War's Casualties Include the Children of Reservists
FARGO, N.D. — There won't be any Christmas on the Schmidtke farm this season. Never mind that the artificial tree has been up and decorated in the living room window for an entire year -- through the spring thaw and the lush summer, when the cats toppled it twice.
It's there because Sgt. Dan Schmidtke promised his daughters he would take it down just as soon as he got home from Iraq. That was in January, when he left with the rest of the Army National Guard's 142nd Engineer Combat Battalion. He isn't back yet, and until he is, they aren't about to let go of last Christmas, much less celebrate this one.
"I worry about his safety when I'm at school. I can't sleep when my dad's awake," said Dani Schmidtke, 15, who decided she would rather live with a tree for a year than risk jinxing her father's life.
The separation of war has fallen hard on the children of American soldiers, and perhaps none so much as the families of those in the reserves. This is the largest call-up of reserve forces since the Korean War, and unlike their active-duty counterparts, thousands of so-called citizen soldiers have left behind children caught between two worlds. Neither military nor civilian, they live outside the vast support network available at virtually every base and fort. Yet they represent an almost invisible minority in a public school system only recently aware that they exist.
Here in North Dakota, nearly half of the Army National Guard has been activated -- one of the highest per capita mobilization rates in the nation. Commitment to national service is known to run three generations deep. The rugged Plains individualism, which is legendary here, seems to be pulling families through. But virtually no one denies that the children are showing scars, some probably fleeting but others potentially indelible.
In and around Fargo, where the 142nd is based, teachers report falling grades and rising absenteeism. Some students have come to school in tears, others have turned to antidepressants to stop their nightmares ("I would have this vision of my dad running toward me, and he would just get shot and disappear.") One high school junior, refused permission to visit his father and brother in Colorado before they left for Baghdad, dropped out of school and began taking methamphetamines. Another 13-year-old boy regressed to the emotional age of 7 in a breakdown so severe that his father came home.
