Every day we don't get a call from the kids telling us that something awful has happened to the grandchildren. They don't call every day to tell us that the grandkids slept safe in their beds, we know that they did from the lack of a phone call.
We owe a lot of people thanks for that, from the cops to the people keeping the power grid up and the water flowing. And those wearing Uncle's suit, the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen, serving all over.
I worry about these young Americans but I am glad that they are killing this enemy overseas, an enemy that has proven a desire to kill us here. I'm sorry that innocent Iraqis are being hurt in this fight but I can be cold blooded enough to think "better them than mine". I keep reading these Great Humanitarians blathering about how we shouldn't be killing these Muslim murderers, that it's wrong. I am not a Great Humanitarian, I'll trade every one of them to save a scraped knee on any of my grandkids.
I, of course, would prefer no war. The best use of the United States Armed Forces is when they are all just standing around looking so durned mean that nobody in the world wants to mess with us. This is, of course, against the rules, instead we have a government that starts wars and then pulls the rug out from under our young men and women.
I don't want to talk about that, tonight, though. Anyone who has ever seen or read me knows how I feel about those who wear the uniforms of our country. I was once allowed to stand with them and I sometimes measured up. There is another group of Americans, just as important, though, perhaps even more important that I shall speak of. Families, the wives, and now husbands, the children and the parents of those who wear Uncle's suit. In many ways THOSE are the toughest jobs in the Services. When I was overseas my job was sometimes dangerous, not real often, though. Mostly it was tiring and boring. The military invented hurry up and wait, after all. Thing is, my family never knew whether I was filling sandbags or trying to do something stupid. I knew when it was time to be frightened, I'm pretty good at being frightened. Most of the time I was busy being a young American. Even in the combat zone we had time to play.
The wife or mother of a Serviceman never gets to know that today my husband is busy filling sandbags (or supervising that operation for Officers and Sergeants) so is able to relax. There will be a hundred hours of sandbag filling for every minute of fighting, even for an infantryman. For the Rotorheads there will be a hundred "ash and trash" flights for every hot LZ.
We can tell the Service family members this from now until we get hungry, they all know this, intellectually. It doesn't matter. Daddy or Son, and now Mom and Daughter are over there, in danger sometimes and those family members won't know when.
I'm not all that sure that todays improved communications helps or hurts. Didn't get an E-mail or call? Busy? Jammed commo? Or that communications blackout because of an injury or death? Would waiting weeks for a letter be easier?
My blogroll, small as it is, has families of those in harms way, protecting my grandchildren. KD of Life Of The Wife's hubble, Army Wife, Toddler Mom's DH is in school getting ready to go again, Teresa of Technicalities son just left for Iraq to fly around in a fifty year old state of the art airframe, all of those, many thousand more, families get to wait, and worry. And pick up the slack of that family member being thousands of miles away.
I dunno, all I can do is keep praying and hope, with all my heart, that these families know that at least some Americans care. Oh, and thanks.
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