Published August 31, 2008
By Susie Wilde
"I tend to write about families separated by things beyond their control war, poverty, prison. When I started to hear about the tours of service being extended beyond what families were expecting and the National Guard folks being called up, I began to wonder what does this mean to the kids. And that was the first question I started with."
Deborah Ellis, an
award-winning author noted for writing fiction about the plight of
children in developing countries, serves North American children with
"Off to War: Voices of Soldiers' Children" (Groundwood Books, ages 9 and up).
More
than 1 million American and Canadian military personnel have taken part
in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, according to the Boys and
Girls Clubs of America, 1.2 million young people in the U.S. have at
least one parent in the armed forces. Ellis' book contains interviews
with 41 children, ages 6 to 17, from Canada and the United States; nine
of her interviewees are from Fort Bragg.
The
breadth of Ellis' book is apparent in locales and ages, in differing
branches and ranks, in backgrounds and opinions. There's a Pagan family
who are anti-war and another family whose members have served in the
military for generations. Some children feel estranged from a returning
parent, others find their soldier parents don't sweat the small stuff
after being overseas. For Ellis, the book was an education in seeing
the military as individuals with varied points of view. "They would be
strong in any situation, but ... these are phenomenal people."
The
commonality is the children's loneliness. "The kids could see when
their parents came home that things were different but because their
mom or dad wouldn't talk, they felt lonely and left out. They didn't
feel like they could bring up subjects because they didn't want to
remind their parents of bad experiences. They took on a lot of
responsibility for looking after parents and maintaining the silence."
Ellis
begins each chapter by explaining issues like friendly fire,
post-traumatic stress disorder, fallen heroes and deserters. Then she
fades into the background and allows the children tell their stories,
which read like pure, unadulterated truth, just the kind of stories
children of military families need. Ellis notes that the families who
have received the book are pleased with their kids' reflections,
surprised they knew so much.
There
are similarities: The children miss spending holidays and birthdays
together; they hide feelings; they fear for their parent's well-being;
and surprisingly, quite a few of them want to grow up to be
veterinarians. Also, many of the families have divorced. And there are
differences: those who support the war and those who don't; children
who feel community support and children, mostly of National Guard
militia, who are the only children in their schools experiencing war's
effects.
But above all, individual
voices and perspectives shine. Like the 13-year-old who wonders "with
so many service men and women coming back from Iraq, spooked by those
sounds, you'd think people back home here would have a heart and cancel
all the fireworks." The 17-year-old boy whose father suffers from PTSD
and snaps at certain sounds and is confused about why the military
keeps sending him overseas. The 13-year-old girl who cries in the
school bathrooms when she can't keep her mind off the danger her
father's in. The 6-year-old who says, "I'm going to be a soldier when I
grow up because they have guns and I like shooting bad guys. The hard
part would be dying." An 8-year-old who says, "I could be laughing and
singing and right at that moment, he could be getting shot, or bombed."
In January, Ellis will publish "Voices of War," a collection of interviews with Iraqi children, now refugees in Jordan.
The
most startling thing to Ellis in all her interviewing has been that the
children had never given any thought to what the world would look like
without war. "It's our fault that we've never presented a world without
war as something that might one day be possible, something they could
think of, or imagine. We've got to change that!"
###
Kids' advice for kids
Ellis
was most impressed with the children's coping strategies. "Sometimes as
adults we forget what it's like to be happy and all our activities are
geared to perpetuating unhappiness. When you're a kid, you want to be
happy, so they did things to make themselves happy."
Some suggestions offered by Ellis' interviewees:
Don't overdramatize. You'll just make it harder on yourself. Find someone to trust if you need to talk to someone.
Just roll along with it. Pretend it's a normal part of your life.
It's OK to cry and be sad.
I do my best to keep my mind on other things, like my dreams and what I need to do.
I wrote in a diary a lot. It was an outlet for what I was thinking and feeling.
We made a new routine when Dad left, and found new things to do.
Keep your mind on good things. You'll get through it easier.
Don't get upset. Write letters and send packages to your parent.
Do
the things you like the most. It will make the time go faster and
you'll have something to talk about when your parent gets home.
Watch a movie or do something to clear your mind
