When Dad and Mom Go to War

By Alain L. Sanders

Brenda Jarmon of Tallahassee still remembers the chilling August phone call. Her daughter, Corporal Lynette Guthery of the Army's 24th Infantry Division (mechanized), based outside Hinesville, Ga., needed a precious favor. Could the 40-year-old grandmother take care of 2 1/2-year-old Ikea -- immediately? Both Lynette and her separated Army husband had been ordered to Saudi Arabia, and Ikea needed a new home right away. Of course, answered Jarmon, promptly placing her life, and her Ph.D. thesis in social work, on hold. She had signed papers earlier agreeing to become her granddaughter's guardian in case of a military deployment. But now she says, "I never thought of war; it never entered my mind."

Four weeks into Operation Desert Storm, the deadly reality of war has come home for the grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers and family friends who have suddenly been pressed into a very special type of war service: tending children whose parents or whose single parent has been shipped to the Persian Gulf.

The questions, doubts and fears surrounding these children are some of the most wrenching consequences of the nation's decision to develop an all- volunteer military and to give women an expanded and more egalitarian role in it. Only now is the Pentagon conducting a survey to determine how many single parents and military couples with minor children are on active duty. Some experts guess that 140,000 people are married to others in the military and that 67,000 single parents are in the U.S. armed forces. Suddenly, many mothers and fathers who joined the services in peacetime to begin a career -- sometimes out of sheer economic necessity -- are discovering that the job is ripping both of them away from their children. Worse, those caring for the children back home fear that the task may become permanent. Asks grandmother Mary Villarreal of Pasadena, Texas, charged with taking care of four-month-old twins whose Marine mother and father are in Saudi Arabia: "What if something happens to both of them? Then what about the babies. What becomes of them?"

The Pentagon's answer so far has been blunt: the risk is one that military couples accepted when both husband and wife enlisted. "It would be a serious mistake, particularly while we are engaged in combat," says Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, "to reverse our long-standing policy that single parents and military couples are fully deployable and available for assignment anywhere in the world." To make sure that children are not simply abandoned, the Pentagon insists that parents appoint a guardian for them. Each service also operates a family-support network that includes counseling for custodians and the children. But there are no special exemptions from war-zone service for military couples or single parents.

Many children's rights advocates, mental health professionals and terrified guardians say the no-exception policy is unconscionable. Experts are worried that children who lose both parents may suffer mental trauma, including deep feelings of grief and abandonment, and serious psychological problems in later life.

Brenda Jarmon says Ikea often leaves her bed in the middle of the night to sleep with her grandmother. "When she gets letters from her mother, she asks me to read them over and over again and keeps them under her pillow for safekeeping," says Jarmon. John and Susan Menard of Hinesville, Ga., close friends of Army sergeants Dionisio and Yolanda Lopez, are taking care of the military couple's two youngsters. Although Carlos, 9, seems to have adjusted well, they say, he frequently asks what might happen to his mother and father. When Carlos learned of the initial raids on Baghdad on the car radio coming home from a basketball game, he turned silent. "We never lie to the children," says Susan Menard. "When they hear about fighting, we check it out and make sure to tell them that these are still the airplanes and that their parents are nowhere near them."

The emotional strain weighs on the military parents, who find themselves torn between the call of their country and the needs of their children. "They miss them; they feel robbed," says Villarreal, who puts the twin infants in her care close to the phone whenever their mom Laura calls from Saudi Arabia, just so she can hear them cry.

Critics of the Pentagon policy charge that neither military parents nor their children need suffer so much grief. Last month Republican Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and Democratic Representative Barbara Boxer of California introduced similar gulf-orphan legislation. Their bills would allow single parents, or one parent in the case of a military couple with minor children, to decline a war-zone assignment. Military officials would choose which parent to exempt in the case of a couple.

The measures build on long-standing military regulations that spare from combat anyone who is a sole surviving child or whose closest relatives have been killed in battle. Says Boxer: "This is a volunteer army, but these are not volunteer children. They took no part in any decision that may leave them without parents." The Pentagon says it opposes the measures. But as the prospect of a costly ground war grows, the matter could become an emotional issue on Capitol Hill.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and Joseph J. Kane/Hinesville