When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Choosing a Military Life

The military is relying on a "tiny sliver of America" rather than on the full spectrum of the population, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a standing-room-only audience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina the evening of Wednesday September 29, 2010.
Military recruitment is increasingly concentrated in the South and the Rocky Mountain West, in rural areas, and among military families, he said, adding that that "for most Americans, the wars remain an abstraction."
Gates cited the all-volunteer army as contributing to this.  Returning to the era of compulsory service (which ended after the Vietnam War) would be both practically and politically impossible, he pointed out, but the "void of relationships and understanding" between the military and the rest of the country that this change in policy left in its wake, poses a risk.
I’ve written before about the disconnect between the 98 percent of the country who are not serving, and the 2 percent who are, and how this makes us as a nation unaware of the serious stresses on this 2 percent.  Gates touched on this in his speech. "We've had so few fighting our wars for so long," Gates said. "How long can these brave and broad young shoulders bear the burden that we as a military, a government and a society continue to place on them?"
The focus of Gate’s speech was getting young college graduates to sign up, to "go outside your comfort zone and take a risk, in every sense of the word." Military service provides “extraordinary responsibility at a young age," Gates said, commending Duke for maintaining ROTC programs and other connections with the military, unlike many top universities. 
Now that we are at war and will probably remain so for some time, it’s true that we need a broader swatch of the population embracing what Gates called the "ethos of service." Ironically, however, will it turn out that the more people are sensitized to the stresses on the 2 percent, the less likely they will be to choose to join them?   The real solution must be to create a lifestyle of military service that does not ask more than individuals and families can bear.  
For a full text of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remarks, click here.
Posted by About AART at 8:06 AM

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