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Hay, Please remember our troops. Their firefighters also...
He doesn't say very much on the telephone. When he calls every week or 10 days from his base in Iraq, Spc. Joe Wills keeps his wife, Patricia, talking about what he wants to hear her talk about. That is: the kids, Stephanie, 5, and Joey, 3; their Seaford home and its upkeep; the kids' grandparents; the guys from his ladder company in the Bronx who help out shoveling snow and mowing grass while a brother firefighter fights a war. They've helped out now through three seasons of his absence.
By the time Patricia gets a chance to ask Joe what he has been up to, how he feels, what he thinks, it is time to hang up. There are always others waiting for the phones, he says. "I'm OK," he says. "I gotta go."
He is a military policeman. He drives around in a Humvee with a machine gun mounted on top, escorting convoys. He passes wreckage everywhere: burned-up vehicles, airplanes, helicopters, people. Sometimes he sees a haunting sunset. Once, the sun appeared at the horizon like the point of a funnel cloud, draining the light from the sky.
Patricia knows this much from the rolls of film he sends her every once in awhile. She has it developed at the local drugstore. He seems to do almost all his talking this way. "Here's a picture of Joe on his vehicle," she says, handing a glossy 4-by-6 print across her kitchen table. In it, Joe and a buddy stand on the roof of their Humvee in front of a bullet-pocked portrait of Saddam Hussein.
"This is a picture of his tent," she said. It is a tent in a sea of flesh-colored sand under blue sky.
"Here's one of his self-portraits," she says. It is the face of an unsmiling 33-year-old man who looks very tired.
His wife thinks he's lost 20 or 30 pounds since his overseas deployment in March, though he assures her he feels fine. His mother, Carol Wills of Wantagh, thinks he's depressed by the ever-receding horizon of his discharge.
"First they told us six months, then it was 'by September,' then it was 'Thanksgiving, or for sure by Christmas,' now it's 'March at the earliest,'" says Patricia.
The Army has extended the tours of an estimated 20,000 reservists and National Guardsmen to a full year "in country," which for Spc. Joe Wills would mean March. Joe tells his family not to worry, he'll be fine. He'll be fine.
He became a member of the Army Reserve's 310th military police battalion in Uniondale when he was about 20, before he got married, before he joined the New York City Fire Department. He was never called upon for more than weekend duty and drilling until January, when he went to Fort Dix, N.J., for three months of training. Then he was shipped to Kuwait, then to an airstrip outside Baghdad.
As a firefighter, Wills spent December of 2001 at Ground Zero, helping retrieve remains and belongings of the dead, some of whom he had known personally. A year later, he was shipped to a war linked in the public mind to those attacks.
He was a supporter of the war. His mother never supported it. His father, Bill, did and still does. But it doesn't matter who does or doesn't anymore.
It doesn't matter that most Americans have been asked to sacrifice nothing while a very few are asked to sacrifice so much. All that matters to the Wills family is that Joe is there, and that they are holding their breath until he gets out.
It is a fact of life in families under certain kinds of stress that nobody wants anybody to worry. So Joe tells his wife and mother nothing when he calls on the phone. His wife and mother, two women who jump at the same words on the TV news, the same words in the newspaper headlines -- you can imagine what the words are -- confide in each other almost not at all. For the same reason, Joe's mother never talks to her husband, Bill, about their son's deployment.
"I try to put on a strong appearance for Trisha," says her mother-in-law, who turns to her friends for comfort, not Trisha -- who puts on a strong appearance and turns for comfort to her friends, Nellie, Tricia and Allison.
Everyone tries to keep the kids busy, though it is hard to know, too, what is going through their minds. At least Stephanie talks about her father. Little Joey doesn't and that worries everybody. He has trouble sleeping.
The kids had just returned from the 7-Eleven at the corner with their grandmother. Each came in with a roll of chewing gum -- Stephanie's was watermelon green, Joey's was electric blue. They showed their mother. She showed admiration for each one's excellent choice.
"Here's a picture Joe must have took from behind the wheel, I guess," says Patricia, flipping through her thick stack of photos from her husband's life in Iraq. It is a picture taken from behind the wheel of the Humvee. It shows a long, empty road stretching to the horizon. Smoke drifts up from something burning there.
By the time Patricia gets a chance to ask Joe what he has been up to, how he feels, what he thinks, it is time to hang up. There are always others waiting for the phones, he says. "I'm OK," he says. "I gotta go."
He is a military policeman. He drives around in a Humvee with a machine gun mounted on top, escorting convoys. He passes wreckage everywhere: burned-up vehicles, airplanes, helicopters, people. Sometimes he sees a haunting sunset. Once, the sun appeared at the horizon like the point of a funnel cloud, draining the light from the sky.
Patricia knows this much from the rolls of film he sends her every once in awhile. She has it developed at the local drugstore. He seems to do almost all his talking this way. "Here's a picture of Joe on his vehicle," she says, handing a glossy 4-by-6 print across her kitchen table. In it, Joe and a buddy stand on the roof of their Humvee in front of a bullet-pocked portrait of Saddam Hussein.
"This is a picture of his tent," she said. It is a tent in a sea of flesh-colored sand under blue sky.
"Here's one of his self-portraits," she says. It is the face of an unsmiling 33-year-old man who looks very tired.
His wife thinks he's lost 20 or 30 pounds since his overseas deployment in March, though he assures her he feels fine. His mother, Carol Wills of Wantagh, thinks he's depressed by the ever-receding horizon of his discharge.
"First they told us six months, then it was 'by September,' then it was 'Thanksgiving, or for sure by Christmas,' now it's 'March at the earliest,'" says Patricia.
The Army has extended the tours of an estimated 20,000 reservists and National Guardsmen to a full year "in country," which for Spc. Joe Wills would mean March. Joe tells his family not to worry, he'll be fine. He'll be fine.
He became a member of the Army Reserve's 310th military police battalion in Uniondale when he was about 20, before he got married, before he joined the New York City Fire Department. He was never called upon for more than weekend duty and drilling until January, when he went to Fort Dix, N.J., for three months of training. Then he was shipped to Kuwait, then to an airstrip outside Baghdad.
As a firefighter, Wills spent December of 2001 at Ground Zero, helping retrieve remains and belongings of the dead, some of whom he had known personally. A year later, he was shipped to a war linked in the public mind to those attacks.
He was a supporter of the war. His mother never supported it. His father, Bill, did and still does. But it doesn't matter who does or doesn't anymore.
It doesn't matter that most Americans have been asked to sacrifice nothing while a very few are asked to sacrifice so much. All that matters to the Wills family is that Joe is there, and that they are holding their breath until he gets out.
It is a fact of life in families under certain kinds of stress that nobody wants anybody to worry. So Joe tells his wife and mother nothing when he calls on the phone. His wife and mother, two women who jump at the same words on the TV news, the same words in the newspaper headlines -- you can imagine what the words are -- confide in each other almost not at all. For the same reason, Joe's mother never talks to her husband, Bill, about their son's deployment.
"I try to put on a strong appearance for Trisha," says her mother-in-law, who turns to her friends for comfort, not Trisha -- who puts on a strong appearance and turns for comfort to her friends, Nellie, Tricia and Allison.
Everyone tries to keep the kids busy, though it is hard to know, too, what is going through their minds. At least Stephanie talks about her father. Little Joey doesn't and that worries everybody. He has trouble sleeping.
The kids had just returned from the 7-Eleven at the corner with their grandmother. Each came in with a roll of chewing gum -- Stephanie's was watermelon green, Joey's was electric blue. They showed their mother. She showed admiration for each one's excellent choice.
"Here's a picture Joe must have took from behind the wheel, I guess," says Patricia, flipping through her thick stack of photos from her husband's life in Iraq. It is a picture taken from behind the wheel of the Humvee. It shows a long, empty road stretching to the horizon. Smoke drifts up from something burning there.
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