Major Conflict: One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military by Jeffrey McGowan Maj Usa

Author:Jeffrey McGowan Maj Usa [Usa, Jeffrey McGowan Maj]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Gay Studies
ISBN: 9780307419118
Publisher: Broadway
Published: 2005-03-08T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Daddy, I’ll Be Good

The following afternoon we were told that our date of departure would be December 24, Christmas Eve, which meant, of course, that no one would be spending the holidays with family. Those final days before the war were a blur as we completed training and hurriedly closed down the post. There were several other units in front of us in the queue, and we got regular briefings on their progress through the system. We noticed it was rare for a unit to get off at the appointed time. They’d arrive at the airport for the scheduled flight, but then the plane would get diverted or the flight would be canceled for maintenance, so they’d end up having to wait for a day or two. Based on this, we were prepared for a nightmare at the airport.

On the twenty-fourth I went down to board one of the buses that would be taking us to Rhein-Main. The farewell scene was like a funeral, all pretense of dignity and restraint thrown to the wind, as wives and children wailed and soldiers did their best to appear strong, though many broke down and cried along with their families. Little girls clung to their father’s legs, wives clung desperately to their husbands’ necks, holding on for dear life, pouring a lifetime of emotion into those final hugs and kisses. Watching the more emotional couples—the younger, childless soldiers and their women, mostly—it looked to me as if they were actually trying to merge, as if by holding on to each other long enough and hard enough they’d become inseparable, one would disappear into the other, and they’d both go off to war, or they’d both remain in Germany. It was a sobering scene, a hard reminder, just in case anyone still needed one, that what we were about to embark on was serious business indeed. The children were the hardest to look at, because they seemed not quite to understand what was going on. All they knew was that their world had been turned upside down and that Daddy was leaving. I was holding together pretty well myself until I looked over and saw a little boy grasping a soldier’s knee, his small head turned up toward his tall soldier of a father, his face streaked with tears; he said, “Daddy, don’t go. I promise I’ll never be bad again if you stay.”

I burst into tears, watching the young father gently lift his son up into his arms and reassure him that it wasn’t his fault and that he would be back as soon as he could. No, I thought angrily, it isn’t your fault, little boy, the person at fault is a shithead dictator from the Middle East who’s about to get his due.

One of the officer’s wives who had had me over for dinner several times saw my tears and came over to hug me and tell me she’d be thinking of me; then the other wives came over and

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