As we prepare to enter our last year of Army, I find myself going between being so ready to be done with it, and not quite wanting it to be over. This, I'm 100% sure, is normal for anyone who's known little else in their adult life, besides Army. Considering that I enlisted when I was 19, and will be 29 when Thak gets out, I will have spent 10 years in some type of affiliation with the Army. That's a long time, over 1/3 of my life. I can only imagine how it is for Thak, who has known absolutely nothing but military for over half his life now. He'll have 18 years of service, if you count Active Duty and National Guard, by the time he gets out. While we both know that leaving the Army is the right thing to do, it's not easy. This may not be the Army that either one of us enlisted in, nor the one we came to love as young soldiers, but even though it drives us crazy, there is still a strong attachment to our branch. I'm always talking about the skeezy underbelly of the Army, the part that the press never tells you, the things that get shoved off in corners. This is not more of the same. This is the good part, the part I am taking with me.
I am grateful to have served when I was young and relatively free of attachments. I often feel for the soldiers who enlist to provide for a family, or who are married throughout their entire service. I don't feel that they get the true experience of being a young soldier. Their attachments outside the Army are too strong a pull, and they can't fully give themselves over to the experience of being young, carefree, and clad in a uniform that's still crisp and not yet faded. For me, there was only one way to be a young soldier, and that was single, ready to volunteer for anything that struck me as interesting, and with just enough naivete to believe that one soldier could make a difference.
I was asked the other day by a military wife who has never served, what my favorite duty station was. That was a hard question for me, because I do not have a favorite duty station. I told her what was good about everywhere I've been, and that the only place I truly hate is Ft. Bliss. Her eyes glazed over, and then I realized, I look at duty stations far differently than people who have never served. As silly as it may sound, I have never thought about where I'd like to live, as far as geographical locations, whereas that is really all that non-prior-service wives ever seem to consider. My first thought is always for the mission, and my second is for who I know who's already there. I could not care less how many malls there are off post, or if there's a beach nearby (although I've learned that living somewhere that it rains occasionally is something I won't take for granted when I leave this desert), or even what the housing looks like.
My favorite duty station is every one at which I surveyed land, conducted materials tests, or did some type of interesting training. I truly don't have a favorite. I am an Ozark Sapper, a Texan Surveyor, and was on an Army commercial (ok, for half a second and it was the back of my head) while training in Georgia to be a Paratrooper. I have walked on hallowed ground, where great people have stood. I trained where the legends trained, sometimes instructed by the legends themselves. I have met soldiers who are featured in movies now. I have built bridges on land that no female soldier had ever surveyed, and stamped my Engineer Castle into the wet concrete, signing my name below it. I am an Immortal Soldier, just as the tattoo on my back says I am. My bridges, roads, and airfields will exist long after I am gone. Every single one of them is my favorite, especially the difficult ones.
I am grateful to have had the experience of being a Private, but to have married above my rank. Because I have worn their rank, I have a greater understanding of young soldiers. Frustrating as they may be at times, especially when they get into trouble and ruin our family holidays, I can't take it too badly, because like every other young soldier out there, I ran my squad leader ragged. Marrying a Sergeant gave me an appreciation for my own squad leader that I'd never have had otherwise. Seeing the Army from the side of the lower-enlisted soldier, and having a third-party view of how it is for an NCO is an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. It has given me an understanding of the way things work.
I am grateful to have gone through Basic and AIT when it was still tough. I hear about how things are these days, and don't wonder for one second why soldiers are so much less soldierly than they were when I went through. I'm glad I got the experience of being scared to death of my Drill Sergeants, and then coming to see them for the great and caring mentors they truly were. I'm glad they were able to train us their way, and hadn't had their hands tied, the way today's Drill Sergeants (unfortunately) do. The times spent in training, when it was real, are to be cherished because that era is gone, and with it, most of our traditions. It's sad that our traditions have died with the standards for soldiering, and that is one reason I will be glad to go. It's hard to look at what's being turned out these days, and see how it just doesn't compare to the way it was. The Army has changed, and unfortunately, I think it's been in the wrong direction, but I am no longer that young soldier who thinks one can make a difference. I now know that these things go on with or without us, and the only say we have in the matter is whether to stay and be a part of it, or move on to something else.
I try to think of the good that's come of being married to Thak for the final half of his Active Duty years, and aside from the good that would come of being married to Thak under any circumstances, I'm really not coming up with much upon initial inspection. Maybe that's why I've never fit in with military wives. Try as I have, I fail to see this as some higher calling or patriotic duty. I heard the call to serve my country when I was very young, and when the time was right, I answered it by enlisting in the Army. That was for patriotic duty, and destiny if you believe in that. I don't see what I have done as Thak's wife as fulfilling that same purpose, and try as I may, I don't think I ever will.
I married Thak because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and grudgingly accepted the Army as a temporary part of the deal, because as much as Thak drives me absolutely insane, a life without him in it would have been worse. (Call me a glutton for punishment if you will. You wouldn't be the first.) I can't get my head around the idea of there being some noble purpose in being forced to offer up every other year of our marriage to a war neither of us has ever believed in.
I grew my Victory Garden complete with flowers in the Division colors as a nod to the General, and decorated my house for the holidays every year with lights in the Division colors for the same reason. I frequently walked through the hundreds of redbud trees planted for our fallen, especially in the Spring when they bloomed. I checked the casualty lists daily, and brewed the Casualty Notification Officer a pot of coffee whenever I heard of a bombing in Thak's area (the CNO never comes to anyone who's ready and waiting for him. Superstition.) I went to every stupid social function, smiled at the higher-ups' wives, and tried not to take it in offense when the subordinate wives got mouthy with me. I dressed nicely, acted with decorum, and represented Thak in a way such that he regularly got complimented on it. I am told I am quite endearing in the way I still address anyone who outranks Thak with proper military courtesy, and can't quite bring myself to call Sergeant Major by her first name. I have played my role, and in the light of day, I have played it exceptionally well. It's just that, though. I have never internalized any part of the military wife culture. I tried for years, but it isn't me. Despite living among them for nearly six years now, I still do not understand military wives in general. Any attempt to fit myself into their world is short-lived, and they're not exactly wrong when they accuse me of being fake. Behind my mask, I am one of the realest people ever, but going without my mask in this world doesn't work. I've tried.
People talk a lot about how being married to someone in the military will make you independent and strong. I was already independent and strong when I married Thak. I had served in the Army, moved all over the country by myself with all my worldly possessions in a duffel bag on my back, and been a single mom for a little while. Being forced to continue being the strong and independent person I'd had to be all along, despite being married, was not empowering for me. It was kind of insulting. I think this is why, despite being a military wife by the simplest definition of the term, I have never considered myself that way, and doubt I ever will.
In light of that, it's hard to think of what I will take with me of these years when Thak was finishing up his time in the Army. I will say it was amazing to watch him earn the rank of Staff Sergeant, even though it meant attaining the maximum number of promotion points possible in every single area. I was so proud of him when Erin and I pinned on his new rank (even though my feet hurt! I was 7 months pregnant, and wearing 5" heels!) After that, I know there's nothing in this world that Thak can't do. If I didn't have complete faith in him before, I did as of my 27th birthday, the day he became a Staff Sergeant against what are universally considered to be impossible odds.
I think that sums it up. As we get ready to begin our final year, which will consist of closing up shop on our time with the Army, it is also the time to sort the wheat from the chaff. I will take with me the knowledge that as a soldier, I made a difference, and that as long as my bridges stand, I live. I take with me a brand on my left arm, a tattoo on my back, and one uniform that I've kept, along with every letter Thak's ever sent me in the past 7 years, and one flower from every bouquet he's given me. I take a jewelry box from Iraq, mementos from every post I've been to, and a hip that pops at inopportune times and makes me laugh because of the stupid way I injured it. I take the knowledge that my husband is the most capable man I have ever known, and that we're going to be fine, no matter what, because he's never met an obstacle he couldn't overcome or an expectation he couldn't exceed.
In retrospect, that must have been what these years were for. It's so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day. Thak's just like any other husband, in that he generally puts his socks NEAR the hamper, never takes out the trash unless you ask him 10 times, wolfs down food that took 4 hours to prepare as if it were beanie-weenies from a can, and has a strange obsession with wearing a Minnesota Vikings shirt in public just to get a rise out of Dallas Cowboys fans. It would be easy to dismiss this one as any other neanderthal, but he's really a lot better than that. Watching him take his soldiers to war multiple times, accomplish the most God-forsaken missions in the most dangerous places, and bring every single troop home alive every single time, proves that these still waters run very very deep. This is something I never would have known on anything but an academic level, had I not been by his side all these years (even if from half a world away). Some things, you just have to witness to really understand the magnitude of. Maybe that's what this was for. I'll take that with me right alongside my box of letters and my Engineer shot glass.
