War Fear Rends Families of Servicemen

When Wes Christiansen joined the Navy two years ago, his father gave the decision little thought. But when Christiansen was sent to the Persian Gulf, the elder Christiansen did not know whether his son would face imminent danger. And for the father, that uncertainty was grinding.

“Particularly when it looked like there would be war, I’d be exhausted--even thought I hadn’t done more than I do in a normal given day,” said Christiansen, a Fontana construction manager.

As the United States openly contemplates war in the Middle East, the strain on military families is escalating.

“If there’s going to be war, there are battles and you deal with that. But with the saber rattling right now, the uncertainty is the big stress,” said Dr. H. James Sears, medical director of CHAMPUS, a military health care system. “Actual combat is probably easier than the uncertainty.”

Tensions are worsened by the need for secrecy, a need so great that no one really knows where a spouse or child is. Instead, a wife will joke that her husband describes his location as “in the sand, third dune on the left.”

“One wife asked me, ‘Will my husband be dead before I even know he’s in danger?’ ” said Rear Adm. Richard Ira Ridenour, medical officer of the Marine Corps in Washington, who was a keynote speaker during the Military Family Mental Health Conference at the San Diego Convention Center last week.

Ridenour and other mental health experts gathered at separate conferences last week in San Diego to discuss the effect of the Persian Gulf conflict on military families. Most are managing, they say, but the strain is almost palpable.

Schools with large numbers of children from military families are experiencing slightly higher than normal levels of absenteeism; military patients visit doctors slightly more than usual, experts said. But mostly, the military families turn to each other. Attendance at Navy support groups has increased and informal networks have sprung up among wives, said Cmdr. Allison Hayes, director of the Family Service Center.

Because 58% of all Navy and Marine Corps recruits come from military families, these tensions are not completely new. Most families are accustomed to the trials of deployments, but the uncertainty of this one makes coping more difficult, experts say.

“It’s just taking one day at a time,” said a 39-year-old Chula Vista woman, who asked that her name not be used. “You are just keeping busy, making sure everything runs smoothly, making sure the kids are fed and are coping. There’s a lot of reassuring to be done.”

The anxiety felt by families is heightened by the infrequent communications from overseas. The Chula Vista woman’s husband has telephoned twice since his vessel, the destroyer tender Acadia, pulled out in early September to assist in Operation Desert Shield. Although he also writes, letters are slow messengers in a nation contemplating war.

Sometimes the letters and calls only add to the fear. Arrington Leonard joined the Navy 11 years ago and has been deployed several times. Although he usually calls his wife, Barrie, whenever he can, he has never--until last week--telephoned his parents from an overseas port.

“When he told me he called his parents, it really worried me because it meant he was concerned about things,” said Barrie Leonard, a 30-year-old mother of two. “It’s getting depressing. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Is he going to be OK? Am I going to see him again?”

Sweetwater Union School District psychologist Sally Lynch said families experience several emotional stages when a mother or father ships out for several months at a time. Those stages are similar to those endured in divorce or even death of a loved one, Lynch said during the second annual Conference on Education and the Children of Military Families.

Family members experience denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and finally acceptance, Lynch said.

But unlike divorce or death, deployment often must be endured over and over again.

“You continually go through it. With a divorce, you go through it once, then you pick up and carry on with the rest of your life,” said Lynch, whose husband joined the Navy 27 years ago.

For some families, seeing ships pull out is one way of accepting a husband or wife’s departure. But for some, including Lynch, that experience is too painful.

“It’s like slitting your wrist and watching it bleed,” Lynch said.

When a parent departs, children are overwhelmed with ambivalent feelings. But the first and most dominant is their fear that the parent will die, Lynch said. The fear is fueled by news reports, as well as their classmates’ offhand comments. Very young children may believe that the parent is already dead because he or she has been away from home so long.

At local schools, Lynch is seeing children who feel responsible for a parent’s departure. In quick succession, the children might experience feelings of desertion and jealousy that their parents have been lured away by something they find more important than the child.

Now, months into deployment, teachers and counselors note that some children cry or fight more easily. Some withdraw. Still others are turning into overachievers because they think they must try even harder to be perfect.

The strain also shows itself in sleep problems: resistance to bedtime, bed-wetting and nightmares. Typically, Navy children dream that their parents’ ship is swallowed by the ocean, Lynch said.

Anger is a common emotion felt by spouses left behind. Mary Bridge, a 30-year-old San Diego resident, said although she felt no anger toward her husband, she did become angry at Navy officials for not deciding sooner when to order her husband’s ship, the guided-missile frigate Reid, back from the Persian Gulf. Then she became angry at herself for needing her husband.

“I am still very independent. My husband and I aren’t sewn together at the hip. But I got angry for feeling sorry that he wasn’t here to help out,” said Mary Bridge, who gave birth to the couple’s first child two weeks after the Reid departed.

For Mary Bridge, evenings without her husband, Lt. Joseph Bridge, were hardest of all. After putting baby Katlin to bed, she began to think about the prospect of war.

“Your imagination really runs wild. You don’t know where they are or what they are doing,” Mary Bridge said. “The Persian Gulf is a pretty big place--are they up by Kuwait or not? And we have this little baby here he has never seen. I was afraid she would be all grown up before he got home. Or, you worry--will she ever know who her father was?”

For Mary Bridge and others, those worries spiraled when the Reid became the first warship to fire warning shots at an Iraqi tanker during the Operation Desert Shield blockade.

But when the Reid finally pulled into San Diego harbor two weeks ago, after being deployed for seven months, the concerns dissolved. Lt. Bridge stepped across the gangplank, and his eyes filled with tears as he cradled his daughter in his arms.

“Whose chin do you think she has?” he asked.