Growing Up Military

This is a story about growing up with a military parent. One parent, half a dozen aunts uncles and great-uncles, twice as many cousins, and two grandfathers pretty much covered all the branches twice over in my family. Not counting our military friends. So being around men and women in uniform was a normal sight for me growing up.

While growing up we didn't move around base to base when my father had to move.

He just went by himself.

In a little kid's mind, it didn't matter where their daddy was or how long he would be gone. It was the fact that they were gone. Back then I didn't really understand the whole thing of "daddy would come back as soon as he can." I'd just tell people he was gone. That I didn't know where or for how long, just that he was gone.

A few times I would say he was dead.

It was easier I suppose.

Telling people that, it mean sense to me.

After a while of him being gone, his memory would fade in my six-year-old mind and it was almost like he was never coming back. Then he would show up after a while of basic training and classes. Everything would go back to normal until they'd call him back out again.

Then he'd jet off to a conjoining military base.

I remember being called into my parent's room with my brother.

I was six at the time.

They sat us down and everything became silent.

Even at the young age that I was, I knew something was wrong.

My brother and I had took note of the increasing amount of whispers around the house.

After a long nervous glace between my parents, my mother said "We have some sad news. Daddy's been deployed to Iraq." My mother was always the one to tell bad news. She told us our grandmother had died just one year before sitting in the same room, in the same place.

I remember burying my face in a pillow while my mother rubbed my back. I told her "This was almost as sad as when Grandma died." And it was.

He brought home his gear he would be wearing out in the field.

He put his helmet on me after extracting it from his car trunk. The helmet made my neck hurt from it's weight and being over sized so, made me giggle.

I sat it back in the trunk, right next to a fully packed duffle bag.

Not long after that, he had to leave.

We had to wake up early to send him off.

I remember it being very cold that day, my tears almost freezing as they drizzled down my cheeks. We sat on the tailgate of our old farm truck to take pictures. Me in my coat, my brother in his, my father in his camouflage field jacket.

Then, off he went.

His division went to a neighboring town with a larger airport to take flight a few days after arrival.

I was told stories of how my father would hide from the nurse, making her chase him down to get his travel shots.

A short time before their take-off into the unknown my father was approached by the First Sargent with a message.

A message that said his retirement papers had came through and he was free to go home.

My father had been working on it for a while, wishing they'd come through before his tour started.

I don't think he ever imagined they'd cut it so close.

They had already found someone to take his place on the daring journey.

He came home and we had a small party complete with friend chicken.

His sister, my aunt, had dropped off a Welcome Home Dad banner she had made for us to decorate.

He was home, everything was back to normal. He wasn't that same as before he embarked on the journey, though.

He went to work at the local military base repairing the equipment that we send overseas.

We received a call from one of my father's closest friend's wife.

His friend, a man whom belonged to the same Division my father had exited just months before,  had been hit by a grenade in battle. He had suffered brain damage along side body damage.

The news frightened us in many ways.

The damn war had stuck close to home this time.  We knew how close my father was to this man. He spoke of him and the adventures they experienced quite often.

We knew he was my father's right hand man and in another life, when my father's papers didn't come through, he would have been right there beside him.

We thought that until we heard exactly what happened.

Before my father had abandoned his division at the airport, he had given his camouflage Bible to his colleague. My father thought his friend would need it more then he would. 

 It was Sunday morning, they had established a makeshift church were they had set up camp. People had gathered underneath the little tent. The people who didn't want to attend, had to go out and run this obstacle course that they had also set up in the time that they'd been there. My father's friend, choose the course he would run. A mortar round was approaching fast and he didn't make it back to safety quickly enough. He became a sitting duck.

After many surgeries and an extended stay at Walter Reed, our friend made it home.

We still see his occasionally, standing behind a folding table, handing out little felt flowers to the people who dropped spare change into his jar labeled DAV.

The man that took my father's place on the eighteen month tour made it back home safe.

We've seen him once or twice since.

Going on with life, living day to day not knowing what news tomorrow may hold.