AUSTIN — Today, Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, we highlight the service of Captain Mary Dale who served in the U.S. Army.
Mrs. Dale is the current Vice Chair of the Texas Veterans Commission (TVC). She is also an attorney at Deitch Law Offices in Austin, Texas, and a member of the State Bar of Texas, all federal Texas Districts, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. Before serving Texas’ Veterans community with TVC and serving in the U.S. Army, Mrs. Dale was a high school graduate looking to make a difference for the country she loved.
“I was just out of high school. I wanted to be in a job that was honorable. I was very patriotic. I actually applied to the police academy out of high school.” Even though she did well on the entrance test, the academy required applicants to be 21 to be considered. In 1989, Mrs. Dale was still in her first year of college when she passed by the Army Recruiting Center and decided to drop in. She learned she could serve her country and pay for college by joining the military.
Mrs. Dale’s father served in the Army Reserves and several of her uncles and family members served on active duty. Her mother was worried when she joined up, a reaction she understands better now as a mother herself. However, she was determined to serve her nation and would not be stopped from pursuing her dreams.
Voices of Veterans: Captain Mary Dale, U.S. Army
Mrs. Dale served four years in the Army Reserves and four years on active duty. She served as a Legal Specialist in a JAG unit in the Army Reserves and as an Ordinance Officer during her active duty. As a Legal Specialist, she would help compile various legal documents like wills and estate planning documents for Military Members who deployed to the first Gulf War. While training to become a Legal Specialist in the Army Reserves, she met her husband, Tony Dale, the current Executive Secretary of the Texas Veterans Land Board (VLB). In 1993, she transferred to Ohio State University to be with Tony and join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).
She graduated in 1993 and was assigned to a maintenance unit as an Ordinance Officer. Her initial responsibilities were to ensure the unit was ready to be deployed, but they eventually expanded to ensuring the entire division was prepared for deployment.
When Mrs. Dale was deployed to Kuwait in 1994, she was the highest-ranking Logistics Officer on the ground. After the U.S. entered a ceasefire agreement, the soldiers were to perform peacekeeping missions on a 30-day rotating basis. However, she described a breakdown in the agreement that changed everything: "While I was there, Sadam crossed into [Kuwait] and broke the treaty, and we turned into a combat operation, Operation Desert Strike, and we ended up being there for six months.”
Mary Dale with her now husband, Tony Dale, while they were both enlisted in the United States Army. Tony Dale is the current Executive Secretary of the Texas Veterans Land Board (VLB)
She discussed how the swift transition from a short peacekeeping mission to a more extended combat mission felt and how she stepped up to the situation.
“My first thought was, ‘We have a lot to do’ because we did not necessarily have the resources or the people we needed to be in a combat operation. So, I went into work mode. You do the math and realize, oh, I’m not going to make it home for Halloween or Thanksgiving. Hopefully, I’ll be home by Christmas. That unknown was a little unsettling […] We always knew it could happen, so it wasn’t a lot of shock; it was more ensuring that my family and my parents and husband knew what was going on.”
While Mrs. Dale determinedly took on this altered mission and was unsurprised by the events, it was still stressful to suddenly be immersed in a combat operation.
"There wasn’t much sleep, so I slept when I could. We were doing LOGPACs [logistics packages] pretty much daily. Thank goodness we did get backfilled with the entire battalion versus the small group of peacekeeping folks that we had, so that was helpful. I was tired because it was so busy, but I was so focused on what needed to happen that I didn’t worry or stress too much. When I did, I relied on my faith. I went to church, found my group of friends, and we prayed together and all that good stuff: focus and faith."
Keeping in touch with her family was crucial for Mrs. Dale, and she always found ways to contact them, usually by sending letters. However, she remembered a special time when her husband Tony was at a National Training Center and could speak with her on the phone. Mrs. Dale also recalled a unique event on Thanksgiving Day while she was deployed in Kuwait. "The Secretary of the Army came out on his plane, and all of a sudden, all these turkeys arrived. We actually got to eat a real, hot Thanksgiving meal. That definitely helped morale."
Captain Mary Dale, U.S. Army
When asked about the challenges she faced as a woman in the military, Mrs. Dale discussed her experiences with culture clashes and the difficulties of so few female officers being present.
“It wasn’t difficult with the unit I was in because we knew each other. They knew me, and I knew them […] It was definitely much more challenging to work with what they called ‘third-world nationals’ at the time. Folks who would come in from other countries, not from Kuwait […], and their culture was not to take orders from a woman. That was probably the most challenging part. The other thing was that there were not a lot of other female officers I could bond with. One of the challenges was finding my people to talk to, to de-stress with.”
Mrs. Dale left the Army in 1997 and took many vital lessons away from her time in the military. She treasures the friends she made and tries to keep in touch with them by seeing them every few months. She said she learned that at 20 years old, she was not, in fact, “invincible.” While laughing at her young hubris, she said, “I have a huge respect for enjoying life and perspective because not only do you not want to take things for granted, but every day you’re not sitting in 130 degrees or being shot at or threatened, that’s pretty cool. So, I try not to sweat the small stuff.”
To listen to Captain Mary Dale tell her story, click the button below:
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