tenenbaumer
New Member
Hello.
not really sure how to start.
I grew up with an Army father. my comprehension of his military career is pretty vague, and that's why i'm here. i never served. i have no detailed knowledge of how the military operates, rankings, inner bureaucracy, semantics and military language, anything of the sort. because my father never talks in detail about it. at all.
the older i've gotten, the less willing he's been to discuss any details of his service with me. my suspicion is, or has gradually become, because i'm a grown man now, if he told me anything specific, he knows i would figure out the truth. i'm starting to suspect that he was in some sort of special forces, but i openly admit i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.
although he was in the military for about 13 years (from approx. 84-97), i was born in 87, and even at age 10, i really had no idea what was going on. why was he gone all the time? why was he always angry and agitated when he was home? why was my mother always so sad and openly wondering if dad was coming home?
i can remember some very strange details, and i'm wondering if there's ANY insight that service members can give me about what might be going on. i want to preface by saying, once again, that my dad won't really talk to me about any of this, so the details are simply from my memory (mostly as a child) and nothing more.
he graduated with honors in high school, joined JROTC, and completed basic training before being allowed to serve a religious sabbatical BEFORE subsequently joining the Army. Confirmed by my mother.
we were stationed and lived in ft. hood until i was about 9 years old. again, these details are random and disoriented, but given that i was a child and my parents won't talk too much about things, this is all i have:
my father was constantly gone, the longest stint (that i can remember) being cuba for over 6 months, only because i can remember my mother crying at the dinner table that it had been "over half a year" since she ate dinner with her husband. Today my father will not discuss this trip, insists i'm mis-remembering how long he was gone. i remember my mother mentioning japan and north carolina when he was gone other times. little research confirms these are stations for special forces. i remember the names clearly because i had never heard the names of those places before.
i was obsessed with x-men by the time i was 5 or 6 years old. i share a "real" name with Wolverine, so he's my go-to as a superhero, and was at a young age. i remember when my father was gone for a long time (I THINK to cuba) my mother leaning in close to me and saying "your daddy's friend is taking you to drive go-karts. he's like the real life x-men-- he's in the Delta Force." i can distinctly remember learning the term Delta Force and equating it with x-men. i can remember using "Delta Force" when I played pretend with my friends that lived on my street. they thought X-men sounded better.
this post is so long... i hope anyone who reads all the way through it and has any knowledge will respond and tell me what they know, or can analyze, even if they're not sure.
the truth is my father has been absent emotionally for most of my life. i have always wondered why, and the older i get, the more i suspect there are some big things i don't know about his time in the Army.
maybe i'm paranoid, dreaming. i don't know. my father has been a successful business executive for almost twenty years after leaving the military. he is totally normal, charismatic, healthy, hard-working... but always very distant, even to me, his oldest son. he loves my mom, and they've remained together my whole life. but they both parrot the same response: "Dad was a 'personnel officer in the Army.'"
One last thing: during my father's military service, he suffered multiple broken bones. I know he broke his collarbone, because I broke MY collarbone when i was about 11, and when he told me he'd also broken his collarbone, i remembered seeing him in the arm sling back when i was a kid. he also broke a leg and arm simultaneously, while apparently going on "training jumps" from aircraft. i can remember distinctly him being in a wheelchair, because he broke his right arm AND leg, thus not being capable of using crutches or moving independently. what kind of a personnel officer is suffering constant injuries over the course of their military tenure?
*Edit: You know, I remembered after writing all this, another intense thing: I remember my father screaming at my brother after he broke some random house rule---
"Do you even know what it's like to stomp a man's head until it's not there anymore, while he begs and screams 'Jesus, save me!'?"
I was maybe 10 years old, my brother 7 or 8... it was shortly after my dad left the military. I don't know where my mom was at the time. Not home.
not really sure how to start.
I grew up with an Army father. my comprehension of his military career is pretty vague, and that's why i'm here. i never served. i have no detailed knowledge of how the military operates, rankings, inner bureaucracy, semantics and military language, anything of the sort. because my father never talks in detail about it. at all.
the older i've gotten, the less willing he's been to discuss any details of his service with me. my suspicion is, or has gradually become, because i'm a grown man now, if he told me anything specific, he knows i would figure out the truth. i'm starting to suspect that he was in some sort of special forces, but i openly admit i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.
although he was in the military for about 13 years (from approx. 84-97), i was born in 87, and even at age 10, i really had no idea what was going on. why was he gone all the time? why was he always angry and agitated when he was home? why was my mother always so sad and openly wondering if dad was coming home?
i can remember some very strange details, and i'm wondering if there's ANY insight that service members can give me about what might be going on. i want to preface by saying, once again, that my dad won't really talk to me about any of this, so the details are simply from my memory (mostly as a child) and nothing more.
he graduated with honors in high school, joined JROTC, and completed basic training before being allowed to serve a religious sabbatical BEFORE subsequently joining the Army. Confirmed by my mother.
we were stationed and lived in ft. hood until i was about 9 years old. again, these details are random and disoriented, but given that i was a child and my parents won't talk too much about things, this is all i have:
my father was constantly gone, the longest stint (that i can remember) being cuba for over 6 months, only because i can remember my mother crying at the dinner table that it had been "over half a year" since she ate dinner with her husband. Today my father will not discuss this trip, insists i'm mis-remembering how long he was gone. i remember my mother mentioning japan and north carolina when he was gone other times. little research confirms these are stations for special forces. i remember the names clearly because i had never heard the names of those places before.
i was obsessed with x-men by the time i was 5 or 6 years old. i share a "real" name with Wolverine, so he's my go-to as a superhero, and was at a young age. i remember when my father was gone for a long time (I THINK to cuba) my mother leaning in close to me and saying "your daddy's friend is taking you to drive go-karts. he's like the real life x-men-- he's in the Delta Force." i can distinctly remember learning the term Delta Force and equating it with x-men. i can remember using "Delta Force" when I played pretend with my friends that lived on my street. they thought X-men sounded better.
this post is so long... i hope anyone who reads all the way through it and has any knowledge will respond and tell me what they know, or can analyze, even if they're not sure.
the truth is my father has been absent emotionally for most of my life. i have always wondered why, and the older i get, the more i suspect there are some big things i don't know about his time in the Army.
maybe i'm paranoid, dreaming. i don't know. my father has been a successful business executive for almost twenty years after leaving the military. he is totally normal, charismatic, healthy, hard-working... but always very distant, even to me, his oldest son. he loves my mom, and they've remained together my whole life. but they both parrot the same response: "Dad was a 'personnel officer in the Army.'"
One last thing: during my father's military service, he suffered multiple broken bones. I know he broke his collarbone, because I broke MY collarbone when i was about 11, and when he told me he'd also broken his collarbone, i remembered seeing him in the arm sling back when i was a kid. he also broke a leg and arm simultaneously, while apparently going on "training jumps" from aircraft. i can remember distinctly him being in a wheelchair, because he broke his right arm AND leg, thus not being capable of using crutches or moving independently. what kind of a personnel officer is suffering constant injuries over the course of their military tenure?
*Edit: You know, I remembered after writing all this, another intense thing: I remember my father screaming at my brother after he broke some random house rule---
"Do you even know what it's like to stomp a man's head until it's not there anymore, while he begs and screams 'Jesus, save me!'?"
I was maybe 10 years old, my brother 7 or 8... it was shortly after my dad left the military. I don't know where my mom was at the time. Not home.