Search Engines Log the Fearsome Journeys of War Families


A wife just found out her husband is going to war. Her husband stands in a doorway. She backs down a hallway away from the news of a deployment that keeps coming closer. She locks herself in a room, sits in front of a computer, and types into a search engine the phrase “husband off to Afghanistan soon.” She knows Afghanistan is not a word but a place. It is a country made of mountains, men, and machine guns where her husband will go to war and live or die. But she is searching for more.

This is just one search engine phrase that leads readers to my blog, Wife and War. When I see the search engine phrases soldiers and their spouses use in discovering my blog, I see the story of war. War is not fought by countries or militaries, but by people, men and women, who go to war and, if they are lucky, come home alive.

War is not over when a country withdraws its troops. War stays with a soldier. It slips through the pores of his skin and the ducts of his house, circulating like blood or heat. War stretches from an armored vehicle turning to face a village in Afghanistan to a dark living room where a spouse waits. War reaches into reintegration and the same living room, where a husband and wife stand on opposite sides in deeper darkness. There can be loud bombs, the kind where a soldier who was standing next to you is falling to the ground, dead. There can be quiet explosions, the way a bed feels half empty like a swimming pool draining. When deployment is over and the bed is full again, war is how two people lay in it, together but far apart.

The search engine phrases used by soldiers and their spouses show the battles they fight in combat and on the home front. Too often they fight these battles alone. Wounded by war, they end up isolated, sitting in front of a computer and searching for support. When I see the search engine phrases they use, I imagine their struggles.

Wives wait while their husbands are gone. One wife folds laundry and finds a shirt in a gym bag that still smells like her husband. She places it into a drawer he will not open. She sleeps in a bed that is half empty and vast, like the ocean that separates them. She patrols a dark house, checking locks, surveilling a living room stretching like a desert and lit by the glow of a computer. She sits and types “I want my husband home from war in Afghanistan.” When her telephone does not ring in 12 days, she types “deployed husband ignoring me.” Another wife thinks about her husband getting killed, returning to her in a body bag, and what her life would be like without him. She drives home from the grocery store and her driveway is either empty or has an unmarked car in it. She types “who comes and tells you your husband died at war” and “how long does it take to be notified.” There is a wife whose husband is dead, his body blown up by a roadside bomb. She types “my husband died in combat.” There is a wife standing in a kitchen, cupping her stomach, typing “pregnant wife soldier died in combat.” There are wives who type “how war will bring you to your knees.”

When the war is over, soldiers return, and wives realize the war is not over. War scars and reintegration are hard. Wives sit in rooms, alone again, even though their husbands are home. They type “men who come home from Iraq and no longer want wives” and “I’m suffering because my husband is mean now back from war.” One wife types “wife of post traumatic stress” because that is what she thinks this is. Her husband is a ghost, sitting with his body turned toward the front door. He patrols their property, marching across grass with a gun. She types “wife war P.T.S.D. leave.” There are wives whose husbands are injured with shaken brains and they type “my husband just got a T.B.I. in Afghanistan” and “Iraq veteran startled by loud noises.” Trauma spreads over skin, over sheets, covering them. One wife types “wives sticking by soldiers after injuries.” Another types “wives leaving injured husbands American war.”

There are soldiers getting orders, getting ready to go to war, thinking about a country they have never seen, made of tents and terror. One soldier types “Afghanistan deployment pistol.” He wonders what it will feel like to have it next to him, all the time, for 12 months, even as he sleeps, his standard-issue M4 or the one he will wear at his waist, the M9. A soldier types “what we do on night raids” because he knows he will have to do it, kick down doors, clear houses, fire rounds, and kill terrorists.

When soldiers come home from war, they find houses and wives that are theirs but do not feel like it anymore. There is a soldier with half his face blown off. One soldier has a prosthetic leg attached to his hip, where he used to wear his holster and pistol. There are soldiers with invisible scars, shaken brains, and flashbacks. They wake up sweating, walk down dark hallways, into living rooms that feel dead, with windows like eyes, and type “I can hear my heart beating injury.” A soldier wakes up his partner, asking her if she hears it, a garbage can being knocked over or a car backfiring, because it sounds like artillery rounds going off. And he is yelling to get down. Later he types “is it possible that me and my fiancé both imagined gunshots in the middle of the night.” One soldier types “trench and checkpoint” because those words feel good. There is a soldier whose wife thinks he should not have a gun, underneath his side of the bed, the butt within reach. He tells her being without it is like losing a limb and he types “war stress and T.B.I. automatic pistol.” When fighting fills the house like smoke and his wife’s sob becomes a battle cry that he doesn’t want to hear, one soldier types “war veteran comes home marriage at war with wife.” And because soldiers are trained to know what is coming, he types “wife left husband because of P.T.S.D.”

When wives leave and soldiers are left even more alone, in a war that will not stop, they type “war vet wife divorced me couldn’t find a job.” And because it is hard to be home, harder sometimes than war, a soldier types “I am a soldier waiting alone and I wish I could stay on deployment.” Another soldier types “coming home from war and feeling dead inside.”

When my husband deployed with the Army, I had no contact with the military. I was alone. While he was gone for 15 months, I received one telephone call from a woman associated with the Army. I thought she was calling to tell me my husband was dead. She was not. She was calling to tell me that if I traveled anywhere overnight, I needed to tell the Army where I was going so someone could notify me if my husband was killed. I never heard from the Army again, not during that 15-month deployment or after, when my husband came home from war and we faced the challenges of reintegration and struggled, together, but alone, to reconnect.

The war is not over. Military suicide is at a record high and veteran unemployment is a problem. Veterans come home with massive injuries. Others suffer silently from P.T.S.D., guilt, depression, flashbacks or face the challenges of reintegration and reconnection. Many veterans are married, with spouses who struggle alongside of them. The search engine phrases that lead readers to Wife and War show that veterans and spouses are alone and searching for support online.

Amalie Flynn’s Wife and War blog is based on her experience as a military wife. She also has two other blogs: September Eleventh and Americans at War. Amalie Flynn’s memoir is forthcoming. You can find her on Twitter and on Facebook and on The Huffington Post.