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The Lost Ones
- 5-25-2010
- Categorized in: Military Brat Culture
During the last 15 years or so, the Military has been ordered to close many Military bases throughout the world, which they refer to as "realignment".
They have consolidated many Bases and Posts and turned a lot of property back over to the municipalities from which they had borrowed the land for decades.
Overseas bases were turned back over to the governments of that Nation. Our homes, schools, churches and all we knew as children are gone.
I had a discussion recently with one of my favorite cousins. We spent a lot of time together as teen-agers as she would travel from Michigan each summer to stay with us on Ft. Devens, Massachusetts. She got a summer job at the same Post pizza shop I worked at, and she did get a small taste of what it was like living on an Army Post.
We have had several discussions throughout the years on their feelings toward us being out of their lives for long periods of time, and then come 'crashing' in for the Holidays or summer break pretty much disrupting their lives. They loved having us home as much as we loved coming home, but as children they did experience some jealousy over the attentions stolen from our grandparents.
Our parents had always been close, and my other cousins were close, but my brother and I never got to experience this, as I sometimes felt like an outsider when arriving to visit my close-knit cousins. It was not that they treated us as outsiders, they were in fact very nice to us, but when they talked about things that they had been doing while we were away, and adventures they shared I was not able to participate in their reflections.
My grandparents would, each year, take a grandchild on a special trip to Florida, where they could spend one on one time with that grandchild. My brother and I never got a trip but we understood why. While we never got to spend our 'alone' time with them, we got so much more. When living in Germany, they flew over and spent about a month with us, touring Bavaria, and Camping in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy.
I swam with my grandparents in the Mediterranean. My grandmother would often, I think, feel guilty she never took us to Florida, and would unnecessarily defend their reasons by bringing up the trip to Germany, and that we always got to travel. I always agreed with her, even as a child.
In the discussion I had with my cousin, I mentioned I was writing and going to have published some of my experiences and sense of loss I sometimes feel at being an Army brat.
Initially, of course, she didn't understand why I would have a sense of loss. "You had a great life!" While she didn't come right out and say it, she eluded to the fact that there was a little jealousy of us when we were kids.
I started to explain the loss of roots, of a home. Just about every base we grew up on has been closed, and I have nowhere to go back to. She argued that her parents sold the two homes she grew up in, and therefore doesn't have a home to go back to either. When I pointed out that her town was still there, she did agree that yes, it was different.
It is hard for the non-brat to understand that while yes, many of us brats had great opportunities as children, there will always be something missing.
We will always feel like outsiders to civilians, and while we consider ourselves Military we are outsiders there as well. As children in school, we were often moved to a new assignment, and the other students had known each other since kindergarten and had grown up together, thereby making us the outsider.
As adults we cannot even answer the simple question at a dinner party, "So, where are you from?" We no longer can carry a Military ID, and we are no longer welcomed on the Military Installation, and in fact, the Military does not even recognize our existence.
We can not even qualify for a discount at Government held landmarks. They have taken our homes, our towns, our privileges, and we are left to ourselves to adapt to a foreign, civilian world. There are no numbers kept as to how many of us there are out here.
The second we resign our ID card, we resign our identity.
Yes, many of us do feel a sense of loss of our childhoods. Not because we feel cheated out of our childhoods, but feel cheated of our past.
Well said. I totally understand. I was a "brat" from the 1970's until 1992 when I married a fellow military brat! The base where my husband and I met is now closed and was given back to the German government. I attended the University of Maryland in Munich....it's long gone now also...the post it was located on was given back to the Germans also. Although I don't think I would have ever traded the experiences I had as a military brat, I do sometimes feel sad that the places that I have such wonderful memories of are no longer there.
Dawn, I know the sense of loss that comes from not being able to visit childhood haunts. the base we lived on in Germany has reverted back to German ownership, but you know what? I got on Google Earth a while back and purely from memory as to where the base was in relation to the city center, i found it! Most all the buildings are still there and look like inhabited apartments. the Germans kept most of the street names too but put allee instead of street...it was pretty cool.
I know exactly how you feel. All my life I have avoided the question "where are you from?" because I feel like I am not "from" any one place! Every school I went to except the military ones made me feel like an outsider. Even now I don't know where most of my friends are because once you move you usually gave up your life and friends. We lived mostly in Europe and some states but it is hard to go back to any of your old homes because most of the bases are not there anymore. We were never close to any of our extended family and my grandmother always acted jealous whenever we did come to visit. Yes we were cheated out of a past and no one but one of us understands this.
I attended Elaki School in Kifissia, Greece, from 1974-1976. It was in a former hotel, and we had open classrooms. The high school (7-12th grades) was closed my last year there, and the few remaining high school students attended the American School.
A few of years ago I started looking up my past, starting with classmates.com, I believe, and I couldn't find my school. I searched the D.O.D. website where military schools are listed and it wasn't there. I began to question my sanity, as over the years I searched military brat websites for any mention of it. Finally, I came into contact via email with someone who at least remembered the school existed, and then I found the sister of a classmate who attended the school. I learned that the school was shut down shortly after my family left. Apparently it was only opened for a short time for the Navy kids who came in on the 7th fleet and then was closed after the fleet pulled out.
I also lived at Ft. Allen Puerto Rico in the late 70's and that base was shut down shortly after we left. Since my yearbooks were thrown out by my mentally ill husband, I have only my photo albums left to remember everyone. Thank goodness my mom always took pictures and passed that interest on to me.
Colleen, your comment about some schools being imaginary struck home with me. Over the years people have asked me about alumni for this or that school and there just didn't appear to be a website for some schools.
Since alumni groups are typically all voluntary and given that some schools may have been small I fear a lot of schools have fallen through the cracks. Recently, i was trying to find websites for several overseas schools and Google came up empty handed.
Also, many well meaning volunteers will start a website within someone else's domain like geocities or other domains that seem to run a limited lifespan then all the websites built within it go away.
Fortunately, all the schools I went to were fairly large and there seems to be alumni groups spanning many generations so there will hopefully be a history to be passed on in the future, but given there is not any sort of systematic saving this history and with an ever aging baby boomer population, a lot of our Military Brat experience won't be passed on, which is why I encourage all Military Brats to blog about themselves in multiple places on the Internet, including Military Brat Life and Military Brats Online, the companion website to this one.
I was a military brat from 1941 to 1960. I started grade school in Sapporo, Japan in 1947 just after WW II. I can't remember thaname of the school. However, I attended H.S. in Augsburg, Germany. Just on a lark I keyed in "Augsburg American H. S and came up with a lot of information including a web site just for those of of us in my age group. Maybe if you do the same with the names of your schools you will find a treasure.
Greg, it sounds a lot like you went to Karlsruhe! We were stationed there from 1970 until 1976. I went back around 2005, and walked right up to the apartment we lived in on Tennessee Street (now Tennesseeallee). They've added another floor to each building, but the truly ironic thing was that all of the support buildings, such as the school and PX still had their US names on them (the school even still has the Knight mascot). There was an eerie sense of sadness that no American would ever be stationed there again. And for others of us, it's even worse. Many bases that have closed the world over have been completely torn down, erasing any ties we might have been able to hold onto of our past.
The mention of giving up one's ID card is something unique unto us. When we turn a certain age, we hand over our access to the life that is the only one some of us have known. Civilians just can't understand that. So while a base might still physically be standing long after we've grown up, most of us (unless we either join the services, marry into it, or work civil service) can't ever truly go "back" home, even if all of the structures remain. And then the question becomes, which post/base do you claim as "home?" The silver lining is that we have options to define our childhood geographically that many others do not. I can call on three different places to say I'm "from" and have always claimed Mannheim, Germany as my hometown. But I could have just as easily called Karlsruhe as my home...
We're a unique breed, and we owe it to those coming up behind us to help them along the way to prepare for the inevitable transition that's coming their way.
As an AF brat, my only "home" was the town we went to where my aunts, uncles and cousins lived. Although most of them are gone now, that little town is still "home" in my memories. It is still confusing to me at times that I never lived there, yet feel such an attachment to it. I guess it was because it was the only "permanent place" in my life.
There is a book "Brats Without Boarders" and a dvd "Brats Our Journey Home" which I found comforting, I learned that I don't feel any differently than other brats and why we are different also how being a brat has formed my adult life in ways I never thought of.