Traveling Companion

Little is written about a soldier’s wife. She is not a hero, nor does she claim to be.

She knows when a soldier is given an order it is followed. He packs up and goes. Sometimes his family goes with him, often they are left behind. She prays she will be up to the tasks before her, and she can carry on until her hero returns.

When a soldier dedicates his life in Military service to his country, a certain quality becomes a part of him. It is seldom relinquished. Even after retiring from the military, he is still a soldier at heart. My husband, Joel, was one of these soldiers.

I was his traveling companion. This is my story.

I met Joel when I was fourteen,

My mother and my brother and I moved into the neighborhood where Joel’s family lived.

Several teenagers living in the area frequently got together in the afternoon to

play baseball. One of the girls refused to play if I was chosen to be on her team. I was not good at sports. My brother, Richard, was too young to play with them. He found his own friends and things to do.

Our house was near the ball field, so I usually sat on my front porch and watched when they played. Sometimes Joel came over to talk with me. Some of the others did also, but Joel was the one who caught my attention. He was always polite, and more mature than many of the others. And he was so good looking. Dark brown eyes, black hair, a dimple in one cheek.

He was in high school and I was in my last year of junior high. We never saw each other at school of course. Sometimes we walked around the neighborhood together or we sat on my front porch and talked.

That summer my family took our yearly trip to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia to visit my grandparents. While we were there, Joel wrote a letter to me. In that letter he said he had a question to ask me when I came home.

That question was “Will you be my girl?” My mother thought I was too young at fourteen to have a boyfriend who was sixteen.

But a girl could dream.

I began my first year of high school that fall. Joel was two years ahead of me in school. When we got our school yearbooks that year there was nothing about me in the book because I was just a freshman, But something made that book extra special for me.

Joel wrote on the first page of the book, “You are the sweetest girl in the world to me and I will always love you.”

He wanted to play on the school football team, but he could not attend after school practice. He had to go to work after school.

So---if you don’t practice, you don’t play.

He worked at the Blue Bird Ice Company. His job was to make the delicious ice cream the company sold. He and his brother Calvin also sold newspapers and cut grass for neighbors. They worked with a gentleman who was a carrier for the local newspaper. They went to a nearby Army base, Camp Croft, to sell the papers.

The Mess Sergeant sometimes made breakfast for them. When Joel was doing basic training he came in contact with that Sergeant.

Joel decided to change jobs. He went to work in a cotton mill, on the third shift. Going to school and working on the third shift in a cotton mill could certainly keep one busy.