Sarah’s husband leaves soon for the Army’s Special Forces Selection and Assessment. After two years of Army life, Sarah knows that the gloom-doom-don’t-complain message from the recruiter is only one part of the story. Now Sarah is asking for the spouse side of the story:
I feel like this might be a complete upheaval of everything I just got used to. How often do they deploy? How different from the “regular” Army is it? Do they really keep a bag packed at all times in case they need to leave overnight? I am excited for the adventure but I really don’t have much information on what to expect!
Knowing what to expect ahead of time really does help spouses cope with the reality of military life. Can you help Sarah figure out what she really needs to know about life with someone at the beginning of a career in Special Forces? What is the one thing you think she needs to keep in mind?
About Jacey Eckhart
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He'll have to actually pass selection first, then it is a very demanding couple of years of language classes and intense training in the field. There is an SF 101 class at Fort Bragg you can take I beleive which lays out the time line. It'll be a couple of years or so before he is actually assigned to a unit, where schedules are pretty hectic and can change on a whim. My husband doesn't have a bag packed, but we know that he coule leave at any time. Have a support system in place for yourself and remember to help him as much as possible, esp. since his schedule is beyond his control. Good luck!
Yes, Kerry is correct, your husband has a lot of training to go through before he can wear the Green Beret and while I'm sure he is a very smart and tough husband, the drop-out rate is very high, about 75% so I would not start to worry about his SF deployment schedule until he gets into a Group, one or two years from now.
MY HUSBAND JUST LEFT TO SFAS ABOUT 1 WEEK AGO IM SURE HE IS GONNA MAKE IT, FOR YOU MRS. KERRY`. THINK POSITIVE ALL I HEAR ABOUT THIS Q COURSE IS THAT IS REALLY HARD AND HOW THE DROP OUT RATE IS REALLY HIGH..WELL HE PASSED SFAS RIGHT? SOME PEOPLE CANT EVEN PASS THAT …SO THINK ABOUT YOU AND YOUR HUSBAND ONLY IM 31 YEARS OLD AND LEARN ENGLISH WHEN I WAS 20 YEARS OLD I HAD TO LEARN IT TO GET AROUND I GOT TIRED OF LOOKING CRAZY EVERYTIME SOMEONE ASK ME A QUESTION..AND BELIEVE ME THATS ALL IT TOOK..NEVER WENT TO A CLASS OR HAD TUTORS …SOYOUR HUSBAND IS GONNA BE OK SO ITS MINE ..THINGS ARE AS HARD AS YOU MAKE THEM… LISTENING TO NEGATIVITY OR STATISTICS ARE ONLY GONNA MAKE THINGS HARD ..STATISTICS ARE MADE BY PEOPLE AND PEOPLE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN CHANGE THAT…GOOD LUCK
The dropout rate for Special Forces (as well as Navy SEALS and Delta Force) is notoriously high. I should have mentioned that in my original post. I think she wants to know what it would be like for the family if/when he does make it through.
Thanks Jacey. I am already familiar with the training schedule after selection. They covered all of that with me and that is the only information readily available ont he internet! I am more interested in knowing what it's like once you're in. Trust me, I know he can fail. But I am being positive about that.
Honestly, you'll have at least a couple of years before he is actually with group, so you'll have plenty of time to wonder, etc. I hardly thought of it frankly with his intense training schedule while at Fort Bragg. As far as group vs. "regular" Army, I have little experience with the "regular" Army because he was deployed for the first 15 months of our marriage and I stayed back home. As far as group goes, you'll have an FRG and chances to meet other wives in the same situation as you. I'm still fairly new to group so I can't say much, but the people here are great, and I am enjoying it. Having said that, plans are made and changed more times than I've seen, which can become frustrating. I suggest possibly meeting wives at Bragg who will be in the same group your husband will be in, since they'll move with you when you PCS.
Thanks. We were at Bragg before we came here and I love it there, so I am looking forward to that (even if he doesnt make it into SF he is Airborne and Ranger qualified so chances are we stay there if he doesn't make it through). Speaking of PCS, I was told that you move less often so you can stay with the group. Is that true or is it still the standard every two or three years?
I'm actually not sure, but we have been with group for almost two years and no plans to PCS yet, but I think that can all change on a whim (SF or not). Good luck to you and your husband!
Well Sarah, it all depends really. IF you end up staying at Bragg then you very well could end up spending most of your career there. However, if he goes to a different group. He will more than likely come back to bragg in 3 to 5 years to become a SWC instructor for 3 years but then he will go back to the group he came from. I hope this helps and good luck to you.
Yes, that helps. Thank you. I know this is still a big IF (IF he gets in, IF we are stationed there, IF IF IF!!) That is why I was asking for information. So thank you very much.
Sarah, you are doing the right thing already, asking questions and reading up on “your” future. I spent the first 6 year in the regular Army and the rest of my 29 years in Special Forces. First as a NCO then as a Warrant. My wife and I made my career decisions together and she helped me through it all. I spent 16 years of my SF career on an ODA and the Soldiers that struggled the most were the ones married to a wife that didn’t understand their husband’s job. As has been stated in the thread, when your husband is assigned a Group, he’s there for most of his career. I started out at Ft. Devens, then the Group/2nd and 3rd Bn location. From there we went to Bad Tölz, then the 1st Bn location, from there to “Mother” Bragg, back to the 1st Bn, now on Panzer Kaserne and finally to Ft Carson, where the Group moved and is currently stationed. It may seem a lot of pick up and move but remember all of the friends you and your children meet are moving to the same locations so you have lifelong friendships. It’s a smaller community and we stick together, even after we retire, that’s the big difference between the regular Army and SF. Last word, it’s an adventure for the whole family and if you are lucky you see the world. Good luck and have fun.
Hi Kerry, I don't know if you will read this but my husband is currently in Airborne training. In 2 weeks he comes home to Ft. Bragg & goes into SOPC hold. Can you tell me what your husbands schedule was like if he was in SOPC hold? Do you think my husband will be able to live off base during this time? From what he has told me, he will have to report there early in the morning for PT & then they are released for the rest of the day.
SPECIAL FORCES MEANS THEY ARE SPECIAL INDIVIDUELS,Train hard and fight hard, special missions is what they do. Your husband is a very brave man, I hope he gets through the whole training, my respects to him.
Recon Tony
Special forces is both fabulous and horrible at the same time. There are times when it brings you together as a couple and a family and there are times when it drives you apart. Our experience was different then what we had expereinced in the regular Army but my husband was graduating as the War on Terror was begining. Everyone's experience is different if you want to read a first hand experence of being the wife of a Special Forces soldier read a little of my first book…….
what is the book?
the book is "Bringing Home the War" and it is available as an ebook right now (it will be a paperback in the fall). It is hard being the wife of a Special Forces soldier.
S%UPPORT HIM! America needs men to go in harms way to insure our security. My hat is off to him and you. Behind every Spec Ops Operator is a very supportive spouse! We need you and your support to insure his success. Men fight harder when they know you are 1000%. It is a wonderful world of SPEC OPs. You will meet and befriend WORLD CLASS PEOPLE. The top 1% of AMERICAINS. Welcome change with alot of humor and excitment and adventure and you will do fine and years later. You will look back with extreme pride. God Bless You!!!!
As a former SF troop, among the most objectively valuable associations my wife had with others was the "wives' intel network." She was able to brief me on factual data, and those briefings turned out to be approximately 95% accurate – and that's a conservative estimate! When deployed, I pretty well knew what I was heading into, could calculate risks and, thereby, increase my opportunities for success(es). She assisted in recommendations for my ready-ruck, necessitating only minor changes when given limited time to pack.
It was a standing joke between us that, while I did the field work in training, she did the recommended reading. In so doing, she helped her own understanding of what she needed for herself and was able to fill in the blanks of what I might have missed. While I WORE the full flash, she EARNED it – in my opinion, far more than I!
De Oppresso Liber
Probably not going to make it.
I am retired now but when I was on active duty I was a PAC Supervisor (Human Resources)type. I used to work with the assignments of our SF qualified soldiers. Duty with SF units is normally oriented towards different areas of the world. Most of the assignments were made with language considerations. I was with 10th SFGA and we were oriented towards Europe. We constantly trained in Europe. Team members would go to military schools in those countries or go with their teams and train with the oriented country's Special Forces type units.
If you love your husband, you'll ignore the "drop out" rate comments. Yes, Barry Sadler's claim that "100 men will test today, but only 3 wear the Green Beret" is accurate (and maybe conservative) but if this is something he wants badly enough, he'll truly need your support to attain it.
If he's going into one of the active groups, you should expect frequent deployments (although short-term ones are not uncommon). 9 months out of every year is an average team guy's op-tempo. The advantages you have are the following:
1) When he goes somewhere, you know he's with the best.
2) Not all deployments are combat zones.
3) If, after a while, the op-tempo gets to be too much, he can always put in for an instructor slot at JFKSWCS which can run anywhere from 1-3 years.
Hope if helps, and hope he makes it. You're no stranger to an Army life, just know that SF will come with new challenges but also new rewards. Best of luck to you and your family.
So you could stay potentially at the same base for most of your career. I spent 11 years at Ft. Devens, MA. As a spouse your family could make roots at a bases for close to 20 years. All SF soldiers are required to be able to learn a language and based on their language they are normally assigned accordingly. SF does have "Separate Battalions" located overseas and at different times our NCO's might need to leave the area and then they could request assignment to an overseas SF unit. If the unit was oriented somewhere other than his current qualification/language was then he would go to language school and learn the language for his next unit. Overseas units got along fantastically with the civilian communities in those countries. Also SF soldiers, mainly NCO's could also go to college to take a break from a team. There are literally hundreds of assignments for SF qualified NCO's, mainly 18B's throughout the country as ROTC Instructors. They could go for normally 3 years, have the opportunity to pick up a degree and work with some great young people as I found out. That's generally the assignment policy for SF.
RetSFER91
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Arts comment is very informative for what I beleive you were looking for. The "op-tempo" or deployment cycle for SF is generally 6 out of every 18 months spent downrange during peacetime. But with the War on Terror it has brought op-tempos up for us for two reasons. One: every group still has thier AOR with a number of contingency and training ops that are conducted in that particular area. Two: On top of the AOR responsibilities each group, no matter what AOR they are oriented towards, spends 6 to 9 month deployment cycles on a rotational basis to the mid east to support the War on Terror. Add the two together and you get pretty close to what Art said for a single team. 6 to 9 months downrange a year. And don't get too comfortible with Bragg either, during the Q-coarse your husband will reach a point where he will be assigned a language and culture to study. Based on that decision you will have a better idea of what group he will be assigned to and ultimately where you will PCS to when he gets put on a lign company. Hope this info helps, and good luck to your husband
I'm a CSO Marine with MARSOC so this is a bit different for me, but here's my opinion.
This life is as hard as you make it. Me and my wife have had hard times and great times, so will you and your husband. In 2010, I was gone for 10 months total. That sucked, straight up. When I got back home for a while I realized things were a bit different. What did I do? I acted like we were just dating again. I took her out on surprise dates, brought home flowers. She put in some extra effort on dressing up, cooked me amazing dinners, she knew I like a clean house, and buried her face in my chest every time she gives me a hug. We loved each other even more after that crappy year. But it don't come easy. You have to work for that.
You hear this next bit 10 times over, but here it is anyway. Be behind your husband in everything he does. I couldn't have finished my training without my wife. I had a fractured ankle during selection and thought about getting medical. My wife told me, "Don't you dare quit. You've wanted this your whole life. If you quit you better not come here." I thank her so much for that kick in the butt. When he's gone tell him you miss him, but tell him to go kick some butt. Let him know he don't need to be a hero because he already is, but there's work that needs to be done and he's the guy for it. My wife does that for me and it motivates me more than anything.
If he makes it through to wear the fancy hat ( haha ) I strongly recommend him doing an instructor rotation after his first deployment cycle. I didn't until now (6 yrs.), and it about burnt both of us out. We're having a blast with me being a "school teacher" now though. She loves being able to host cookouts and go see family with me.
A piece of advice for your husband, when your on a deployment cycle YOU accommodate your WIFE when you're home, SHE does not have to accommodate you. When your gone that much she becomes even more independent, and when you're home you HELP her with how she does things. Don't TELL her how to do things.
Last bit. When he's gone, tell him about your day, laugh, don't cry if you can help it, and let him know you're thinking about him. Make sure he don't think you're replacing him with other things in your life.
My wife is an RN, also, she'd go nuts when I'm gone if she didn't have a job. An idle mind isn't a good thing.
It is what you make of it. We love it. The community is great, I have brothers and she has sisters and moms within this community. Make sure to pick the right people as friends in this community though. There's always a bad apple.
Semper Fi
Gunny USMC, You need to write a book or start a blog or something. You've got some fantastic insights that a lot of people can benefit from. Thanks for sharing your wise words.
im so glad to hear this..my husband is gone for selection right now and im 4 months pregnant with his first child …i have been marride before to another soldier (really bad experience) so i cant help but to have this crazy thoughts in my head..what if this whole Special forces thing makes us grow apart…my husband is my BEST FRIEND we are very close and to hear something else other than Negative comments about how they cheat and they go to South America and woman be all over them..kinda scare me little bit ….im from Honduras so i can see how this can be very scary most of this woman want to be here in this beautiful country and they dont care about you or your family..BUT i TRUST that my husband does….so thank you for your story
That was awesome what you said… my husband is ranger, regular army and we've went through so much through our 12 month deployments… so much of what you said rang true for us as well.. He is now in selection , I do not know if he will make it but I am backing him up 100% and if I know my husband he WILL make it. I am wandering how my life will change and trying to prepare for it , so I ran across this. Thankyou for your wise and great advise….
Navy special forces wife here. I find the life very rewarding. It can be lonesome at times, but I was told many times that it would be way worse than it actually is. I am a very independant woman though. If I can offer one piece of advice, be VERY careful now who you talk to about your husband's training. I wish we had been more discreet from the beginning, because we have a lot of people asking us if he made it through training and basically have to lie.
My husband is at SOPC right now and starts selection next month… How soon will they give him his TDY so he can come move us?Im new to this all, he has only been in the army sine jan this year and we got married in april!
My husband is at SOPC right now and starts selection next month… How soon will they give him his TDY so he can come move us?Im new to this all, he has only been in the army since jan this year and we got marrie in april!Would love to hear any feedback please
Hello! My husband had his official orders within a month after making it through selection, at which time you can move. Once he makes it through selection, it won't be too long! (p.s. I'm sure some may think I should have said 'if' he makes it through, but we're all staying positive, rights. :). Good Luck!
WIVES SHOULD BE VERY STRONG AND SUPPORTED. BE FAITHFUL AND KEEP BUSY. DIVORCE RATE IS HIGH IN ANY UNIT WHERE DEPLOYMENT IS CONSTANTLY AND SOMETIMES UNKNOWN UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. DON'T GIVE HIM ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, FOR HIS MISSION COMES FIRST AND FOREMOST. CONSTANTLY LET HIM KNOW YOU LOVE HIM AND SUPPORT HIM NO MATTER WHERE HE IS. IN SOME CASES SO IS BETTER FOR SINGULAR INDIVIDUALS.
I'd like to add a comment about life during the SF Q course, since that's a huge part of the process! It's definitly not easy for the soldier OR the spouse, and with it being so long (over a year for all, almost double for deltas), my biggest piece of advice is to use that time to get out, get involved, get to know the community, what it's about, and to use the time to strengthen your marriage, your family life and your own personal resiliency before even beginning the next phase of life at group. Best part is there is now a very awesome and active FRG for the students, which is something that has only been around for about a year. The amount of education, information and support given to the families (and soldiers!) during the training is directly contributing to the success of the students and the mentality they carry forward with them to their teams. I wish you both all the best of luck!
I would like to say that I have experience my husband being on a team and did a SWC tour which is 3yrs of being an instructor. I have to say that when he was in SWC as a small tactical unit (SUT) instructor he worked a lot more than he did when he was on a team to where i felt he was deployed and of course that was frustrating for me and the kids but we pressed on. It was also frustrating that location is very important where you decide to live. I have to say if you are station in FT. Bragg I suggest you live between Ft. Bragg and Camp Makall. My hubby had to drive everyday from hope mills to Makall which was 70 miles round trip. So it can get very expensive. As far as my experience being an SF wife is you have to have trust don't get scared if you see your hubby on a team and the guys around him is having divorces left and right just stay true to what you and your hubby have. Yes there was times in the begining when he first deployed to Columbia I was nervous cause of what I heard from my fellow sf wives that the woman there throw themselves at the guys hoping they will come to the US. And you do see that happen but that is where you need to focus on you and your husband. You need to reassure trust. So main thing is to focus on keeping the family together and taking care whats at home. I know as wives we need to vent and venting to your hubby is good just don't vent to him about him, specially when they are in hostile areas they don't need more stress than they already have on coming back home in one piece. My stress level is higher when he goes on missions but it gets lessen when he calls me that he is ok. I got a call from my hubby that he was in a hospital due to an IED. He said that he suffered a ringing in his ear and that one of the guys had pulled him out. Thank God. Its a roller coaster but the saying is look foward to the calls. They do have sometimes a lot of down time and that is where you must take full advantage of it. They do have to take a lot of different schools so just be prepared specially for Halo school it will advance their career on the team as well as his rank so its important that he goes to all of them. Good luck! And you won't really know if the shoe don't fit unless you try it on. So give it a whirl and see how it goes.
I will always be here for anyone who needs to chat!!! Bless all who have husbands, wives, daughters and sons fighting this fight.. Not to forget nephews and nieces, grandsons and daughters, I think you get the message… Peace to all
How long is selection? My husband started Oct 26 and I thought it was 19 days for some reason but I keep reading that it is 24! Which is it??
Its sched for 24 days but he should be finished with the hard part by tommorow. the rest is clean up out process selection board etc.. you should hear from this weekend if not sooner. If you haven't heard from him yet means he has done pretty well but no quaranty until boards are finished and selections are made
Hi there – really enjoyed reading these posts, thanks everyone for lending insight. My bf told me he would find out today whether he got selected, but I am crazy impatient and want to know if they get their phones back early today, this evening, tomorrow?
do the soldiers get to call their wifes while in selection…please help im dying here my husband left 3 days ago this is the longest i have gone without hearing from him ..i have talked to my sweetheart everyday even when he was in Iraq so please help..been marride for 3 years :)
do selection soldiers get to call their wifes
My husband has been gone for 13 days already , and I still haven't had a call… I think they are not allow to call, so we have to wait til they go through the whole precess.. Just keep strong and pray to God to help you . I'm keeping a diary of what I do everyday .. So when he gets back I can give to him , so he knows he was in my heart all the time.
it sound like our husbands are in Nc together ..anyway i figure that, i havent heard from him so i guess i got another week or so to go …i text his phone everyday so when he gets to turn it on the first thing he sees is my messeges,they made it this far so good luck to you and your husband
No, they are not allowed to call. Their phones are confiscated upon arrival. If they are in NC then you will hear from them the 26th (this Saturday). I know its hard but at least they are not in any danger. They are at Selection, not Afghanistan or Iraq.
am back and better
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