Bringing Home the War

By Theresa Brandt

I was an Army wife for thirteen years. I spent the five years of that time trying desperately to hold on to my marriage and myself while my Green Beret husband was fighting insurgents in Iraq. Bringing Home the War: The Story of an Army Special Forces Wife is the complicated tale of what it is like to be a spouse of an elite soldier during the war. Stories about Green Berets are well known but an insider’s perspective into the struggles of the families trying to survive in the shadows of the military is virtually untold.
This book is written in the first person with a “chain of consciousness” narrative that grips the reader and allows them to share in the near madness, the utter frustration and, eventually, the real life triumph. The book reads like a novel. The story is controversial. There are observations and events that tend to shock and outrage the reader. This book has a unique viewpoint that chronicles current events, but it is also the timeless story of an individual struggling to find reason and relevance within chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theresa Brandt
• Release date: Jul 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476457697

Theresa Brandt

I have wanted to be a writer my entire life. I love books. I love to read anything. I think in terms of narrations, chain of consciousness, third and first party perspectives. But it took me until I was almost forty to actual sat down and write my first book. Just finishing it was such an accomplishment. I could barely contain myself when the copywrite came back from the Library of Congress. Seeing my manuscript actually available for sale...well that is just a dream come true.

Book preview

Bringing Home the War

Theresa Brandt

Copyright 2012 by Theresa Brandt

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1-The Ending

The interstate stretched endlessly in front of me. The adrenalin of the day had long ago worn off and I was left completely exhausted. My brother was driving Dad’s old farm truck ahead of me. The headlights from my truck lit the interior of the small trailer of mismatched animals he was pulling. Stan had spent hours in the humid August heat helping me to catch chickens and goats and load them into various crates and cages. He had been fabulous help for me and the boys but he was not an animal lover. He had commented out of earshot of the kids that everything there could have easily been taken care of with a box of .22 rifle shells. The truck and trailer took a sharp turn and I swore under my breath as my old mare struggled to keep her footing. The protests of the goats and chickens could be heard through the night air.

We were somewhere in the middle of Illinois. We were a sad little convoy. Stan led the procession driving Dad’s flatbed farm truck and pulling the trailer. My sister-in-law, Connie followed with a van full of kids and essentials I couldn’t leave behind. I drove in the middle. Everything I truly loved was in those three vehicles. Everything except the husband I was leaving behind.

Twelve years earlier I had run away from a dangerous husband with John to a new life. Now I was running just as hard away from John back home. The irony of the way my life had come full circle was not something I really wanted to dwell on. Maybe years from now I would look back on this with some perspective and wisdom and feel as if this was a part of some great plan. Tonight, it took everything I had in me to drive mindlessly forward following Stan into the night. I had no desire to drive. I had no desire to start my life over again at thirty-five with three boys. I had nothing left to go back to, so I drove on.

Stan signaled at the next rest stop. We pulled off and separated into trucks with trailers and cars. I parked next to Connie’s van and left her to try to wake up and keep an eye on my sleeping boys. I hurried across the parking lot to Stan. I checked on him, another sleeping boy, and then to the back to check on the animals. All of the animals seemed to be doing well, even Lady. She was a skittish part thoroughbred mare, but she was traveling well. The practical side of me quickly glanced for any signs of stress or injury. Then I let my hands rub her velvety nose and mumbled nonsense that made her ears go up and nuzzle my hands.

I had been most worried about loading her. She was a big horse, standing a little more than sixteen hands. I had owned her for three years. When I bought her, she had been skinny, scared and stubborn. The only things I had changed in those years was to make her a little less skinny and add spoiled to her personality list. Stan was the best help I could ever have, but he was not a horse person and I was not leaving without her. Stan had backed the trailer up to her pasture and I opened the gate and broke a bale of hay in the front compartment.

Lady knew me and I knew her. She didn’t like the trailer or the smell of the hogs and cattle that had ridden before her. She took one look at me and knew something was wrong. I ran my hands over her neck and shoulders as I clipped the lead rope to her halter. I started walking with her in a large, slow circle. I told her exactly what was going to happen. I talked about how much she would love it at my Dad’s farm. How we planned on traveling at night when it was cooler. Gradually we made our way to the trailer. She stopped. Her nose reached out for all the smells, her eyes and ears took in the entire trailer. I gave her lots of lead and then asked her to step up. She looked at me then with her liquid brown eyes and her ears pointed forward.

This was the moment. Honestly she could do anything that she wanted to do. She was bigger and stronger than I was and we both knew it. I waited. I had saved her. I had given her a good home. I trusted her to follow me. She believed that I would do nothing to bring her harm. I had trusted John too. I had trusted him with all I had in me. I had believed in him when it didn’t make sense. I asked her again. Without ever taking her eyes off of me, she stepped into the trailer and followed me to the front. Lady trusted me even when it didn’t make sense. When I was younger, I used to believe that men were only slightly smarter than horses but much less trainable. Maybe I had been right all along.

The farmland of Illinois was giving way to the suburbs around St. Louis. Traffic seemed heavier than it should have been for the odd hours we were traveling. We navigated across the overpasses and bridge. The sign welcomed us to Missouri at the midpoint of the river. Automatically, I switched lanes and found my way through to the road that would take me home. I had driven this road too many times to get lost. I had learned to navigate the bridges and overpasses by myself. For years now I had driven home alone with the three boys. I knew the way from the base to my home town in Mid-Missouri so well I could probably drive it in my sleep.

Traffic thinned considerably as we sped south on Interstate-44. If this had been any other night I would have woken the boys to see the lights of Six Flags. We went there once a year with my only sister, Glenda, and her daughter, Brittany. It was a tradition of ours. John went if he could. He had gone the year before last. It had been such a good time. He had poured water on Glenda when she had luckily not gotten wet on the river ride. He had gloated about getting the highest scores on several games. He had flatly refused to ride any of the roller coasters. This year he hadn’t been able to go because of work. I had taken the two oldest boys myself. I had been oblivious. His encouragement for the boys and me to take the trip to see my family was so much more about him having time without us. It had given him hours to talk to his girlfriend, or fuck partner, or mistress, or whatever you are suppose to call the woman who is having sex with your husband.

Now I cried as I drove. I’ve heard people say that they cried so much that they couldn’t cry anymore, but I had been crying for days, months, maybe even years. I wasn’t sure that I would ever to stop crying. I was never going to sleep again. I had gone months without sleeping more than a couple of hours a night. I had stopped sleeping sometime in June. The day John told me about his girl, the first time I caught him in his lies, the day I realized that my marriage was over.

Now we had the road to ourselves. Our three vehicles drove too quickly along the two lane road. We were getting so much closer to home. Again, and again, I went over the things that had happened over the last couple of months. I thought about the things John had done to destroy our family. I thought about the decision I had made to leave him and our life in Tennessee. I felt the helplessness and the panic overwhelm me as the events played through my head. The emotions hit me wave after wave. They were raw and primitive. The pain was sharp. The sadness was overwhelming. My therapist had said that anger would carry me through for awhile. I prayed for anger. I prayed for strength. I wanted to be numb. I wanted to think of anything, to go anywhere to hide from the pain and the fact that I still loved John.

We slowed down as we passed through the city limits of the town in which I had grown up. We passed the old high school, the Catholic Church, the square, and the courthouse. My home town is about seven streets wide and a little over two miles long. It winds its way along a ridge and is a nondescript, Midwestern town in all respects. I both loved and hated it. There was familiarity about it, a piece of my own history that made it home. There were other memories here I didn’t care to remember.

A little ways outside of town we turned onto a two lane black top. We were only a few minutes from Mom and Dad’s. Even though the road was terribly curvy, we sped along quickly. The road was too familiar to all of us. My cell phone rang as I turned down the gravel road to the farm. My heart stopped for a minute. It was Mom. I felt so stupid. Even after all that had happened for a split second I had thought it was John. We drove down the hill into the valley. The vehicles rumbled across the cattle guard. For the first time in months the panic seemed to ease a little. I was home.

Chapter 2-The Army

I met John at a truly horrible time in my life. I was working second shift at a local warehouse. I was young and several months into a very abusive marriage. Mark, my first husband, was mad at the world and I was the easiest person to take out this anger on. It was a marriage that never should have happened. We had dated for years, lived together through college and never truly had what it takes to make a good relationship. But I was young and stubborn. I didn’t really know what a healthy relationship was like and I definitely didn’t believe that I deserved to be in one.

When I met John, I was trying desperately to hide the fact that my life was falling apart. The only part of my life that wasn’t a disaster was work. I was good at my job and well like by both the management and other employees. John was assigned to my department and I was instructed to train him. There was something between us the minute we met each other. I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but there was this connection that defied explanation. At first he was so wonderful, funny and easy to be around and then, as soon as he found out I was married, he became a complete ass. Not a very adult response to being attracted to someone, but it was his rational at the time.

One afternoon my husband and I had a horrible fight. We were working together that afternoon on our little farm, it was getting late and I needed to leave for work. It had not been the most productive day, and Mark was already angry and irritated. When I mentioned that I needed to head up to the house to get ready for work, he completely lost his temper. He started shouting at me that I couldn’t leave because we had too much to do. I ignored him and turned to walk out of the barn. We hadn’t finished chores for the day but there were always an endless number of things to do and my job at the warehouse was the only source of income that we had. Logic was irrelevant to Mark. He grabbed my arms and rammed me back against the barn wall over and over again. It was always the shock of the attack that hit me first, then the pain and, and then the fear of what he was capable of. I was crying and screaming, begging him to stop. There was a moment when I looked into his eyes and I truly didn’t think that this time he would let me go. When his grip loosened slightly, I wrenched away and ran for the house. The only thing I was thinking was to make it to work and escape at least for a little while the hell that was my life.

I had cried through the twenty minute drive into town. I clocked in ten minutes late and ignored the questioning looks from my supervisors and went about starting my shift. The orders had already been assigned to everyone for the night. I nearly groaned out loud when I realized John and I would be working together that evening. John had become such an ass to work with. I grabbed orders and he started in on me with his cocky grin and smart ass comments. I turned around sharply and handed him a fistful of paperwork.

Not tonight. I am not in the mood. I said the words too sharply and with too much force. He mumbled an ‘Okay’ but his look asked too many questions.

The warehouse was hot and within an hour I was lost in my work and had shed my light jacket. I loved the work. Everything here at work made sense. Here I was, the problem solver, while at home I was simply perceived as the problem. Most of the workers were in another building for the night, so I could speed through the orders and the lines and pack at my own pace. I had lost track of where John was working. I reached up to pull a few items off the top shelf when I heard John gasp behind me. I instinctively jumped as I felt John’s hand graze the small of my back. I jerked around and away from him as he asked the obvious question.

What the hell happened to your back? I searched for a plausible explanation and started rambling on about falling into something at the farm when I noticed he wasn’t listening to me but staring at my arms. I followed his gaze and saw the unmistakable purple bruises in the shape of my husband’s fingers as they had wrapped around my upper arms. I stopped talking. There was no explanation that made any sense and we both knew it. I grabbed my jacket and orders and headed for my desk.

I had worked so long and so hard to protect this part of my life from everyone. Of all the people that I knew I definitely didn’t want John to know the truth about what was going on. There was such a mix of fear and embarrassment and guilt that accompanied the abuse. I hid out at my desk until break without seeing him. He was sitting on one of the empty lines. He waved me over as I was making my way to the break room. I walked over slowly, waiting for the inevitable joke or flippant comment. I flinched as I saw his hand coming towards me as if to touch me. He stopped and I could see the regret in his eyes.

This shouldn’t be happening to you.

It was an obvious statement perhaps. It shouldn’t be happening to anyone. But I had lived so long with the idea that this was my lot in life that I couldn’t even understand what he meant.

You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about my life. It was a defensive answer, but I felt the need to defend Mark’s actions, regardless of how ludicrous this all seemed. He shook his head in disagreement.

I know you. I know that everyone here loves you because you truly try to do your best and you care about everyone. I know that you are better than this place and better than me. If anyone deserves better, it would be you. I stared at him in amazement and disbelief but he wasn’t quite finished, You deserve better.

He nodded at me as he walked off, as if he had his say, agreed with his own words and had no need for me to respond. He told me in some way, every day from then on that I deserved better, that I was worth more. It took months for me to believe him, it took months for me to believe in myself, but eventually I left Mark.

It took a giant leap of faith to believe in anyone or anything at that point in my life. But it took very little for me to fall head-over-heels in love with John. For his part, John treated me better than anyone had ever treated me. Soon, we had moved to North Carolina. In so many ways it gave us both a new start. John was easy to be with. We spent the weekends together either on the beach or poking around flea markets and antique stores. We had very little in a material sense, but in so many ways we had everything in each other. I had a new job and a new life on the East Coast. Suddenly, John was talking about joining the Army. He had always been interested in the military. He had done a two year enlistment with the Navy until he was downsized out of a job. His family was full of generations of soldiers and I suppose as much as the farm and country were ingrained into me, the military was ingrained into him. We had barely gotten married and we were expecting a little one and jobs were scarce. John believed that the Army was the answer for all of us.

We moved into a tiny house, in an older subdivision a short drive from base. John enlisted as a parachute rigger. Before long, I was an Army wife and stay at home mom with two little boys. I was not nearly as enthusiastic about this career direction as he was. It seemed way too dangerous for me. I hated that he jumped out of airplanes, but at Fort Bragg almost everyone wore jump wings and it seemed routine. It had the illusion of being safe. I hated it, every jump, day or night. For John it wasn’t enough. He hated the routine and repetitiveness of being a rigger. Soon he was talking about trying out for Special Forces. We discussed it and fought about it on a regular basis. I saw no advantage in it for me and the kids. John saw a challenge. The other Special Forces wives I knew complained about how often the guys were gone, how much their husband’s attitudes had changed, and that the money and the risk was not worth what they felt like they were giving up. I worried about how dangerous it was, where we would be stationed and the high divorce rate. I didn’t think we could survive this career as a family.

John was persistent. He talked about the extra money. We could be stationed closer to Missouri for me, closer to my family. The family support groups were great. He started to sound like a recruiter. He tried everything to get me to agree to selection. He brought home Army brochures. One of them actually said that some marriages were stronger because of the honeymoon period enjoyed after the countless deployments. Nothing I read or heard pointed to this career path being good for us or our family.

I loved John. I wanted him to be happy, but not at the expense of the happiness of me or the kids. He asked me not to make him choose between his dreams and me. He then changed tactics, talking about the high dropout rates and the low percentage of soldiers who were actually selected. Suddenly he didn’t believe he would make it through selection anyway. He just wanted to try out and then if he was selected, we would talk about what we wanted to do. I didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. I knew my husband. John would make it through selection on determination alone if he needed to. I knew there would be no discussion if he was one of the soldiers selected.

Nothing I said or thought made any difference. John was determined that this was the right choice for him. We were sitting in the living room one day and he started talking. The cocky grin was missing. He brushed the hair back from my face. Looking back, I’m not sure if this moment was staged and manipulated for John to get what he wanted or if he was truly sincere. He talked about how he had known he wanted to be a Green Beret since he was nine years old. It is what he was supposed to do with his life. Now that he had the opportunity to make his dreams come true. He asked me not to make him choose between his family and his dream. He believed that we were strong enough to make this work. I suppose it all sounds somewhat melodramatic, but I couldn’t say no to him at that moment. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe in us. I felt a tear track down my face. He brushed it away as I nodded the consent that he had asked for.

His excitement built instantly. The cocky grin returned.

Who gets to be what they dreamed of as a kid? With a beautiful wife and baby boy on top of everything else. His excitement was infectious.

He immediately started preparing for SF Selection. He started working out at a furious pace. He put in his regular time at work and spent all the rest of his time and energy and preparing for the trial ahead. He existed with a 75 pound Army backpack, or ruck, attached to his back. He went for runs with his ruck on, he did lunges and squats wearing his ruck. He somehow seemed out of place without it attached to his back. He found other soldiers with hopes of being Green Berets and they logged countless miles together. For my part, I threw all my support behind John in his new quest. If this was to be our future I wanted to whole heartedly support him.

He left for selection and I hoped desperately that this was the best decision for all of us. I didn’t hear from him for six weeks and I finally got the phone call that it was time to pick him up. He gave me the time and the place but that was all I knew. I drove on to base and easily found the group of Special Forces hopefuls. I searched the unfamiliar faces for John. I found him. He had lost over twenty pounds and he was gaunt, filthy, and smelly but he had a grin from ear to ear. I knew immediately that he had been one of the soldiers selected to go on to the next step. He stood up to make his way over to the car and I realized he could barely walk. I rushed to help him with his bags. He had broken several bones in his foot on one of the timed rucks. He had missed the required times but finished every ruck without medical attention or help. He would be weeks recovering but he had made it. Whether it was stubbornness or determination or