My husband is pretty sure he knows what his next job will be. But there were a few weeks in there where he was confused, so he decided to turn to the assignment officer who might be able to help him. Know who it turned out to be? MAJ Patti.

Of all the people in the Army, a blog spouse needed help from another blog spouse. The world is a small place.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:04 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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As of today, we're here because we want to be.

Last night, my husband and I realized that today is his four year anniversary of being in the Army. If he had wanted to get out, he would've skipped this course and we would've coasted the rest of our time in Germany until today. And today we would've been civilians.

It's strange to think about, really. But it's also kinda fun to know that we're now here not because of an obligation he made when he was 19, but because he chose to stay. Pretty cool.

And I couldn't help but remember CaliValley's rant...

And the misery we endured when my husband couldn't start the Army right away. How poor we were then! But it makes where we are four years later all the sweeter. The Army's been good to us.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So two nights ago, I had the strange realization that my husband could deploy again in the near future. When he returned from Iraq in March 2005, the thought of the next deployment seemed far off. He moved to Finance, where there was no chance of him deploying with that particular unit. Then we were coming here for two courses, with obviously no deployments either. We still don't know where we're moving in December, but the other night as we were getting ready for bed, I suddenly had the thought that he could go to a deploying unit. Oh yeah, deployment. It was a strange realization that's hard to put into words: it wasn't fear, sadness, or anxiety; it was just a feeling of "oh yeah, I forgot that was a possibility." So, yeah, I forgot that was a possibility. We've been extremely lucky so far that he's only gone once, so we'll just have to wait and see what's in store for us at the next duty station. Wherever that is. Seriously, can we find out soon? The movers will be back before we know it.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:02 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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John Kerry Proposes Universal Coverage by 2012. Cold Fury calls it "health care with all the compassion of the IRS, all the efficiency of the Post Office, and all the competence of the DMV." We here in the Army have some of that good ol' free health care. I called the health clinic because I need one of those yearly woman appointments; it's not life-or-death, but it's a health care need. I called in the beginning of July and they said they could make me an appointment for 4 August. Then they called me today and said that the doctor won't be there on Friday and we'll have to reschedule for 28 August. Yep, it's free, but it's taking me two months to get seen. I'm just sayin'.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about being squeaky? Something funny just happened. My husband tried to settle his travel pay when we got here, and Finance mailed us a letter saying we owe the government $800. That certainly wasn't right, so he went in and tried to fix it. They came back with another letter that said that the Army owes us $600. That's not right either since we got a travel advance; in actuality the Army owes us about $50. My husband understands how this stuff works, so he went in and walked the Finance person through it. She called DFAS and they all agreed that the Army owes us something like $63. So a few days later we get a direct deposit for $675. Ha! My husband said that the system will work itself out eventually and take the money back, so it's not worth his time to go back in to the office and try to get the correct amount. In the meantime, he put the money in our money market so we can at least milk a little interest off it!

The government does the best they can, but their best is an idiot.

Posted by: Sarah at 01:14 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Many people who work for the Army in certain aspects -- finance, housing, health clinic come to mind -- hate their jobs because if someone's in their office, he's probably mad. My husband realized this when he started working in Finance: it used to frustrate him that people always came in guns blazing, so he and I have always tried to be extra understanding and extra benefit-of-the-doubt-giving in these offices. But we're slowly learning the lesson of the squeaky wheel.

The first thing my husband did when we got our cell phones was to go in to Inbound Transportation and give them our phone number. They assured us that they would call us when our household goods arrived. It's been two and a half weeks since then, and we've started getting antsy. Eleven days on an air mattress can do that do you. So my husband went by their office today to see what was going on. Our stuff has been here since 6 June, but "they didn't have our phone number." My husband watched someone write it down on a paper in our file on 2 June, but apparently that paper is lost and no one in Transportation seemed to care that much. And it gets worse: they are so busy that they can't deliver our stuff until 5 July. So we'll live in this city for six months, and our stuff will languish in storage for a month of it because they lost our phone number.

And I knew I had a bad feeling about it. Some of our friends got their stuff two weeks ago, and I knew that our stuff couldn't be this far behind. But I didn't want to be the guns-blazing type who goes into Transportation every day and demands her stuff. I figured that I would give them their space since they assured us they'd call. Silly me.

Two years ago my friend's husband didn't get his reenlistment bonus. He politely pointed this out to Finance three times, each time to no avail, and his bonus came a full year late. My husband joked that he hates when soldiers go straight to IG with asinine complaints, but my friend's husband sure would've gotten service faster if he'd headed straight to the top instead of putting faith in the system. If he'd come in guns blazing, someone would've helped him. The squeaky wheel tactic works.

I want to be an understanding and cooperative family, especially if we're staying in this system for another 16 years. But I am already tired of getting screwed over. There are medical appointments if you bark loud enough. Reenlistment bonuses come when you shout. And your household goods get delivered a month earlier if you pester Transportation.

From now on, I guess I'm squeaky.

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The first time we moved together, away from our college town and to our first duty station, the first move of many to come, my husband surprised me by bringing along our Tom Petty CD and playing "Time to Move On" as we headed off. We've continued to do this every time we drive to our new post, and every time I cry as we leave the old. That is, every time until now. I honestly can't say that I was sad to leave Germany; the only thing I miss so far is Erin, Kelly, and The Girl, and I've talked to one of them on the phone about every three days anyway! (Also, can I just say how wonderful it feels to have three friends who seem to miss me as much as I miss them?)

It was time to move on, and I'm so glad we did.

I love our new post. I realized that I've never been around basic trainees before. It wasn't so obvious at Knox, and there were none in Germany, but since this post is almost exclusively a training post, I've found it seems everyone is a private. And I love it. I drive around with this stupid grin on my face because I'm constantly passing formation, duffel packing, pugil sticks, bayonet training, and other extremely cute things. I love when a pack of trainees is standing in formation outside the Shopette, all clutching their AAFES bags of goodies. I even love the way the gate guards welcome us to the post every day: "Victory starts here."

But I realized yesterday as I was moving stuff out of our hotel that living off post will be a completely different experience for me. This is the first time I won't constantly be surrounded by Army. I realized I won't wake to the sound of PT, and I will have to make a special effort to drive onto post to ogle at basic trainees. For many wives, moving off post comes as a relief, but it saddens me. I love on post.

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Over the weekend, we caught Markos Zuniga on Tim Russert. Overall I thought he did a good job of presenting his side without making me want to smash the TV, but there was one thing he said that really didn't sit right with me. Russert asked Kos about his military service, and he had this to say (clip here):

I think one of the tragedies of the war right now is that so many people like me, people who came from lower socioeconomic status, from the barrios or the ghettos or the trailer parks or low income areas use the military, which is a very colorblind society, very meritocratic, use the military as a way to build their self esteem, to grow as a human being, and to learn very valuable life skills, and come out of it with money for college. And this is what I did, and it was very effective in helping me get to where I am today. I would not be the person I am today without my military service -- I'm extremely proud of it -- and it just pains me to see how many lower income people now do not view the military as an option because, clearly, join the military, get shipped to Iraq: it's not a very attractive proposition.

Our nation has a military in order to defend the US and fight her wars. That's the whole point of a military. I hate when people act like the military should be a place where they can get free college or some extra cash for one weekend a month and not have to do any of the hard work. The military is not a summer camp where you get to know yourself and then get free college. Kos should've known that back when he joined right before the first Gulf War. The military is serious business, and anyone who joins thinking he can reap all the benefits without any of the risks is a jerk. The US doesn't front millions of dollars so some kid from the barrio can find himself. He has to fight when called to, so if he doesn't want to fight, he needs to find someone else to finance his maturation process. Period. It irks me that Kos acts like the US is oppressing low income kids because they can't have their college and eat it too. If you're not prepared to fight, the military is not for you ever, even in peacetime.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I've been thinking a lot about Bunker lately. It's been a year since he passed away, and I still miss him very much. I think about him often when something exciting happens in the news, so he was one of my first thoughts yesterday. He would've been so excited about Zarqawi's death. I just wish I had baking utensils or flour and eggs, for I surely would relish a "Suck it, Zarqawi" cake right about now. Maybe I can make a belated one...

Posted by: Sarah at 02:58 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I was thinking more about that AFN commercial and I found a military compensation calculator that lets you see the equivalent civilian income that relates to the same standard of living you live at in the military. It doesn't work well for overseas because they don't add anything for housing, but try it with the CONUS average and see where you're at. Heck, this is the main reason we're not getting out of the Army anytime soon.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:55 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I suppose today is a milestone of sorts, though I don't really know how exactly it should be celebrated. My husband returned from Iraq one year ago today. I feel blessed that I've had him for 12 consecutive months without another deployment on the horizon; that's something to cherish in today's military. And that's all I have to say about that.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Several people have asked what's next for our family. We should PCS back to the US in about two months. We'll enjoy some hard-earned vacation time in the Midwest before we drive out to South Carolina for my husband's career course.

However, the finance career course might all be for naught, since my husband has answered the call for Civil Affairs officers. The active Army currently only provides 4% of CA soldiers, with the reserves pulling the majority of the weight. However, with changing needs of the Army, there has been a call for officers to volunteer to change their functional area to Civil Affairs. My husband has submitted his packet, so we should find out this summer if he's been accepted.

We've told very few people about his decision, and the ones we have told typically reply with "Wow, you two must like being apart." My husband hopes to be selected for either Arabic or Farsi training, which of course will mean that he'll be more valuable in the Middle East than in garrison. But it's what he really wants to do, and I couldn't be prouder. If someone has to be a Civil Affairs officer, I'd rather have the most capable person I know on the front lines.

So keep your fingers crossed that he gets selected for an exciting and important duty. And I'll keep my fingers crossed that he doesn't spend the remaining 16 years of his career away from home!

Posted by: Sarah at 05:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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My husband's report date for the next big adventure is in exactly three months. That means that our aval date should be in two months. We're leaving Germany in two months. We don't have orders yet, so the only thing I'm working on regarding the move is panic. If I sit and think about it for too long, I start to feel like I'm going to throw up.

But I could never have written a better blog post about moving than Erin did.

(And I don't know how she and Kelly get away with making fun of me all the time: they're both just as neurotic as I am!)

Posted by: Sarah at 02:25 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 I keep saying that I can't wait to find out what we are doing and when but I know I will stress once we find out. You better get busy using up all the food, spices, and shampoo at your house! I worry about the little things...(i.e. will you up the toilet paper?") I need to relax! See you tomorrow

Posted by: Stephanie at March 03, 2006 08:57 AM (Y1m/K)

2 Sarah... If you're heading to the Fort Hood area, let me know. MajorMom is a new realtor in the area! Let her help you guys find a nice backyard for Charlie! See you on the high ground! MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at March 03, 2006 09:21 AM (j7S/Q)

3 Kelly is the "last man standing". Erin reminded me of dinners in Graf at the Italian restaurant, I miss that. Especially Bayrisch Irish....and some kind of discussion. What now?

Posted by: Vonn at March 03, 2006 09:45 AM (dEgRi)

4 I loved Erin's post. How appropriate and how true. I remember wanting to leave Germany so bad at times but secretly knowing that I probably wouldn't find such a close knit circle most other places (mostly because Vilseck is so small). I love America for sure, but I do miss sitting outside in the summer eating Gelati and feeling so unique as an American living overseas. Good luck with your moving...I'll be praying for you (and your stuff!)

Posted by: Nicole at March 03, 2006 01:09 PM (1ECnr)

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CaliValleyGirl is closing in on a week until her soldier returns from Afghanistan. His unit was featured in the Stars and Stripes this weekend. I can't wait to read about their homecoming on her blog.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I wrote yesterday about how I couldn't believe my husband left for Iraq two years ago. Gunnar Becker's mom can't believe it's been that long either: she sent me an article about her son I hadn't seen yet. No one in the battalion has forgotten Gunnar.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My husband and I had the following conversation last night:

Me: On Tuesday it will be a full year since you left for Iraq.
Him: Two years.
Me: Huh?
Him: Two years.
Me: Oh, right. Dang. (Pause) Daaaang.

I can't believe how time has flown. He's right: he left on Valentine's Day two years ago, and it'll be a full year in March since he's been home. My Swedish friend and I were talking over the weekend about how easy it is to lose track of time when you no longer measure your life in school grades. Once you get out of school, time is a big blur. Even something as monumental as a year of deployment got all mixed up in my head.

I can't believe he left two years ago. I remember it so vividly...

Posted by: Sarah at 04:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Since September 11, I've had a handful of war dreams. Sometimes I'm a soldier, sometimes I'm a civilian, and last night I was a frightened wife being escorted through a battle by her husband's soldiers. Whenever I have one of these dreams, I jolt awake in a panic. It always takes me a while to calm down enough to go back to sleep. I can't help but wonder how real soldiers are affected by these dreams: I dream of a war I've never been in; they dream of real situations they've faced. I hope their dreams don't haunt them like mine do...but I think that's too much to hope for.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Reader Glen pointed out a blog post that really made me smile. It's a wonderful story of a husband's love for his wife, a love that keeps them strong deployment after deployment.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:12 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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LGF points to two views about the recent study showing many deaths in Iraq could've been prevented with more body armor: on the one hand, writers at the left-wing site Daily Kos are wringing their hands and blaming bureaucracy, and on the other hand soldiers are saying that the armor they already wear is sufficiently clunky and cumbersome and that more armor would make them less effective. R1 voiced the soldier side:

The armor I wore was a big improvement over any other armor I've seen before. But it was still hot, heavy, and contributed to heat and fatigue casualties. So what's better? Losing one man to a gun shot wound or losing five to heat stroke?

The other night my husband and I caught an episode of that show Over There. The plot in a nutshell was that the Americans had captured an insurgent who knew information about where stolen missles were. At the end of the episode, the insurgent agrees to tell the Special Forces officer where the missles are (on a farm) as long as the Americans promise not to kill the farmer and his family. Long dramatic pause as the officer promises...cut to the next scene of the farmer feeding his goats and his farm getting blown to bits from an air strike.

Naturally, I got wrapped up in the moral dilemma of the issue. Why would the director of this show have the officer promise and then just blow up the farm? What was the underlying agenda behind this move? I turned to my husband and asked him, "Would that really happen?", meaning would someone be able to so easily renege on a promise like that and just blow up a family of civilians. The answer I got was not what I expected...

My husband said the scene was complete horse manure because you don't just call in air strikes on some random farm where you think there might be missles just because some prisoner told you so. He said Iraqis were notorious for lying about weapons caches: they'd have a beef with a neighbor and then run to the Americans claiming the neighbor was a terrorist just to get him in trouble. Husband said what would really happen would be that they'd raid the farm looking for the missles. If you just aerial bomb the farm, you have no idea what you just blew up. Maybe the missles were there, maybe they weren't, so you're no closer to knowing you're safe.

I fell for it. I fell for the tug-at-your-heartstrings nonsense that the director of Over There wanted me to. Hook, line, and sinker. But that's because I'm a dumb civilian, just like the majority of people watching this television program. The writers sent me right down the garden path towards Moral Dilemma, so I completely missed the tactical errors. I don't have the military training to notice the things my husband noticed about this show.

I can't help but think that the people at Daily Kos have gone down the same garden path. They've never worn any body armor, but if someone says it saves lives, well then coat the soldiers from top to bottom in it. Make their bodies bulletproof and none of them will die. The only problem is that soldiers don't just stand out in the street trying not to die. They need to move around, run, jump in and out of HMMWVs and Blackhawks, and react to whatever comes their way. They can't be standing there like the un-oiled Tin Man because they're weighted down in body armor.

I used to joke with my husband online in Iraq that he needed to sleep in his body armor. I told him I was going to make him kevlar pajamas to keep him safe. Then he got home from Iraq and put his body armor on me, vest and helmet. I had it on for maybe two minutes and I felt like I was being crushed. He wore it every day for 13 months.

Sometimes we civilians think we can see things as clearly as our soldiers do. We think we know what's best for them, or we think we can see the Moral Dilemmas just as well as they can. I'm just not sure we have the knowledge and experience to make that call. Our hearts can be in the right place -- as I'd like to believe this Kos writer's is -- but sometimes all the empathy in the world doesn't match up to experience.

Usch, I can't believe I walked right into that stupid tv plot.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:17 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 Heh. The crap they made us wear was even heavier. We would have killed for the niftier armor they make nowadays, but it was no big deal, my particular hatred was for those damned MOPP suits and gas masks. Armor plates are just heavy and bulky, MOPP gear is positively stifling, but we needed to wear it and drink lots of water to replace what we'd lost, because the risk of dehydration is worth it, considering what VX or sarin could do to you. Anyway, the sequence you describe in "Over There" is entirely contrived. I see it as a failure of imagination, a lack of familiarity with what really goes on in combat or military in general. It's self fulfilling as well, the idea that we'd just blow up a house on someone's say so is "credible and gripping" because, well, that's how it is always portrayed in the popular media. Isn't that what we always see in the news, where we blast some house to smithereens on a tip? So it gets portrayed as such, over and over, till the popular perception is that it is standard procedure. And so it repeats, and it doesn't occur to the folks writing the story that we maybe just do things differently. Not in the approved paradigm. Fortunately for us, the war is being conducted by folks who understand warfare, like Red6 and your husband, rather than some technoweenie in Hollywood who thinks 40mm grenades explode like so many pounds of dynamite and gasoline. Now, don't get all bent out of shape because you didn't consider possible alternatives to blowing up the house in the stupid TV show. No alternatives were presented to you, suspension of disbelief was enough to carry you through the show, but at least you maintained sufficient incredulousnes to ask the question afterwards. But think of it like this, if the show was "Hyperknitting", and the rest of us were watching (who don't know squat about knitting) were led to believe that some overhand/underhand manuever (or whatever, I don't know squat about knitting) was the proper way to make a sock, and you know darned (heh) well that there are a lot more ways to make a sock...how would you feel about it? I dunno if that last part made enough sense.

Posted by: Jason at January 09, 2006 11:36 AM (565iX)

2 That's probably the most frustrating thing about getting to be "in the know" about how the military works...I am by no means fully educated but it's getting increasingly more frustrating to deal with my ignorant civilian counterparts!...which makes me realize how little I knew for so long

Posted by: Nicole at January 09, 2006 03:58 PM (KJBDI)

3 Don't feel too bad. Having served in the (peace-time) Army, I can catch more stupid portrayals of the military than the average civilian, but even I get snagged. For the generations who grew up on TV, movies and mainstream media, it's tough to get away from a lifetime of indoctrination.

Posted by: Eric at January 09, 2006 11:23 PM (qaR9z)

4 that'll teach you to stop reading daily kos. ; ) anyways, there is historical precedent for what happens when you try to armor a soldier from head to toe. it's called the middle ages. Something will happen to make ceramic body armor obsolete, and then we'll stop using it altogether.

Posted by: annika at January 10, 2006 12:12 PM (Yotfs)

5 Great post. Just goes to show you should never form an opinion until you have seen at least more than one side of the situation. I don't think the kids at KOS will ever figure that out.

Posted by: Titan Mk 6B at January 10, 2006 01:48 PM (8HxzN)

6 I have to send my MIL to blogs like this so she can educate herself. She thinks most of the military are blooming idiots and WHY did I ever chose to serve. THANK YOU for keeping us informed.

Posted by: Sgt Lori at January 13, 2006 02:21 PM (DmF+F)

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