No holiday presence: holiday separations have become part of the Air Force lifestyle

Airman, Dec, 2002 by Louis A. Arana-Barradas

French bread, Crusty and warm. That's what Trinidad Garcia remembers most about Christmas 1944. Not the cold. Not the fear that an enemy shell could cut her life short. Not even that she was thousands of miles away from her dear mother and the life she knew in San Antonio.

No, it was the fresh-baked bread she ate at Christmas dinner with a French family.

"After so many years, I can still remember how good it smelled," said Garcia, 82.

For a fleeting moment, the aroma made her forget where she was, which was good. Because there was death, destruction and misery all around her. World War II was still raging, and the 24-year-old was in France, doing her part to end it.

"We all wanted to go home so badly," she said. "But we had a job to do, and it wasn't over."

Garcia rushed to join the military in the patriotic fervor that swept America after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Like most Americans, she couldn't believe someone could attack her country.

"I wanted to join the fight and get it over with," she said. "We all did."

She joined the Women's Army Corps Sept. 11, 1942. Until war's end, she was a supply clerk for the Army Air Corps. She liked her job and being involved. So she volunteered for overseas duty and, in late 1943, got her wish. She went to England and spent Christmas 1943 there.

"It snowed," she said. "I'd never seen snow before."

A couple of weeks after the June 6, 1944 -- D-Day -- invasion of France, Garcia volunteered for France. Her next job was at a supply depot north of Paris. She was one of the millions of American troops caught up in the tumultuous final months of the war. But she was lucky that Christmas -- she got an invitation to Christmas dinner from a French farmer and his family.

"I remember the house being warm and full of wonderful smells," she said. "We ate roast beef, and there were many plates full of vegetables on the table," she said. "And lots of bread."

The dinner was wonderful, she said. But it also made her homesick for the traditional Mexican holidays of her youth. The big family dinner and opening presents on Three Kings Day.

"And I missed making tamales," she said. That was a Garcia family Christmas tradition.

A familiar Yuletide tale

Garcia's story of separation at a time of togetherness isn't new. Family separation is a part of the U.S. service member's way of life.

It's a tradition born partly as a result of U.S. national policy. Enforcing that policy takes U.S. troops, who must stand guard at posts around the world. Many times their families must stay behind. That's when service members miss more than holidays. The lives of their families go on without them. They miss once-in-a-lifetime opportunities -- like a baby's birth or first step, birthdays, graduations, piano recitals, ball games and proms.

And telling a child why mom or dad must be away for the holidays is tough duty. Tough to do during World War II, the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars, and Bosnia. It's still tough as American men and women in uniform wage the war on terrorism.

Staff Sgt. Vivian Bender wanted to stay home. So she had a difficult time explaining to her youngest son, 7-year-old Antondre, why she had to go to Afghanistan just before Christmas 2001. It was her first Christmas away from him, and it was hard on both of them, said the 621st Air Mobility Squadron command and control troop at McGuire Air Force Base, N.J.

"I told him mommy had to help the United States because of the bad people who attacked New York and the Pentagon," Bender said. She deployed to Kandahar Dec. 21, and celebrated Christmas en route at the Moron Air Base, Spain, chapel.

Her husband, Darreck, who was an airman for 10 years, became mom and dad to Antondre and older brother Darreck. It was a sad time.

"But with the Lord's help, I was at peace with her leaving," Darreck said. The Benders waited until Vivian's return in February to celebrate Christmas.

Coping becomes a top priority during such separations. A deployment in 1995 for Operation Joint Endeavor caused a problem for Master Sgts. Chris and Cori Dockery of McChord Air Force Base, Wash. He left as she was set to go to a military school. That meant having to leave their two-year-old daughter Jordan with Cori's mother.

"That was our hardest separation," said Cori, a maintenance data systems analyst with the Reserve's 446th Logistics Support Squadron. "I'd never been away from my daughter."

Chris, a C-17 loadmaster with the active duty 7th Airlift Squadron, celebrated Christmas with his family before leaving for Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany.

"Though I knew my daughter was in good hands with her grandma, I still worried," he said.

The Dockerys managed. After all, it wasn't the first time Chris was away on duty for Christmas. So friends from church and the Air Force became her family, Cori said.

Newlywed Ma]. Jeff Lepkowski, fumed when he learned he'd be deploying to Saudi Arabia in December 1990, just before Desert Storm. That meant spending his first wedding anniversary and Christmas away from his wife, Suzanne, an electrical engineer.