Rose Buchanan of San Diego was delighted when she received five letters from her husband, Marine Capt. Larry Buchanan, one day last week. But as she read the missives, she grew increasingly somber. “Dear Snookums,” one of them read: “I am not speaking negatively, honey, in saying that I don’t know how this thing is going to end. I am hopeful and confident that God will see me through. The last thing in this world that I want is to be separated from you in any fashion, especially death. But at some time when you can, try to imagine what you would do if someone showed up at your door in dress blues with a chaplain. To have things in order now would ease [the effect of] my passing on you later. Such things as getting a copy of our marriage certificate and placing it with the will; going over the will we made a few years back to see if we still agree with what is in it. And here is one [question] I’m not sure of: Does my [insurance] policy pay if I’m killed in war?”
Ryan Anderson’s latest letters to his mother, Ann, in Atlanta, have been upbeat, detailing life in the Saudi culture. The l9-year-old artillery-unit soldier has written about the desert beauty, rocks he has found and those “stinking, smelly, clumsy” camels. He says one package of Snickers mini-bars can fetch $15. And he asked for something that puzzled his mother: tins of sardines. “It’s the oil,” he explained in a phone call. “It keeps the bugs off me.” But what he wanted in one recent letter was reassurance. “If I kill anyone over here, will that change anything between us?” he asked. She wrote back immediately. “Nothing you ever do will make me not love you,” she answered. “I am your mother.”
A letter from Specialist Herbert Plummer, son of Mary Plummer of Springfield, Mass., finally confirmed the receipt of a gift - a volleyball with “Hi From Mom” written on it. But Herbert was writing to say thanks for more than the ball. “You have always taught me. when I was young that paying attention to detail is most important,” it read. “Believe me when I say that it’s proving itself more worthwhile than ever. Your love and support have brought me a long way - especially in this situation. God has totally blessed me with you. I love you mom. Your son, Herbert.”
Jim Ives had something to say to his wife on Valentine’s Day that he felt no printed card could capture. So he climbed into his Jeep and drove to the nearest telephone - 400 miles away. But when the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., policeman and reservist tried to call his wife, Judy, no one answered. He tried again, and again. But after hours of dialing, he still wasn’t successful. So he called a man’s very first love - his mother. Jim told her about life in the desert and said he hadn’t had a bath in seven weeks. He seemed optimistic, but his mother was upset nonetheless. “I broke down,” she recalls, “and he told his sister, Meredith, ‘Look, take care of Mom. I know what I have to do and I’m coming home. Tell Mom the worst thing that ’s going to happen to me in this war is I broke my nose playing football’.” In his last call to his wife’ however, Jim Ives told the answering machine a different story. He said he was at the front, she recounted, and “he didn’t know if he could call again.”
“I’ve taken advantage of the endless hours of waiting,” Army Specialist Brad J. White wrote his wife, Kit, in El Paso, Texas. “I’ve been going to a Bible study a couple of nights a week. It’s really enlightening. I can fully understand now why God placed key figures of biblical times into the desert for days, months, even years at a time. In some ways, it’s very cleansing. With no TV, little radio, and newspapers that are days or weeks old, I’ve had more time to work out how I feel and deal with our situation. I believe that I’ve fully adjusted physically, accepted mentally and have fully realized that I have faith that I’ll be home. The difficulty for me at this point is simply homesickness.”
Test-pilot Oswald Ingraham is one of three Ingraham brothers stationed in the gulf. “I’ve been into a mission a couple of times and we’ve all made it back alive,” he wrote his wife, Regina, in Clarksville, Tenn. “I won’t lie, it’s scary. Your stomach muscles tighten. I think of how nice it would be to be home again. I don’t like killing people and may God forgive me.”
If Edward Gregoire Jr., a Marine on the front lines, felt worried about a ground war, he was downplaying it. In a letter to his sister Tammy, of Londonderry, N.H., he wrote: “How ‘bout this war? Sometimes it gets a little scary, but the adrenalin is flowing through your body. It feels like good sex.”
Lance Cpl. Frank Gudmundson, an infantry grunt at the Kuwait border, recently received his first photos of the baby daughter he has never met. “I love you both so very, very much,” he wrote his wife, Danelle, in Nice, Calif. “My only wish is to return home and finally become a family. Muffin, if we fight you must realize that my company will be the first to penetrate the border from the ground. So we all stand one hell of a chance of being a casualty of war. If I happen to be one of these casualties, I don’t want any tears! Just smiles! My love for you is very real. With you there are no regrets.” A few weeks later he wrote again. “Muffin, in a few days my Fourth of July will have started, and this is one fire-works show I wouldn’t mind not seeing.”
During the early days of the deployment, the letters Marine S/Sgt. Ernest Henderson wrote his wife, Robin, in Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif., were lively and full of teasing. “They all write about their sexual fantasies,” she laughs. “They write about how they’re going to take you from room to room or even house to house, making love all the while.” But lately the jovial tone has disappeared. Sergeant Henderson’s unit is close to the Kuwait border. A letter written at the end of January said, “I’m ready to come home so I can hold you. I’ve had enough of this. I just want to hold you.“Says Robin: “It seems like there’s a lot of maturing going on over there. It’s not about groping, about mad, passionate lovemaking. It’s about seeing each other, about waiting until that day that you can really hold each other, talk and just get to know each other again.” Ernest closed his most recent letter with the words of a gospel song the couple liked to sing. “Just in case the Lord should come before we get together again, I’ll meet you, yeah, meet you on the other shore.”
