On Jan. 17, 1991, Col. Richard “Dick” Cody fired the first shots of Operation Desert Storm. Task Force Normandy destroyed Iraqi radar bases, allowing Allied planes to strike critical targets. After this successful mission, he would continue to rise through the ranks, and he served as Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 2004 to 2008. His wife, Vicki Cody, has been by his side every step of the way. 

In her first memoir, Army Wife, Cody recounts meeting Dick Cody as a teenager and offers a portrait of the life they built together. Her new book, Fly Safe, focuses on Dick’s first combat deployment. In an era before email and cellphones, the letters he sent home were her primary source of information about her husband. Fly Safe includes excerpts from those missives as well as the author’s journal entries from that time. Kirkus Reviews calls the resulting narrative “an impressively candid recollection, poignant and thoughtful.”

Cody has moved 18 times in 33 years. In conversation from her current home in Northern Virginia, she describes her early days as an officer’s wife. A New England native and a graduate of the University of Vermont, Cody was immersed in “hippie culture” before she fell in love with a West Point cadet. Dick was a lieutenant when they married, and while he was in flight school, Cody attended a “a course for the spouses on etiquette and protocol. They had us all go out and buy little white gloves, which we were expected to wear to functions. And we had calling cards with our names on them. So if you visited an officer’s house, you left your calling card on a little silver tray.”

Being an officer’s wife came with responsibility as well as ritual, and Cody found a sense of purpose in caring for the families left behind when Dick’s unit deployed to Saudi Arabia. This was not just the first time her husband was going into combat. It was also the first time American troops had gone to war since Vietnam.

As the commander’s wife, I had worked tirelessly to build a team of spouses and families who would support each other and could sustain the rigors of Army life and the inevitable separations. There were almost as many family members as soldiers in the unit—approximately three hundred. My goal was to keep the group connected and informed and create a family atmosphere. I did it because I believed that was what a commander’s wife should do, I did it because I was as invested in Army life as Dick was, and, most of all, I did it because I wanted to be part of a very special and unique team. I liked being Dick’s teammate and had never felt so much a part of his career as I did at that time. 

It’s clear from Dick’s letters that he regards his wife as his counterpart on the homefront. Maintaining operational security limited what he could say, and he didn’t want to burden Cody with information that would complicate the task of supporting families back on the base. Nevertheless, he was mindful of providing her with good news about his troops that she could pass along to their spouses. “I loved being part of my husband’s job,” she says. “I can’t think of any other profession where a spouse has an opportunity—if they want it—to take part in what their spouse is doing.” This experience, Cody says, made her, her husband, and their marriage “stronger and better.”

Sept. 11 was another turning point for their family. Both Cody’s sons had started military training by then. At that time, Dick was a major general and Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division. Cody remembers the day Clint called his father to say, “Dad, I want to come to the 101st, because I know you’re going to go to war, and I want to go with you.” This was the first time Cody confronted the prospect of her boys fighting alongside her husband. “Suddenly, I was struck by the reality that I was an army wife and an army mom all at the same time.”Dick wouldn’t see combat again, but Clint would see multiple tours of duty over the next several years—as would his brother, Tyler, who followed him into the 101st.

When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were at their most intense, Dick was in charge of the Army’s day-to-day operations. “He was in a position of power, and our sons, both helicopter pilots, were deploying. So the decisions my husband was making at the very top level impacted our sons and their wives and their little kids.” 

Cody accompanied her husband as he traveled around the world to meet with the families of deployed soldiers. “The unique thing about us is that we weren’t just there as this general and his wife. We were there as parents as well. We were worried about these young spouses and their husbands in combat, but we were also worried about our own sons. It was exhausting because we had to be supportive and advocates for these spouses and these families, but at the same time we were just as scared as they were, quite frankly.” This experience inspired Cody to write her first book, Your Soldier, Your Army: A Parents’ Guide, in 2005. (An updated edition—retitled Your Soldier, Your Army: A Family Guide—was released in 2017.)

Dick retired from the Army as a four-star general in 2008, but both he and his wife are still busy supporting soldiers and their families. Dick is chairman of the board for Homes for Our Troops, a not-for-profit organization that builds and donates houses customized to meet the needs of severely injured soldiers. Cody writes, she says, “to capture the Army way of life.” 

Fly Safe offers a unique view on the early days of the Gulf War. It’s also a record of one woman suppressing her own fears and uncertainties while trying to care for the people who are counting on her for support—her own children but also the families of every soldier in her husband’s command. This memoir is a portrait of resilience forged through decades of service. Looking back, Cody has no regrets. “I enjoyed it all,” she says, “and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Jessica Jernigan is a writer who lives and works in the Midwest.