The sweet voice on the phone was not what I expected when I called Gunnery Sgt. Sally Drumm, U.S. Marine Corps, Ret. What I knew about the 52-year-old former drill instructor, I learned from her pen. She is the editor and also a contributor to the anthology, "MilSpeak: Warriors, Veterans, Family and Friends Writing the Military Experience." (Press 53, 2009.)
Her story, woven through the book, includes difficult chapters: An abusive father, her struggles as a woman in the military, alcoholism, a career-blighting injury, finally her intent to walk away from the military forever.
Perhaps I expected a rasp, salty language, an edge of bitterness. Instead, Sally spoke softly about the healing power of writing and about MilSpeak Foundation, which she initiated to extend that potential for healing to military members, veterans and families.
Hard to imagine this voice in the throat of a DI, screaming orders to recruits at Parris Island. Once it did, but now Sally encourages military and family members to find their voices through Milspeak Creative Writing Seminars. A professional educator, she developed and leads the six-session course at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C., as a volunteer.
The anthology is a compilation of writing by participants in the first seven seminars. The tenth session just ended, and Sally has plans for more, saying the outcome is worth the time she donates.
Writing, she said, "is an extended process of thinking. It gives us an opportunity to evaluate and re-evaluate our experience. We bring all of our life experience to bear upon what happened in the past when we revisit it and write it."
Giving military writers a voice is one intent of the seminars and the anthology. Sally said those voices also speak to readers about their lives.
"For military readers, I think it is very important that they have stories they can relate to, not just the positive ones," she said. "When a family goes through a traumatic event, they need to know that someone else made it through."
For civilians, she said, "These stories give them an insider’s look at what it’s like to go through a military life ... from many different points of view."
Every story in the book is not a military story, but all come from the military family, including retirees, spouses and children: A daughter observes her mother’s stand against cancer; a wife rebels against her husband’s deployment; a veteran finds humor in his memories of Vietnam.
Through Milspeak Foundation, Sally plans to offer more writing workshops in more locations, potentially reaching out to disabled veterans and military children. None of this was in her plan when she left the Marine Corps.
"When I left the military in 1998, I had every intention of completely and totally walking away from any association with the military," Sally said. "I was ready to start over and do something different."
So she earned a master of fine arts in creative writing, a pursuit that brought her full circle. In graduate school, a professor encouraged her to write about her Marine career.
She began reluctantly, but said the process changed her perspective of her career and her life – so much that she created MilSpeak to extend that opportunity to others in the military.
"My own story is not exactly pretty. I don’t hold back … in the book," she said. "I do that because many of the writers don’t hold back, and I don’t want them feeling like they’re out there in the cold all alone."
The anthology is available at online retailers. For more about the MilSpeak Foundation, workshops and a look at the book, see www.milspeak.org.
Terri Barnes is a military wife and mother of three. She lives and writes in Germany. Write to her at spousecalls@stripes.com and see the Spouse Calls blog at: http://blogs.stripes.com/blogs/spousecalls.