— New York Times • July
8, 2006 —
An
Internet Lifeline for Troops in Iraq and Loved Ones at Home By
LIZETTE ALVAREZ
...With mortar
shells exploding near him sometimes twice a day in Ramadi,
Iraq, Sgt. Mark Grelak found a way to shut out the heat,
the noise, and all the demands of his job — sweeping the
local highway for bombs left by insurgents. In a tiny space
in his barracks, he would flip open his laptop, adjust his
Web camera and watch his daughter Katie take her first halting
steps.
|
 Jane Therese
for The New York Times
The Internet has connected military families. Tynase Arnal, 1, of Harrisburg,
Pa., looked at relatives in Iraq.
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...From 6,000 miles away, Sergeant Grelak, 35, drew flowers with Sara, Katie's older
sister, and witnessed, almost in real time, her first day of preschool. The soldier
and his wife, Jennifer, 26, even bought a house in Baltimore together, e-mailing
pictures and appraisals back and forth. Through instant messaging, they discussed
the new landscaping and camping equipment as if they were sitting just across
the kitchen table from each other.
..." Do you
care if I take out the crape myrtle?" Ms. Grelak messaged
him in March.
..."Why
not leave it for now," her
husband suggested.
...Later,
she messaged, "If you have some time, take a look on eBay for a tent.
I'd like to go camping this year."
...Military
deployments have a way of chewing up marriages, turning daily life upside down
and making strangers out of husbands and wives. But for this generation
of soldiers, the Internet, which is now widely available on bases, has softened
the blow of long separations, helping loved ones stay in daily touch and keeping
service members informed of family decisions — important and mundane.
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...Most
soldiers deploy with a laptop in hand and a hookup to the Internet
in their barracks. Others, particularly those with young children,
pay for Web cameras, a trend that began in earnest two years ago.
...Mental health experts and military commanders say that the tens of millions of
dollars spent on technology in Iraq for Internet cafes, computers and Web cameras
have helped ease the isolation of soldiers' lives, as well as the turbulence
of coming home, an often-bumpy transition from combat to kiddie pool and from
commanding to compromising.
..."It's rejuvenating," said Sergeant Grelak, an Army National Guard
soldier who was gone for 18 months and is now at Fort Benning, Ga., awaiting
his release from active duty. "It keeps you from getting detached from the
person you left behind. You go outside, and you run the risk of getting shot
and blown up. That changes people. If I didn't have that connection, I would
feel like a stranger." |
Sgt. Mark
Grelak, in Iraq, talks to his wife, Jennifer, and daughters Sara
and Katie,
holding doll, in Baltimore, using a Web camera.
|
...Those
who benefit most are often families with young children, said Jaine
Darwin, a psychologist and the co-director of Strategic Outreach
to Families of All Reservists, based in Cambridge, Mass., which
counsels reservists and families. "They make families much
more connected to the soldiers. A voice is not the same as seeing
a person," Ms. Darwin said.
Military spouses were once left to make all child-rearing, household and work
decisions by themselves for months at a time; telephone calls were simply too
brief, unpredictable and expensive. Now the burden is a little less lopsided
and an answer is only a few hours away.
...The
constant communication makes for fewer unpleasant surprises after couples reunite,
though there can be a downside: It brings the anxieties of the living
room into the war. "Who wants to hear that your daughter got a tattoo?" Ms.
Darwin asked. "Any piece of news that makes you preoccupied is not good
for you in a war zone."
Sergeant Grelak, for example, became alarmed when he learned that Katie had an
ear infection. "I had to be a shoulder for Jennifer," he said, but,
he added, "I was 110 percent concentrating."Ms.
Darwin pointed out that soldiers, for their part, can have too
much Web access between missions "and it's quite disruptive
to a family," she said. "It poses a hard conflict between
the wish to get every
moment they can with their soldier and the need for life to go
on. Talking to your soldier can become a full-time job." |
...Internet
cafes with computers began to spring up at military camps during
the crisis in the Balkans in the 1990's, but mostly in fits and
starts. Since then
the military and private organizations like the Freedom Calls Foundation have
spent millions of dollars to wire camps in Iraqi war zones. The Defense Department
alone has spent more than $165 million in the past two years to set up cybercafes
in Iraq. In 2004, they began with 36 cafes, and now there are more than 170.
The use of satellites has made the job considerably easier. Freedom Calls, which
raises private funds to build satellite links and provide communications hardware
for soldiers in Iraq, has enabled 30,000 service members in four camps to reach
relatives free in the past two years, setting up live teleconferencing to broadcast
the births of babies, birthday parties, weddings and graduations. About 1,000
families in the United States have been equipped with screens in their homes.
..."A
person can now keep his commitment to his family and keep his commitment
to his country," said John Harlow, the executive director
of Freedom Calls Specialist Kevin Groll, of the Michigan National
Guard, took a virtual seat at the Thanksgiving Day children's table
last year, a Groll family tradition. The family Web camera was
positioned right next to the children's table. "Boy, you did
it again," Specialist Groll joked with his mother, Vicki Groll. "I'm
not even near the kiddies, and I still had to sit at the table.
The kids just
loved it."
...While the divorce rate for returning soldiers remains relatively high, a testament
to the difficulties of war and the number of pre-deployment leaps to the altar,
commanders agree that the Internet has helped morale considerably. Yet such easy
access to families also poses problems in terms of controlling the release of
classified information. Service members are not allowed to discuss where they
are going, what they are carrying, how they will get there or how long they will
stay, for example. All communications on a base are typically shut down after
a casualty or injury is reported until family members can be contacted, which
can take anywhere from a few hours to two days.
...Web
logs relating to official duties must be registered with a
service member's chain of command, but personal Web pages set
up by people back home can run into trouble.
...One mother, Robin Vaughan, whose son was a military policeman in Iraq and
who created a Web site for people who wanted support and information about
the unit, said soldiers and their relatives were told not to view her site
because it was not an official, registered site.
But monitoring all calls, e-mails and Internet traffic is impossible, so
to a large degree, the military relies on self-censorship. "It's a big
challenge," said Maj. Sean Wilson, a public affairs officer at Fort
Drum, N.Y.
..." Soldiers
are naturally proud of what they do. They want to tell somebody about it."
...Juggling home and battle can prove stressful. The immediacy of the Internet
allows little time for reflection, and rather than let a bad mood pass, a
spouse may rush to the computer and rant, which is not always wise, Ms. Darwin
said.
Rumors, too, can run rampant, even those about infidelity, she added. And
not hearing from someone can be painful and frightening, on both sides of
the divide, particularly when daily e-mail contact has been the rule, the
families said. Breakups via the Internet do occur, in a contemporary equivalent
of the Dear John letter.
...Sherri
Cropper, 30, said she e-mailed her husband, Sgt. William Cropper, in Iraq
every day. It was her way of making sure he was all right. But
it also helped her to cope with the demands of what seems the equivalent
of
single motherhood, and to express how she was changing, becoming more independent. "It
did ease the transition a lot," said Mrs. Cropper, who lives at Fort
Drum. "It wasn't bam, in your face, there are a thousand things that
went on and I will sit here in the next two days and talk you to death."
...The
happiness of a reunion tends to wear off quickly, she said. "Then,
it's, 'O.K., you missed nine months of baby-sitting and I'm out of here,' " Mrs.
Cropper added. "I think this gives the person who is deployed a good
grasp or perspective on how it will be when you get back."
Dixie Clark of Harrisburg, Pa., said she was lucky to get a quick phone call
once a month from her husband in the 1980's when he was a marine.
Recently she had three family members to fret over. Her two oldest sons and
her husband, all Army National Guardsmen, were all deployed to Iraq at the
same time, posted to the same base.
...This
time around, she routinely watched her "three guys" on a
Web camera. Once when a mortar shell hit the camp, Mrs. Clark e-mailed
one son
and demanded that all three appear in front of the camera to assure her
that they were fine.
..." My son comes running into the barracks saying, 'Mom is on the Internet
and she wants us to get up there; she has to see everybody,' " Sgt. First
Class James Clark Sr. recalled. "I didn't even know he had a Webcam set
up at that time. We all huddled up and said, 'Here we are.' "
...Every day, Mrs. Clark and her husband sat down for a 90-minute round of instant
messaging, which cost a pittance compared with telephone calls.
...They
planned the renewal of their wedding vows together online. He chose the
menu — chicken, roast turkey and broccoli and cheese. And when
things went wrong with the house, she knew that an answer was a few hours
away. "Honey, where is the furnace?" she messaged him. "I
ran out of oil."
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article
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