to give the extra money back to the state of Indiana. Debbie solved the dilemma by starting a fund for members of their Guard unit: If somebody had trouble paying their bills, they got assistance, or if a family member died, the unit sent flowers. She made the math work so that the hot dog trailer neither made nor lost any money, which pleased her superiors.
After she worked there for a few years, Debbie earned a certain degree of fame, and whenever she walked into a veteransâ organization, people who had once been or were still in the 113th Support Battalion would come up to her and say, Oh, itâs the hot dog lady! But her bosses found the hot dog wagon unmanly and were slow to appreciate the way in which the food truck was boosting morale. Then one of the main skeptics, a man named Captain Hoskins, was promoted to company commander. After he observed firsthand the emotional lift that his soldiers received from chatting with Debbie, he became a convert.In May 2000, when the 113th Support Battalion prepared to go to Louisiana for a joint readiness training exerciseâa practice battle in which the soldiers mimicked the roles they would perform if they actually went to warâthe commander of Bravo Company made sure the hot dog wagon went, too. Soldiers loaded all of the cooking equipment into the truck. But they could not put the potatoes on the truck without violating weight requirements. Hoskins did not want to try to pull off a field training exercise without Debbieâs baked potatoes, but he couldnât exceed the weight restrictions, because the trucks were going to be loaded onto barges and floated down the Mississippi. Hoskins ordered every soldier in the company to put five pounds of potatoes into their rucksacks. That was when Debbie knew that she had become beloved.
Over the previous decade, Debbie had seen a steady influx of young women join the unit after the passage of the Montgomery GI Bill. The original GI Bill, of 1944, had provided a range of benefits, including college tuition, to soldiers who were returning home from World War II. By contrast, the Montgomery GI Bill offered tuition benefits as an inducement to enlist. Because the United States had moved to an all-volunteer force, the military was constantly looking for ways to entice young people to sign up, and tuition benefits were being used alongside cash bonuses. The ratio of men to women in the roughly one-hundred-person group that drilled in Bedford had shifted to about three to one, meaning there were now about twenty-five female soldiers. Debbie adopted them all. They turned to her for guidance in every arenaâlife, love, the military. And yet, running a hot dog wagon was not exactly what she had envisioned, years earlier, when she had signed up to join the National Guard. Where was the glory in making baked potatoes? Somehow her dreams had shrunk. She took fulfillment in her work, but she had envisioned more. She had thought she might stem a flood, secure power, go overseas. But the 113th Support Battalion had stopped sending mechanics to Germany, and during emergencies Debbie was not needed. On March 12, 1991, a freak storm sheathed vast swaths of northern Indiana in several inches of solid ice, and then sent high winds gusting through the frozen, glittering landscape. Tree branches that had started to leaf out cracked down across roads and power lines. Miles ofutility poles toppled over, and half a million people lost electrical power. National Guard soldiers rushed to get communities functioningâbut only those soldiers who had experience with generators were needed. Other people from her unit received calls to assist in nearby towns that had been hit by tornadoes, but the twisters never touched down close to where Debbie lived. During the entirety of Debbieâs service in the National Guard, the state of Indiana experienced no emergencies that called for expertise in fire control. More than sixty thousand members
After she worked there for a few years, Debbie earned a certain degree of fame, and whenever she walked into a veteransâ organization, people who had once been or were still in the 113th Support Battalion would come up to her and say, Oh, itâs the hot dog lady! But her bosses found the hot dog wagon unmanly and were slow to appreciate the way in which the food truck was boosting morale. Then one of the main skeptics, a man named Captain Hoskins, was promoted to company commander. After he observed firsthand the emotional lift that his soldiers received from chatting with Debbie, he became a convert.In May 2000, when the 113th Support Battalion prepared to go to Louisiana for a joint readiness training exerciseâa practice battle in which the soldiers mimicked the roles they would perform if they actually went to warâthe commander of Bravo Company made sure the hot dog wagon went, too. Soldiers loaded all of the cooking equipment into the truck. But they could not put the potatoes on the truck without violating weight requirements. Hoskins did not want to try to pull off a field training exercise without Debbieâs baked potatoes, but he couldnât exceed the weight restrictions, because the trucks were going to be loaded onto barges and floated down the Mississippi. Hoskins ordered every soldier in the company to put five pounds of potatoes into their rucksacks. That was when Debbie knew that she had become beloved.
Over the previous decade, Debbie had seen a steady influx of young women join the unit after the passage of the Montgomery GI Bill. The original GI Bill, of 1944, had provided a range of benefits, including college tuition, to soldiers who were returning home from World War II. By contrast, the Montgomery GI Bill offered tuition benefits as an inducement to enlist. Because the United States had moved to an all-volunteer force, the military was constantly looking for ways to entice young people to sign up, and tuition benefits were being used alongside cash bonuses. The ratio of men to women in the roughly one-hundred-person group that drilled in Bedford had shifted to about three to one, meaning there were now about twenty-five female soldiers. Debbie adopted them all. They turned to her for guidance in every arenaâlife, love, the military. And yet, running a hot dog wagon was not exactly what she had envisioned, years earlier, when she had signed up to join the National Guard. Where was the glory in making baked potatoes? Somehow her dreams had shrunk. She took fulfillment in her work, but she had envisioned more. She had thought she might stem a flood, secure power, go overseas. But the 113th Support Battalion had stopped sending mechanics to Germany, and during emergencies Debbie was not needed. On March 12, 1991, a freak storm sheathed vast swaths of northern Indiana in several inches of solid ice, and then sent high winds gusting through the frozen, glittering landscape. Tree branches that had started to leaf out cracked down across roads and power lines. Miles ofutility poles toppled over, and half a million people lost electrical power. National Guard soldiers rushed to get communities functioningâbut only those soldiers who had experience with generators were needed. Other people from her unit received calls to assist in nearby towns that had been hit by tornadoes, but the twisters never touched down close to where Debbie lived. During the entirety of Debbieâs service in the National Guard, the state of Indiana experienced no emergencies that called for expertise in fire control. More than sixty thousand members
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