Interview

 

What is changed in the regular family setting when one member is in the service? How much of your life is changed in the process of growing up when a parent is constantly in harm’s way, and what changes when they come back? Some of these questions took Anne Kessler a few minutes to sort out, having had her father and husband both be in the service. The vast amount of experiences and stories she had to tell were amazing, and we spent most of the time reminiscing about the old days and how she missed various members of her family. Some of the most interesting answers however weren't even her own stories.

            When I first asked my mother what it was like to be raised in a military family she simply stated “Well that’s a broad question, I guess it had its ups and downs. We moved a lot and had to leave lives that we started in England to start ones in Australia, but I guess it wasn’t so bad. For the most part it was exciting, we had never been to another country before and I was afraid to start a new life, but the idea seemed like a big grand adventure.” She stopped for a moment, though, and when I asked what the down sides were of moving Anne said “Well we left all of our favorite furniture behind. My father couldn’t sell his motorcycle in time so he buried it in a big box and came back for it a year later. I had to leave all of my friends behind on the bases back in England. It was dreadful at times but the idea of moving to Australia was just so romantic that I couldn’t say a word against it.”

            When I asked her if there were any dark times with her father coming home from Korea and then Vietnam, she didn’t even hesitate to say “No, George was a tough old bastard. He was through it all by the time I was born, and my mother wouldn’t have put up with the drinking just like I don’t either. Things were hard but it was always just because money was tight. Your uncle moved out when I was thirteen and even that argument was gone.” She seemed pretty satisfied with her answer, until her face lit up with “But there are some horror stories. Back then there were no diagnoses of PTSD or the like, so they just accredited the way a person was acting to depression. They drugged em up, and acted surprised when they committed suicide or ran off with another woman destroying their families. Worst case scenario they killed someone. A friend of mine’s father actually went on a car robbery spree, started in Perth and ended in Sydney. He was a decorated war veteran, and got off easy, but still, what would have driven a man to act such a way, especially a man with three degrees. One of them was in psychology!”

            A lot of the stories she told me were more interesting than anything worth mentioning. The things she said were just like everyone else who grew up like us, if our parent wasn’t the one doing it, then we knew someone whose parent had. This relization was sad but true, and we thank god there ware ways to help the soldiers better now.

Community exploration

I grew up in a military family. My parents as well grew up in this environment, and knew all the warning signs themselves, so we managed to stay relatively healthy mentally and physically. My dad was the one deployed all the time. My mom was in the Royal Air Force, but retired long before my oldest brother was born. My father was took off for a year at a time, and then was home for a year, so he was home as much as he was away, but this never stopped him from being a good parent. He knew the troubles some of the other guys were having at home, and was determined to not have the same issues sprout up at his home. He kept us in line growing up, and taught us responsibility and respect. My mother spoiled us rotten but kept us in line, so we had a pretty balanced out childhood. Some kids I knew from base were in broken families who never really learned to function on their own. I know a few kids I grew up around addicted to pain killers, heroin, meth, or worse. Most of those families had divorced parents, cheating on each other and using the kids as pawns to tug at each other’s heart strings and leave them twisting in the wind. That, I am told isn’t even the worst of it. Apparently the worst of the feelings are those when a parent talks bad about the other parent to the child, weather is be that they are divorced or still together. My parents were old fashioned so I didn’t have to deal with a lot of this. I heard the stories, however, and they were not good. I can relate to some of those problems, but I find myself reluctant to talk about them. They aren’t nearly as measurable to the things the others went through, but I do understand that problems like that manifest in other ways.

            My life has been sheltered from a lot of problems that I should have gone through, but I do understand them nonetheless. I intend to explore these issues in the next few months from my first-hand accounts and the second hand descriptions given to me by people, who have lived that way, lived the absolute worst case scenario of my community. These problems are worse than they should be, and I will also explore other options in fixing these issues. There are lots of social institutions set up to help soldiers and their families through these hard times, but most times the soldiers do not want to seek out this help through fear that they will appear weak. If they do go to these support groups or social work they run the risks of being put on report and have their active duty status taken away. There is nothing worse to a soldier who wants to keep working then the idea of being put behind a desk.

Return

In my second article it covered the return of a soldier who had been killed in action. Needless to say it evoked the usual emotions and called for patriotism among even the biggest communists among us. The boy was young, nineteen, the same age as me. He wanted his combat wings and got them. He was killed by a cowardly enemy who hides and buries their weapons in the side of the road. The article was well written and did everything extremely tasteful. I was pleased with it, especially because the reporter was with the French foreign Associated Press. They aren’t always known for their favoritism of the American Imperialist. The family was crying, there were plenty of tears from onlookers, but they were not directly affected by the death. They wouldn’t be burdened by the loss of their loved one. In many cases like these the funeral is huge, and this was no acceptation. People flocked for miles to pay their respects to the young man who had lost his life in such a horrible way. I realized the feeling of obligation when you go. You feel like you have to go, in order to pay some debt to the poor man. After the funeral the family was interviewed and they really didn’t want the big funeral, they just wanted to deal with the issue privately.

             This story demonstrates the impact on a community that the death of a soldier has. Imagine walking around at seven knowing that there is a possibility that your father or mother isn’t coming home.

Homeomming

 

In my first article I found that there are a lot of things to be said about the topic I decided to write about. When describing how military families interact and how they live their lives can evoke and describe a lot of emotions. The writing technique was exploratory, and really talked to the effect of homecoming expectations in the eyes of the entire family. Most of the time it is good, according to the author, and he basically takes an over view of the return process. The family in question never once batted an eyelash that their family member was coming home missing part of his leg. They didn’t even mention it in their interviews prior to the plane landing. The writer touched on it briefly, but didn’t give it much justice when he was typing the article up. He obviously didn’t want to ask the really tough questions.

How can you go through that mentally and come out the other side the same man. Unfortunately the story that is told more then not is of the soldier coming home to no one. The kids in this war are the ones taking the risks, and they don’t have the strong family base that the older troops have, so when they get off the plane the only people they have are their parents and a girlfriend that isn’t going to be around much longer. This is sad beyond belief, but at least the family looked strong. The family looked like they could deal with this change.