Home of the Brave 
Life During Wartime
By this spring, nearly 40,000 troops will have been deployed to Iraq from Fort Hood. For the military spouses left behind, time passes. They raise their kids, wait for breaking news, and pray whenever they hear a knock on the door.
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Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, a place so vast that its size is roughly equivalent to the city of Dallas. Before the war, the post vibrated with the sound of American military might. Fleets of humvees and M1 tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers barreled down its roads, and Blackhawk helicopters hovered above the bleak expanse of prairie. Now, the post is quiet. Most of its 42,000 or so soldiers are either in Iraq or preparing to deploy there, and along Tank Destroyer Boulevard and Hell on Wheels Avenue, where combat vehicles once parked by the hundreds, only the empty blacktop remains. The landscape around the World War II-era military post is brown and barren, with a scattering of utilitarian buildings laid out along a grid. To the east, beyond its concertina-wire border, lies a tangle of pawn shops, tattoo parlors, topless bars, loan shark outfits, used-car lots, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants, cheap motels, and gun shops, all of which prominently display “We Support Our Troops” signs. Military families stick closer to the chain stores and fast-food joints along the main thoroughfare that runs through town, U.S. 190, where businesses managed to stay profitable during last year’s deployments. The working-class subdivisions south of the post are filled with men and women in fatigues and look as impermanent as a carnival.
At Shoemaker High School, just south of Fort Hood, more than three quarters of its 2,100 students have a parent who is stationed in Iraq or who is preparing to deploy there. This is a community visibly altered by war; at football games last fall, the stands were largely absent of fathers. In the guidance counselor’s office, where the TV is always tuned to CNN, Iraq is never far away. “I just found out my friend’s dad was almost killed,” one senior told a counselor after Hussein was found. “He was in a convoy, and an explosive device went off next to him.” Between talk of SAT scores and homework and the prom, reminders of the war are everywhere. Before the moment of silence that starts off the school day, the name of a parent or relative on active duty is read over the school loudspeakers. The latest attacks are whispered about in the halls. From the ceiling hang blue and silver cardboard stars, each one bearing the name of a parent or relative who is in Iraq or who is headed there. They now number more than one thousand. For students with parents at war, Hussein’s capture has stirred false hope. “Kids are saying, ‘This means my dad will be coming home!’ and, ‘It’s over!’” said Rodney Leary, who teaches U.S. government and economics. “But it’s not over.”
“The possibility of death is very real to these kids,” said principal Nelda Howton. “Almost half of our teachers have spouses in Iraq or deploying there, and they’re scared too.” Nothing at this high school is more dreaded than the unexpected knock on the front door. Within hours of a casualty, the Army dispatches one of its officers and a chaplain to the home of a soldier’s next of kin. Although the “notification team” has a suggested script to follow—“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret …”—words are rarely needed; the sight of two soldiers in dress greens is sufficient. In October a notification team visited the family of one Shoemaker student after her father’s convoy came under attack. On the morning of the funeral, more than five hundred classmates lined up outside the high school in a show of solidarity, each one holding a miniature American flag. “When the family drove by us, you could have heard a pin drop,” said Howton. “Every kid out there saluted that family. For a lot of students, I think that’s when the reality of this really hit home.”
As the stress of war has spilled over into the classroom, discipline problems have risen sharply and grades have plunged. Some students have less time for homework because of greater responsibilities at home; they must look after younger siblings, cook and clean, and serve as the remaining parent’s emotional support. “You have a lot of one-parent households now where kids are acting out and Mom is falling apart,” said head counselor Barbara Critchfield. “Dad doesn’t want to be the disciplinarian; he’s busy fighting a war. One mother wanted her husband to write a letter telling their son that he needed to shape up, but her husband refused to do it. He said, ‘I don’t want that to be the last letter my kid gets from me.’” Mothers are not the only ones left at home during deployments that can stretch on for up to fifteen months. As more women go to war than ever before, men are picking up the slack, like teacher Rodney Leary. When his wife, Sharon, a battalion commander in the 1st Cavalry, deploys this spring, Leary will be the sole caretaker of their nine-year-old son and five-year-old daughter. “I can shop and cook and clean just fine,” said the fifty-year-old Leary with a good-natured grin. “But sometimes with kids, Dad just doesn’t cut it.”
Leary knows the drill; a retired infantry officer, he did three tours in Korea. “As a soldier, I understand better than anybody why she’s going,” he said. “But as a husband and father, I’m concerned. This is my wife. This is the mother of my children. The husband in me wants her home. I try not to think about it, but I know that she might be injured or killed. As a man, I hate to admit this, but there are going to be times when she’s over there that will be hard on me.” Like most military spouses, Leary has made preparations. “We’ve filled out lots of paperwork in case anything should happen. We’ve drawn up our wills. We’ve lined up secondary child care. But my wife and I haven’t really dwelled on it. It’s too painful.” Other spouses have had more-candid discussions. After watching a TV news program together about soldiers who were coming home from Iraq as amputees, Beth Blevins turned to her husband, a sergeant first class who was then preparing to deploy with the 1st Cavalry. “We talked about what could happen to him in the war, and I said, ‘If you come back and you’re different than you were before, I will love you just the same,’” she recalled. “These things must be said.”
Once soldiers leave, their spouses have little choice but to wait, tethered to the TV for information. The 24-hour cable news cycle is as much a curse as a blessing. Many spouses have become consumed with watching CNN for breaking-news alerts. “As soon as I would wake up, I’d run downstairs and get on the computer,” said Sarah Jefferies, whose husband was stationed in Iraq last year. “I’d read everything that had happened since I’d gone to bed the night before, until I was sure Perry was safe. Then I could breathe and have a day.” E-mail, if soldiers are lucky enough to have access to it, provides a link. Otherwise, spouses must rely on occasional, brief “morale calls,” which make for awkward conversation because the satellite transmissions are patchy. Despite long separations, there are attempts at keeping romance alive. During deployments, the local Victoria’s Secret does a brisk business with Army wives who slip lingerie into care packages bound for Iraq, along with the requisite cartons of cigarettes, instant coffee, and pork rinds. During war, life goes on, with fathers missing children’s births, first steps, first words. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself,” said Blevins. “Your kids are watching you to see how to react. You have to hold it together even if you feel like falling apart.”
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