by Vicki Cody
“What?” I asked shrilly.
“I’m deploying, and I can’t tell you where or for how long. I don’t really know the details myself.”
I didn’t even really understand the term deployment, but I sensed it was more significant than going to the field. The war in Vietnam was ending, so I couldn’t figure out where the Army was sending Dick. I had a million questions, but he cut me off before I could ask any of them. He told me to trust him and that he would be in touch as soon as he could. Then he said something that would become his mantra throughout our marriage and his career: “Vicki, watch the news.”
I was stunned and wasn’t sure what to do. He had said he would call his parents, so I called mine. They were shocked and, I believe, on some level thought this was Dick’s way of backing out of the wedding. None of us had any experience with the military or Army life. But, as confused as I was, I had to trust Dick.
Two days later, all hell broke loose in Vietnam. It was April 25, 1975, and as the United States was pulling the last of the troops and Americans out of the country, the North Vietnamese took control of Saigon. The city was in total chaos, and the images on the news were frightening: US soldiers trying to evacuate the American embassy, people trying to flee, helicopters lifting people off the roof. I began to think that maybe Dick’s deployment had something to do with what was going on in Saigon and what I was seeing on TV, but I had no one to ask. I was scared, but it was also the first time I felt that little adrenaline rush mixed in with the fear. It was exciting, it was history in the making, and Dick was part of it.
As the events in Vietnam unfolded on the evening news, there was talk of refugees and orphans being evacuated to the island of Guam. The US Army was setting up camps to house the thousands of refugees who began arriving immediately after the takeover of Saigon. And then I got my first call from Dick, at my sorority house, no less! One of my sisters yelled up the stairs, “Vicki, you’ve got a call from an overseas operator!” I about wet my pants running down the stairs to grab the phone. I had no idea what to expect. An operator at the naval air station in Groton, Connecticut, was on the line and told me to hold for Second Lieutenant Cody.
“Hi, Vicki. I’m fine. I’m on the island of Guam, helping with the refugee effort. Over.”
I giggled every time he said “over.” It took a few minutes to get used to it. He explained that we were talking on a MARS radio and that the operator was on the line, too—hence the “over and out” thing.
That first conversation was short, but he sounded so good; he sounded like himself. He promised to write and then said, “I love you, and we’ll get married when I return.” That was all I needed to hear.
The days flew by, I finished my exams and graduated, and then I moved back home to my parents’. As time wore on and I attended friends’ weddings that summer, I couldn’t help feeling a little angry and frustrated at the Army for messing up my wedding plans. I was proud of Dick, and I understood the importance of the mission, but I missed him.
I watched the news and waited for letters and the occasional phone call from him. When it was obvious that he was not returning anytime soon, I got a job at the local Grand Union supermarket. I had a student loan to pay off and had not applied for teaching jobs in Burlington because I was supposed to be married and living in Hawaii by then. Every time someone said to me, “I thought you got married this summer!” I wanted to scream.
While I was checking groceries, Dick was making a name for himself on the island of Guam and within the military in one of the largest humanitarian efforts at that time in US history. The joint team of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines had the huge task of setting up refugee camps for all the people fleeing Vietnam.
From April to September 1975, Operation New Life, along with Operation Babylift, would bring more than 110,000 refugees to the island of Guam to be processed. Approximately 93,000 of those refugees would receive asylum in the United States. At its peak, Camp Orote, Guam, housed 39,000 people on a daily basis.
Dick earned the nickname Mr. Transportation in those early days of Operation New Life. As the transportation officer, he coordinated the offloading of the planes and boats filled with refugees and the ground transportation to get the refugees from the port or Anderson Air Force Base to the makeshift camp at Orote Point. He also handled the incoming soldiers (approximately ten thousand) and equipment flooding onto the island from Hawaii and the US mainland.
In his letters and phone calls, he could barely contain his excitement. The deployment was the highlight of his young career. “Hey, Vick, things are going great here in Guam. I have a huge responsibility, and it’s so exciting. Over.”
“Wow, I’m really glad you’re enjoying it. Over.” (Dick Cody could be neck deep in shit, in one-hundred-degree heat, flies swarming him, and still claim to be having a good time. I really admired the guy for that.)
The deployment had given Dick a convenient excuse to postpone things, but it was time for me to take a stand. Around mid-July, Dick called and I gave him an ultimatum, all of which, I’m embarrassed to say, the Navy operator heard.
“Hi, Vick, how’s everything going? Over.”
“I’m getting just a little sick of sitting around here, working at the Grand Union, with no real prospects, waiting for you to finish your gig in Guam and tell me you want to get married. Over.”
“Gee, Vick, I don’t know what to say. Over.”
“Let me put it this way: you have until the end of the summer to marry me; otherwise, I’m movin’ on. I’ve had some other offers. Over.” (I did have two former boyfriends who had been hanging around, hoping that Dick and I wouldn’t get married, so it wasn’t a lie, but I would never have seriously considered anyone else—I just needed to make a point with Mr. Transportation.)
“Okay, let’s pick a date. I think I’ll be back in Hawaii by mid-August. Over.”
Checking my calendar, which was amazingly open, I suggested August 30.
“That sounds good to me. I’ll take leave and come home to Vermont. It’s a date! Let’s call our parents and get the ball rolling. Over.”
Years later, Dick told me that after I hung up, the Navy operator said, “Lieutenant, you better marry that girl!”
Now, with the date set, my mom and I had six weeks to plan the wedding. Back then, we didn’t have wedding planners and people in my world didn’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a reception. I had always been good at party planning, so, after I called each of my bridesmaids, everything else fell into place. But the most important thing was, we were getting married and beginning our life together as an Army couple.
Our wedding was simple and beautiful, everything I wanted it to be. As my dad walked me down the aisle and I saw Dick waiting for me, so handsome in his tuxedo, I did not think about the reality of being an Army wife. All I cared about that day, in St. Mark’s Church, was that I was marrying the man of my dreams. I knew that he loved me as much as I loved him, and I was excited for whatever lay ahead and ready for where our journey might take us. After a small reception, my sorority sisters and I locked arms and ended the festivities with our traditional Kappa Alpha Theta song. I was leaving my sorority sisters and entering the sisterhood of Army wives.
PS: In the coming months, I began to realize that the man I had married didn’t just wear a uniform and work in the Army. His uniform defined him, and his job was his life. He had taken an oath to defend our country, and he meant every word of that oath. When you marry a soldier, you pretty much marry the Army and everything it stands for.
3
Educating Vicki, Brand-New Army Wife
Okay, so maybe Army life wasn’t all fun and games in the beginning. The first year of marriage can be tricky for any couple. And as a brand-new Army wife, I was not only adjusting to marriage but had entered into a whole new way of life, with its own language, rules, expectations, and responsibilities. Add to that the fact that I was thousands of miles from home, with no family or friends nearby,
and I had to navigate pretty much on my own. But at least I had Dick, my best and only friend, by my side.
In many ways, being so far from home that first year cemented our foundation. When we argued or got on each other’s nerves, we had no one else to turn to. There was no running home from Hawaii to Mom and Dad. We faced adjustments and an occasional struggle, but never once did either of us think that we had made a mistake. From the beginning, we felt as if we complemented and brought out the best in each other.
I’m not sure what I expected married life to be. I was just one generation removed from the Betty Crocker image of a typical housewife, the woman who greets her husband when he comes in the door at 5:00 p.m., still wearing her apron, pots on the stove, delicious smells emanating from the kitchen. That’s what Dick and I had each grown up with: a stay-at-home mom and a dad who was home every night for dinner. But I was naive to think that Army life would play out that way.
“I don’t understand why you work such long hours,” I complained to Dick.
“Vicki, it’s not like I can help it. If there’s work to be done, I can’t just leave it.”
“But I make dinner, and then I wait and wait and try to keep it warm for you. Plus, I’m bored and lonely. I live for you coming home each day.”
“I know it must be hard right now. This is a big adjustment for you.”
That was an understatement. I didn’t want to resent Dick, but initially, that was exactly what happened. I didn’t like that side of me—it was unlike me. I also didn’t want to be the nagging wife. I wanted to be Betty Crocker!
I had so much to learn, and Dick was a willing teacher when it came to Army things. The problem was that we approached things differently. I was a hands-on learner, preferring to learn as I went, whereas Dick liked to jump right in and learn everything up front. He thought he could teach me everything the first week of our marriage, throwing facts and acronyms, of which there seemed to be thousands, at me. It was like a whole other language and so confusing.
“Vick, remember I told you that I’m the MCO in the DTO of the 25th ID. My job also encompasses the monthly OTJs to the Big Island” (movement control officer, division transportation office, 25th Infantry Division, opportune journey).
“All I know is, you work long hours, go to the Big Island for one week every month, and have to stay in the barracks at least one night a month.”
“Well, because I’m the lowest-ranking officer on staff, I pull SDO a lot” (staff duty officer).
“Wow, that really explains things! Tell me, what’s the acronym for ‘brand-new Army wife with no friends, no job, and homesick as hell’?”
“You’re funny, Vick.”
“I’m a laugh a minute, Dick!”
As I understood more about Dick’s job and the Army in general, I came to the realization that I was going to have to be comfortable with myself and being on my own. That was a fact of life in the Army. I couldn’t blame Dick for the long hours and separations; that was just the nature of the Army. I decided it was easier to be angry with the Army than with Dick; I didn’t want to jeopardize what he and I had, so I would just have to figure out how to get through it. I knew I could do it. I also knew then that we were probably not going to have a typical marriage like my friends back home. Still, I never once doubted our love for each other.
I began substitute-teaching in the elementary schools in central Oahu and on post at Schofield Barracks. I also got a job teaching high school English to soldiers working on their high school equivalency diplomas. I enjoyed the part-time teaching jobs—each so different, yet each providing learning experiences for me. It gave me something to do with my free time, and I began to feel like my old self again.
One thing I still had no clue about was the importance of being in the proper uniform, including the PT (physical training) uniform. Back then, the PT uniform was not standardized; soldiers wore shorts with their division logo (the 25th Infantry Division was the Tropic Lightning Division), their unit T-shirt, and white socks. I got behind on the laundry and innocently sent Dick off one morning with different socks packed in his gym bag. Because I didn’t understand the uniform thing, I figured it was okay for him to wear socks with little red stripes at the top. Personally, I thought they looked cute with his red shorts. Big mistake!
When he came home later, he told me what had happened at PT. “My battalion commander singled me out in front of the whole formation and said I was out of uniform. He said, ‘Can’t your little wifey do the laundry?’ I was so embarrassed.”
“What a sexist and demeaning thing for him to say!” I said to Dick. “I’d like to give him a piece of my mind! I’m trying my best to learn the whole Army thing, and who cares about the socks, anyway?”
Eventually, I did learn to care about the socks and all the parts of Dick’s uniforms. I learned that it was all about standards, about every soldier doing exactly what he was supposed to do and never, under any circumstances, being out of uniform. I bought Dick more socks—more of everything—and tried to be organized about the uniforms and all the other Army things that he needed, but I had to hold my tongue the next time I saw that lieutenant colonel.
We lived in a high-rise building just across the street from the main gate at Schofield Barracks. It was convenient for Dick but not the most picturesque location, let alone a condo on the beach. Our apartment was a roach-infested, one-bedroom unit with walls so thin we could hear the couple next door screaming and fighting night after night. Still, we fixed it up as best we could with our few belongings and some Army-issue quartermaster furniture. There was no point in buying a lot of furniture, since we would be moving within a year. I loved cooking and entertaining and reciprocated both for the couples who had been so good to Dick when he was a bachelor and for any of his bachelor buddies. At least once a week, we had some guys for dinner.
I went to the monthly coffee group for the wives of Dick’s coworkers. Because Dick was the youngest on staff, everyone was quite a bit older, and I didn’t have what I would have considered a day-to-day best friend. I longed for one—someone I could feel comfortable with and could talk to and confide in. I had just come from four years of college, living with sorority sisters, surrounded by more friends than I could count, but those first weeks in Hawaii, I couldn’t buy a friend. At first I didn’t know where I fit in, but some wonderful senior wives took me under their wing and, without even realizing it, became my first teachers. I was especially grateful to the lieutenant colonel’s wife who took me to my first Officers’ Wives Club (OWC) luncheon.
In the mid-1970s, the Army was suffering the effects of the decade-long war in Vietnam. There were budget cuts and a large reduction in forces (RIF), many of the NCOs and officers were worn out from multiple combat tours, and many soldiers didn’t want to be in the Army but had been drafted. People were doing drugs and drinking, some were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (although we didn’t use that term back then) as well as discipline problems, and there were even riots in the barracks. Many of the issues and social unrest that our society was experiencing had crept into the ranks of the Army. As much as Hawaii was a great place to be stationed, it was also wild and crazy back then. Happy hour at the Officers’ Club featured topless dancers and excessive drinking. I was surprised to find a college campus mentality in the Army. Forgive me for not wanting to share my husband with the betasseled dancers and his beer-drinking, rugby-playing buddies, but, having just finished four years of college and lots of partying of my own, I wanted only to settle into married life. Dick was ready for that, too, so we started doing more on our own or with other married couples.
When Dick was around on the weekends, we went for long drives, exploring the island. I was always trying to get him to go to the beach, but his short attention span and lack of desire to sunbathe (he had to be doing something like surfing) made it a struggle. He liked the drive out to Waianae with the top off the Corvette, along with a stop for lunch at Pioneer Chicken. I fig
ured that if he could tolerate excursions to the beach with me, then I could certainly endure the frequent trips to Hickam Field to check on the C-5A and C-141 cargo planes that were so much a part of his job. And if I gave him lectures on beach etiquette, then I deserved his tutorials on each type of plane and its load capacity.
A typical duty assignment back then was about two to three years. Since Dick had already been in Hawaii for three years when we got married, we knew that he would be getting new orders for a PCS (permanent change of station) move for the following summer.
One day that winter, Dick came home from work all excited and announced, “I got accepted to flight school!”
“Wait a minute—run that by me again. Flight school?”
“I’ve wanted to fly helicopters since I was a kid.”
I prided myself on knowing just about everything there was to know about Dick Cody, but here was something I hadn’t heard.
“Remember, I told you I applied before I graduated from West Point but got turned down because of my knee surgeries? I reapplied before I left for Guam. I can’t believe I got accepted. It’s a dream come true!”
Okay, maybe he had told me, but it had clearly gotten lost in the whole canceled-wedding-and-deployment shuffle.
“What type of helicopters, where exactly is flight school, how long is the course, and when do we move?”
“The Army’s flight school is at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and my class begins June first. We’ll leave here at the end of April so I can take my thirty days of leave.”
I had my maps out before he could finish his sentence. I was a map reader from way back, having inherited this unusual attribute from my dad. (Some people keep magazines in the bathroom or by their favorite chair; my family kept US road maps.) I was poring over the map while he was talking to me, trying to explain stuff I wasn’t yet ready for. “Please, Dick, first things first.” It took me a few minutes to find Fort Rucker on my map. It was way down in lower Alabama, near the Florida border.