Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Mothers in Uniform

*** MOTHERS IN UNIFORM ***

ERIC WHITNEY: On Mother's Day, most mothers, especially those with young children, want to be with their families. But that's impossible for the more than five hundred mothers in the Army who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those mothers are based at Fort Carson. We had a chance to talk to a couple of them by satellite phone from Baghdad.

SGT. LISA KING: My name is Lisa King, I'm out of Colorado Springs, I'm in the United States Army and I'm serving here in Baghdad, Iraq.

WHITNEY: When Lisa King got pregnant in 2004, she was a twenty-one year-old soldier based in Germany. The Army gives pregnant soldiers the option of leaving the service before they give birth, but King not only decided to stay in, she re-enlisted for a second four year hitch. Even though she knew at the time that it would virtually guarantee she'd spend at least a year in Iraq.

King, who is a sergeant and a medic, arrived in Baghdad in March. Reached on a satellite phone borrowed from an officer, she says she doesn't regret her decision, but it's still difficult being away from her one-year-old son:

LISA KING: Knowing that, one, I volunteered to miss things, and then missing my son get off the bottle, or missing him saying my name, things like that, that's the worst. Just missing things that won't ever come back, missing his first things. That's the hardest.

WHITNEY: The only things that Lisa's husband is missing are what happens at daycare. Twenty-three year-old Darne King is a full time accounting student who lives in married enlisted housing on base. He, too, was a soldier when they decided to have a child. He left the military, Darne says, in part, because he had more college credits.
Both of them returning to civilian life, he says, was not an option.

DARNE KING: How would we support ourselves? I guess would be my question to you if we both got out. I think that woulda been a real stupid decision in that case. If we're gonna start a family we wanna start it off right, and this way one of us can have an education, then she can get out and get her education, and we'll both live that dream life, the American dream life more or less.

WHITNEY: Having the American dream in the future, the Kings say, means they have to sacrifice now.

In today's volunteer army, being a mother doesn't keep you out of harm's way. Army spokesperson Major Elizabeth Robbins, is a mother herself.

MAJ. ELIZABETH ROBBINS: The Army views a soldier as soldier, and soldiers are deployed with their units to carry out their wartime missions.

WHITNEY: The Army still prohibits women from serving in smaller units whose primary function is direct ground combat, but female soldiers in Iraq commonly pull guard duty, go on patrols, and operate the turret guns on Humvees. So far thirty-seven Army women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning of the war on terrorism. Seven of them were mothers.

But, Robbins points out, there are plenty of men in uniform who have left kids at home, too.

ROBBINS: About forty-three percent of our deployed soldiers are fathers, and about three percent of our deployed soldiers are mothers, and I think it is equally hard for our fathers as for our mothers to be away from their children.

WHITNEY: But just as women are now sharing the hardships that men at war have faced for centuries, they're also getting access to the benefits of a military career. That includes housing and healthcare for their families, and leadership training and advancement. And, there are plenty of women who just plain like being soldiers.

SGT. AMY PERKINS: If I didn't have kids, I probably wouldn't even bother coming back to the states.

WHITNEY: Sergeant Amy Perkins is in Baghdad, too. She's a 30-year-old single mother whose twin six-year-olds are staying with Grandma while she's overseas. She says she feels a little guilty saddling her mom with the kids while she gets to do what she loves in Iraq.

PERKINS: Because frankly, I do enjoy deploying, I do enjoy being in a different place. I like the job, I love the job.

WHITNEY: Perkins says she does miss her twins, but she's in touch with them regularly via letters, phone calls and e-mail. The Army works hard to facilitate modern communication, because knowing that everybody is OK back home reduces soldiers' stress and allows them to focus on the task at hand. Sgt. Perkins says it makes for some funny moments when battle hardened soldiers get a videotape from home and pop it in a shared VCR.

PERKINS: You'd see all these people come back from the field in full camouflage, in full battle rattle, first thing they did was stop at the mailroom, come running in with their rifle and what have you, just sitting there watching their kids, and everybody's crying, "Oh, aren't they cute. Aww!"

WHITNEY: Sergeant Lisa King, who left her one-year-old son with his father back in Colorado, is in regular contact with her family. Last year her husband gave her a day at the spa for Mother's day. This year, she says, won't be quite as luxurious.

LISA KING: No, on days that are special, I work all day and keep myself busy all day so I don't think about it, so on that day I know I'm going to be really busy, so I don't have time to sit and think about anything.