Soldier Girls (17 page)

E
LLEN ANN WAS
getting married. The wedding would take place in May 2004, and six weeks before the ceremony Debbie Helton threw her daughter a wedding shower. In the club room of the apartment building where Debbie's parents lived, she hung streamers and blew up balloons. In the middle of the shower, the phone in the club room rang, and somebody said it was Jeff. Debbie knew her boyfriend would not call in the middle of the shower just to chat.

“You got your call,” Jeff said. “You're on alert.”

Debbie had been told a deployment was likely. She could not wait—she had been wanting to do something like this for ages. The only problem was that the idea of her traveling to a war zone made Ellen Ann hysterical. To shield her daughter, Debbie hid her enthusiasm when she shared the news.

“Mom! You can't go!” cried Ellen Ann. “You'll miss the wedding!”

“No, you know, I've just got to call them back,” Debbie said. “I've just got to check in, that's all.”

“But you're going, aren't you?” asked Ellen Ann.

“Well, this isn't a definite thing,” Debbie hedged. “We'll have to wait and see.”

But she could barely contain her elation. “Finally!” she told her friend Will Hargreaves when she saw him at drill the following weekend. “We get to go do something!” Debbie had waited years for a chance to show her worth, a chance to shine in a crisis, a chance to see the world. Since
9/11, Debbie had supported most of the stances taken by the Bush administration: she thought it made sense to invade Afghanistan; the Patriot Act seemed like a necessary precaution. The question of whether to attack Iraq had confounded her at first—Debbie had not known whether to believe the assertions about “weapons of mass destruction”—but then Colin Powell had addressed a plenary session of the UN Security Council and said with certitude the allegations were well founded. “There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more,” Powell had said. That was all Debbie needed to hear. She trusted the man. He would never have pushed for the invasion of Iraq unless a second war was warranted and feasible, she thought.

But it was a relief to be heading instead to Afghanistan. There were supposed to be beautiful mountains, women in burkas, strange spices, and camels. All that concerned Debbie was whether the doctors would find her fit enough. At fifty-one, she was the oldest woman in Bravo Company, and she had to make it through a screening designed to weed out individuals with mental or physical impairments. Other soldiers were hoping to be held back. One member of the unit even claimed that he felt out of control and might start shooting at people randomly. After the medics nixed his orders, the rest of the battalion nicknamed him Weasel, and shunned him so thoroughly that he requested a transfer. But Debbie, to her great joy, was cleared to go.

Then Bravo Company's executive officer—they called him the XO—pulled her aside.

“You aren't going to Afghanistan,” he said. “You're a stay-back.”

“Why?” asked Debbie.

“We already have enough people on the team,” he told her. She was supposed to be joining a four-person team, led by ex-marine Patrick Miller, that would handle armament. That meant fixing broken weapons, for the most part. But the XO said the team might travel off-post, might see combat.

“It's probably going to be an all-male team,” he told her.

“I'd really like to go,” Debbie said.

But he did not relent, and Debbie went home crestfallen. The Guard was the center of her life, and now the rest of her colleagues were going
to go to Afghanistan, and leave her behind. Maybe the XO had been trying to protect her; or maybe he thought she was past her prime. Jeff had never seen Debbie so disconsolate.

Then Debbie heard that two 45Bs from Evansville were joining the armament team. That had to mean Schmidt and Fischer; they were the only two 45Bs in Evansville. How did Michelle Fischer gain a spot on the supposedly all-male team?

“I'm a little upset,” she told the XO the following month. “Didn't you indicate that it was going to be all guys for armament? And the job they were doing—there weren't going to be any females?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, how come Fischer's on it?”

“What makes you think Fischer's on it?”

“I know she's on it. And the last time I checked, she was female. How come she gets to go?”

“I think they are going to take her,” the XO conceded. “But I don't know that she's actually going to be doing any traveling off-post.”

He said they were only taking 45Bs, and Debbie was a 41C. Debbie reminded the XO that she had been cross-trained as a 45B, but she could not talk him into letting her join the team. She tried a Hail Mary pass. Debbie knew that Patrick Miller's wife was pregnant, and beside herself because her husband was going to miss the birth of their child. Debbie sought Miller out and said she would gladly take his place. Miller shrugged her off—as a former marine, he could not imagine letting a fifty-one-year-old woman serve in his stead. Debbie spent the rest of that drill weekend watching everybody else pack up their gear. People kept telling her they couldn't believe that she wasn't coming; she was the heart of the unit, they said, it wasn't right to leave her behind. Debbie said good-bye to everyone and went home feeling useless. Jeff grew alarmed when he could not cheer her up. In June 2004, however, when the rest of the battalion had been at Camp Atterbury for a month, Debbie got another phone call. A member of the armament team had just collapsed. Supposedly he was overweight, and during a strenuous workout, his knee had given out. They offered her his spot.

Debbie was euphoric. She delivered a crash course on the beauty salon's payroll to the woman who was going to fill in as manager and
showed Jeff how to care for her pets. Debbie gave Ellen Ann power of attorney and asked if her daughter could pay her bills. “Mom, I'm trying to get pregnant!” Ellen Ann objected. “What if I have a baby while you're gone?” Debbie said these things take time and she was sure she would be home before Ellen Ann made her a grandmother. Debbie's mother asked, “What if you get killed?” But Debbie's father said, “She'll be home safe and sound in a year.” Debbie ran to Kmart for deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, Q-tips, and foot powder, but she could not find a footlocker there. Walmart was sold out, too. Indiana was pouring soldiers into the two wars, and even the PX at Atterbury had run out of footlockers. Debbie would have to make do without one until they restocked. When she arrived at the women's barracks, Debbie took the only empty bed in the place, which happened to be next to Michelle Fischer. Fischer was a mess. She was so young, Debbie thought, only twenty-one. Fischer did not have a very good attitude about being sent to Afghanistan, but Debbie decided she was just a kid and forgave her. Guys were following Fischer around like puppy dogs. It had been a long time since anybody had trailed after Debbie like that. “Us older ones were like, look at those young guys, all they want to do is just follow that tail,” Debbie would say later. “But she handled the attention pretty well.”

Debbie got into the habit of waking Fischer up, because the young woman was drinking heavily and had trouble rousing herself in the mornings. The girl was all drama and self-involvement; she talked endlessly about boys. She was in love with someone named Pete, who wrote her sweet letters, but at night Ben Sawyer from missile repair attached himself relentlessly to her side. Sawyer was married, but not happily. Already some of the married men were not acting very married, after having been prised away from their families; people were looking for ways to unwind. Party time was seven to ten in the evening; ten o'clock was curfew.

And nobody was partying harder than Desma Brooks. One of the first things that Debbie Helton had noticed upon walking into her barracks was that every bed had been made up with the same regulation green wool blanket, except for the bed that belonged to Brooks. The rules stated that everybody had to draw linen from the base, flat white sheets, hospital corners, make it tight, then the green wool blanket.
Brooks had not wanted to use the communal sheets, however, so she had gone to Walmart and found a bed in a bag—a full set of sheets and a comforter—in a florid print, bright purple with big pink lips. Bed after bed in army green, then the shocking purple. There was nobody else in the unit quite so defiant. At the foot of her bed Brooks had a cooler full of ice and assorted adult beverages. Brooks said, “Help yourself,” and Debbie did. She liked beer. Brooks drank Smirnoff Ice Triple Black.

Brooks looked good, Debbie thought. She had let her hair grow down to her shoulders and had a new haircut with bangs that emphasized her generous cheekbones. She had streaked her hair blond, too, and her skin had turned golden from all the time they were spending outdoors. One night, when they were allowed to go off-post wearing civilian clothes, Brooks put on frosted lip gloss and a black T-shirt that said in hot pink letters
kiss me quick!
She was only twenty-eight years old, and when she fixed herself up, you would never guess she had three kids. Brooks knew how to lift everyone's spirits. Outside their barracks, she had hung up a string of plug-in party lights shaped like moons and stars. Then she had set up tiki torches in a grassy area right by the door and dubbed it the Tiki Lounge. Sometimes Debbie socialized with the young women over at the Tiki Lounge, but more often she joined the older crowd at the NCO Club, a bar on post favored by the lifers, or she slipped away to supply to see Gary Jernigan, a longtime colleague who kept a hidden stash of booze in his office. In the new diary that she began keeping, Debbie noted with relish that they were consuming at least as much alcohol as they did at annual training. “Everyone seems to be glad I am here,” she wrote. “Hugs from everyone, and welcome home. Felt good and right to be with my longtime friends. I know no one understands but I am a happy camper.”

War preparations flooded Camp Atterbury. Waves of “rolling stock,” military vehicles of all kinds, surged through the post: Humvees, Bradleys, and Armored Security Vehicles came back in need of repair, and soldiers washed the dirty vehicles, changed the oil, changed the tires, replaced fluids, switched out parts. Waves of military personnel poured through Atterbury, too: various National Guard units showed up for training or for a deployment. Meanwhile, marines, regular army, and army reserve units paused here before shipping off to war or paused
here on their way home. On the walls of the NCO Club where Debbie went to drink hung the insignias of every unit that had flowed through the post, and the display told a story of constant movement. Atterbury offered soldiers their passage into war and their passage back home. It was therefore a place that evoked in the soldiers who were streaming through it some of the strongest emotions they would ever feel—it made them angry, sad, confused, lonely, fulfilled, bored, excited, and, most of all, afraid. At the same time, there was something about the uniformity of the buildings and the uniformity of the vehicles and the uniformity of the uniforms that sought to contain all those emotions. Atterbury served as a place where individuals marked the significant turns in their journeys. Every outbound soldier who moved through this place was traveling away from an ordinary life, and every inbound veteran returned to this same endless tract of yellow cinder block and brown shingles changed in ways they would only begin to recognize upon washing up against this familiar shore, no longer the same people they had been before.

At Atterbury, Debbie got shots for measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, hepatitis, meningitis, tuberculosis, and influenza; attended briefings; and stood in line for gear. She picked up an M4 assault rifle (a new version of the old M16), a Kevlar helmet, a flak jacket. The flak jacket, known as an Improved Ballistic Vest, or an IBV, was made with hard ceramic plates and weighed around forty pounds. “Boy this IBV is really heavy it kills my shoulders,” Debbie wrote in her diary. “I hope I can make it ok. I will still [be] a happy camper!” Down at the range where the red flags were flying, signifying that soldiers were using live ammunition, she fired the M4 until she qualified. Other soldiers liked the M4 better, because it was lighter and had a shorter butt stock, but Debbie was tall and had long arms and the M16 had fit her big frame more comfortably. Plus, it had become familiar to her, over the years. It was difficult to get used to the new gun, and her eyes were not as sharp as they had once been. She scored in the low thirties. Everyone else considered that acceptable, but Debbie was disappointed not to get a perfect score. She practiced driving in a war zone, which wasn't anything like driving in the civilian world. “Drive like you mean it!” the instructors yelled. “Drive like you stole it!” She redid the chemical warfare training she had done years ago,
practicing how to use a gas mask. And she did endless sit-ups, push-ups, sprints, marches, runs. Despite all of the exercise, Debbie found it hard to sleep. The other women had set up huge fans inside the sweltering barracks, and the thrumming noise kept Debbie awake. She tried Tylenol PM but the tablets only helped her wrest a few hours of oblivion. She pined for her dog. “I miss my Maxx!” Debbie declared repeatedly in her diary. “I miss my Maxx!” She missed Jeff, too, though not quite as much. He was feeling the strain of their separation acutely. After several weeks, he told Debbie over the phone that her absence was making him glum, but added that he had cheered himself up by cleaning out their fire pit. Debbie promised to visit as soon as she got a pass.

Nothing deflated Debbie's good spirits. “Had latrine duty!” she wrote cheerfully. She marveled at her pay; Debbie was now earning more than $1,000 every two weeks. Excitement swept the barracks when they learned that in a few days they would get their desert camouflage uniforms, or DCUs. “Can't wait!” Debbie told her diary. The desert camo seemed surprisingly drab to her after the stronger contrasts of their familiar BDUs, but even Fischer posed for photographs in the dusty, washed-out colors of their future. Debbie's one regret about being confined at Atterbury was that she could not leave the base to visit Jim, her closest childhood friend—the boy whose hair she used to cut for free. He now lived in Florida, and he had just learned that he had an inoperable brain tumor. “He has to wait till I get home so I can see him one more time,” Debbie wrote in her diary.