Family separation. Probably the hardest part of being in the military. The Ney York Times has some real heartbreaking stories here. How do you deal with it? What prepares you to deal with it?
Nothing.
No one.
Maybe you will get some training in the pre-deployment family services brief on how your loved ones should do things when you are away. Maybe, just maybe, you have someone you look up to who has been there, been through the homecomings and the day after, someone to tell you not to get your hopes up. Especially if you are young and just starting to realize that this relationship/marriage thing is a whole lot different than you thought it was going to be. Combat, visible and invisible scars, and missing body parts make it an order of magnitude harder. Out there, you have your “family” to keep you strong: your fire team, your platoon, your shipmates. Your real family back home, wife/children/mother/father, likely have no way to understand what you are doing or what you have done. They most likely have no frame of reference for what you are doing, for how intense your life is on a minute-by-minute basis. In the ideal world, you would have some time to come back to earth to relearn how to be a human after being out on the front lines. Usually that never happens. You are home and ‘poof’ it’s back to normal. Except its not. Now you have to deal with being a husband/wife/mother/father. The parenting thing may be new, something that occurred when you were gone. Your loved ones may wonder where you are after you get back, because this is not the same person that left 6/12/18/24 months ago.
My submarine deployments taught me that you need to work at your relationships when you are gone. Writing letters every day, even if that means you only get 2 hours of sleep before the next watch instead of 3. It means calling every chance you get, which can be difficult if you only have 3 port calls (for a total of 21 days over a 180 day deployment-the other 159 days you are at sea, submerged, out of contact). You have to work at keeping your family first, and that is not easy. You must rely on your faith, your judgement, and your brothers to help you through. Most of all you must rely on the ones you love most, the ones you are closest to, for trust and understanding.
Nobody said it would be easy…
I have always believed that the families have it tougher than us joes. Yes, we’re in a dangerous area facing combat, but we know that our families are safe at home. My wife did not know where I was (specifically) and didn’t even know if I was alive from day to day. It usually takes a day or two for notification to arrive to next of kin when a soldier is killed, so she could be reading an e-mail one or two days old and I could already be on my way home in a box.
Yes, she had it tougher.
You know, most of what you said you learned was necessary to work on your relationships is something that *every* person should be doing, not just deployed military. It is just so much more important for deployed military members to do, because they are not in physical contact with their loved ones for extended periods of time.
But *everyone* could learn a lesson from your example. If everyone worked on their relationships in this way every day and took the time to spend quality time with their loved ones each and every day, most relationships would be a lot better.
Good post, Bull Nav.
Damned right the spouses have it tougher… I couldn’t tell my wife anything about what we were doing, or even when I was coming home. She literally came home from work and found me sitting in the kitchen with six bags of sand-covered gear spread all over the floor.
Military families are special, and they put up with a lot of shit. My hat is off to my lady wife, who endured my multiple trips to the desert with nary a complaint.
She ranks me.
I have no frame of reference for what my wife went through. We would get underway–no email or phones mind you–and there would be zero contact for, say, 2 1/2 months until I could call her from wherever we pulled in. After a couple of weeks it was back out again for another 2 months. I still don’t know how she did it.
She is an incredible woman, and they most certainly have the hardest part of what we do.
I think the sub guys have it toughest… very little contact from home, so you sometimes don’t learn about births or deaths till you broach the surface (not possible on a boomer… but shorter patrols though). I remember reading about the USS Scorpion. Quite literally the families were waiting on the pier for Scorpion to show up… when it never did, then everyone realized something was wrong.
Guess that’s why they call it the “Silent Service”.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m pretty sure Boomers surface during their patrols…or at least get to periscope depth.
Something to do with comm, I’m not sure what exactly.
I believe they only go out for two or three months, do NOT surface (or come even close) and basically the Navy only has a general idea of where they are at (I think there are assigned “boxes” they have to stay in). I think they have the ability to receive comms submerged deep.
I was told once by a Navy sonar guy that the only way you have even a CHANCE of finding an Ohio-class SSBN was to look for the spot in the ocean where there was absolutely NO noise… they are that quiet.
I was a fast attack guy, so I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the SSBN life. However, there are similiarities. When the two types of boat are on patrol these days, you will still receive comms, even if you can’t send.
The submarine squadrons are very good about getting word out about life events, even if it is a couple of days later. For instance, I found out about my son’s birth 2 days after it occurred, but at least I knew about it. We pulled into Haakonsvern, Norway, about 10 days later and I was able to call home. We got back to Norfolk 1 1/2 months later, and I will always be indebted to my wife for having arguably the toughest part of taking care of a newborn by herself: the first couple of months when you wonder where the owner’s manual is…
All that being said, I don’t want to diminish the fact that wives/children of our frontline combat folks wait in suspense every day hoping those guys in uniform don’t come walking up the driveway with the worst imaginable news…
Another aspect is fiances and girlfriends, who aren’t legally recognized by the military. They wouldn’t receive official notification, only through family channels. Or how about kids who live with horrid, evil ex-wives, whose only concern is how quickly the SGLI would flow to the kids? (Hint: set up a trust fund monitored by someone you would trust your kids’ lives with to dole out child support funds so the ex-whores can’t get their filthy claws in it.)
Very good story and nice site.
I don’t know about that…
It is interesting.