War Brings New Reality To Military

Going Abroad

Spc. Patrick Helfer, 22, will spend several months of his final year in the Army in Afghanistan, far from his home in the North Carolina sandhills.

Helfer is in the Bravo Company of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg -- a quick-reaction force that remains prepared to send soldiers anywhere in the world in 18 hours. Soldiers from the 82nd are on rotations in Afghanistan, and Helfer is guaranteed to go before he gets out of the Army.

Helfer enlisted when he was 19 after attending Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. He said that he always wanted to serve a limited amount of time in the military and that he knew the timing was appropriate. "I was at a turning point in my life," Helfer said. "I stopped (school) and said, 'I'll (enlist) for four years.'"

He said he is confident in his training and believes that going where the country deems necessary is his job. "You go over there, and it's a possibility that you might get shot," Helfer said. "At least I'm doing it for what I believe in."

Helfer said his fellow soldiers' attitudes changed after Sept. 11, when the possibility of being deployed to a major conflict became a reality. "Before people would go through the motions during training, but now people around here are taking everything a lot more seriously."

Despite all his training and the briefings he will attend before he leaves for Afghanistan, Helfer said he still has no real concept of actual combat. "When we actually get into a fight where they're shooting back at you, I think my perspective will change," he said.

He estimated that more than 80 percent of the soldiers in his platoon have no true combat experience.

The Battle at Home

Mary Ellen Vannoy, 22, said the hardest part of being a military wife during this time of conflict is the unknown.

"I try not to watch the news all the time because if I do, that's all I'll think about," she said. "I know (my husband is) leaving, but I don't know what will happen. You can't go day by day thinking everything is going to hell; you have to think positive."

Mary Ellen was in class at UNC-Pembroke on Sept. 11 when she found out about the terrorist attacks. The first thing she did was try to contact her husband, Sgt. Jamie Vannoy, because he was scheduled to leave for training that morning.

"I wasn't scared about anything happening right then," she said. "I figured it would be a long-term thing that would affect me later rather than sooner."

Jamie is expected to leave for Afghanistan in December. He and his wife have been told he will be abroad four to six months. "When I married him I knew he was in the military and something like this might happen," she said.

But Mary Ellen is two months pregnant. "I know it's not going to be easy, but I'll be done (with school) soon," she said.

Though Mary Ellen is inexperienced at having a husband in combat, her life has always been intertwined with the military -- her father also is in the Army. She said she soon found out that years of watching her mom still left her unprepared for a military marriage.

"Being an Army brat, I told myself I'd never be a military wife," she said. "I remember as a child telling my mom that I didn't want to be one of the women alone with three kids running around the commissary. I didn't realize at the time that I was insulting her."

Even though she never wanted to marry into the military, Mary Ellen thought she was familiar enough in military life to know what to expect. "I thought I could handle it; I thought I could conquer the world," she said. "I thought it would be wonderful and I'd have it easy. I told myself, 'I know what to do and how to act.'"

Jamie was gone for three months out of the first year he and Mary Ellen were married, including their first anniversary. "I was living by myself, going to school, work and having no one to come home and talk to."

The longest her husband has been away was for 4 1/2 months while he was in Ranger school.

To keep her mind off his absences Mary Ellen says she keeps busy as a full-time student at UNC-P and as a waitress at Outback Steakhouse. "I do whatever I can to stay out of the house," she said.

Mary Ellen said she's lucky because her father also is stationed at Fort Bragg and her family is in the area.

She also said the Army has family readiness group meetings to help keep spouses informed, but the meetings are not informative. "No wife likes (the meeting)," she said. "It seems so fake; nobody really cares."

Military family support was thrust into the national spotlight this summer after three Fort Bragg special forces soldiers were suspected of killing their wives shortly after their return from Afghanistan.

Mary Ellen said the nature of the job influences how the men act at home. She said that after being away some soldiers come home more possessive and aggressive. "Men are not physically, mentally and emotionally prepared to come back to the real world," she said. "Military men have a lot of insecurities, and there is a lot of fear that when they're gone the women are alone and in a town of men. There's a lot of infidelity."

Since the killings, she said, the Army has instituted marriage classes and anger management classes for special forces wives. There are other general programs, but Mary Ellen said most wives don't take advantage of them and it isn't the Army's first priority.

"I think there are untapped resources," she said. "It's not the Army's responsibility to make sure the wives are OK. It's their responsibility to protect the country."

By Jennifer Hagin, Senior Writer