Salute to veterans: Troops' families are heroes for sacrifices, strength

I hated calling home from Iraq.

As a gun truck driver in 1st Squadron, 151st Cavalry Regiment of the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, I was normally out on the road at night, local time. We would usually get to a fueling point about midnight and head out an hour or two later. We generally got where we were going — or at least somewhere we could hang our hat for a while — around sunrise.

Those early morning hours worked well to call home, from a timing standpoint, because that would be during the daytime for Mom and Dad. No way would I call home when it would be late at night for them. I didn't want the phone to ring at some crazy time and them see a weird caller ID number from some military switchboard somewhere. That sounds crazy, as if bad news only comes in the middle of the night, but I didn't want to cause them anymore stress than my being overseas already was.

And I knew it was, even if they didn't let on that it did.

Only once did either of them say anything that hinted at them worrying about what was going on while I was in Iraq. It hit like a ton of bricks.

We were at Scania, a big diesel station and chow hall out in the middle of nowhere, and we were behind a few other convoys that were waiting to get back on Main Supply Route Tampa. So, I had some extra time and decided to check in.

Mom answered. After a little chit-chat, she said she needed to tell me something but that she hated to even mention it. She was having a heart issue, a serious one, and needed bypass surgery. But she said she was going to hold off until I got home. She didn't want to have the surgery while I was away. And she didn't. She had it the week after I got back. Not a day too soon.

Dad never said a word that indicated he was worrying about me, but one of his employees did after the fact. A few weeks after I got back, I went to visit Dad at the store he managed. He was helping a customer, and I stayed up at the front desk, talking with his right-hand man. Jerry told me he was glad I was home. Said he was worried about Dad while I was gone. Said he would see him from time to time staring off into space, like he was wondering whether his son was OK but powerless to help if he wasn't.

Those things — the worry and wondering my parents went through — wear on me. To this day.

Another memory does, too.

Summer 2003. My unit was set for a rotation to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of Joint Task Force GTMO. We were at an airport to catch a commercial flight to our pre-mobilization site, Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Some of us had already said goodbye to our families, but for half the unit, this was the day we were leaving for a year. Nobody was going to be shooting at us at Guantanamo and we didn't have to worry about the road blowing up in front of us, but being a thousand miles from home is being a thousand miles from home regardless.

One guy's wife and two toddler children were there to see him off. When the moment came to board, his kids grabbed him around the legs and started wailing, begging him not to go away. After a few moments of trying to calm them down, he sort of had to pry them off and have his wife forcibly hold them so he could get on about going where Uncle Sam had ordered him to go. Not many dry eyes in that gate area.

That scene, or one similar, has occurred tens of thousands of times over the past two decades in airports all over the country, with moms and dads gearing up to go all over the world, often to places a lot less hospitable than Guantanamo, and small children not knowing whether they'll ever see Mommy or Daddy again. It's tough to watch.

After our tour ended, the guy got out of the military. Said he could never leave his children again. I understood. I think most folks would.

Mom and Dad are no different from other family members of military troops. They support their spouse, mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister however they can, and they try not to add to the stress that comes from leaving home to serve the country in a foreign land.

They say war is hell, and it is, but I think military deployments are more difficult on the loved ones left behind.

In a combat zone, military troops have a job to do. They focus on their job (because their life depends on it), and once they've made their peace with the possible outcomes of a steel-and-flesh world, living in a place where the next moment might include a bright flash and a big bang is more or less like life anywhere else.

For the folks back home, though, there is more time to worry, to wonder, to not know.

And that's the thing — the not knowing.

Add to that these family members have to fill in for the across-the-world troop. Where there were two to help shuttle the children here, there and yonder, now there's one. Where there was someone who could handle his own business — all kinds of things that have to get done in person — now someone else must. Where there was someone who took care of those dogs, now someone else has to.

I have nothing but respect for the men and women of the U.S. military, the people who volunteered to defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They put themselves in harm's way because they believe in ideals larger than themselves

For the families who support them, I have an abiding admiration. They are the long-distance glue holding everything together.

They should get a medal.

Many parents, spouses, siblings and children — though not all — have gotten something better, though.

They've gotten their loved one back.