Soldier and wife take different viewpoints
Stacy Bannerman, a leading peace advocate with Military Families Speak Out, travels the country for anti-war events. She recently published a book about being a soldier's anti-war wife, 'When the War Came Home.'
Washington Post Photo by Nikki Kahn
"I got the call," he says.
"What call?" she replies.
Does she have to ask? Don't they both know their life is poised to turn completely strange at any moment? Possibly even tragic?
"I'm going to Iraq."
His eyes watch her closely.
"No. No. No."
Yes, yes, yes: Lorin's National Guard unit just got called up. And in a deep part of him that he doesn't reveal to his wife, a professional peace and justice activist, he's kind of looking forward to it.
It's the fall of 2003, seven months after the war began, outside Seattle where they live. They are the warrior and the anti-warrior, and their years of living dangerously are about to begin.
She watches him drive away in his new white Kia Sorento. The planet-hugger in her never approved of his buying that SUV. Now, as her man prepares for mobilization to the land of oil and blood, she sees the manufacturer's name and thinks: "Killed in action."
The Bannermans are like nobody else and everybody else with this country at war. Stacy, 40, and Lorin, 45, dramatize an extreme version of the conversations, tensions, compromises and leaps of faith taking place across America. As the death count rises, public support for the war plummets, two black lines on a neat, precise graph.
Beneath Stacy and Lorin's apparent polarization, they share a messy truth of nuances and grays. She is convinced this war was built on lies, yet her admiration for those who choose to wear the uniform has only increased, even though she knows some soldiers -- including, she would learn in anguished phone calls from Iraq, her husband -- have been connected to the deaths of Iraqi civilians.
Overshadowed by the controversial wattage of Cindy Sheehan, Stacy is nevertheless a featured speaker in the peace movement's marches, rallies and caravans, a leading advocate with the group Military Families Speak Out, which claims about 3,000 members. She recently published a book about being a soldier's antiwar wife, "When the War Came Home."
Lorin felt the almost boyish appeal of the military when he signed up for the Guard while in college. During his yearlong deployment in Iraq, he harbored increasing doubts over the reasons for the invasion but never wavered in his devotion to his mission. He is, he says, "glad" to have fought in Iraq, where he was a sergeant first class leading 34 soldiers in a mortar platoon. His mission -- to beat back the insurgents lobbing rockets and mortar shells in his sector -- was accomplished, and he earned a Bronze Star for, in the words of the citation, "incredible speed and deadly accurate response" in "taking the fight to the enemy."
"What matters is that Lorin is the love of my life," Stacy says. "What matters is that I remain true to myself. What matters is I'm big enough to let him do the same."
Common values
They met seven years ago in Spokane at a fundraiser to fight hunger. He was helping manage food service that night and spied her looking at him.
She had never married; he had been married once before. She was executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center in Spokane, a position she would eventually leave amid controversy. (She filed a complaint with the Washington State Human Rights Commission alleging she suffered discrimination on the job because she was white; the matter was settled in 2002 for undisclosed terms.)
They discovered they had many values in common -- a belief in diversity and a commitment to fairness and equal treatment based on the content of one's character.
Stacy did not fall in love with a man in uniform. Lorin had quit the Guard after about 15 years of service. Once they were engaged, he decided to re-enlist so he could reach 20 years and qualify for retirement benefits. Stacy was surprised. But this was before Sept. 11, 2001. She rationalized the Guard was a conventional outlet for a man like Lorin to peacefully serve his country.
After he got the call to go to Iraq, she did not always make his life easy. Sometimes, she said exactly the wrong thing.
It would happen in moments when life within the paradox seemed unbearable, forces both political and personal wrenching their relationship. In one of their long pre-deployment conversations, he said, "There may come a time when I've got someone at gunpoint, and I'll have to make a decision. ... I can't be thinking of the enemy as human."
"If that day comes," she replied, "and you're standing there, looking into that person's face, I want you to imagine that it's me."
As soon as she said it, she regretted it. The pacifist found herself wondering, she later wrote, if she had planted the seed of doubt that would lead to a moment of hesitation, resulting in her husband's death. Is a pacifist supposed to have such regrets?
Stacy still cringes, and Lorin hasn't forgotten either.
"It's not what I need to be thinking about. I don't need to have that moment of doubt," he says.
But, he adds, "there were times when she probably didn't say the right thing, but she said what was on her mind. That's something that you need to accept. This is where she's at, this is what she's going through."
Paths diverge
Lorin admits he couldn't help detaching himself emotionally from her. "I did notice a wall was coming up," he says. "I was focused on what I was getting ready to do, getting ready to be asked to do. Put my life on the line. And I had responsibilities for other people's lives."
The thing that shocked her most was when he confessed that a part of him was looking forward to the war. At last, the real thing.
"This is what I've trained for, this is now actually going to happen," he says. "There was a little bit of that in there, excitement, if you want to put it that way. Here I get to go do something I've been training for for the last 16 or 17 years."
Stacy recalls her reaction: "Please tell me I'm not hearing this. ... I can't believe he's talking about going to war like it's some great opportunity he doesn't want to miss."
One thing she could understand: By the fall of 2003 when Lorin was called up, it was becoming apparent Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, and Lorin was having some misgivings about the logic behind the war. But he had a duty, and he felt a deep loyalty and responsibility to his fellow soldiers. That was why he was going to war, and that was reasoning his activist wife accepted, even admired.
While he was away, she kept the window blinds drawn. That way, she would not be able to see a government car pull up to announce another casualty. Therefore, in the superstitious logic of the home front, no car would ever appear.
And she found common ground with the group Military Families Speak Out.
Shaken by deaths
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