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Military Brat Life
I was the oldest daughter of an Army officer. We moved about 20 times
before I graduated in 1976. We mostly lived in Alabama, Georgia and
Texas and lived in Germany for three whole years while I was in high
school. We always lived on post except for the two years my dad was
in Vietnam and 9 months in California.
I hated when we lived off-post. It always made me feel unsafe. No
MP's, no barbed-wire fence to keep the dregs of society out. And it was
even scarier to me, because not only were we in this alien environment-
but Dad was gone, and maybe could never come home. Daddy's picture -
crying and praying every night.
When I was young, I remember tanks and helicopters in my back yards,
strict rules about everything, washing walls before we moved and moving
every few months. Even at a young age, I devised a way of coping with
moving. I would figure out the halfway point between the point where
I was living then and to where I was moving. Then I would allow myself
to cry about moving to the halfway point and then be excited the last
half.
In the junior high years, I remember learning of friends whose father's
died in Vietnam, taking lengthy classes on nuclear emergencies, bomb
drills, dreaming about war, shopping at the PX, and I remember how mad
Dad got when I drew a peace sign.
High school in Germany was a whole new arena. Losing my ID all the
time, MP's watching us like a hawk, GI's drooling at every female all
the damned time, more bomb drills, long bus rides to school, the best
friends in the world, barbed-wire everywhere, and more GI's.
Once a Brat, Always a Brat!
by Natalie Allison Johnson
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by Vann Baker
What is green, covered with stickers and filled with memories and icons which only a Military Brat can understand? Operation Footlocker.
We've all grown up with footlockers, but Operation Footlocker doesn't travel with one person from destination to anotherit travels to brat reunions, events and military bases as a mobile memory project.
Operation Footlocker is a grassroots effort to celebrate the shared cultural identity of Military Brats and grew out a discussion in the spring of 1996 on the Military Veterans of America site within America Online.
Mary Edwards Wertsch, author of the book Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress, and one of the participants in the discussion, first conceived the idea of taking a real footlocker and sending it around the country as a way of gathering
memorabilia and bringing brats together. Reta Jones Nicholson provided the first footlocker and was the catalyst who brought Operation Footlocker from discussion to realty.
Operation Footlocker is a volunteer effort and requests can be made to have the footlocker shipped to for brat events or sharing brat history with the general public.
For more information on appearances or to bring the Footlocker to your event, visit the Operation Footlocker web site.
This article first appeared in On The Move, Volume 1, Number 1.
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. . . Pat Conroy is a Military Brat?
For a more complete list, be sure to take a look at Glenn Greenwood's Famous Overseas Alumni & Military Brats list, located on the American Overseas School Historical Society web site.
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