Post Magazine: Love and War
Kristin Henderson
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, October 12, 2004; 1:00 p.m. ET
Going to war is never easy, but neither is being left behind. With their husbands deployed to Iraq, and soon to Afghanistan, Marissa Bootes and Beth Pratt are fighting battles of their own.
Kristin Henderson, whose article about how Bootes and Pratt are coping on the homefront, will be online Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 1 p.m. ET to field questions and comments about the article.
Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.
Henderson is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post Magazine.
Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Kristin Henderson: Hello everyone! Thank you so much for taking the time to read the article, and for giving this subject the serious thought it deserves. I'm looking forward to "talking" with you over the next hour.
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Alexandria, Va.:
Dear Ms. Henderson:
I read your very fine memoir, Driving by Moonlight, and learned that your husband is a Marine chaplain who was deployed to a war zone in Afghanistan. How have your own experiences informed your reporting for this article?
Kristin Henderson: My husband is active duty Navy, and served with the Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. I wrote about our homecoming experiences in the Post Magazine a year ago. I learned a lot, though, working on this article, and the book that has grown out of it. One thing I learned is how reassuring it is to be with other people who are going through a similar experience, that instant connection you feel. I think that certainly helped in my conversations with Beth Pratt and Marissa Bootes and the other spouses I met. I had felt many of the same things they did.
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Mechanicsburg, Pa.:
Great article. I'm glad Marissa Bootes was able to quit her job, as it was clearly overwhelming her. Can you tell us what Pvt. Pratt and Spec. Bootes take home each month, and what housing allowances, etc., they receive? I know they get medical care and Commissary/PX privileges, but my impression is that most military families scrape by until retirement, whien benefits are pretty good if you can last that long. Thanks. Kristin Henderson: I don't have the specifics of pay and benefits at my fingertips, but I do know that if Beth and Luigi Pratt are able to start a family, and if Beth quits her job, they will qualify for the WIC welfare program.
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Lexington, Ky.:
How didyou choose to focus on these two women? I assume there are many others in your book. Did their husband have any veto/editorial rights over their comments? I just started crying when I saw they were going to be shipped off to Afghanistan next year.
Kristin Henderson: I chose Beth and Marissa because they were very different in many ways, with different experiences. Together they give you a hint of the many different facets of the military spouse experience. I could not possibly hope to capture them all tho, because there are as many perspectives as there are spouses. At the same time, they all experience the same concerns for their military spouse and many of the same stresses.
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Arlington, Va.:
Why did you choose to focus only upon female spouses on the home front? There are presumably any number of families out there where the wife has gone to war while the husband remains at home. Your article, at least on the surface, seems to perpetuate sex-role stereotypes.
Kristin Henderson: You're right, there are husbands who are left behind. In my conversations with them I have found that they feel the same things wives feel, and face the same demands on their time and emotional resources. The difference is they react like men -- in general women want to nurture, men want to protect. So the husbands all said, as their wives were leaving, who's going to protect my wife if I'm not there? Not that they didn't think their wives could protect themselves as well as their fellow male soldiers, just that that was their instinctive reaction. I do include men in the book I'm working on, but given the space constraints of the magazine, I focused on the majority, which is women... men make up, if I recall correctly, less than 10% of military sopuses.
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Fairfax, Va.:
How can the American people help the
families of deployed soldiers? What
programs/fundraising projects are
focused primarily on providing for and
supporting families of soldiers?
Kristin Henderson: A simple thank you goes a long way. For more concrete ways to help, there are a number of links on my website, www.kristinhenderson.com. I also recommend a visit to the National Military Family Association website, www.nmfa.org. They recently completed a study of support systems for military families, including a look at how communities can support them. They listed "best practices", including a financial aid program in Illinois, and a travel-assistance program in Maryland for families trying to travel to the bedside of their wounded service member. You can download the study from the website, I believe, or request a copy. The links on my site also include links to sites that provide help and information for military families, including help in dealing with homecoming stresses, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other challenges.
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Manassas, Va.:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your Sunday article. It needed to be seen.
As the survivor of a father who went to Vietnam in 1969, I know first-hand what these ladies are facing, all the hassles, the tears and fears, the frustrations, and the feeling of total victory when they find out that "yes, I really can mow the lawn on my own!" Life goes on - you can either crawl into a corner and start twisting your hair or get on and do what you have to do. My mother made sure we did the latter - and we did it with virtually no support from anyone, plus I grew up with a severely disabled sister who requires constant 24 hour a day care. She wasn't in a nursing home in those days, she was in our home. Support for the disabled was virtually nonexistent in those days, it's a little better now, but still terribly inadequate. Luckily, one of my father's brothers got orders for the Pentagon, so he and my aunt were always there for us. Was I frightened to death for my dad? You better believe it! But I had to accept the fact that he was 6,000 miles away, and anything that might happen to him I could not stop or do anything about, so I asked God to watch over him and bring him back safely. I was lucky - he did come home safely.
I'm pleased to see these support groups going on. My mother was like Marissa - she figured out when to cry and when not to so her daughters wouldn't get frightened. But other than my aunt and a couple other neighborhood wives, she had nothing in the way of moral support. I'll never know where she found her strength to put up with all she had to deal with.
I have a good friend currently in Iraq who I will call Joe. In August, Joe was notified by the Red Cross that his teenaged disabled son from his first marriage had drowned in a boating accident. So he was sent home on 6 weeks emergency leave to bury his child, then was sent back to the war. I've been e-mailing him a lot to give him as much moral support as possible - I also have written a letter to his new wife to introduce myself and let her know how sorry I am that this terrible thing has happened - and I hope to God there's support for my friend who has to do his duty in Iraq and try to get over the death of his child, as well as support for his wife who now not only has to worry about Joe coming home alive, but also mourn the loss of the son my friend fought so hard to keep alive.
To anyone who makes remarks about how "these wives are just whining, at least their husbands have jobs", let me just quote something from a song that was popular in the 1960s: "...Hey, before you accuse, criticize and abuse, walk a mile in my shoes." It comes from a Native American saying whose words I can't remember correctly. Yeah, their husbands have jobs - and already a lot of them have come home in a casket. These ladies at Fort Bragg and now Fort Hood (I know there are others) have to live with that chance every single second of their lives. Think about it before complaining about how military spouses gripe too much. And God Bless every single one of those spouses.
Kristin Henderson: Thanks for sharing your story. The amount of support services available for military families has increased dramatically since the Vietnam era, but there is always room for improvement -- spreading the word about those services for one thing. The care givers do a pretty good job of reaching those families who live on a military installation, but 2/3 of active duty families, and nearly all Guard and Reserve families, live off post, and getting the information to them is extremely problematic. I exhanged emails with one of the Vietnam era wives I interviewed, and she said she, too, was glad to see the support groups in place, but then she said, the more things change, the more the stay the same. Families have been struggling through wartime deployments for millennia, and no matter what we do, the struggle will always be there. A wartime deployment is a mountain no matter how you climb it.
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Portland, Ore.:
You just mentioned a book that relates to this article. When will this book be published and what is it called?
Kristin Henderson: The book will be published next fall by Houghton Mifflin. It's tentatively titled "Sisterhood of War," but titles often wind up being changed in the run-up to publication. As I was working on the article I was learning so much and gathering so much fascinating material that I've been grateful for the opportunity to expand it into a book, which allows me to explore the issues in a much more in-depth way. I'm able to get into the causes, symptoms and coping strategies for anticipatory grief, for instance, and the unique issues facing Guard families vs. active duty families, husbands who wait behind, how children respond to deployment, issues of infidelity, how the casualty notification procedure works... you see what I mean? I could go on and on!
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Richmond, VA:
Loved the article. I found it very moving. How do the two women in the article feel, e.g. vulnerable, exposed, or glad for a chance to reach out to others, now that they have seen their stories and pictures in print? washingtonpost.com:
The Siege (Post, Oct. 10)
Kristin Henderson: I think the answer to that is YES. They feel vulnerable and exposed, but they did it hoping that their experiences would help others.
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Woodbridge, VA:
Hi Kristin - well done article. Can I add some pointers?? I am an active duty Special Forces wife. To the ladies that are young and newly married (I am married 13 years), check out the women who have been at this for more years than yourself. How are they dealing? Who are they getting help from? What are their thoughts on doing everything alone? Get involved with your FRG. What you put into it is what you will get out of it. Look for a younger wife than yourself. There is nothing like forgetting your own sadness when you can really help someone else. Ask her to the local McDonalds where your kids can play on teh slides and you 2 can chat. Go to your local pumpkin patch and go for a woal on the farm. Get involved in your Church or in your kids school. Teachers always need someone to listen to the slower readers or cut out things for the bulletin boards or shelve books in the library. There are a MULTITUDE of programs offered by the services. Get to your Family office on post and make yourself aware. ANd remember the last line of the article - MOST OF US MAKE IT!!!!! Good luck
Kristin Henderson: Couldn't have said it better myself!
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Odenton,MD:
HI I wanted to say I thought the article you
wrote was very well done. I thought it was not too bias one way or the other. Thank you for that! But I was curious why you didnt end with the Soldiers thoughts of the war since they had a very real experience with it.
Kristin Henderson: Thanks for you kind words. I tried to keep the focus on the families for this article. The soldiers' experience is often covered while the families remain in the background. That is not to say that Charlie and Luigi's experiences were not relevant or important -- they were crucial to Marissa and Beth's experiences. But given the space constraints, I chose to focus on the perspective on those watching and waiting at home.
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Doylestown, Pa.:
In your new book will you touch on the effects on children of having to say goodbye to a parent and remain with the very sad left-behind parent?
Kristin Henderson: Yes, I have a whole chapter devoted to the children. It's one of the most heart-wrenching parts of the deployment experience.
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Alexandria, Va.:
The two women profiled in your article seem very different from each other in many ways, but both seem to have become stronger people in dealing with the adversity they experienced. Would you say this is more typical today than the experience cited by an older woman whose ex-husband was in Viet Nam, that of marriages stressed and strained to the breaking point by separation and lack of outside support?
Kristin Henderson: I don't have statistics, but my impression is that the chaplain was correct when he said "most of us make it." You know that old saying, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. There are still marriages that do not survive deployment. But the majority do.
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Ellicott City, Md.:
The scenes with these women are so personal. What kind of access did you have to them? Were you actually in the doctor's office with the dancer/wife?
Kristin Henderson: I was with Beth and Marissa for parts of the deployment, but most of the story came from my conversations with them, which was why I wrote that Beth and Marissa "remembered" or "recalled" the various events. In addition to spending a lot of time with them, also confirmed their stories with their families and friends. As I said before, they are both brave women who were willing to open up their lives hoping it would help others.
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Washington, D.C.:
What benefits do they get when their husbands were deployed?
Kristin Henderson: Financially, a service member receives hazardous duty pay when he or she is in a combat zone. It used to be $100 a month, now I believe it's $300. They also do not pay income tax for the month they are in a combat zone. The pay system is fairly complex, so there are many other factors, including deductions that I don't have the space to go into here. But Beth calculated that her husband made an extra $22 a day while he was deployed.
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Alexandria, Va.:
Kristin, I admired both women, but I was really struck by the differences in Beth and Marissa's positions on the war. Has Beth or Luigi experienced any negative pressure from the military community because of Beth's anti-war activities?
Kristin Henderson: Many of you have sent in questions like this, and thank you to all of you. First, to answer the last part of your question, Luigi reports that he has experienced no negative pressure from his military leadership as a result of his wife's activities.
The number of military families going through a deployment that are actively opposed to the war through public activism is relatively small. So is the number of families who actively support it. Most families have enough on their plates just trying to get through each day without adding politics to the mix, beyond perhaps putting a "Support the Troops" yellow ribbon on their car. And that's more of a plea for mercy than a political statement -- over and over again, spouses brought up the Vietnam war experience. Even for spouses who weren't born then, the memory of the way returning soldiers were treated back then is still very painful within the military community.
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Herndon, Va.:
My is going to be deployed shortly, any suggestions on what I can do to mentally get prepared for this?
Kristin Henderson: Stay busy and hook up with others going through the same thing. There IS strength in numbers. Even if you live far from a military installation, you can find support online. There are links from my website, www.kristinhenderson.com.
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Washington, D.C.:
Hi Kristin,
I found your article very thought provoking and moving. Here's my question... How do military wives separate their support/oppostion to the president's policy from what their husbands are doing in Iraq and elsewhere? I support the effort of our troops but I have a major problem with how things are going there and the failure of the "suits" in the Administration to admit their mistake. Their words don't match the images we see on TV.
Kristin Henderson: There are as many political opinions among military spouses as there are military spouses. I am often asked why soldiers go fight in wars they might not believe in. The fact is, they took an oath to obey the orders of the military's civilian leadership. In a democratic society, the military must do what our elected leaders tell it to do -- if they didn't, it would be the end of democracy. So our soldiers are already doing their duty by following orders. It's each civilian citizen's duty to ensure those orders are the right ones by holding their elected leaders accountable.
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Macon, Ga.:
On the same day your article appeared, there was an article on the front page of the Post describing the frustrations of Marines serving in Iraq, who feel they are risking their lives for no clear purpose and are frustrated by the bureaucratic tangles that, as they see it, prevent them from doing a good job. Did you get any similar sense from talking to Pvt. Pratt and Spec. Bootes? If not, did you get any sense tht they were toeing the company line, or honestly committed to this miserable, unwinnable war?
Kristin Henderson: You're last question brings up an interesting point. I did meet with Luigi Pratt and Charlie Bootes, on post at Fort Bragg, in the presence of a public affairs officer. Charlie's commanding officer was also present. Both men spoke extremely frankly, and what they said matched what they're wives had told me. (I interviewed their wives in their homes, without any official military presence.) In my experience at least, there appeared to be no pressure to control or influence what either man said.
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Andrews AFB, Md.:
I just wanted to be a voice of encouragement for Mrs. Pratt and other family members like her. She is not the only one in protest! There are military families, like mine, that do believe you can be for the troops AND against a war. I hope she will continue to courageously stand up for her beliefs.
Kristin Henderson: I'm sure she'll appreciate the encouragement. She has said that, living in a military town, she has often felt alone in her beliefs.
In my conversations with spouses of all political stripes, I found that once you got past the rhetoric, on a human level, there was a recognition that no matter their political leaning, they were all going through the same thing. There was a lot of compassion for each other.
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Arlington, VA:
Since military families are often far from their extended families, the support that others share in similar situations seems even more important.
Kristin Henderson: The isolation that comes with frequent moves far from your family is a challenge that can really work against a spouse during a wartime deployment. That's why it's so important for them to reach out to their unit's family readiness or support group, even if the group doesn't reach out to them. Those groups are made up of volunteers that are often just swamped. Or you can reach out to the community service center on the military installation. Or to an online group. Anything to remind yourself you're not alone.
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Kristin Henderson: Thanks to everyone who participated today, for giving this subject your time and such serious thought. I know the families appreciate all the expressions of support.
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