We arrived at Fort Huachuca on 9 August 1978.  I personally could not remember a happier day in my life than that day.  I had found the woman that I loved and she was with me at last. As far as professionally I was finally through all my military schooling, nearly 4 years after my enlistment I had reached my first goal, that of being an officer in the Army and arriving to my first duty station.   

Susan and I spent the day looking for a place for her to live, but rent was expensive and the only place we found was about 9 miles outside the base in Sierra Vista a mobile home park where they rented fully furnished trailers.  There was no way I could afford this place at the time unless Susan could find a job and soon.   If we were married we could have had base housing at no cost or impact on my pay, but seeing we were not married and in fact in the eyes of the Army as well as Christians we were living in sin they would not allow me the extra money for off base housing known as BAQ.  I was allowed to live off base since I was an officer but that was the limit.  I had made sure to inform my commanding officer of what I was doing and of Susan’s legal separation and intention to get a divorce.  I will tell you at this point for those that believe the Army was ever on a witch hunt to find sexually immorality nothing could have been further from the truth.  I was honest and up front from the first day as I always tried to be and as such the as long as no one complained my commanders left the issue up to Susan and I. 

As things would have it money got to be an issue quite quickly there was never enough money to pay for rent, utilities and the food for two people.  Sierra Vista was a very small town and it was difficult for Susan to find work that she would enjoy.  As I found out later she never would be the type of person to work out of necessity but only would work if she could have fun doing it.  So for the next 20 some years the entire burden of financial support fell on me, much later I also found out in her mind that was 100% my responsibility as the man in the first place.   Susan did find a National Guard unit up it Tucson to start to work out her ROTC obligation to serve for her education.   We turned those weekends into vacations as much as possible because I would drive her to Tucson and as often as we could get vacant room at Davis Monthan Air Force Base.  She had an aunt and uncle that lived in Tucson as well and we would always go over to their house for dinner and to visit them. 

My first assignment was as a platoon leader in a brand new company of the US Army’s Electronic Proving Grounds.  My unit was called the Digital Systems Test Company being formed for the sole purpose of preparing and conducting all manner of testing on the military’s new Tri-Tac equipment.  This equipment was the military’s first attempt and developing a true interoperable communications system for joint operations.  We were testing micro wave radios, digital circuit switches, digital message switches, and digital multiplexing equipment.   

When I first arrived the unit had only about 50 men assigned so far, there were four officers assigned by this time including myself and two other lieutenants that came with me through training at Fort Gordon and Fort Sill as well as the company commander at that time a young 1^st lieutenant.   We learned we were to have a full strength of some 250 men and women when the company was fully staffed in the next 6 months.  For the first couple of months there really was no work for us to do we simply would report for a formation in the mornings and one in the afternoon, we had no equipment yet, no mission and only a hand full of people to deal with.   It was our job to find things for soldiers to do, I did my best with what we called adventure training, we would go on road marches into the mountains and conduct map reading courses as well as the physical training benefits from the marches, and we also would organize other sports activities. Again we had no equipment including no weapons or even protective makes.   Many of us were going on to contractor conducting training courses around the United States to give us some familiarity with the new systems we would be responsible for testing.    

Susan and I were getting along great it was the best time of my life and our life’s together I believe.  By November of 1978 we had both come down with a rather severe case of venereal warts each.  At the time I never thought much about where they came from other than we were having a lot of intimate moments together at the time.   At any rate as I think back on it now there were possibly outside forces at work.

During November of 1978 I was ordered to Boston to attend a contractor school myself, and Susan went up to Washington to be with her parents.  While she was there she had her warts treated and also found out that she was pregnant with our first son.  I was very happy the night I called her and found out about it and I was very proud too.  I called everyone in my family to tell them the news.  Most were okay with it but they knew Susan and I were not married at the time.   When we got back together I did ask her to marry me and she agreed.   

My warts were much more difficult to treat and it took nearly 18 more months for mine to go away between surgeries and multi flights to the major Army Hospital at Fort Bliss outside El Paso, Texas. 

Many little things started to change almost immediately, whereas before she was pregnant Susan got up with me every morning and cooked breakfast for us both she stopped that and for the most part maybe made breakfast for the family after that maybe once a month from then on the rest of the time we were together.   She stopped washing my uniforms and I started to take them to the cleaners for any washing and sewing required on them.  She continued to wash my other clothes for several years just refused to have anything at all to do with my uniforms from then on.   She did try harder now to find her estranged husband to get the divorce.  Not only was I paying the rent, but with the pregnancy and no insurance for her there were no free medical services during her pregnancy.   I started to use credit cards now for groceries and for medical care for her.   

            In January of 1979 I started college at the Cochise County Community College.  I was the last group of even National Guard officers allowed to attend OCS with out at least a two year degree or two years worth of college credits.  I not only got in and graduated but was accepted on active duty with out any college what so ever.  It was critical that I get my start and my degree to stay in the Army as a career.    My Army jobs at Fort Huachuca were not very demanding my platoon was 120 men strong about the size of an average infantry company but I had a very good platoon sergeant at the time that not only took care of educating me but a lot of the issues in the platoon during off duty times by him self so I could attend classes for two to three nights a week.  Needless to say Susan was not happy about the more time I was spending away from home now to go to classes they were usually at least 2 hours long each night I went.   She always made dinner for me and kept the house clean but was not always happy about being left alone for so many hours a day.  Sierra Vista at the time was a very small town with little to do at all.  All the bars were western bars with country western music neither of us liked, not to mention nothing but drunks and red necks around all the time.  It was impossible for her to make friends living off base with the neighbors most of whom the couples both worked.   

            By April of 1979 she finally had gotten her completed divorce and we quickly made plans to go to Las Vegas to get married.   Her sister had just returned from a long tour in Spain with her husband an Air Force major at the time.  We drove up and stayed with them and were married the day after we arrived.    The night we were married was the very first sign that Susan was going to be very controlling in the bedroom but at the time I overlooked it even though it made me sad.  The first night we were married was the very first time she refused sex with me.  I have no idea what I had done wrong during the day but of course I was made to think I did so she used her body by refusing sex that night to punish me.  That was the first of many more times that in the course of some 22 years of marriage would some time go for 3-4 months at a time.  Not even once would she ever even give me a hint at what was wrong, what I had done or how to correct it.  I will cover much more of this in the coming chapters and the very basic reason what happened to us in 2000 was basically inevitable.   

            Once married we returned to Fort Huachuca and it was then easy to obtain base housing and move on base I believe we were in our home by the end of April.  Susan was able to go to the base medical facilities at last and receive medical care as my wife for free.   By then of course our credit cards were all ready maxed out and we were in debt for the most part the rest of our marriage. 

            On June 23^rd our first child was born a son we named Shawn William after me, Shawn being the Irish word for John.  I was so happy and proud of Shawn he was such a good baby and so cute.   Needless to say again intimacy was now an issue because she had just given birth.   About weeks after Shawn was born I had not asked Susan for any kind of sex at all but I was getting pretty desperate by then so I asked her to use her hand on me and to at least touch me.  You would have thought that was the end of the world to ask that.  She claimed from then on that I tried to have sex with her the night she brought Shawn home from the hospital.  The very first time I realized her memory of certain events were different than mine was about 10 years later when she told me that during our first discussion about the problems of our sex life together.   To this day I don’t know if I was wrong or being selfish in my request for her to use her hand on me or not, she always accused me during a 22 year marriage of only wanting sex from her so my mind is more than a little screwed up about what is right and what is wrong about sex with your wife. 

            For the most part things went along fine for the next 18 months or so.  However in January of 1981 things started to go bad for me physically.  I attended a first aid class for CPR and during that course one of my fellow lieutenants was suppose to give me a demonstration on the Heimlich maneuver on me however he did the real thing and I believe he purposely did it wrong.  Soon after I started having severe chest pains and gas that was out of this world.  I became very distraught over my health, all the symptoms were that of a heart attack and I became obsessed with the pain of it all and the fear of dying.  By the middle of February of 1981 I was a wreck.  I finally started going on sick call and all they could tell me it was I was over stressed and I needed more physical training to help with it all.  I was all ready doing daily exercises in the Army but increased my running by another 30 minutes a day.  Every time I ate I’d be in so much pain and discomfort that I would have to lie down in the fetal position for any comforts what so ever.   I was sure I was dying and no one was doing anything to help me.  Even Susan was ignoring me telling me it was all in my head.  I was loosing weight I was normally about 170 lbs but had lost 10 lbs in the last month.   

            Susan was pregnant again by this time only a couple of months but in March of 1981 she started to spot and in a few days had a miscarriage and we lost our baby.  Susan was very distraught and up set and I was simply no help to her at all.  My own physical problems were so severe by this time the added stress on her and myself from the loss of the baby was creating so much stomach acid in me all I could do was lay down.     

            About a week later I finally went to the emergency room and my EKG was so screwed up they were convinced I was having heart problems and put me in the CCU for a couple of days.  After many tests they found nothing wrong with my heart and though maybe I had an ulcer or something wrong with my stomach and they were sure I was depressed and needed counseling.   For the next 9 years this repeated for me multiple times in and out of military hospitals for the same symptoms.  Nothing was ever found by x-rays or the tests they were doing.    A lot of the more stressful jobs I had caused even more pain because of the stomach acid being created.   In a few years Susan not only became indifferent to it all she became down right spite full and hate full over it always trying to prove that what ever was wrong was only a mental condition.  It was not until I was assigned to the White House and President George H.W. Bush’s doctor the second time I complained to him knew what was wrong.  He sent me directly over to Bethesda Naval Hospital after calling the head of gastronomy to have me examined.  With in a day they discovered that I had a hiatal hernia and acid reflux disease all these years and significant damage had been done in the previous 9 years going un-treated.   From then on my stomach only caused minor problems a couple of times a year.   

            By the summer of 1981 I had been selected for Captain and retention in the US Army in an indefinite status once and for all.   Susan to this day never got over my inability to comfort her for her miscarriage nor would acknowledge my medical condition that caused me not to be there for her.   

            In June of 1981 we were assigned back to Fort Gordon, Georgia for six months of my Signal Officer Advanced course.  The trip back was very good with our son and even with all the heat we experienced.   Neither of us were too happy in the desert of Arizona, by the end of our first month there we had pretty much done all there was to do there that we enjoyed three times.  So after three whole years there we were more than ready to return to the place where we had met and had a lot more fun together. 

            When we arrived at Fort Gordon there was no on base housing for officers in our status since we were only going to be there for six months of training so we rented a very nice apartment in Augusta, Georgia the town just out side Fort Gordon.  It was very nicely located behind a very large mall and we started to enjoy life again in the “big” city with malls, real restaurants and theaters.  We met up with many friends I had made during our Basic Officer’s Course in 1978.   

            With in a few days Susan found out she was pregnant again.  So that long hot summer was not very comfortable for her.  I had a lot of time off during the advanced course. At the time it was designed to give officers a break of sorts as well as train them for more responsibilities at the company command level and higher level staff positions.   We would often go out to the lake even after school and just have a picnic with Shawn or just walk to the mall after I got home at night.  Susan had a brother that lived in Tennessee that we would go over and visit several times during the next six months we were there.   

            I was promoted to captain on 1 October, 1981 and was pretty satisfied with my career at this point.  My follow on orders were go Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington were I was to go to college full time and get my BA in Radio and Television Management.  I had gotten just one year of college credit during our stay at Fort Huachuca but from my records the Army and my requirement to obtain a degree the Army saw fit to send me full time to complete my education.   

            We moved from Fort Gordon to Washington during the middle of December 1981, and stopped off in Des Moines for my first Christmas with my mother since 1977 and as it turned out my last one until 1995 with her.  Susan was now 7 months pregnant and did not want to make the rest of the drive with me to Washington so I put her and Shawn on a plane to fly to her parent’s house and I made the rest of the drive by myself. 

            I was facing quite a challenge when I got to the University and had no idea what I needed to do other than I needed to get 3 years of college done in only 18 months that is all the time the Army gave me to do it.  I went to the head of my department there and told him what I was facing and that I had never attended a university before full time and needed help getting my schedule started.  He was very impressed that as a Captain the Army was sending me to school full time so he was very helpful.  The only problem I had was he picked out all 300 and 400 level courses for me the first quarter and I was working 7 days a week between the classes and homework.  Home work was particularly hard on Susan she did not like that I needed so much time at home to still work she wanted more help at home and did not like trying to keep the children quite for me to do the study I required. 

            Around the second week of February 1982, Susan was at the Fairchild Air Force Base hospital for her regular prenatal check up and they discovered that our child was having some problems.  She had gotten her self wrapped around her cord and was having some issues with that.   Susan was required then to go in every other day for more tests to ensure that if it the condition became serious they could react and save both her and the child.    

            When Susan went in on her birth day the 9^th of February the condition had become serious and they needed to induce labor.  I was with her and we had left Shawn with her parents at our home.   I called her parents and told them we would not be coming home tonight and they were going to induce her labor.  This started in the late afternoon.  Susan did not want the baby born on her birthday and tried all night to keep that from happening.  By midnight Susan was happy that he baby had not been born yet but the nurse on duty was frustrated and turned up the drip on her IV to help speed things along.  I asked the nurse before I left the room if I had time to go out for a smoke and she said it would be about another two hours or so.   I left and came back in less than 10 minutes to find them rushing Susan now to the delivery room.  The baby was now in a big hurry to come out and everyone was rushing around and the doctor was trying to wake up, he’d been asleep for the past couple hours waiting for the nurse to tell him when he was needed.  They through me my gown and mask and just got dressed in the delivery room.  By the time I was finished putting on my face mask Angela Nicole was there and screaming at the top of her lungs.  She was not happy about her early delivery and wanted everyone to know about it.  Mom and baby were fine, (so we thought at the time)   Angela was about 3 weeks early and very small but otherwise fine.  The doctor delivered her placenta next and made a minor comment that it did not look right but no one thought much about it at the time.  

            We all were home in a few days with our new daughter and all seemed to be going well.   However Susan continued to bleed for the next couple of weeks.  She would call the hospital and tell them and even went in once to complain about the bleeding.  However they all said it was normal or she maybe trying to have a period.  Nothing could have been more wrong.  By the 10^th day Susan went back in for a check up and they said they thought that part of her placenta may have been left in her womb and they needed to do a D&C to clean it all out for her.  It was suppose to be a very simple procedure so they scheduled it for the next day.   Shawn and I were out of town on our very first overnight camping trip together when I called and found out about her schedule the next day.  We rushed home that night so I could be with Susan and Angela.    I went to school the next day and made arrangements to miss my classes for the day because of Susan’s medical emergency.   I got to the hospital about 10 minutes after they took Susan into surgery.  I was a little upset at the time because I missed her and tried to get the nurses to let me see her before they started to no avail.  

            Two hours now had passed and I was more than nervous about what was taking so long and very worried about Susan.  I complained to the nurse who simply told me to calm down every thing was going well it was a simple procedure and there was nothing at all to worry about.  I asked her then if it was so simple and only suppose to be 10 minutes why am I still waiting 2 hours later.   She had no response and simply walked away.  Another hour passed and the doctor came to me and took me into a private room and told me we needed to talk.  By then I was very scared and the news got bad quick.  What had happened is that they did leave a part of her placenta in her and it had not only rotted in there but had actually grown into her womb near one of her fallopian tubes.  When they had gone in earlier to do the D&C they had not only ripped into her womb but cause damage to her tube as well.  She had lost a lot of blood and required about 4 bottles of blood to get her stabilized.   The doctor told me he needed my permission now to do a complete hysterectomy and that the damage was too severe.  I told him no way was I going to make that decision for Susan, all she wanted in life was to be a mother it was her whole life and we wanted at least four children.  I demanded he either fix the problem or at least give her the opportunity to make the decision.  He decided to do his best at fixing the problem.  I had left the children with a baby sitter thinking it was only going to be a couple of hours and we’d all be home.  The surgery lasted another 4 hours and it was nearly 8 hours after they took her in before I could see her and talk to her to tell her what had happened.  She was not a happy camper at all.  I told her no one knew if we could have any more children or not and if we did there were likely going to be problems.   

            This event changed Susan even more but she did her best to take care of the children an me.  In fact the only time I ever remember Susan trying to initiate sexual intimacy came during our 3 year wedding anniversary that year in April.  She had secretly made plans that day and after dropping off the children at a baby sitter came by the school to pick me up to take me home, only she had all ready gotten a hotel room for us and lunch.  She took me to the room and we had a very good time being alone for the first time in months.  The only mistake I made was telling her what a good time I had being with her and how much I loved what she had done.  It seemed that Susan did not like compliments any more than complaints so she never did that again.  Over the course of our marriage when ever I told her that the sex was incredible and I really appreciated her it was the last time she would do the same thing. 

            The next year and a half I got very use to the school schedule and by the second quarter I was there was able to make my own schedules so that I would only be in classes 4 days a week or at worst maybe one class on either Monday’s or Fridays so we almost always had a 3 day weekend together.  We would drive to her parent’s house nearly every weekend so we could have some help with the kids and maybe a night out to ourselves.   Susan now was an instructor with an Army Reserve training battalion; she would actually have to go to her parent’s home town or very close to it once a month to teach classes.    So not only were we getting to go to her parents home but we were actually paid to do it and if we wanted a hotel room for ourselves it too was paid for by the Army as part of her official business expenses.   

            School was pretty much a piece of cake it was the easiest job I had or ever would have.  Nothing much happened over the course of our stay there once Angela was born.   I continued to have stomach problems and was admitted to the hospital a couple of times but always with the same answer it was stress.  So I got use to it the best I could and lived with taking a bottle of Mylanta with me where ever we went. 

            After spending the 18 months at the University I was going to be assigned to another Army school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for 9 more weeks of training.  I spent a lot of time with the ROTC cadets I got encouraged to go to the Army’s airborne training too to learn how to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.    I was now in the best shape I had ever been in yet so I made arrangements with my instructors at the university to take my finals a week early and left one week before graduation to go to Fort Benning alone for Airborne training.  I wanted to be there at least a week before training started so I could get use to the heat and humidity of Georgia after spending the last 18 months in the mild weather of Washington.  However, as it turned out it was not enough time.  I worked out every day and I made it through the first week of training called ground week with out too much trouble, I would puke every single morning on our runs but like all good soldiers I never missed a step I’d simply step to the side of the formation and puke while I ran.   The first day in the afternoon of the second week things got very bad very fast.  It was very hot there and I had worn a battle dress uniform for the first time instead of the lighter weight fatigues I had always worn before that.  Around 2 PM just prior to going to the towers for our first training there I had a heat stroke and passed out.  I remember waking up in the base hospital emergency room and being told my core temperature was still 104 degrees.   I was pretty upset knowing full well I’d miss the rest of the weeks training if I did not make up what I lost that day.  So when they finally let me out of the hospital I went straight to the tower training office and had a talk with the captain in charge.  I explained to him my situation about lack of time for a recycle due to my follow on training at Fort Leavenworth and needed him and or his staff to take me through what I missed that day in order to complete the course.  He would not do it even when I was talking to him captain to captain.  He told me it was too much of a risk to my health after what I had been through I thought at the time I was fine but in the end he not only won out but he was so right too.  That night only a couple of hours after getting back to my room I was sick as a dog all night with throwing up and diarrhea all night long both about every 30 minutes.  The next morning I was a wreck and reported for duty to try and get recycled.  Just as I had thought the Army would not recycle me my training at Fort Leavenworth was much more important to them than be jumping out of planes and there was no time to let me have another week to finish the training.

            The only thing left to do was to out process and I went home for a couple of weeks to be with Susan and the kids for the 4^th of July weekend and rest up and try to regain my strength.  That all went pretty well until the last weekend we went to her parent’s house again so I could say goodbye to them before going off to Kansas for 9 more weeks alone.  The last night we were there Susan and I went out to eat alone and have a little time to ourselves.   However, the restaurant where we ate had a problem that night and no one knew about it either.  We both got a severe case of salmonella food poisoning.  Susan came down with it very hard the next night at home the last night I had to be with her before leaving for Fort Leavenworth.  She was very sick and was burning with fervor of 102.  It was all she could do to take me to the airport the next morning so I could leave.  She had to go back home alone and take care of the kids and herself she was sick for another 2 or 3 weeks all alone with the kids.   I did not get sick until later that night.  I had flown into Minneapolis and my sister was driving me back to Des Moines when it started to hit me.  I made it to Des Moines but only to the first rest room she could find for me.  I did not have to be at Fort Leavenworth for another 2 days so I went to my mother’s apartment and stayed with her where I thought I’d die.   I was never sicker in my life. I had diarrhea worse than I had ever imagined possible.  I tried to get a delay in reporting but was told by the colonel I called that I had no choice but to either report on time for duty or be in the hospital or dead.    

            I made the drive to Fort Leavenworth but it was very hard, I had to stop every hour and spend at least 30 minutes on my problem.   

            I had a very hard time at the start of classes because I had to leave every 30 minutes or so to go to the restroom.  I had to keep up with all the physical training including tests and running every day even though I was so sick.  I couldn’t keep anything down at all.  By the second week there Susan had gone to the doctor and they told her what was wrong with her.  By then also the LTC in charge of me had finally figured out something was seriously wrong with me and told me to go to sick call where they diagnosed me too.  I was sick for 5 weeks with that stuff.  I lost about 15 lbs and was down now to 155 lbs again, pretty skinny for me.    

            The rest of the training time there was only difficult because it was all knew to me, I was the most inexperienced officer in the class not to mention I had not even been with the Army the whole time I was at the university.   Classes were all day long 12 hours and homework would often last 8-10 hours longer.  No I am not kidding it was a brutal course in learning how to be a battalion or higher level staff officer. 

            Susan came down from Washington for my graduation, by then she had all ready gotten the Army to pick up and either ship all put into storage all our house hold goods and also rented out our home in Cheney. She had moved in with her parents about 2 weeks prior.    We also made arrangements for my mother to come to my graduation as well. Outside of my graduation from OCS and the commissioning ceremony to 2LT where my mother pinned my bars on for me she was never able to participate in any other ceremony for me.   

            Susan and I took about a week to go from Kansas back to Washington.  While in Washington she had started a course to become a Lamaze instructor and needed to attend a seminar in Ventura, California in order to complete her certification.  The idea was to help her find a job that she would like and help out with all the family expenses.  It was getting increasingly harder and harder for us to make ends meet with out using credit cards with only my income to do it on.    We drove out to California where I visited with family and then off to Ventura for her 3 day seminar.  Then back up to Washington for a couple of weeks. 

            Once in Washington we stayed at her parent’s house and we took her car and our new care over to Seattle to have the new car shipped to Germany for us when we got there.  It was nice to be alone with Susan again for the first time almost all summer long.    

            Soon after getting back to her parent’s home I had to leave for Germany by myself and wait for quarters before Susan and the children could follow me over and we could finally settle down again in a normal routine.