A Special Worry--3 Children on the Front Line

Donna Wishmire dreads answering the door for fear she will see a military sedan in her El Cajon driveway and two officers on her doorstep. Then she imagines a horrifying question.

“Which child is dead? Which one?”

All three of her children--two sons and one daughter--are on the front line in the Gulf, possibly in the thick of the ground war.

About 20 miles away, David Caywood, Wishmire’s first husband and father of the three children, watches television news. Caywood, 58, is paralyzed by a stroke and cannot articulate the emotions he feels. He understands the danger his children face. He cannot write to them because he has lost the use of an arm. Sometimes, in the privacy of his room, he cries. “Three. All I have is three,” he said haltingly. “Now all three. There.”

Wishmire, 53, has been coping by reading everything she can about the war and watching the news. She plans her day so she can be home when the mail arrives. She tries not to be out of the house too long so she won’t miss a call. It broke her heart to learn recently that her youngest had ridden four hours in a truck to get to a telephone, only to reach her phone machine.

“I don’t have a career. I spent my life raising my children. I was hoping I’d have grandchildren, reunions, family dinners. Now I think maybe I won’t, maybe none of that will happen,” Wishmire said.

As the United States moved closer to the current ground war, Wishmire’s anxiety mounted. She has had trouble sleeping.

“When you let your imagination have full throttle, you have all these pictures of your children in your mind. Your son stepping on a land mine, saying: ‘Ma, mama.’ Your son burning in a tank. The chemical gas--you try not to dwell on that,” she said. “You push it from your mind, but it’s a battle, a daily battle.”

Lt. Shelley Robertson, Wishmire’s 23-year-old daughter, is in the Army’s 327 Signal Corps, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C. She joined the Army to get financial assistance with college tuition.

Two weeks after her departure, Wishmire’s youngest--20-year-old Thomas--shipped out.

Thomas Caywood, a military intelligence specialist with the Army’s 2nd Battalion 69th Armored Division at Ft. Benning, Ga., is charged with following tanks into battle. His older brother, Lance Cpl. Jess Caywood, 25, a tank driver with the 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, departed Feb. 4 for the combat zone.

The Pentagon has no regulations forbidding siblings from serving in the combat zone. But some families are pressing for a new policy that would allow only one family member in battle at a time. Rep. Toby Roth (R-Wis.) introduced legislation last week that would enable a family member to request a transfer to a non-combat area if another immediate family member already is serving in the war zone.

“It’s heart rending enough if one family member passes away but to have an entire family wiped out is too much to ask,” Roth said.

Wishmire fears these efforts will not be successful in time to help her. She also doesn’t believe that any of her three children would shirk what they saw as their duty.

“My children are patriotic; they don’t complain,” she said.

She tries to match their bravery. But her anxiety grows when she is unable to talk to her children or no letters arrive. Weeks have passed in which she heard nothing. For two months last fall, she got no letters or calls from her youngest.

Wishmire tries to imagine the day that her children come home. It’s a dream she tries to wrap around herself like a warm shawl.

“I visualize going to the airport. They’re coming down the ramp and they are whole,” she said. She, the kids, and her husband, Harry, then sit down in the living room. The three are laughing, bursting with the war stories they want to tell.

But it takes little for her to crash from this dream. As President Bush expressed “serious concerns” about the peace proposal announced by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Wishmire’s hopes plummeted.

“I am scared now because we are down to the nitty-gritty,” she said.

In the weeks since war broke out, letters have trickled home. For the parents, each letter brings a surge of energy and hope.

After moving with her unit 400 kilometers closer to Kuwait, Shelley Robertson wrote:

“I know you are worrying. Just remember no news is good news . . . Mom, I’m doing fine. Mentally & physically. I’m a little dirty, a little tired, a little tense--but doing just fine. There is me & one other female on this site. We look out for each other real well. Modesty has been lost, but I guess this is war.

“The 16th (the day the war began) was crazy. We have gotten dug in now. Our only problem is supplies. They are six hours away so we are rationing . . . .

“Mom, it was really weird hearing war declared & being in it. The middle of the night . . . it was surreal. I was thinking of you & knowing you’d be worried.”

To Donna Wishmire, it is inconceivable that her daughter will be hurt.

“Maybe I am being a product of my generation--the men go off to war. I know my daughter is a paratrooper, she jumps out of airplanes. I should be used to this but I am not.”

She worries about Thomas, who joined the Army after graduating from Grossmont High School. Thomas can’t see without his glasses. “What if his glasses get wrecked? He won’t be able to shoot,” she frets.

Each of his letters to her seem like vintage Thomas. He regales her with tales of how he made “hooch,” a home-brew of sugar, raisins bitten in half, yeast and water. The resulting fermented concoction was an “instant acrid, rank-tasting but, oh, so morale-lifting fluid.”

In recent weeks, Thomas Caywood--not ordinarily a prolific letter-writer--began to write everyone. Wishmire saw it as a sign that he might be saying goodby.

“I’ve never seen so many stars,” he wrote his aunt. “Their brilliance is stunning, like tiny diamonds on black velvet. I must sound really corny, but I assure you I’m not exaggerating. The desert has its moments. But for the most part it’s just an endless desolate sea of sand shifting with the wind . . . . Sometimes I think the wind will just erase me as it does our footprints.”

Mostly, he is playful. “The last couple of days have been a lull. I don’t want to give the impression I’m bored, but I spent the better part of four hours playing rock-paper-scissors with Master Sgt. Joyner yesterday, “ he wrote his cousin.

But recently, his letters have become more somber as his unit edged closer to the border.

“I am getting stressed out and worried, but I’m doing my best to keep that in check, “ he wrote. “I must admit, though, at night those late - night guard shifts bring a noisy cluster of thoughts into my mind. Ah , well, can’t be helped I suppose. I just know that my dear old Mommy is handling this with composure. . Try not to worry , you guys , because this doesn’t do anyone any good, especially not you or me, OK? Of course I realize emotions cannot be turned off with the flick of a switch, but please try hard to hang in there and take care. I love you.”

To his father, Thomas Caywood wrote expressing hopes for better relations. As Thomas Caywood tried to look toward his future, he wanted to make sure he reconciled his past.

“The thought of staying here for another five months is extremely disenchanting. I guess all that is out of my hands, though. My role is that of a simple soldier . . . . I look forward to a day when I can again have some say in the direction of my life. But for now, that’s just a daydream . . . .

“Anyway after my unit gets done raining on Hussein’s parade, me and you will have to go somewhere. All those places you took me as a kid went right over my head. But it must have rubbed off on me, because these days I love classical music and enjoy art galleries . . . . It took a while for your teachings to take root . . . .

“At any rate, the dirty business at hand must be dealt with first. It’s bedtime for diplomacy I suppose. I sure wish it could have ended some other way.”