Children of Iraqi War Vets - The Silent Victims

I live near the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. It is not unusual to see the Iraqi and Afghanistan war vets who are being treated there in the community shopping or seeing the sights. Sometimes they are accompanied by a spouse, family member or their children. No matter which side you come down on the war, pro or con, it seems to be easy to support these brave men and women who have sacrificed so much. I sometimes wonder about the families, what they looked like before a parent went to Iraq and what were they like after the soldier returns home. The following article is from today's Times of London.

'...As long as dad comes back alive'.
US army children are fraying amid pressures that would crush many adults.
Report by Tony Allen-Mills, The Times, London

I am sitting in a field in central Oregon with an 11-year-old boy who calls himself “Twelve Thirty Savage”. His real name is Matt Evans-Spate, but last year he jumped off a stage at his children’s summer camp, hit his head on a rock and was taken to hospital by ambulance. His new name commemorates the time of the accident and the way he felt about it afterwards. Twelve - as I started calling him for short - seems an ordinary enough American kid, one of countless thousands across the country enjoying his summer at an activities packed camp in the woods. He has been swimming, canoeing and done archery, and later he will learn how to make a bird’s nest from twigs and mud. Yet Twelve was not quite as happy as he seemed. His father, a US navy reservist, is awaiting a summons to active duty in Iraq. “My dad’s on call,” he said. “It’s 50-50. If they can’t find someone else he’ll have to go.” It is hard to ask an 11-year-old if he is worried his father might die, but the question has long been preying on the minds of an estimated 155,000 American children with a military parent serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I’m okay with it,” Twelve answered bravely. But his voice tailed off as he added: “As long as he comes back alive . . .”
They are easily overlooked in the turmoil of America’s troop surge in Iraq, but a generation of military children is growing up amid pressures that would crush many adults. As US military deployments have lengthened and multiplied in a war with no victory in sight, children are going months without seeing their parents - months that are often spent frantically worrying they may never see that parent again. “The resilience of some of these kids amazes me,” said Joyce Raezer, head of the National Military Families Association (NMFA), an independent
charity that has been arranging special summer camps for children with parents on active duty. “But we’ve begun to see the cracks.” The story of the youngest American victims of the Iraq war is partly a dismal catalogue of anger, grief and Pentagon neglect. But it is also an inspirational tribute to the efforts of ordinary military families to shield their children from solitude, depression and stress.
On the other side of the Oregon field, Sarah Dizick, a friendly 12-year-old in purple-rimmed glasses, was trying to make giant bubbles by dipping a plastic hoop into a paddling pool filled with soapy water. Sarah’s parents are divorced, which is tough enough for any 12-year-old to handle, but she is also struggling to deal with the consequences of her father’s recent return from Iraq. “He hurt his arm,” she said. “He was near an explosion. He wasn’t, like, right next to it, but it blew up.” Her father was invalided home from Iraq a month ago and has been undergoing physical therapy in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is due to return home to Oregon soon, but Sarah seemed strangely ambivalent about seeing him. Was she looking forward to him coming home? “Yeah, kind of.” How long ago had she last seen him? “Sometime around last Christmas.” But she must have missed him badly? “Yeah, kind of.” Then the reason for her reticence emerged. Her father had telephoned to say he would be taking her on a long vacation. They would have at least six weeks together. But wouldn’t that be great? “Yeah, kind of. But I’m worried about missing my mom.”
This summer the NMFA is running week-long Operation Purple summer camps at 34 locations in 26 states, caring for almost 4,000 children. Purple is the color the military uses to signify open to all services. The camps are free to military families and are aimed at providing the children with a friendly, stress-free environment where they are too busy having fun to worry about their parents in Iraq.
Patty Barron, the wife of a senior Pentagon staff officer and one of the NMFA’s deputy directors, has visited several of the camps and met children who left an indelible impression. “There was a girl in a camp in Rhode Island who told us she had always been used to being comforted by her mother when she cried or got upset,” Barron said. “Then one day she heard her mother crying in the bathroom. She felt she had to take over as the comforter, to be the one who was strong.”
Too many children have been trying to be strong for too long, added Raezer. “Some well-meaning adult has said to them, ‘Your dad’s in Iraq, you have to look after the family now.’ But the war has been going on so long. Families are experiencing multiple deployments. Many can survive a single deployment and adjust, but it’s happening over and over again. It’s too much stress for the kids. Some of them are trying to take on too much.”
Raezer says the Pentagon has already accepted it needs to do more work on the
widely reported problems of PTSD among troops returning from Iraq. About 75,000
cases have been diagnosed so far and countless children have had to contend with
the return of a parent they barely recognise. “They get very confused by PTSD,” said Barron. “The returning parent may look the same, but they are acting very different. The kids wonder, ‘Is Daddy mad at me? Why is he so angry?’” Then there are the children of the thousands of soldiers injured in combat. “They ask questions like, ‘Can my dad still throw a football? Will my mom still be able to hug me?’”
At the Operation Purple camp in Oregon, the activities last week included horseriding, learning to apply camouflage face paint, the study of flora and fauna and an “adventure swing” that hurls kids high in the air. “It’s hard for me sometimes,” said Michaela Shouldis, 11, the only child from her small town of McMinnville with a parent on active duty. “But it’s fun here.” Iraq seems far away, but even amid the happy chaos of a summer
camp in the Oregon woods, there were shadows over the fun. Jennifer Huggins, a pretty

10-year-old from the neighbouring state of Washington, hasn’t seen her father since Christmas. “A lot of his guys have already been killed,” she said. “He goes patrolling a lot. But I think he’s pretty safe.” She paused and watched her new friends washing mud off their faces after their bird nest-building project. “I just don’t want him to get killed,” she said.