I’ve mentioned this a few times, but I really hate the phrase, “this is what you signed up for.” Mostly because I didn’t sign up for anything, I got married. It also bothers me because if you ask my husband and quite a few others out there, they may have signed up for this, but they didn’t know exactly what they got themselves into.
I’m awful with numbers, but my husband was asked to do the math on exactly how many days he’s spent overseas on this assignment. The numbers were a little shocking. Since starting this assignment in January 2008, he’s officially spent 460 days overseas. If you add in time away domestically for training classes, etc it adds over 90 additional days to that number. Yes, the total number overseas includes 2 deployments, but those were only a little over 120 days for each deployment. The rest of those days were trips where the military sent him to fly overseas, often at the last minute.
This means that in a little over 3 years, he’s spent more than a year overseas. Crazy, huh?
While I know he did sign up for the military, I don’t think he signed up for that.
I am aware that some military members deploy for a year at a time, but when they are not deployed, they’re home. That’s usually not the case with flight crews, but I do realize that we have it easier than many other soldiers and their families do.
Update: Last week, I was concerned because they pushed back the start date of the class that is necessary for his next assignment. I was upset that he may have to do yet another deployment (and miss his 3rd Christmas in 4 years) because of the date change. As of right now, his class date has been pushed back less than 2 months, I had panicked because they originally said it could be as many as 4 or 5 months. This means there’s a good chance he will not have to deploy again before we leave his current assignment. (Fingers crossed it stays that way!) The assignment people said his commander called them personally to check on things, which I thought was pretty nice. Special thanks to everyone for thinking of us last week, you have no idea how much we appreciate it.
In case you’re keeping track of the numbers… This class is domestic, but 4 months long. Add that to at least 90 days of other domestic training classes plus 460 days overseas (That’s as of right now, he will probably fly more overseas missions before we move). So the total days gone since January 2008 (both foreign and domestic) will equal out to more than 2 years away by the time we move around April 2012.
I’ve never been good with math but I don’t think anyone signs up for numbers like those.
Yes, that's just crazy.
ReplyDeleteMy husband is gone a lot too. Or, if he's not gone, he's on the night shift so I don't get to see a lot of him.
New reader! EOD Army wife here.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say that no, other military members aren't home for a year after deployment. My husband is EOD and they TDY A LOT. It does not count towards time away. There is no TDY max. Sometimes it can be 3 weeks on, 1 off for months in a row and then pre-deployment training and deployment. Also, the "grunt" jobs in the Army train in the field, overnight constantly. It's not a year on, a year off by any means. It's one of the reason the Army had to (theoretically) extend the "dwell time" because so much of it was spent away from the family.
I hate the phrase "we signed up for it". Not this. But, that's the good thing about contracts: they eventually expire. My hubby only has ten years left, and we just got married last year so we have that left. Our choice, though. I hope the Army learns to respect the family more, though.