The bowl of M&M’s sitting on the Adamson’s kitchen table sits almost untouched day after day, its contents barely shrinking as just one piece is eaten each night.

Each candy is one more day until Chief Warrant Officer David Adamson finally comes home to his family from active duty in Iraq.

Adamson is one of the 900 Utah National Guardsmen currently deployed in Iraq, all told to expect 12 months of service overseas with one or two chances for two-week leaves at home. According to Maj. Hank McIntire, Utah National Guard spokesman, that number has been decreasing since 2003, when it was upwards of 3,000.

While the Utah National Guard reports that only two of their servicemen have been killed in action, another ten Utahns have been killed in Iraq serving in other military branches like the Army Reserves, contributing to the much-publicized marker of 2,000 American military deaths reached last week.

“We’ll be deployed overseas as long as necessary,” McIntire said, “and that depends on the Commander in Chief. Our job is to be prepared and ready to answer the call, and every time the nation has called we’ve answered.”

Most of Utah’s servicemen are not full-time members of the military, McIntire said. They become full-time when they are activated and mobilized, but usually return to their civilian jobs and part-time Guard service when they come home.

That’s how Kayelynn Adamson’s husband started in the Guard – initially enrolling for schooling and part-time service, until he was offered what she says were a job and salary he couldn’t turn down. Although he has served in the military for almost their entire marriage, she calls his tour in Iraq the hardest thing she’s ever had to live through.

“You hear about people who send their loved ones off and you think oh, how sad,” she said, “but you really don’t know until you live it, until you go through each day and you can’t speed those days up. The support a husband and wife have for each other — you don’t realize how important that is until it’s gone.”

The hardest part is sometimes the everyday things — a Keith Urban song on the radio or a plumbing problem she doesn’t know how to fix herself. Harder than those moments, Kayelynn said, are stories like the time a convoy followed David’s through an Iraqi town, one day later, and several men were killed under fire.

The four Adamson children, aged 11 to 20, have come up with their own ways of keeping their dad a part of everyday life. Besides the M&M ritual, every “slug bug” they see counts as a hug for him, and when the clock says 11:11 or 2:22 it’s a kiss. That would make about 552 hugs so far, Kayelynn said.

Maj. McIntire, who spent a year at Guantanamo Bay before returning to Utah to work in National Guard public affairs, said it is important to remember that the families waiting at home are a key part of the war effort.

“I left nine kids for a year,” he said. “I could not have done what I did without the support of my wife. None of our service would be possible without the support of our families and our civilian employers … they’re just as much a part of the team as the guy or gal in uniform.”

For now, the Adamson’s are anxiously preparing for David’s two-week leave over Thanksgiving — it will be the first they’ve seen him for seven months, and they plan to make up for all the holidays and family events he’s missed. For one thing, he has yet to meet his oldest daughter’s first baby.

Kayelynn said she doesn’t know quite how to feel when she sees people protesting the war her husband is helping fight.

“Sometimes you feel like, ‘Yeah, get our men home,’” she said, “but we do need to stand for our country, because if we didn’t what would happen? Probably none of us would be free. It’s true what they say, that freedom isn’t free, somebody pays for it. They really do.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 7 Nov 2005