My Army Experience

I have been asked to be a part of a panel about "Women in the Military" at Kellogg as a part of their Vet's week next week.

I just wanted to use this blog to gather and compile my thoughts. 

To begin: 

The United States ended the draft for military service in 1973, transitioning to the all-volunteer force that exists today. At the time, the active component of the military comprised 2.2 million men and women. Now, this group comprises just under 1.29 million, or less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population.

Keeping that in mind, only .5 percent of the population is in the military. Each branch is also different. In culture, atmosphere, and the missions that they carry out. According to the council on foreign relations website the Army consists of about half a million soldiers.

Now for the last 8 years we have been in areas that are primarily military. Living on Army bases where you can stay on base for just about anything that you need. In that atmosphere it is hard to believe that people may not understand what you are going through.


In an effort to explain my story I want to paint a picture of a normal day in my military life. We lived on base in Alabama and Washington state and in upstate New York we lived only 15 minutes away from the back gate. So, living on base. This means that to get home, to get on base, you are required to enter through a gate. The gate includes soldiers and later they had a machine to scan your military ID as you went through. The soldiers at the gate are armed, which was always fun to hear the comments from my kids about. There is also a likelihood of a random vehicle inspection when going through the gates, meaning that you have to pull to the side of the entrance area and leave your vehicle and open your trunk. They would search the vehicle and if all was well they would let you return to the vehicle and leave. On occasion they would have police dogs that would assist in the random vehicle checks. If you have family visiting they need to be sure to have a  Drivers license and care registration to get a visitors pass. Some states licenses are not valid for military base security and in that case you would need a second form of ID such as a passport.
Once you are on base, you will pass troops training, military convoys, military museums, Pizza Huts, Popeyes, Arby's, and a commissary - which is the military grocery store. There is a PX where you can buy clothes, electronics, or household goods and just outside that is a food court with a few more options of chain restaurants. There is always a theater on post, and they generally have advanced screenings of movies though they aren't the newest fanciest theaters. They have entertainment, usually bowling, and they have gyms. Lots and lots of gyms. The gyms are packed during the daily morning PT, but other than that aren't too bad. They have classes and sports, intramural activities for soldiers and wives. The sports programs for kiddos are run by a different program though and have their own specific gym. The kids sports offering are surprisingly generous, gymnastics, basketball, baseball, soccer, dance, theater voice, really anything that you would want for kids is found on post. The kids sports are also offered at a discount for families whose soldier is currently deployed. As is the child care.
The elementary schools for the military families are all on post. In fact, ours was across the street from our home. The schools are amazing, the teachers are wonderful and mindful of the children and the other children are all so understanding because they have all moved a lot and dealt with a parent gone often due to training and deployments.
So generally I would walk my daughter to school across the street and then do daily tasks. The commissary in Washington was on Main post and we lived on North Fort. So we would have to drive out the gates of North Fort and enter main post and then return the opposite way to return home. In the military you NEVER forget your wallet!!
I would run on base, often past soldiers training. I remember running out of my neighborhood one day and looking to my right to see a soldier down in the grass with his assault rifle aimed right at me with a soldier kneeling up right at his shoulder level. It wasn't alarming. It was pretty normal.
Military convoys were normal. Military helicopters overhead were normal. It wasn't super normal to see them in formation, that was a rare treat.

There were a few special times a day that were pretty picturesque. Reveille, retreat and taps. A different music would play at each of those times. Reveille was to begin the duty day and generally played over all the speakers on post at 6 am. Retreat was to end the duty day and played at 5 pm and taps was to signal quiet time on post at the end of the day at 9 pm.
When retreat was played at the end of the day it is customary to stop whatever you are doing and turn towards the music with a hand over your heart. This was a dreamy sight to see daily to see everyone turn together in the same direction and take a moment to honor the flag, the country and those who serve. I say that this is the custom loosely, because it was enforced. You would get a ticket if you continued to drive on post during the retreat instead of pulling to the side of the road. If in uniform you also had to get out of a vehicle during that time.

Living on base your military ID was crucial for just about everything. You had to show it to get on base, to shop at the commissary or the px, during times of high alert you couldn't even enter the commissary without an ID. You need the ID for a doctor appointment on post, or a pharmacy visit. The military ID was crucial. I heard rumors that on some bases they had a policy that they could stop anyone walking and ask them for their ID, even children, who on those bases were required to have an ID by the age of 11 or 12.

I want to touch quickly on the military spouses position. A military spouse may not actually be paid by the US government, but I venture to say that it would not run near as smoothly without the involvement of the spouses and families. There is a large family involvement in the military. So it was normal for us to easily say that "we" were in the military, when in all reality it was only my husband who had that job. The hours of volunteering that goes into helping a unit are crucial for the unit to thrive. The families are affected by the deployments and its so important that they are checked on and taken care of. That isn't a paid position. The soldiers may not need the packages and everything they receive, but knowing they aren't forgotten is important. That is not a paid position. I felt very involved with my husbands unit. We took presents to the families who had babies, we made meal trains for them, we scheduled activities for the children during deployments... none of those things were paid but they were all important. The truth about moving every couple years is that it makes it hard or impossible to get a new job at every duty station. So many military spouses stay at home. It's a truth that we came to love. It's not a feminist thing, it's just that it is hard to move so often with a career. So the military spouses often spend the equivalent time volunteering. There are even yearly ceremonies in the brigades to honor the work that the military spouses do in volunteering.

_________________________________________________________________________________


We joined the military after we had gotten married. It made a difference. We chose for Russ to enter the ROTC as a help with money for school and a catalyst to his future career. He had always wanted to be a pilot, so he worked hard and was chosen to be in Army Aviation. Due to choosing Aviation and him being in the top 13% instead of the top 10% of ROTC officers, we did owe a little bit of time back to the military. In other words we were in the military for 11 years after flight school as our commitment. 7 years for aviation and 4 years for an ADSO. Due to some changes with how we could pay back those commitments we ended up being in the military for a total of 8 years. 

We were integrated into the military community with a military ball and our first taste of what those would be like in the future and a spouses coffee at the commanders home with the wives of the commanders. 

I had just graduated with my bachelors in marketing and was working for a digital marketing firm, so meeting the military wives was my first taste of what life would be like in the military. Life is very much a family thing. When a person with a family enters the military, they are not the only ones affected or involved. The spouses are a huge part of our military today. Anyone who is in the military can tell you that, but it is so different from the way that things are run outside of the military. 

The military has an organization called FRG which stands for Family Readiness Group. This organization cares for the military families and is run largely by the spouse volunteer. The norm is that the commanders wife is the FRG Leader and has other wives that will volunteer to help. 

The things that the wives do may seem frivolous, or unnecessary. Activities, coffees, playdates, planning the balls and the holidays, making calls to the families, taking baby gifts and setting up meal trains for new mothers. But when it comes to the husband being deployed they are essential. 

An FRG leader is involved in meetings with Unit, Brigade, and Battalion commanders at least monthly and sometimes more often if needed. They are important to the commanders as a line of communication with the families. 

Let me paint you a picture of our first deployment. From a journal I kept at the time:

January - Hubby was at training for deployment
February - Hubby came home to NY for a minute
March - Hubby deployed and my almost 2 year old daughter and pregnant me moved to UT
September - Hubby home for 2 days, induced hubby met baby boy for a week and then returned to Afghanistan
December - I prepped for the 3 of us to move back to NY before hubby returned early January.
January - Crappy weather, cancelled flights, a day of driving and we finally got in the day before hubby got there. My in-laws helped me get everything out of storage in a day and hubby came home that night to a house full of boxes.

That's the overview, to dig in a little deeper here is this:
I was a mom of a two year old bubbly girl with a somewhat normal "easy" pregnancy. We lived in a house that we were house sitting just down the street from my parents. In someways it was easier and I would come to find that in some ways it was harder. It is a huge blessing to be in a location and neighborhood where everyone has been through or is going through the same thing. If you want to find a strong community - go to a military base and observe.

Some of the things that I want to highlight:
Spotty internet connections made for frustrating calls. When I got too frustrated at repeating the same thing over and over to my husband I found it was less irritating to just hang up and wait for another time.
Black outs - when there is a death overseas there is a worry that the family may find out by another channel. So to negate that they have blackouts whenever there is a death.
I remember one black out in particular. My husband is a blackhawk pilot and we were on day 3 or so of a black out and I had seen that morning on the news that 3 blackhawks had gone down and their were casualties. The home I was house sitting had a teenager living in the basement. She worked full time and wasn't often home during the days. My daughter and I had been out enjoying the summer and came home to a black car parked in front of our home that we had never seen before. My heart sank. I went inside the house to find that my downstairs roommate had made a new friend and he was visiting her.
I was shaking and it was too close for comfort. The stresses that a military wife goes through are arguably unparalleled. All the worst situations come to mind.
Wills - before a deployment it is important for a family to meet with a JAG officer to make sure that legal affairs are all in order. During that meeting we were asked questions that I had never expected to think about. Questions like, what would you like to happen with your husband's remains? Where would you like the children to go should something happen to both of you?
I think those were the most jarring.
You learn to answer those questions objectively with little emotion.

My objective in painting how hard of a life it is in the military is to bring to light the good. I have never been in a community that is so amazing. I can honestly say that in our neighborhood I could have gone to any house on our street with an emergency and asked for help and had immediate help.
For example:
One night at bedtime during my husband's second deployment my son was trying to balance on the side of his wooden bed frame. He slipped and split his lip open, lots of blood. I called a neighbor over who had recently moved behind us and was still in processing so I knew that her husband would be home to stay with her kiddos. She graciously came over and sat with my sleeping ones while I took my son to the ER to have his lip glued.

I was at a soccer practice when my other son slipped and cut his head open on the bleachers and had another mom graciously take my children home so I could rush to the ER and get my son treated. I had never been to her home before. We had only talked at soccer.
As a military family that moves often, you learn to make friendships and connections quickly and deeply. Connections who I would trust my children with. That doesn't necessarily happen, at least for me, as quickly or deeply in the civilian world. Having shared and similar hard times will do that.

_________________________________________________________________________________


I don't know that I can adequately express or describe the loss that I have felt since I left the military community. It was a dreamy life, though that may not be how you would expect military life to be described. It was a life of deep connections with friends all over the globe in a community so small that you were sure to run into neighbors and friends multiple times over various moves. It was a community with shared trials, vocabulary, and livelihoods. It was a community who went through hard times like a wave, with everyone rising up to the occasion of those hard times hand in hand offering helping hands to those in need knowing full well that the next day those helping hands may be pointed in their own direction. It wasn't all perfect, but it was a very good life.

During my personal hard times I had different friends do each of these things (all during one deployment):

• come over and help during a particularly rough bedtime
• watch my children while I took another child to the ER
• come to my home and be my personal laundry fairies after the kids had gone to bed so I could also talk with an adult
• drop by unexpectedly during the last weeks of pregnancy to clean my kitchen
• sleep at my house to take care of children so that my husband could be at the hospital for a birth
• bring me dinners
• umpteen playdates for sanity
• help me pack to move
• help me move a garage full of storage boxes to clean maggots out of my garage
• help me put training wheels onto my son's bike 
• help me move a dresser into my home (purchased during deployment) 
• help me clean after my husband deployed and I moved to another state the following week 
• let me sleep at their home before my husband came home because we had a day lapse that we didn't have a house
• bring us cookies at the temporary housing hotel since we had to live there with a young baby while house hunting 
• I am sure there are a lot more things that I could name, but that is only a few

Things that I have done to help other people struggling: 

• taken a full Christmas eve dinner to a family in the ICU
• watched kids during a move 
• watched kids during dr appointments 
• watched kids during a sanity break
• I am pretty sure no one in my circle of friends ever paid for child care, we just tended to rotate who took care of the kids. It was beautiful!
• helped so many people box up their home to move
• made dinners for families with new babies
• made dinners for families that just moved in
• taken cookies to neighbors
• set up block parties
• arranged FRG activities

I don't know if that even close to sufficiently paints the picture of the give and take relationship that occurs in the military. It is beautiful. It's a wonderful community that I will never be able to repay sufficiently. They were the color in some of my dark days of deployment and the close friends that you couldn't find in years in the same neighborhood outside of the military.