“Which of those captains from the meeting do you want to be your rear detachment commander, Ang? We both know how important that dynamic is and how difficult you are to deal with, so I’m leaving the choice to you.” My man knows what he is talking about. He knows that the relationship could be a make-or-break situation in a deployment.
A COUPLE WEEKS OR so after the change of command, we have our first steering committee meeting at the battalion headquarters. Should I bring cookies? Or would that seem too eager? I wear cargo pants and an easy T-shirt with Chuck Taylor sneakers. I don’t want to seem like I am trying too hard to be “down with the people,” but I also don’t want to overdress and seem unapproachable. I must strike a delicate balance. As I walk into battalion headquarters, I decide maybe the sneakers are a little too much. But in the North Country, there is a two-week period that divides flip-flop season from UGG season, and I want to seize this moment before UGG boots become my only choice.
I’ve met many of the battalion’s leaders at the change of command, followed by our official welcome dinner a few days later, and then yet again at my welcome given by the wives the following week. But those were all social events; this is the first “work”-related activity. Steering committee meetings are held monthly and are the opportunity for Jack and me to disseminate information from the division down to the company-level commanders and the Family Readiness Group (FRG) leaders. A time for the links in the chain to share ideas, to plan events, and to posture. Always a time to posture. Eager to see the team in action, I can’t wait to see what everyone has to bring to the table and dissect the dynamics and figure out how I will fit in.
Jack, who is always über-prepared, has laid out a detailed and strict agenda for the meeting, and I know that my place will be to interject a little humor and personality into the meeting. I am a great heckler. Maybe make us seem like real people, because Jack certainly gives a first impression of being mechanical, but also upbeat and approachable. It takes a while for people to realize he is earnest and endearing. With Jack, what you see is what you get. I come off as a smartass, and that might be an intriguing combination. Over the years, we’ve perfected our roles.
After the steering committee meeting in October 2006 with Jack and me reigning as the battalion command team, we committee members are already aware that our brigade is on the patch chart to deploy to Iraq the following summer. We have ten months to prepare and plan, even if none of us is ready to talk about it yet. Jack and I are hesitant to come into a battalion of war-weary folks who’ve just gotten back from a year in Iraq and start excitedly talking about the deployment we all know lies on the horizon. Both of us need to keep our thrill of being at the helm of a battalion during war in check, for now. But we are already plotting and scoping things out. My main mission for the day is to assess the captains in attendance at the meeting and choose one. Choose my rear detachment commander. After the meeting, I hang around and make chitchat with everyone as they gather their belongings to head back and go about their day. Some of the men exit immediately after the meeting, a few chat with each other away from me, and only one approaches me and talks to me like I am a person. As I talk with this relaxed, relatable soldier, I feel the click of knowing I’ve found one of my people. We have an easy conversation, and he tells me he’s heard that I am also a Dave Matthews fan. You had me at hello.
I clean up the table with the empty cookie plate and head to Jack’s office so we can rehash the meeting and its attendees while it’s still fresh in our minds.
“Close the door,” he says as soon as I enter. It feels as if the first day of school has just ended and it’s milk and cookie time, time to rehash and analyze the new cast of characters.
When Jack asks me to choose, I don’t hesitate. “The tall guy with the brown eyes. He stayed after the meeting ended and chatted with me. He looked me in the eye, didn’t call me ma’am. Good social skills. Him. He likes Dave Matthews; it’s a sign.”
“Ouch. That’s Ben Black. He’s my best captain. Isn’t there another choice?”
“Nope. Him. I thought the policy is the best stays in the rear to take care of families, right?” My retort is only half teasing. I want to make sure he remembers his own philosophy.
And with that simple exchange of sentences, Ben Black’s fate as my future partner and battle buddy is sealed. When Ben learns of his new assignment, he fights it; he calls congressmen and pouts. Ben can be moody. He lacks Jack’s tireless energy and focus, but makes up for it with his ability to relate to people, especially chicks. He doesn’t think in black-and-white military terms, but on a more human level.
A year later, when Ben asks me what in the world made me choose him, he insists that he only stayed back after that first meeting because he had to get a paper signed by Jack and never would have hung around to talk to me otherwise. The very irreverence of this conversation convinces me again I’d made the right choice.
As I leave the headquarters in my try-hard sneakers on that first day, a group of women in a deep discussion lingers in the parking lot. They ooze frustration.
Wanting to be the resourceful problem solver, I approach. “Is everything okay? Anything I can help with?”
They look at each other, then their suspicious eyes land on me. “When are the afghans we ordered coming in?” one woman asks. “Our families paid for them, and they’re annoyed that they aren’t here yet. Sandy Morrow ordered them months ago.”
My stomach lurches. During the transition, no one said a word to me about an afghan fund-raiser, where the money went, or where these friggin’ afghans were—or even that they existed. Now I’ll have to engage drunken Sandy in a dialogue and try to get to the bottom of this. My first real pain-in-the-ass command conundrum in Jack’s coming three-year command. Not a very challenging one, but it offers a nice way to get my feet wet in the muddy waters of problem solving. Two years later, I will have spotted this kind of tense conversation from a room away, averted my eyes, and hoped to escape without getting involved. But at this early stage, I have the energy and chutzpah to attack with vigor. Make a great first impression.
It’s well known that the most contentious of relationships in a battalion can be between the wife of the battalion commander and the wife of the battalion command sergeant major, the top officer’s wife and the top enlisted soldier’s wife. There are entire seminars offered to wives about navigating this complex relationship, perhaps making us look too hard for drama and power struggles that might not exist at all. But mine does exist.
Liesel Leonard, the wife of Jack’s new command sergeant major, is an eccentric woman who has never participated in the army wife scene. It’s fine to not participate all along the way, but to jump in with both feet as a newbie in a leadership position, well, that’s just a recipe for disaster. Anyway, she never really does jump in with both feet. It’s more like she tips her toe in the water when she feels like it. Liesel offers piano lessons in her nearly empty home, which strikes me as void of personality and warmth, and each time I speak to her I can only picture the mother from the movie Carrie. But there’s also something gentle and thoughtful about her, and I hold on to high hopes that our opposite natures will be complementary. She refuses to call Jack by his first name and instead calls him “Colonel Hawwwwkins” in a singsong lilt. It isn’t long before I realize that she will not be a strong teammate for me. The same is true of her husband, a self-admitted old and tired enlisted man who has never seen a day of combat, but is well liked for his easygoing, relaxed disposition. Pretty much the opposite of the stereotypical hard-ass, scary command sergeant major.
Had I met Liesel under different circumstances, I think I would appreciate her eccentricities and unique manner. She is so offbeat that it’s hard not to find her amusing. Liesel is in her late forties at the time, but because of her long, gray, frizzy hair and frumpy, practical clothing, she looks much older. She has a slothlike way of moving and a witchy, shrill quality in her voice. Somehow I think she would be a perfect battle buddy for Regina Sweeney. They would get each other. Liesel makes her disdain for me clear with stares, sighs, eye rolling, and nitpicking at irrelevant details. She rarely even attempts to show up for meetings or other events, but when she does, the tension is clear.
As the wife of our battalion’s top enlisted soldier, the command sergeant major, she is supposed to be my teammate and battle buddy. Battle buddy is a cheesy term the army uses to describe the other half of the command team, though more and more senior officers’ wives have grown to use the term with a solid dose of sarcasm, because it almost never works out that our command sergeant major’s wife is a true battle buddy. In theory and under ideal circumstances, she is supposed to be the one who galvanizes the enlisted wives and encourages. The resourceful and wise one, not the weird and withdrawn one. Instead, Liesel is ill equipped for deployments or, really, for functioning in a combat unit at all. Passive-aggressive and lazy, she offers zero commitment to her role, other than making occasional appearances at her convenience. I resent this because I give so much of myself to my role, while she gives so little. She blames her weakness on a lack of training through her husband’s career and complains that enlisted wives are not “groomed” as officers’ wives are. As a natural introvert, she is overwhelmed by the deployment and the demands of her role and she retreats, but refuses to relinquish the title of “senior advisor” in the battalion. She plays the victim and accuses me of intentionally leaving her out of decisions, but the reality is that I am exhausted and sick of catering to her demands. She does no entertaining at her home, probably because her only furniture is a card table, four folding chairs, one bookcase, and a piano. No pictures on the walls. No computer or television. No warmth. I want her house to at least smell like patchouli, but it just smells like stale nothingness.
The lighter side of Liesel’s presence is that she provides an endless wealth of behind-the-scene chuckles. Nearly everyone has a spot-on imitation of Liesel. In everyday civilian life, characters like Liesel can be galvanizing because their very presence is anything but dull. I am equally responsible for the tension between us. I’m sure I’m not as good at restraining my inner mean girl as I should be, at least for the sake of appearances.
The other witchy one, but an oh-so-different witchy, Linda Stewart, pulls me aside about a month after the change of command, peers over her glasses at Liesel and then back at me, and squeezes my arm. “You’ve got your work cut out for you with that one.”