This girl I know peripherally because we follow the same religion... she was just kinda floating her way through life like a lot of us used to do. Making her own way, making her own choices. She'd disappear and resurface a few months later. Bad relationship here. Life lesson there.
She came from an abusive home, had psychological issues which got her kicked out of the Air Force during basic training. She was doing her best to be able to live on her own terms, trying to make an honest living. But she didn't have schooling, skills or support of any kind. So she ended up like a lot of them do.
She's pregnant. And her husband of six months, The One(tm) who finally tied her down, is about to deploy for Iraq.
You don't want to sound like her mother (especially HER mother... but I'm not going there). You want to sound like a friend. But you're twice her age and you see all the pitfalls and traps laid by the military for the likes of her and her family, and you just want to have a primal scream into a pillow or something when she excitedly says, "...and we're going to look at cars tomorrow!"
They're about to take on a huge amount of debt with a baby on the way, and he's deploying to Iraq. And the soulless sons of bitches who told us all to "go shopping!" on 9/12/01 will gladly and gleefully take their pitiful amount of money, their souls, and food out of the mouth of their firstborn child.
They're just barely adults themselves. They don't even think about the possibilities. They're a young, poor enlisted family - one grunt, one and a half "dependents". It doesn't even occur to them that he could come home in a box or somewhat less than whole, that she could be saddled with thousands of dollars of debt and an infant to feed - and possibly him to feed as well should he come home disabled.
Well, I did my best. I pointed her toward the American Veterans And Servicemembers Survival Guide, available as a free .pdf download, and told her to read it NOW, because she's going to need to know all that stuff ahead of time - should something bad happen she is going to be too shell shocked to want to sit down and read a book then.
And I pointed her toward Casey J. Porter's YouTube video about how enlisted troops are being conned into spending all their money both here and overseas, in order to build their dependence on the military and force them to stay in. It's a game I saw myself played all too often during my own military service, but the heart-ripping part these days is that these kids take on all this debt as they take their first steps toward adulthood. Furniture, house, car. Sheets, towels, silverware, china. Artwork. Household pet. Clothing and food and diapers and toys for the kid.
Then one comes home in a box. Another comes home missing a leg, an eye, a hand. There's PTSD and TBI, and like magic your breadwinnin' grunt isn't a rock star in the "Be All You Can Be" action movie anymore... he's nothing to them if he can't shoulder a gun and play the game. And you and your kid are now dependents of a dependent... LESS than nothing. Get 'em out by Friday. Repo the car, sell the house. Roll up the shiny new pretense at stable, responsible adulthood and get whoever's left on the dole.
It never was much of a giant step from an A1C's pay to welfare anyway, I certainly remember that. I actually made more working as a civilian in a supermarket. They're not living large now, but they're living. The government pays for their housing, there are cost of living allowances, there's combat pay, there's medical care.
She doesn't even know that she's going to have to fight tooth and nail for those benefits if anything happens to him.
Well I pointed her in the right direction. I tried. And I'm not her mother. There's only so much I can do. But goddamnit, I now have a whole new set of reasons to hate this fucking war to the marrow of my bones.
To this day, remembering this 20 year old conversation gives me chills:
"Didja hear about Marie? She cracked up when she got the news about Ed. Had to be taken to Weisbaden and shipped back to CONUS in a straitjacket."
"Tsk tsk. Damn, she was pregnant with his kid, wasn't she?"
Marie and Ed were real people. Ed was my command sponsor - the guy who takes you around and shows you the ropes when you are assigned to a new duty station in the military.
Ed died on Pan Am Flight 103, the day before I myself flew out of Frankfurt to New York for a week's worth of Christmas leave with my family.
Sergeant Ed Eggleston's pregnant fiancee was due to also fly out the next day and meet him at his home in upstate New York. They would thence go to his mother's hospital room, which she was unable to leave as she had terminal cancer, and be married. Right there, in the hospital room, for Christmas.
Instead, Ed disappeared forever into the air, earth and water of Lockerbie Scotland and the fire of a Lybian terrorist's bomb. His wife and unborn child... neither the Army, the nation, nor the world at large were kind enough to record their fate.
Now my young, pregnant Army wife friend; and her husband, soon to be deployed to a meatgrinder that makes the plot of Sweeney Todd look sane, are "looking at cars".
That primal scream is seeming like a real good plan right about now.
Crossposted at VoteVets.org