Giesela Siscel remembers well the hardship she faced while her husband was away serving two tours of duty in Vietnam.

"Everywhere I turned, I was rejected," said the 67-year-old mother of three. Siscel, like many military wives of her time, was forced to take care of herself and her children with the little money she had.

And when her husband died in combat, things didn't get any easier. The independence she learned while her husband was away would be her reality forever.

Years later this Army widow found a way to cope with her grief when she turned to the Society of Military Widows.

"It really got easier," said Siscel, of Oklahoma. "Just getting out, talking and sharing really helped."

At the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, 245 members of the national Society of Military Widows gathered yesterday for their annual memorial service as part of their weeklong convention at the Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki.

The women refuse to forget the struggles and sacrifices of their husbands. And with the current war in Iraq, they are well aware of the adversity that today's military wives face.

Yesterday they honored 45 women in their own sisterhood who have died in the past year, but they refused to make it a somber event.

"We're not sob sisters," said Shirley Degan, the national organization's chaplain. Instead the group is politically focused to enhance and maintain survivors' benefits for the military wives and widows who will come after.

"It's tough. I know it's tough," said Degan, of Tucson, Ariz., reflecting on what today's military wives are going through.

She said it is important that they learn to be independent but also rely on the family and military support they have.

"They have it easier," Degan said. "They may not want to hear that."

Degan said she was forced to do everything on her own since she was miles away from family with little to no support from the military.

"The water heater goes out, the car breaks down — I had to deal with it on my own," Degan said.

The society has become for these widows a sisterhood of support, something they hope widows of the current conflicts will come to embrace. For the most part the group is made up of women whose husbands served in Vietnam or Korea, but some can be found from the World War II era.

Ruby Malchow's husband served in Vietnam, which she said is similar in many ways to the conflict in Iraq.

"They're facing the same things we faced," Malchow said, like social rejection and raising children on their own.

"But we were strong and they need to be, too," said the 75-year-old woman from Georgia.

One thing is different with this war: the wives are much younger, she said. Malchow was 32 when her husband left for Vietnam but many Iraq and Afghanistan war wives are in their early 20s.

The society became an outlet for Malchow to deal with her grief. "You see all these women who are like you," she said.

But the group is not to be mistaken for a breakfast social club, she said. The sisters are focused on enhancing and maintaining the benefits their husbands literally died for, like their Survivor's Benefit Plan and Tricare Medical. And the group is a champion for other political issues, especially a federal flag amendment that would make it illegal to desecrate the American flag.

More importantly, the sisterhood hopes to pave a less rocky path for military wives and widows that are sure to come.

"We're all fighting for the same things," Malchow said.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.