Moving Out

ANDRE LAMBERTSON/CORBIS SABA FOR TIME
Stocking up on hugs: As he prepares to deploy to Kuwait, Corporal Tracey D. Beets is embraced by his son D'Artagnan

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And don't send anything special that you want to keep forever, First Sergeant Robert Wilson advises at a meeting Wednesday night. He explains that before his unit went into action in Desert Storm, the soldiers bulldozed an eight-foot trench in the sand, tossed in every piece of personal gear they owned and set it on fire. That way captured soldiers would not have family photos or letters that could be used against them by interrogators and it also insured that any space in their vehicles that could hold water, ammo or food would not be wasted on a Walkman or Tom Clancy.

Anna Beets generally avoided the Charlie Company family meetings, but she went to the last one, because she knew she needed to hear about how the deployment would work. "They started talking about making wills," she says, and her eyes fill. "I wanted to burst out, How can you talk like this? I know I have to stay strong for the kids. We all know we have to do wills. But it just slaps you in the face to hear people talking about it that way." She knows that her husband's job is as dangerous as any other. Beets is a grenadier, in charge of four other soldiers who would go into battle crammed, like bullets in a magazine, into the tiny, noisy, jouncing rear compartment of a Bradley fighting vehicle. Their job is to clear enemy forces before the rest of the unit arrives.

"It's so devastating," Anna says of the prospect of deployment, "because once they get over there, it takes so long to hear from them." Like many other wives left behind, she thought about going home to her family while Tracey is away. But she is grateful for what the Army offers to families: the health care, classes and play groups. "I want the kids to have some kind of normal life," she says. "If I changed his environment," she says of 3-year-old D'Artagnan, "he might not think Daddy is coming back." His father was away for a month last fall at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., and D'Artagnan stood at the window every night, watching for him.

When Tracey was in the National Guard, he served in the honor guard at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, N.Y. He would hand the folded flag to the widows of the Korean War and Vietnam vets who are starting to fill that graveyard. "If something happens to him," Anna says, "I don't want the flag. Let them give it to his mother. If you can't give me my husband back, you can keep your flag."

The mood is raw in part because uncertainty is the enemy now. "Your kids ask, 'How long will you be gone, Daddy?'" says Colonel Weber. "And you say, I don't know. 'Will you have to kill anybody?' 'I don't know.' 'Will you go to Iraq?' 'Dunno.' And all that uncertainty weighs on you. In a deployment like this, you just don't know." The soldiers all talk about logistics and training and tying up loose ends. This is what we do. This is what we've trained for. But they hardly ever talk about war.

"They want you to believe it's an exercise," Anna says. "Well, we all know the President will declare war. I come from a military family, and I know how it goes." One of her brothers is a master sergeant in the Marines; the other is now a police officer but was a Marine in Desert Storm. "They said Desert Storm was an exercise, right up until you turned on the TV and saw they were bombing Baghdad. I know it's his job and he has to go. But D'Artagnan doesn't understand, and he asks all the time."

Tracey is proud of his family, proud of the little boy who has an American flag sticking out of the roof of his little camouflage tent, who when he sees a gun at the toy store says, "Dad, can I get that weapon?" Even a child knows the drill, knows the words, and tonight in the living room, D'Artagnan sings them for his dad:

"I'm just a dogface soldier
With a rifle on my shoulder,
And I eat raw meat for breakfast every day.
So feed me ammunition,
Keep me in the 3rd Division,
Your dogface soldier's A-OK."

Even his mom has to smile. These men in her life, large and small, love her, but they love the Army too, and that's just what she will have to live with, as the long winter unwinds.