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A
Conversation with Kristin Henderson
What
made you decide to write While They're at War?
The seed was planted during the initial invasion of Iraq. My husband’s a
Navy chaplain, and when a neighbor found out my husband was over there
with the Marines headed for Baghdad, she said, "Wow, what’s that
like? Having him in harm’s way?" I was the only person she knew who
had someone in the fight. And it hit me: Most Americans no longer
personally know what it’s like to send someone they love to war. Some
time later I complained to an Army officer that civilians just don't
understand what we military spouses go through, and he said, "Maybe
that's because we don’t tell them." And that’s true, we don’t.
It’s partly out of pride. We don’t want to admit how much of a
struggle it is sometimes. And partly because we feel vulnerable -- when
you’re emotionally on edge, it can be hard to open up.
But in a democracy like ours, civilians are the ones who send us to war.
So their lack of experience with war’s consequences seemed a dangerous
development to me. I wanted to write a book that would help civilians walk
a mile in the shoes of the men and women whose loved ones are fighting and
dying for the rest of us. I was also hoping a book like this would help
other military spouses know they’re not in this alone, because isolation
can be a real problem for some of us.
Aren’t
the consequences of war greatest for the people who actually do the
fighting? Why focus on the families?
The real story of war doesn’t end at the battlefield’s edge. The
people fighting our wars will tell you that they depend on their families
for the support they need to prepare for war, get through it, and then
recover from it. Our nation’s military readiness depends on three
things: training our military service members, equipping them, and making
sure their families are in a position to support them. Families are just
as important as training and equipment, because soldiers are human beings,
not machines. If a soldier knows his family is struggling while he’s
gone, that can distract him from his wartime mission. And in a war zone,
distractions can be fatal.
Were
you able to just sit down and start writing from your own experience? Did
you learn anything you didn’t already know?
Before I started, I figured I knew everything I needed to know to write a
book like this, because in the space of a year and a half my husband had
deployed first to Afghanistan, then Iraq. But life has a way of curing us
know-it-alls. For instance, I learned from the chaplains on Fort Bragg
that when your spouse is in a combat zone, many of us have the same
emotional reaction as someone whose loved one is dying from a terminal
illness. It’s called anticipatory grief, and the physical symptoms
include everything from shortness of breath, like an anxiety attack, to
restlessness and agitation and difficulty concentrating. Emotionally, you’re
prone to crying jags. You find yourself imagining the funeral. You’re
essentially grieving as if the person you love is already dead. When I
heard that my mouth dropped open, because while my husband was in
Afghanistan and Iraq I had had those exact symptoms. Not only had I not
known all that craziness had a name -- anticipatory grief -- I had no idea
other spouses were going through the same thing.
Was
that the biggest surprise to you as you wrote While They're at War?
It was one of many. I was really surprised at how willing the spouses were
to talk to me. They opened up their lives. Although in hindsight, it makes
sense. I was one of them — they knew I’d been through the same thing.
I knew what questions to ask. They trusted me, and
I felt a responsibility not to betray that trust. So I tried to tell each
person’s story the way she saw it, and not impose my own judgment on it.
That was especially important
in the stories about infidelity. I spent time with one homefront spouse
whose soldier cheated on him while she was in Iraq, and another homefront
spouse who had a long-running affair during her soldier’s tours in
Vietnam. Deployments, especially wartime deployments, can really test a
marriage. The testing strengthens some marriages, but it undermines
others.
Was
there any one part of the homefront experience that was harder for you to
write about than the rest?
There was one part I did not want to write about at all. And that was the
one thing we're all afraid of -- that knock at the door. At first I told
myself that since this was a book about typical deployments and the vast
majority of us don’t wind up as widows, I didn’t have to include it.
But then I learned about anticipatory grief and eventually I had to admit
there was no way I could write about the homefront experience without
writing about what it’s like when your worst fears come true.
It took me weeks to work up the nerve to call the first widow. Every day I’d
put it on my list of things to do -- "call widow" -- and every
day I’d find fifty other things I absolutely had to do first. In the
end, these women taught me so much. I’d sit down with a widow, and there
I’d be -- I'd have my funeral face on, tiptoeing around the
conversation as if she were a fragile doll instead of just an ordinary
human being with a hole in her life. And she’d be so matter-of-fact
about it, laughing sometimes, crying sometimes, sometimes both at the same
time, that I had to tell myself to just get over it and follow her lead
and be normal. Spending time with each of them enriched not just the book,
but my life.
Did
you work with the military in doing your research?
I didn’t plan to. I found most of my wives and husbands through informal
channels — through my personal life, my friends in the military family
advocacy community. I didn’t want a military minder looking over my
shoulder during these interviews. I wanted to tell the homefront story
honestly, both the upside and the downside, and I assumed the military
would censor the downside. But eventually I decided I wanted to include
the perspective of the officials whose job it is to support military
families. So I went ahead and approached public affairs. I was amazed by
how cooperative they were. I was also amazed to discover how many services
were already in place to help military families. I had no idea those
services were out there, even though my husband is a chaplain. He knows
about them, it’s his job to know. But I didn’t. It occurred to me that
if I didn’t know, most other spouses probably didn’t know either. As I
spoke with one military official after another I learned there’s not a
lack of services so much as a lack of communication between the military
and the spouses. That’s an area that could use improvement.
What
sort of reaction do you get from readers?
From military spouses, I hear thank you a lot -- for making them aware of
the available services for instance, but mostly for telling their story on
their terms, without twisting it to fit a political agenda. For just
saying: Here are the sacrifices; for better or worse, this is what it’s
like.
Probably the most interesting reaction I get, though, is from civilians
who are opposed to the Iraq War. The war seems unjust to them, and they
know there are always some people in the military who feel the same way.
And so these civilians ask, "Why don’t soldiers just refuse to
fight?" As if it’s up to our military service members to prevent or
end a war. But in a democracy, that’s not their job. To those civilians
I say, "That’s your job." The Founding Fathers put civilians
in charge of the military. The civilian leaders we elect are the ones who
give the military its marching orders. And it’s every civilian citizen’s
job to hold those leaders accountable, to decide which wars are worth
fighting and which ones aren’t. The people who volunteer to serve in our
Armed Forces, their job is to go out and possibly die for us. And now on
top of that you want them to do your job, too? There are two things wrong
with that. First, it’s an awful lot to ask. And second, that’s an
invitation to turn our democracy into a military dictatorship, where the
generals call the shots instead of the president and Congress. I don’t
think any of us want that.
You’re
a Quaker. What’s that like, to be a pacifist moving through the world of
the military?
I’m an outsider on the inside, and it’s given me a unique perspective.
I used to think the military had nothing to do with me, that we’d all be
better off without a military. But after my husband joined the Navy, I was
forced to confront my own prejudices. Gradually I began to realize that my
own attitude was the result of a growing gap between the military and
civilian society. Since we no longer rely on the draft to fight our wars,
there’s a whole generation of Americans like me, both liberal and
conservative, with no firsthand exposure to the military. That’s ominous
for two reasons. If you look back at our history as a nation, whenever
there have been fewer veterans among our elected leaders, that’s when
our country has most often resorted to war to solve problems. And looking
ahead, if civilians disengage from the members of our armed forces, the
two groups run the risk of becoming increasingly alienated from each
other. I don’t want to see the day the military no longer feels it has a
stake in civilian society, because they’re the ones with the biggest
guns. Understanding and embracing our military families is one way to help
bridge that gap.
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