Active Unit News

Less media coverage leaves soldiers' wives fearing the unknown
LISA FALKENBERG
Associated Press
FORT HOOD, Texas - During the height of the war with Iraq, Lisa Bennett watched as other women's husbands plowed through the desert in tanks, donned gas masks, bathed with baby wipes, ate, slept, and even brushed their teeth on national TV. But since her own husband was deployed in April, these images have disappeared from newscasts, along with minute-by-minute reports that offered anxious military wives the small comfort of seeing what their husbands were seeing and knowing what they were facing. "They got to watch it. We have to use our imagination and guess what it's like," Bennett, 29, said one recent afternoon as she watched after her children - Cody, 12, and Katelyn, 9 - at a park on post. "The only thing the news covers now is the negative stuff: 'This soldier was killed today.'" Her husband, Staff Sgt. Jayson Bennett, is one of nearly 20,000 Fort Hood soldiers still in Iraq. About 12,500 from Fort Hood's 4th Infantry Division, generally considered the Army's most lethal and deployable heavy division, began shipping out in late March. They have been involved largely in rebuilding and peacekeeping. The thinning flow of information and the waning attention on the war has led to increased fears and intensified worries among many wives on this Central Texas post. "The not knowing makes you worry more," said 41-year-old Mary Hinojosa, whose husband, Gregory Hinojosa, is a supply sergeant with the 4th Infantry Division. "I just think there's more going on than what the news says." The Army wife of 15 years still jumps when the phone rings, dreads the knock at the door and sinks into profound worry when the television news reports a skirmish, a sniper or a grenade has killed another soldier. She says she's frustrated that Americans and the media seem to have lost interest in a war that is still killing soldiers. Since the war began March 19, 194 American soldiers have died; seven from Fort Hood, according the pentagon and post officials. More than 50 Americans have died either from hostile fire or in accidents since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat in Iraq was over. Jessica Jones, a 23-year-old mother raising two toddlers and a 7-year-old while her husband, Sgt. John Jones, 24, is away, said she was relieved at first by Bush's words. But then she started questioning the president's declaration when the fighting and dying continued. "Afterwards, I was asking, 'What did he mean saying the war's over?' There are still people getting killed over there. He needs to come back and say specifically what he meant," Jones said. Since television news coverage has dropped off, Jones now gleans information from the Internet and from trying to read between the lines during her husband's brief satellite phone conversations. "'Last night, we had a big scare'," Jones said her husband of four years told her recently, but wouldn't elaborate. It's been three weeks since she heard his voice, two and a half months since she's seen his face. Monica Skelton, 32, who raises two children while her husband of 13 years, Staff Sgt. George Skelton, serves overseas, says she reads about some of her husband's experiences through his letters - 14 by last count - many written in the dark as he pulls guard duty on a boat. "He wrote me a letter the other day saying he wanted to break his leg to get out there," she said with a laugh. And, in the absence of in-depth media coverage, Skelton says many restless wives turn to each other for support and a time-tested method for information gathering: the grapevine."You're forever getting the call, 'Have you heard anything?'"

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