|
The other battle: coming home
High heels, high hopes, and high stakes
It was after midnight on June 3. In a heavy cloudburst, a formation of 3rd Infantry Division artillerymen marched from the parade stand across Fort Stewart's soggy Cotrell Field belting out the division's "Dog-faced soldier" song played by an Army band.
As the soldiers drew near the hundreds of cheering families clustered on one side of the field, children began leaping up and down. Wives, some wearing prom dresses and stiletto heels, screamed and dashed into the muddy downpour. Seconds later, the troops and loved ones converged in a drenched mass of hugs, squeals, and tears.
For young troops and their wives, separated by war for the first time, the homecoming was a moment of pure fantasy and overbrimming expectations. Yet beyond the lipstick banners and yellow ribbons, the parades and high-heeled embraces, couples must often struggle to reconnect and rebuild their lives together after long, hard separations. For many, a return to normalcy proves elusive.
Army reservist Staff Sgt. Christian Hofeller finally set eyes on his wife last month after more than a year in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the brief reunion in Boston ended painfully, in separation. Married in July 2000, Sergeant Hofeller has been deployed virtually nonstop since Sept. 11, 2001, when he was called into action in New York the day the twin towers fell. "This is the hardest and the worst part of everything, when it's time to come back," he says in a phone call from Brooklyn, N.Y., where he is now living with his mother and aunt. "I pictured it like the movies: They are at the airport with their arms wide and smiles - and she was. But in the movies they don't tell you what it's like after that, with the doors closed."
Hofeller had rushed through his redeployment screening at Fort Benning, Ga., declining to talk with a chaplain or counselor in order to return more quickly to his wife. But he remains focused in significant ways on the war zone he left behind. He says he's still on edge, looking up every time he hears an aircraft. And he is haunted by images of the dead and wounded from his days in a special task force. "You see the faces before you go to bed, but you learn to say goodnight," he says. Now, he prays for a second chance to revive his marriage.
Hofeller's case, though extreme, underscores the challenges faced by many. Family separation is now the third most important reason - after pay and benefits - that soldiers consider leaving the Army, says Bruce Bell of the US Army Research Institute.
Indeed, couples at Fort Stewart say that after a short "honeymoon," the struggle to readjust begins.
"There's that euphoria and 'I love you - you're safe.' But that stops pretty quick, and those dishes left on the table after three days start annoying you," says Laura Batson, who as the wife of Captain Batson, a battery commander, helps counsel other spouses.
Many men come home exhausted, thinner, hungry, and unable to sleep normal hours, Army officials say. Women are also tired, and sometimes bitter about being left alone for months. Add to this unrealistic expectations about sex, and arguments are almost inevitable, experts say. "I talk about flight to fight time," says Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kingsbury, a medical expert who briefs returning Army soldiers. "From the moment I get off the plane, how long will it be before we have our first fight."
When Laura Batson's phone rings these days, she says it's often because reunited couples are in conflict. "Most of the calls right now we're getting are: "I don't understand. We are fighting constantly. He doesn't like how I cut my hair.' It's not the hair. It's the fact that she's changed."
Sitting in her Hinesville living room, Laura explains that just as the war zone affected her husband, the battlefield at home changed her. "As a wife, you are doing your own little private war here. You are not facing Iraqi soldiers and grenades and artillery. But you are facing rumors, fears, self-esteem issues, finances, and children," she says.
Laura, a teacher, tried to shelter her children, telling 7-year-old William and 3-year-old Megan that Batson was in Kuwait. But when William came home one day asking "Is Daddy at war?" she had no good answer. She limited herself to 10 minutes of television coverage each morning or night, when the children were in bed. "You will lose your mind if you don't limit your intake of news," she says.
And while Batson had the companionship of his men, Laura, too, created her own "family" with close friends Valerie and Kelly. Several times a week, they had potluck dinners together. They bathed their six children and read them bedtime stories together. Once, they also kicked up their heels together. In an evening of escape, Laura and a group of female spouses watched the Lady Chablis drag show at downtown Savannah's Club One - an establishment off-limits to their active-duty husbands.
The growing independence of spouses, most of whom are women, can give rise to tensions when husbands return. He's used to giving orders. She's been coping alone for months and knows she can make it on her own. Under such circumstances, arguments can escalate into domestic violence. Soldiers and spouses meeting with Chaplain Mauck have acknowledged problems with domestic violence as well as concerns it might happen, he says.
Divorce is also more likely after a deployment, especially if the relationship was already troubled. "Dear John" situations are common, says Mauck, where the wife will find someone else, initiate divorce, and grant custody of the children to her husband. Indeed, the percentage of single parents in the military has risen 60 percent since 1990, with most of them men."
"Some of these guys have been gone more than they've been home. What surprises me is that marital breakups don't happen more," Mauck says.
More widespread than divorce or domestic abuse, Laura says, is a feeling of bitterness among wives over their husbands' prolonged absence. "The unfairness of life bubbles up, and the husbands come home, and the woman says - OK, I'm gone," she says. "They go to have time for themselves, to the mall, to the movies, and meanwhile the kids are climbing all over Dad and sucking the oxygen out of him."
To overcome such problems, couples must often "renegotiate" their entire relationship. Those with sound marriages, such as the Batsons, are better able to do this. "In the past, I probably didn't do my fair share around the house," Bryan Batson admits, saying he is willing to wash more dishes. Laura, also, says she must remember to let Bryan make decisions regarding the children again, after she's played the role of mother and father for so long.
Meanwhile, both realize it will only be a matter of time before he deploys again. "This has to be a calling," says Laura. "I have to make peace with that, and sacrifice."
A kind of rebirth
Sgt. Maj. Robert Howell shakes his commander's hand, salutes, and steps off a stone platform following his promotion ceremony. Dew glistens on the parade field, and the June air feels steamy in the mid-morning sun. He smiles and embraces his wife, Monique, and their two sons.
It is a proud yet bittersweet moment for Sergeant Major Howell, who returned from Iraq in early June.
Surrounding him is the "rock garden" of boulder-like monuments to fallen 3rd Infantry Division soldiers from the last century's major wars. Soon, Howell knows, another stone will be placed here to honor men, his comrades among them, who died in Iraq.
Howell carries his share of "emotional baggage" from the war, Monique says. The fear, the regret for innocent loss of life, the guilt over soldiers still facing daily attacks in Iraq. And while he's changed, so has his family. His boys are taller, and his wife more independent than ever.
Indeed, like many soldiers, Howell realizes that he'll never truly come home to life as he left it.
Still, having risked death, he and many others return with a deeper appreciation for living. Gilmartin enjoys watching sunsets over the beach. Batson is more grateful for the resourcefulness of his wife. And, today at least, Howell looks ahead to a future full of potential.
"You take a big, deep breath, knowing you hit the ground," he says.
"You appreciate being an American. You appreciate freedom. It's kind of like a rebirth."
|
RSS feed
