A Soldier's Story: How Much is Too Much to Give One's Country?

This is neither a pro-military nor an anti-military piece. It is the story of a little boy born to a teenage mother who grew up to be a very good man. He is eleven years younger than me and I've always thought of him as a little brother, not a nephew. The one and only time my parents sent my younger sister and I off to summer camp, we came home to find our older sister and her three month old baby also living in our room. Since they came with a new corner group ensemble to replace the broken down twin bunk beds my sister and I had slept on since leaving cribs, we initially were charmed. Not so much after the first six weeks of colic. But we were a family of all girls, and little Christopher was a boy, so we adored him. We were sorry when he and his mother moved out and we were happy when our sister remarried to the young Air Force corporal who would soon adopt our nephew.

I watched my nephew grow up like most other young boys of his generation or any other. He and his younger brother picked up sticks or rulers or whatever and turned them into guns. They dressed as soldiers and emulated their father's military lifestyle and discipline. They were kids who had big dreams of what life would be about some day. They later had a younger brother and finally a baby sister, but it was those two boys who grew up almost as a unit. Each wanted to be a soldier. When the younger brother had a serious leg injury in high school that left him with one leg shorter than the other and much hardware in his body for life he began to face the possibility he might not be able to get into military. He tried though. He applied to every branch, and finally the Army accepted him only to dismiss him from boot camp over the leg issue he had disclosed from the outset. Christopher, the older brother, also kept trying to get into the military, but not just into any branch and any program - he wanted to be a Navy Seal. He washed out twice, due to issues with his deep water swimming. He later adjusted his ambitions to Air Force Special Operations, initially in the pararescue unit. He made it in with flying colors. His first deployment, at the age of 20, involved the unglamorous duty of cleaning out troop transport planes upon their arrival at a southern air base. He had to wear a hazmat suit, mostly for the dangers of cleaning out the latrines.

Away from home for the first time in his life, he married another soldier he'd known for a few weeks. In very short order they became parents of his first daughter. But, their ambitions and aspirations were very different, and within six months of their daughter's birth their marriage was already in grave trouble. They divorced, went through a prolonged custody and visitation proceeding that was really ultimately decided by where the military next deployed each of them, to different sides of the country. He married again a few years later and he and his new wife soon had two more daughters. And then planes began crashing into buildings and their world, moreso than many of ours, was turned upside down.

He went first to Afghanistan, in a strategic unit working with strategic personnel from other branches of the military. During his second tour there he was awarded the Bronze Star for his role in taking out an enemy striking force in close comabt that claimed the lives of some of his unit. All of this time his wife, who was in her early twenties then, was living in a remote part of the south distanced from her own and her husband's family, raising the two younger girls on her own on a very tight budget, and worrying constantly about her husband's safety. When she could manage it, she brought the oldest daughter out for a visit, and very briefly in between the two tours my nephew got home to see his family. After the second tour he was home for a few months and flew out to the west coast to see his parents and brothers and sister and extended family. He looked different, older. He strongly resembles my father, and for the first time I didn't see the little boy I'd known or the skate boarding teenager he'd once been, but a war hardened veteran who was also a devoted husband and a very doting father. He had his arms around those little girls, who had been growing up in his absence, almost all of the time I saw him. Like many veterans, he talked little of war or conflict. While he was here, mostly for his parents but also because I wanted to honor him in some way, I had our legislature issue him a resolution honoring his service and acknowledging his Bronze Star. My local state senator graciously hosted the huge extended family on the floor of the State Senate and gave Chris the Resolution and posed for pictures with anyone and everyone. I do wonder how all of that felt to my nephew.

Not long after that visit he shipped out again, this time to Iraq, and a couple of months after coming home, he shipped out again. He came home in 2007, five years after first leaving to fight for his country, democracy, all of those things. He looked much older. He and his wife enjoyed time together again after so many years of long separations. I realized when I received pictures from them that nearly eight years into their marriage they were really still newlyweds. His oldest daughter flew out to their new home in North Carolina for a few weeks this summer and they had a family 4th of July, for the first time since 2001. When those pictures arrived I saw his oldest, about to turn 13, looks like a young woman more than a little girl. At Christmas this year he limited the amount of gifts family members could give his two younger daughters, because he knows their means and he knows what is reasonable and he doesn't want them spoiled. He also doesn't want people, himself included to overcompensate for the hard times they've endured without their dad. He is a great deal like his father and his grandfather before him. In the photos from Christmas he was sporting a scraggly beard and mustache, a signal he was ready to ship out again. That is how his family started 2008, sending dad off to war for the 5th time, and for the 6th year.

He goes willingly. The choice he has made is a military life. He accepted an extension of his service, he accepted additional tours of duty. I know, based on how he was raised and his own belief system, that he sees his kids frolicking in their little backyard in the modest home he is so proud to own and so proud to provide for his family, that he understands why he does what he does. I know his wife hopes he will get out soon. I know that, like any wife, she wants her husband safe, her family whole. But, she is a vivacious, intelligent young woman in her late twenties now - much more grown up than many women her age. For years she has known isolation, loneliness and much responsibility. She has also known the joy of raising a family and of a loving marriage - just not in the way she pictured. While her husband is away they really struggle to make ends meet. He is an enlisted man, not an officer. She knows how to make the most of the few perqs of military life, shopping on base, etc. Her life hearkens back to a much earlier time in our country's and our culture's hsitory, and all over this country many other military wives are living the same life she is and they are also making it work.

Given our penchant for conspicuous consumption, our adoration of all things celebrity and glittery and our commitment to corporate growth and the sustainment of personal wealth, I think it's time we really looked at each soldier's story. They do not live the lives we live. They do not walk in safety day after day. They do not possess much. They know enduring hardship, violence, isolation, uncertainty. They come home, the ones who come home alive, damaged, unsettled. They pick up as best they can until it is time to ship out again and do it all over. Six years. The term unremitting comes to my mind. I cannot help some days when I look at the picture of my nephew and his colleague in their fatigues smiling brightly six years ago, of how long these past six years have been for him. I admire his stoicism, his commitment, his resilience and ability to come home and be the man he was before as best he can - better in many ways. But I also wonder if we are asking too much of him and hundreds of thousands of other young men and women. Six year of combat. Six years of separation, hardship. Two little girls who are turning 8 and 9 in a few weeks, who have lived this way almost all of their lives, and their 13 year old sister who already suffers the normal absences of divorce, has had her isolation form her father compounded by war.

I honor them with these thoughts, this remembrance, this hope as I always hope that he is safe from harm and that he comes home once again. This is a soldier's story. It is not what I thought a soldier's story was when I was a child, a young adult. It is not the experience of my own family for generations with soldiers who served during war but whose careers stretched out mostly in peace time. I do wonder how much is too much for these soldiers and their families to take, and I know even as I write this that none of them, the good soldiers, will ever say it was too much.