'Gulf Between Us' chronicles post-POW life of Cliff Acree family
 |
|
||||||||||
Ten years.
A decade can seem like a long time, when you're a busy young military couple and you move to new houses in three different states and one foreign country, and two lively sons arrive to complete the family.
But to Cindy and Cliff Acree, 10 years vanish in a twinkling, when they think back to the terror and the joy that marked February and March of 1991 indelibly in their memories.
"The memories are so sharp and clear that it seems like yesterday," Cindy said recently in a visit to Seattle.
The Acrees, Northwest natives who spent their early years in Seattle, found their lives torn apart a decade ago by Operation Desert Storm, when Cliff (then a lieutenant colonel) was shot down by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile while he was piloting his OV-10 Bronco aircraft on the first day of the war.
That was the beginning of their nightmare. For Cindy, who didn't know at first whether Cliff was alive or dead - only that he was missing - life took on a whole new purpose when she saw her injured, captive husband on international television as an Iraqi prisoner of war. Cindy founded the Liberty Alliance, a letter-writing campaign to protest the treatment of the American and other coalition POWs in Iraq. She met with politicians and celebrities, from Barbara Bush to Kevin Costner, drawing attention to a campaign that eventually garnered thousands of letters of support.
For Cliff, who ejected from his fiery plane and saved his navigator's life after the missile struck, two months of horrific solitary captivity were bearable only because of his faith in his wife's love and in his country, whose leaders he knew wouldn't abandon him in the hell of the ironically nicknamed "Baghdad Biltmore" prison. As the senior officer in captivity, the well-briefed Cliff was a potential gold mine for Saddam Hussein's interrogators, who beat and tortured him relentlessly at gunpoint as he sustained skull fractures, nerve and heart damage, drugging, mock executions, and starvation.
It was a story Cliff Acree would tell only to his Marine Corps debriefing team, when he finally was released and returned to a hero's welcome in Washington, D.C., on March 11, 1991; to the press and others, he said only, "We weren't treated well."
It was a story Cindy Acree knew she had to tell, not only to document her husband's heroism but also to tell what military families go through when their duty puts them in harm's way. She started working on "The Gulf Between Us: Love and Terror in Desert Storm" (Brassey's, $23.95) in 1991, and finished it seven years later - during a period that included the birth of the couple's two sons, Stephen and Mark (now 8 and 4, respectively), and Cliff's postwar assignments to the Defense Department's Air War College (Montgomery, Ala.), Marine Headquarters (Quantico, Va.), Naval Air Station/Marine Air Group 42 (Atlanta), NATO staff (Belgium), and finally Pensacola, Fla., where he inspects Navy and Marine ROTC units throughout the United States.
Featured in condensed form in the January "Reader's Digest: The Best New Nonfiction," "The Gulf Between Us" has caused a flood of fan mail that almost rivaled the flurry that came to Cindy during the terrible days of Cliff's captivity. The book's episodes in which Cliff defied his torturers, refusing to make a video statement condemning then-President George Bush, also won the couple some highly-placed fans; George and Barbara Bush sent them an enthusiastic letter endorsing "The Gulf Between Us" and calling the Acrees heroes.
How have the Acrees' lives changed in 10 years? The toughest part was after Cliff's return, when he was bombarded with requests for interviews and speeches, while the couple desperately needed quiet time together so that his physical and emotional traumas could heal. Luckily, most of the damage has been short-term, although the four surgeries to repair Cliff's nose have been unsuccessful. He still has some neck difficulties from the beatings, too, but he is generally in good health and enjoying his job as chief of Naval Education and Training, based at NAS (Naval Air Station) Pensacola.
Cindy, meanwhile, is developing a career in public speaking for military groups, consulting and writers' training. She proudly notes that Cliff also is getting straight A's in a master's program in management at Troy State University, Pensacola, with an eye on a post-Marines career when he retires in the summer of 2003. Another big change: Cliff has had to adjust to a new grandchild, born recently to 21-year-old Stephany, his daughter by a previous marriage.
"We don't take anything for granted anymore," Cindy explained, "because we realize that even though the odds may be against a disaster, anything can happen. We're religious about seat belts."
"Cliff still reacts to sudden loud noises and even to smells that remind him of his experiences. And if I throw away any food, I find myself thinking, 'Wouldn't Cliff have loved this piece of stale bread when he was starving in captivity!' He always celebrates the anniversary of his freedom by bringing cinnamon rolls and Middle Eastern tea to the people he works with. We are both grateful for the little things in life.
"When our first child, Stephen, was born a year after Cliff's return, we gave him a middle name that symbolizes what was so precious to us both: Freedom. And you know, Stephen is very proud of that name.
"We're all different people now. Any time you go through such a trial, you're stronger. And though this may seem corny, the goodness of people never ceases to amaze me. We've received so much support and caring, not just from friends but from people we've never met who read the book or saw the Reader's Digest condensation. It's really heartening; people do care."