Chicago Tribune
December 16, 2007
Forced Apart By War Yet Connected By The Internet
Web has military families in touch like never before during long stints in Iraq
By Dahleen Glanton and Aamer Madhani, Tribune national correspondents
FT. STEWART, Ga. — Before her husband left for Iraq last spring, Amanda Nelson purchased a used laptop computer, and soon she was flooding her husband’s e-mail with videos and photos of their new baby.
For Pfc. Josh Nelson, the electronic messages became a lifeline to Amanda and their infant daughter, Kylee.
But as Amanda grew used to talking to her husband almost daily by phone, the e-mail routine faded. At the end of his recent home leave, Josh let her know what a loss that was.
“You’d better send me pictures this time,” he said between the teary hugs and kisses at the airport as he prepared to board a plane to return to Iraq. “All the videos you said you were going to send me, you never did.”
“I will send you lots of stuff,” she assured him.
Another skirmish in America’s first major war in an age of e-mail.
For families separated by long deployments to Iraq, letters that take weeks to arrive have been replaced by e-mail, blogs, videoconferencing, video cameras, instant messaging and Web sites from YouTube to MySpace.
All this 21st Century technology has transformed military life: The home front and the battlefront are connected as never before. That has made for an odd mix of intimacy and distance—and created an unprecedented challenge for combat leaders who must sustain morale.
“For some people, it’s good to maintain that contact with home and know that they can help if possible. While for others, the bliss of ignorance makes it easier to get through what we go through over here,” said 2nd Lt. Kyle Graham, Nelson’s platoon leader in Bonecrusher Troop, an element of the Army’s 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
“The only thing I caution … is don’t overdo it,” said Graham, 23. “The phone is like alcohol: It’s good in moderation, but if you use it too much you get hooked.”
Earlier this year, the Defense Department blocked MySpace and other sites on military computers, restricting access for soldiers serving in Iraq and on bases around the world. Military officials cited security concerns and a lack of adequate bandwidth as the primary reasons for the ban.
But the Internet clearly has presented difficulties beyond military security, a fact played out in the lives of Bonecrusher Troop families such as Josh and Amanda Nelson.
For Army wives like Amanda, cell phones and computers are as necessary as weapons are to the soldiers. Because of the cost of cell phones, most soldiers do not have them in Iraq, so their spouses wait, sometimes impatiently, for them to call. On the other end, soldiers like Josh have come to expect a steady flow of e-mails, photos and videos from home.
In the seven months since he left for Iraq as part of President Bush’s addition of nearly 30,000 troops in a “surge” to stabilize the country, Josh has balanced his duties as a soldier with helping his wife back home at Ft. Stewart.
Thousands of miles apart, they decided via telephone and Josh e-mailing from an Internet cafe in Iraq that Amanda would try to get pregnant during his home leave. Josh also helped her work out a household budget when she ran out of money at the end of the month.
Such connectedness has helped many couples through the Iraq war’s long deployments, but it also can damage morale at home and abroad.
After Bonecrusher Troop deployed with the rest of the Army’s 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, the brigade commander replaced the leader of the troop’s family support group back at Ft. Stewart when word spread about certain postings on her personal MySpace page.
The woman, the wife of a deployed soldier, was replaced because the controversy had affected the morale of the entire troop, the military said.
“If you are a wife,” Amanda said, “people might not know your name, but they know when you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing.”
Not the life she expected
On the May morning her husband first left for Iraq, Amanda had planned to get up before dawn. She would have his favorite breakfast—fried egg sandwich with cheese, ketchup and Tabasco sauce—waiting for him when he got out of the shower.
But the mounting fear of what lay ahead overwhelmed her. All she could do was lie in bed next to him and watch the minutes tick away on the clock.
As Josh got dressed in his fatigues, she thought to herself how handsome he looked, like G.I. Joe. She was sure that the Army would be good for him, that it would give him the discipline he needed to be a strong husband and father.
She was not as certain about herself. She was suddenly thrust onto unfamiliar turf as an Army wife, and she had no idea what that entailed.
In the months that followed Bonecrusher Troop’s departure, though, Amanda evolved from a teary-eyed, love-struck young woman into a mature, devoted mother determined to get her own life on track while holding her young family together.
She is raising Kylee alone, in a sometimes cold and isolating place where friends are there one day and deployed the next. Though she tries to remain strong, she has battled loneliness that threatens her promise to Josh that she would stay in their apartment on base during the 15 months he is in Iraq.
She gave up her dream of a college degree after a few weeks because there was no one to care for Kylee. And there is no reprieve from the lingering fear that she might get a call that her husband has been injured or killed. After only a few months, she is fed up with Ft. Stewart.
