Lawrence.com

We wanted to do a story about people in the war. Something we could write from Lawrence. We decided to focus on relationships. After trying to track down a few couples in the past few weeks, we got responses from two pairs of people.

The first is a couple that broke up over the course of working on the story. The second is a couple that made it work despite dating for only two weeks before one of them went to Iraq. We also interviewed a Kansas State professor who studies military relationships and is retired from the Army Reserves. Here's what we got.

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James Bagby and Bri Hodge broke up weeks ago, after dating for the duration of his time in combat. James has been stationed in Iraq since October 2006. He and Bri had been dating since July 2006. They met a couple years earlier while both working at The Merc.

They stayed in regular communication through emails sent nearly every day, phone calls and written letters. Naturally, their conversations ran the emotional gamut. In a couple of emails with lawrence.com just after the couple broke up, James openly struggled with the meaning of the war and his presence in Iraq. In one email he complained of the lack of progress in the war and in the next he seemed to take more of a nihilistic stance and asked not to print what he'd sent earlier. He called it "garbage."

We reprinted the latter email below, and a Q&A with Bri. The letter is not meant to be read as a character study, as no one email can capture more than a glimpse into a person's state of mind while typing. It is a point on a pendulum, devoid of context. (As Bri pointed out, who knows what atrocities he might have encountered the day he wrote it?) We broke the email into paragraphs to make it easier on the eye and clarified one thing in parenthesis, but otherwise didn't change it.

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Email from James Bagby, sent from Iraq. Thursday, Nov. 1, 4:27 a.m. Iraq time.

Frank,

Hey man I got your message and funny thing is before I came in to check my email I was out on a foot patrol at night and I was thinking about this whole gig, Iraq, me, you, the story you are working on and I thought "Wow it doesn't really fucking matter." You can probably understand in the giant scope of things. I mean it is all world economy, right. I just happen to be stuck right in the dump of the economic process. But so are alot of other guys and their families.

This shit in Iraq was inevitable, unavoidable. That should be obvious to everyone in America as well as the rest of the world. NO it has nothing to do with democracy or WMD's or fucking terrorism for that matter. Fuck terrorism. Terrorism will always be around. Hell the guys blowing us up over here are just thugs looking for a paycheck. Fundamental Islamists represent a small group. Fuck Islam and Fuck Christianity. THis gig is being driven by the almighty dollar. And the fault lies not with big business and the oil companies, fault lies with us. Me and you, the great American public cause we don't give a shit about anything but our own leisure lifestyle.

Fuck, I wanted to come to Iraq cause I'd never been to combat and I thought that sounded like the thing to do. And in a way it was. Hell, I hate these fuckers over here. I didn't before. But I do now. And you never know, maybe putting a little money into Iraq via the American military machine will have a long term positive outcome. Maybe we are on the way to a world socialism based on Marx's theory that it has to be born out of a working and efficient capitalism. Fuck it, I'm game. SO it really is social consciousness that matters. You and I may never see the positive outcome, but it could happen.

So fuck everything else I have sent you. Dont print anything from that garbage. Screw military relationships. THis is about something bigger. THis is about consumers spending their buck where it counts. That's all the power we got. This is about world economy. THis is about bringing the outskirters into the fold, kicking and screaming if necessary. THis is about saving the world, man. This is about getting drunk in Reno and gambling and forgetting it all ever happened. But knowing it did and knowing a difference was made in the world, even if that difference is very ugly.

Sorry, Frank that I could not help you in your story for Lawrence .com. Call me Jaded or like Bri, call me an asshole. But know deep down that I do love (her) very much. And please use nothing from what I had told you before.

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Q&A with Bri Hodge

How did you meet?

We met working at The Merc a couple years before we actually started dating. That was before he even joined the Army. We were only dating for three months, I guess. Everything went really fast because we knew he was leaving. He was stationed in Texas that whole time, so we only got to spend a couple weeks together at one time, and then a couple weeks at another time, and then just on his leaves.

He was stationed in Texas when you started dating?

Yes. He was on a week leave in Lawrence when we hooked up, I guess. And then he left. ... It was definitely fairy tail-ish.

What were your thoughts on whether to stay together when he went to Iraq?

It wasn't really a question, whether to stay together. We just fell in love really quickly and it was really strong.

I've emailed him a couple times. In his first response he was very gung-ho about the story, and in his second he seemed to change 180 degrees and told me to disregard his first email. Is this pendulum swing something you experienced?

That right there is a perfect example of, I think, what a lot of soldiers go through, and definitely something I observed in him the whole time he was there. Being very strongly opinionated about something at one point and then quickly changing his mind. And not just about the war, as far as our relationship too. We'd be really great for a minute, and then we'd have fights for no reason, and be back fine. I think that's definitely something all of them go through just because of their environment.

Many obstacles you faced must be common to all long-distance relationships. But what stresses are unique to dating someone who's in a war zone?

The hardest thing is that neither of the people really knows what the other one's going through. The wives and the family members really have no clue what they're actually doing day-to-day, what they're actually seeing. We really have no way of knowing that unless we're there. And they have no way of knowing how hard it is just to live day-to-day knowing that they're there but there's nothing that you can do about it. I think that's probably the biggest thing that causes problems between couples in the military. They just can't understand what the other one's going through.

Another Iraq veteran I interviewed said he often didn't want to talk about what was going on in Iraq, but at the same time what his girlfriend had to say seemed trivial, causing a disconnect. Tell me about this from the perspective of the person back home.

I remember talking to him and thinking that the things I was saying were trivial, but not really having anything else to talk about. You know that they don't really want to talk about what they're doing, so what can you talk about besides the meaningless stuff that you're doing day-to-day? It's in the back of your mind at all times, where they are and what they're doing. And it affects your day-to-day life, because you try to do what you normally would do-you know, go to work, go out with friends-but it's always in the back of your mind that something's missing. That was the hardest part for me, just trying to live my normal life without being sad all the time or depressed, just trying to do the normal thing and be happy.

How often were you in contact?

Email, practically every day. There would be times when he'd be out on a mission where he couldn't get to an email, which might've been a week. The longest I ever went without hearing from him was a month, which was hard because you just have no idea if anything's happened. Phone, at first it was once a week, maybe a couple times a week, but I think they started to get busier and go out more, and so the phone slowly got less and less.

How long was he initially told he'd be in Iraq?

At first it was a year exactly. And then they got extended three months, which would be January.

Was the one-year mark something you'd been looking toward?

Oh yeah. The extension was hard. He was actually here in town when we found out about the extension. He was on leave. It was definitely hard, because you really plan on that time. But at another point it just seemed like, "Well, I've waited this long. What's another three months?"

You guys recently broke up. Why?

I think a big part of it, and probably a lot of other girlfriends and wives would agree with me, is that you slowly start to:they sort of change to you. I felt towards the end like I almost didn't even know who he was anymore. And I think that is completely to do with the military. What they have to do over there basically dehumanizes them. They lose their emotions and their tact. Like when I said we would have little fights for no reason, it was because he just didn't really know how to relate anymore, so anything could set him off. I think that was definitely part of the reason that caused us to break up.

And I think it also causes them to really, really question their own lives-"What's my place in the world?" I think he's really confused about re-entering society. And I think ultimately that's what broke us up.

Any particular experiences you'd like to discuss?

One of the worst days of my life was taking James to the airport when he had to go back from his leave in April. I've never felt heartache like that. You see all these other families and girlfriends and wives, trying to hold back their tears just for the sake of the soldiers, but it not really working. You sit there and wait for them to be called, and then you have to say goodbye, watch them get on a plane, fly to one of the most dangerous places on earth, and not know if you'll ever see them again. That is a feeling no one who hasn't been there will ever understand.

The whole thing is just bullshit. The fact that they're even there in the first place is just wrong. It would be different if they were actually fighting for a purpose, you know? If they could believe in what they're doing. But because they don't have that, it's just making them all crazy. I don't know. It's really awful what it does to people. Like marriages and things that would've worked out fine if not for the military.

In his emails to me he was openly struggling with his purpose in Iraq. In one sentence he says the whole war is a sham and in the next he says, well, maybe it's all for the best. He also said that he hates the Iraqis now-the ones trying to kill him-even though he didn't before.

That's kind of what I mean by the dehumanizing. The James that I know would never say that, but I think because they're there they kind of have to believe that the Iraqis are bad and, like I said, they kind of create their own purpose just so they can get through the day. And that's just wrong. You can't do that to people.

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Justin willfully stayed free of relationships for his first two deployments in Iraq. After joining the Army in December 2001 during a wave of post-9/11 patriotism, he was first deployed in western Iraq in March 2003 with a special operations unit in preparation for the invasion. His first deployment lasted two months. His next two, in western Iraq again and then in Baghdad, each lasted six months.

Two weeks before his third deployment, he went on a blind date with a girl from New York City. He was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y. They fell in love. They stayed in contact while he was in Iraq. He calls it an "extremely frustrating" experience and says the relationship probably wouldn't survive another deployment. They have now been dating for three years. Justin is now an Army Reserves recruiter and asked us not to use his full name. Here is a Q&A with Justin and a brief conversation with his girlfriend, Amy.

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Q&A with Justin

When did you join the Army?

I joined December of 2001, about three months after September 11. I was living in Kansas City and not really doing anything, and September 11 had a big impact on me. And still does somewhat.

Tell me about your three deployments to Iraq.

The first one was two months. I was with a special operations unit at that time. The second one was six months. I caught up with a unit that had been there for six months already. Then the third one was for six months. So in total I've been over there, what, 14 months? Which is pretty short. Some people have been over there 15 months in one stretch, or 18 months.

How did you keep in touch with folks back home?

Generally it was through telephone. But I could only call. I couldn't receive calls, obviously. A lot of emails. And sometimes on our way back we had a lot of downtime and we were able to get on a messenger service, like Yahoo Messenger.

Starting to date your girlfriend two weeks before you left, how'd you make it work?

It was extremely frustrating, to be honest. There's a nine-hour time difference between here and there. It was disruptive to make phone calls because I'd either have to do it late in the evening or early, early, early in the morning. I'd get up at like 3 o'clock, 4:30, walk a ways to the phones, and maybe she'd answer, maybe she wouldn't. She might have been busy at the time or something. So it was really frustrating. I tried to stay away from it for most of my military career while I was deployed, but it just didn't work out on that last one. But it worked out for the best.

How did you bond while in Iraq? Or did you?

Actually, we didn't really get to know each other. We just made small talk. You know, just kept contact. Maybe talk to her once a week or something. I didn't even keep in contact with my parents that much other than a phone call once every couple weeks. If I talked to them I'd start thinking about home. I just didn't want to do that. We just maintained contact. And we didn't really get to know each other until I got home.

A Kansas State professor who studies this stuff told me that what the person back home talks about may seem trivial to the soldier, while what the soldier talks about the person back home can't relate to, so there's a disconnect. Is this something you experienced?

When you talk to people, when you're over there in that situation, you can't exactly talk about what you're doing or what's happened. There's quite a rift. It's almost like two different worlds talking. It creates a separation. And that's something that I still deal with even though I've been back for over two years. I still can't quite connect with people. Like my parents, there's quite a separation there now since I was deployed several times. And my girlfriend just doesn't...I don't think she quite understands what I did over there and what happened.

Tell me more about that disconnect.

It's like almost speaking another language sometimes. It's hard to put into words, but it's like trying to explain something that somebody has no knowledge of.

What did you do in your three deployments? Where were you?

My job was infantry. We'd patrol, which pretty much means just drive around looking for bad people, I guess. And we'd walk around, dismounted, and patrol that way. I can tell you general areas, I suppose. I was in western Iraq for the first couple. When you think of the desert, that's western Iraq. Then my third deployment I was in Baghdad. The first two were a lot different from the third. The first two, it was still very:the third one was just as hostile, but (in the first two) there was still more of a war atmosphere, and the third one was more rebuilding and occupational. Well, not occupational, but more rebuilding. We worked with the communities a lot more in the last deployment, contributing to schools, tried to get more personal relationships, working with international units a lot more, working with the Iraqi army.

Is going back to Iraq something you've talked about with your girlfriend?

No, we haven't talked about it. To be honest with you, I don't think it would last another one of those, because it's very frustrating and stressful. Every time I've come back I've seen a lot of divorces, a lot of people getting divorced. It's really tough on relationships. But I've seen a lot of marriages still work after coming back too. It just takes a period of readjustment.

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Q&A with Amy

Tell me about going from being single to dating a guy who two weeks later is in Iraq for six months?

When we first met I really liked him, so I wasn't sure what was gonna happen with him being over there for six months. It was hard. He would call me, but because I went to school full-time and I worked two jobs I very rarely got to talk to him. The time schedules were totally off. He'd email when he could, but we didn't talk that much when he was over there. It was really hard. I don't know what kept:I just really liked him, so I was like, I'm just gonna try to make it work until he gets home and see what happens after that.

How were you able to make the fragile relationship work?

I don't know. I thought we had a connection, so it wasn't really that hard. And because he was at Fort Drum anyhow I wouldn't see him that often. And with me being in school and working two jobs, I didn't really have a lot of free time to sit around and think about it.

What did you talk about?

Just like what I was doing, how school was going, how work was going, my friends. Because he knew some of my friends. He had met them before he left. So just keeping up on what's going on around here, talking about things we could do when he got back.

With you in New York and Justin in Kansas, you're in a long-distance relationship anyway.

Yeah, it's definitely hard. It's harder now because I'm not in school anymore, so I have more time to do things and want someone here with me. But we're trying to make it work. It seems to be working OK right now. We're getting to the point where we want to move. So we're kind of thinking who's gonna move where. It's hard. Any long-distance relationship is. But we're trying to make the best of it.

How is it the relationship now different from when he was in Iraq?

The only thing that's really different is he calls more now.

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Walter Schumm has extensively researched the effects of deployment on relationships and military families. He is a professor of family studies and human services at Kansas State. He also is a retired Army Reserves Colonel. He served for more than 30 years. He told us about the stresses war puts on relationships and about a bad relationship with his daughter that spun out of missing most of the first year of her life during the first Gulf War.

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Q&A with Walter Schumm

What are some of the major stresses that being deployed in a war zone puts on a relationship?

It's like a fundamental duh, lightning flash of the obvious, but most people get into relationships because they enjoy the relationships. So when you can't spend time with the person, then that's undermining the most primary purpose of the relationship.

It's easier today to stay in touch, with webcams, email, etc. Does that help?

We've looked at that. People have generally had some contact during wars. There's always regular mail, although sometimes it took months. When we've studied it, it appears to be kind of a wash. There's benefits to it and there's negatives to it. A benefit, obviously, is a chance to see how the person's doing, to talk with the person. Some negatives are that if they do have a problem, then it may be really frustrating because you know they have a problem and you want to help them, but you can't. Some things it's easy to discuss over the telephone or through email, but there's other issues, particularly emotionally laden issues, which are a little bit harder to effectively discuss over the telephone or with email. I don't think that the research community has decided yet whether it's an overall plus or minus to have the communication.

I've been emailing a soldier who is in Iraq and he and his girlfriend recently broke up. He says he's gone through many character changes since going to Iraq.

That can change people in both ways. A lot of times the stay-at-home person changes because they have to do everything. Particularly, if they're a parent, they have to do everything on their own. They realize that they can make it without the other person. So you can have changes on both sides. The guy that's in the war zone, though, is probably gonna have a number of changes. One change that's not so uncommon is that you see people being killed around you and blown up and then you talk to a civilian back here and they're complaining, like, "Well, the weather was bad today." And you're thinking, "You've got to be crazy. Who cares about the weather? I just saw my best friend killed yesterday, and you're worried about the weather." All of a sudden all the things people worry about in a peacetime stateside situation look kind of silly. But if you tell them that, well, they'll probably feel like you're not validating them.

As a member of the Army Reserves, you were sent, not to Iraq, but to San Antonio during the first Gulf War. Not the same as being in a war zone, but how did that affect your relationship with your wife and the five children you had at the time?

I don't think it affected the marriage as much. I had a daughter that was born three months before, in September. So when I came back after a year-you know, babies that are three months old, they don't know anything anyhow-so when I came back she was like 15, 16 months old. I was like, "Who's this stranger?" and she didn't want to have anything to do with me. The other kids were like, "Daddy's home!" and they were all excited. It was pretty irresistible to give the other kids more attention than I gave her, which made her think that I was devaluing her. And it just spiraled into a bad relationship for, really, almost 15 years. We've kind of worked our way through it after a while, but we're talking a good decade of clearly, in her mind, the unfavored child sort of thing. And, in my mind, the not-so-liked daddy. So for me it was more a parent-child problem than it was a marriage problem. »