A COMBAT MARINE MOM'S OBSESSION

"It's like living with death, even though he's still alive."
--Susan, a Marine mom, whose son did three combat tours to Iraq

"If this president's two daughters had to be deployed, he'd think twice about sending any more troops to Iraq."
--Kay, a Marine mom, whose son did three combat tours in Iraq

"No one in my family has a child in the military. I would feel better if just someone next door--or even down the block--knew what I was going through."
--Kathy, a Marine mom, whose son is about to deploy for the first time to Iraq

"I'm a therapist by profession, and I am surrounded by caring and supportive professionals who often pull me into their office and encourage me to talk about this. But nothing in my professional training or experience can possibly prepare someone for what this is like, and I can't explain to my good colleagues that they can't help, either--not unless they've been through it."
--Bob, a Marine dad, whose son was on his first combat deployment to Iraq at the time.



I've been accused--many times--of being obsessed by the war in Iraq, by members of my family, and people who think they know me.

I have never, however, been accused by another Marine mom.

It's a helpless feeling, trying to explain to someone, why the way you feel is NORMAL--when compared to others who are going through the same thing.

We are all obsessed--check out any military family support website that allows for back-and-forth commenting--to see that, it doesn't matter whether we have thriving careers or five other children still at home, whether this is our firstborn or the baby of the family, whether we are married to our warrior or related otherwise, whether we come from a military or a civilian background--this war and the toll it takes on our family is all-consuming.

All I can do is point to two women I know, one a progressive and one a conservative, both of whom had sons who served four years active duty in the Marine Corps and both of whose sons served three combat tours to Iraq, and both of whose sons have recently mustered out of the service.

One is a gifted artist who found herself unable to paint for the entire four years her son was in the Marine Corps. Within weeks of his getting out, she went through a creative renaissance--a frenzy of painting--and emerged so profoundly happy she could hardly contain herself. Before long, she was talking about writing a book, and taking up marathon-running again.

Another channeled her energies into USO activities during the years her son was in the Marine Corps, preparing hundreds of care packages and sending off Army troops from DFW airport every Sunday, along with other activities designed to "support the troops." She endured her son's deployments with a sort of manic energy, going into overdrive with the care packages and other coping tactics, festooning her house with Marine Corps paraphernalia and so many bumper stickers and yellow ribbons on the back of her Tahoe that it's almost covered solid. (Her son said that, at one point, she'd sent him so many care packages that he built himself a wall out of the boxes.)

She still spends every Sunday afternoon at the airport and still sends out packages, but now that her son is home and enrolled in college, she has been set free, laughing and chattering around the house like a happy little magpie, out from under--at last--the dreadful anxiety and ongoing resistance to the idea that she could bury her child at any time.

Part of my friend Bob's duties as a therapist is to counsel veterans who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and he and I have discussed the idea that, in a sense, the parents of those in the military endure a sort of post traumatic stress of their own.

Survivor's guilt, as well.

Enduring such unmitigated stress for months on end, knowing that friends of your son or daughter have died--sometimes right in front of them--writing letters of condolence to bereaved parents even as your own child is still in terrible danger, knowing that your beloved child is going to be asked to do terrible things and may even kill other human beings--and then live with it--trying to remain strong for that child and keep from them the toll their deployment is taking on you--is a stress that can take months, if not years, to come to terms with.

There is a phenomenon I've noticed among the Marines I've known who've returned alive and in one piece from combat--I've observed it firsthand.

They seem to understand.

My son and my nephew, both, have been quick to hug their moms. Not just when they leave the house, but most any time the two of you are in the same room together, like, say, standing at the kitchen sink. They'll reach over and give us a manly quick-hug, and sometimes say, "I'm glad to be home."

They appreciate, so much, everything that their loved ones do to support them during their deployments, and they know--more than anyone--how close they came, time and time again, to never being able to hug their loved ones again.

This Christmas was the first time in years that my son had been able to be home for the holidays when he was not due to deploy soon or, was actually in Iraq. Every now and then, I would think of the mothers of his buddies who did not make it back, and my breath would catch in my throat, and my eyes would well up, and I'd have to creep out of the room and weep in private so he would not know where my thoughts were.

But I knew that he had similar thoughts.

When I talk about Marine parents--it's not that I don't include Army or Air force or Navy parents in that mix--but I do want to distinguish between COMBAT troops and SUPPORT troops.

In this terrible war, there are no safe havens. There is no "front line." There is no "rear area." Just getting from, say, the Baghdad airport to their bases is fraught with danger.

Even big bases get mortar rounds lobbed into them at random, and I know of troops who've been killed while "inside the wire" by such mortar rounds. We also remember terrible events in the past, in which some Iraqi security personnel within that wire betrayed their American allies and allowed explosives or other attacks to be carried out within the base confines.

These are terrible events, to be sure, but they are random.

But for those troops ensconced in large military bases, let's face it, their lives are different. They have access to e-mail, for instance--some of them can even post their own blogs. They have better living quarters, air conditioning, plenty of water for bathing, a fully-stocked mess hall and PX. On some of the huge sprawling bases, there are even fast food franchises, gift shops, gyms for working out, internet cafes, and other amenities.

Many of those troops are housed in air conditioned storage containers that hold only two, and it becomes a home away from home, a place to put, say, a teddy bear sent by their child. Sometimes they get up base touch football or basketball games or holiday parties.

Now, I must also be fair and state that there are plenty of troops who live on those huge bases who still must go out on daily patrols, and I do not wish to disparage their own dangers and service and sacrifice.

But the simple truth is that, generally speaking in military terms, for every ONE combat troop, there are TEN in support of that troop's work--either in supply, or transportation, or headquarters command, or intelligence interpretation, or tech support, or base security, and so on. And these troops can send daily e-mails home, can even call home every day sometimes.

Their families can be reasonably assured that they will get to come home.

With combat troops, though, and especially for Marine Corps infantry troops, and the Navy medics who hump with them--these young men and women are DAILY exposed to the most bloody and dangerous of jobs in the worst areas of the war zone.

As I've stated before here, the Marines I know, and the parents who e-mail me in our own little support group, live a far different life than those on big bases.

Their "FOBs"--Forward Operating Bases--are often housed in abandoned buildings with no water or power. There is no mess hall and no PX. Once every seven to ten days, they are transported to a real base where they can get a shower and a hot meal, and sometimes, depending upon their CO's, they have hot meals trucked out to them once a day. But for the most part, they live on MRE's and on stuff their folks or spouses send to them in care packages.

As far as phoning home goes, a platoon will lug around a battered satellite phone, and in relatively quiet moments--while up on a rooftop watching for snipers, say, or around a desert campfire--they will pass the phone around so everyone can check in at home. The phones are usually so beat-up that the connection gets cut every two minutes or so, and once the satellite is out of range--so is the phone call. There is only time to tell them we love them, to ask if they need anything and if they've received any of our packages, to tell them we miss them and pray for them daily, to reach out through the cosmos for that quick hug.

It's not the same thing as lining up in an air-conditioned call center for a half-hour conversation with parents or spouses on good phone lines. Not the same thing at all.

Combat parents and spouses do get those types of calls as well, usually once every ten days or so when our guys get to spend a night on a real base, and we cherish them because in those few minutes, we can feel at peace, because they are safe.

For 24 blessed hours, they are alive and well.

Even so, when a combat troop calls home, their loved ones always live with the knowledge that this may be the last time they ever hear their child's voice.

How would you speak to your child or sweetheart if, in every conversation, you knew it could be your last?

What would YOU say?

Usually, combat troops often go out on lengthy patrols that require them to sleep in abandoned houses or out in the desert. And everywhere, wherever they go and whatever they do, they are surrounded by the enemy.

Children playing in the street beg for candy from the troops, then act as scouts, and run in to tell their elders when the American convoys or patrols are coming.

Men who pretend to work with the Americans by day are the same ones who creep out under cover of darkness and set the IED's that they explode with remote controls as soon as the children alert them that the Americans are coming, and then they disappear into the labyrinth of dusty Iraqi streets to try again another day.

So many vehicles are hit by these roadside bombs that it has become commonplace for patrols. Not all of the bombs are lethal. Not all of the bombs kill. They don't even all go off. But enough do to disable many of the vehicles needed for those patrols, and foot patrols are even tougher. In some neighborhoods, such as Ramadi, the troops have to jog down the streets, zigzagging as they do so, because the snipers are so bad.

People die. People get parts of their bodies blown off. People sitting next to them walk away unscathed on the outside and scarred for life within.

Sometimes, your child has to pick up body parts left over from an explosion, and not just of fellow servicemembers, but from children and families caught in vicious sectarian fighting.

It has been thus throughout the history of warfare, but in the past 40 years, whenever a troop has been sent into combat, when his tour was over, he was done.

Not so any more, not in Bush's war.

Now, a combat troop can be sent to the most horrible places in the entire war, come home alive and well, then a few months later, get sent back again, come home, then get sent back…

Every time they get sent back could be the last time. They know it and their families know it.

And every time that they are home, this oppressive dark cloud hangs over their heads with the same question pressing down on them: AM I GOING TO HAVE TO GO BACK? Or…IS MY LOVED ONE GOING TO HAVE TO GO BACK?

I can't tell you the accounts of combat deaths I've read or heard about that occurred two weeks before they were due to come home, after multiple deployments.

We combat parents know it and the combat troops know it. And we have to live with it for the entire time our children or loved ones are in the service. A Marine Corps commitment is four years, and after that, four years in the Reserves.

An overstretched, overstrained, overstressed military trying to fight every war Bush wants to fight, must depend heavily upon its reserve forces.

So for FOUR MORE YEARS, we have to live with the knowledge that our children or loved ones could be yanked out of their civilian lives and sent back to war again, only this time, when they are not at their peak physical condition or training, possibly led by inexperienced superiors.

This war has gotten so deadly, so dangerous, that many of the news media reporters covering it cannot leave the large bases or relatively secure areas where they are housed. Many times, on issues like the congressional debate over the war, they interview those troops who are housed on these large bases, many of whom have not even been on combat patrols. It is these troops who are the ones most likely to comment on-camera that their morale is being hurt by this debate.

But for those intrepid souls who leave those bases and go out in the field on the deadliest of patrols--such as Lara Logan of CBS evening news and Richard Engel of NBC Nightly News--those reporters who have themselves come under fire or experienced an exploding vehicle--those reporters are far more likely to hear from combat troops that they are growing weary of fighting, that they know it is a losing battle, that they think it is time for a complete change in strategy.

Those of us who are combat parents--especially those of us who objected to this war in the first place more than four years ago--know this, and yet we must endure outrageous schemes for "victory" from the so-called commander-in-chief, we must observe close-up and first-hand the futility and frustrations of those schemes for the troops on the ground, and we must live with the terrible good-byes when our precious children leave for war.

For so many thousands of us who do not have access to the support offered on military bases--for the Marines, especially, who are not as large as the army and are a seagoing force--we have no one nearby who can possibly understand our agony. This nation was at peace for an entire generation. Many modern families don't have a single family member past World War II who has served in the military.

They send a cherished child off to war and they have no idea what that means, and whether they watch the news or not, whether they follow political debates and blogs or not, they are alone.

Online support communities can be blessed help, but the fact remains that when you put your child on a plane not knowing if you will ever see them alive again, or welcome them back and see that they are changed forever and there is nothing you can do or say that can take away their pain, and when you know that it's all going to happen again and again while politicians pose and preen in front of the flag your child may die to defend…

How can you NOT be obsessed?

How can you not search, each and every day, for some small glimmer of hope, from any quarter, that somehow, some way, the day will come when we will no longer have to live with this awful anxiety, this daily dread, this terrible terror?

Many of you reading this right now are unaware of the fact that I am a published author. I've had eleven books published by major New York houses--you need only check me out on Amazon.com to see that this is true.

I keep being asked if I am working on another book. Even my own family is impatient to see me back doing what I do best and what has always brought me such joy. They see me pouring my energies into this blog instead, and it worries them. They wonder if I will ever be able to write again. Sometimes I wonder that myself.

But my situation is no different from my friend Susan's--the artist who could not paint. The truth is that the relentless, ongoing, chronic stress of this situation so paralyzes those of us going through it that we can hardly turn our attention to creative pursuits that do not reflect that same anxiety. In those four years that Susan's son was in the Marine Corps and going through three combat deployments to Iraq, she was only able to complete one painting.

It was a peace sign.