When most Canadians think of the military, they see camo-clad soldiers going off to war. They imagine danger, drudgery, yellow ribbons tied around trees and the potential for tragedy. But few people think of the families left behind, those who are married to the military.
This month, Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds travelled to Shilo and Carberry to talk to some of the wives and children whose daily lives are defined by the war in Afghanistan, even as they slog through their days as single parents and fatherless children, families who fear the knock on the door that will tell them their world has come crashing down.
Tara Leifso holds three-year-old daughter Natalie. In the military, everyone gets used to daddy’s absence.
Tara Leifso's home is in chaos.
Vader, the family's enormous eight-month-old black Lab cross, barks frantically and relentlessly from a back bedroom.
Ivory, 14, is at school so the mother-daughter conflict that vibrates when they're together is temporarily silenced.
The phone is ringing, there's someone at the front door and Natalie starts fussing for attention. Leifso's coffee cup is empty.
"Welcome to my world," the 32-year-old says with a wry grin.
Adeline sidles over to the table.
"My dad is the captain of the good guys," says the blonde-haired child sweetly. "He kicks the bad guys' butts."
That's how you explain to a preschooler that daddy -- Captain Troy Leifso to his troops -- is off at war and won't be home for months. That's part of what you whisper to your children when you want to stave off their fears and help them understand the reason birthdays pass without a visit and why bad dreams are only answered by mommy.
"You don't really prepare for it," says Leifso. "We knew for a year he was leaving. It was a long year. After a while you just think 'let's just get this over with'."
She and Troy chose to live off-base in Carberry. Partly, she says, they didn't want their kids thinking they were special because their dad was an officer. Troy didn't want to live where he works. And Tara, whose wise-cracking facade barely hides her fears for her husband's safety, needed a life that wasn't military 24/7.
They met in a Calgary bar the night he finished battle school. She was 21, he was 23. After just two dates, he was sent to Manitoba to fight the Flood of the Century.
"I understood he was very, very dedicated," she says. "That was clear from the beginning."
They've been through a lot in the ensuing 11 years. The couple have been posted in Calgary, Edmonton, Cornwall, London, Owen Sound and, for the past eight months, Shilo.
Leifso has already received one of the phone calls military spouses dread.
"We almost lost Troy in September in a training accident in Wainwright (Alberta). An LAV (a light armoured vehicle) rolled down an embankment. He was in the turret. He had facial lacerations and a crush injury to his head and should have, in all reality, been killed."
She lights a cigarette, blows the smoke out the sliding door to her deck.
"I got a call on that one, a call from a medic who said 'I have your husband here and he wants to say hello'. And then the phone cut out. No one would tell me anything. And I realized I might have to tell my daughter her dad's not coming home."
She immediately called the house of her closest friend, Jen Sluis. Jason, Jen's husband, was at the door in minutes.
"I said, 'Troy's been in an accident and I don't know what's going on'. He picked me up off the floor once or twice."
Jason Sluis' military career saw him do five tours of duty before a 2002 friendly fire incident in Afghanistan sent him home for good. An American F-16 fighter jet dropped a laser-guided 225-kilogram bomb near Kandahar, accidentally killing four Canadian soldiers and injuring eight others.
Sluis was medically retired and still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He now makes his living as a long-distance truck driver.
"My life hasn't changed much," says Jen Sluis. "I'm still a married single mother."
The two couples have become close friends. Sluis finishes Leifso's sentences and the two share a shorthand borne of shared experiences in different postings.
"When I finally heard from Troy again he was telling me he was up and walking," Leifso picking up the story. She makes her voice sound loopy and drunk. "He was like, 'No, really I'm fine, babe.' I said: 'Are you still on a backboard?' He said 'yes.'"
Leifso is training to be an emergency medical technician.
"You don't walk if you're strapped to a backboard," she says.
She and Sluis both shout: "Liar!" They laugh raucously.
But Leifso's toughness doesn't run all that deep. She wears a spare set of her husband's dog tags around her neck, her engagement ring fed through the chain.
One of the shirts Troy wore when he was last home hangs in her closet unwashed.
The smell of him is gone, she says sadly.
Not all combat soldiers are men. Capt. Nichola Goddard, married but with no children, was killed two years ago in Kandahar. But most soldiers are men, and the support system is designed for women. The husband of a fighting woman is on his own.
The Canadian military does what it can to prepare soldiers and their families for deployment. Shilo's Military Family Resource Centre has a handbook that covers everything from essential financial information to tips for couples on coping before the soldiers leave.
Spouses and soldiers are told to write down medical information, arrange power of attorney and given guidance on figuring out monthly budgets. It's essential information for the spouse staying behind. It is critical if the soldier doesn't make it home.
Every military spouse has a list of contact numbers on the fridge. If a soldier dies, that list tells friends whom to call first.
The MFSC, located in a vast and sunny building on the base, has a full slate of activities and supports for spouses and their children. Families who have a soldier deployed receive Warm Line calls once a month to make sure they don't have any problems they need help with. It's a way of reaching out to make sure the families don't feel isolated.
There's a drop-in day care on the base and parents are entitled to six free hours of baby-sitting a month. There are also daycare and pre-kindergarten classes for military families.
There are an astonishing number of young children at Shilo.
Melissa Quackenbush, 26, the MRFC's employment and special event coordinator, is new to Shilo. She's engaged to a soldier. She plans and runs deployment-related programs like the Warm Line program.
There's a library in the centre, one that offers titles like My Mom Is A Soldier and A Father to be Proud Of. If you want to take a course in anything from scrapbooking to second language courses to resume writing, you can find it at the MFRC.
There's a teen centre for movie nights and Guitar Hero. There's a thrift shop, volunteer opportunities and a theatre club.
If you want to be busy at Shilo you can fill every minute.
^^^^
Jen Sluis, Pat Allen and Leifso sit around the kitchen table at Leifso's house. Sluis's three children are at school but Allen, a pretty 46-year-old, has brought her four-year-old, Tristan, over to play.
They spend a lot of time in each other's houses and on the phone, gabbing about the important things and about nothing at all.
All three say they were fairly well prepared for the life of a military spouse.
"Jason was really direct with me from the start," says Sluis. "I think so many husbands aren't. I know girls that have said 'I didn't know we were going to have to move every four years.' How could you not know that?"
Pat, who has been married to Sgt. Doug Allen for nine years, says her upbringing taught her what her married life would be like.
"My father was in the Air Force when I was a child and he worked as an airline pilot so I was used to daddy doesn't work 9-to-5, daddy wasn't there everyday, daddy was home some of the time and he was gone for stretches.
"I was kind of brought up in that environment. He left the military when I was young but becoming a pilot, it was sort of the same kind of lifestyle. We were accustomed to it just being mom and the old terror, 'Is she going to tell dad what I did when he comes home?'"
The women talk freely about the deployment cycle, the anxiety that precedes their husbands shipping out, the settling in after they leave and the difficult adjustment when they come home.
"They say it's harder for them to come back than it is for them to go. I know we go through the typical deployment cycle, Leifso says. "The month before he goes, you get into a big fight. Everybody does."
Allen says the fights are usually over stupid things. "And then you realize, like two days before he leaves, 'oh my God you're leaving and I just chewed you out for leaving your socks on the floor'," says Leifso. "When they leave you have a couple of days of sadness ..."
Allen nods and finishes the thought.
"That lost kind of what am I going to do now? What should I do?" she says.
Sluis chimes in.
"And then a few days after that you get into your groove of, 'OK, he's gone now and there's nothing I can do about it' and you're almost in survival mode. And you start doing things for yourself."
The wives don't know exactly where their husbands are based. It's better not knowing, they say.
When there are reports of casualties they just wait to see if their phone will ring.
When the 2002 friendly fire accident happened, Jen Sluis called the base.
"They said, 'We're still notifying families'. I said 'Can you tell me if I'm one of the ones that's going to be notified?' Of course they couldn't."
It was another 24 hours before she heard her husband had survived.
The kind of toughness necessary to survive the uncertainty blends into their lives at home. Tara Leifso says she's very independent.
"As an army wife, I've figured out how to do it all. I've learned to fix toilets. I can fix plumbing. I can change the fuel filters on my van."
She gestures to the living room.
"I built that book shelf while Troy was gone, I'm waiting for it to collapse."
Her friends laugh.
Letting go of the responsible role is tough when the soldiers return, the three say.
"You get used to being in charge of all that," says Allen, "taking the garbage out and mowing the lawn and all those things."
Leifso adopts the voice of a Disney villainess.
"Actually, I don't let him mow the lawn. That's MY lawn. You can't do it right."
Jen Sluis says a lot of negotiation has to take place.
"They want to be involved. They want to be involved right back in the lifestyle and it's not that military wives mean to push them away in that sense but you're so used to doing it yourself it's almost like 'you're in my way'.
"You're so used to doing it yourself that it's almost like 'Just stand there and look pretty'. And they're used to being in charge."
There are only 11 military families in Carberry but they get a lot of support from the community. Pat Allen says she met her new neighbours as soon as she moved in when they offered to help her with whatever she needed.
Raelyn McIntosh, a Grade 11 student at Carberry Collegiate, decided to take things a step further. Although none of her family members are in the military, she has formed Super Troopers, a group of teens who will babysit, do lawn work or just lend a hand to the partners of soldiers who are deployed.
Essentially, a couple of teens will adopt a military family.
Ivory Leifso came home from school enthusiastic about joining the program.
"I told she couldn't trade us in for a different family," cracks her mom. "She's stuck with the one she's got. It she really wants to help, she can start by emptying the dishwasher."
Raelyn McIntosh says most of the town's teens hadn't stopped to think about the burdens faced by military families.
"It's really hard when you have a little baby and you have to mow the law," says the 17-year-old earnestly. "Sometimes the wives just need to get out and get their hair done or do some grocery shopping."
McIntosh put out the call to her fellow students. Quickly enough she had 47 volunteers.
The Super Troopers met the spouses for the first time last week at a Spouses of Spouses Away (SOSA) meeting in the local Presbyterian church. They entertained the kids while the women had the chance to chat and visit.
The students can get credit for the hours they volunteer but guidance counsellor Veronica Adams says that's not what motivates them.
"It's just a couple of hours out of these kids' days," she says. "They want to help. They're good kids."
McIntosh says most of the high school students have never really thought about the repercussions of war.
"When you think of war you don't expect people from your town to die," she says somberly. "It's scary and sad to think about it."
There's a carefully lettered certificate hanging in the church where the Super Troopers care for the military kids. In beautiful script it lists the names of the townsmen who fought in World War I and II. A silver star marks the names of those who died in battle.
There are a lot of silver stars for such a small town.
^^^
Captain Lonnie Goodfellow is the deployment support staff officer at Shilo's Deployment Support Centre. They're across the hall from the MFRC, an easy walk for anyone who lives on the base.
Family members can stop by to mail packages to the troops, to chat over a cup of coffee or just to get some company.
"The support structure that's in place, I've been in the military for 33 years now, and you know back in the days there was no such thing as support for the family members. The soldier was expected to make sure everything was sorted out for his family before he went away so that they could function while he was gone until he came back."
Now, family members can phone the DSC anytime they have a concern, he says.
"I guess basically our role is to talk to them, let them know that we're here to help them and we'll do whatever we can to support them with whatever their concern is."
Eight hundred soldiers left from Shilo in the last deployment. Goodfellow and his team of seven could get calls from any of their family members.
They average 2,000 calls a month.
If there is a casualty, the soldier makes a phone call home. If there's a death, the chain of command takes over.
"Where we would fit in is after all is said and done and the spouse has gotten herself back on track and gotten herself back to work there may be a problem that she comes up with where she needs say, a social worker to talk to or a counsellor to talk to. Or something has happened to the pay she was supposed to get. So she can call us up and we can help her."
While Goodfellow doesn't have to do death notifications personally, he's well aware of how difficult the process is.
"The whole drive down to do that notification, what's going through your mind is 'What am I going to say?'" says Goodfellow. "And then you're worried about what is the reaction going to be? And I can tell you it's not like in the movies. I would say it's not as easy as they portray it.
"I think the word is getting out there that now if a military vehicle is driving up in the driveway, neighbours are getting a general indication of what that means."
Tara Leifso and Jen Sluis have made a pact.
If Leifso ever gets that visit, Sluis is getting on the plane to Germany with her when she goes to reclaim Troy's body.
^^^
Tara Leifso says she's putting her foot down and she says this will be Troy's last tour for a while.
"Maybe in another five, six years we'll think about it. But for right now, the little ones just don't understand. It's been a big challenge for me."
Pat Allen says it's especially hard on the children.
"We went to the base the other day to pick up (Doug's) check. I went to headquarters first. I was supposed to go to the PPCLI building first. So I got Tristan back into the car, went to the PPCLI building, went back to headquarters and had to go to the cashiers.
"And Tristan's going to everybody, 'where's my daddy? Where's my daddy?" And as we're leaving the base he says 'we looked in every room and we couldn't find my daddy.'"
As strong as the wives try to be for their children they admit they give into their black thoughts sometimes.
"Sometimes late at night I'm reading my book and I'm falling asleep and I turn off the lights and I lay there," says Allen. "After last week (when Sgt. Jason Boyes was killed) I e-mailed Doug a few times and I never got a phone call and when he called me, as soon as I heard his voice I started crying.
"He's like 'what's wrong?' and I'm like 'nothing's wrong and I'm just upset about what happened'. I couldn't say it, I couldn't even say because Jason died. He said 'you know, we're really being safe' and I wanted to say 'well don't you think HE was being safe? Do you think he deliberately went out there wearing a shirt with a target on it?'
"And you think, what if it was you? What would I tell Tristan?"
^^^^
Ivory Leifso is home from school and sitting with her mom, her mom's friends and her young siblings at the kitchen table. She's a pretty 14-year-old, even as she hides under a thick shock of hair accented with strands of green.
She picks away at her black polished nails as she and her mother pick away at each other. This is the practised routine of moms and teenage daughters.
Under her studied ambivalence, she is devoted to her father and the work he does. Still, she misses him terribly.
"You're always used to your parents worrying about you," she says. "You feel you have to worry about them when they're away."
She copes by isolating herself.
"I just kind of go and draw. I'll just go to my room. It's easier not to remember sometimes where he is."
Most of her friends don't really understand what it means to have a parent deployed, she says. The Super Troopers is a great idea because it will open the eyes of her classmates.
She says there are girls at school who wear Stop the War T-shirts. She's livid.
"Our fathers, mothers, brothers are over there. They wouldn't have the right to wear those shirts if it wasn't for my dad fighting for their freedom."
Her eyes well and she turns away.
"If they read that T-shirt they should thank a teacher," she snaps. "If they can read it in English the should thank a soldier."
As for the idea of Canadians going off to war, she is unequivocal.
"If you don't want to pick up a gun and fight, don't join the armed forces," she says. "My dad is defending the world."
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca
Lindor Reynolds blogs at www.winnipegfreepress.com
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