Beautifully Broken

to the final rounds of hand-to-hand combat and got his nose busted by a guy twenty pounds above his weight class. Why would an Army guy need to know hand-to-hand combat techniques anyway? Seems a little outdated for twenty-first-century warfare, in my civilian opinion. And I knew Josh wouldn’t have stood a chance anyway. He still hadn’t gained all of his weight back from passing the Army Special Forces Selection a few weeks earlier. Prior to joining an infantry unit, Josh was an 18X-ray, which is a prospective Green Beret. However, he would have to pass the eighteen-month Special Forces Qualification Course to actually get the green beret. In order to begin the qualification course, Josh had to survive Special Forces Selection, also known as “nineteen days in hell,” meant to weed people out. There was another reason I questioned the whole nice tuxedo schtick for our wedding: the nineteen days made him almost unrecognizable. His eyes and cheekbones protruded; his skin was pale from nineteen days of MREs, which stands for “meals ready to eat”—prepackaged meals that only needed water added to be ready for consumption—and getting little to no sleep. But the same stupid grin slid across his face whenever he talked about going through Special Forces Selection. As if the coolness of passing and then getting beat up trumped any and all consequences I could give him. All I could do was shrug my shoulders and pray about it, because God knows a soon-to-be spouse of a lowly Army specialist has zero control over her future.

I found a little comfort in controlling what I could with our wedding ceremony, even though the Army dictated most of that, too. The date was set for December 29, 2010—a Wednesday. Yes, the Army chose a Wednesday for our ceremony. We were having a Christmas leave wedding, and it was taking place in my hometown of Fort Payne, Alabama. This seemed par for the course in the military world. Anything an active-duty service member wanted to do outside of job requirements must be done during a planned military holiday while the soldier is stateside. If a soldier needs to travel outside of a 250-mile radius of the base, he must obtain permission for “leave.” Hence, the all-too-common “Christmas leave wedding” used to safeguard the preparation, ceremony, and honeymoon of thousands of military couples each year. If a military holiday is not readily available, such personal events will have to fit into a weekend, after work, or even during a lunch break. In fact, even before our own wedding, I had served as witness and photographer for three different lunch break marriages at the county courthouse while visiting Josh in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he was stationed. Josh would call me from the base and ask if I could meet one of his buddies and his girlfriend at the courthouse around noon. I signed my name on the witness line, threw rose petals, and took pictures after meeting the couple in the lobby only five minutes before the ceremony. That’s military life for you—you do what you can with the amount of time allowed. God, country, then family.

My Wednesday night wedding at least took place in a church with a bridal party and reception to follow. The event was beautiful, and we had over two hundred people show up to a ceremony between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. So much of it was not ideal: I chose my dress because it was the only one I could afford that semi-fit without any alterations, we didn’t have hair or makeup done for the bridal party, and I was blessed to get two reception cakes and a venue for free. We left our reception at 8:00 p.m. to start our four-hour drive to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we would honeymoon for two whole days. We stayed in a one-bedroom chalet with wood paneling, deer heads on every wall, and a hot tub in the middle of the living room. However, I remembered the alternative and was so thankful to not be getting married at the Cumberland County Courthouse.

Not exactly what I had dreamed of when he popped the question six months prior to saying “I do.” Nonetheless, my legal union with Josh would finally complete the trio: the United States Army, Army Specialist Josh Wetzel, and hayseed civilian Paige (Beasley) Wetzel.

Eighteen months later, I was sitting against a wall in a buzzing silence 2,500 miles away from home. I needed to call my mother-in-law. We had to make a plan of how we were going to get to Josh. We were the only people in the whole family that lived on the West Coast, and some part of my subconscious told me to connect with her first, then travel east together. The lump in my throat grew larger. How I wished I was calling to tell her that her son, once again, had placed a bet too big and the Christmas photos would include a broken nose. What I wouldn’t give for an injury from a petty fight.

Thank God my mother-in-law is a nurse. As the officer began to read the same lines to her, she had interrupted and said, “I’m going to need you to slow down so I can get something to write with.”

Her own son had been disfigured by a bomb in a foreign country, but Cathi needed answers on amputations, levels of intubation and responsiveness, and what the next evaluations would be. Her questions revealed that the people giving us this information were not anywhere near Josh or even in Afghanistan. With that knowledge, Cathi gave them very clear questions to ask the doctors working on her son.

Cathi called me. There was no time for sobbing or sulking. She simply asked, “Well, am I coming to you or are you coming to me?”

I simply replied, “I will come to you.”

A deep fog had fallen in my mind, and I functioned only as told, my only