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.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

"Normalizing"

Military housing in South Korea
I wrote yesterday about the efforts to “normalize” tours of duty for soldiers serving near the DMZ in South Korea. As I wrote, I was troubled by a few things, and they have stayed on my mind since then.
The first has to do with the children at Camp Casey.   North Korea has  technology that it likes to demonstrate from time to time to show its power and its disdain for other countries, especially us.  Perhaps their missile tests and other such things are empty sabre-rattling, but it seems a rather unstable situation with possible quick and deadly changes in the state of things on the ground.  I am assuming the DoD must be confident Camp Casey is safe, but I am wondering what it bases that on.  Safe yesterday and today does not necessarily equate with safe tomorrow with an aggressive and hostile neighbor.
The other concern is that, while family-accompanied tours of duty seem to work quite well for families when the base is set up with the services they need, am I correct in my assumption that the vast majority of service members do not deploy to Korea, or  our other “safe” posts around the world?  Stories like the school at Camp Casey are nice to read, but they are small diversions from the big issue, which is that most military children have parents in war zones.  There is no “normalization” possible in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan. Most military children will not benefit in any way by improvements in safer bases around the world.

This is not to say that efforts to “normalize” postings to keep military families together are insignificant, but they should not detract from the fact that the “new normal” for many thousands of military children is having parents deployed repeatedly for a long time in dangerous situations that leave their safe return constantly in question, and their children’s and spouses’ lives destabilized and stressful. Solutions to that will require far more than new schools and family housing on "safe" bases around the world.

As I have said before, I don't have a military background and there are many things I don't understand.  I would appreciate any light readers can shed on these issues or any others I have raised in my blog!
Posted by About AART at 8:00 AM

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