Beatrice Dahlen:  

I AM AN ARMY WIFE I am an Army wife -- a member of that sisterhood of women who have had the courage to watch their men go into battle, and the strength to survive until their return. Our sorority knows no rank, for we earn our membership with a marriage license, traveling over miles, or over nations to begin a new life with our Army husbands. Within days, we turn a barren, echoing building into a home, and though our quarters are inevitably white-walled and unpapered, we decorate with the treasures of our travels, for we shop the markets of the globe. Using hammer and nail, we tack our pictures to the wall, and our roots to the floor as firmly as if we had lived there for a lifetime. We hold a family together by the bootstraps, and raise the best of "brats," instilling in them the motto, "Home is togetherness," whether motel, or guest house, apartment or duplex. As Army wives we soon realize that the only good in "Good-bye" is the "Hello again." For as salesmen for freedom, our husbands are often deployed, leaving us behind for a week, a month, an assignment, a war. During separations we guard the home front, existing until the homecoming. Unlike our civilian counterparts, we measure time, not by years...Expand for more