I previously posted that my wife was pregnant with a baby boy. And that the good doctors at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Washington, got alarmed one day and decided to induce labor. As a result, my boy, Wright Junior was born on July 8, 1986. Prior to inducing labor that day when I had brought my wife into the hospital for her OB/GYN appointment, the doctors had informed us of the decision to induce labor. And they informed me that I had a couple of hours to go home and grab my wife’s things and change clothes and return to the hospital. Of course, you realize they were Army doctors, right? And of course, you also realize that they were naturally, totally incorrect. I didn’t even make it out of the building before the damn kid decided to make his grand entrance into the world. I darn near missed the whole Kodak moment because the doctors sent me on a wild goose chase down the hall toward my car. Fortunately, I was in damn good shape. So, I made it back to the delivery room in less than two shakes of a lamb’s tail. If you are not familiar with just how fast two shakes of a lamb’s tail is, it is at least as fast as lickety-split and much faster than right quick and in a hurry. If you need more information than that, I guess you will just have to time it. You know. The same way that those lying-ass cops do when they write speeding tickets, and they forget to turn on their radar gun. Either because they are too busy jerking each other off in the squad car, or they are too busy eating donuts or both. Anyway, just three days after my son was born, the unit I was commanding, the 508th Maintenance Detachment, was alerted for deployment. My unit was an RDF (Rapid Deployment Force) aligned detachment to certain critical elements of I Corps at Fort Lewis. Whenever one of those critical elements of I Corps got alerted for deployment, by default, we got alerted. Yay. Usually, generally but not always, a commander lives for deployment because that’s where shit happens. However, I did say not always. There is a reason that I said not always. Sometimes, there are extenuating circumstances that trump those “live-for” moments that commanders dream about. One such moment or circumstance is having a new member added to your family such as the birth of a son or a daughter. It is during those moments that you wish to heaven that you did not have an obligation to the Army. It is during those moments when you curse the Army because you are ripped away from your family in their moment of critical need. On the one hand, you have a military unit with a mission and a critical need, and on the other hand, you have your family with your newborn son or daughter whom you must leave behind. You must sacrifice one to serve the other. At any other time, you would gladly stand up and accept this duty. In fact, at a later point in my career, during another command, I even volunteered my company’s services for deployment to another theater for a critical mission. Everybody all the way up to the Two Star in my chain of command questioned my sanity. They asked me what in the hell was wrong with me. They asked if I understood that there was a possibility that I and my soldiers could get killed. No shit. I simply asked, “Isn’t that why we’re here? To do or die? Preferably, to do rather than die?” See, I believed, and wholeheartedly subscribed to the logic of General George S. Patton, Junior. He said, and I quote, “No poor bastard ever won the war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country. And the object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” But I digress. A week after my unit was alerted for deployment, we deployed for parts unknown. Meanwhile, my wife had to care for my newborn son and my six-year-old daughter by herself. She did have some help from her mother and the neighbor. But still, I felt as if I had abandoned her. I felt that way for the entire duration of the flight to our destination. Once we arrived at NTC (National Training Center), Fort Irwin, California, we got busy playing Army. Once we started playing Army, I forgot all about my newborn son and my wife and daughter. When my unit redeployed back to Fort Lewis and I returned home to my family, I finally learned how much trouble my family had while I was gone. Forget the fact that the Army had deployed me. Suddenly, I was the bad guy. I was the monster that had abandoned my family in their time of greatest need. Just label my deployment the great escape because that’s what they did. They called it the great escape. What had I escaped from? I hadn’t busted out of any jail. I hadn’t escaped from the clutches of a man-eating lion or tiger. The Mafia hadn’t been out gunning for me. So I’m not really sure just exactly what I had escaped from. I hadn’t tried any of Houdini’s tricks. You know. Like the one where he was chained and handcuffed and bolted inside of a glass box filled with water that was locked from the outside. No. I had not tried any of that shit. But I had pulled off the great escape, nevertheless. Eventually, my wife begrudgingly let me off the hook. But that damn deployment turned out to be one helluva exercise in futility.
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