Thursday, June 24, 2004

MARRIED FOLKS IN A WAR ZONE

How does that compare to married couples a couple thousand miles apart?
Is it easier being together in a war zone than leaving spouses behind for a one-year deployment? That’s too simplistic, said two couples.

Yes, they’re together, but a marriage in a war zone is basically suspended. No overt affection. No privacy. Certainly no intimacy.

Experiencing what the war zone is really like, and what a spouse is doing in it, heightens some anxieties while alleviating others...

April 30 was the best day of Spc. Cornelius Randolph’s young life. His wife, Spc. Ayesha Randolph, joined him at Camp Black Jack, near Baghdad International Airport, after surviving two months at Camp Cooke in Taji...

His wife’s arrival completed his world, Cornelius Randolph said.

“My wife, myself and my boys, right here!”

Cornelius Randolph is conscious of not flaunting their relationship in front of his brothers in arms, who are desperately missing their wives. That said, he never thought he’d be in a place where people could tell him what he could and couldn’t do with his own wife...

“I’ve got someone right here to protect, someone I love. I’m a little more motivated to catch these [bad guys],” Cornelius Randolph said...

Tom and Heather Fauvell grew up together. They’ve known each other since the fourth or fifth grade, when their families lived a block apart in their central Long Island, N.Y., suburb.

They even went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point together.

Now, Capt. Tom Fauvell, 26, 2nd Brigade utility project manager, and 1st Lt. Heather Fauvell, 25, engineer brigade adjutant, are at war together, assigned to the 1st Cav...

With their Army-mandated platonic relationship, “it’s kind of like being teenagers again … a bunch of friends hanging out,” Heather Fauvellsaid. “I laugh all the time.”

Laughing “keeps us sane,” she said.

The Fauvells said they talk often about the future, about family and travel.

“We crave the future normalcy of life,” Heather said.
You know what Heather? Me too.

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