Supporting The Troops
By Michael R. Bowen (05/08/03)
In the spring of 1986, wearing my Summer Whites like all my shipmates, I watched from the edge of the flight deck of the USS TRENTON LPD-14 as she pulled away from the pier. My wife, with our daughter in the stroller and pregnant with our first son, was just visible amid the throng of other wives and children waving goodbye as Daddy got underway.
For the next six months she would be on her own, 600 miles from the nearest kinfolk. She'd keep the house, haul the groceries, mow the lawn, and watch the baby without help. Susan Sarandon never called.
Two months later she was down with shaking chills and fever, our daughter rambling disconsolately around the house wondering what was wrong with mommy. It was my dear buddy Jerry who fetched the medicine, fed the baby, and cleaned the house while she recovered. Tim Robbins never showed up.
In a little cubbyhole off the mess deck, there was a Ham Radio set purchased with funds from the wives of the Officers Mess. At night we'd beam our call sign stateside, until our signal was picked up by a Ham Radio hobbyist in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, or any of a dozen other places back home.
The kind stranger would patch us into his own telephone line and let us talk for a brief minute with our families. God bless those anonymous Americans who sacrificed their leisure time to let lonely sailors hear a voice from home! I took my spells operating the radio set, and I can tell you for a fact that the voice of the stateside operator was never that of Sean Penn.
The Glamorous Ones insist that while they oppose the war, they 'Support Our Troops'. Sure they do--it's just that they roundly damn what those troops do. But they support them. If that's so, let's see Madonna pay a visit to the shabby apartment of a 19-year-old sailor's wife, and wash a few dishes and change a few diapers. Let's see Martin Sheen out mowing the lawn for the sergeant's wife, and Susan Sarandon sending her chauffeur to the commissary to fetch the groceries for Mrs. Marine at Camp Lejeune.
Talk is cheap, but talk is what celebrities do. Let's see them walk the walk. We'll wait till hell freezes before we see them get their hands dirty by really supporting our troops.
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