The story of Jill Biden helping heal veterans families from the effects of combat deployments.
The story of Jill Biden helping heal veterans families from the effects of combat deployments.
"I want my Daddy back," came the plaintive cry from the sandy haired thirteen year old girl, as she wept before the assembled covey of adults at the Chicago Institute of Psychology.
The year-2010. The occasion? Not group therapy, although it may have unwittingly become group therapy. Not psychoanalysis of a troubled teen ,although it may have unwittingly become that also.
No, the focus of the gathering was to assist troubled veterans and their families reintegrate after combat deployments to the never-ending war, as some have termed America's longest running conflict in the middle-East and Afghanistan.
The Chicago Institute of Psychology, a world renowned post-graduate training institute for psychologists, joined with the Obama administration's drive to assist veteran's and their families. The effort led by First Lady Michelle Obama, a Chicago native, and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice-president Joe Biden, and family member of a combat veteran. Jill's son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, deployed to Iraq with the Delaware National Guard.
The eight-foot tall windows spanning two sides of the small conference room streamed in the Chicago spring sunshine as the twenty or so participants gathered with coffee and bagels. The head of the institute opened with greeting Dr. Biden, veterans, a few family members, including the thirteen-year-old, who would later cry, the commander of the Illinois National Guard and his wife. She announced the Institute's new-found interest in assisting veterans and their families.
The interest likely spurred by Michelle Obama's initiative to assist veterans and their families with emotional scars due to the trauma of combat deployments. The stress on families often as great or greater than that on veterans. The ranks of Illinois veterans recently swollen with the return of the Illinois Army National Guard's 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team from Afghanistan. The 3,500 soldiers represented the largest combat deployment for the Illinois Guard since WW II.
Unlike WW II, communications between the war zone and the home front were virtually instantaneous. With Facebook and Internet access to email families were often aware of combat injuries and deaths before National Guard officials. When the network news announced an IED attack with casualties, the stress levels spiked. The group texts between Guard families became a crescendo as wives, moms, dads and children of soldiers in harm's way asked each other "Where did it happen?", "Was it one of our guys?", the silent prayers "Oh God, don't let it be Joe" recited until the email "It wasn't our guys. I'm okay" came through.
National Guard units and their families are different from active duty units. Active duty units pull soldiers from all across our great land. Soldiers seldom know each other until assigned to a unit. If married, active duty soldiers' families typically live on or near an active duty installation with all the support services that accompany massive military facilities, such as the 50,000 soldiers at Fort Hood, or the tens of thousands at Benning or Drum or Stewart.
National Guard units on the other hand are community based. Many times with brothers, or dads and sons, or moms and daughters serving together in the same unit. While officers rotate every few years throughout the state, NCOs often spend decades in the same unit. Rising from private to first sergeant. High school students recruit their friends, sign up together, go off to train together, and sometimes die together.
Although little remembered now, the town of Bedford, Virginia, population 3,500, suffered the highest per capita casualty rate of any town or city in America during WW II. The home of Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division of the Virginia National Guard, Bedford lost twenty of the thirty-five National Guardsmen it called its own.
The sense of duty hasn't changed much in those Guard units and families, whether Virginia or Illinois. The members still the ones who spend all week at their occupations whether a teacher who spends all week with students, a farmer tilling his crops, the mechanic turning wrenches or factory worker on the line. They get up before dawn on Saturday, missing soccer games, birthdays and family gatherings, to head to drill. They spend springs battling Midwestern floods, summers fighting forest fires and recovering from hurricanes, winters rescuing blizzard stranded motorists. And for the last three hundred years fighting our nation's wars, declared and undeclared.
This wasn't Jill Biden's first trip to Illinois to support Guard families. The previous summer, while the 33rd was ass-deep in alligators in Afghanistan, the Chicago Cubs invited Guard families to attend a home game at Wrigley Field, while a local restaurant provided free pizza and soda.
Jill agreed to come at the invitation of the commanding general's wife, Judge Annette Eckert. Jill arrived at the restaurant with Secret Service agents in tow and NBC national newscaster, Lester Holt, following in their wake. Not one to stand on ceremony, Jill saw hungry kids and a clock marching on. After much hugging and photos with kids, she and Annette took charge of dishing out pizza. Once the last child was served, she looked at Annette and said, "You've been working long and hard. Sit down and eat." Then dished up salad and pizza for the starving general's wife.
I don't know that she ever ate that night, but her care and concern for families undergoing the stress of a family member far away in a free-fire zone came through loud and clear. She obviously understood all too well their anxiety. She'd lived through those sleepless nights herself.
That empathy came through the next year as the family members talked about the stress they'd undergone while mom or dad was gone and the changes they saw in their loved ones once they returned.
The thirteen-year-old's dad served as the company first sergeant. As the first sergeant he is the senior enlisted soldier in the unit. He reports directly to the company commander and is charged with the development and training of NCOs and soldiers. An unofficial duty is the mentoring of young officers. The sage advice of a grizzled old soldier is critical in the development of inexperienced young officers, half their age.
He'd served in the unit for years. Trained the yuoung kids. Watched them grow in to competent soldiers. His duty to bring them home. All of them. Get them fed. Keep them in bullets and bandages. Make sure they sleep, shower and most of all survive.
One hundred fifty soldiers. Some college kids, some dads, maybe even a grand-dad or two. All with families. All with more than an M-4 carbine and a duty to do. All with faces, names, personalities and family members you've met.
It takes a special soldier to be a first sergeant. A good one must have the patience of a Little League baseball coach, the wisdom of your best teacher, the compassion of a loved cleric and the discipline of George Patton. Many are called, few are chosen. They are the backbone of the Army.
He was there in that sunny Chicago conference room with the Vice-President's wife, the general, the other veterans, the learned psychologists. He was there with the thirteen-year-old, his weeping daughter.
His body sat there. His mind? His mind with the ones who went with him. His mind with the ones who came back with him. The ones who now drank a little too much. The ones who now drove a little too fast. The ones who now didn't sleep quite as well. The Army may release you from duty, but duty doesn't release you.
"He treats me like a soldier now. I want my Daddy back," she wept. Jill crossed the floor circled with chairs filled by stricken adults to gather the girl in her arms.
The sun still streamed in.
© William L. Enyart 2020