Deployments

An Army recruiter asked me how I feel about being deployed.

In honesty, if I were go an entire enlistment and not get deployed somewhere, at some time, I think I would feel like I'd been cheated out of the whole military experience. Deployments, after all, are what the military does.

I am not someone who walks into a recruiter's office and says, "Can you get me a non-deployable MOS?"

First, I know there really is no such thing. If you want to join the military you have to accept the possibility--even probability--that you are going to be deployed. I have accepted this, if not embraced it.

Yes, I would miss my family. Who doesn't? But I would also strive to go into the deployment with a sense of pride and duty that I'd be doing what I was trained to do. Our military is not trained so that it can sit on its butt in the states. It is trained to go and meet the enemy at their own gates and confront them on their own turf. Why join the military if you aren't willing to go to that front and do what you are trained to do?

I know that seems a bit at odds with the idea of being a family woman but I can't help but see how so many military families make deployments work and are strong, thriving families. I, personally, don't see the difference between a mother or a father deploying either.

I read an article the other day that condemned mothers for serving in the military and deploying but said nothing of deploying fathers. Is there a difference? Is the absence of one parental unit better than the absence of another? Is a father's willingness to serve and deploy more acceptable than a mother's?

In my very humble opinion I would rather my son be raised without a mother than without a father, especially upon considering the kind of father he would be missing. My husband is a good, strong, confidence, independent, decisive, commanding man and a wonderful father. He has so much to teach and give his son and I have no doubt that with or without me, with nothing but the guidance of his father, our son would grow into a very confident and moral young man. I have that much faith and confidence in my husband. If I didn't, I wouldn't have married him, I wouldn't have had a child with him and I certainly wouldn't leave my child to be raised alone with him for months at a time.

Yeah, my husband might dress our son in clothes that don't match or have some trouble getting his coat on him or find it awkward to bathe him but in the end he is a father among fathers. I would not hesitate to leave my son in his care while I went to training or even on a deployment.