Female veterans write their war stories

The women at the table are on a mission. They've only just met a couple weeks earlier, but they have developed a camaraderie that will carry them through to the end of this latest assignment.

All are veterans, meeting at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Downtown Indianapolis to share their "war stories" and learn how to put those stories into words on paper.

Women Veterans' Memoirs: A Writing Workshop has brought them together. It's a free workshop designed to help women craft their military stories through prose or poetry. A grant from the Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation paid for the program.

Led by Shari Wagner, an instructor for the Indiana Writers Center, the class meets twice a month through March. The best work from each veteran will be published in a book by the Writers Center and celebrated at a public reading in May.

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These vets are a tough and varied bunch. The youngest are in their 30s, the oldest in their 60s. Collectively, they've served in just about every branch of the military, during times of war and peace.

"I watched as the planes flew into the Twin Towers, and I watched as (the towers) fell. It was my freshman year of college, and I felt the pull of my country at that moment."

Those are the words of Christylee Vickers, 33, who enlisted in the Army in 2002 and served in Iraq as a light-wheel vehicle mechanic. It was the hardest thing she's ever done, and she still bears the scars. She describes her time with her unit at Fort Campbell, Ky., as a "battle" and her command "toxic."

She completed her service in 2007 and eventually moved back to her hometown of Shirley with her husband and two children.

"The biggest and most important thing I learned when I was in the Army was not how to change a radiator on an HMMVW, or how to search vehicles for bombs. And not how to march in step, or even shoot a gun. It was that I have a voice, and that I can impact the way things are if I stand up and use it," she said.

"I use everything that happened when I was in the Army. And every bad day I channel that into making a difference," Vickers said. "I advocate for veterans' issues."

Specifically, mental health issues. Vickers has been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and struggles with her experiences during war.

She can still smell and hear the mortars, improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire that were part of life and death in Iraq. She remembers the buildings shaking, roads crumbling and people dying.

"As a mechanic, I had to fix the broke stuff, ignore the blood and get the truck back on the road."

When people talk about post-traumatic stress disorder and war trauma, they automatically think of men, she said. "I want my fight and all the pills I take daily to be worth something."

Crafting their stories

At each class, the women are given a writing prompt, such as "Why I enlisted" and "What I learned in boot camp." They work on that section of their story before returning for the next class, at which point they take turns reading what they've written and listening to gentle suggestions from peers and from Wagner.

"I’m a big believer in the importance of memoir writing as a way for anyone to make sense of his or her life stories and to share those stories with others," Wagner said. "But I think it’s particularly important for veterans to explore their experiences, which often are painful, through writing.

"When you create a well-written story from the reservoir of memory, you, like any artist, are exerting control over your material," she added. "It’s a process that brings enlightenment and healing and, ultimately, a powerful sense of connection as you craft something that becomes a gift to others."

Wagner also was pleased to learn that this workshop would be for female veterans because most military memoirs have been written by men. "I think it’s vital that female voices start to be heard."

Bugs on the menu

Leslie Bales and Laura McKee are survivors. The two Air Force vets found out while talking after the workshop that both had completed survival training during their service, a week of intense physical and mental challenges that few women attempted 30-plus years ago.

Bales, who served from 1978 to 1984, was the first female to qualify as a load master on a C5 transport aircraft in her unit.

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Because women weren't permitted in career fields in the military at that time, she said she had to work hard to convince her superiors that she deserved a shot.

Though she didn't serve during wartime, "I went up against a male-dominated military; it was a fight," said the 55-year-old, who now serves as director of customer operations for the Department of Defense. She's been at the Bean Federal Center at the former Fort Benjamin Harrison since 1992.

Her time training in 7-foot snowdrifts taught her to use her strengths, to prove that she was capable. And she succeeded. The only thing she couldn't force herself to do? Eat bugs. "That's why I went in February," she told McKee.

For her part, McKee chose eating bugs over miserable cold during her survival training experience. "I couldn't have done it in winter," she said.

The 46-year-old has been with the Air Force Reserves since 1990, serving as a jet engine mechanic. She joined because she was inspired by her grandmother's travels around the world, and over the years, she has seen her fair share as well: England, Germany, Ireland, Australia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam.

"I'm glad I got to do it then as opposed to now because of all the threats around the world," said McKee, women's veterans coordinator for the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs.

Painful past

Sometimes those threats came at the hands of the very people the women served alongside.

Lisa Wilken was raped 22 years ago by a fellow airman during basic training at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. She was 22. What followed was years of torment, some of it caused by those charged with investigating the assault, some from the anxiety and depression she suffered as a result. She went on to serve as a lab technician at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio before being granted a medical discharge three years after the rape.

Her story was detailed in The Indianapolis Star and USA Today in 2013.

Leaving with anything less than an honorable discharge was not an option, said the Westfield mother of two, adding that military sexual trauma veterans like her had three choices: take it like a trooper, go AWOL or kill yourself. She refused to quit. Her attacker was identified and forced out of the military but never served jail time.

Wilken said she told her commanding officer to remember her name "because I won't always wear this uniform and you will hear from me again."

In 2013, she testified before Congress about the care and treatment of military sexual trauma veterans, and she continues to advocate for female veterans.

Vickers, too, hopes her story will give others the courage to seek treatment if they suffered military trauma.

"The best help I've gotten isn't pills or talk therapy. ... The best for me is talking vet to vet, being supported, understood, validated."

In Vickers' mind, a war story is supposed to be heroic, something they make movies about. Her story is about fighting for her place in the Army and for equal care once PTSD closed in. She kept a journal during her deployments in Iraq and has copies of letters written to family members during that time that will help in shaping her story.

"In my own perfect world, the soldier isn't given a boot in the ass and tossed out the door the day their enlistment ends. If their experience is anything like mine, that only makes the war trauma more intense. Then you truly feel alone and abandoned again," she said.

"We need real change to happen; we need real services for vet reintegration, and we need it soon. That is how I will heal, I will advocate for change."

Call Star reporter Maureen Gilmer at (317) 444-6879. Follow her on Twitter: @MaureenCGilmer.