WHEEL ME OUT - Military girlfriend

A military girlfriend’s account of what it’s like when war invades your life

Your boyfriend is in the Canadian army, what does he do? He’s a paratrooper. They jump out of planes with all their gear and parachute into areas that are harder to get at. I don’t know what it is really, maybe it’s more secret, maybe it’s more specialised.

Before you met him did you ever think that you would date someone who was in the military? Ha ha ha, no, of course not.

Did you have any hesitations about it? Yeah, except when I first met him he said that he was getting out.

So you thought it was ok... Yes, because I could never be involved long-term with someone in the military.

Why not? Because their lives are hard. They spend so much time away from home, they’d be doing things that I probably wouldn’t agree with. I’m selfish, I want my man at home.

Do you think that your boyfriend’s ever killed someone? Probably. We haven’t talked about it. In reality I’m sure he has.

Where is he now? He’s in Afghanistan, in a little outpost.

How is that affecting your life? It takes a lot of patience and it’s not easy. He’s pretty good at calling but at the moment I haven’t talked to him for a couple of days. The last time I did talk to him he’s like, “Oh, can you hear that gunshot down the road?”. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I can hear that,” and then it gets closer and he’s like, “I have to go check that out. I have to go now hon.” I haven’t hear from him since then and it makes me worry. Right now he’s moving from one place to another so I’m just guessing he doesn’t have the phone to call me.

So a lot of this is about guessing? It’s a lot of guessing, it’s really weird, it’s out of my reality. I’ve never known anyone to be in the military. I’ve never had to deal with it before. I mean in places where there’s military bases there’s a whole culture. There’s the whole wives’ club that goes on.

What’s the difference between you and them? They’re into it, they’re supporting their husband’s careers and I’m not. I’m supporting my boyfriend through the last couple of months he has in the military and then he’s getting out. I think I’m fairly tolerant of this all — I am very tolerant actually, I’ve been a good girlfriend, but I’d never do it as a lifestyle and I think other women see it that way.

Do you think they’re doing good things over there though? Yeah but I don’t think it’s actually gonna make a difference. We’re recorded over the sat phone so he can’t even say that much, so I don’t know, my guess is as good as anyone else’s.

So it’s hard to get accurate news about what’s going on there? Yeah, but there are Canadian newspapers. The Globe and Mail has a reporter staying with them right now and my boyfriend was quoted in ones of the articles.

Was it weird for you to read that? Yeah totally, especially since the article is all about this booby-trapped house that they went into and like ten detonators went off. But that’s where I get stories from I guess. It’s stuff that he wouldn’t want me to know about. When we talk on the phone we don’t talk a lot about what’s happening over there, we talk about the future. We’re going on vacation in a few weeks. It’s fucking stressful as hell, I’d never do it again. WMO