Off to War

by Deborah Ellis

  Malia — I’ve been to where he works. It’s very big with lots of rooms and stairs.

  Dahshan — He’s been in the military since I was three or four. I have no idea why he joined.

  Malia — He had to go to Iraq, and now he’s home.

  Dahshan — He was gone for over a year and came back last January. It was his first time in Iraq.

  Malia — But we all lived with him in Germany. We had a dog there named Niko. He was a brownish kind of Chow dog.

  Dahshan — It was a small base in Germany, not nearly the size of Fort Bragg. You could fit three or four of the German base in Fort Bragg easily. It was pretty close-knit. We lived by the hospital, where Dad worked. It was the only hospital around, so we got to see everyone.

  Malia — We were there when I was really little and I had to go to preschool on the base. My mom worked there, too. Her job was to help the teacher. It felt very fine to have my mom go to school with me.

  Dahshan — I went to elementary school on the base. It was pretty big, all US military kids. Before we went to Germany we lived in Kansas.

  Malia — Kansas is very different from North Carolina.

  Dahshan — Kansas is dry, then it’s raining a lot. It’s cold, but then it’s summer and it’s still a little cold. Pretty much anything that could strike over there will strike. Tornados, storms, lightning. We were in Fort Riley for three years.

  Malia — We were in New York first. We’re from New York. We’ve been all over. I was born when we were in Fort Riley.

  Dahshan — I liked Germany. I was ten when I got there, and by the time we got out I was thirteen, so it’s where I did most of my developmental thought and everything. We got to go on school trips to see other parts of Europe. We went to France once, and Berlin. Germany is a lot like America except for the counting and measurements.

  Malia — We live on post here at Fort Bragg. It’s good because I’m close to my school. It’s right over the hill. Dahshan’s school used to be close, but he goes to one in Fayetteville now.

  Dahshan — We used to live in Fayetteville, in the city, and it was okay. It was just where we lived. But when we moved on post, it was like being back in Germany, only bigger. Instead of spending five minutes to get to the shops, like we did in Germany, we spend an hour to walk there and back. Fort Bragg is the second-biggest army base in the US. Only Fort Hood is bigger, in Texas.

  When you come on the base it’s like a whole other world, because all these strange things go on and you can see them all. If you just walk around, you can see Burger King over there, with kids yelling at their parents to get more food, then on the other side of the street you can see soldiers training or heading off to their barracks to sleep, and you can hear gunfire sometimes in the morning from the training, and bombs exploding in the forest. Tons of stuff.

  The gunfire’s not scary because it’s not like the war stories, where you hear gunfire and you hear people yelling and dying. You just hear it. It’s nothing alarming. It just goes off, and you’re like, okay.

  Malia — I hear the trumpet at night sometimes, and in the morning. It’s very cool.

  Dahshan — At night it plays taps. In the morning it plays reveille, and at the end of the duty day it plays retreat. I don’t always hear it.

  Malia — I can hear it because my window’s open. It’s a nice sound to hear before I go to sleep.

  Dahshan — I think they play it on all the bases. When Mom first heard it in Kansas, she was looking for the bugle guy, but there wasn’t one, it’s all on tape. In Kansas it was on blast, on big speakers, so it sounded like someone was blowing an actual trumpet in your ear. Here it’s more like someone is playing a trumpet under your window. It’s much quieter. Here you can pretend not to hear it — and sometimes you don’t — and you can keep moving if you’ve got some place to go. But in Kansas there’s no way you can’t hear it, so you have to stop.

  You’re supposed to stop your car, get out and stand at attention, or at least stop driving. At Pope Air Force Base, which is right next to Fort Bragg, they play the national anthem, too, and soldiers all have to stand still and salute until it’s over.

  Malia — I don’t have a military ID yet because I’m seven, but Dahshan has to have one. It’s got his picture on it.

  Dahshan — We have a curfew on post, too, of 9:30 if you’re under eighteen, which is really trying on Saturdays when I want to stay at my friend’s house for a little bit and I have to go home.

  You can go anywhere you want to on the base, as long as you can make curfew. It’s on you. Well, there are some places we can’t go, like we can’t go watch the soldiers do target practice, and most of those areas you can’t bring a POV into anyway. POV is a Privately Owned Vehicle, like out on Chicken Road where the ranges are.

  Malia — We went on two trips to Florida, to Busch Gardens and to Disney World, on a tour bus from the base, and it was not comfortable at all.

  Dahshan — The seats didn’t go back like they were supposed to, so when you were sleeping, you had to sit straight up with your head and shoulders slumping over. It was a nine-hour trip. They were good trips except for that, though. It was all paid for by the army, or most of it was, even the hotel. Sometimes there are day trips to DC, too.

  Malia — Disney World had a great pool. I’m a good swimmer. There are pools on the base, too.

  Dahshan — Everything is great here, as long as you can get to it. One thing on base that Mom likes is that there’s one main road, and if you can find that road, you can usually get to where you need to be.

  I just started going to a regular off-post school, but I’ve made a few friends who are not in the military, and their way of looking at things is very different. They see a lot more than we do. On base it’s very nice, but it’s not like in Germany, where you saw a bunch of different cultures. At least where we were you did, because we were at the hospital, so we saw people from Iraq who’d been hurt, and all sorts of people. But here you see pretty much everybody without differences. There’s no exoticness, I would say, here on base.

  Off base you can go all around and see lots of different cultures and art and music and ways of looking at things. There are band stores where people will come in and play different instruments, and you can meet and talk with them.

  Here it’s kind of like everyone is kind of the same. Even people you don’t know, you feel like you’ve seen them before.

  By the time we moved here, we knew Dad was going to Iraq. If you’re in Germany and you get sent to Fort Bragg, you know you’re getting deployed. It’s guaranteed. This is where Special Forces trains. People get shipped out from here. So we knew. We were getting prepared for it emotionally, so it wasn’t a surprise.

  One of the really hard times when Dad was gone was when I’d walk around my house. Back then, I used to come home from school at three, and no one would be home, unless I picked up my sister on the way. Mom works at the medical clinic for the 82nd Airborne. My dad used to stop by the house around that time, just to check in, make sure I was okay. But then he went to Iraq, and I’d walk around the house and realize no one was really there. I tried to keep busy, to find myself things to do, because you don’t want to just be thinking about how alone you are. You try to do what you can to fill that empty space.

  Me and my dad used to play around a lot. I would say something and he would start laughing. We’d be like best friends, almost. Although he’d call from Iraq as much as he could, it seemed like all the stuff I wanted to say was so dumb, like, why even bother? He’s over there, he needs to hear good stuff, so our time would run out and I wouldn’t be able to say anything. It was awkward. It wasn’t normal. I was ashamed of myself that I couldn’t make our phone conversations go better.

  Dad didn’t want us to take him to the drop-off point. He didn’t want us to be there when he left. It was his first deployment, his first time going. I hope it made it easier for him that we weren’t there.

  I hear from other kids who take thei
r fathers to the goodbye place, and they say it can be really hard, with kids clinging to their parents and crying and not letting go and having to be pried away. That’s not good for anybody.

  Malia — After Daddy left, we had to go to school.

  Dahshan — He had to do so much training before he left, too. He really didn’t get much time to be home with us.

  After he was gone, I noticed that without him, things just kind of seemed the same, routine, and nothing seemed important.

  Like, usually, with Dad around, when I’d wake up, I’d want to get going, be dressed, look nice, do things, take on the day. And when he left, it’s like, “I went to school yesterday, it’s going to be the same thing today, and tomorrow’s going to be the same thing after that.” It got to the point where I thought, “Why bother?” I kind of just stopped caring.

  I got through it by finding other things to do. Instead of just going straight home after school, where Dad wouldn’t be, I went to a friend’s house, and he kind of helped me through it. His dad was deployed once before, and he was heading over to Iraq again. My friend kind of kept things even for me. Without him it would have been very different. It wasn’t even that he would talk about it constantly. He maybe mentioned the deployments once, and that was it. It was just the fact that we could hang out, that I knew that he got what was going on. It made my head feel clear again, not stale and down, and made me want to go to school again and do things.

  We made a new routine when Dad left, and found new things to do. We couldn’t just do the old things, because whenever we did, Dad wouldn’t be there and we’d really feel that. It would have taken us down. I had new chores, and I did stuff with my sister, like walking her to school and picking her up from daycare. Some Sundays we would go to church. We just made a new routine, and we stuck with it, and we were able to get through it.

  Malia — We sent Daddy packages. If it was up to me, I’d send him a package every day. My mom set out a box, and every time I made something I wanted to give to my dad, I would put it in the box. When the box got full, we would send it to him. I sent him pictures and school work.

  I also did a book with my class in first grade. It’s all about our dads being in the army. There’s a picture of all the kids in the class, and I remember their names. We wrote a whole book, with stories and pictures.

  Dahshan — I got really into music when Dad left. I started listening to all kinds, a lot of hip-hop and jazz. I started making my own music, too, rap songs.

  Malia — Dahshan draws, too. He draws really good, lots of different kinds of things. And he’s teaching me to play the trumpet.

  Dahshan — Dad came home on leave just in time for Malia’s birthday. Then he had to go back again. He hadn’t wanted to come home because he knew how hard it would be for everybody when he left again. It was hard for him, too, because he got away from Iraq, then he had to go back there again.

  He came home for good in January. It was really heaven at first. Then after a month or so, it came back to normal. Our old routine came back and our lives were good and normal again.

  My dad’s really good at bouncing back. I know it must have been really difficult for him over there, but he worked hard at being the same guy when he came back as he was when he left.

  Malia — He was very the same. He is a good role model and so is my mother and so is my brother.

  Dahshan — Dad wasn’t going to war-war. He was in the war, but he was kind of just doing paperwork. He was treating prisoners at Camp Bucca. There were a lot of riots there, but it was more like a fire drill, not like the riots you see on TV with a bunch of people running around. It was more like a cultural protest than an actual riot. But still it must have been difficult. He made a huge effort not to allow the things he saw and did affect him at home. He was real conscious of that. He thought a lot beforehand on how to separate what he was doing from his life with the family.

  Malia — He’s a really fun dad.

  Dahshan — He doesn’t have to go back to Iraq, but they’re sending him to Korea next. It won’t be dangerous like Iraq. There’s no war there. He’s just going to live there for awhile. We’re staying here in Fort Bragg.

  Malia — We’re going to make a new routine. And I’m going to try to write the routine down, and write about our lives so Daddy will know what we’re doing while he’s away.

  I’m not going to join the army when I get bigger. I’m going to be a movie director and a teacher. I’d enjoy both those things. There’s too much work in the army.

  Dahshan — I’m not joining the army, either. Right now I’m at a really weird stage, because I’m really good at the music thing I’m doing, and I’m really good at art, too, so I don’t know what I’m going to continue with. I could do both, but I’d like for me to have just one destiny, just for me to be stable, so I can direct my focus. I’m not really very organized.

  I don’t really know what’s going on in Iraq. I don’t want to get into it. I’ll want to see the facts when it’s all over, not while it’s going on. People are saying a lot of different things now, but when it’s all done, you’re going to see the facts.

  Malia — On that, I’m going to have to agree with my brother.

  Kaylee, 13, and Bailey, 12

  A 2007 report by the Ontario Ombudsman focused on the effects of overseas deployment on the children at CFB Petawawa. Children talked about panicking when they were called to the principal’s office because they thought they were going to be told their mother or father had been killed in Afghanistan. Others talked about hiding in their homes with the lights off so they couldn’t be found if officers came by to give them bad news. The report revealed there were long waiting lists for professional counseling services for children, and it called for increased funding for the local mental health center.

  It is now acknowledged that war trauma can affect both the soldier and the soldier’s family. Sometimes military parents are afraid to give their children bad news. They don’t want their kids to worry. They want their kids to have childhoods that are happy and free from cares about war. Sometimes their children find out anyway, and keep their knowledge a secret, so their parents don’t worry.

  Kaylee and Bailey are friends who live in Permanent Married Quarters (PMQ), family housing on CFB Petawawa. Both are active in support groups run by the Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC), which provides support for military families.

  Kaylee — My dad is a corporal. His job is mat tech, and a welder. He’s in Afghanistan now. He’s been there for five months. He should be home at the end of August.

  He’s been in the military for seven years. I think he joined in order to help children in all different countries. Before that, he fixed houses.

  I have a ten-year-old brother named Tyson. My mom does home daycare, a lot of times for parents who are overseas.

  When Dad first told us he was going to Afghanistan, he said he was leaving in a month. Two weeks later, he said, “I’m leaving tomorrow.” So that was a really big change.

  When Dad left, my mom put us in lots of programs, like the Deployment Program and the Buddies Program. I’m a Big Buddy and my brother’s a Little Buddy. There are a lot of different activities we go to, like Bonaventure Caves and stuff like that, and the Diefenbunker. Different places. And we’re in the Deployment Group at school, for kids whose parents are overseas.

  The Diefenbunker is a huge old underground military base. It’s really cold and dark down there. It was built a long time ago so the government would have a place to go in case there was an atomic war. It’s called the Diefenbunker because the prime minister at the time was Diefenbaker.

  As a Big Buddy, I’m assigned a Little Buddy for events like playtime at the recreation center, and we get free movie tickets, too. I’ll go to the movies with my Little Buddy. Maybe I’ll buy her a popcorn or something. There are a lot of other deals, too.

  I always ask my Little Buddy how she’s doing and when her dad called last, and how that went. Stuff
like that. It gives her someone to talk to. She’ll tell me everything. Even stuff she doesn’t tell her mom, she tells me, like when she feels sad, and when she misses her dad.

  It’s really cool to hear what other kids have to say about their parents being overseas, and it’s even more cool to hear what a little kid has to say, because it’s even harder for them to understand what’s going on.

  For Father’s Day we sent my dad two boxes full of chocolates. They weren’t just for him, they were for all the troops. We always send him Tim Horton’s gift certificates, too. The money the soldiers have to use over there is called POGs. They’re little cardboard disks, and when Dad has them in his pocket at the gym, they all disintegrate because of the sweat. So we send him gift certificates. He’s got, like, $500 worth there so can buy coffee for all his friends.

  Now that my dad is overseas we have more of a routine in the mornings. It used to be wake up and go with the flow. Now you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at exactly what time.

  When my dad came home for his HLTA everything was all screwed up because the routine was basically wrecked.

  The first four days after my dad left, my mom was in a cleaning mode. She cleaned everything. When he left again after coming home for his break, she cleaned again for three weeks. That’s how she copes. She cleans. And she puts us on a routine.

  When Dad came home for HLTA, he slept a lot. He’d want to take us to school but he’d sleep in so late that Mom would have to call the school to tell them we were running behind.

  He was a lot more thankful for everything when he came home. He wouldn’t waste anything. He’d tell my brother and me, “Be thankful for what you have because the children there don’t have anything.”

  He’d seen a couple of children over there get shot when they were leaving their school. That changed him, too. He’s a lot more protective.

  Sometimes he’d go out into the marketplace. When he had to go out of the Sandbox, which is what they call the base, he would see children. He watched a Taliban shoot one of the kids. He hasn’t told us a lot about it. He’s not really allowed to talk to us much about things like that because of security.