Veterans Day, 2016. I know I promised you specific ways to overcome obstacles, but I feel moved instead to write about military life. Obstacles will return next week, I promise!
I served 6 1/2 years active duty in the navy. It was a time when women weren’t allowed to deploy on ships, so I did not have that experience. I also “served” as wife and mother of military men. My husband was in 27 years (31 if you count the Navy Academy), flew as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and lost numerous good friends in that conflict. As we watched the POWs coming down the gangway of the plane after their release, he named many of them. They were friends, squadron mates. In 1967, he was aboard USS Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam when a bomb ignited, starting a huge fire on the flight deck which killed all of the firefighters and 134 men altogether. He was in a plane ready to take off and jumped out as other bombs started going off. He was promptly blown back about 100 feet. Somehow he survived with just shrapnel in his leg and began helping to fight the raging fire. I hadn’t met him yet.
Twice during the first 20 years of our marriage, I thought he had been killed. I had just put him on a helicopter to fly out to USS Guadalcanal to take over the ship as the Commanding Officer when I heard on the TV, “Helicopter crash, USS Guadalcanal, 17 killed.” I stopped breathing, then bounded up the stairs to call navy headquarters asking, “Is my husband dead?” The other time, a navy chaplain, who was also a good friend, showed up at our front door in Japan in uniform and obviously anguished. I simultaneously experienced the elation of learning my husband was okay, and the shock of learning that a mutual dear friend had been killed in an F-4 crash in the Mediterranean.
And then our son enlisted in the Marines. Frankly, being a mother was even harder than being a wife! After 7 years, he became a navy officer, deploying twice to the Iraq war. Incredibly, he just retired a couple months ago and is starting his new life as a civilian. It’s different and a challenge. As he said, “I miss the sense of a shared mission.” So today, as you go about your business, think of the veterans and their families who have served so you can live in freedom.