the world wouldn’t stop turning for her family.

One day, the local news channel reported that a father two towns away from me found Army representatives at his doorstep. He knew their message. His only son. While the two soldiers consoled the mother in her living room, the man went out his back door, grabbed a gas can, and set the soldiers’ vehicle ablaze. He stood on the street, sobbing. He was not charged or punished further. I understood then, with clarity, that my child was not special.

War is hell

What felt like centuries crawled by — then there were rumors that the 2BCT was coming home. Having suffered more casualties than any other unit, they were quietly training their replacements and preparing to move out. You think that made us all feel better, don’t you? No. As time wound down, fear reared up. Soldiers can still die, even when they’re scheduled to leave, and the Army moves agonizingly slowly.

On a Wednesday in June, two footlockers, smudged with greasy sand, arrived at our front door. I sat on one and closed my eyes. Hope.

Still more soldiers died. More injuries. Wives cried. Mothers hid behind doors locked by grief. Fathers sat still, heads in hands. My boy phoned home and spoke, in halting words spaced like marching steps, telling us of a Humvee vaporized below his lookout tower. Restricted to his post, he couldn’t move to help. The victims were mates he worked with every day. My mind boggled at what my son had witnessed in this long year of his so-far short life. Please, God, let him live to be stung by another wasp.

Redemption

Summer’s end. Standing in an O’Hare Airport terminal, I swatted absently at a buzzing insect. I stared at the arrivals monitor — willing it to show the plane I sought. Delayed. Sometime later, I glanced up and saw my soldier-son at the top of the escalator. Really there.

I felt like I had run a long way for a long time.

That hug is tattooed on my heart for the rest of my life. He sighed a huge sigh, his boots on home ground. Until that year, I had never considered my kids’ mortality, and I recognized this as a reprieve for us. I marked a quiet moment for other moms and offered a prayer for their soldiers’ peace and safe return, remembering the more than 3000 who would not come home. I still can’t watch much of the evening news.

Epilogue

While waiting at the airport for my soldier-son’s return from Iraq, I contemplated 3,000 other mothers whose children died in the sand there. But for fortune, it might have been my boy.

Like most Americans, I have strong feelings about war in general and that war in particular, but when a loved one’s life is on the line daily, none of that matters. Politics loses all meaning — world issues, pushed out of your head, are supplanted by anxiety and pain.

My eldest grandson will report for Navy duty on June 8, 2024, three days after high school graduation. His mom was Navy, and so was his dad — members of his family have served in every war since the US Civil War. It’s what he wants to do. For his family and for all families everywhere, I pray sanity prevails between China and the US. Give peace a chance.

For more reflections on family and military, read my memory story, Military Sexual Assault