Heather Sweeney: CAMOUFLAGE • Book Reviews

Inside The Wire

Nonfiction by Heather Sweeney, reviewed by Krista Puttler
CAMOUFLAGE: HOW I EMERGED FROM THE SHADOWS OF A MILITARY MARRIAGE (Knox Press)

The word camouflage can be traced back to the 14th century Italian word camuffare, which means to feign or conceal, like a clown puts on makeup. A slightly more recent origin comes from the French camouflet, which means to exhale a puff of smoke into the face. Camouflet is a concealment put on by others, or one we allow others to put on us; it is also a fitting inspiration for Heather Sweeney’s memoir, Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage.

The story begins two months before Sweeney’s wedding, when her husband-to-be shares that he is joining the military, “as casually as if he were suggesting we order pizza for dinner.” In the previous year while they were dating, he never once expressed to Sweeney any interest in serving on active duty. She is baffled by this out-of-the-blue decision and all that came with it: “my head spun with timelines and acronyms and military jargon.” She had not grown up in a military family (her father served only briefly). But this man is the love of her life, and she cannot imagine life without him. If her husband “was passionate about this path, I would support him, follow him anywhere.”

Sweeney continues her wedding preparations, alone, while her husband-to-be gets in shape for the military physical fitness test. They decide on a small, destination wedding—a great escape to start their lives together—even though Sweeney mentions, almost as an aside, that she wished for something bigger. As she walks down the aisle, storm clouds brew behind their beach wedding, and she has a clairvoyant moment: “We’re not meant to grow old together.” But she brushes it off as prewedding jitters and continues down the aisle. Shortly after their marriage, Sweeney’s husband leaves for basic officer’s training school, and she finds herself all alone, suddenly thrown into the military spouse role, without her husband by her side and without anyone to learn from.

Military dependents’ lives are unique from civilian lives. Yes, deployments to war zones are stressful. Most non-military folks can empathize with this. But many civilians do not understand all the stressors and expectations put on military spouses to appear strong, independent, and capable of pivoting at a moment’s notice. Sweeney is expected to act a certain way. She writes that “one of the primary duties of a military spouse is to understand and accept the hardships inherent in military life.” Being a military spouse is not just having the title, “it was an entire identity”—one that is bound up not in herself, but in her husband’s job.

Eventually Sweeney and her husband figure out a routine as a couple. When they are together, it is like another honeymoon; they are sweet and caring to each other. But when another absence looms on the horizon, their interactions shift solely to what her husband needs for the next trip, not discussing anything that Sweeney may need when she is alone. And they never make time to talk about her worries that fitting into the military spouse role is slowly causing her identity to be pushed to the periphery.

Sweeney’s past life, traditions, and career are all put on hold. She faces difficulties in her career as a teacher, particularly in trying to get hired. During one interview, Sweeney observes, “I could see her doing the math in her head, mentally calculating if I was worth hiring.” It’s clear: her worth as a teacher has to be compared to how soon she will have to leave because of her husband’s career. Their first Christmas as a married couple is spent without family in a local Pensacola bar. Her husband accepts this as an adventure, whereas Sweeney, “[smiles] back, even though this wasn’t the cute tradition I wanted to remember.” Yet, her husband seems oblivious that his job is changing the person he married. “The military forced us to be creative, and Tristan accepted the challenge well.”

Over time, Sweeney rises to the challenge—because she must. During one trip away, Sweeney’s husband almost misses the birth of their first child. Sweeney muses, “maybe this wasn’t just a close call but a wakeup call… I wasn’t prepared to have a baby without my husband, but I should have been. From then on, I vowed to build a tougher military spouse skin.” Shortly after the birth, her husband deploys to a combat zone. Somehow, she must still “keep the homefront running so he didn’t have to worry about his family while he focused 100 percent on his mission.” But she wonders if anyone, particularly her husband, understands how difficult it is to care for a newborn alone while constantly worrying if her husband will ever come home. When he does return, she wonders if the struggles in her marriage are just normal reintegration problems or a sign of something more. But there is no time to figure this out because they have to get ready to move to Japan. Moving to a foreign country, not knowing the language or the customs, can put a strain on anyone’s marriage. But Sweeney is also struggling to keep up appearances, to be the strong and “independent military wife Tristan needed me to be.”

Through it all, Sweeney cannot get the premonition from her wedding day out of her head—that this relationship is just a coverup, that it was never meant to be. Contemplating a divorce while working and living within the small military community brings an additional level of concealment to Sweeney’s life. The fights, miscommunications, moments of making up, and repeated absences continue for thirteen years. Sweeney eventually realizes she does not love the person she is married to anymore, but due to the dynamics of her marriage, she also does not fully know who she is without him. She knows herself only as a military spouse, and divorce seems like the last option a military spouse would choose.

Sweeney comments, “no one can understand unless they’ve lived it themselves.” As a military spouse myself, who also grew up in a military family and who is a Navy veteran, I think she is mostly correct. Not all military marriages are like hers, but all military spouses can probably relate to some aspect of her book. And I would argue that all spouses, military and civilian, can recognize within her story similar aspects of their own.

Life as a military spouse is truly a life inside the wire—a place that is supposed to be safe within a combat zone, a place that is only truly known by those inside it. But Sweeney does an incredible job of pulling up the wire and letting us all peek inside.

Krista Puttler is a military brat, a preacher’s kid, a US Navy Veteran, and a military spouse. Her writing has appeared in As You Were: The Military Review, Collateral, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Cleaver Magazine, among others. A medium-roast coffee gal at heart, she is pleasantly surprised by how much she loves Italian espresso. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters.