Military couple ended up on explosive honeymoon
When Jake and Heidi Radkiewicz got married, they did not have enough money for a honeymoon. Soon, however, they went abroad
somewhere hot and exotic and spent nights together under the stars.
The newlyweds spent their honeymoon with the National
Guard in Baghdad, driving supply trucks in the same convoys between Camp Anaconda and another US base four hours south of the Iraqi capital on the road to Basra.
This unusual matrimonial arrangement is related in a memoir by Heidi Radkiewicz, 38. It was permitted, she said, because she had met her husband in training. ‘‘There are probably a lot of spouses that are both in the military but I have never heard of another married couple like us,’’ she said. ‘‘We were in the same platoon. We were on the same road missions, we slept in the same cot.’’
It was not long after the invasion of Iraq and the camps were a basic assortment of tents and trucks with ‘‘these super-old, Vietnam era or Second World War wooden latrines, which we set up,’’ Heidi Radkiewicz said. The marital bed was outside. ‘‘We strung up a mesh netting . . . and had a makeshift honeymoon suite.’’ Driving in convoy together, they came under fire ‘‘all the time’’, she said. ‘‘RPGs [rocketpropelled grenades] ... roadside bombs, AK-47s.’’ The camp where they were staying came under mortar fire too; but romance was not absent. Heidi Radkiewicz recalled her husband, now 39, standing over the tubs where the soldiers washed their laundry. ‘‘He was like: ‘I bet you never thought you would be spending your honeymoon washing your clothes in the middle of Baghdad’.’’ Her memoir, Honeymoon in Baghdad, recounts this time of conjugal bliss in the midst of a war zone. She had joined the
National Guard while at college
and met her future husband on a drill weekend after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He had made ‘‘a pretty awful joke, saying: ‘Oh, we are going to get called up overseas, you’d better contact your family.’ I was freaking out. He felt bad so he invited me to have dinner at his house. After that we were inseparable.’’ They married in late 2002 and were deployed early in 2003. It was not always easy to find privacy while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Under canvas one night in Kuwait, they got ‘‘pleasantly busy’’ and then heard this fact being broadcast to the rest of the tent by a fellow soldier. Another time, after setting up a makeshift shower cubicle, they were interrupted by a camera flash and looked up to see another soldier taking photographs. During a break from their tour of duty, in Germany, Mrs Radkiewicz discovered that she was two months’ pregnant with their first child, Wyatt. He is now 14. ‘‘I said to him just the other day, ‘you were being shot at in Iraq and you didn’t even know it’.’’