by Daria Sommers
Army veteran Nancy Stroer served from 1986 to 1992 as a maintenance officer, spending time in what she calls “the beer-soaked trenches of post-Cold War Germany.” After leaving active duty, she worked in military communities in Germany, Turkey, Japan and the United Kingdom. During that time she found her calling as a writer. Her work has appeared in Stars and Stripes, Soldiers magazine, and Things We Carry Still, an anthology of military writing from Middle West Press.
In her 2024 debut novel Playing Army, Stroer deftly turns the Army’s famous “Be All You Can Be” slogan on its head with a feisty protagonist who sometimes awkwardly and often courageously confronts issues of sexism, racism, and leadership shortcomings as well as the painful legacy of Vietnam.
VBC Magazine recently caught up with Stroer to find out more about her journey from soldier to author.
Playing Army isn’t a war story, nor is it about returning from war but it does depict one soldier’s very real personal struggle. What was the genesis of that?
By telling the story of Lt. Minerva Mills, the main character of Playing Army, I wanted to show what it was like to be a woman in the ranks in the 1990s. There’s a question behind that, too, which is what kind of woman joins the military? And I could better address that curiosity by writing a Tim O’Brien-esque “true war story” rather than a memoir of my own service.
How did you end up joining the military? Family influence? Or your own desire?
Unlike Minerva, I come from a big family: six kids and two parents shoehorned into a tiny house with one bathroom. My father didn’t go missing in action in Vietnam like my main character’s did: he taught in the University of Georgia’s Art Department. When that job ended he supported us as a sign painter.
I think growing up in a family without much money draws creativity out of kids. We played, played, played—mostly outside, up trees and on our bikes, but also making up stories and acting out the ones we’d read. We must have “played army” but I don’t remember any of us having much interest in it. My dad had been a medic in the Army Reserves, but never considered those his glory years.
My first brush with the military came when I was at an activities’ fair at the beginning of my sophomore year at Cornell University and stopped to chat at the Army ROTC table. As my friend and I walked away I told him I was going to join.
“No you’re not!” he (a Quaker) said, aghast. I said I sure was, laughing at his shock, but also recognizing a kernel of attraction to military service I’d never considered before that moment. I was still finding my way in a big, super-competitive university far from home, drifting around majors, having lots of fun but not buckling down to anything, and the Army felt so … real.
A chance to be outdoors and physical in a place that was so interior and cerebral. I loved the ROTC physical training and navigating by compass around the woods of upstate New York. I loved the lectures on leadership and courses on military history. The rank structure felt earned and by the time I was a senior, I had risen to the top of the student ranks. I felt like I had “it” to be a good leader of soldiers.
Veteran and Author Nancy Stroer
What was it like for a woman in the Army of the late 1980s and early 90s?
It’s difficult to overstate how instantly and completely a woman who arrives in a new unit is commodified, both sexually and as a basis of comparison for men’s abilities. I’ve tried to convey this in Playing Army, but it was overwhelming to experience firsthand. The focus on my appearance had an odd way of both setting me squarely in the center of attention and removing me from serious consideration as a soldier.
None of that attention had anything to do with being interested in me as a person—instead I was a test subject, a lab rat who had to prove to the investigator whether I was as good as a man. Not in job performance, (in my case, as a maintenance officer), but in the number of pushups I could do, or my running speed. The researchers wanted to know if I’d sleep with them. Some of the looks I got were … hungry. Not the wolfish kind, but the lonely one. But 99.9% of the attention was unwelcome and contributed hugely to my feeling like an outsider at every turn.
What was your relationship like with other women soldiers?
There were few other women to spend off time with. I was friendly with some of the enlisted women I served with but the rank structure prevented us from being friends, another situation I’ve tried to convey in Playing Army.
I remember looking up from the night shift during a training exercise and realizing I was the only woman for miles. Someone from a Reserve unit brought me their one female soldier and asked me where she could find a toilet. “There aren’t any female latrines,” I said. I’m not proud of it now, but I remember thinking if I could hold my pee for an entire 12 hour night shift then she could (literally) suck it up and drive on, too. There was a lot of self-protection among the women and it sometimes came out in not-great ways, even toward our sister-soldiers.
How did you cope with what sounds like an isolating experience?
Maybe as a substitute for friendship, I found myself eating and drinking to keep up with the guys. I’d grown up with a lot of shame around food and a double-whammy genetic predisposition for alcohol problems, and the Army did nothing to encourage better habits. I was always starving myself or binging, just like Minerva does throughout Playing Army, and I didn’t know how to get organized. The things I wanted to eat were fattening, and the only legitimate forms of exercise were punitive. Drinking was a liquid opener to inclusion in the Old Boys Club. The Army never put me on a weight control program like Minerva, but I skirted the limits from time to time.
Tell me about your post-military career.
After the first Persian Gulf war, there was a round of Voluntary Early Release to downsize the military. I had just earned my first fitness certification and finished my first master’s degree and had a couple of job offers on the outside. I didn’t have many personal goals, I just knew I was miserable. I told myself, without understanding what I meant, that I needed to “get normal with food.”
Fast-forward to 2008. I was working as a military community health coordinator. That job put together my favorite skill sets like fitness and food and public speaking and writing. I went to the Ellyn Satter Institute for training in a secondary intervention called How to Eat, which helps problematic eaters normalize their relationship to food—not just those who aren’t making military body composition standards, but adult picky eaters, and chronic overeaters. I’ve continued my association with ESI, and if you ever ask a question on their Facebook page it’ll be me who answers it in the inbox! I love Helping parents adjust their feeding habits so their kids grow up feeling good about eating and their bodies.
As I was writing Playing Army, I wanted Minerva to have a realistic arc in her recovery from her distorted eating patterns, so I only allowed her to get to the point where she was just beginning to allow herself to eat things she liked. I don’t think she’d embraced the “Be All You Can Be” philosophy as much as she was becoming more comfortable with “be who you are,” or even “be all you can be as you define it.”
Playing Army, published by Koehler Books, is available at nancystroer.com and booksellers everywhere.
