The soldier embraces his family before shipping out. The spouse stoically waves goodbye knowing heartache and worry are about to take hold. Thoughts creep in that life as they know it could soon be shattered.
It’s a scene Nikki Batts has played out twice with her Army husband and one she fears going through again with her 18-year-old son who just finished Army Reserve training. The mother to six children, including a transgender son, has led a difficult life as a military spouse, overcoming long bouts of not being able to communicate with her husband and swallowing fears that he might not return home from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And now, with the military in the hands of commander-in-chief Donald Trump, she's scared more hard times are on the way.
“I’m afraid of our new president and what that means for my husband and for my son, in terms of going to war,” Batts, wife to a 25-year Army officer, said during a recent phone interview with International Business Times. “And I’ve never felt more compelled to want to speak out.”
Under the recently installed administration of President Trump, the emotions of some military families can best be described as fearful. Dripping with hyperbolic and at times vitriolic words, Trump’s speeches, tweets and some of his executive orders during the first days of his administration have led to uncertainty and worry among some military families who are afraid his rhetoric and actions could lead to more deployments and possibly endanger enlisted personnel stationed overseas.
During the presidential campaign, many Americans voted Republican because they believed Trump’s goal was to isolate the country from the rest of the world to avoid international conflicts and instead focus on domestic policy. Yet, Trump’s recent actions and threats have put many military families on high alert. There was his decision to remove Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the National Security Council, and his flippant remarks to the Central Intelligence Agency about how "we should have taken the oil," after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. During his short time in the White House, Trump has also threatened China, Mexico, North Korea, Iran and other nations, and praised intelligence officials for sending generals in the “right direction” so “the fighting becomes easier.”
“You do the job like everybody in this room is capable of doing,” said Trump in a recent speech directed at the CIA. “And the generals are wonderful, and the fighting is wonderful. But if you give them the right direction, boy, does the fighting become easier. And, boy, do we lose so fewer lives, and win so quickly. And that's what we have to do. We have to start winning again.”
But winning wasn’t Liesel Kershul’s top concern during her husband's five deployments. Kershul, 33, met her Marine Corps husband while studying at the University of California-Irvine and the couple has been together for the last 15 years, including 10 years of marriage. During that time, he’s shipped out five times for combat, including the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then Afghanistan the following year. During one particularly difficult deployment, Kershul didn’t speak to her husband, an MV-22 Osprey pilot who flies in support of bombers, for six months.
Currently based at Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona, Kershul said every deployment is different and military family members often deal with “low-level anxiety with spikes in between.” Kershul said Trump might not have understood what military families go through when he spoke to the CIA.
“It felt disconnected to my reality as a military spouse…because the fighting is never wonderful. It felt like he maybe lacked a little empathy for how military spouses feel about sending our loved ones to go fight those battles,” Kershul said.
Angie Drake, left, has been married to her Air Force husband for his entire 27-year career. Drake's father, right, also served in the Air Force. Photo: Angela Drake
Angie Drake is also afraid of what Trump could do to her family. She said Trump’s decisions and choice of words seem erratic and misguided, increasing fears and further destabilizing a community that any day could see a loved one deployed or killed in combat. The Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer and photographer has been married to her husband for his entire 27-year Air Force career. Together, they have two sons who are now in college.
“I think military families are always worried when a new administration comes in because there’s always a time of uncertainty,” said Drake, “and I know I’m feeling this and a lot of my friends are feeling this, that this current president, the uncertainty the levels are probably the highest I’ve ever felt in my time as a military spouse. I think all you have to do is look at the newspaper or your social media of choice every morning and see that there is an uproar every single day since he has taken office. That alone suggests this is a president who is trying to turn things upside down, and not necessarily with a definitive plan with each move that he makes. And military families value planning.”
Drake has deep family ties to the military. Her father was also in the Air Force and was stationed in England, where he met his wife and Drake’s mother. But when Drake recalled her sons, then eight and 11 years old, saying goodbye to their father before he deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, she started to fight back tears.
“They have watched their dad go to war, they remember what it felt like to have their dad at war,” Drake told IBT. “One of the hardest things a family can do is say goodbye to someone who you may not see again.”
There’s no denying the number of spouses and children that could be affected by more deployments. Roughly 50.6 percent of the total military force is married, according to a Defense Department report from 2015 that broke down the military’s latest demographics. Meanwhile, 36.5 percent of the active duty force are married with young children.
Tracy Sivacek, 51, is another seasoned military spouse who’s worried about the Trump administration. She’s been there for 17 of her husband’s 27-year Army career and has a disabled 17-year-old son afflicted with Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome. The syndrome is in the same family as arthrogryposis, similar to that of disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski, who many accused Trump of mocking in November 2015 during a campaign trail speech.
Sivacek said Trump may not be looking out for the best interests of military families.
“When I heard that [Dunford] was out, I started feeling like maybe they’re shopping for the advice they want to hear,” Sivacek said. “And that concerns me because every time I’ve seen an administration start shopping for the advice they want to hear, something bad happens to the military.”
An untimely death isn't the only fear hounding military spouses. Myra Hinote, a 23-year Air Force wife and mother of three, stressed many people don’t truly understand the long-term effects a severe war injury of any kind can have. The immeasurable damage long deployments can have on the enlisted, such as in cases involving post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), affect both the servicemen and their families once they return from a combat zone, she said.
“Thankfully this has not affected my husband, but so many of our service members have suffered traumatic brain injuries, along with other, more visible injuries, and the physical and psychological effects are life-long and significant,” Hinote said in an email. “I don’t think that we’ve even begun to grasp the long-term implications of this. So, any talk of new deployments, especially fighting terrorists who favor [improvised explosive devices] and landmines, is doubly concerning. ”
Roughly 11 percent of all veterans who served in Afghanistan and 20 percent in Iraq were afflicted by PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Meanwhile, a 2011 Pew Research Center survey of 1,853 veterans, including 712 who served after 9/11, found 44 percent of veterans said their “readjustment” to civilian life was difficult.
“When President Trump spoke to the CIA and he mentioned ‘taking the oil’ that sent a chill through my community of military spouses, the people I talk to and we support each other, that sent a chill through all of us because we know what that takes – to go into a country, to take something that belongs to them, that means putting boots on the ground and using your military to do so,” Drake said. “And I think that when President Trump speaks about actions like that he forgets that there are people in those uniforms and that there are families of people behind our men and women in uniform and that we are worried.”
A military wife for nine years, Amy Bushatz stressed the military is just as divided over President Donald Trump as the rest of the country. Photo: Amy Bushatz
Servicemen have traditionally supported Republican policies and candidates, but have moved toward the center of the political spectrum in recent years. While roughly 50 percent of the military backed the GOP in 2000, only 32 percent did by 2014, according to a poll conducted by Military Times. Another 28 percent identified as independents.
In many military families, political conversations are rare if only to avoid possible conflicts in a community that supports and relies on each other to get through lengthy overseas deployments. The wives who spoke to IBT are registered as independents, although Batts said she actually switched to the Democratic Party to vote for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during the primary races last year.
Amy Bushatz has been married for the last nine years to a 10-year Army serviceman recently turned Army National Guard infantry officer. Bushatz, a 32-year-old editor with Military.com, suggested the military, like the rest of country, is deeply divided over Trump, with some showing support, others not and some in between.
“Now that [Trump] is our president I think the attitude is the same that we had by and large as a military for President Obama,” Bushatz said. “Not everybody liked President Obama, but they recognized that he’s the commander-in-chief and that is your contractual duty as a member of the military and your duty as an American to obey the commander in chief.”
But for others, the reaction to Trump has been much more visceral. When the president said he would’ve “taken” Iraq’s oil, Batts said she was stunned. Combining the words “take,” “oil” and “Iraq” equaled one thing to many military spouses: more boots on the ground.
“It’s been by far the most trying experience of my life to be a military spouse," Batt said. "But also the level of camaraderie…among the Army family is unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before. We would do anything for each other. When the unit goes out and they’re all overseas somewhere, we’re a family, just that quick, overnight, because we all understand how hard it is to sleep at night and the fear that’s involved and just the difficulties of taking care of your family and dealing with the stress that the kids are experiencing. We’re all going through the same things together.”
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