The military spouse is key to combat readiness. They manage the home front and provide the strength of character to reassure the active duty soldier that the family is stable.

 

Typical issues the military spouse has to deal with include:

 

• Frequent relocations
• Employment and career challenges
• Financial strain
• Emotional stress and mental health
• Social isolation and integration challenges in new duty stations
• Parenting and family dynamics from managing as a single parent

 

In 1996, Julie captured her thoughts on her life as a military spouse.

 

Having had 28 moves in the first 32 years of our marriage, sometimes it was tough to keep smiling. Pentagon duty was especially hard as Hal worked long hours, even weekends, and we lived in genteel poverty. I remember one month in the late ’60s when I had to make $4 feed the seven of us for 3 days. We had some very strange meals as I opened whatever cans were on the shelf. Hal Moore taught me to “face up to the facts and deal with them,” so I did.

 

In the summer of ’49, I decided that Hal Moore was the man for me and chased him till he caught me. We were married in November, and our first child was born 18 months later at Fort Bragg. We moved to Fort Benning when Greg was 4 months old, and Hal attended the Advanced Infantry Officers Course. All the Bragg crowd went with us. Toward the end of the school year, Hal received the orders I had been dreading – the Korean War! I was highly pregnant with Steve, and he refused to come on time. The doctors made me drink cod liver oil in hopes of speeding him up, but he finally arrived on May 4, and Hal left for Korea six weeks later in June.

 

I was 23 years old. I stayed in the high heat and humidity of Columbus, Ga, in a tiny tract house with no air conditioning for another 3 months by myself as my parents hadn’t found a place to live yet. I planned to move in with them in Auburn, AL.  It was so awful, though, as there was NO NEWS of what was happening during that war. Sometimes, I would find a paragraph or two on the back page of the Opelika-Auburn Daily Newspaper. If there was a big fight like Pork Chop Hill, the Atlanta paper might mention it. Sometimes, I think I was better off not knowing compared to the intensive coverage of Vietnam. My two best friends in Auburn were Evie Coursen, whose husband had been killed winning the Medal of Honor, and Jean, whose husband was a prisoner of war. Not a happy group.

 

Of course, we didn’t have TV then either. Hal sent me a telegram wishing us a Merry Christmas, which I found in the mailbox. I thought it was bad news and refused to open it, so Dad had to do it. You can imagine the relief. I told him never to send me another telegram and have always “frozen” when I see one so the debacle of the telegrams from X-Ray paralyzed me.

 

When we received the news from President Johnson in late July of ’65 that the 1st Cav would go to Vietnam, there was a flurry of activity among the wives to get the men packed up. At that time, the Army had no camouflage insignia or underwear, so our great concern was dying their underwear (two forest green to one black was the standard formula we came down on – I know the Chattahoochee River ran green for months) – inking out the white name tag and the gold U.S. Army on their fatigue shirts.

 

We were told we had 30 days to get out of the Army quarters on the Post, so there was a great scramble to find a place to live outside the gate in the little town of Columbus. 438 wives settled in the area. Dad wanted me to come to Auburn (40 miles from Columbus, GA.), and I felt that I owed him a year with his grandchildren, so I looked over there, but there was nothing that we could fit into for rent and only a $30,000 house to buy, which was way too expensive. I found a dinky house in an area of Columbus that many wives had settled in, close to the Post. The three younger children (3-11 years old) had the largest bedroom – poor Dave slept on a cot, which we put up every night and took down every morning – Greg and Steve (13 and 12) shared a room, and I had the smallest room – could only get out of bed on one side!

 

We tried to keep the night Hal left like any other in the family. All had dinner together; he read Ceci and Davy their evening story and finished the last-minute packing. We went to bed. I tried to sleep, but I just hung on to him. When he got up to leave around 1:30 a.m., I pretended to be asleep as I knew I would start crying and didn’t want him to worry about us. He had enough on his mind. I heard the back door shut, got up, leaned against the upstairs window, and watched while the jeep pulled away in the dark. Then, I cried. I was 34 years old.

 

I will never forget that Monday morning in Nov. ’65 when I picked up the Columbus, GA. Ledger off the front stoop and opened it up to Joe’s story. I must have read it 10 times trying to comprehend what had happened, and that name Lt. Col. Hal Moore kept jumping out at me. Somehow, I got the children off to school and drove Dave’s nursery school carpool. When I got home, the phone started ringing and didn’t quit. I totally forgot to pick up the carpool until the school called! Even Peter Jennings called to arrange an interview with the local TV station that night. He wanted to film our reaction to seeing Hal on the evening news program. I did not want to do it, but the Public Information Officer at Ft. Benning asked me to. I was so stunned at seeing my husband with tears in his eyes that I could hardly speak. I should have known better as the Sergeants were his brothers and the privates his sons – no one can lose that many family members and not weep. We did not make the next evening news.

 

Up till then, I think we thought of Vietnam as patrols and little actions that really wouldn’t affect us. I stupidly believed that Hal, being a Lt. Colonel, would be safely in the rear. It never entered my head that he would be up on the firing line. The Division had been on field maneuvers so much for months at a time that I think we wives thought of it as another maneuver. We had a tight-knit group of wives who tried to help each other and took over if one got sick or needed help with the children.

 

It is hard to describe the special closeness that Army wives have to each other. Even though I was lucky enough to end up a General’s wife, I never forgot that I started out as a lieutenant’s wife and the burdens they carried of raising young children with never enough money or husband.

 

I wish I could say that I was immediately inspired by a greater power to visit my wives who received the fateful telegrams, delivered by taxis at whatever hour of the day or night they arrived at the Western Union office, but it was only my father’s prodding that made me go. I was terrified at how I would be received – would they hate me because it was my husband who had ordered theirs into that awful place? What beautiful women they were. I told you Army wives are special.

 

I remember Mrs. Givens so dignified and gracious. Saying she thought she had escaped the bad news and had been visiting the other wives who had received the telegrams. She received the last one delivered. The young girl, who couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17, was totally bewildered and truly not understanding what had happened or what to do, or where to go. The darling pregnant Puerto Rican girl who spoke no English (I could understand some Spanish) telling me how she answered the door at 3 a.m., saw the telegram, couldn’t read it but knew immediately what it was and fainted dead away. The Taxi driver banged on her neighbor’s door to get help for her. She later had her baby boy in the Fort Benning hospital, and we got a layette together for her. She then returned home to Puerto Rico.

 

Since it was early in the War, they had pride in what their husbands had done and could feel that their husbands had died “for a good cause.” I thought about them so much in later years when all the demonstrations started and all the hatred spewed out. What did they have to justify their sacrifice then? I hate to blame Fort Benning for the telegrams, as I think they were just as unprepared as all the rest of us. Benning was not ready for LZ X-Ray – or Columbus, GA., or America, for that matter. The war in Vietnam had suddenly changed radically and violently. It was a very cruel way to tell a woman her world had just come to an end I can’t add any more to the horror those women suffered being told in such a cruel way that isn’t in the book.

 

I will never forget that tense moment when the yellow cab stopped at my door. I saw the driver get out and come up the walk. I was alone, so I hid behind the drapes and prayed he would go away, but he kept coming. When he rang the bell, I decided not to answer; that way, everything would be alright. I finally said to myself come on, Julie, you have to face up to what’s to come, so answer the door. He only wanted help in locating a house number. I literally sagged against the door jamb, white as a sheet, and I was so relieved. I told him never to do that to anyone again. He was so apologetic. All the cab drivers said they really hated that duty.

 

It was so lonely at night after the children were in bed not to have him to talk to, to get advice on problems, handling all the finances, and making ALL decisions. It was so different, though, than the Korean War, as I did have so many friends around in the same boat. It was the same for the children. Instead of being the odd person with no father, they thought it strange that some kids had a father around and wanted to know why his Dad wasn’t in Vietnam! There was always someone to have a cup of coffee with, or we would get together with all the kids for a potluck supper.

 

Everything seemed to go along ok until about 9 months then I noticed that the wives were starting to have trouble. I had to get one officer’s wife into psychiatric counseling (her first husband had been killed in Korea), gals were coming down sick, and even I ended up with a hysterectomy in April ’66. We were about at the end of our ropes, and I think a lot of it was the constant TV and newspaper coverage. We grew up in a hurry, listening to the troops talk, seeing the actual action, and hearing the gunfire. The news got home so fast that we wondered if it beat the telegrams and if we would get one the next day.

 

One of the worst times was when I thought Hal was on his way home. I was waiting for the call from San Francisco, the children had made a big Welcome Home sign for Dad, and I was watching the noon news on TV when I suddenly heard “Colonel Hal Moore said.” I knew he was in another fight, and only God knew when he would get back. I certainly did not want him killed when he was so close to coming home. I learned later that his replacement was on hand, but when his brigade was ordered out to rescue a cut-off American Battalion, he refused to turn his men over to a new commander going into a fight. Even though I learned at my father’s knee that to a truly dedicated Army officer such as he and my husband,” the troops ALWAYS come first,” you get this terrible feeling that you will NEVER come first, it will ALWAYS be the troops, and anger takes over. I was hurt and furious with Hal. I felt that we had all given enough!!