Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9102030317
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
People line up to wait outside the movie theater, and there's an hour wait to be seated for dinner at the nearest strip-mall restaurant.
Not exactly what you'd expect to find right now in a town that's home to the U.S. Army's second-largest base, a town that got its Vietnam-inspired nickname from the once rough-and-tumble lifestyle that prevailed in this military-dominated city.
While 95 percent of Fort Bragg's 50,000 soldiers are stationed in the Middle East - with only a skeleton crew left behind to run operations - Fayetteville, the town, lives on.
Not so much in spite of the men and women who are gone, but because of them.
Although overall business in town is down, a woman named Gina says the slump hasn't yet affected the combination pawn-jewelry-photo shop where she works. "We sold a whole lot of jewelry at Christmas. I figured the wives were needing to treat themselves with their husbands gone."
Tensions are up here, and maybe that's why traffic is so heavy and the malls so busy - people here are going out of their way to escape the TV news.
Crime hasn't stopped for war, either. When the troops first went to the gulf, soldiers' families put up red-white-and-blue ribbons outside their houses. But instead of signaling a show of support, the ribbons marked the absence of a spouse - and a crime waiting to happen. After a few reports of attacks and burglaries, the ribbons came down.
But banners hang from many businesses. This isn't the kind of place you'd expect to see an anti-war demonstration, after all.
The town's daily newspaper, The Fayetteville Observer-Times, devotes a page on Saturday to war poetry, presumably written by wives of soldiers stationed in the Gulf:
" . . . I am fearful of changing scenes:
of camouflage tan turning red
in the desert sand.
of flashing images on the evening news . . ."
A friend named Paul, an Army captain, waits by the phone. In one respect, he feels lucky to be one of a handful sent back from the gulf last week for new training.
But mostly he feels frustrated and guilty. Seven years spent preparing for combat and now, by fluke, he's back in the United States, glued to CNN just like everyone else.
Meanwhile in the gulf, some of his best friends may die. "I admit I didn't think I'd ever see war when I signed up for the Army," he says. "But I sure as hell didn't think I'd be sitting here if it came to that."
In the months leading up to the war, the letters Paul sent from the gulf ended with "Pray for peace." He couldn't say exactly what it was he was doing over there, but you could sense it boiled down to this: months of sheer boredom, interrupted by moments of sheer terror.
There, news from home means everything, he says, even though for some the news isn't always good. One soldier slit his wrists after reading a Dear John letter from his wife. Luckily they found him before he'd lost too much blood.
Now, between training sessions, Paul waits by the phone for his next call to war. And though he has mixed feelings about it, he hopes the call comes soon.
A few days ago, he and some others on base were trained on how to notify the families of soldiers killed or missing in action.
Paul says he'd rather face the chance of dying himself than have to tell anyone about the death of their husband or father, wife or mother.
So in Fayette-nam, he prays.
Not so much for peace anymore, but for the phone to ring.
by CNB