Dear Dora,
My husband is away serving his third tour in Iraq. I knew when we got married that, as a career soldier, he would be away from home from time to time, but I don't think either of us bargained for being separated so often and for so long at a time.
There are numerous support groups for the spouses of soldiers serving in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. These groups are not formally recognized by the Defense Department, but the Army (and other services) does encourage and facilitate them so as to minimize the emotional and financial damage to the families of the troops.
For example, the groups locally are composed of spouses thrown together by the Unit Family Assistance Office. The UFAO, as it is known, tries to assign the spouses of any given unit to different support groups, partly to keep down panic and grousing about the soldiers' orders (i.e. so all of the families in one support group aren't hit with the same deployment orders at once, etc.), and partly to ensure that the support groups don't collapse when a given unit rotates back into CONUS.
The days of these support groups being made up of all women are long past, of course. In our support group of twenty-one, there are six Army wives, eight Air Force wives, two Navy wives, and five Army husbands. We meet every week in a facility provided by the UFAO at the rec. center on the local Air Force Base, and at first we talked through all the difficult issues of staying afloat emotionally and financially in the absence of our spouses. We provided each other with sympathetic shoulders to cry on, babysitting help, advice proven from experience, and lots of black coffee.
We have a calling list with everyone's home phone and cell phone numbers so we can call our support group members with news and rumors, or get help individually if we need it.
As you might imagine, with a couple dozen young people of both sexes thrown together in emotional circumstances, relationships develop from time to time. The other members of the group try to overlook these things, but one of the functions of the group is supposed to be friendly help in avoiding just this type of damaging diversion while the spouse is away.
Unfortunately, our group meets in a room housed in a "portable" facility – a temporary trailer moved onto the base to accommodate the increased activity level during the war. This space is also used as a staging barracks, where soldiers stay overnight while waiting for transportation to their overseas assignments. The trailer is therefore equipped like an apartment with a kitchenette, multiple bathrooms, and, of course ... beds.
