The 24 Hours of an Army Spouse
When I get truly terrified to do something, I freeze for a few seconds and everything goes in slow motion. Then, it’s game on and my adrenaline kicks in. I go into overdrive with pushing through the fear, and I never admit I’m afraid until after it’s all over and I know I survived it. One of my best examples is the day my ex-husband deployed to Afghanistan for a year.
It was 2011, and I was 22. Brian and I had been married for 8 months by the time he deployed. The first three months were spent apart as we waited for his army paperwork to reflect the fact that he had a spouse so I could legally be with him on post in Baumholder, Germany. Needless to say, we were definitely still young newlyweds by the time he had to leave with his company.
We woke up around 3:00 AM that winter morning in Germany and climbed into our tiny, white used car. Brian drove us to the other side of the base where he was set to report. We stood side by side and tried to take in the surreal 10–15 minutes that were left of our time together. Those moments passed, and the soldiers hugged their goodbyes and fell in line to enter the busses that would take them to the aircrafts. I stood beside another young wife, and I experienced for the first time what it is like to truly comfort a stranger. She and I had never met before, but we encouraged each other in the dark while standing outside, waving at a bus at 3:30 AM. We cried for a few seconds and then it dawned on me: I wasn’t sure how to drive the car back to the apartment. We bought the car used about a week before the deployment, and Brian had spent a better part of that week trying to teach me how to drive a stick. I told this new girl my realization, and we both laughed. She said, “I’ve only ever driven a stick. It’s easy. You got this,” and she walked me through the important parts. Thanks to her, I was able to putter my way home in the dark.
Once I got back into the apartment, I slept until about 7:00 AM that morning. The plan was for me to stay put in Germany while he was gone, with the exception of going home to Tennessee for a bit in the summer and for holidays. Well, around 9:00 AM, I decided there was no way. I don’t know where this resolve came from. But, I knew in my soul that there was no way in hell I was staying in this foreign country for months without family or a single friend.
I had vaguely heard about Space-A flights. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s where you can essentially fly for free via the army’s aircrafts as long as there is space available for you at the right time. The obvious positive is that it’s free. The negative is that it requires patience and flexibility. I called the Space-A flight number that morning and listened to the recording: there was a flight from Ramstein AFB to Dover, Delaware AFB at around 10:00 AM that day. I could make it, but I would have to hurry. I quickly packed what I could into my worn, blue suitcase from college and I called a cab. My plan was to get to Ramstein, which was about a 20 minute drive, fly to Dover, get myself to the Philadelphia airport an hour away, and then fly home to Nashville.
The cab driver showed up at the apartment, and we flew down the autobahn. About five minutes into the drive, she starts exiting. I anxiously asked, “Where are we going? I have a flight to make.” She replies, “Oh, I just remembered I have a doctor’s appointment, so my husband will drive you. Don’t worry. I just need to stop at my house and switch cars.” Her husband hops in and proceeds to drive even faster down the autobahn. We make it to Ramstein in record timing, but he was not allowed to enter the airforce base. So, I paid him the 60 euro and proceeded to drag my suitcase through wind that sliced my face as I walked about 15 minutes to get to the actual airport. I would later mentally register the fact that I went to my cab driver’s home and still made it out alive without a “Human Centipede” experience.
I checked into the airport for the flight and luckily made the list. As I waited to load the plane, a flight attendant asked if I was okay with “HR” being on the flight. I honestly had no idea what the woman was referring to, so I just firmly nodded and said it was fine. I’ve always been a big fan of acting like I know what other people are talking about. I sat back down and used my German cell phone to text Brian and my family to update them on my decision to leave. Brian texted back and said he was in his own waiting process not far away from where I was in that moment. We wished each other good luck, and he told me how many hours it would take him to get to Kuwait first. They had been instructed to code such information, so our code was to use episodes of our favorite shows. The number of episodes we discussed were the numbers of hours it would take for him to travel. After about 40 minutes of waiting, I boarded the aircraft. The entire plane was stripped of carpet and proper airline chairs. The only seats were foldouts along the sides of the plane. The middle of the aircraft had a vehicle, several metal containers, and three caskets. That’s when I realized “HR” stood for human remains. In front of my metal foldout seat were three caskets. Each one carried a dead soldier, and each one was draped with an immaculately crisp American flag.
Seven hours after sending my young husband to war, I sat on a ten-hour flight staring at three occupied caskets. The flight was freezing cold because there was minimal insulation. I tried to sleep, but the heartache from it all kept me awake. I wondered where Brian was in that moment and if he was as cold as I was. I wondered if my flight would make it safely to Delaware. I wondered if he would come home to me in one of those boxes.
Miraculously, we landed in Delaware in the middle of the night. I waited inside a very small USO office until a cab could pick me up to take me to a hotel. Everything on base was closed. There was a Russian girl waiting with me. She cried on the flight because she had not heard from her deployed husband in two weeks and she was afraid he was in one of the caskets. I told her to remember what they taught us: if your soldier passes away, they have to tell you to your face before anything else. If no one with her husband’s rank had contacted her face-to-face, then we have to keep assuming he’s alive and well. When we got to the hotel, she asked if I wanted to share a room with her to save money. I truly thought about it for a second, but ended up getting my own room. I would later end up sharing a room with another female stranger after another botched Space-A flight, but that’s another story for another time. Around 11:00 PM, I collapsed in my hotel room. My mind was racing trying to keep up with the events of the day. Just 24 hours earlier, I had been in bed trying to memorize the smell and feel of my husband’s body near mine. I couldn’t sleep, so I grabbed my computer and booked a flight from Philadelphia to Nashville. I called the same cab driver I used earlier that night and asked her to pick me up at 5:00 AM. I woke up early and was ready at the hotel entrance. At 5:20 AM, I called the cab driver and demanded to know why she wasn’t here like we had agreed. She frantically apologized and said she’d send her friend to take me because her car died in the cold. Feeling like I had no other option, I said ok, and I allowed myself to be picked up in a big, black truck by a stranger who was not a licensed cab driver. He was just a friend doing a favor, and I chose to trust that. He turned out to be a very nice man, and he got me to Philadelphia safely within an hour. Consider this my second round of “But, Did You Die?”
Once I got checked in at the airport, I took whatever was left of my energy and willed myself to not cry from exhaustion. At any point, that man could have driven me wherever he wanted and that could have been the end of this story. But, I followed my gut and I prayed that I was right. Thankfully, it all worked out and I landed in Nashville by about 9:30 AM that morning. My dad picked me up and I remember him asking me, “How was your trip home?” I didn’t even know where to begin. So, I waited the 45 minute drive home for it all to soak in. At my parents’ house, I unraveled my story, and my dad just shook his head. Now that I’m a parent myself, I look back on his quiet reaction as one of those moments where a parent just has to let the child experience life for better or worse. Sometimes, you can’t shield your kid from the world or make decisions for them because the only way they can learn is ultimately through these insane experiences, and I think he knew that. He didn’t like it, but he knew it.
There are times when life seems too overwhelming and I question if I can keep up the act, but then I remember that day. My stint as an army spouse was short-lived, but it thickened my skin to circumstance. My experience was unusual to me, but it’s not at all new to those living the army life. The army itself is not for me, but there is a sense of nostalgia I will always have for it. For those families who live this life and make these moves regularly, this is my love letter to you this Veterans Day.
