Dave,
So I just finished up a few days in the fun port of Singapore and am now in the Indian Ocean on our way to Gonzo Station. We just heard today that we are being extended. Since this deployment started the scuttlebutt (rumor mill, gossip) has been running hard and heavy about being extended. Well it is now official, or at least publically official. We are going to be gone from our families for eight fun filled months. There are a slew of emotions churning through everyone right now. Everything from the "Que Sera Sera" thoughts, to how one can make their bank accounts fat, to will they or not serve divorce paperwork. This just adds to deployment stress. I can't even get a hold of my wife right now to tell her the good news because she is in the middle of the 3-Day cancer hike near our hometown. She is going to hike 60 miles after raising a bunch of money for breast cancer research. I will let her know later this weekend about it all. I am of the opinion that what was going to happen was going to happen. There is nothing that I can do to change it, just grin and take it. The only thing I can really hope for is additional and fun port visits, because of this. I was talking to some family back at the beach and a couple of them reminded me it can't always be all that bad. One of my relatives left for cruise on the 2nd of January and returned on Christmas Eve that same year. Another left on a cruise and didn't make it back to the states for eighteen months. So life isn't that bad. This is just one of the joys of my job. I am just glad that I was able to bring a large enough book collection that I should be able to get through a large amount of it (or hopefully all) before I get home.
Deployment Stress. We [us in the military] aren’t aliens or oddities that don’t deal with some of the same things the rest of the civilian populace deals with. Rather our stress is even more complex and convoluted the normal. Most people are able to come home and work through the stress every day. Being in the military sometimes means being deployed and trying to have to deal with this stress from the end of email/postal link or the ever so infrequent phone call link. Both sides deal with stress and the military is working hard to have pre-deployment classes so everyone realizes the stress and can work through it. They tell us not to leave with fights our heads. Try to get things resolved as soon as possible before a deployment happens or see if an issue can be tabled until everyone is home and able to talk about it. It is accepted that everyone will be angry and say some things that aren’t nice on the ramp up to the deployment. Working through that before deployment is always stressed as well. All sorts of coping strategies are introduced by the staff of the pre-deployment classes.
All of us who have deployed know the stress that I will be talking about. It is where something happens at home and you as the deployed member can’t deal with it. Having to only send word home via email, letter, or twenty minute phone call via a Sailor Phone. The stress where you hear from the Spousal unit things like: “The car is broke and the mechanic is asking XYZ for repairs….”; “Johnny is becoming a terror at the house and starting to do poorly at school…”; “Yeller took sick a couple of days ago, I took him to the vet…”. You get letters like this and it tears you up inside. You know how to deal with it if your home, but out here away from it all, some of us are at a loss to deal with the feelings or emotions. Part of it comes from the fact that you want to someone for a shoulder, but your loved one isn’t there immediately. Even worst is the feeling that you know others onboard are probably going through the same sort of stress, but still feel like your alone in the water. Combine this with the regular work stress of trying to maintain a work center, a workload, and keep out of the negative spotlight in maintenance control; we have a storm brewing inside everyone.
There are a number of ways we seem to deal with it. Some folks write out long flowing emails/letters describing how they are feeling, telling their spouses how to deal with it down to the tiniest detail, and in general trying to offload some of this stress. Others will spend every off-shift hour making phone calls via the sailor phones trying to get help going where they can or work through the problem. Others still will try and turn to supervisors and leadership for direction. We in turn help point them to such people as the chaplains or even the ship’s psychologists as people to talk to. Some of us will compartmentalize the information and off load it while in port some place or they will go to the gym and work out the stress that way. Some will just take a day and everything that goes wrong will explode against people about little things, after a day of just venting they will feel better. The final is the worst way and I personally have only seen it done once on a deployment years ago. That is through hurting themselves. As someone in leadership, having to attend training trying to recognize this stress and intercede before the final option is exercised has emphasized constantly during workups in most of my cruises. The ones that usually go the final route are those in the first term/first deployment cycle.
Most of our first cruise folks are dealing with being away from home and again those feelings of being alone, even though they are around five thousand other people. It gets even harder when they are TAD to some place on the ship and only feel more and more alienated. This isn’t what they were expecting from the TV shows, the recruiter, the instructors at the various schools were telling them what the fleet was like. When you add to that a letter that begins “It isn’t you it is me…” from a girlfriend/wife, that usually seems to be the straw that breaks the back for a large number of our first cruise folks. It is hard work to bounce back from something like that, as supervisors we work very hard to pay attention to mood changes. Sometimes all it takes is some engagement, opening up a chance for someone to vent. Sometimes you need to be the initial contact and then refer them to other people who are better trained and prepared to help work through the issue. Engagement is always the word of the day for some of this stress.
I am going through my own deployment stress. Being a newlywed is hard, even more so when you were only home for two months before starting the in/out of the deployment cycle. I was smart and loaded up with nearly all the cards for the birthday and anniversary that I could get while in San Diego and Japan when I could. Every place I hit for a port visit I try and remember to hunt for some little curio to send home and share my trip with her. Even more then that though is just the thought that I really want to just spend time at home getting use to living the married life. We were dating while I was in work ups for my 2007-2008 deployment. Trying to get personal time in-between duty weekends, training detachments, etc. Nov 2008 and changed commands that winter, only to start the whole cycle again. I have a slew of things to figure out beyond finishing up this deployment. The biggest tickler in the back of my head is finding a house where the two of us can live together, but the other thing fighting that is I am expected to rotated in January of 2011 (basically a year and four months from now) to another duty assignment. So even if I found a good house at a decent price could if I did have to move could I make a profit on it? Family is also a big stressor right now. My last deployment, some very close family members passed away, they weren’t in my immediate nuclear family, so I couldn’t take leave. The most that I could do was shoulder the news, compartmentalize it and move on. There wasn’t the time nor the money to make a transit from the Gulf all the way back to the US to make the funerals. When the deployment ended is when the emotional release happened, still very hard for me to deal with even now some of these thoughts. I am really in the mood for a break from this sea duty and want some nice shore duty place where I don’t have to see a ship for a while.
Oh, and the home front goes through deployment stress as well. It is even harder for them since most of the time they are in the middle of the storm that started the letter or email. It is really helpful if friends or neighbors are able to help out from time to time. Even something simple as helping to cook a meal because of a hectic week is appreciated from time to time.
Well that is it for deep thoughts from out here. I hope this little glimpse in to some of the other things that make up our lives beyond fun port calls and living out the dream of being Top Gun has been enlightening for your readers .
Charles
