For Soldiers, Families, Shared Anxieties Of Unfinished War

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla -- There was a healthy turnout for a picnic at VFW 1966 in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. Children clamored onto the bounce house, showed off their face paint, and crowded around a microphone on a makeshift stage. Outside and in the cafeteria, were women -- at least three very pregnant -- along with grandmothers holding small children, and women in their 20s and 30s, paired off in quiet conversations. There were a handful of men.

Slideshow: Military Families Come Together

Bob Harris, who heads the Family Readiness Group for the 743rd Maintenance Company, sat at a table in the cafeteria with his sister-in-law, Sylvia Harris. His brother, Capt. Kenneth Harris, 38, commands the 743rd, which is stationed near Tikrit, north of Baghdad. The company was "adopted" in May, along with the 724th Military Police Battalion, by the local VFW. Saturday was the first time the two units' family support organizations -- which often hold social events for their own families -- planned an outing together.

The idea, Harris explained, was to give the families a day's rest from private worries -- to let the kids play together, and the wives, husbands, girlfriends and mothers of soldiers share their stories, their frustrations, and some downtime, with people who understand what they're going through.

Harris said although the units have very different missions -- the 724th are Army reservists, while the 743rd is a maintenance company with the Florida National Guard -- The families face the same demons: separation anxiety, missed births, anniversaries and deaths, and mostly says Harris, stress.

"Some of these families have been through deployments before," he said, "but some of them have never been separated."

Harris, who in the fall will resume teaching sociology at Florida International University, said helping the families is like a Full-time job. His group holds weekly meetings, plans social events, and distributes information and resources to the families of some 200 troops, of whom 186 are currently in Iraq. Harris said he fields scores of phone calls, and responds to about 20 TO 30 E-mails every week. But each time there is news of a soldier dying in Iraq, the number of calls and E-mails spikes, and sometimes he can't get answers for several days. Mostly, though, Harris said the families are dealing with the everyday stresses of being a suddenly single parent; taking care of the house, the kids, home repairs; and paying bills. But Harris said the biggest issue is anxiety.

Harris served 13 years on active duty IN the Army and the Colorado National Guard. His final deployment was to Bosnia, at a time when, he said, there were few family services. The Bosnia deployment took an irreparable toll on his marriage, his finances, and his professional life. Now divorced, Harris said he promised his brother he would be there to "help provide the continuity and assistance" he and his family never got.

It isn't always easy. The family readiness groups are all-volunteer, and Harris said, "getting a group of emotionally stressed families to work and cooperate together is tough." In fact, Harris called the effort "one of the biggest leadership challenges a person can have."

Gloria Reed, vice president of the 724th's family readiness group and whose husband, Master Sgt. Byron Reed, is stationed with his unit at Camp Bucca II in the southern part of Iraq, said the stress is taking its toll on her families, too.

"I just got off the phone with a wife who hadn't talked to her husband for three weeks," Reed (pictured at right) said on Sunday. "We've had two grandmothers pass away this month. There are kids having trouble, pregnant women."

Stress On Both Sides

Reed, whose father served in Korea and whose husband and two sons are "professional military," is lucky enough to talk to her husband almost daily, on a prepaid cell phone he purchased before the unit was activated Dec. 27. During the calls, Reed and her husband trade tales of stress on both sides of the deployment.

The 724th was the first military police battalion to be deployed in Iraq, said Reed, and her husband says morale among the 130 or so men and women, whose job is to guard Iraqi prisoners, is low, and getting worse.

"They're burned out ... they're tired," Reed said, noting that her company, unlike some, have air conditioners, but not the 10-gauge wire and circuit breakers needed to connect them to generators. "August is the hottest month, just like here, but there it's 130 to 140 degrees."

Both Reed and Harris say the poor living conditions, the heat and the dust, (which Harris said forces the troops to put everything in plastic bags,) aren't the only drags on morale. There's also the lack of information. "They don't get news," said Reed, who bundles up Sunday papers to send to her husband nearly every week, and says it was she who first told her husband about the deaths last week of Saddam Hussein's sons.

"Military communications take priority," Harris said. "Sometimes they don't even hear about what's happening in Iraq, if it doesn't directly affect their mission."

Calling home can also be a challenge, said Harris. There is often a three- to four-hour wait to check and send E-mail in the lone air-conditioned tent, or to place a minutes-long call on a satellite phone.

"IF you're working a 12-hour shift, to sit in line for four hours to make a phone call for a few minutes, then get maybe four hours of sleep is tough," he said. The 743rd rigged up a satellite television, on which they sometimes get Fox News, but most of their news comes from family members.

And then there are the things they'll never get back.

The 743rd was activated on Jan. 28, the same day Kenneth and Sylvia (shown in photo at left), married. The family was at the wedding reception when they got the call, and Kenneth began his deployment at Fort Stewart in Georgia on Feb. 2, before being sent to Kuwait, and then to Iraq in April. Sylvia and Kenneth are expecting their first child, due on Sept. 11.

"He's there because of SEPT. 11," said Harris, "and now he's got another reason to think of Sept. 11."

Harris said 9-11 continues to be the biggest motivating force for the men and women still fighting the war in Iraq, despite the fact that no connection has been proved between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. Harris said it's because the troops need to feel a sense of purpose. The 743rd arrived in Iraq after major hostilities were over. "It's like getting invited to a party when it's over," he said. "There's a lot of glory in winning the military victories, but there's not a lot of glory in being a maintenance company out in the middle of the desert. ... If they feel that what they are doing is helpful, to the people of Iraq and to the people here at home, that is a reason to be away from home. When you're suffering, you need to know that there is a reason for it."

The difficulty of staying motivated is aggravated by the uncertainty surrounding their deployments, Harris said. A typical tour of duty is supposed to last one year, meaning the 743rd would return home next February. But, said Harris, "we all know Uncle Sam can do whatever he wants." And if the situation in Iraq remains unstable, Harris said most of the families know the homecoming could yet slip away.

"All of these soldiers and their families are voters," said Harris pointedly. "So it would be very politically unhealthy (for the government) not to keep their promises. But if things blow up in Iraq, anything can change."

Those changes have been hardest on the Army, which hasn't enjoyed the homecomings that Americans have watched on television as aircraft carriers pulled into port. For military police units like the 724th, the homecomings could depend on whether enough foreign troops can be brought in to replace them. "They thought they were coming home in July," Reed said. "It wasn't in stone, but word went around that they were coming home. A lot of them packed their things, then they were told they had been extended."

Reed said that even the dozen or so who have received 15-day furloughs have sometimes found the visits home more painful than rewarding.

"I had one young man, (who came home for family member's surgery) tell me 'this is too hard, I need to go back ... I can't handle this," Reed said. "It took him about three days to adjust. He said he felt culture shock. He's from here but he felt culture shock being home. It took about three days for him to adjust, and then, of course, he didn't want to go back." His furlough ended on Saturday.

Reed and Harris said that beside the delayed homecomings, the biggest frustration for their troops, and for them, is the sense that beyond friends and family, people have largely tuned out the war.

"They feel lost in the crowd," Reed said of the soldiers. "I mean they know this isn't Vietnam -- they know they're not gonna get spat on when they get home, but there's a feeling of 'come on, community, you were there during the fighting, where are you now?' They feel forgotten."

Reed said she is still collecting donations for her unit, but she said interest and contributions have declined. "They still need community support," she said. "But when you talk to people, you get the sense that the war is over, and people don't see the need."

Harris put it more bluntly. "Even though it appears to be over in the news," he said, "it's not over for these families until every soldier comes home."