Posted on 09/22/2004 2:04:26 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
GULFPORT -- Cristie Oliver sat down heavily at the kitchen table as she read the Western Union mailgram.
"Oh, no," she said, the color draining from her face.
Her mother, Cheryl Sendio, figured Cristie must have just opened a whopper of a bill.
"They're going to make me leave my baby," Cristie whimpered.
The mailgram was from the Army; Cristie was being called back to active duty. The Army wanted as many as 545 days, starting Sept. 5.
It had been more than two years since Cristie had put on a military uniform at Fort Riley, Kan. It was not a place where she had fit in. Twice she had had to repeat basic training, and she had left early after giving birth to her daughter, Asia.
That night, their pastor, the Rev. Dr. Angel R. Toro, sat next to a despondent Cristie on the couch in her mother's living room. He told her he would start the church prayer line, a group of 15 people who would pray for her each night.
"Sometimes," the reverend said, "God has a way of surprising us."
The next day, members of the Chapel on the Hill United Church of Christ of Seminole gathered outside a courtroom to support two of their own, a pair of gay dads trying to adopt foster children. Among the group were Cristie and her mother.
Toro silenced the group, announced that Cristie had been called to Iraq and asked the members to pray for her. They held hands and bowed their heads. They converged on Cristie, hugging and kissing her. One woman told Cristie that she had a son in the Navy, and she offered advice:
"You should get pregnant."
On July 6, the Army began sending out 5,674 Western Union mailgrams to former soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve. These are inactive reservists who completed their active duty time but are available to fill vacancies in emergencies. Some people call this the back-door draft.
Rarely are these soldiers called back; most assume that when they're done with active duty, they're done. That's why the mailgram that arrived July 15 threw Cristie for such a loop.
She had enlisted during her senior year at Pinellas Park High School. A recruiter approached her several times. She didn't really want to go, but she didn't know what else to do.
Her mother thought it was a good idea. Cristie was shy and quiet, with an innocence that Sendio thought needed to be tempered with confidence. A dose of the Army might do her good.
Cristie smoked and didn't exercise much before she reported for boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Push-ups, sit-ups, running - she always lagged behind.
"I'm a really sensitive person, and they're all yelling at me, and I'd just go back and cry," she remembered. "I was trying to fail so they'd send me home."
That didn't happen. She completed boot camp and trained to be a chemical operations specialist.
Michael Oliver, who also was in chemical operations, remembers the day he and his buddies were replacing the wheel on a small tank. Cristie and three other fresh-faced female recruits walked up.
Michael took one look at Cristie and called dibs on her - something about her model-like walk. She gave up her boyfriend back in St. Petersburg. Michael sent her a different-colored rose 12 days in a row, and he sent love notes:
Lifetime is all I have for you
Oliver, that's my last name
LOL.
Vase that sits on a table that have priceless memories
Everyday that I see those pretty brown dreamin eyes
Cristie got pregnant in September 2001, and they married a few months later. She and a half-dozen other pregnant recruits were assigned administrative tasks at post headquarters.
She wanted to name the baby Africa. Michael didn't. They compromised on Asia.
Cristie left the Army the day after Asia was born, a few months shy of her two-year obligation. Michael got out a month later. They did not look back.
After leaving the Army, they struggled financially.
In the past year, they finally found good jobs. Cristie, 22 now, does office work at the attorney general's office in St. Petersburg, and on weekends she works at a movie theater. Michael works in customer service at PODS, the portable on demand storage company in Clearwater.
Their 1995 Ford Contour broke down and needed $800 in repairs. Michael took the bus to work; Cristie's mom drove her. Cristie's stepfather picked up Asia from day care.
They talked about having another child, but Cristie wanted their finances in order first. Michael kept pressing, and she finally relented. But they were always so tired at night. Sex came last.
Then the mailgram came and everything changed: Get pregnant, get out of going to Iraq.
A friend of the family gave her an ovulation cycle wheel. She put in the date of her last period and saw a tiny window of time the last week of July.
She and Michael would have just one shot.
Cristie awoke at 3 a.m. Michael lay asleep beside her, the TV still on.
She padded into the bathroom, opened her home pregnancy test, urinated on the strip. And waited.
Minutes ticked by. She thought about Asia without her. And Iraq. And the beheadings on TV. What if she went there and never came back? What would become of Asia? Cristie was just so scared.
The little line signifying that she was pregnant did not appear on the strip. She sat on the toilet and cried.
A week later, Cristie felt cramping in her stomach.
Her report date was three weeks away, and she and Michael had made no preparations. She hadn't even looked at her military gear, stowed in a box in the back of her closet.
Cristie decided she would try another pregnancy test, after Michael got home.
That night, 2-year-old Asia lined up birthday candles on the coffee table. "Dats bootiful," she said.
Cristie ran around the kitchen barefoot, in a long, blue, flowery dress like something out of a painting by Monet. She fixed Asia a waffle. Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella played on TV.
The doorbell rang. In came Cristie's neighbor, 21-year-old Shanetra Wells, holding her 3-year-old's hand and heaving a car seat with her 2-month-old in it. Shanetra's 15-year-old brother, Norman "Trey" Wells III, strolled in behind, chewing on a Coke-can-sized pork rind.
"Did they tell you about my orders to go back in the military?" Cristie asked.
"You going back?" Shanetra said.
"I don't know yet."
Wells picked up her baby and handed him to Cristie, who gently smoothed his soft, curly hair.
"I like this," Cristie said.
"If you have to go back to the Army, it's the wrong time to go," Shanetra said.
"Five hundred forty-five days. It's almost two years."
"Oooooh, you're their property now."
"Would you like to stick around and see if I'm pregnant?"
"Sure, why not?"
Cristie emerged from the bathroom with a white stick in hand. She left it on the kitchen counter and paced back and forth, hands flat on her face.
"I'm not looking at it," she said, back to the counter. "I'm afraid."
She looked. If pregnant, the stick shows two lines. Only one showed.
Cristie drummed fingers on the counter, walked away, shook her hands, her amber eyes wide, panicked. And back again.
"There's a second line. It's really faint," she said. "I can see it, but it's not all the way there. I don't know. Look at it. I can see it, but it's not coming.
"Michael, come here. Do you see the second line?"
Michael studied the stick. There was a dark maroon line and sort of a shadow next to it.
"A little bit," he said. "Last time we saw no color."
"I think I'm excited now," Cristie said.
Again Cristie picked up the stick. The second line was a shade darker, but nowhere near as dark as the first.
"Oooh, it's darker. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant."
Michael dialed his mother in Arkansas. "She's got to be the first one," he said.
"How you doing, Mom? You're going to be a grandma again."
Cristie called her mother.
Said Sendio: "I'll be convinced I'm a grandmother (again) when you go see a doctor."
On Cristie's lunch break the next day, she sat in an empty waiting room at Planned Parenthood under a sign that read: Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.
She hoped they wouldn't charge her for the visit; she had no money in her wallet. She wore boots, jeans with diagonal strips of brown corduroy, a tan halter top and a beige sweater. She had told co-workers that she was pregnant.
"Some people think it's a good idea. Some people think it's a horrible idea, that it's for not the right reasons."
She talked about recent news reports that the United States was bringing home tens of thousands of soldiers from Europe and Asia.
"What about the people in Iraq? What about the people dying over there? It doesn't make any sense to me."
She pulled her sweater tighter. "I hate waiting," she said, and frowned.
The clinic assistant tested her urine three times, with three brands of pregnancy tests. All were inconclusive. She told Cristie she would have to test her blood and left the room.
Cristie looked worried and confused.
The assistant came back. "I checked the test again," she said, her face dissolving into a smile, "and you're pregnant. Congratulations."
"I knew it, I knew it. That's awesome."
"Congratulations," the assistant said. "It looks like you're not going to Iraq."
Cristie called the Army the next day to report her news. They sent her a delay and exemption packet that she returned with proof she was pregnant.
She and Michael are relieved beyond words - for now. Cristie learned her pregnancy only delays her entry into the military until four months after the baby is born.
After that, she could be called up again.
Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
What about the child?
Is it right that the two year old should be denied her mother for two years so she should be callled back in the army?
Stupid situation if you ask me.
This is just more proof that women do not belong in the military in a combat or close combat support capacity.
When you take the King's Shilling and wear his uniform, you should expect to smell gunpowder, and not complain when you do. Which is the case with the OVERWHELMING number of American military personnel. Creatures like this give them all a bad name.
this kind of "soldier" we don't need....the REAL soldiers have enough to do without having to cover for a brat like this.
The child needs a set of parents that can teach the child that life isn't fair, and there are many willing parents that would do a fine job of making this child realize that life is what one makes it, and not what others make it.
"The child needs a set of parents that can teach the child that life isn't fair, and there are many willing parents that would do a fine job of making this child realize that life is what one makes it, and not what others make it."
So how's that going to help the 2 year old when she wants he mother?
This woman's plight has nothing to do with issues surrounding women serving in the military. She should have been kicked out in Basic training when they saw her behavior. There are pmen who behave as she did and they shouldn't be in the military either. Pregnancy issues are one of those problems that no matter how the military tries to solve them, there will always be problems. What do you do about the woman who deliberately gets pregnant to avoid being sent to a war zone? What about military couples who want to start a family? I don't think anyone has a good solution.
My personal opinion is women in support roles, non-deployable, makes a much more steady force.
Dittos to what you said.
Not having any children for the remainder of my wife's enlistment does sound like a reasonable solution for our particular situation. Fortunately the Navy isn't known for having a need to call up IRR so we could proceed right after she is separated from active duty, although it is possible. But what of women who are subject to involuntary recall after separation? Should they wait until the end of their IRR before continuing their lives? And what of a woman who elects to be career military? Has she forfeited a right to a family?
I agree.
"If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have enlisted."
Dude, read a bit more carefully. She was already out. She didn't want to be called back up. Big difference.
The authoratative source on this issue is Phyllis Schlafly, in my opinion. She has a way of saying the true things that people, especially many women, do not want to hear. The truth of the matter is, men and women are not equals, physically or biologically. Period. End of story. Anyone who argues otherwise is simply being either blind or politically correct. This is not to argue that women are not mentally as tough or capable as men, because that is beyond argument. But women in general cannot put an 80 pound pack and trudge around in the mountains of Afghanistan. Some can, but the average woman has no chance, only the exceptional top fraction could even consider it. But that is not the real isssue. The real issue is to deny biology, which is what many liberals and feminists want to do (I know, redundancy). If a woman CAN get pregnant, there is always a possibility she WILL get pregnant. And the impact that can have on force readiness is well documented. To insist that pregnancy is something that can be simply avoided is just plain STUPID. If you put men and women in close proximity under trying/dangerous/boring conditions, pregnancy can result. An example of how this can negatively impact operational readiness is the Submarine Example. Many feminists and democrats want to put women on submarines. If a woman gets pregnant (and a sub would be a fine crucible for sexual activity, boredom, close quarters, etc.) a pregnant woman would have to be removed from the submarine as soon as any pregnancy is detected. There are trace elements in the recirculated submarine atmosphere that are not harmful to a fully developed adult, but are toxic to a developing fetus. That billion dollar weapon platform whose job is to remain undetected and invisible, would need to surface to transfer the woman off the vessel ASAP, a dangerous task under the best of conditions, compromising the mission. This is one example. Like it or not, it is the truth.
Ah, yes, the Kerry legacy lives on. This article is the biggest load of crap I have seen since Rather/Memogate.
This chick was looking for the easy way around life and has just discovered that choices have consequences. She didn't have to read the fine print in her contract, all she had to do was look at the fact that she didn't complete her two-year tour of active duty and signed up for a six-year obligation.
So, to keep from honoring her obligations, she's going to download children she and her husband can't provide the basics for and will become yet another welfare mom.
Way to go, St. Pete Times, for encouraging this behavior.
She still had time left on her contract. NOT OUT. Im so tired of excuses, boohoos, give me give me and then what do you mean you want me to work for it now? If you sign a contract, you should be responsible for it...if you cant be responsible ...easy answer ....dont sign the contract....she was not drafted ...she volunteered
Been there, done that. I felt more like I was "raking it in big-time," not just "doing pretty well." But that's subjective.
and we would like to have children. Should we wait just because she's in the military?
YES!
How is that fair?
She volunteered and she is being paid. If she can't do her job, she should get out. If she plans on not being able to do her job when the hard part rolls around, she should get out NOW.
Men in the military don't have to wait to start a family
My wife got out while pregnant with our first-born (her first enlistment was up.) I have been fortunate enough to be there for the birth of all of my kids, but there were no guarantees. Number 6 (six) (yes, that's right, s-i-x) is due in Dec - I'd say it's slightly better than 50-50 that I'll be home for this one. Again, there are no guarantees. And that is the key difference - men with pregnant wives can deploy. Pregnant women can't.
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