Nonfiction Book HEART OF A MILITARY WOMAN Now Available

I've just received a copy of the new nonfiction book HEART OF A MILITARY WOMAN by Sheryl L. Roush and Eldonna Lewis Fernandez. (The above is an affiliate link.)

Sheryl is a former Navy wife "honoring the unique lifestyle, challenges and dedication of military life." Eldonna is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant "with 23 years of honorable military service."

The book is a collection of essays by military members and their families. And I'm pleased to be one of the contributors.

Here from the book is my essay "Proper Mrs. Lieutenants in 1970":

On my third date in late winter of 1967 with the young man who would become my husband, Mitch said to me: “I’m going to Vietnam.” At that moment the song “Duke of Earl” was playing in the background of the party we were attending with other members of the newspaper staff of the State News, Michigan State University’s daily newspaper. Over 40 years ago, and I still remember it, as the saying goes, “like yesterday.”

At that time the Vietnam War was raging – battlefield casualties were shown on the nightly news (albeit in black and white). And the anti-Vietnam protesters were raging too. No voluntary army then – a draft (although the first draft lottery in December 1969 had not yet taken place). Mitch was a junior, two years ahead of me, and he was in Army ROTC.

In the summer of 1968, a year later, Mitch was commissioned a second lieutenant in infantry. That summer he attended ROTC summer camp at Ft. Riley, Kansas – a hellhole in the days before air conditioning. Of the four weekends out of six that the men got off, they drove to a motel and slept four in an air-conditioned room. The cookies that my mother sent him from Elgin, Illinois, melted in his locker, and he reported that at 3 a.m. the temperature was still unbelievably high.

At Fort Riley Mitch’s hayfever was so bad that he was in the infirmary for three days with pneumonia. He got out of sick bay for the night compass course because, if he had missed that exercise, he would have had to repeat summer camp.

Before Mitch went off to summer camp he insisted he didn’t want to get married until after he had served his ROTC two-year commitment. Upon his return from Ft. Riley he had changed his mind. We set our wedding date for September 7, 1969, as Mitch had a year’s active duty deferment to get a master’s degree at MSU.

During the year that Mitch got his master’s in communication and I finished my undergraduate journalism degree in three years, I typed on a manual typewriter numerous copies of Mitch’s request for a branch transfer to military intelligence while Mitch took an army correspondence course in psychological warfare.

We were married as planned, and when we returned from our honeymoon Mitch was scheduled to report to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for Infantry Officers Basic training. Mitch called an army clerk in St. Louis, Missouri, to ask about his branch transfer. She told him not to report to Ft. Benning; she would put his orders on hold until he heard about his branch transfer request.

This delay and the eventual granting of the branch transfer put us on the road to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, for Armor Officers Basic training (Military Intelligence officers had to first take a combat officers’ training course) in May 1970 a few days after the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent State University during a protest against President Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia.

Even though the army hadn’t said officers attending Armor Officers Basic (AOB) could bring their wives, I insisted on going with my husband. The Ft. Knox housing office had a list of available off-post housing, and we found a one-bedroom apartment in Muldraugh, Kentucky.

Mitch started AOB and suggested to a classmate from the South who lived near us that the two men carpool and their wives share the other car. Suddenly I was spending my days with someone who until now hadn’t known a Jew (me), let alone been friends with a Northerner.

And then came the ironic surprise: Even though the army hadn’t said we AOB wives could come, there was a training program for us to learn how to be proper Mrs. Lieutenants. I raised my hand to be chair of the entertainment committee for the wives’ graduation luncheon. Of course my carpool mate had to be on my committee as we shared a car.

Somehow we got three other AOB wives on our committee: a black (the correct term in those days), a Puerto Rican who spoke English and was the daughter of a career enlisted man, and a Puerto Rican who didn’t speak English. And then the five of us had to adjust to our racial, religious and class differences in order to get along.

This coming together of such different women because our husbands went on active duty at the same time made a lasting impression on me. I soon realized that, as different as the five of us were, our husbands’ well-being was the most important thing to each of us. And that in this shared concern we were all proper Mrs. Lieutenants.

Thirty-eight years later from my time as a new Mrs. Lieutenant, I published my novel Mrs. Lieutenant to tell a fictional story of this experience that had such an impact on my life.

Read the first four chapters or the entire novel MRS. LIEUTENANT based on these experiences at Ft. Knox.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. Her newest project is www.FilmsThatSupportOurTroops.com.

Phyllis' company MillerMosaicLLC.com does power marketing that combines traditional marketing principles and Internet marketing strategies to put power in your hands.

New Afghan Law Makes It Legal for Husbands to Rape Their Wives

"A new Afghan law makes it legal for men to rape their wives, rights groups said." This news blurb was carried on the front page of the April 3rd Wall Street Journal.

My immediate thought was: That's one reason we're in Afghanistan -- to try to stamp out this oppressive male-dominated society.

My second thought was about the April 1st interview of Eldonna Lewis Fernandez on the BlogTalkRadio Show www.YourMilitaryLife.com that I co-host with Nancy Brown of www.YourMilitary.com.

Eldonna retired from the Air Force as a master sergeant and is now working with women to empower them. You can read Eldonna's January 23rd guest post about her military experiences and the book HEART OF A WOMAN, which she is co-authoring. (The deadline for submission of essays by military women has been extended to April 20th.)

Yet it's Eldonna's life experiences -- how she was raped more than once while in the military -- and how she finally got help (she suffered PTSD from these experiences and her abusive childhood) that offer the inspiration for women -- and the reminder of how wrong this new Afghan law is.

Listen to the interview now of Eldonna Lewis Fernandez.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Heart of a Military Woman -- to Support and Defend

Below is a guest post from Eldonna Lewis Fernandez, MSgt USAF Retired. The photo is of her in Qatar in the summer of 2002.

May 2002 -- The El Paso Texas airport was busy as always. Many army personnel were in a group heading to board a plane for a deployment to Afghanistan. Ft Bliss is a stone’s throw from the airport and Holloman AFB where I was stationed is 90 miles away. This is an area saturated with the presence of the military and the airport was busy with troops coming and going.

I walked to the escalator and stepped on. I didn't look back until I got to the top and saw my children and my sister walking toward the exit. They could no longer walk me to the gate to see me off for temporary duty. National Guard personnel were at various locations throughout the airport, weapons ready; 9/11 had left our country in a constant state of alert.

It was now my turn to support and defend in the Middle East. As an Air Force master sergeant I was being sent to run an operation.

I walked down the long corridor to the plane that would start my journey. El Paso to Atlanta to board a flight with 200 plus others deploying to various locations in that region. Atlanta to Germany for a layover while the plane refueled. Germany to Qatar where I would be spending the next four months of my life in tent city.

There was the threat of being blown out of the sky and we all knew it. We approached the runway to the base in Qatar with shades drawn and lights out so as not to be easily detected.

Touch down around midnight; it’s hot, humid, dusty and miserable. The bags are piled in the middle of the camp, about 1000 of them. Most people have four bags, personal and military-issued gear. Good thing I marked mine with some bright colored scarves -- 400 chemical warfare gear bags all look the same.

Once processed in, my group of about 30 piled into a bus and was hauled off to a place called Camp Snoopy, where I would run the contracting operation for the 1,000 person base …


Unless you've been in the military or been around military life, you may not know what the life of a military woman is like. The book I’m co-authoring – “Heart of a Military Woman” – will be a collection of inspirational stories and poems about women who have served their country in the armed forces.
President Obama made a comment in his inaugural speech about being of service. The military woman is being of service to her country, to her family, to her children if she has them, and to her fellow service members. It's a special kind of life.

If you are or were a military woman, a child of a military woman, a mother, father or other relative of a military woman, a friend, co-worker or neighbor, you have a story to tell.

We are looking for original stories by, for and about military women. Please submit your story before the March 14th deadline for possible publication in our upcoming book.