“Lieutenant Colonel Dow called and you are to report for duty at Fort Riley in four days,” I told my husband when he was recalled to active duty for Desert Storm. Russ was an officer in the Army Reserves, a federal asset, while the National Guard is a state asset. We knew the Army would take care of him, but what about us? Our sons, Carl and Neil, were 11 and 8 years old. We had and still have, a farm in southwestern South Dakota. Russ would be 640 miles away at Fort Riley, Kan. — if we were lucky and he didn’t have to go overseas. We had done our official preparations. We had the power of attorney drawn up to be sure I could manage all of the farm affairs, our wills were in order and ID cards were up-to-date.

Aug. 2, 1990. was the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. Living on an irrigated farm/ranch near tiny Oral, S.D., why would that event matter to me? Prior to 1990, Iraq had been the importer of 50% of the United States’ edible bean crop. We had beans to harvest and sell. They became worth next to nothing in the flash of a gun.

I had assumed that if he were ever called up, we would be without a family support group. Then Lt. Col. Greg Davis and his wife, Kathy, arrived on the scene exactly when they were needed.

In addition to Russ’ duties with his Army unit in Kansas, he was an instructor with the Reserve Officer Training Corps detachment at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. Just two weeks before the Iraqi invasion, Greg Davis had become the ROTC commander at SD Tech. As a courtesy we invited Greg and Kathy to our farm shortly after they arrived. We discovered that although they had traveled and lived around the world (including Saudi Arabia), they were still Arkansas farm kids at heart. We had sons near the same age; we had farming and the Army in common.

After Russ left, Kathy jumped right in as the commander’s wife and became my support group of one throughout the ordeal. During our frequent phone calls, we talked of childhood illnesses and other things that moms have in common. Yet the primary emphasis for the calls was to keep the military support in the forefront. I knew that if I needed anything, militarily or otherwise, I could call on these brand new friends for that help. Kathy knew what the uncertainty was like. Would Russ stay in Kansas and help my sons and I run our farm by telephone … or would he go to Kuwait to use his training as an Infantry Officer? Kathy had been in Panama during an invasion, and she buttressed me, simply by being available and more than supportive.

 For 4 1/2 months Russ was gone. He did not deploy overseas; he returned to the farm the day the air war started. Six days later we started calving.

Sanders is a national-award winning columnist who writes from the farm in southwest South Dakota. Her internet latchstring is always out at peggy@peggysanders.com. She can be reached through her website at http://www.peggysanders.com.