By Carolyn Cole
Published on November 15, 2008

At first Mustang-area resident Holly Patkowski couldn’t find her husband Max’s face among hundreds of soldiers returning home from Iraq with the Oklahoma National Guard.

Their five children couldn’t pick him out either.

“He tapped me on the shoulder,” Holly Patkowski said. “I turned around, and there he was. I could feel all of the year melt away — all of the worry and the stress.”

Maj. Max Patkowski returned Oct. 15, one of 2,600 Oklahoma soldiers who spent almost a year away from home — the largest deployment of the state’s guardsmen since the Korean War. The citizen soldiers left home in October 2007 for Fort Bliss, Texas ,to begin training for their deployment to Iraq. After a brief break for Christmas at home with their families, Oklahoma’s soldiers returned to Fort Bliss for another month of training and landed in Iraq in February.

After 19 years in the armed services, Patkowski said even though he’s been deployed a handful of times before, including tours in Saudi Arabia and Iraq in Desert Storm and Desert Shield, the separation from his family never gets easier.

This deployment to Iraq was Patkowski’s third wearing the thunderbird emblem on his shoulder. Eight years ago he deployed to Bosnia on a peacekeeping mission, leaving his wife caring for newborn Sarah and her older sister Jenna, who was toddling. For six months, Max Patkowski watched the infants grow up in photographs.

Days before a deployment to Afghanistan in 2003, the Patkowskis learned they would have their first son while he was away. Holly Patkowski had her hands full with toddler Lauren and her older sisters, Sarah and Jenna. Max Patkowski first saw Kyle through an Internet camera and held him for the first time during a homecoming celebration.

This time, he boarded a bus back to training on Kyle’s fourth birthday, with Holly was holding their 10-month-old son Ben.

Each deployment gets tougher, Holly Patkowski said, and while she rode out an emotional roller coaster caring for their five children, the couple’s friends and family let her know she wasn’t alone. Church friends took the children once each week so she could buy groceries, finish chores around the house and have a few moments to herself. Relatives helped her with home repairs, and other National Guard families looked after her house and fed the Patkowski goats while they visited her parents in Ohio.

Patkowski said her children’s teachers were also supportive. Their daughters attended a school support group for youth with parents deployed overseas, which she said helped them face their emotions and worries about their father’s absence.
Patkowski ordered a life-size cardboard cutout of her husband in uniform — a flat daddy — that her children carried all over the house. Their youngest Ben kissed the cutout before blowing out the candles on his first birthday cake.

“It was kind of spooky because they (the children) would sit it on the couch and I’d walk by, and it would take me off guard, a couple of times,” she said. “Like he was really sitting there.”

Max Patkowski said flat daddy served its purpose. After a few minutes and a couple pieces of orange hard candy, Ben warmed right up to him, even though the soldier had spent more than half of the boy’s life away from home.

“He comes home, and within a day or two it’s like he never left,” Holly Patkowski said.

While Holly Patkowski and the children worked through long days missing a husband and father, Max Patkowski said he did his best to shelter them from the dangers he faced. Most Oklahoma National Guard soldiers were stationed either near Baghdad or at Camp Bucca in Iraq. Once Patkowski arrived at Camp Bucca, he took a potentially more dangerous assignment in Basra as a liaison between the American and British forces.

Soldiers at Camp Bucca faced one rocket attack when the Oklahoma National Guardsmen first arrived. Patkowski said Basra was a much hotter zone last spring, and rocket fire on the base was frequent — at times daily. As the Battle for Basra succeeded, the Iraqi forces took more control away from the insurgents, and Patkowski said the neighborhood quieted.

Little by little, he said soldiers at his base watched as the Iraqi army had more success and their soldiers’ confidence grew. Patkowski said he believes in the Iraqi forces, and while they can’t take over the full security of their country yet, one day soon they will be ready. Each day he said the insurgent forces grow weaker.

“Those guys are nothing down there now,” he said. “They ruled down there; they ruled with an iron fist — bodies filled the streets, people were afraid to do anything. The shops are starting to open up again. People are out on the streets.”

Patkowski didn’t work directly with the Iraqi forces, and his job rarely took him off base. His work days ranged between eight to 18 hours, and his healthy sense of paranoia kept him from ever leaving work or home at the same time of day twice.

“There were Iraqis who worked on the camp, and we weren’t sure if they were good guys or bad guys. It wasn’t clear how well vetted they were,” he said, adding some would carry out attacks because insurgents had threatened their families.

Although rocket attacks were frequent, Patkowski said he never mentioned them to Holly or his children until he got home. He didn’t mention attacks while he was stationed in Afghanistan until he was safely stateside either.

His wife’s only clue would be a pause in an instant messaging conversation. In reality, he left the computer screen the moment the air raid sirens howled, triggered by a rocket detected on radar. He said soldiers had at most 20 seconds to find shelter.

“I wouldn’t respond for a long time,” he said. “I would come back and say, ‘Oh, the Internet went out.’ It was because I was running for my life for a bunker.”

Patkowski e-mailed with his daughters’ classes, and he said he struggled to answer questions from Jenna’s classmates about his safety.

“It’s hard,” he said. “You don’t want to lie to them, but you don’t want to scare them either. It’s a delicate balance. I tap danced around it fairly well.”

Patkowski could talk with them a little bit about his job and sent them pictures of helicopters, snakes and camels — anything he thought young children would like to know more about.

Patkowski worked closely with American special forces and British soldiers and learned quickly the two militaries have different mindsets. His first lesson is nothing irritates British soldiers more than being called Europeans. He said they also dislike movies about the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

“They are a good ally,” he said. “We don’t necessarily see things the same way.”

Patkowski said the British forces didn’t receive the same level of support at home. For example, he said when he wears his military uniform in Oklahoma, business owners will sometimes offer services pro bono, in honor of his service.

“You wouldn’t find the British going out on their economy back in the UK in their uniform because the civilian population doesn’t relay support,” he said.
The British follow a six-month service rotation similar to the Air Force. Patkowski said he was able to serve with several units.

When the Oklahoma National Guard prepared to return home, Patkowski said most of their jobs were passed to forces from New Jersey. Although he was among the first soldiers who flew back to Fort Bliss in mid-September, he didn’t get to return home until Oct. 15. Holly Patkowski said the last month was tough knowing he was so close to home, but they were still unable to reunite their family.

When Max Patkowski finally made it home Oct. 15, he was welcomed with signs made by his children, hugs and kisses.

Then Kyle ran for his bicycle to show his father he could pass the family’s bike driving test. He expertly rode it through the yard and around a large tree, and for the critical moment, stopped without falling.

Max Patkowski took him out for the family’s traditional reward — ice cream. Kyle chose a single scoop of chocolate enveloped in a waffle cone.

Next, Patkowski faces a long list of “honey-dos” from fixing the mailbox to waging war with a blooming colony of gophers.

“I think he was just itching to do things outside,” Holly Patkowski said.

In December, he will return to his day job as a data processing manager at the Oklahoma Military Department.

“There are always rumors of the next deployment,” he said. “That’s years down the road — focus on the here and now.”