All is Fair in Both Love and War

By: Kate Shively

After spending all day in class at UM Dartmouth, twenty-year-old Brian LaVigne changes into white pajama scrubs, settles into his cluttered room and talks to his fiancé, Brynn Karli, 18, through the camera on his grey laptop, resting on his full sized bed.

“Want a blue M&M, babe?” Brynn asks, holding the small piece of candy up to the camera. Her olive skin is highlighted by her bright green Boston sweatshirt.

“No, but I’ll take a red one” Brian answers, reclining his 6 foot 2 inches body on the unmade bed. He bunches some of the tan and brown bedding together for support, and aims the camera towards the back white wall, decorated with two samurai swords.

The cluttered side of the room, containing a piano keyboard, “Stairway to Heaven” sheet music, and piles of disheveled text books, is hidden from the camera’s view.

“No, you can’t have a red one,” Brynn shoots back. She only eats red M&Ms, convinced that they taste better than all the rest.

“Baby, they’re all the same,” Brian says, a smile spreading across his light freckled face.

“It’s completely normal,” his dark haired fiancé replies.

“No, but baby they are all the same,” he repeats, laughing now.

“But they taste different.”

“It’s psychological, baby.”

“No it’s not. There’s just not enough flavor in one piece of candy to tell the difference.”

“Baby, the only difference is the color and food coloring has no taste, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He says, laughing more. He enjoys picking little fights with her.

“The difference is your attitude towards it,” she says, smiling. She enjoys the game too.

Brynn and Brian are engaged to be married July 17. They play fight, they go ice skating, they have a favorite drink (Mountain Dew,) they call each other “baci,” which roughly translates into “kiss” in Italian, and they only get to see each other for a few weeks a year.

Brynn is an active brigade medic in the United States Army and was deployed to Baumholder, Germany, a small town on the French border, almost three months ago. She made her career decision after waking up one Thursday morning at her house in Tucson, Arizona and realizing that her life was “going nowhere.” She signed the recruiter’s papers that night, a decision she doesn’t regret—it led her to Brian.

Brian, a native of Swansea, Massachusetts, joined the Army National Guard after receiving a letter from UM Dartmouth stating that his full-ride academic scholarship no longer existed so he would now owe the college thousands of dollars that he didn’t have. He figured the Guard was his best option. A few weeks later, he was on his way to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for Basic Training. He then went to San Antonio for medic training, called Advanced Individual Training (AIT.)

It was there he met the woman who would become his fiancé.

The next few months are like a cliché 90’s movie. Boy sees girl. Girl isn’t interested. Boy persists to an annoying level and wins over heart of girl. Brynn insists that Brian just “wouldn’t go away,” even though she always gave him that in-your-dreams kind of look.

Dating fellow soldiers technically is not allowed during training, so the couple dated “illegally” for four months while not on base.

Then, Brynn asked Brian to marry her.

She proposed using an ugly yellow 25 cent ring she bought in a candy machine at a restaurant named “Good Chinese.”

“I said ‘no’ until she got me a real ring,” Brian says laughing.

He had his mother send him a family heirloom, a gold wedding band, to give to Brynn.

The next few months were then spent planning their Tucson wedding, a feat that would be nearly impossible were it not for Brynn’s “freaking phenomenal” mother, who planned the whole thing in two months.

Brynn has her reasons for getting married so young, despite the fact that she will not be able to see her husband for months at a time. She is scared to death of losing Brian. Afghanistan is extremely dangerous territory, and there is a good chance both husband and wife will end up there.

“There will be about 150 people at the wedding right, baby?” Brian asks.

“Not even. I narrowed it down to only certain people coming to the wedding, and everyone else will come to the open house and the brunch at ten the next morning.”

“Wait. There’s a brunch?” Brian asks, laughing. “You never told me about an open house or a brunch.”

Brian isn’t exactly what you’d call an “active” groom. He likes to kick back and take orders from Brynn. His only responsibilities so far are to get the tux and get on the plane.

“That’s ‘cause I just heard about it a few days ago,” Brynn says. “My mom thought of it. The wedding would be twice as much money if everyone that wanted to come shows up. So we decided to limit it and let everyone else come the next day.”

“Yeah, brunch sounds like a good idea,” Brian says. “But do I have to go?”

“What? Yes,” she says.

“But ten o’clock? Babe, that’s early,” he says with a grin.

“You’re going to be awake.”

“Uhh…No I won’t.”

“Yeah you will, ‘cause you’re driving me,” she says seriously. Her dark brown eyes narrow and she moves her face closer to the camera to prove her point.

“I want to keep this PG rated, but we’re going to be up late,” Brian says after pausing for a moment. “It’s kind of our wedding night, Babe.”

“Hey, I’m only running on a couple hours of sleep every night over here,” she says. “I can make it.”

Brynn talks to Brian for 3-4 hours nearly every night, catches 4-6 hours of sleep, then works a 17 hour day taking care of small injuries like sprains, breaks, and pregnancies on a shift called “Sick Call,” in the hospital wing at the local base.

When she’s out on the field, in Graftenwhor, she gets even less sleep. It is here that she works on trauma victims who have more serious injuries. After tonight, she will spend 17 days there and will not talk to Brian at all.

“When you’re out there, you don’t get a designated amount of sleep—you sleep when you have the chance, even if it’s just 5 minutes sitting up in a chair,” she says. “I’m not like you, Mr. Weekend Warrior, who gets to sleep all day long,” she says, poking fun at the fact that National guardsmen spend one weekend a month training.

Until they get deployed.

Brynn likes to joke that she wears the pants in the relationship, but she knows the chances that Brian will get deployed are high. His unit is not due to deploy, but he may ship out to northern Afghanistan with a unit from Boston looking for a combat medic. Brynn is getting deployed to Afghanistan in January of 2011, though she technically cannot be in the “hot zone” because she is a 4 foot 11 female. Brigade medics stay at the base or in the trucks, while line medics go directly in the line of fire.

The two hope see one another while in the war zone.

“Well, babe, you’ll probably see me if I get blown up,” Brian jokes.

He stops laughing. There are tears in Brynn’s eyes.

She knows combat medics are walking targets.

During Advanced Individual Training, the pair was told that of the 8,000 American casualties in the Iraq war, 2500 are combat medics. Brynn knows Brian will be sent into the hot zone because he stands at 6 foot 2 and is an excellent medic—during training Brian taught Brynn “everything she knows” about being a good medic.

“The enemy knows that someone is coming to get the guy they just shot, so they sit and wait. A lot of medics go down because of it,” Brian says.

Being a medic wasn’t Brian’s first choice—he originally wanted to play percussion in the band, which would have been a “sweet deal,” but there were no available positions. He took the medic job because they offered him a $20,000 bonus at the end of his service.

“I understand why that is now,” he says. “I didn’t know the statistics when I signed up.”

If Brian and Brynn do end up in the same area, they know what the typical scenario in the field is: A soldier gets shot in the leg in the line of duty. Brian goes out and wraps the leg in a tourniquet, simultaneously dodging bullets from the same source that originally shot the soldier. Once he gets the soldier out of the line of fire, a black hawk comes in and airlifts him to a local base, where he will end up on Brynn’s table. She will decide the next steps in saving his life.

All of this would happen in about a year, after the wedding in a beautiful 18^th century white mansion in Tucson with blue trimming, stone fountains and large gardens. The day will be magical, but short lived. Eleven days after her wedding, Brynn flies back to active duty. The couple will honeymoon after Brynn is released from the army—in 2013.

In the meantime, the couple enjoys the little moments.

Brian looks at the computer screen.

“The dog is sleeping in the bed,” Brian says into the microphone.

“No, it’s not,” Brynn answers.

“Yes it is, baby.”

“Baci, if the dog is sleeping in the bed then I’m sleeping on the couch,” Brynn says sarcastically.

“Okay then, that’s fine,” Brian says with a grin. “Balto is sleeping in my bed.”

Brynn just shakes her head and smiles. It’s almost 3:30 in the morning in Baumholder. She’ll stay on for another hour or so.

She knows seventeen days is a long time to go without talking to the one you love.