After Iraq, Learning What a Real Soldier Is

As we near the 10-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, Yahoo News asked U.S. servicemen and women and their families to share their perspectives on the war and discuss how it changed them. Here's one story.

FIRST PERSON | After 9/11, it was trendy to date a soldier. Recently divorced and living near a military base, I set my sights on finding a soldier. Rank, color, and creed did not matter to me: a soldier was a soldier.

My first was a command sergeant major. When all of the deployments began at Fort Campbell, Tenn., around 2001, he ended the relationship by telling me he was being deployed. I then ran into him a couple of months later, and he admitted that not only had he not been deployed but that he had never been deployed. He was a coward and had dishonored every soldier who'd ever been deployed.

My second one was a single father. Unfortunately, he was looking for a trophy and for a sugar mama. He stole cherished antiques from me that had belonged to my late father.

Did you serve in Iraq? Interested in sharing your story? Learn more here.

Then I met my husband, Dismas, in 2002. The first time he came over to my house, he noticed a live wire in a closet. Rather than just pointing it out to me as the other two had done, he actually went home, got some tools, and fixed it. The second time he came to my house, my old dog had an upset stomach. Without thinking twice, he gently scooped up Wizard and gave him a bath. Clearly, he was a kind and gentle person. However, he was also a soldier and had been one for more than a decade.

In the past 12 years, Dismas has been deployed two times to Iraq, three times to Afghanistan, and once to Pakistan. Except for two, these deployments lasted for a year or more. He was sent to Korea in between deployments. He missed his son's birth, his first words, his first steps, and his first day of school. I had to inform him during a particularly rough deployment that our child was diagnosed with autism. Last year, our son almost died from a bad reaction to a new medication during Dismas' deployment. Although his request to come home was denied, he never complained or lost sight of the mission.

Dismas is a staff sergeant in the Army and currently stationed at Fort Rucker in Alabama. He is spending his last year as a soldier training other soldiers how to be soldiers. I am still in the Fort Hood, Texas, area and own/operate a small ABA clinic for children with autism spectrum disorders. I was doing this type of work long before our son, Boston, 8, was born.

When my husband received his orders to Fort Rucker for one year, we knew I could not accompany him because of the clinic and other obligations. Dismas' only request was to take Boston with him. Because of the multiple deployments and his autism, Boston had become overly attached to me. Although he loves his father very much, he didn't know him. I soon came to realize that Dismas didn't know his son any more than his son knew him. Together, we made the decision to send Boston with his dad to Alabama. We have been apart for seven months now. Dismas has learned the role I played as a single parent of a child with special needs all those years he was gone, and I have learned the role he played of the absent parent.

So, as a military wife, how did war in Iraq change me?

First and foremost, I learned what a real soldier is. My husband has been a crew chief and technical inspector on Chinook helicopters. I wish I could say what he did during deployments, but he has never once talked about his experiences. I believe being married to Dismas during the past 10 years has taught me what a true hero is. Although we hear about "bad" or "rogue" soldiers or extraordinary soldiers, we rarely hear about just the average soldier. The one who deploys when asked to, the one who honestly believes he is fighting for freedom, the one who just thinks it is his duty to defend our country, the one who still and will always have nightmares, the one if asked to do it all over again would and without hesitation.

Secondly, I learned that being the spouse of a deployed soldier gives you strength you did not even know you had. It has taught me to take life day by day and to be very thankful that our child will grow up in a country where he is free to be himself and to have his own beliefs. It has taught me that my family is part of a larger family that only those who have shared similar experiences can understand. It has taught me to appreciate the acceptance of diversity in our country and that my heart skips a beat whenever I see an American flag.

Finally, it has taught me the effect of war on soldiers. Is my husband the man I married 10 years ago? Yes and no. He is still the kind and loving man I married. However, I had to learn how to wake him up carefully so that I don't scare him. I had to learn to respect the fact that he sometimes needs to go fishing for hours on end alone. I have had to learn that he has friends who were killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan and that he will probably never stop grieving for them and their families. I guess I have learned that there is life after war, but it is not the life you thought you had.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-learning-real-soldier-180100494.html

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