Sis B’s husband was supposed to be going on a dangerous mission. And then she wrote this:
And now we found out that he will be left behind.
I should be overjoyed, right? And yes, a great part of me is relieved. But another part feels guilty… I guess that’s a decent word for it. My friends are going to be facing the hell of this task, while Soldier Boy and I will still be able to talk frequently and enjoy the comfort of his relative safety.
He sounded so disappointed and upset. He’s sending these men, whom he loves and considers brothers, out to face incredible danger, while he stays behind in relative comfort.
Who knew relief could hurt like this?
Deployments are like snowflakes, but it’s even more complicated than that, isn’t it?
In 2004, my husband’s platoon was chosen to go to Fallujah. Yeah, that Fallujah, the ugly one. And departure was scheduled for my husband’s R&R, so he wasn’t going to be able to come home. But something in the Army changed, as often happens, and they didn’t end up sending my husband’s platoon. They sent his best friend’s, and thus was born the Armor Geddon blog.
My husband had already been to Najaf twice on long missions, so he wasn’t exactly crying to have been passed over. And neither was I, because I didn’t want him to miss his R&R.
But when people from our post started dying during his R&R, that was not easy. He was home, he was safe, and he had been passed over to go. And my friends’ husbands were in some of the heaviest fighting of the year.
And one friend lost her husband, on the last night of my husband’s R&R. My husband and I were sitting together on the sofa when I found out her husband had been killed 2000 miles away.
Guilt.
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On recent episodes of Army Wives, Roxy has been dealing with the idea that Trevor wants to return to war instead of staying home with his family. At first she was hurt and offended. Trevor had no way to explain how he was feeling, other than to say, "You’re not a soldier; you don’t understand." I think over the past couple of episodes, Roxy has started to understand that many servicemembers feel like, if there’s fighting going on, they need to be a part of it with their brothers and sisters in arms. They need to be there to make sure the unit is whole and everything is working in sync.
Something AirForceWife said to me rang so true: her husband would’ve rather died himself than lose one of his men. I am sure my husband feels the same way. He used to have nightmares about losing his loader. Always the same soldier, always the same sense of foreboding. He used to watch over that boy like a hawk, and his fear of losing him was so great that during one battle, my husband barked an order at him to get down…right as a round hit where his head had been moments earlier. If he had lost that soldier, my husband never would’ve been the same again; he would’ve carried entirely too much guilt. As it stands, he still frets over things he could’ve done differently or better, things he could’ve done to be more useful. He just wanted to be as useful as he could to the Army and the war.
Thus Trevor’s guilt at being home. And his fast-tracking his physical therapy so he can get back.
In looking for an episode summary or a clip from Army Wives, I noted with a chuckle that the TV Squad reviewer said:
Trevor can’t speak to Roxy about what happened because she’s not a soldier and doesn’t get why he wants to go back to rejoin his buddies. I don’t get it either. I feel like Roxy.
And the wife’s guilt, that is another strange aspect of deployment, one that outsiders also might not understand.
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The day my husband came home and told me he’d been assigned to Rear D, that was a day of guilt. We were new to the unit, and he’d been chosen because he was the most recent addition. I wondered how I would face the other wives in the company for the first time when they knew that their husbands would be leaving and mine would stay back. I had an overwhelming sense of guilt that my husband hadn’t been deployed since early 2005, and he was being chosen to stay behind. We were due for a deployment, right? He was willing to go, we had prepared for it, and we both felt so much guilt at being asked to take on Rear D.
And I love that AirForceWife, upon hearing my husband had been assigned to Rear D, sent him a sympathy card. She got it. She just totally understood that guilt.
It all became moot after another soldier squeaked into the company at the last minute and bumped my husband out of Rear D and back onto the deployment list. But not completely moot: my husband is now a pogue. While the soldiers he supports are out running missions, he mans a computer and sits in air conditioning. This time, I have the guilt of constant contact and an easy deployment. Last time my husband, like Sis B’s, was the pointy end of the spear; this time he fills out the finance paperwork to set the spear in motion. Kinda different.
And there’s a guilt there. A guilt that I talk to him often. A guilt that he’s not in danger. A guilt that, even though we already know the departure date for his next deployment, he’s not going to be gone 15 consecutive months.
Next deployment, my husband will be pointy spear again. I think in many ways I welcome it. At the pointy end of the spear, you don’t have as much of this guilt. For me, that’s easier to deal with.
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I think that probably every military vet understands that last scene in Saving Private Ryan when Old Man Ryan visits the graves in France.
And I think that the TV Squad reviewer is wrong – I think Roxy does "get it", even if it hurts her to understand. Most spouses do get it. We even have our own version of it.
My husband is not sitting at a computer but he's in a easy spot too, and he's not only feeling guilty, he even felt dissapointed when he got there, is our first deployment, so after all the training he was expecting more "action". I try my best to make him feel better but i have bittersweet feelings about it, i love to be able to talk to him as i do, but i feel bad for all those who can't talk to their love ones as much.
"how can i face the other wives"….
exactly. that is exactly what is happening in my head.
I felt guilty too about the amount of contact we had.
I felt guilty for a while. but then, when I got slammed after the extension by a woman who claimed my husband wasn't really deployed since he was doing his job at a base (which was mortared constantly), I thought about it some more. He's doing the job he does best. and he's damned good at it. WHY waste all that training and knowledge going on a mission where he ISN'T as good as the guy who trained for it? he worked long hard hours, and did some mopping up he still won't talk about, and did the work he was supposed to do AS PART OF THE TEAM. We can't all be the pointy end, some people need to be that cotter pin that holds all the parts together. this is, don't forget, a TEAM effort, a TEAM works together… It's not all John Wayne and storming the breaches. Yes, they feel guilty for not being in the same level of danger, but if THEY aren't there, where they are supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to be doing to the max.. the support for that pointy end is gone, it falls down and is not doing it's job.
LAW
My husband's last day of sea duty is today. He will go on transfer leave and then rotate to shore duty next month.
Next month his squadron leaves for deployment.
I am *SO* happy that he will be home, and that the next three years we can go through the ups and downs of life together instead of apart so often.
But I also feel *SO* guilty that the other wives will have to go through the deployment.
My husband is also Navy. On a boat. He has been to Iraq, but in a relatively safe locale. And when I have had a hard time with his goneness I have felt incredibly guilty that he wasn't more 'in harm's way.' Of coure I DON'T want him in harms way, but the thought that I'm struggling like a wimp when someone else's husband is, as you say, the pointy end of the spear, just makes me feel like an idiot.
The guilt chases me around. And I know better than to waste time with it, but I can't seem to get away from it. Like you said about our servicemembers feeling that if there is a battle going on, they should be in it, I feel that if a deployment is happening I should be on the waiting at home side of it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm glad other people get it.
Sarah, I am so glad that you did this post. I felt so guilty that #1 Son was chosen out of his platoon to be one of two out of the company to stay at the FOB and write the daily reports, brief and debrief the soldiers that went on patrol. I know that it was hard for him to see his buddies come and go each day and when he was home on R&R and his roommate was KIA I saw how hard that hit him. I know that he knew that his job was important and necessary, but I heard the guilt in his speech he gave his brother and best friend when he talked about Ryan that night. It's nice to know that there are other's out there are are feeling the same way. Thank you.
I love LAW's analogies…it makes me feel better too. We have it good with communication this deployment so I've been feeling guilty for a while now. During his first deployment, my husband was more towards the "pointy end of the spear" and now he is one of the "cotter pins." No matter what everyone's job here is, it doesn't take away from the fact that all of us have spent so much time apart.
My husband has and did struggle with guilt about his mission. He was supposed to be in the middle of it and then at the last second their mission changed and most of the soldiers in his battalion stayed in Kuwait the majority of the time. He refused to wear his combat patch for the longest time. I get it, but I don't. I know that his job was essential to the other units being able to do their jobs and I was proud of him and felt the same pride everyone else does when their husband is overseas. However, I was angry for the way he felt and the way other soldiers made him feel for the mission he was given. He was called a Fobbit and some other acronym that escapes me. He won't get the Iraq vet plates for his car because he doesn't have the medal that is on them.
I felt like by him feeling the way he did, that I shouldn't have felt the way I did about his service. It made me feel like I should have been embarrassed about his mission.
We too had to deal with one of his troops getting injured while he was home on R&R. He sponsered this soldier and I went to school with him and he was pulled to go with a different battalion and was in the middle of it.
I watched my husband struggle with the guilt that he wasn't there to protect him and I struggled with the mission my husband was on and why my friend had to go through things that I didn't. I too felt guilty that I got to talk on the internet to my husband almost daily, while she heard from hers only once a week if that.
As we are rapidly approaching our next deployment, my husband's biggest fear is being left behind or being stuck without the "important" mission. I understand how he feels, but I think we shouldn't put this guilt onto ourselves.
All of our soldiers are doing the job they need to do for things to go the best. No matter if they sit at a desk or are on patrol. Everyone is important and we, including the soldiers, should be proud. After all, there are thousands of people who will never experience being given the crappy mission or the one with the action. We are the elite few…the civilians should be the ones carrying the guilt.
"All of our soldiers are doing the job they need to do for things to go the best. No matter if they sit at a desk or are on patrol. Everyone is important and we, including the soldiers, should be proud. After all, there are thousands of people who will never experience being given the crappy mission or the one with the action. We are the elite few…the civilians should be the ones carrying the guilt."
Guilt? Oh, in spades. The reason I actively "support the troops" is not because it makes me feel good (which it sometimes does), but because I absolutely believe it is a moral imperative; I benefit from others' sacrifice, and this is the only way I am capable of attempting to balance the scales (they never balance).
What veterans who are my friends tell me over and over is that not everybody was meant to be a warrior, not everybody was meant to serve in the same manner. They say that those "stand the line" (both in war and peacetime) are making space on the homefront for those who were meant to do other things. And so I tell myself that when I feel guilty. But the guilt never goes away because in my heart I know it's not the same. I guess I get closest to comfortable with it when I simply accept that some people DO do greater things than others.
My husband had lots of different jobs over there. Some jobs were outside the wire, some were inside. His FOB was attacked daily and often times he was TC in the gun truck when they were taking fire. Just because you don't leave the FOB doesn't mean you're safe. The only PH awarded in my husband's unit was to a guy who was hit INSIDE the wire by shrapnel from a rocket.
I will never truly understand, but I know that if my husband hadn't re-enlisted when he did, he'd have felt guilty about not going over.
A hearty hooah to you, Beth.
Hello,
I run Capessa.com, a site showcasing the real life experiences of women and their life-learned advice, and we are searching for a military wife who wants to get a makeover before her husband or boyfriend returns from being deployed. I was hoping you might be able to help us find a deserving candidate by either posting an announcement to your readers/community or sending this information around to your circle.
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Anyone interested is invited to submit a brief note explaining why she wants to be a part of this project, if she has children, when her husband is scheduled to return home and which branch of the military he's in. We also ask that candidates confirm with their husbands that it's okay for them to participate, since he will have to be on camera during the reunion, and that they send in a recent photo. Submission materials should be sent to militarywivescasting@gmail.com.
If you want any additional information, please let me know. Thanks again for any help you can lend in getting the word out.