***I was a guest writer on a blog at my previous site. I was asked to write about my first deployment experience with my exhusband. There was some confusion when this was published. Yes, he is the father of my child. No we are not married anymore. It doesn't make my experience any less real or potent, so I still choose to publish it.***
MILITARY MONDAY
Stanley's tour to Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom began January 28, 2002. What followed for me was a haze of school work, hand written letters, short emails, very rare instant message conversations, and occasional phone calls. What followed for him was work, work in the desert where they were freezing and living in tents searching for the enemy. Stanley is a radar hunter, among other things and his story of his first kill of the war was pretty funny to me. He said he was on the radio telling the firepower to light a particular site up. They asked for clarification, not wanting to hit "one of ours". "How do you know it's not one of ours?" His response was "Because it's FRENCH, and they're not HERE!" *smile*
No news was always good news, although somewhat nerve wracking. The news channels and 5 o'clock news was the enemy. It did nothing but make me afraid of what could happen to him. It fed my fears. I tried to avoid it as best I could. I got most of my news from the internet. I remember one morning logging on and seeing a story about a plane crash at the air field where he was based. **Panic!** I called our Family Readiness Group (FRG) leader to ask if our guys were okay. She had no idea. She said she'd make some calls and call me back. I waited all day. It was so hard to concentrate in classes that day. Later that afternoon Stanley happened to call. "Are you okay?!?" I asked. "Uh, yeah, why?" The plane crash that I had seen on the internet was only a small brush fire. Talk about getting things blown out of proportion. It was then that he told me, once again, his familiar refrain of, "Unless you get a call from a commander or a visit from the Red Cross, I'm fine." I knew that, but it was hard not to try to keep up with him half a world away.
After he had been gone for three months they had better internet access. One day I received a note in my mailbox to come pick up a package. He had sent me carnations and a big Hershey's kiss. My roommate and very good friend was livid. I really felt sorry for her boyfriend that night. He lived twenty minutes from the school and she had never gotten flowers. ;) A couple of weeks later he sent me a large crystal vase and a dozen roses. He said they were like the roses that bloomed there in Afghanistan. That one I happened to open up in the cafeteria. My roommate told me later she wished she had had the camera. I was wearing his high school letter jacket and holding the flowers and vase, she said it was the picture perfect moment. I felt so humbled and fortunate to be so loved and pampered by a man that was overseas fighting for our freedom.
I finished my freshman year of college and moved back home, preparing to run my business for the summer. I had already completed transfer paperwork for the fall to the university near Ft. Campbell. After a war apart I wanted to be close to him. That summer was filled with hard work, business meetings, and my mom and I actually began preparing for a wedding that Stanley and I had tentatively set for the following May. I can remember constantly running for my cell phone, wherever I had set it, when it would ring, knowing it was him. I still can't believe I didn't break an ankle or my neck that summer trying to catch the phone. The soldiers would have access to the phone for only so many minutes or so many phone calls. Once those were used up, they were done. If I missed him, sometimes I missed him for two weeks. I will say when I would be out on my phone talking to him in public and explain to people who I was talking to and why I was not hanging up my phone, they would be extremely accommodating. Many offered me a place to sit, a quiet corner in their store, or simply told me to thank him. That meant a lot.
It was right about that time that his location was mortared. The FRG called and said that all of our guys were okay. When I did get to talk to him I asked if he was okay. "Oh sure, I'm fine. I was asleep." I wanted to go crazy. "ASLEEP?!? You SLEPT through a mortar attack?" "Yeah." You just have to understand how hard he sleeps. I found this completely believable. I was strangely comforted by the fact that if he had been killed in the attack, he would have gone peacefully in his sleep…
When I got an apartment near Ft. Campbell my mother and went up one day to look at it and get some pots and pans and things. We stopped into a sewing store and purchased wedding dress material. I remember sitting at the pattern books, looking with my mother, trying to decide what I really wanted, realizing this was real, I was going to be his wife. It was shortly after this happened my dad forwarded me an email Stanley had sent him. It apologized for not calling, but the phone lines had been down for two weeks (something I knew and was not happy about) and he couldn't wait any longer to address this issue. He said he knew wedding dress material had been purchased and other preparations had been made. He said he wanted to ask for my hand in marriage. He said he didn't want to wait until he got home, he wanted to go ahead. I had no idea. I also had no idea he and my dad had been emailing themselves as friends. My dad simply told him he didn't have to convince them, he had to convince ME. ;)
He had always told me when he called from Germany he was on his way home. I had been in my new apartment near Ft. Campbell for a grand total of four days when my phone rang at 1:00AM. He was in Germany. He was supposed to be in Afghanistan another month. WOO-WHO! It had been seven months, which was long enough. They were delayed in Germany for a whole week. That was the most nerve wracking week I think I've ever lived through. Knowing he was on his way home, but too far to touch. When they did head home, they had to do customs in the northeast. He was able to call me then. He was able to call me pretty much all week as well, which had helped. Nothing prepared me for seeing him walk in the unit conference room. I was so excited to see him. I could actually touch him. He was safe. His commander said a few words, but the ones I'll never forget were, "You have all been to war, and you all came home. Hooah." And she was right. They all came home. Every. Single. One. Thank God.
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