Day 362: the news

I check my email first thing and spam, spam, spam, Chad! Yay! While I knew he was safe, it is nice to hear the details. He has his first cold of the deployment. I don't know if he gets sick more often in Iraq or is more aware of it because he has nothing to take his mind off of it. Poor baby. When he is sick enough to take medicine, I know it's bad. I wait to reply until I can get to the computer. Typing an entire email on my cell is less than ideal. But even reading his email puts me behind schedule and I must have spaced out in the shower, because at 7:30, I am just running out the door. Why do I do this to myself, try to fit ten activities into five minutes? and schedule myself down to the last second? I don't know why I keep doing it when I know it makes me run late, but I can't seem to stop. I do make it to work on time, but barely.

I take a second to catch up on Facebook and see several military wives are hearing some of the same things I am. "Why is your husband going to Iraq? I thought all the combat troops were home." It feels like a punch in the chest when I hear that, like somehow my husband's sacrifice this year won't count as much because people don't know about the troops that are still there and still transitioning INTO country.  I make it a point NOT to watch the news while he is gone because every roadside bomb sends my heart into a tailspin until I hear his voice again, so I don't know if it is ignorant reporting or crappy listening, but why don't most people know that no one extra came home. Soldiers scheduled to finish their tours came home, but all the hoopla over bringing the last combat troops home is ridiculous. All they did was say some of the troops are now support personnel. I know people who were combat troops one day and "not" the next. We are still sending people over there. It is still dangerous. They still need rifles, pistols, hand grenades, but are primarily supporting and training the Iraqi army and police to take over fighting the insurgents. I guess I am partially angry at the blatant propaganda that is deliberately slanted to misguide the American people into feeling good that that Iraq war thing is over and partially upset that people continue to talk about things of which they are ignorant. I don't understand the details of many things and sometimes am guilty of complaining about how things are done, but when people criticize the army or the soldiers and don't have a clue what they are talking about, it makes my blood boil!

Yes, they get paid and we do get free health care during active duty, but that doesn't change the fact that these men and women were not drafted into the military. They volunteered to put themselves into harm's path for the rest of us, just like a police officer or fire fighter. The pay they receive seems to be pretty average overall and the extra combat/hazardous duty pay is a few hundred dollars a month. We couldn't live on just his salary without cutting back significantly but he makes about what I do. Of course that could just mean both teachers and soldiers are REALLY underpaid.

I hear more people say ignorant things about soldiers than anything else. Like someone close to me suggested, not to my face luckily for her sake, that my husband must want to be away from his family all the time to keep getting deployed. They don't have a choice. Some duties do not deploy and there are circumstances under which a soldier ends up non-deployable or in a garrison post, but if your unit is slated to go, you go, whether it is your first, third, or fifth deployment.

Not all soldiers are perfect or even good people, but a majority of them are heroic by nature and heroes by choice just for going over there so we don't have to. Take a second to mentally or physically thank a soldier or his/her family today. I am sacrificing the day to day moments with my husband that most people take for granted. He is risking his life and leaving behind most of the things that the rest of us would consider elemental to our cores. He doesn't get to hunt or fish or eat dinner with his family. He doesn't get to sleep in on the weekends, or ever. He works 19 hour days without relief with basically frozen dinners for every meal. He misses his favorite TV shows and Christmas every other year. It is a sacrifice you wouldn't make, so don't disrespect those who do. Disagree with the politics all you want, but thank a soldier for the right to do so.