Left Behind

Thursday, April 19 2007 | Send to a friend

Left Behind

Joshua Bertelson, age 9

Yesterday's news of yet another bombing in Baghdad, this one killing over 170 people, is precisely the kind of carnage that the increase in American troop levels was intended to prevent. The so-called troop surge initially quelled much of the violence. But it's impossible to know what effect the increase in troop levels will have over the longer term.

There is another side to the troop surge: the effect that the prolonged absence of a parent has on a child. According to a Pentagon study, 177,930 children now have a parent serving overseas. Joshua Bertelson is 9 years old. His father, Bret, is an Army medic who has just been sent to Iraq for the second time. Joshua talks to Dick Gordon about how hard it is not having his dad around.

Whenever I look at something of my dad's, or I hear my dad's name, or I see a picture of him, it always makes me sad inside. I always ask [my mom] the same question: why does he have to leave? And usually she says, like: 'Because that's his job. That's what he does. If you just pray he usually will come home safe.'
-Joshua Bertelson

Cari Bertelson

Their conversation later expands to include Joshua's mother, Cari, who has her own hardships trying to raise three young children with her husband gone.

What's sad is that you long to be alone and to get time by yourself.  And then once you're gone, all you can think about is getting back home.
-Cari Bertelson

Maryann Williams

The final guest is Maryann Williams, who helps 180 students like Joshua at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. She's with an organization called Club USA, which encourages the kids of deployed parents to express their anxieties and feelings through activities and art work, and ultimately to help each other with the absence of their parents.

• See some of Joshua's photos
• Read an essay Joshua wrote about saying goodbye to his dad
• Get help with deployment issues from the Army, the Navy, and the National Guard
  

Over the last year, Dick has talked with other people whose lives here at home have been altered by the war in Iraq: a mom, a trucker and a pacifist.