Panama: The Road to Recovery : Tour of Duty Places Christmas on Hold for Military Families

For many families in this gritty military town next door to Ft. Ord, Christmas is on hold, awaiting the end of a conflict thousands of miles away.

“It’s not like a holiday. I don’t feel in the mood,” said Ramona Remy, the mother of a newborn and a 5-year-old son.

Santa will come for Remy’s children eventually. But she had to explain to her 5-year-old that “Daddy is on a tour of duty” and would not be home on Christmas morning. Remy will leave her gifts and those of her husband’s under the tree until his tour of duty ends.

Three thousand miles away, in another military town, Fayetteville, N.C., a similar scene was played out in Mary Pugliese’s home. She had to explain to her 5-year-old son, Vincent Jr., why his father would be away for Christmas.

Daddy is Army Capt. Vincent Pugliese, a company commander in the 313th Military Intelligence Battalion based at nearby Ft. Bragg. Pugliese’s company was in the vanguard of U.S. military forces that invaded Panama last week.

“My biggest job now is making sure other families aren’t alone during the holidays,” Mary Pugliese said, as she looked forward to joining with the families of other enlisted men at the home of their husbands’ first sergeant.

Throughout the United States, military wives whose husbands abruptly deployed for combat in Panama spent the holiday weekend trying to maintain their Christmas cheer while trying to hold down their anxieties.

Some, Mary Pugliese among them, found solace in keeping busy--making stockings for unmarried soldiers away from home, going shopping at the last minute, entertaining visiting relatives. Some canceled planned feasts and scaled back celebrations. Some said they planned to spend Christmas Day with other wives whose husbands also were sent to Central America with barely time to say goodby.

It was a trying time, especially for young mothers who struggled to keep the day festive for their children.

“I have a little boy who is 6 years old. He’s counting on Mom,” said Shandra Riffey, whose husband, a Ft. Ord soldier, was among those sent to fight in Panama.

“Whether we like it or not, the holiday season is here. The easiest thing to do is to stick together,” said Kelli Borges, another Ft. Ord wife. This was to be her first Christmas with her husband of six months.

“Now, we’re just going to wait until he gets back,” she said. After a pause, she added: “I just hope and pray to God that he comes back.”

Ft. Ord spokesmen do not say how many soldiers have gone to Panama, though the number is in the thousands. At least one infantryman from Ft. Ord has been killed and 13 have been reported wounded.

Marina is a town where bumper stickers still denounce Jane Fonda for her opposition to the U.S. military’s role in Vietnam. It is a place with its share of churches and bars. At one bar, Mortimer’s, two televisions aired Sunday football games, but no one from the base was there to watch.

Two soldiers left in town on Sunday watched a pool game in a bar across from Mortimer’s, but they would not talk about Panama, so concerned were they that any information could be used against their buddies by forces loyal to deposed dictator Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

Some wives would talk only if the names of their husbands were not used.

Whatever happened to be the latest news of Panama was the talk of the town. Families grasped for any word out of Central America. When Ramona Remy heard that her husband had been quoted in a news service story in the local newspaper, she exclaimed, “Thank God, that means he’s all right.”

Lisa Flowers, 26, the mother of two young children, felt a need to pray on Sunday and went to the First Baptist Church with a friend, Lisa Buckner, 31, a member of the congregation whose husband also is in Panama.

The preacher, William Hoops, read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Book of Luke. Then, he prayed for the men who are “out there defending our right to believe in Christ.”

After the service, Flowers, like the other wives, told of breaking into tears. Her 7-year-old son saw her cry and tried to reassure her, telling her: “ ‘He’s going to do his job and come home.’ ”

The children may not understand the dangers in Panama. But the people left behind do. “We have to talk about it. You can’t keep it inside. Sometimes, you have to let it out and cry,” Flowers said.

It doesn’t matter if an old friend is calling with a holiday wish. When the telephone rings, or there is a knock at the front door, “your heart drops,” she said.

“I just hope it’s over soon,” Flowers’ friend, Buckner, said. “I just want my husband home.”

Near Ft. Bragg, Lisa Scott, 21, of suburban Hope Mills, N.C., was feeling the same emotions. She said that she and her husband of three years, Pfc. Michael Scott of Ft. Bragg’s 82nd Airborne Division, had planned to start some special Christmas Eve traditions of their own this year.

“This would have been our first Christmas together by ourselves as a family,” she said. “The others since we were married we’ve spent either with his parents or with mine.”

Among other customs they had hoped to institute this year was one of sitting around the tree on Christmas Eve and reading the story of Christ’s birth from the Bible to their two young children, Michael II, 2, and Amanda, 8 months.

But, she hastened to add, their plans won’t be scrapped--just postponed. “I’m keeping the tree up and the presents wrapped until Mike gets back,” she said. “We’ll do everything we wanted to do. It’ll just be two or three weeks later.”

At suburban Fayetteville’s sprawling Cross Creek Mall, the region’s largest shopping center, Cathy Sessoms took time off from work on Christmas Eve to scrawl a message in blue ink on one of the three 4-by-8-foot panels that the mall and a Durham television station designed as a giant Christmas card to be sent to the troops in Panama.

“We will do Xmas when you get back. I love you,” Sessoms, 26, wrote to her fiancee, Spec. Brian Reynolds.

Hers was among thousands of messages that filled the panels. Sessoms vowed that when Reynolds returns: “I’m just gonna grab him and hug him and kiss him. I miss him so much. We just got engaged about two weeks ago.”

Chris Rietveld spent much of Christmas Eve trying to arrange for her husband to spend Christmas Day at home on leave from the base hospital at Ft. Bragg.

Her husband, Spec. David Rietveld of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was among 37 wounded servicemen who were flown from Panama to Ft. Bragg late Friday night for treatment.

Rietveld was among the most seriously injured, having been hit by grenade fragments that broke his arm in two places and left him with shrapnel wounds in his arm and leg.

Dan Morain reported from Ft. Ord; David Treadwell reported from Ft. Bragg.