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War and divorce Friday, Sep 16, 2005 By Jack Moseley Absence sometimes really does make the heart grow fonder - of someone else. That's particularly true of married couples separated by war and mobilizations of National Guard troops. Older Americans recall the "Dear John" letters from wives and sweethearts that GIs received on the front lines during World War II and Korea. The same thing happened with Vietnam. When I was mobilized and sent to Fort Polk, La., to somehow fight communism and defend the city of Berlin for a year, my division of the Texas National Guard set a new record for divorces in the U.S. military for a single 12-month period. Seems the Texas girls discovered new Texas men, and their former husbands and sweethearts discovered Louisiana women. Thank goodness, I was single at that time. But most of the Texas guardsmen were young, inexperienced in the ways of the world and had never really been away from home for an extended period of time. Many had married their first sweethearts right out of high school. As the war in Iraq continues, the Oklahoma National Guard has announced increased support for holding military families together during these stressful times and stemming the rising tide of divorces in the ranks of our fighting me. Marriage and family workshops for military couples are being promoted as being in the best interest of keeping up the morale of our soldiers. That makes a lot of sense. The one thing American wives of our men in the Middle East don't have to worry about, I suspect, is competition from the women of Iraq. The ones I've seen on television just don't come close to comparing to the Louisiana girls who were such an attraction to young men from Texas 40 years ago or the Oklahoma beauties of today. Seriously, a rising divorce rate among military families is just one symptom of the way war changes and separates people. The young men and women serving today - and those who have completed their Middle East service as well - will never be the same people they were. Some will be stronger and more caring. Others will be hardened and hurt by their experiences. Some will talk about what they lived and saw and felt over there. Others will keep those things bottled up inside. Make no mistake, war changes people drastically. And the scars are not all physical. Soldiers do and see things that play over and over on the movie screens in their heads. Some try to find a little good in what they are doing. Others simply become embittered and distrusting. For many, drugs or alcohol will be the only things that will provide a temporary escape. And yes, marriages and whole families, too, become casualties of war. The reasons for trying to save as many military marriages and families as possible may range from commanders selfishly keeping troop morale up to genuine concern for what wars do to the people who fight them. Whatever the reasons, it is right to try to keep husbands and wives united. Give the military credit for at least trying to do that. Now, if we only could do the same thing to stem the tide of divorce among the civilian population in this throwaway society of ours, things might be a whole lot better. Sadly, too many Americans dispose of wives and children the same way we throw a microwavable TV dinner container into the garbage can. Folks, we've got problems in this country - in and out of uniform. Life, luck and -30-. ------- Jack Moseley writes for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jackmoseley33@hotmail.com. |
