Good "Military Christmas" story. But what hits me is, "Get these women out of the Military!" They are not really deployable. This first woman has two small childen by two different fathers and a present boyfriend. All in the last three years.
December 25, 2003
G.I. Joes May Be Under Tree, but Not Around It
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL - New York Times
KILLEEN, Tex., Dec. 19 — When Specialist Nichola Gauthier of the First Cavalry Division in Fort Hood goes to war in March, who will watch her babies, Genevieve, now 2, and the 7-month-old twins, Gretchen and Isabella?
Not their fathers. One has been a soldier in Iraq since April. The other was in the Army and now lives in Florida. Not her sister, Laura. She has been on duty in Iraq since April. The specialist's boyfriend cannot. He is leaving for Iraq in January.
So Specialist Gauthier, 27, Army mechanic and single mother from Brasher Falls, N.Y., is spending her Christmas arranging for her sister's husband — a rare civilian in the family — to be her interim nanny.
Little Genevieve already senses something is up, her mother said. "She knows when I put on a green uniform, and she throws a tantrum." Still, Specialist Gauthier (pronounced GAH-tee-ay) said: "I feel strongly it's something I have to do. I've got my mind set on going. I just pray to God I'm going to come back to them."
Torn between country and children. It may sound like a particularly wrenching dilemma, a sort of Nichola's Choice, but it is just an extreme example of the countless everyday sacrifices being made by Americans in and out of uniform as the United States counts down a first year of war in Iraq.
Elsewhere, the war may be more distant, something seen on the news and in the headlines. But it is intensely personal here at Fort Hood, the nation's largest military installation, home to Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz's III Corps and its more than 40,000 troops, including the Fourth Infantry Division, which captured Saddam Hussein. The vast post covers 327 square miles, enough to fit all five boroughs of New York City.
For Mollie Miller, 26, whose husband, John, a lieutenant with the headquarters company of the Fourth Infantry, has been away since March 26, it is the loss of someone, as she says, "just to hold my hand."
For Emily Howard, 24, whose husband, Jess, is also a lieutenant away with the Fourth Infantry, it was waking up on their first wedding anniversary, Aug. 21, to a call summoning her husband to deploy that night. Still, she recalled wistfully: "We were able to go out to eat. We got to go to the Olive Garden."
For Melissa Phillips, 21, whose husband, Benjamin, a corporal with an armored unit of the Fourth Infantry, has been in Iraq since April, it is that he has not been around to see their year-old daughter take her first steps and say her first words. Ms. Phillips spends her time collecting furniture to store for other soldiers who have been deployed, and she works in a card store in the Killeen mall, where, she said, most people are buying cards that say "I miss you" and "I love you."
"I take it day by day, and I pray to God," she said.
What does she pray? "I'm just blessed with such a wonderful family. If something was to happen to my husband, I know that we had a happy marriage, and that's the way things were meant to be. I just think everything's in God's hands right now."
And for Lula Lopez, 19, who held hands with her husband, Hector, 23, as they walked through the mall, it was worrying about his imminent deployment to Iraq as a driver of the Army's biggest trucks for the 1st Cavalry Division. They met at a gasoline station in Killeen a year ago, married in April, and now she is three months' pregnant.
"I'm behind him 24/7, 100 percent," Ms. Lopez said. "He needs to know that."
But she said she did not think the war was justified: "I don't think it's right for our troops to go over there. It's bringing the nation down, moneywise, bringing everybody apart."
She was frightened, she said. They have talked about Hector dying. "We're trying to plan now, the wills, the banks," she said. "It's scary."
But it is not just the women. There are men like Sgt. Ken Harvey, 44, a trumpet player with the First Cavalry Band, who worries here at home while his wife, First Sgt. Renee J. Harvey, a clarinetist, has been in Iraq since April leading the Fourth Infantry Band. Meanwhile, he has been caring for their daughters, Erin, 11, and Hannah, 7, at least until he departs for Iraq in March or April, by which time, he said, "she should be back." If not, he had a brother in Missouri City who could take the girls.
Was band music that vital to the troops?
"We shoot our weapons too," Sergeant Harvey said.
But he said the performances in the field were such morale-boosters that another Fort Hood ensemble he knew styled itself "Music Without Mercy." He did not want to dwell on it, he said, but if he had to he could play taps, too, for fallen soldiers.
Those left behind share tears in "Family Readiness Groups" and pair off as "battle buddies" to comfort each other during long periods of loneliness. Some wives keep their absent husband's voice on the answering machine for solace, or have dispensed with Christmas trees. Others buy artificial trees that will stay up, defiantly, until their men come home, they hope, in March or April, when the Fourth Infantry is due to return and the First Cavalry will replace it.
Some will never come home. Ursula Pirtle's husband, Specialist James H. Pirtle, was killed in Iraq Oct. 4 — four weeks before their daughter Katie was born — one of the 41 deaths from Fort Hood in the war to date. It is the nightmare those at home all struggle with.
Killeen empathizes. "We're home of America's heroes," said Mayor Maureen Jouett. "We're symbiotic. What's good for Killeen is good for Fort Hood, and what's good for Fort Hood is good for Killeen."
An early rail stop named for an 1880's railroad man, Killeen, a quintessential Army town of 103,000 spread along the gritty axis of Route 190 in Central Texas, has boomed along with Fort Hood. The post is an economic engine churning some $3.9 a year billion into the economy. Boosters call it the largest business in Texas. And Elvis slept here. It is where he trained in 1958, with the Second Armored Division, which became the Fourth Infantry Division.
William C. Chamberlain, a retired colonel who has made Killeen his home for 30 years, said he cherished its warm welcome after being showered with eggs upon his return from Vietnam. "We came back with no nothing," he said, his voice catching.
Ann Farris, deputy superintendent of the Killeen Independent School District, said the community offered a guarantee of sorts to the troops: "We take care of your families while you take care of us."
Ms. Farris and her husband, she said, recently took in two teenagers of an Army couple who both went to war. When the news of "We got him!" raced through Fort Hood, she said, "our first question was, Who got him?" When the answer was the Fourth Infantry, they burst with pride, cheering, "We got him!"
Many young wives who could go home to their families while their husbands are away decide to stay in Killeen.
"This is my home," said Brandi Azua, 20, who works in a shoe store and attends community college while her husband, Gabriel, serves in Iraq.
But sadness comes out in many ways. Noel Taylor, 29, a history and social studies teacher at Clear Creek Elementary in Killeen, sees 95 pupils a day, most of them children of soldiers in Iraq or headed there.
"Right now their focus isn't learning," Mr. Taylor said. "Their focus is their mother or father's safety."
The capture of Saddam Hussein led many to think the war was over and that their parents were coming home, Mr. Taylor said. "I'm having to tell them it's not over. We have a lot more work to do. Their constant question is why, why, why?"
He tried to turn it into a history lesson, talking about other wars, from the Revolution to Vietnam. Saddam Hussein, he told them, was like King George. To motivate his pupils, he displayed a large stack of gift certificates from the El Chico restaurant chain. They came in red, green and yellow, for Perfect Attendance, Honor Student and Bravo — the last a generic award for a student who just needs a boost.
"They get a thrill out of this," Mr. Taylor said. "Plus, it allows the family to go out, and save money if a certificate is used."
At the Killeen Chamber of Commerce in a 1913 train depot, two workers, Amy Shepherd, 23, and Jennifer Kirkpatrick, 26, commiserate. "I'm very proud of him, he's so exited to be going," Ms. Shepherd said of her boyfriend, Chris Taylor, a First Cav sniper due to leave soon for Iraq. "At first I couldn't understand," she said. "How could you be so excited about going to war? But yeah, I would be excited about getting to do something I've been trained for."
Ms. Kirkpatrick said the imminent departure, too, of her husband, C. J., with the First Cav, made their remaining time more precious. "Right now, I'm so grateful to be crowded in bed or to trip over his boots," she said. "They are proofs of his presence."
As the wife of Sgt. Maj. Charles Fuss, the Fourth Infantry's highest ranking noncommissioned officer, now in Iraq, Roxanne Fuss, 44, is Fort Hood's cheery comforter in chief, dedicated to lifting the morale of relatives left behind. "There is no alone," she likes to assure them.
But when a group of wives — her iron ladies, she called them — presented her with some Christmas gifts the other day, her eyes misted. First was an action figure that is a big seller at the PX this Christmas — a Fourth Infantry soldier doll complete with flak jacket, hand grenades and Meals Ready to Eat.
"He looks about Chuck's height, 6-2," Ms. Fuss decided, her voice strained.
Then she unwrapped a small glass figurine holding the division insignia, a cluster of four ivy leaves.
"It's an angel," said Jenny Murray, whose husband, Gordon, is a command sergeant major with an aviation battalion in Iraq. "Because," she continued, "you're the angel in our life."
"Oh, my God!" Ms. Fuss said, holding it up. "Do you see her? She's beautiful. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" Then the tears came.
The women were hugging when a cellphone's trill intruded. Sharon Jones, 38, an emergency room nurse whose husband, Milton, is the Fourth Infantry's command sergeant major in Iraq, rummaged in her bag and held the phone to her ear. "Hello!" she said, suddenly beaming. "Yes, I'm here."
"Shhh," everyone said. The room fell silent. Ms. Jones was talking to her husband.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |
