Deployments have been extended to 15 months. I understand this. I know why it has to be done and why it makes sense. I consider us lucky that we even have deployment "ends", unlike in WWII when they fought until they were dead or the war ended, whichever came first. I know all of these things logically, and I accept them as a consequence of war. But. I know what my husband was like after 13 months of non-stop work. I heard his voice around the ninth month, right before R&R, when he sounded robotic and detached. I felt his monotony and f*ck-it attitude in every conversation we had. That's a long time to be at war. I feel sorry for these soldiers who will have to ball up and tough it out.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:39 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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See, here's an example of what I wrote about yesterday. Yes, there are some drawbacks to the current body armor. But it takes time to pinpoint the problems and come up with solutions, to test out the solutions, and to implement them. For pete's sake, we didn't know what the shortcomings of the original IBA would be until they were actually used in theater! But now they've improved upon it, namely to make it lighter, change weight distribution, and even supply a quick release to instantly remove the armor in case of drowning or fire. That's brilliant and applicable, but the only way we knew we needed it was to let the original design run for a while. Nothing is perfect the first time around, but that Time article acted like the Army has given up on trying to improve the situation. Army's broken, guess that's it. That's absurd: they're constantly working to make life better for our warriors. Remember...Civil War soldiers had $175 worth of gear, OIF's have $17,000. But people act like our government is shortchanging our troops or throwing them to the wolves. They're working on it, dangit. It took seven years to design and build the LM, right?, a lunar module that had never been seen before. Well, IBA is a new concept too, and it will take time and effort to get it right.

Grr, I get so worked up over this stuff. Deep breaths.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:22 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"America's Broken Down Army" is a completely disheartening article. I could fisk just about every paragraph in the thing, but the fact that it was even written makes me want to cry. I will say a couple of things.

"For us, it's just another series of never-ending deployments, and for many, including me, there is only one answer to that—show me the door out," wrote an officer in a private e-mail to Congressman Steve Rothman of New Jersey.

If Time had asked my husband for his opinion, they'd've gotten the exact opposite answer. He's looking for the door in, trying to figure out how he can be more useful to the Army.

"Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.

If McCaffrey had asked me, he would've gotten the exact opposite answer again. I am so proud of what my husband is doing, and I am doing everything I can to help him get closer to the fight.

After training to fire the artillery's big guns at foes 15 miles away, his unit is pulling infantry duty. "I love the Army," the 12-year veteran, a native of Columbus, Ohio, says, "but I hate this war."

No one in the Army is doing what they trained to do in AIT or OBC, save 11Bs and 19Ws. And everyone hates this war. My husband hates this war. But he still thinks we have to fight it.

Three weeks before his enlistment was up last year, the Army ordered him to Iraq for a second tour. He had been planning to live with his wife in Chicago and attend film school by now. Instead, Santopoalo stalks Sunni insurgents through the palm groves. "You start to think about what life could be—sitting on a beach drinking a Corona," he says. "That's when it affects you."

My husband and I had two very different reactions to this quote. My husband said that this is the most normal feeling in the world. All soldiers wish they were relaxing and drinking beer, all the time. He's leaving for the field this weekend, and he says he knows all week he will wish he were at home in his recliner. That's what soldiers do: dream of relaxing. My reaction is the same reaction I have whenever I think of my own husband deploying: our life is not worth more than anyone else's. If my husband doesn't deploy, someone else will. Someone has to do the job, and we have never once thought that we've already done our time and now it's time for someone else to do it. Until this war is over, it is ours to fight.

I could go on and on about this article, about how they mischaracterize the Blue to Green program as the Army "cannibalizing" the Air Force, or how they beat that eternal dead horse that is uparmored HMMWVs. Their own figures make the argument that the Army is doing everything a lumbering bureaucracy can do to make this better:

A World War II G.I. wore gear worth $175, in today's dollars. By Vietnam, it cost about $1,500. Today it's about $17,000. [...] The Army said at the start of the war it would need 235 armored humvees; the number is 18,000 today—and each time the Army improves the armor on the truck, the insurgents improve their IEDs. The Army has packed on all the armor a humvee's transmission and axles can carry, so the military is rushing to buy 7,774 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles for an estimated $8.4 billion—more than $1 million each. Their V-shaped undercarriage is designed to deflect blasts from the soldiers on board.

Yes, the Army thought OIF, this one stage of the Global War on Terrorism (oops, can't say that), wouldn't last so long. So freaking sue them. Whiny microwave, drive-thru culture...you can't have everything you want as fast as you want it. This is a war. War sucks. People have to fight in it and they have to die in it. Forgive my lack of empathy, but I just finished reading a book on Sherman's march in the Civil War, and I have a hard time shedding tears that we've got to let more folks with GEDs in the Army to meet recruiting goals. Union men in the Civil War fought for years on end with no employer benefits waiting for them back home, fought to end the slavery of other men; they were in no danger of becoming slaves themselves. Today we fight an enemy who wishes all of us to submit, to become slaves to shariah. Forgive me if I don't care if you have a marijuana bust on your record or a low ASVAB, so long as you want to help us fight this long and awful war.

Is the Army broken? Maybe it wouldn't seem that way if we didn't constantly harp on it. Men in WWII parachuted all over kingdom come and were lucky to have a weapon and a cricket when they landed. Patton didn't have enough gas to advance his Third Army. But Americans didn't sit around and harp about how broken-down we were. They didn't gripe about how soldiers on the beaches of Normandy didn't have kevlar and uparmored landing crafts. They fought with the Army they had and didn't write four-page articles on how doomed they were.

Anyone with an ounce of perspective knows that war sucks and nothing is ever perfect. There's nothing wrong with striving to do better, but this constant naysaying and tearing down of our military is a bunch of baloney. I'm tired of hearing how crappy our Army is and how awful life is for everyone involved. We don't even know the meaning of the word crappy.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:56 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 Well said. I get very tired of hearing all the negative things about the army. My husband would probably agree with your husband. It is nice to read your well-written essay expressing how many of us feel. Thanks.

Posted by: Butterfly Wife at April 06, 2007 07:32 AM (Ilnml)

2 Amen, ditto & well said Sarah.

Posted by: tim at April 06, 2007 09:09 AM (nno0f)

3 Amen. You know, most of the time I am pretty apathetic about the BS I hear or read in the news, but occasionally I will get POed enough to write a letter or a post. But most of the time I am just thinking in terms of sheep, sheep dogs and wolves. Let them bleat. The victors write history...sometimes I would love to go back in time and hear exactly what the naysayers were saying back in the days...however, that doesn't really get recorded often. And sometimes I just want to go Atlas Shrugged on everyone.

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at April 06, 2007 09:10 AM (deur4)

4 I can guarantee that if you become a Chinook mechanic, you WILL be working in your field. Ask my son who is a Flight Engineer. *grin* As for Time... I expect no better from them. It's tiring to hear them bleat like that all the time.

Posted by: Teresa at April 06, 2007 12:33 PM (gsbs5)

5 Sarah wrote: They fought with the Army they had and didn't write four-page articles on how doomed they were. Well, they actually wanted to win back then. Nowadays... *sigh* Though I was amused at the article's use of the "I'd rather be somewhere else" thoughts. I suspect there are plenty of people in any occupation that do that. Why are soldiers having such thoughts "proof" of a "broken" army, again? (Hah! We can use scare quotes too!)

Posted by: Patrick Chester at April 06, 2007 04:11 PM (MKaa5)

6 Very well written.

Posted by: R1 at April 06, 2007 07:40 PM (xexA1)

7 I really regard what you say of the military. Of course there are always people who don't like their jobs, and some of those include members of our military. But Time has again proven its liberal bias. I hope they go under. They did their whole revamping, hoping to rebuild the flagship magazine, but I think they are killing it themselves with their editorializing.

Posted by: Tom at April 07, 2007 05:49 AM (nOjZS)

8 I must have been the wierd one, then. I distinctly remember on several occasions thinking while in the field "gosh, why can't we use the nuclear simulation pyrotechnic instead of using kool aid to pretend we've been hit with nerve gas?" Proof, PROOF that we were unprepared for anything in 1990! We trained with BLUE POWDER and pretended we'd just been gassed! Oh, the humanity! We were all thinking "what if they used REAL GAS" during the first Gulf War, paralyzed with fear because our training was so poor. How on earth did we survive in that old M113 and ragtop HUMMV? Despair! Woe!

Posted by: Deskmerc at April 07, 2007 11:29 AM (lcKyC)

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Registration is underway for the Milblogs Conference! If you are planning to attend, please make sure you go register!

Posted by: Sarah at 07:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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If you're already excited about the release of the movie 300, or if you don't know what the heck it is, you should read Victor Davis Hanson's review of the movie. Me, I'm excited. We haven't seen a movie in the theater since Superman returned, but we might have to make an exception for this one.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:17 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Two good links I found on JackArmy:

First, some dorks tried to call recruiters and trick them into being so desperate as to let gays or druggies into the Army. Didn't work.

Second, a medic wrote about his reasons for joining the Army:

I digress a little, but people say only the bottom of the barrel go to the military but I definitely don't think that's true. A lot of my friends from college have joined because college life just wasn't for them and they're all smart kids (none of us scored lower than 99 on the ASVAB). I went to college for awhile myself, but both ran out of money (College is expensive!) and decided that it was far too dumbed down and ... hands-off to be enjoyable. I wasn't satisfied with half-sleeping in a classroom while the professor rambled on about stuff I didn't care at all about just so in 4 years I could take my $100,000 debt and get a reasonable job (which a college degree doesn't even guarantee these days). Some of us just want to do something that matters. Being a college student hardly accomplished anything -- I'd rather be out there fighting for something that shows results. Saving people from gunshot wounds, giving people gunshot wounds or leading others to do the same.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've really become a big Neal Boortz fan, and his remarks about how the problems at Walter Reed will be everyone's problems if we have government health care hit home with me. We in the military have this government health care, and we truly understand the meaning of the phrase "you get what you pay for." I have never had any truly bad experiences with our health care system, but even the day-to-day dealings are what we'd all face under a nationalized plan. It takes at least six weeks to get a doctor's appointment, for anything whatsoever. And when it takes that long, it doesn't pay to be picky about which doctor you see, so I've never seen the same doctor more than once...except for the one in Germany whom everyone hated so her schedule was always open. It also routinely takes over an hour of waiting in line to get prescriptions filled. And records are constantly getting lost. It took me two months to request records from my hometown doctor, and then once the records finally arrived, you guess it, six weeks to get an appointment.

Boortz is right: this is what we'd all do if we had government health care. Yeah, we in the military don't pay for it, but when you don't pay, you also have no grounds to complain about being treated poorly.

MORE TO GROK:

JackArmy has great thoughts on the matter.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:39 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I heard on the TV over the weekend that the cadre from West Point visited the writers of 24 and asked them to tone it down because they were having a hard time convincing cadets that torture is not the way. I'm struck by how sad our education system must be if the teachers at West Point can't educate their students and instead have to resort to trying to change Jack Bauer. And how hopeless the students must be.

So I looked up more info on this story and got completely sucked into this New Yorker article: WHATEVER IT TAKES The politics of the man behind “24.”

Posted by: Sarah at 02:50 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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When I took a US history class in college, I remember reading tons of firsthand sources, letters and the like from the different time periods. We had a separate textbook of just these firsthand sources. So I find it odd that the new president of Harvard, a war historian, seems to be arguing that we should dissuade people from relying on firsthand sources in order to understand the war in Iraq. Why would a war historian not want people to pay attention to blogs and emails and YouTube videos from soldiers and Marines who are currently fighting this war? Surely this war historian doesn't think that letters from the Civil War are just propaganda and "war porn" that need to be downplayed, so it's ridiculous to ignore modern firsthand sources of war. Apparently she's just against the idea because war historians like herself haven't had time to cherrypick these sources and weed out the ones that make Americans feel that fighting the War on Terrorism is a good thing. Nothing like a war historian with an agenda to brighten my day.

MORE:

Read this analysis by Sean Lawson.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:50 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Found an old post from an Air Force wife where she encountered Extreme Snottiness from other wives:

As I was paying for my groceries I heard "you would think the commander's wife would put a little more thought into her appearance before leaving the house."

I looked around and realized they were talking about me.

Thank heavens my husband will never be a traditional commander because of his switch to CA. I haven't worn make-up in two years, except for that one day at SpouseBUZZ Live. And I wear so many track suits I chould be in a Wes Anderson movie. Today I have on courderoy pants covered in drips of baby blue paint. They used to belong to my dad 15 years ago. I think the paint came from his boat or something. A beauty queen, I am not.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Just a quick post about the MilBlog conference.

I will be attending with the illustrious CaliValleyGirl, and I'll be speaking on the "All in the Family" panel at the event, in the company of Some Soldier's Mom and ArmyWifeToddlerMom. I have no idea what substance I'll bring to the panel, seeing as my blog has devolved into into the fated make-up and houseplants, or in my case, Charlie and having a baby. I'm finding it hard lately to get worked up enough over Pelosi's jet or Arkin's diarrhea of the mouth to bore you with thoughts you can certainly read better elsewhere. But I'll do my best to appear legit in Washington.

So if you're in the area, or anywhere near the eastern half of the country, come on out and meet us! More info on the Milblog Conference webpage.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:45 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I just found this Army wife's blog post and it made my fingers itch to write:

I was told the other day that Hubble's ultimate mission is to come home to me (actually the choice of words was "come home to his mother" but we're not going there today). I had to bite my tongue. That is not the ultimate mission. It is to succeed, to better, to save, to secure. I know he can do all that. After all, I married him.

He did not enter the service to fulfill the mission of coming home to me. We both well know that there is a chance he may make the ultimate sacrifice. That is something we've come to terms with. There IS a war and there ARE people depending on him.

My husband is freaking out that when it comes time to get his Civil Affairs assignment, he'll get South America or something. We have no idea if this is even something to worry about, but I've seen the Army do dumber things. (I met a soldier on our post in Germany who was an Algerian-born fluent Arabic speaker...and he was on Rear D while the rest of the post was deployed to Iraq. The Army is anything but logical sometimes, but I digress.) My husband wants desperately to be put to good use to support the Global War on Terrorism because, like kd's husband, his mission is "to succeed, to better, to save, to secure."

The meaning of life is not Avoid Death. The meaning of life is to use your life for meaning.

Not everyone in the United States sees meaning in what we're doing in Iraq. I attribute this to many things. AWTM remarked that "people are much too busy watching American Idol/Dancing with the Stars and Deal or No Deal to bother researching world Events." I also fault the Bush administration for not helping Americans see what's really going on. But some people, like my husband, want to do what they think is right, no matter how many people the polls say are backing them.

As den Beste put it,

Honor comes from inside. An honorable man is true to himself and his own ideals, and he lives and acts according to those ideals no matter what anyone else says. It doesn't matter if that makes him respected or despised, for honor is not based on peer opinion.

And an honorable man will, if necessary, die for honor, die for what's right. There are issues worth dying for, and issues worth killing for. These things are not done lightly, but when they must be done an honorable man does not shy from his duty, even if he has to face it alone. It is more important what you stand for than who you stand with.

Honor is not and cannot be "multilateral". When you stand up for what's right, you may stand with many others, but each of those others stands there because of his honor. Each makes that decision for himself, and every one decides unilaterally.

If you compromise your honor in the name of "unity", or of "harmony" (or "alliance", or "multilateralism"), then you have lost your honor and have sold it cheaply. But if you are willing to do that, you never really had any honor to begin with.

I admire kd's husband's honor and sense of duty despite the naysayers around him. And I admire my husband for taking a job that will take him closer to the fight.

And I pray they don't give him South America. We'd have another ukulele incident for certain.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:46 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Matt Sanchez has written a great article about the anti-military attitude he's encountered at Columbia. My favorite part:

For the academics, joining the Corps over attending an Ivy League school was an obvious sign of desperation.

Were we desperate? Our platoon "heavy hat," Staff Sgt. Forde, never once mentioned he was named the best tanker in the Corps — two years in a row. But my professors at Columbia always mention the books they and their colleagues have written and often assign those books, as graded papers, so we all have to mention them, too. Who is desperate?

(Found via SandGram)

Posted by: Sarah at 03:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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If I could sum up how the Army has given my life more meaning than I ever thought possible when I agreed to marry that ol' cadet, this is what I'd say: Perspective.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:15 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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This has been the hardest blog secret to keep ever. I was dying for her to post something about it so I could put up a big blog hooray. But apparently telling people in her Real Life was important for some reason, like they couldn't just read it on the internet like the rest of us (wink). CaliValleyGirl-friend is now CaliValleyFiancée

Posted by: Sarah at 09:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Remember this summer when our travel voucher got all messed up and the Army paid us about $600 too much? That overpayment finally got found and corrected in November. But they did it again this time! And WAY more than $600. My husband just sighed and said, "More interest to be made." OK, Army, we'll keep your two grand for you for a while.

Ah, Finance. It's good to be away from you.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:01 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 When we first arrived in Germany (and when I knew little to nothing about how to read and correctly interpret an LES), I discovered by accident that we were being paid about $700 per month too much. (luckily I had a good idea of what a 2LT gets paid per month!) Without knowing that these things always get resolved eventually, I took my power of attorney and headed over to the finance office to make them aware of the situation...the look on the guy's face was too funny. It was the "you're actually reporting this?" look. The next month they promptly took back all of the overpayment...which introduced me to the "if you are underpaid, we'll take our time re-paying you but if you are overpaid, we'll take it all back at one" policy.

Posted by: Nicole at January 10, 2007 06:16 AM (8QLUb)

2 sorry...meant to write "once"

Posted by: Nicole at January 10, 2007 06:17 AM (8QLUb)

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I just watched Shootout: Return to Fallujah on the History Channel. This episode chronicled one soldier I know -- CPT Sean Sims -- and many soldiers I was amazed I had never heard of.

I've read so many stories of heroism online, but there's something completely different about reading it and hearing it from the soldiers themselves. I love the way soldiers can talk about grenades going off and appear more calm than I was last night when a Coke fell out of the fridge and sprayed in circles around the kitchen. There's something just so powerful about hearing that when a guy who was dragging his wounded buddy to safety got shot in the shoulder, he simply switched his grip to the other hand and continued to care for his friend. There's something about seeing these men talk about each other with awe, and sometimes a few quivers in the voice, that doesn't come across online.

There's something humbling about watching a single man sustain a firefight alone that makes me so damned proud to know that I even lived in the same town as him once.

God, I love these men.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I have been completely spoiled for the past four and a half years.

The entire time my husband has been in the Army, we've lived extremely close to his work. Most places have been walking distance; the last one was at least biking distance. So every day he's been in the Army, he's made three trips into work: PT, pre-lunch, and post-lunch. We've eaten breakfast and lunch together most of our married life.

Today he went to work for the first day before PT and won't be back until close of business.

I keep telling myself that normal husbands and daddies don't get to come home for lunch. My dad never did. I also keep telling myself that now that he won't break up my day, I will have more uninterrupted time for big sewing projects. But I'm still not taking this been-gone-for-11-hours thing well.

Neither is the dog.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hahahahaha! All ACU wearers have to go right now and see this photo at Jack Army!

Posted by: Sarah at 10:37 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The waves of PCS nausea are starting to wash over me.

My husband still doesn't have orders, but we're about 95% sure things will work themselves out soon. His control branch has been changed on his ORB to Civil Affairs, but we're waiting for that to trickle into orders. However, it was enough to put a silly grin on my husband's face, since he's been waiting for this day for over a year. Still, we might be the only couple in the history of Armydom who PCSes without orders. It could happen.

We leave on Wednesday, move in our house on Thursday, get our household goods on Friday, and get cable and internet on Saturday. What does your week look like?

Posted by: Sarah at 08:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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