Women in the Military; Loyalty to My Husband’s Mistress
July 22, 2012
I know exactly how my husband feels when he leaves me to be with his other family. I know because he has written it down. This is how he describes 16th March 2008.
“We kissed and I walked out of the door and down the path, my kit slung over my back. Once, twice, I glanced over my shoulder at Margaret and the life I was leaving behind. There was sadness, but also excitement.”
“My latest adventure awaited. In those few steps between wife and car, I went again from being hers to being theirs.”
Theirs, he says. The Army’s.
I remember that day as I remember every day we have said goodbye over the course of a 25-year military marriage. This particular departure marked the start of what Doug said would, without doubt, be his final operational tour of duty, the twelfth in all (on top of which there had been countless exercises which have taken him away for weeks on end).
As Doug stepped out of sight I remained rooted to the spot, something inside me saying that maybe, just maybe he will come back around the corner for one more look, a lingering smile. I waited for another wave from the man I live with – on and off – and love. Of course he did not turn back. Doug had already switched mode, the gentle compassionate man was now Doug the professional soldier, someone bound by responsibility to carry out whatever task he was given regardless of whether it could cost him his life.
Not for the first time I stood there alone, not quite sure if I was immensely proud of Doug for having such a strong sense of duty or immensely resentful of him putting the military before me. I have never been someone who neatly fitted the mould of the Army wife. Yes I was the partner of a soldier, but that did not make me a natural or subservient member of the ‘military family’.
When Doug served as the Regimental Sergeant Major of 1 R IRISH it was expected that I would, along with the Commanding Officer’s wife, run the wives’ club. But I declined to slot into this role. My life had never previously centred on that enforced sociability and I had no intention of starting just because I now happened to be married to the RSM. It would have been disingenuous of me to do so. Doug held the rank, not me, something many partners forget.
This isn’t to say I was not intimately involved in what happened in the unit or wasn’t close to other wives and girlfriends. Rather, I offered my support as a friend, not as a regimental ‘official’ who got too closely involved in others’ personal lives.
While I have been walked out on countless times as Doug departed for this deployment to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, or training trips to Kenya, Cyprus, Canada I always knew in my heart he would come back to me. But I also witnessed far too often when the husband never returned and the life shattering news reverberated around the married quarters creating fear, apprehension, isolation and loneliness.
For living on what in known to many within the military and outside the military as ‘The Patch’ is like living in a community within a community. And although the place names may change, for an infantry battalion the family personalities remain constant.
As a unit was posted so went the families to a new community somewhere around the globe. It is like staring anew, new house, new job, new school and new places to explore. It sounds glamorous, conjuring up images of exotic places to see and interesting people to meet. Glamorous, that is until you actually arrive at your destination.
The repeated shattering reality was one of dispiriting disappointment invariable caused by miserable accommodation. Over a quarter of a century we have lived in 15 sets of army quarters, ranging from flats to terraced houses, small bungalows to detached properties. Ostensibly they were all different, yet each possessed a common feature: a drab, shabbiness that induced melancholy at best and depression at worst.
If you had tried to put asylum seekers in such conditions there would be uproar amongst the chattering classes. The camp followers of the 19th Century, used as they were to squalid conditions, would not have felt completely out of place. Yet if you as a 20th and 21st Century military wife wanted to be with the man you loved then there was little alternative other than to try and grin and bear things as best you could.
Having made that decision to share your life with a servant of the Crown; having decided to sacrifice your career; having accepted the sub-standard housing; having understood that to a lesser or greater degree your existence would be governed by written and unwritten military rules; you then find that your husband is routinely snatched away for half year periods. The effects on your own self-esteem can be startling. Your physical health can suffer visibly, but it’s the emotional impacts of absence that are felt hardest. The joys and pains of ordinary life fall and are put squarely on your shoulders to deal with.
In the early days of our marriage, Doug missed the birth of both of our children. The second, Luke, was already six weeks old before his father finally saw him. Countless birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas mornings have come and gone without the man of the house being present.
But for the selfless efforts of my parents I do not know how I would have coped. Dealing with their deaths was tremendously difficult. Not only were my mum and dad no longer with me, the grief normally associated with losing loved ones was compounded by the disappearance of the only practical pillar of support I had.
Reading back over what I have so far said I see that I have created an impression of treatment at the hands of an uncaring military something akin to domestic abuse.
There will be those shouting at their computers, “You should have bloody well left him.”
But how does anyone walk away from the most loving man I know? Someone who treats me like a princess when we are together? Someone who adores me, who plays his part in the home, who worships the children?
The privations are great, the time together often all too short, but the rewards, despite it all, are immense.
And through it all you adapt. For all the difficulties, I have managed to come to terms with my life and, just about, coped. You learn to be resilient, self-reliant. You establish a routine that is almost that of a one-parent family. Essential parts of this existence are the radio and TV. Each morning when Doug was away I would get up and turn on the news, trying to catch some detail about the latest war he was is involved in. The day ends in the exact same manner, hoping to see or hear an update, praying even that the footage on the box will portray a glimpse of my husband, giving some comfort that he is, for the moment at least, safe.
During the invasion of Iraq Doug actually seemed to be on the television all the time. Seeing him there helped ease the gut-wrenching fear that stays with me night and day when he is away. For soldiers themselves, danger is often a fleeting thing, something which might actually account for a very small part of their working lives. But for their families the anxiety is constant. We have no way of knowing when the danger is present and when it is absent, so instead we are condemned to always think the worst.
White lies told by the men themselves do little to alleviate the stress. Doug’s first tour of ‘Afghan’ supposedly involved doing a desk job at Kandahar Airfield. I should I have been reassured by this; I wanted to be reassured, but it wasn’t easy. Doug has always yearned to be out and about doing real soldiering. As much as I tried believing he was well out of harm’s way, I never quite did.
When he returned home on R & R with a broken nose, dislocated fingers and cuts and bruises he attempted to pass it off as nothing more than the result of vehicle accident at the base. I suspected something else. But it was only after Doug had returned to Helmand and I foolishly watched the Sean Langan Channel 4 film Fighting the Taliban – which documented an awful, bloody battle, and all too vividly showed my husband’s part in it – that I understood where he got his injuries from and just how lucky I was to have him back at all.
I wished I hadn’t seen the programme. For the final two months of that tour I lived the worst existence imaginable. My coping strategy was shattered and I was constantly on edge. Whilst he was still away I received news that he’d been awarded the Military Cross for his part in the horror that I sat through. This merely fuelled my imagination. If they were giving him such high recognition for his actions the risks involved must have been huge.
I know that I am not alone in my suffering. Today there are thousands of women – wives, girlfriends, mothers – who are going through what I have endured. In the years to come there will be many thousands more.
These women are the real backbone of the British Army, the ones who engender hope, courage and commitment in the soldiers sent away to fight. If only they were rewarded by officialdom with the respect and dignity they deserve. For they give a lifetime of service just as much as the sons, husbands and boyfriends they unflinchingly stand behind.
My husband’s career has been long and illustrious. He went from boy soldier to young ranger; from RSM to a commissioned officer. He has been honoured with the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland Commendation, the Queens Commendation for Bravery, the NATO Meritorious Service Medal and that MC earned in Afghanistan.
Doug always says the medals are mine, as mush as they are his: that we have been through things together, even though so much of the time we have spent physically apart.
Going back to the question I asked at the start of this piece, the answer is both. But while the resentment is a passing emotion, the pride is always there. Though my husband rarely makes things easy for me, even now as we both get older and have not only children but grandchildren.
As it turned out Doug’s 12th operational tour wasn’t his last. Despite what he said to me, despite what he promised, he went on to complete a third tour of Afghanistan. Today Doug still works with the Royal Irish. He promises me that he is now home for good. I’ve heard it all before and every time the phone rings I fear it will be them ringing. His other family. Making him an offer that’s just too good to resist.
This week’s piece in my ‘Women in the Military’ series was a guest article written by the wife of Captain Doug Beattie MC who he previously wrote about in this Channel 4 piece. I am very grateful to her for sending me her words.
Every soldier has a unique reasons for enlisting. Ask some, and you will understand.
Whether it was to escape a broken home as a boy soldier at 16, a childhood friendship pact to go together, a result of the recession, a dream to fly, a failure by our education system resulting in no other viable alternative, a need to provide for a young family in hard times, a sense of duty, family tradition, the desire for travel and tough physical exercise, childhood ambition, a want of comradeship, a love of adrenaline rushes, the good pension or a wish to lead men, every soldier signed up with a reason. Rarely will you find one who will tell you the reason he applied was because he whole heartedly agreed with the political decisions of our current government in power and a desire to act upon their every whim.
Soldiers are not allowed to speak out if they disagree with the war. Soldiers cannot take part in anti-war demonstrations. Soldiers are given the phrases we hear them sometimes ineloquently deliver to waiting television cameras as they alight from coaches within their garrisons at the end of a six month tour. They mean what they say in the sense that they believe it. They are not stupid however, they know exactly why they say what they say; to retain unity in their ranks, a belief in a common purpose – a belief that these deaths are not in vain. From the Oxbridge educated Captains with first class degrees to the Generals who worked their way up from scratch, the army is instilled with the belief that no matter where they go, they go together. As one.
These men and women are husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, fiances or fiancees. They have best friends, a dog perhaps, a dodgy uncle, a smelly cat, an irritating ex and a nosy nextdoor neighbour. TA soldiers have normal civilian work colleagues (you never know, Alan who fixes the photocopier may exchange his tired shirt and trousers for a salad suit and sniper rifle at the weekend) and your local GP or hospital nurse may have been out in the field in Afghanistan applying tourniquets to soldiers who have just had a limb blasted off by an IED. They laugh, they joke, they cry and weep. They are trying to stop smoking, leave an abusive partner, or restrain an expensive desire for Jimmy Choo shoes. They are not politically motivated. Without question, they will go wherever they are needed.
If we were at war with a huge super-state tomorrow, these are the people we would hide behind. They are the ones, like those brave men and women who protected our country so valiantly in the two World Wars, who would sacrifice themselves for our freedom. They did not choose to go to Iraq, they did not ask to go to Afghanistan, but they willingly fly in at a moment’s notice to obey their commanders in battle. They are but humans, not heroes.
Do not sit in the ivory tower of your air conditioned, open plan office (third floor, past the kitchen, cubicle on the left), reclining back in your adjustable chair, leaning on your wrist support (there to prevent an RSI, of course) and criticise our Armed Forces to your colleagues, when they are doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Mock the politicians’ greed as you will, but do not denounce the men and women who put their lives on the line in the name of our country. Unless you have been in the heat of battle, adrenaline surging through your veins, making decisions faster than you can normally think, you can never understand the real reason our troops do what they do. They do it because they are born to do it, trained to excel at it and desire more than anything never to let their colleagues down.
As the guest of honour at my sibling’s officer graduation said… “look at the man on your left, then look at the woman on your right. They are the reason you fight”
Support our troops, even if you do not support the war.
Unless you hung around an army barracks’ front gate with your knickers conveniently already draped around your ankles at 1.20am on a Saturday morning in order to bag your man, you probably did not go looking for a military partner. In my case, coming from a military family, I thought I knew what to expect. How terribly misguided of me. My parents had climbed the hierarchical ladder to such a height that when I was born they could organise their lives to suit themselves. Dating my other half was a shock to my system, not eased much by the sugar coated glossy half-truths he sweetly fed me at the beginning of our relationship. It did not sound that bad. We managed our first tour well, as it was in the “exciting” honeymoon period, letters were exchanged and packages sent, long (alright that is a lie, sometimes incredibly brief due to minimise cutting off comms) telephone conversations in the evenings meant that time passed quickly. I was not used to him being around twenty-four hours seven days a week, so the total emptiness of his absence was not felt so keenly. I can do this, I thought to myself. This life will not be as bad as my mother keeps trying to tell me it will be.
I will never walk away from him, because he is my best friend, my confidante and my soul mate. But, by god, sometimes I want to. I curse the military more than I ever cursed any girl who tried to steal an old boyfriend, more than during any childhood argument with my little sister after she had borrowed and broken a prized possession. The Ministry of Defence (known in my house as “the f*cking army”) is my other half’s other woman. In fact she is worse than that. She is his controller, his dictator. She owns him. He spends more time with her than with me, and if we are about to make plans she will come along and royally fuck them all up for us. Dealing with this is difficult for both parties, as the desire to rant and scream at him for something beyond his control is sometimes impossible to resist. “Please don’t shout at me, I want to be with you as much as you with me.” “I’m not shouting at you, it’s not your fault, I’m angry at the army.”
So what pearls of wisdom can I offer to anyone who has found themselves in this situation after falling in love with one of these men in green?
The army will ruin your life. The army will ensure you have no partner at Christmas, no partner on Valentines Day. Your birthday will not be spent with your other half, you will learn to rely utterly on your friends and family. Forget anniversaries, genuinely, forget they exist. You cannot be the kind of person to take offence when no card or flowers arrive on your special day, because if you are, you are in the wrong relationship. You have to handle the household bills, the council tax, mechanical problems with the cars and DIY. You must be strong for others and be able to handle both his family’s problems and your own, as he will often not be around to help. You are basically a single woman and will be for the rest of your life, strengthened in the knowledge that in spirit he is with you the entire time in everything that you do. How often I lament that I have heard him say “I would be with you if I could. I am so sorry.” more times than I have seen him walk through the door. Expect to have to trust your partner implicitly. You will not know where he is ninety percent of the time, or who he is with. He feels the same about you, an open honest relationship is the only way long distance (for this is essentially what this relationship is, even if he lives an hour away) will work. Want to make romantic plans for a weekend away? Forget it. Well, do not forget it, but be prepared for these plans to have to be cancelled last minute, as She in her infinite wisdom has decided he is needed for some task. Often these tasks appear meaningless, he may, as my partner is this weekend, be in fact sleeping in a bush. Invest in travel insurance. Brush up on your GCSE German. You might end up visiting or even living there. Play the Afghan card, even when he is just on exercise in Britain. The Afghan card will get you access to all his billing information to perform tasks for him when he cannot, in my experience subtle crying (a little tearful sniff here and there) on the telephone to companies is a far more successful way of getting what you need than rudeness. Try not to snap at him when he cannot go somewhere or do something. He is missing my graduation, this is not his fault. Patience must be your strongest virtue, kindness and the ability to bite your tongue the closest second. He may sometimes lie to protect you from worrying. A discussion between you about this is recommended, if he feels he should omit facts when he is on tour, then this is his prerogative and you must respect it. PTSD. Be aware of the symptoms. Be aware that he may not ever be able, or wish, to recognise that he has it. Know that there are some things he may never wish to share, and that at the same time he might serve his years blessed in that he does not experience anything awful at all. You do not know and will never know more about the Army than he does. Do not listen to the idle gossip of other military wives and girlfriends. Do not get involved in tour-time wife and girlfriend mass hysteria. Believing blindly that they will come back in one piece is the only way to get through a tour. Listen to the news, but do not become absorbed in it. LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE. Have your own career, your own dreams. If you invest too much in his life and his work and dreams, your own happiness will suffer. Treat him as an equal, not a superior, but understand that his job involves a certain amount of flexibility. Keep your friends close and your family even closer. You will need them.
I would not wish this life on anyone. The reason I have this path ahead of me is because the love of my life chose this career for himself nearly a decade before we met. He is my best friend and I support him fully, as he does me in my chosen career path. However, if he did not support me, if he was not my best friend I would be running for the hills.
This is going to be hard but you have decided to stand by him (or her!) and deal with it. This is, therefore, the mentality you must adopt and it is one you cannot let falter, for both of your sakes.
