Air Force Community, Air Force Spouse and Family Resources - Air Force Times

On watch at home

Each week, another new book is published that examines some aspect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military members, authors and journalists alike come back from the war zones with boots-on-the-ground perspectives for a civilian population largely disconnected from the war.

Much less has been written on the effects of war on the families back home, but increasingly, those family members are making their voices heard.

Among them are Kristin Henderson, Stacy Bannerman and Rebekah Sanderlin.

These women hope to help civilians connect with how the war is changing both those fighting and those back home who support them.

Airing ‘dirty laundry’

Henderson, 44, is the author of “While They’re at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront.”

Her husband of 21 years is a Navy chaplain who has been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Published last year, Henderson’s book includes information gathered from interviews with several military spouses, many of whom shared details of the darker side of deployment, including marital discord and infidelity.

Henderson said she was expecting a “mixed response” from the military community, particularly because “what I was writing about, some people would call ‘dirty laundry.’ But I’ve had overwhelmingly positive comments.

“The military community knows [a deployment] is hard,” she said. “And they know that most civilians don’t know what it’s like. And unless [civilians] understand, there will be no funding to help take care of these families.”

No stranger to Iraq, Henderson spent a month in the war zone in 2005 researching an article on religion and the military.

A Guard spouse’s fight

In her book, Bannerman also challenges conventional wisdom, but in her case, she focuses on the treatment of reservists and their families in wartime.

“When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind” describes a reserve force that is largely unprepared and ill-equipped for war, and whose pay and benefits still lag behind the active forces. She also takes aim at resources for families, noting that family members do not have access to the support and services active-duty families have.

A longtime peace activist, Bannerman married an Army National Guard soldier in 2000. The 15-year Guard veteran had recently re-enlisted to reach the 20-year retirement mark. Three years later, he was mobilized for duty in Iraq.

After her husband was activated, Bannerman found that she was unprepared for military life — and that she was not the only spouse of a reservist who felt that way.

“For the vast majority of us ... when our loved ones joined the Guard or reserves, they were told ... it was almost certain that they would never be deployed,” said Bannerman, 41. “And now we find that National Guard and reservists are serving some of the longest tours in Iraq.”

“When the War Came Home” is intended not only to call attention to Guard and reserve issues, she said, but also to “put some real weight behind the phrase ‘Support the troops.’”

To Bannerman, that means sending them to war with the best training, equipment and support available.

Of the apparent distance between civilians and the war their military is fighting, she said: “I understand why there are so many people in America who want to turn away from this. There’s a part of me that would like to, as well. But I think we owe it to our service members who have served so bravely and the families who have suffered so much.”

‘Alone in this war’

Where Bannerman and Henderson chose books as their forum for telling their stories, Sanderlin has developed a two-way conversation.

Sanderlin, 30, blogs about military life for iBraggle.com, a military spouse Web site launched by The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. She is married to an Army staff sergeant who has deployed several times in support of the wars.

Sanderlin is a journalist who was the Fayetteville paper’s health care reporter until October 2004, when she quit after having a baby.

“Do not equate your husband’s three-week trip to London/Omaha/ Tokyo/etc. with a one-year deployment to a war zone,” she wrote in a recent blog post. “Aside from the obvious trip length difference, nobody shot at your husband or tried to blow him up with an [improvised explosive device]. ... There is no comparison. We do not feel bonded to you in the slightest because of this comment and, if anything, we probably resent you a bit for comparing a combat deployment to a business trip.’’

Late last year, Sanderlin was asked to submit a commentary to National Public Radio that aired on NPR stations across the country. She hoped it would be a wake-up call to the American public.

“We bristle a bit when other people say ‘Iraq war’ instead of the war on terrorism, she wrote in her commentary, “because our next-door neighbor was killed in Afghanistan and no one seems to remember that we’re fighting there, too. I’m telling you this because it seems you all don’t understand us very well.

“We feel pretty alone in this war,” she wrote. “America seems to have sent us the loud and clear message that we volunteered, and that makes the war our problem. ... People like me are not even 2 percent of the American population. The other 98 percent went shopping.”

After the commentary aired, Sanderlin received negative e-mail from civilians, many noting that she should “be grateful for what you have” and “get over it.” But she struck a chord among those in the military community, who offered feedback that was entirely positive.

“It’s increasingly frustrating to me to be somewhere [among civilians] and to have people acting as if these things that are totally insignificant are a big deal when we literally have guys fighting and dying,” she said. “I think that’s the reality of the situation — but I don’t think that’s how it should be.”

--

Laura S. Jeffrey is a freelance writer in Northern Virginia.