Compared to other military families, I consider myself lucky. Very lucky.
We’ve been married for almost 14 years and although Andy has been gone for a lot of training, schools, and TDYs, I’ve only had to endure one long deployment. (That’s not counting the year he was gone before we got married. And he was in the Army for 10 yrs before we met, so those don’t count either).
How did we manage this, you might ask? Especially when so many soldiers are doing multiple deployments.
Dumb luck.
When 9/11 hit, we were at Fort Hood. Andy’s unit was spooling up to deploy and instead of going with his unit, he got orders. Orders to become a Drill Sergeant. After Drill Sergeant School, he did his normal two years of duty, but then was extended for another year (since they were short on guys because of deployments). Then he got a First Sergeant position in a TRADOC unit. Still no deploying. Next we moved to Alaska and that is where he deployed from. The last place on earth I wanted to be left for a year with 5 small children. I think it should count as two deployments (for me at least!).
Then we did a short 11 months in Savannah before heading to the Sergeants Major Academy. Another year of school.
Not a day goes by that I don’t realize how lucky I am. Especially since I’m surrounded by women with deployed spouses.
Even though I’m not the expert on deployments, here are a few of the posts I wrote while Andy was gone. I apologize if some of them look a bit wonky. They were imported from my old blog and the formatting is a bit off in some of them.
This is the first place we’ve been with a deployment cycle (that Mark will not be on). We’ve only been here a few months and already I’ve had close friends’ husbands leave. It is a new experience for us
I wish we could say the same! I certainly don’t begrudge you being able to have your husband home with you as much as possible!
My father-in-law spent 23 years in the Army, and somehow never even had a hardship tour. His brother instead, did 3 tours in Vietnam.
We are really hoping that our next duty station is a non-deployable unit. After 21 years, and almost all of that being line units, we are ready for a break.