I’ve oft wrote about America’s unsung heroes, and I’m not talking about your Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Sailors, or Coastguardsmen. No, I speak of those married to them, of their children, and of their parents. So, in the spirit of this weekend’s SpouseBUZZ Live consortium, I thought to publish this article written by a deployed Soldier’s wife.
A little background on the 172nd Stryker Brigade out of Fort Wainright, Alaska.
In a reaction to worsening violence in Baghdad, the Defense Department is extending the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s tour in Iraq for up to 120 days.
The 172nd has spent the past year headquartered in Mosul, and had already begun its redeployment to Alaska when word came of the redeployment to Baghdad.
The decision to extend your Soldiers was certainly a punch in the gut to their families…
The Army comes through, just when you need it most
By Michelle Cuthrell
Published October 20, 2006
Posted in Local, News
As an unofficial member of the U.S. Army, I’m used to standing in lines.
Hurry up and wait is just one of those realities in the military — and one I usually confront with a tap in my toe and frustration on my face.
But Wednesday night was a totally different story.
For the first time in my life as a military spouse, I stood in a line on a military base excited, smiling and completely content to wait on my feet for an hour and 15 minutes while the line crept slowly forward to the front of Murray Hall. I would even call the experience pleasant, if line standing can be classified as such.
Hey, I’ll sing a song backwards while standing on my head and writing love notes to the Army if it means that at the end of that line are tickets for my son and myself to fly to Anchorage for a weekend. For free.
For all the complaining I occasionally do about the military (”the Army stole my husband,” “I hate deployment” and “Matt brought a third party into our marriage and I’m telling!” have all been household phrases in my home at one time or another), the commanders, rear detachment and base organizations at Fort Wainwright sure have reached out to Stryker families this year — and not just in a “we’ll do the least we can and scrape by at bare minimum” kind of way.
They’ve applied for grants that have given each family eight hours of free respite childcare each week, plus five hours of free care every Tuesday and Thursday night. They’ve set up a Family Assistance Center with staffed personnel nearly any time of day, and brought in teams of counselors (Family Life Consultants) to consult with anyone at any time.
They’ve set up free bowling nights for Stryker families, set up free humor and motivation-inspiring events for spouses. They’ve even turned the Last Frontier Club into a family-friendly place where burnt-out single parents can bring their kids to play laser tag and crawl through playland tubes when they just can’t take another round of “who can beat Mommy the hardest with his He-Man, just-like-Daddy’s sword” any more.
Some people tell me that that’s the least the Army can do for keeping our spouses overseas for an additional four months, or for deploying them overseas at all. But my husband signed up to serve, and he considers his job an honor, and that means that everything the Army does for us beyond providing a paycheck, some health care and a form of communication is just icing on the cake.
The Army does not owe it to me to provide free childcare nearly any day of the week. They do not owe it to me to send their rear detachment team out to hang up my Christmas lights because my husband isn’t here to do it for me. And they certainly do not owe it to me to arrange an incredible all-expenses-paid trip to Anchorage for a weekend of shopping and fun with a plane ride down and a train ride back to cheer me up in the middle of an extension.
But the team at Fort Wainwright does it anyway. Because they want to. Because they choose to. Because that’s a gift they can give us during a stressful time for our families. It’s just that, in the middle of that heartbreak and chaos, I haven’t always been able to view it as one.
I’m done “surviving” the Army. Today, I am going to start appreciating not only the roof the Army puts over my head, but the hard work and sacrifices the Army’s home-front personnel make every single day so that I can live a more comfortable life while my husband serves overseas. And I’ll do it one joyful line standing at a time.
Michelle Cuthrell is a local freelance writer. Her columns about life as a military spouse at Fort Wainwright will appear while her husband, a lieutenant with the 2-1 Infantry Battalion, is deployed with the 172nd Stryker Brigade.
Like I said, America’s unsung heroes. Sgt Hook out.
Posted by Hook @ 0017 zulu | | Permalink
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