Army Wife

  Dick’s very first deployment, to Guam, before we were married, was more of a big inconvenience. I didn’t worry about something happening to him; I just plain missed him. So when he returned and we were able to get married, all was well.

  When Dick returned from his short tour in Korea, we went through a definite period of adjustment. Unlike the times when it was just the two of us, having a baby changed the dynamics. Dick needed to feel like he was a part of the family again, not an outsider, and I had to work on giving up a little control of Clint, as I took my mothering very seriously. Just as I wanted to be in Dick’s world, I had to let him into mine and Clint’s. It took a few weeks of communicating and verbalizing our feelings to each other to get us back on track.

  When Dick left us in Savannah to go off on that special-operations deal, I worried about him almost every day. I lived with a lot of fear and stress during that relatively short period of time, but somehow that reintegration was surprisingly easy. When he returned that time, I was just plain relieved, and the boys were too young for that deployment to have impacted them.

  The Gulf War presented us with a whole other set of issues. It was a lengthy, dangerous deployment, and before Dick’s unit returned, our battalion was assigned a counselor to help prepare us for the reunion and reintegration. It was all pretty basic information; most of it made sense, based on what I had already experienced with Dick, and I even learned a few new things to keep in mind. Our husbands went through similar briefings in the combat zone. The battalion chaplains talked to all the soldiers and the leadership about what to expect and what to do and not do when they returned home. Dick and his command sergeant major spent the first few weeks after their return trying to identify any soldier who was having a rough time reintegrating or anyone having problems at home. They even set aside some vacant rooms in the barracks in case a soldier needed to cool off.

  Clint and Tyler were just so glad to have their dad home that they didn’t seem to miss a beat. Maybe because of their ages (twelve and ten) and their ability to comprehend what their dad had done, to them it was over now that he was home safe. They didn’t exhibit any weird behavior and didn’t test us in any way. They were busy with their friends, school, and sports. They did enjoy their dad’s recent fame and even had friends ask them for their dad’s autograph.

  Those first weeks after Desert Storm were, in many ways, idyllic. When you’ve worried about your loved one for nine months and lived with stress and fear for much of that time, it’s a huge relief to put all that aside. Plus, something about Dick’s having been gone for so long and the added danger of the mission made for very intense and exciting sex—we were like young kids again. Our communication was good, and we got caught up on everything during our trip to Colorado. We had little power struggles over day-to-day things—usually when I didn’t want to give up control of something because I was used to being in charge—but no significant hurdles.

  So I was caught off guard when I realized Dick had broken a promise to me, which triggered a rage in me that I did not know I possessed. He had promised to quit smoking and chewing tobacco (I didn’t mind an occasional cigar) when he returned from the deployment. He always did those things sporadically, but more so during deployments. I thought it was an annoying habit that he could easily stop, but when I dropped by his office one day and through thick smoke saw a lit cigarette in his hand and a wad of chew in his cheek, I went from adoration to pure hatred in a split second. I couldn’t say a word, because a journalist was interviewing him, so I quietly backed out of the room and ran to my car. In that moment, I wanted to leave him. All the way home I was thinking, How dare he! He didn’t even try to keep his promise! I’ve worried so much about him all these months, and then he comes home and continues to do something to jeopardize his health!

  I knew I had to do something with my anger, so when I got home, I packed his duffel bag with some essentials and put it by the front door. He came home as soon as he finished his interview because he had seen the look on my face. I told him to go to the barracks until he was ready to quit smoking. He knew I was serious. By the time the boys got back from school, I calmly told them that their dad was going to spend the night in the barracks because he hadn’t quit smoking. Completely on their own, they made NO SMOKING signs on construction paper and taped them on every door in the house. I was so proud of my sons for taking a stand with me.

  Later, after I had calmed down, Dick and I talked. I told him everything I had been thinking. I realized I wasn’t just angry about his broken promise; it was a buildup of nine months of stress and worrying about him. I felt he had no regard for himself or for the boys and me. He begged and pleaded and promised to quit, so I let him come back home. The issue was resolved for the time being but would persist on and off for years.

  That argument had as much to do with Dick’s reintegration as it did with his smoking. I came to realize that with each reintegration, we had to have at least one big blowup in order to clear the air and move on. It happened every time; some were worse than others.

  Also during that time, we experienced the emotional upheaval of Dick’s giving up command of his battalion and moving. We argued about that, too, because he had been seleceted for a command in the special operations community. Again, I felt as if Dick had come home safe, only to go right back into another dangerous job. He didn’t see things the way I did. It was a bone of contention with no easy compromise, and it wasn’t until we were all settled in the next place and I accepted what his job was that we could begin to feel normal again. All in all, that reintegration took us a couple of months to get through. After that one, it always seemed easier.

  The weird thing about reunions and reintegration is the fact that two different dynamics are at play at the same time, creating a conflict of emotions. You’re riding high on the actual homecoming, but then, at any given time, something can trigger emotional outrage and bring you down. In that instant, you hate the very person you love, the person you just welcomed home. You think you’re going to get divorced over who gets control of the checkbook or the TV remote, or for not quitting a bad habit, and then you feel guilty for even feeling that way. As we got older and more mature, we learned just to ride it out, knowing that it would all pass in time.

  Dick did not experience—and we were luckier than most in this respect—any lasting psychological effects related to actual combat. Maybe because he was a pilot and so much of what he did was from up in the air, thus distancing him from the death and destruction on the ground, he didn’t experience what soldiers on the ground do. There were times during Desert Storm when he did see the effects of his missiles and guns; he told me about flying low over the Highway of Death at the end of the war and what that looked like. He showed me some of the footage of Task Force Normandy from the video gun tapes on his Apache, but to me, it was blurry. Maybe I didn’t want to know what I was looking at. Dick seemed unemotional as he pointed out to me, “When bullets and missiles are coming at you, you will do whatever it takes not to get shot down.”

  By the time Clint and Tyler were flying Apaches in combat, they said pretty much what Dick had said: “You’re firing at a target on the ground, and you try not to think what that target is.” There is no emotional attachment when they pull the trigger. (The trigger being a button on the cyclic.)

  I know that each of them has seen things, and has had to do whatever it took not only to keep themselves safe but to protect the soldiers on the ground—because, after all, that’s what Apache pilots do in combat. Maybe being in their cockpits has shielded them from some of the trauma. Like their dad, my sons have had buddies die in helicopter crashes and in combat and those images will be with them for life.

  We’ve been luckier than most families who have been through the ups and downs of Army life, and I know that not everyone gets off as easily as we have. When it comes to reintegration and my family, I’ve adopted an attitude similar to Dick and the boys: I will do whatever it takes to get through
it.

  13

  The Best Year of Our Lives

  We left Fort Campbell in the summer of 1991 after tearful goodbyes to the unit and the people who had become our family. Fort Campbell felt like home to us, and none of us wanted to leave. Just eight days after giving up command of his Apache battalion, Dick took command of a Special Missions Unit (SMU). We had had lengthy discussions and gone around and around about his taking the job, but there was still no easy answer.

  “Vicki, I can’t really turn this down. If I do, I might as well get out of the Army. Do you want me to do that?”

  “Of course not! I just wanted you to take a nice, safe job like everyone else we know. Why do you always have to have these high-stress, dangerous jobs? Aren’t you tired? I’m tired!”

  “This job is what I do. It’s the kinds of missions that I just did in Desert Storm. As the commander, I won’t be going on all the missions, but I will have to travel and it is highly classified. I won’t be able to tell you everything. And you can’t talk about anything.”

  “That’s impossible for me, Dick!”

  Still, when he asked me to go with him to look at houses, I went, and when he said, “Trust me, Vick,” I did.

  That first year of Dick’s new command, he was gone 200 of 365 days. I had few friends and lived in a civilian neighborhood where I didn’t know my neighbors. I was lonely after living on an Army post surrounded by other Army families; it forced the boys and me to live outside our comfort zone. I had to get used to answering people’s questions about Dick’s comings and goings and questions, like “If he’s in the Army, why doesn’t he wear a uniform?” I learned to keep my answers simple. The less said, the better, and the story I stuck with was that he was in “research and development.” I found things to do; I got involved in the boys’ schools and made a life for us. There were some advantages to Dick being in a Special Missions Unit; when he wasn’t traveling, he worked decent hours and was able to attend the boys’ sporting events and even helped coach them. The boys were old enough to enjoy the same movies as we did, so we spent Friday nights with them and had a date night every Saturday.

  After all the time that we had just spent apart, I was more determined than ever not to let Dick’s new job or the US Army come between us, but that took patience, trust, and effort. Because I was not working, I had time to devote to my husband and the boys. I believed my job was to be there for Clint and Tyler during what I thought was a very important time: puberty, middle school, and high school. I was the constant in their lives. I was the constant in Dick’s life, too.

  That assignment was not my favorite, by any means, but I made it work. When given a choice to be happy or sad, I choose happy every time. I greatly enjoyed Clint and Tyler’s company, and Dick and I were both proud of what fine young men they were becoming and of how well they adjusted to new surroundings and public schools. I found my niche in writing, too: I wrote a children’s book based on Clint and Tyler’s experiences in Army life. I didn’t know where it would lead me, but it was something that I felt compelled to do and that occupied me when Dick was gone.

  When that tour of duty was over, there were no tears shed and no foot dragging on my part. We were on our way to the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. It was billed as what would be the “best year of your lives” by everyone who had ever been there. After two back-to-back commands and four years of pretty stressful living, we were all more than ready to let the games begin.

  Nestled in the Cumberland Valley of South-Central Pennsylvania, at the edge of the Shenandoah Mountains, just south of Harrisburg and just west of the battlefields of Gettysburg, is the small town of Carlisle. Carlisle Barracks is home to the US Army War College, established in 1901 to prepare selected senior officers for high command and staff positions. The first class had just nine officers. Dick’s class, 1994, had 304 students, including officers from all the services, Department of the Army civilians, and international fellows from thirty-six different countries.

  For the next year while Dick went to school, the four of us would experience Army life at its best. We would be surrounded by other Army families, reunite with old friends, and make new ones. And, for the first time in a long time, we would have no deployments, no separations, and no stress.

  We moved into one of the little white, cottage-type houses in what was nicknamed Smurf Village (because the houses were so small). Imagine my surprise when I found out not only that my old best friend Sarah Pearce was there at Carlisle but also that she, her husband, Bill, and their three kids lived just around the corner from our house! I walked over to see her that first day, and we cried as we hugged, long-lost friends who had seen each other only twice in eleven years. We could not have planned it better. My old friend from flight school, Eleanor Young, whom I hadn’t seen in thirteen years, was there as well. Every day, someone else moved into the neighborhood; our old friends from Fort Leavenworth, George and Marilyn Higgins, ended up right down the street. Literally overnight, I went from having practically no friends in our previous assignment to having more of them than I could handle.

  There were lots of teens on post, so the boys had instant companions, too. Army brats, like their parents, learn to make friends quickly. It was something we had all missed while living in a civilian neighborhood.

  Like everything in the Army, there was a method to the War College, not just to educate and prepare officers but also to build cohesive teams. There were all kinds of planned activities and sports events that facilitated bonds and friendships that would be beneficial later on, when the students were serving together in key command and staff positions.

  Campus life was fun for us, simple and easy. We loved the quaint feel of the post and the small town of Carlisle. It was the farthest north we had lived since we’d gotten married, and we enjoyed our close proximity to the big cities of the East Coast and to our families in Vermont. With our plane parked at the Carlisle Airport, we could fly anywhere we wanted and we made lots of trips that summer and fall. When the leaves changed and the weather turned cold, we were reminded of our childhoods. We bought a season pass to the Roundtop ski area, just twenty minutes from Carlisle, and prayed for lots of snow.

  The War College offered classes and seminars for the spouses that were designed to prepare us for our husbands’ next commands and/or staff positions, and I attended as many of those as I could. Dick’s own class schedule was easy compared with the jobs he’d had for the past ten years, and he signed up for every sport and extracurricular activity available.

  Shortly after school began, I noticed a role reversal between Dick and the boys. Now that their dad was a student, just like they were, they checked up on him, and I had to chuckle when I heard them questioning Dick about his homework. It was good for them to see their dad in a different light besides officer, commander, and leader.

  We all felt carefree, but then that fall, two things happened that were reminders of the realities of Army life—realities that we thought we had left behind but that were actually never far from us. First, a helicopter crash in the California desert claimed the life of a young pilot who had worked for Dick in our early years at Fort Campbell. Dick shared a special bond with Phil, and his death was especially difficult for us.

  Then, about a week later, on October 3, the news was full of US military operations in Mogadishu, Somalia. We watched in horror as angry mobs dragged dead US soldiers through the streets. We watched footage of Mike Durant’s helicopter going down, his capture, and eventually his rescue. That was when Dick confided in me some of the things in which he had been involved over the previous two years on the “black” side. Dick knew many of the pilots involved and many of the ground troops, and it was agonizing for him to watch all that on TV, from the sidelines.

  On the upside, we got plenty of snow that winter and skied every possible Saturday with the boys. Dick figured out a way to not have any classes on Friday afternoons so he and I could go skiing. It was just like o
ld times.

  Basketball took up the rest of Dick’s and the boys’ free time. Dick was either playing or coaching every night of the week. The boys were on the post’s all-star traveling team, which Dick coached, and we spent many fun Saturdays traveling to military installations throughout the mid-Atlantic region, from New Jersey to Washington, DC.

  Clint was a junior in high school when we began talking about where he wanted to go for college. Since he’d been a small boy, helicopters, airplanes, and everything else his dad did had fascinated him. Both boys had spent so much of their childhood hanging around Dick’s hangars at the various airfields and being surrounded by soldiers and pilots, and all the time we had spent as a family taking trips in our plane, had made flying a way of life for all of us. So it was natural to think that one or both boys would choose to go into the military.

  “I want to try to get into West Point and have a career in the Army, just like Dad,” Clint told us. “Someday I want to fly helicopters.”

  Dick and I were encouraging and supportive but at the same time tried not to sway Clint in any way. Entering the military had to be his decision and his alone. Secretly, Dick and I were thrilled at the prospect of either or both of our boys wanting to go into the Army, but more than that we just wanted them to choose careers that would give them the same satisfaction that their dad had experienced in his.

  As the snow melted that winter, excitement hung in the air as everyone began to talk about where they were going next. Our precious time at the War College was coming to a close, and Dick had orders for Fort Hood, Texas.

  In a small, private ceremony after graduation, Dick was promoted to the rank of colonel. I thought, It seems like I just pinned on his oak leaf for lieutenant colonel; things are moving fast.