Members recall the loneliness of war

Joe Pitts stood by his bedside looking at the plastic Christmas tree and little red stocking that was sent to him by his wife. He couldn’t stand the thought of an ocean away from his family, especially during the holidays. 

“It was almost an obsession. All you could do was think of them,” he said. “You just couldn’t wait until your tour was over.” 

There are currently 66,000 U.S. personnel serving in Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense. And while President Obama has yet to decide on the number of troops that will stay beyond 2014, that drawdown is expected to be completed in two years.

Loneliness is something all service members can relate to. Homesickness is part of the job, according to Gary Berntsen, Florida state director of Concerned Veterans of America. 

“It’s clear that veterans during times of war miss their families,” Berntsen said. “For some, [Christmas] is the most important time of the year. It’s a time of family and they reflect on that.” 

Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican who was first elected to Congress in 1996, served five and a half years in the military, racking up three tours in Vietnam in that short period. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, working as an electronic warfare officer, a navigator who flew strategic combat aircraft to identify and counter surface-to-air missile threats and the like.

All told, Pitts completed 116 flight missions in Vietnam. His last flight mission was on Christmas Eve in 1968. It was a welcome reprieve.

On another Christmas Eve in 1990, Pitts’s future colleague, Steve Palazzo, boarded a plane and flew to the Middle East to serve in Operation Desert Storm. He was 20 years old.

Palazzo, now a freshman Republican from Mississippi, felt a twinge as he thought of his family, but said he didn’t let that deter him from the mission at hand. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and an international coalition led by the U.S. was on route to liberate the small kingdom in the Gulf.

“I would say I had some emotions not being with my mother, father and sister, but service members have thousands of people that are expecting them to do their job and focus on the mission at hand,” reflected Palazzo.  

A lance corporal at the time, Palazzo spent the next six months in the Gulf with the Third Force Reconnaissance Company providing support for the 1st and 2nd Marine divisions as they liberated Kuwait.

While most service members come home, many of them do not leave the battlefield unscathed. 

Pitts recalls one moment in particular, when he came home after serving a year in Vietnam. When he saw his 14-month son, he reached out to give him a hug. His boy looked at him and turned away. 

“He was afraid of me, so I said that’s it. I got three kids. They don’t even know their dad, I’m going to have to get out,” recalled Pitts. 

At that difficult moment, Pitts decided to retire from the Air Force. 

According to the American veterans organization VetFriends, the largest number of active-duty personnel stationed overseas occurred during the Vietnam War in 1968, when approximately 1.1 million troops were deployed on foreign soil. 

Berntsen said that the service members are able to survive the pangs of war because their families were always in the back of their minds. 

“They were all volunteers, understood what they were fighting for and the commitment to country, comrades and family carried them through,” said Bernsten.

Texas Republican Sam Johnson remembers his war experience in Vietnam all too well — especially during the holidays. As Christmas Day approached, the former POW recalls sending fellow inmates season’s wishes by tapping on the wall of his dank prison compound. 

Johnson served in the U.S. Air Force for 29 years. 

A major in the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing in Thailand, he was on his second tour in Vietnam when on April 16, 1966, his fighter jet was shot down. Johnson was quickly apprehended and would be a prisoner of war for the next seven years.  

He was not allowed to receive any form of contact from the outside world. 

But in 1971, for reasons unknown, the Vietnamese delivered Christmas mail. That year, his wife sent him a package filled with vitamins, toothpaste and “magic” gumdrops. 

Johnson began sucking on the hard candy when he realized something was jabbing against the roof of his mouth. 

It was microfilm of the front page of The New York Times describing the events of the Son Tay raid in November 1970, a rescue attempt to free 61 prisoners, including Johnson. The attack was successfully executed, but all the prisoners had been previously moved to Hoa Lo camp. 

By the end of the war, Johnson and all the other prisoners were freed and returned back home. 

“All I could think about was hugging my family,” Johnson said. “Words don’t even come close to describe the joy, relief, and thankfulness I felt when I stepped off the plane in Texas and was reunited with my wife and children for the first time in nearly seven years.”