MyMilitaryMedals.com Blog
What it Means to be a Military Spouse
January 30th 2012 - 6:28 am
What does it mean to be a military spouse? Being a military spouse is much more than most civilians realize. For me, being a military wife is a new role. A role I was not briefed about in its entirety. I knew it would be difficult and my husband warned me it would be, but I was in for a rude awakening. I met my husband when he had been pulled on temporary recruiting duty for a three year duty. Right away, I learned recruiting for the Army is a very stressful and high pressure position. Unlike a job recruiter or college recruiter, recruiting for the Army involves a very touchy balancing act. First, you have to find the recruits. Where he was at, the population was mainly college kids and graduating seniors. Although an individual may have the desire to join the military, their disgruntled parent had words for my husband. Degrading his career, they’d tell him they refused to have their child be a bullet catcher, completely disregarding the honor that comes with serving one’s country. Not only were parents breathing down his neck, but his own command would threaten his career if numbers were not hit. I will say my husband was a stellar recruiter; never giving people the run around, telling the truth about combat, and the hardships the military life can impose. Kids looked up to my husband though because of his passion for our country, his love for his freedom, and the excitement and pride that combat instilled in him. These were some of the traits I came to love about him and in turn I say he recruited me to marry him! Not to mention a man in uniform with military medals gleaming in the light and a chest full of military ribbons doesn’t hurt the situation either!
We married just as his recruiting duty came to an end. He received orders to move across the country and thus away from all of my friends and family would remain. I looked forward to our new exciting life! I was an Army wife now!
I was not prepared for the life of an active duty, regular Army soldier’s wife. Moving to a new location, civilians often don’t realize how difficult it is for a military spouse to find a job. Often, employers do not want to hire us because they know we may not be stationed here for the long-term. Generally, we will not be stationed here for more than three years, but we won’t know that until he gets his order 90 days out. The idea of a stable, good paying career is not always an option.
The first time my husband’s unit went to the field for just one month, I was extremely lonely. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know our town. I would call my family and they’d ask, “Well, why can’t he come home for the night?” I’d mope around all day, miserable. My husband would call at night, I’d be so scared to sleep, and there wasn’t much he could do.
It’s a very difficult concept to grasp. You’re married, but you are alone. Your protector and friend are not always there. You must learn to wipe your tears, hold your head up, and figure out how to relight your pilot light because he is not home right now. Youtube offers wonderful videos to help you fix about anything.
Often times, you feel abandoned. It is difficult to hear your husband talk about his excitement for deployment. You feel like your husband loves his country more than you. Then you remind yourself, he is going to be living under plywood for a year getting shot at from all directions and you thank God he is getting in a positive mindset or neither of you would make it through the deployment. Being a military wife is difficult. It is sad. It is stressful. It is lonely. But being a military wife has shown me what a strong person I am. How lucky I am to have other strong military wives in my life. What incredible leader skills I possess for those young wives who struggle. And finally, distance really does make the heart grow fonder for your military man. When I see my husband adorned in all his military medals, those military honors belong to both of us because I know I saw him through them.
Uncle Ed
January 28th 2012 - 7:39 pm
Recently, I made the thirteen hour trip back to my hometown in Iowa to visit family. While visiting with my grandma, I noticed an old postcard in her china hutch that caught my attention. I asked her about it and she was more than reluctant to take it out and share it with me. Carefully, she took out the postcard and a tattered, worn out envelope. She explained to me that her uncle was a soldier in World War II. She proceeded to show me his military profile picture, and although it was black and white and a bit blurry, I could clearly see the family resemblance. She explained to me how he was taken as a prisoner of war and held at a camp for years and years. Sitting back in her chair, she reminisced about the day the black sedan pulled into her farmyard driveway with the United States military emblem on the door. As if it had happened yesterday, she described how she felt as the military officers slowly lifted themselves out of the car and reported to her stunned mother that her uncle was missing in action. Although only a little girl, she remembers the feeling of her heart seeking to her belly. The officers had no more information for her mother, no words of condolence, no remarks about keeping in touch with the family. Months went by and they received no word from him until on my grandmother’s 6th birthday, she received a postcard from him in the mail. It had a simple, distorted message, but said how her mom and dad were to get money from his bank account so she could get some candy from the penny store for her birthday. Such a simple message, but the joy it brought to her family was indescribable. Delicately sliding the postcard to me, I noticed how the message of the postcard had been completely rearranged and the language of the message was unnatural; an obvious doing of his captors to deform any information that would delve my uncle’s whereabouts, health, or environment. For six whole years, these once-a-year birthday messages continued to be the only source of information my grandmother’s family received of my uncle’s well-being until he was returned home. Although my grandmother doesn’t have any military medals or keepsakes of her uncle to remember him by, those letters will remain a treasure in my family for years to come. The feelings associated with them are monumental. The real military award was having him finally home safe all those years ago.
