Sunday, January 08, 2006

Gold Star Wives Club

Sounds classy, but this is one club which no wives would ever want to join… one all-sufficient reason being that all the members were widows.

It sure is prestigious to be a member of any Special Forces group, but the turmoil which your wife & children go through is extremely arduous.

This afternoon, it was a sobering moment when I read my recently bought book, titled ‘In the Company of Heroes’, written by the US Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 (CW4) - a Blackhawk helicopter master aviator, who shared his personal account of being shot down at Somalia, captured, tortured & forced to appear & speak on live broadcasted television worldwide, even appearing in magazines such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report.

Since secondary school, I had always had the ambition of being a Special Forces soldier, but reading these words really made an impression in my heart. Here is a short excerpt of this book –

“In times of peace, the larger percentage of military men & women go off to work in the morning & return at night. But when a woman falls in love with a special operator, she knows she’s in for a roller-coaster ride.

Marry a SEAL, a Ranger, a Night Stalker, or any member of the Special Forces, & you can forget about counting on celebrating birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries together.

You might be in the throes of honeymoon bliss when his beeper goes off & he jumps up to leave. You might be clutching his hand in the final agonies of your first labor, when he kisses your sweat-soaked brow & walks out the door. Your mother might pass away & he won’t make the funeral. His mother might die, & you will have to watch him knee at the graveside, stricken with remorse, long after she’s cold.

If you are a woman in danger of falling for one of these men, your family & friends may wisely warn you to cease & desist. But the heart is a blind hunter.

But to the warrior goes the glory, while to the wife goes the pain. A special operator may be killed in combat & even suffer terribly at the precipice of his death, but then it’s over for him. For his wife, the agony goes on forever.”


A woman tried to comfort another woman, saying, “Everything will work out fine. Our husbands are very good at what they do.” This wife of the soldier responded, “Yes… but how good is the enemy at what they do?

This passages kind-of shook me up a bit… & in my heart, I started to ask myself if this is really something that I would still do, if I had the capabilities & aptitude to become one such elite Spec Ops soldier. Maybe not…

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