I've been playing Christmas music lately, while reading or sewing or wrapping packages (for financial reasons, we're lean and mean this year; I scrounged through my "I bought this and never gave it to someone" drawer" for many of them). One of my favorite CDs features Bing Crosby in a concert for the troop during WW IIs, and I always tear up when I hear "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and it resonates strongly with me. The final line is "...If only in my dreams." The song was written in 1943, at the height of World War II. It summed up the feelings of lonely G.I.s in Europe and the Pacific, dreaming of home and family while a war raged and hoping that next year they would indeed be home for Christmas.
The song has special meaning for me. As most of you Kossacks know, I was a Navy wife for 15 out of the 18 years I've been with my husband as wife and lover.
. I was fortunate never to miss a Christmas with him, though Gulf Insanity Part I was touch and go. He was sent to Saudi a few days before my birthday . The squadron was supposed to come home mid-December, but when calls to the duty office in ME (I had stayed in Jacksonville where I had a job since he was deploying as soon as he got to his new duty station; we decided we'd move me up there when he got back) couldn't tell me what flight he was scheduled for, or even if he was coming back, I started to get worried. Since we were in the final lead-up to a small war (but even in a small war, people die), I wasn't sure he'd be coming home with everyone else.
Ben was a groundpounder, a Tron--translated into English out of military speak, that means he wasn't air crew, and he fixed the electronics on Navy planes. He worked on P3s, which are heavily loaded electronic birds that track subs and other things, like ships bound for Iraq. His squadron had been deployed to Sicily, but he got assigned temporarily to Jeddah in Saudi. It was quite possible they'd leave him there until t he squadron replacing him got settled in and sent someone over. Which meant he might very well not be home for Christmas. Fortunately for us, he got word the day before to pack up and come back to Sicily, and he was on the final flight home to Brunswick, Maine. Despite his supervisor trying to put a spanner in the works, he got Christmas leave and was able to make it down to me.
Because he didn't know what time his flight would get in, he told me he'd take a cab from Mayport to the library branch where I worked. I was walking on air, and it appeared the clerks were telling all the patrons I was expecting my husband home from Saudi because a lot of them came over to congratulate me. The other librarians were all standing by to take over from me as soon as he walked through the door. When he did, they headed over and told me to go home. I managed to control myself until I got out of the public area and then he picked me up and swung me around. The end of Officer and a Gentleman, but recreated with a sailor in Crackerjacks (the bellbottom uniform). The clerks and patrons were disappointed we didn't do it in the main area, but I wanted to kiss him for real for the first time in months privately. And that Christmas, he gave me the most wonderful gift I've ever gotten. He gwve me the wedding rings we both wear. You see, when we married two years earlier, we were too poor to be able to buy the rings we'd wanted, and made do with $7 silver Claddagh rings.
After 9/11, the squadron wives for his Special Projects Squadron were called together for a briefing. I knew Ben wouldn't be going anywhere, because he was too important in his stateside job to ship over and there was no one else trained to do it--but it was very likely that the rest of the people would be going to Afghanistan or some other hot spot. That squadron was top secret. When they deploy, spouses aren't told where they are going, what they'll; be doing, or how long they'd be over there. There is no email and no phone service. All you can do is send Snail Mail. Once a week you get a call from the MCPO telling you your beloved is alive and in one piece. That's it. They are incommunicado the whole time. Even though I knew my guy wouldn't be going anywhere, I felt a kindred with the other wives, because I knew what they had to be feeling.
The Navy has a saying that being a Navy wife is the toughest job in the Navy. It sure the hell is one of them. When the active duty member is on sea dutt, you can guarantee they'll be deployed for at least 6 months of every year during the sea rotation, and probably more like 8 to 9 months. and that when they are home, they'll be working long hours preparing for the next one. In war time, deployments can extend indefinitely as the miltiary is stretched thin.
When a spouse deploys, the days drag on. You can pretty much guarantee that within the first two weeks, there will be a disaster--the car will break down, you'll be in an accident, someone will get hurt or sick. It never fails. You deal with the debacles by yourself, and you're told by the Navy not to tell him about the problems until they're solved. It's been my experience that Family Services is about as useful as, to use my husband's colorful Southern expression, tits on a boar hog. The phone bills alone (if you are lucky enough to be able to call him) eat up whatever extra money is coming in from danger pay or separation pay.
There's not a lot you can do about the nights you cry yourself to sleep praying that the one you love really is safe. The loneliness never leaves you, but, if you have children, you've got to keep your game face on for their sake. It's this loneliness that drives many spouses toi nfidelity and ends marriages.Even if you stay faithful--and msot do--and don't have a breakdown, it takes toll on you. If you are pregnant, you make sure you have a back-up labor coach, just in case he doesn't make it back in time. If he's gone during the holidays, you try to keep a brave front, even though trimming the tree and wrapping the presents seems like you're just going through t he motions, and you'd gladly trade it all--the tree, the presents, the holiday meal-- just to have him home. You mail him packages regularly with the stuff he can't get--homemade cookies, candy, books, while trying not to cry when he's gone for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays.
And you pray that one day you won't see two khaki-clad officers, one a chaplain, stride up your walk with bad news. Because you live every waking moment with the fear that this time he won't come back to you or that he will return maimed or changed emotionally from the man you married--because war takes its toll.
I was one of the lucky ones. My husband retired from the Navy two months before they invaded Iraq--though they considered using stop-loss to keep him in. But he didn't get out of the Navy unscathed. He'd seen Saddam's treatment of the Kurds up close, and he'd had to kill someone. And it took him ten years to tell him about that. When he did, he cried in my arms. He told me that once you've taken a life, you are never the same. That face haunts your dreams forever. A day doesn't pass that you don't think about it, even though you know you didn't have a choice because it was kill or be killed. He's finally talking about it others, two years after he told me. He's beginning to heal.
But sometimes he will fall silent, and a shadow will fall across his face, and I will know he is remembering.
So every time I hear "I'll Be Home For Christmas" this year, I will be thinking of all the men and women who won't be with family and friends on December 25th and praying that next year, they will be, that we will no longer beat war, that Bush will gain a soul, a heart, and a brain, and that no one's husband, wife, brother, sister, son or daughter or friend will be in harm's way. That no one will have to bear the scars of war as my hsuband does. That no one else will die or be horribly injured physically or mentally for Bush's arrogance.
P.S. I normally try to send care packages to people I know who are stationed overseas. While it's too late to get anything to them by Christmas, I am posting some links anyway. I know from experience that care packages are welcome any time. Books are especially welcome, along with DVDs and CDs -and since there are women serving, that means send old romance novels as well as mysteries, sf, thrillers, horror novels and sf and fantasy. Cookies, candy that doesn't melt, granola bars are always a big hit too.
Hating the war--and I most certainly do--doesn't mean hating troops. Support them. And work to bring them home .
http://usgovinfo.about.com/...
http://usgovinfo.about.com/...
http://anysoldier.com/
http://www.marineparentsinc.com
http://ca.dir.yahoo.com/...
http://www.operationshoebox.com/
http://www.soldiersangels.org/...
And some links to places that help the Iraqi people:
http://home.comcast.net/...