Mom, I’m Going to Iraq

By Nancy B. Ronquillo

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Nancy B. Ronquillo’s memoir, A Soldier in the Family, which examines the hidden burdens military families carry before, during, and long after war. In this opening chapter, Ronquillo recalls the night her son Matt, a soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division, called to say he was leaving for Iraq, and the fear that began reshaping their family from that moment forward.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day 2003, at about two in the morning, the singsong ring of my cell phone woke me up from a deep sleep. I threw off the covers and stumbled toward my purse in the narrow hallway. I fumbled for the phone in the dark and saw it was Matt calling.

“Mom, it’s Matt. I’m getting on the plane for Iraq in just a few minutes.”

Even though the invasion did not begin until March, President Bush had made it clear that the United States was going to take action against Iraq because his administration claimed Iraq possessed stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Although there was no direct link between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq, Bush was determined to attack Iraq. Years later, the nation learned that those claims were false.

Matt had mentioned Iraq on and off throughout his time in basic training. He could never say for sure, at least not until this moment, but he’d often hinted that he was likely going to be sent to Iraq as part of an invasion force.

“Oh, Matt, I’m sorry we didn’t come out there to see you.”

“I’m scared,” he said with a shudder in his voice. “Mom, I’m afraid I won’t come home and I’ll never see you again.”

I heard him choke back tears. I broke down crying.

“Don’t worry, Matt, you’re going to be all right. Just remember that your dad survived three combat tours in Vietnam, and your grandfathers went to war, and they all came back okay.”

“I gotta go, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, Matt. God will be with you at every moment, and our love will keep you safe.”

“Bye, Mom.”

The line went dead. My arms were shaking, and a wave of panic surged through me. I started wailing and yelling at God, begging him to please, please keep my boy alive. Then it occurred to me that my neighbors could hear all my yelling through the walls and might think someone was being attacked and call the police.

I crumpled onto the bed and pulled my pillow to my belly, trying to hold onto something that would keep me from flying into pieces. I lay in my bed for the rest of the night and stared at the cracks between the blinds on the picture window until the sky changed from black to a gray shroud. I got up to go to work feeling exhausted and numb.

One month later, on the night of March 19, 2003, I was holding a glass of club soda, standing in a restaurant reception area with my coworkers in Springfield, Illinois. The place was crowded, and everyone was straining to hear the television. President George W. Bush came on the screen, seated in the Oval Office. He looked into the camera and announced the imminent invasion of Iraq. I felt my stomach clench.

A few weeks earlier, Matt had boarded a plane to Kuwait. I learned years later from Josh, Matt’s team leader in Iraq, that Matt’s unit and thousands of other soldiers were taken to a tiny island near Kuwait, an island Saddam Hussein’s forces had bombed during the Gulf War, to prepare for the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. soldiers were training on the island while they waited for orders to attack Iraq, using the island’s cratered landscape to practice attacks in wide-open areas and urban warfare in villages. At the time, I didn’t know any of that was happening.

When Matt’s unit flew to Kuwait, I still believed that Saddam Hussein would comply with the demands the United States was making, that it was still possible to avert an all-out shooting war. Matt wasn’t in touch with any of us during this time.

I realize now that the way I coped with my fear of what was happening to Matt, back when it was happening, was to simply not take things in, to sort of keep the truth at bay. I couldn’t really believe that Matt was half a world away and that any day he would be ordered to invade a foreign country where people would be shooting at him or launching chemical weapons, bombs, and missiles.

There was a dreamlike quality to my life back then, as if I were walking in someone else’s life as I went through my days, doing my job, being with my family. But the moment I heard George W. Bush say those words about the imminent invasion of Iraq, everything changed. Suddenly, I knew with every part of me that I had a son who was facing an enemy, who was waiting with his paratrooper buddies for the orders that would send him into battle.

I stood there with the cool glass sweating in my hand and a hard lump in my throat, wondering if my son might be among the first casualties reported.

“This is really scary,” someone near me said.

I turned to them and said, “Yes. My son is over there somewhere right now.”

The person looked at me with wide eyes. “You must be very worried.”

“I am.”

I turned back to the TV and watched strings of green light cross the screen and erupt into white flashes in some part of Baghdad. My husband, away on a consulting assignment, was watching the same images in a hotel room in Chicago. Our oldest son, John, was watching on a TV set while working as a bartender. Andrew was at home in Bloomington.

None of us were together at that moment, and what happened in the coming months took us to a place where we were blown completely apart.

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As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.