From Kelly Holbert’s perspective, her husband’s deployment could be summed up in one word: worrisome.
“Is he safe? Is he OK — mentally and emotionally?” she would ask herself.
Petty Officer 1st Class Drew Holbert deployed Oct. 14 from Naval Station Norfolk with aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower for what the couple thought would be a typical six-month deployment with port calls and regular communication with the family.
The idea of a “typical deployment” faded 12 hours after the Eisenhower pushed off the pier when the warship and its strike group were ordered by the secretary of defense to sail to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter wider conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The family didn’t know then their patriarch would become part of the Navy’s most intense combat since World War II.
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No guide book for this
At their Virginia Beach home in November, the smell of burnt grilled cheese hung in the air.
“Momma! Momma, look!” exclaimed Kelly Michael, then 3, doing a strong man pose.
The family’s labradoodle puppy, Scarlett, barked incessantly and their 9-year-old golden retriever, Brody, whined for attention.
“I need help with homework!” Penelope, 8, shouted from her seat at the dining room table.
The TV in an adjoining room blared as Harper, then 6, turned up the volume.
“Two more hours until bedtime. We can do this,” Kelly said under her breath as she scraped crusted cheese off a sizzling frying pan.
Her mumbled motivation was almost lost in the sounds of a full house as the family settled into its evening routine.
When her husband deployed, Kelly was thrust into tackling the challenges of life solo — juggling three young children, two dogs, a full-time job, upkeep of their home and her emotional well-being. It’s not easy being a mom, she said, but being a mom with a deployed spouse takes the cake.
“And it is not something that comes with a guide book,” Kelly said, tears welling up in her eyes. “There is no ‘how to’ on being a Navy wife.”
Meanwhile at sea, aircraft mechanic Drew Holbert and his fellow sailors aboard the Eisenhower and its strike group vessels became embroiled in firefights in the Red Sea for the bulk of their deployment, defending merchant vessels and military ships traveling through the Suez Canal that were the target of attack drones and anti-ship missiles launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen.
The Houthi attacks on shipping escalated after the start of the Oct. 7 Israel-Hamas war, and the U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels, overshadowed by bombings over the Gaza Strip, turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced in nearly eight decades, its leaders and experts told The Associated Press.
U.S. Central Command reported almost daily instances of missiles being fired toward U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East for the nine months the Eisenhower was deployed to the region. Drew Holbert, his wife said, was part of the team that prepared aircraft for retaliatory strikes under the cover of darkness.
“He actually told me this deployment was worth it. The adrenaline of being part of it, he loved it,” Kelly said.
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‘I wasn’t ready for a war’
But as Christmas approached, Kelly kept thinking about her husband’s proximity to danger. It was the first Christmas that Drew Holbert would miss celebrating with their three young children. The Holberts had experienced a deployment in 2017. At the time, the couple only had infant Penelope and Kelly was pregnant with Harper.
“I could not do this — raise the kids alone — for the rest of my life, God forbid something happen to him,” the mother said. “But when you have kids, you don’t have a choice. You have to be OK.”
Red Sea attacks kept making headlines online and at home.
“Do you have CNN on?” Drew said to his wife in a text message shared with The Virginian-Pilot.
Continual news of Houthi attacks combined with the “thought of the unimaginable,” Kelly said, pushed her emotions over the limit just 75 days into her husband’s deployment.
“I was ready for a deployment. I wasn’t ready for a war,” Kelly said Dec. 27 in a tearful voice recording shared with the Pilot.
But it was far from over.
The U.S. designated the Iran-backed Houthis a terrorist organization in January and launched a campaign to strike back. The Eisenhower strike group and its air wing engaged in combat with dozens of Houthi-employed one-way attack drones traveling by air, sea or underwater to target critical shipping lanes, according to U.S Second Fleet.
“I know the best place for them to be is on the ship. But it is still hard and I don’t like it. I don’t really want to do this anymore,” Kelly said tearfully.
Several scheduled port calls were canceled. Sailors aboard the Eisenhower spent six months at sea before they set foot on land, visiting Greece in late April.
While Wi-Fi for personal devices was available for sailors in designated spaces, it was occasionally turned off for days at a time, forcing the Holberts and about 5,000 other families to rely on brief, infrequent emails to communicate with their sailors.
The isolation, Drew told his wife in a text message, was “insane” on one’s mental state. In the same conversation, he said he had been experiencing “really bad anxiety.”
“I’m just praying they let us go home in time,” he told her in a text.
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‘Where’s Daddy?’
The widespread news made it difficult for Kelly to shield her children from the ongoing conflict.
“A kid should not have to worry about war, people killing people, and if their dad will ever come home,” she said.
But Penelope spotted a magazine in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. On the cover was a dead child in the rubble following an airstrike on Gaza. When explaining the situation, the mom included the younger siblings in the conversation.
“Now, if you ask Kelly Michael, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ He will say, ‘Killing the bad guys.’ I mean, how else do you explain it to him?’” Kelly said.
In the weeks after their dad deployed, the children went through bouts of tantrums and misbehavior, Kelly said. Throw-down fits became routine for Kelly Michael while Penelope was unusually quick to cry. Harper, who the mom said is typically unbothered, would randomly say, “I miss my dad.”
To help Penelope through the deployment, Kelly enrolled her in Operation Hero, a free after-school enrichment program offered by the Armed Services YMCA of Hampton Roads. The program, available to military children in second through fifth grades, addresses unique obstacles they face, including parental deployment, stress related to frequent moves and trauma if a parent is wounded or killed in service.
Makayla Torrey, an Operation Hero facilitator, said a parent’s absence as a result of military service is a tough topic for kids 7 to 11 to understand.
“They don’t understand why parents have to leave them or why they have to miss their birthdays or holidays,” Torrey said.
Oldest children, like 8-year-old Penelope, typically have more responsibility when a parent deploys as they are tasked with helping the non-deployed parent with other siblings and household chores, she said.
Penelope became her mom’s helper and sounding board, filling the void left by her dad, Kelly said. Penelope recognized when her mother was overwhelmed and would step in to help with the younger children.
“That turns into mom guilt. Like, am I putting too much on her? But also, I need her,” Kelly said.
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Reconnecting …
On Jan. 3, Kelly clung to a text message instead of her husband on their ninth wedding anniversary.
“You’re strong and resilient, the hardest working woman I’ve ever met and that includes the jobs you don’t get paid for. I love you with all of my heart. To spend a life with anyone else would be a waste of my time,” Drew texted his wife. “You are the brightest part of my life and you always will be.”
Despite only being alone for about an hour a day, Kelly said this deployment felt lonelier than the one seven years ago. The chaos of kid life and her missing co-parent reinforced her loneliness, such as when Harper went to the emergency room after a bad fall or when Kelly Michael’s father missed him breakdancing in the living room.
Communication was an ongoing struggle.
“Reconnecting is my marriage now,” Kelly said as the couple unsuccessfully video chatted while she tucked the kids into bed one night in May. The call dropped after about 30 seconds.
The longest video call the couple managed lasted eight minutes — on Thanksgiving night about five weeks into the deployment. Since then, Kelly’s days were scheduled around making an effort to communicate with her husband at select times — typically 10 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 7 p.m. or 11 p.m. Often, messages were only snippets of a sentence and would go unanswered for days.
The couple exchanged about a dozen messages and a three-minute video call March 18. On March 20, Drew texted, “I’m starting to get really really upset not talking to you.” It was another three days before he had a chance to check in with his family.
“I had to learn to let go of it all. Let go of my feelings about him not telling me he misses me enough or him not saying he loves me enough,” Kelly said. “Nothing pauses just because you are not getting what you need from your spouse, who is on a ship really far away. Life goes on for everybody around you, so I just had to keep it moving.”
Best friend Tiffany Dixon stepped in to support the Holberts. She had been in their shoes — her father missed 16 Christmases due to deployments when she was a child.
“I think even she didn’t realize how isolating and lonely it would feel to be in this little house with three children,” Dixon said. “Just not having a second grown-up to say, ‘Yeah, this sucks. This life we live is hard.’”
Dixon said her friend is good at picking herself up, keeping things upbeat for the kids and acting on her husband’s behalf. Kelly tackled Christmas shopping and wrapping, surprised the girls with Valentine’s Day gifts from their dad and organized birthday parties.
“Kelly’s strength outwardly in front of the kids is what allows them to continue as if life is normal,” Dixon said. “…The way that the kids coped is very much a testament to her ability to keep their life stable with some sprinkles on top to make it a little bit easier.”
And on the days that were harder — when it was 11 p.m. before Kelly realized they were out of milk or when she was late to a school event she nearly forgot — Dixon was there to help. All the while, Dixon reminded the Holberts about the “light at the end of the tunnel” despite the deployment’s extension to nine months.
“Every deployment ends. It might feel like it won’t, like it will go on forever. But this will end,” Dixon said. “He will come home.”
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The wait is over
As the Eisenhower entered the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on July 14, Drew ran his sailor’s cap between his hands while sweat collected on his brow outside the airframes and corrosion shop on board.
His mind focused on the narrowing distance between him and his family, how they would celebrate, what they could do together and ordering the Mexican food he couldn’t find abroad.
Over the course of the 275-day deployment, he frequently thought about what he missed at home. He said he kept his mind level by focusing on work.
“This is the first time I have ever missed major holidays or birthdays,” Drew said. “On me, those days were tough. At Thanksgiving, we normally get together as a family, and I couldn’t do that. Especially since I’m night check, I didn’t really get a Thanksgiving dinner. I woke up and I got right to work.”
Penelope was only 22 months old when her father returned from his first deployment in 2017. She wasn’t sure what to make of him in the first meeting; she was too shy to say anything. He wondered this time about 4-year-old Kelly Michael’s reaction.
“I’m more worried about how the kids will adjust to me rather than me to them,” Drew said. “I thought about it a lot and I’m just ready to be with them again after the distance we had.”
Through two extensions, he leaned on the ship’s Wi-Fi granting him access to talk to his family to stay sane for himself and for the sailors around him.
“This deployment showed me what we can do,” Drew said of his crewmates. “There were a lot of ups and downs. I saw what we could accomplish with our minds in it. We all came together, and we all took care of one another. That’s how we made it.”
The carrier strike group accumulated more than 31,000 flight hours and completed more than 10,000 aircraft launches and recoveries and more than 13,800 sorties in a busy operational tempo during the combat deployment, the Navy reported. Overall, the strike group launched attacks against more than 460 Houthi targets.
A quick visit from Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro to sailors waiting in the hangar bay concluded their time on board. Before departure, Drew called his wife on the pier to organize where to meet in the chaos of thousands eagerly awaiting their loved ones.
“I love you,” the husband said. “I will see you soon.”
In the shadow of the bow, Kelly Michael stomped his feet in a jig as he chanted, “Daddy’s home, daddy’s home, daddy’s home!”
Kelly wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and let a few tears fall. Inches away, Penelope and Harper desperately tried to hide their own tears.
The Holbert family had finally closed the roughly 5,000-mile distance between their lives.
“I couldn’t do what I needed to out here without someone like Kelly back home,” Drew said. “She holds it down at home, and I don’t have to worry about anything at home.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Caitlyn Burchett, 727-267-6059
Billy Schuerman, william.schuerman@virginiamedia.com, 832-451-2465
