Has anyone seen the commercials for goarmy.com during the NCAA tourney? There are four to my count a Hispanic middle class son talking to is mom a white farmboy talking to his dad a black middle class son talking to his dad and a white middle class woman talking to her dad. Anybody notice the pattern?
There will be no draft. Not unless we engage China and/or North Korea in a protracted conflict *while* we are engaged in the WOT. Why? Because considering the scope of the current conflict we can squeeze by now with what we have. We abandoned the 2.5 MRC concept a long time ago. We realistically dropped the 2 MRC ideal during the Clinton era, when we cut the Army literally in half. We cre currently at about a 1.5 MRC capacity of capability right now, and are operating at about 1.0 of that capacity with OEF and OIF. We've got about a half of a Major Regional Conflict to spare right now, just enough to rush an emergency force to an (Asian) theatre to attempt to stabilize it while we figure out what to do... But why no draft? Three reasons: 1) it would be too costly, 2) we don't need one, and 3) it would destroy the force we have now. 1) It would be too costly. Do you know how much it costs to run a mechanized division? A lot. How about a light infantry division? A little less. How about another composite air wing? Outrageously expensive. We could use another two or three divisions. Hell, we could use another six. Or eight, to bring us back to the Desert Storm force levels... But when you're talking about a $400 billion budget that only gets you ten divisions - that can do pretty much everything you want (remember it is capabilities, not size, that matters), and you're already WAY over budget, you have to ask yourself whether it's worth it to spend that extra hundred billion on those two divisions, two combat wings, and carrier group that you'd really like to have... Efficiency of power is the name of the game, and if you already have the capabilities that you need to accomplish what you want to get done, then you put those extra billions towards something else. 2) Hinted on in previous point, but - we don't need it. Or rather, we would only need it if the sh(t really hit the fan (China/NK simultaneous with other committments). And if that happened? Well, that's what nukes are for. And nukes are exactly why the sh*t won't hit the fan in that way (ref: deterrance). As I said, it would be nmice to have another couple divisions, another couple bomber wings. I'd love to add another two air assault (like the 101st) divisions, and one light airborne armored division armed with Strykers, as well as another B-2 wing. We would be able to absolutely crush any opponent on the planet, no questions asked, with those additions. But hey - we can crush anyone now with what we've got, so why bother? 3) Modern, western armies live and die by the discipline that their forces exert upon themselves. With the all-volunteer force, we have the highest level of discipline that any army has had since the Romans, and it is that way for a reason: every single one of those people made a conscious decision to be there, doing what they are doing, performing a very difficult job, motivated in ways that conscripts never could be. I am not talking about morale here; that ebbs and flows with operations, goes up and down - we are all human, and the battlefield frequently offers up conditions which will chip away at morale. What I am talking about id dedication in its purest form. The Army values are coined in the term "LDRSHIP" - Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal courage. The people who join the services are likely to hold these values in high regard, and once they join these values are reinforced - mercilessly . Think about the American public. Honestly. Do most of the people you know hold these values in high regard? Do they live them? Or just give them lip service? How many do you think are really fit for service, given those standards? Conscription nearly destroyed the services during Vietnam, because the general erosion of traditional American values - like those the Army presently demands - left us with a pool of potheads and "individuals". The Army doesn't like "individuals"... They die too quick in combat. Notice the relatively low combat casualty rates we've had the past 25-30 years? It ain't because we've got better toys. It's because we've got better people. There will be no draft.
Oh, and one more reason we won't need the draft: 4) The Reserves and National Guard. In spite of what some of you may have heard, the qualitative differences between these guys and the Active army are not that great. Most of the members are former Active Duty members, and after the typical 4-12 weeks of refresher training before deployment (depending on mission), they are just as competent as the regular army. Only difference is that their equipment is generally older, but that gap is shrinking (they're anywhere from 0 to 6 years behind Active technologically now, used to be about 6-12). The comment on these guys is that they're all going to quit after they get off of their activations, because, after all, if they wanted to be Active Duty they would have gone (or stayed) Active Duty. It sounds logical, but it again leaves out the human factors; these guys were also trained with LDRSHIP in mind. They believe in this country, they believe in its causes. And overwhelmingly, from my experience, they believe in what we are doing in this war (Iraq/Afghanistan). None of them are eager to get their turn in the war, but pretty much everyone is willing to do it. And they accept it - it's just part of the commitment. There will be no disintegration of the Reserves and Guard, as retention and recruiting numbers are already showing. In point of fact, those particular numbers have never been higher in the AVF. Soldiers b****. They b**** especially hard when they're on demanding missions. But when the time comes to re-up and sign on the dotted line, most of them choose to stay. Hell, where else will they get to go camping and blow crap up - and have the government pay for it???
Hell, where else will they get to go camping and blow crap up - and have the government pay for it??? Sounds like a guy who hasn't been in combat, yet. I could have my brother in law the 20yr special force's guy., with much combat in Latin America, comment on this camping and blowing things up, but he would get upset and get banned after his first post. For a different perspective. ************ article | Posted March 25, 2004 A Deserter Speaks by Christian Parenti he young man across the table looks sad, but not as stressed as one might expect from a US Army deserter. Camilo Mejia served with a unit that crossed into Iraq just after the invasion and then, for five months, fought in the counterinsurgency war in the Sunni Triangle, where he says he was in firefights, killed people, almost got killed, helped torture prisoners and finally had his life saved by a small-scale mutiny. Now he is a declared conscientious objector who spent five months absent without leave, facing the wrath of US military justice. In October, when he was home on furlough, Mejia decided to ditch the killing and chaos of Iraq. Although the military never officially charged Mejia with desertion, he spent the rest of the autumn and winter living like a fugitive, never using cell phones, credit cards or the Internet for fear of being busted. He was frequently on the move and survived on the good will of friends. There are dozens of other soldiers who have refused to show up for their deployments, but the military doesn't pursue most of them and usually releases them from service without too much fuss. Most AWOL soldiers don't even get tracked down. However, if a soldier goes public to make a political point, the military response can be severe. "This is an immoral, unjust and illegal war," says Mejia. "The whole thing is based on lies. There are no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link with terrorism. It's about oil, reconstruction contracts and controlling the Middle East." Like many US troops, Mejia is a recent immigrant, but unlike many he is from a left-leaning bohemian family; his father is an internationally famous Nicaraguan musician, Carlos Mejia Godoy, and his mother was active with radical movements in the 1980s. Mejia, however, says he used to be apolitical. When he moved to the United States as a young adult, he joined the military "to become an American and know the culture." Just before Mejia's eight years of service were up, he found himself in Iraq. "After the war people were cheering, but within a week or two they were asking when we were going to leave and getting angry. And then it became clear that nothing was getting reconstructed, people's lives weren't getting better. We had all these deadlines, for setting up the police, getting the power back on, whatever, and nothing ever got done, nothing changed or got better," Mejia explains. "And then the resistance started." To make matters worse, Mejia found his officers to be glory-obsessed and intentionally reckless with the safety of their men. In particular, he says, they wanted the Army's much-coveted Combat Infantry Badge--an award bestowed only on those who have met and engaged the enemy. "To be a twenty-year career infantry officer and not have your CIB is like being a chef and having never cooked or being a fireman and never having put out a fire," Mejia says. "These guys were really hungry, and we were the bait." article | Posted March 25, 2004 PAGES prev 1 | 2 A Deserter Speaks (page 2 of 2) Print this article E-mail this article Write to the editors n one attempt to draw enemy fire, Mejia's company--about 120 guys divided evenly into four platoons--was ordered to occupy key intersections in Ramadi, a notoriously violent Iraqi city, for several days running. "All the guys were really nervous. This was a total violation of standard operating procedure. They train you to keep moving, not sit in the open." Finally the enemy attacked, and a platoon in Mejia's company took casualties. When the troops were ordered to perform the exact same maneuvers again, Mejia refused. "I told them, I quit." Luckily for him the four staff sergeants of the platoon that had taken casualties also refused to go out. Technically, refusing an order in a combat situation can be charged as mutiny. But in a tense meeting with their commanding officer, the staff sergeants negotiated a new plan of action that allowed the GIs to vary the timing and movement of their patrols. After these changes, Mejia agreed to go. "We went out two hours earlier than usual, and because of that we caught these young guys setting an IED (improvised explosive device) of three mortars wrapped together." If Mejia's squad had set out according the Commanding Officers' original plan, he believes that some of the guys in his squad would have been killed. For its part, the Florida National Guard claims that Mejia was a bad sergeant and that he was not aggressive enough in engaging what all admit is a highly elusive enemy. Spc. Oliver Perez, who served with Mejia, disagrees. "I fought next to him in many battles. He is not a coward," said Perez, who has also said he will testify on Mejia's behalf if the Army proceeds with a court-martial. During another assignment, Mejia's company ran a detention camp. "They didn't call it a POW camp because it didn't meet Red Cross standards," he explains. There, intelligence officers ordered Mejia's squad to psychologically torture three suspected resistance fighters. The hooded and bound prisoners were placed in isolation, intimidated with mock executions and forced to stay awake for days at a time. "We had one guy lose his mind. He was locked in a little metal closet that we'd bang with a sledgehammer every five minutes to keep him up. He started crying and begging to lie down." When asked how the prisoners were fed and given water, Mejia stares off into space for a moment, and then says, "I don't remember how we fed them." This soft-spoken young man has plenty of other bad stories to tell. There's the time his squad killed a civilian who ran a checkpoint; the time they shot a demonstrator. There's the officer who forged orders so he could get his unit into combat, and the other officer who broke his own ankle to get out of combat. There is the father who wasn't allowed temporary leave even though his young daughter had been raped. And there is the GI who took shrapnel in the head and now can't talk, can't recognize his family and wakes up in the middle of the night confused and sobbing. Given the politics of the military, it is unlikely that Mejia's serious allegations about the conduct of his superiors will be investigated, let alone prosecuted, while his own decision of conscience could be treated as a criminal matter. "I'd rather do the five to ten years in prison for desertion than kill a child by mistake," says Mejia. "When you are getting shot at, you shoot back. It doesn't matter if there are civilians around. Prison ends, but you never get over killing a kid." So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter. link
Oh wow, an article from The Nation. Yeah, they're not biased or anything. And BTW, camping and blowing stuff up is quite fun. Why don't you ask your , uh, "brother in law", tell you how much fun FISTers actually have on live fires? If he's really SF, then he'd know all about FISTers. In all honesty, though, I'm no longer a FISTer (although I'm keeping it as a secondary MOS). Recon in a MLRS battery now... so just camping for me. Man, your "brother in law" must be proud of you, glynch. I guess you balance each other out; he spends his days trying to protect this country and kill its enemies, while you spend yours trying to destroy its defenses and giving propagandistic aid to its enemies. Must make for nice dinnertime conversation.
Hey. Treeman. You're right in one aspect only. He does say it is fun to blow stuff up and shoot off various weapons. Combat is hell and he considers himself a working class guy, who was fed a lot of bull by the army recruiters and others. I believe he still considers himself a Republican, but for the first time he will be voting Democratic-- at least for president. He is upset over the Iraq War. He says" "anybody, but Bush. " As a retiree he is very uspet about the cuts and lack of support for retired veteran's benefits. BTW, he also spent approximately 4 years, after his twenty as a cviilian contract employee, training Saudi combat forces and thinks he knows what is up with the Middle East. We are fairly close when it comes to US foreign policy at this point, but are still very far apart on most domestic issues.
So there's this (along with numerous other issues), and doesn't Kerry want to make all high school students participate in some sort of service as well? Damn. I have no one left to vote for.
I think the truth us we may need one. There is zero chance a draft will be enacted in a presidential campaign year (or even annouced). Even in 2005, I suspect that very few Congressman would want to get behind a draft. Enlistment and re-enlistment are both down. Soldiers are getting their tours extended. Part timers are on full time which may go on for years. We need more soldiers, until they are no longer needed in Iraq. And then there is our ongoing other commitments like Haiti that pop up.
Washington Post survey of military families... And the story... _________________ Army Spouses Expect Reenlistment Problems By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A01 CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- Patty B. Morgan's husband was fighting in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, and she was caring for two children by herself. Their lease was expiring and they had committed to buying a house across town, so she was going through with the move anyway. One hot morning last July, as she was about to drive boxes to the new place, she walked outside, infant car seat in hand, and opened the garage door -- to find that her green Jeep had been stolen. A few days later, she was told that her husband wouldn't be home by Labor Day, as she had expected, but would serve in Iraq six months more, for a total of a year. "It was a hell of a week," Morgan said in her throaty voice. Morgan's experience is part of a significant change in Army life brought about by the post-9/11 world: The extended, or repeated, deployments that have characterized the Army since then have intensified the burdens traditionally borne by military families. And most of the spouses who have remained behind are wondering how long the Army can keep it up. This change is reflected in a recent poll conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, and in dozens of supplemental interviews. The poll, the first nongovernmental survey of military spouses conducted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, included more than 1,000 spouses living on or near the 10 heaviest-deploying Army bases. While most of them said they have coped well, three-quarters said they believe the Army is likely to encounter personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the pace and leave for civilian lives. Lt. Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief, said in an interview that, overall, The Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll results seemed to reflect those of the service's internal surveys. The findings come at a time when the Army is providing soldiers' families with unprecedented levels of support. Over the past 30 years, beginning with the end of conscription after the Vietnam War, the service became smaller, more professional -- and more married. By the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the military was caught flat-footed by the growing need to support soldiers' families during a major deployment. In response, the Army built a robust network of family supports ranging from day care to counseling to legal help to instruction in Army basics, household finance and coping with stress. In addition, spouses can volunteer to watch over one another through Army Family Readiness Groups. As Patty Morgan dealt with her crisis last July, she also drew on another common, and powerful, resource: her "military girlfriends" from nearby Fort Campbell, Ky. They swooped in, she recalled, to provide babysitting, transportation and relief from her volunteer duties with her Army Family Readiness Group so she could go ahead with her move and do the paperwork to replace the Jeep. "We have formed bonds," she said. "We're all family." Hagenbeck said the Army is taking family concerns over deployments into account. "We recognize that as a major issue," he said. Yet since Sept. 11, 2001, the Army has been increasingly expeditionary -- that is, based in the United States but prepared to take on a stream of new missions overseas. "That's the business we're going to be in for a while," said Col. Michael Resty, the garrison commander at Fort Carson, Colo. "Anybody who thinks differently is fooling themselves." The strain on troops and their families has led some in Congress to advocate a big boost in the size of the active-duty Army, which stands at about 485,000 troops. The Pentagon is planning to add 30,000 soldiers over the next several years, but before agreeing to further expansion, it wants to see whether the other steps it is taking will ease the strain. Most notably, the Pentagon is reorganizing divisions to expand the number of the Army's deployable brigades from 33 to 48. In addition, the Army has announced a new policy under which troops will serve longer tours at bases, permitting their families to put down deeper roots. The question is whether those steps will be sufficient. "There's no way to know for sure," said Tom Donnelly, a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee. Donnelly said he expects that 2005 will be "the make-or-break year," as some soldiers who have already served in Iraq for a year are sent back for a second tour. In the meantime, repeated and unpredictable deployments remain Army spouses' biggest issue. In The Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll, a slight majority -- 55 percent -- said their spouses' current deployment had been extended longer than they expected. Of that group, more than a third said that had created "major problems" for them. "It was a roller coaster," said Meg Davis, whose husband, a lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division, spent the past year in Iraq. "Everybody said six months, so we were expecting August, worst-case scenario." Instead, her husband did not return home until February. Of the spouses polled, 95 percent were women. Three-quarters had one or more children younger than 18. The same proportion had had a spouse deployed overseas since Sept. 11, 2001. A third of those whose husbands had deployed and returned said they expected another deployment in the next year. The poll did not examine the problems faced by the families of National Guard and Reserve troops because they are a far more difficult population to locate and survey. Large majorities of Army wives said that coping with their spouses' deployment had been a problem, but that they were proud of their service to the country. Many resented media coverage that portrays them as not handling it well. "It's not fair to us, or to the guys over there, to say that we're all having nervous breakdowns, because we're not," said Holly Petraeus, wife of the commander of the 101st Airborne. At the same time, some worry about the toll on their marriages, and far more worry about the emotional strain they see in their children. There is almost one child -- a total of about 470,000 -- for each soldier on active duty in the Army. In interviews, mothers said the Iraq deployment has been harder on their children than it has been on them. In the poll, three-quarters said the deployment had created problems for their offspring, with more than a quarter characterizing the troubles as major. Two-thirds said their sons and daughters were "sad"; somewhat less than a third said their children were more aggressive or had trouble concentrating. "When my husband deployed to Afghanistan, my fourth-grader, the light kind of went out of her face," said Amanda Hicks, whose husband is a pilot in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Hicks and her fellow teachers at Ringgold Elementary School, the school closest to the gates of Fort Campbell, said their current students are notably fragile. "I have got the teariest class this year," said Debbie Sanders, a kindergarten teacher. "They just cry all the time." While half of the spouses rated their own morale as high, less than a third rated the morale of the families around them similarly. And even though they feel at least somewhat supported by their nonmilitary countrymen, the spouses do not feel particularly well understood by them -- not even by their own extended families. With the community of wives living on and around Army bases offering an attractive alternative, this generation has broken the long-established pattern of going back home for the duration of a husband's deployment. "We have become a sorority of separation," said Anne Torza, wife of an Apache attack-helicopter pilot in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, "and I wouldn't give up my sisters for anything. You know that 'band of brothers'? We're a band of sisters." The Daily Tax "It's been a rough, rough, tiresome year," said Jeniqua Knuckles, mother of three and wife of an artillery sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division who spent most of 2003 in northern Iraq. That was what the women who did well tended to say. More than 40 percent of those with deployed spouses said the experience had left them depressed, and nearly 80 percent said they often felt lonely. Family-oriented holidays were especially difficult: Candice Foster, whose husband is a staff sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division, said she left the Christmas tree up an extra two months with all her husband's presents underneath. "The hardest part is going to bed and waking up alone, every night and day being alone," said Amy Greene, wife of a 3rd Armored Cavalry medic and mother of a baby born while her husband was in Iraq for the past year. "It's very hard, especially when you see all the happy families together and you know that your family may never be together again." Although the possibility of death has become part of their everyday lives -- over the past year, 588 U.S. troops have died in Iraq -- the women do not talk about it much, at least not directly. Their avoidance was reflected in the cautious way some talked when asked about memorial services. Foster said she simply could not attend them. "I thought it was just too hard, with my husband still over there," she said. "It could be him." Even when things are going well, their spouses' absence remains a source of chronic underlying tension, imposing a small daily tax on their psychic energy. "It's always there," said Jennifer Trantham, wife of a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief in the 3rd Infantry Division, which returned from the Middle East last summer. There were whole days, she said, when she would hang around the house, "kind of hoping he will call." He has already been told to expect to redeploy to Iraq next year, she added. Counterbalancing the daily burdens are not only the wives' Army and informal networks, but also their own sense of purpose. Three-quarters felt they were "doing something important," and more than eight in 10 said their spouses' deployment had made them more confident in their ability to take care of themselves and their families. Diane Campbell, wife of a warrant officer in the 43rd Area Support Group, said that one night at a movie, her young daughter turned to her and out of the blue said, "My daddy's saving the world." Many have eased their emotional load by getting out of the house and staying busy volunteering or taking on new projects. Some have blossomed, learning new skills ranging from changing tires to paying bills. Ileana Arnold, wife of a motor pool sergeant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry, said that until last year she had always left home-improvement projects to her husband. But when he shipped out, she said, she began building a patio behind her house. That done, she moved on to a series of woodworking projects. When she began hammering and sawing, she joked, her five children began muttering things such as, "Daddy needs to come home now!" From Kitchen to Battlefield Technology -- not only 24-hour news, but also e-mail -- has kept this generation of spouses extraordinarily close to their husbands' lives. But that, they have discovered, is a mixed blessing. The Iraq deployment has been the U.S. military's first war fought in an interconnected environment, in which even front-line soldiers generally have access to e-mail and the Internet. "It's the 'kitchen table to the battlefield' war," Morgan said. "Something happens -- between cable news, the cell phone, the Internet, e-mail -- it goes back and forth instantly." That speed can be vexing: Almost every wife seems to have gotten a predawn call telling her to turn on the television because the "crawl" on the bottom of the cable news screen was reporting that a soldier had been killed in the region of Iraq where her husband was posted. To squelch rumors sparked by such reports, the Army has had each unit's Family Readiness Group quickly transmit information on events in Iraq. "When something happens, the phone tree lights up, so you're not sitting there watching TV trying to figure out if your husband is hurt," said Kristin Jackson, whose husband is a mechanic in the 101st Airborne. But even when the news is that he is safe, she quietly added, it carries a pang of grief. "It still hurts, because it is someone's husband, and it is a loss in our family," she said. About four in 10 spouses said they had had problems communicating with their deployed soldiers. But that number reflects more than anything the height of their expectations: Many of them grew up on instant messaging. At first, as units deployed to Iraq last spring, most had to write letters to communicate -- and for some, it was an unfamiliar exercise. Hiccups in the mail compounded their worries. Tanya Metansingh, whose husband is a scout in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, mistakenly believed for some time that her husband had been wounded in the face twice, both times by shrapnel: Her mother-in-law received a letter about an incident in May, and a month later, as she was about to give birth, Metansingh received another -- not realizing that the second letter had simply been held up for four weeks. Later in 2003, e-mails and phone calls from Iraq became more common, and something of a lifeline. Many wives said that, in recent months, they had received electronic communications three or four times a week -- including digital photographs of their soldier-spouses, which are especially meaningful for children who cannot yet read. "Technology has made a huge difference," said Sonia Scott, whose husband, an Apache attack-helicopter pilot in the 3rd Armored Cavalry, spent the past year in western Iraq. "I think it's kept marriages together." Given a close-up view of the war, two-thirds of the spouses said things were going well for the United States in Iraq. Only four in 10 said media coverage of the war was good, and even fewer approved of the coverage of military families. "Our soldiers are doing wonderful things, like painting schools, and they never see it in the newspapers," said Jeanne Koss, who works with Family Readiness Groups at Fort Carson. Television news, the spouses said, acted like a powerful drug for them over the past year, reviled but craved. "It's a necessary evil," said Jean Patterson, wife of a senior sergeant in an engineering battalion that was in Mosul, Iraq, for 12 months. "We're addicted to it, we need the information -- but then we turn around and bash it." Morgan said simply, "It can make you physically ill." That was not an idle observation. Army counselors and others said that one of the leading indicators that a deployed soldier's wife is headed for trouble is that she takes hours-long wallows in the news. The problem was especially acute last spring, when all the broadcasts from correspondents embedded with front-line combat units made it possible to watch hours of coverage at a time -- a new experience for Army wives and everyone else. Here, too, the wives were concerned about their children: The coverage tends to show the most violent aspects of the deployment -- firefights, helicopter crashes and the aftermath of bombings -- so children tend to assume that is what life is like for their deployed fathers. And coverage of casualties and funerals, many wives found, was insensitive, even rude. One other thought hovered in the back of their minds: "Family members believe in the mission," said Jan McConnell, a youth services coordinator at Fort Carson. "But as you keep hearing press reports about how other people feel about Iraq, everybody wonders, 'Will the American public turn against the military?' " Civilian Cluelessness When Traci Lever, married to a platoon sergeant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry, had a fender bender not long ago, she mailed the damage estimate of $500 to the driver who had hit her. When the driver learned that her husband had just returned from a year in Iraq, he sent a check for $600 -- and enclosed a second one for $50 with the notation, "Dinner for two." Despite such gestures, military wives see a gap between themselves and the civilian world. About 90 percent of spouses said they were satisfied with the respect the American public shows soldiers. But Davis, wife of the 101st Airborne Division lieutenant, spoke for many when she said: "The farther away you get from post, the less understanding there is." Often, the spouses see good intentions thwarted by a lack of comprehension. Desaree Venema, whose husband has been gone for a year as a senior sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division, said that in her nonmilitary neighborhood, residents have been supportive, shoveling snow and babysitting her daughters "when I have a bad day." But when they complain about a spouse having to go on a week-long business trip, she said, "I just about have to draw blood from my tongue" to stop from shouting at them. "It's wonderful to put the red, white and blue Dixie Cups in the chain-link fence to show patriotism, but you need specific tools," said McConnell, the Fort Carson youth services coordinator. Civilians sometimes will say things such as, "It's good your dad can e-mail you because it shows he's alive," unaware of how scary it will sound to a child -- especially when the e-mail breaks down, said Mary M. Keller, executive director of Military Child Education Coalition, a nonprofit group. Many wives said that even their own parents and siblings back home don't get it. "I would talk to my parents" back home in Texas, said Marisela Martinez, wife of a 4th Infantry Division sergeant who was deployed to the Sunni Triangle until recently. "But they don't know what we're going through. I try to explain to my dad what I'm going through, and he'd say, 'Well, you signed up for this.' " Coming, Going, Gone There was only one point on which the spouses' views of the Army turned toward to the negative: About half said the Army had done a "not so good" or "poor" job of keeping them informed about the timing and duration of deployments. When deployments were extended, spouses said, there were direct and painful consequences: Those whose husbands were gone for longer than expected were nearly twice as likely as the others to report that a child was having trouble at school or acting more aggressively. Extensions also sharply increased the percentage of spouses who reported feeling depressed and anxious. "We are not a bunch of whiners," said Joyce Dolinish, wife of a commander in the 101st Airborne. "But the repeated deployments worry us." Many Army wives did not sign up for that life. At Fort Carson, for example, the major unit is a brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, which had not seen combat since coming home from Vietnam in December 1970. And until 9/11, Army recruiters tended to dwell less on the adventure of Army life and more on financial incentives, such as education benefits. The spouses who were interviewed estimated that one or two of every 10 wives take deployment very hard. "Their husbands will probably get out," Kristin Jackson said. That sentiment is widely shared: About 76 percent of those polled said they believe the Army is heading for personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the post-9/11 pace and leave the service. And yet, the same percentage said that, knowing what they know now about the Army, they would do it all over again. What those numbers reflect, said wives and other Army insiders, is that the Army is adapting to the post-9/11 world. "We're seeing a harder Army come out of this," full of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said Lt. Jason Davis, the husband of Meg Davis. "The reenlistments that we'll see will be good ones," the Iraq veteran said. "These guys are experts, and they know what they're getting into." A strong minority of military wives want no part of that frequent-flier life. About half of those polled said they expect their spouses to reenlist, and that they will support the decision. But about three in 10 said that they are certain their spouses will get out -- and that they want that to happen. If those numbers prove true, "that's a good news story for the Army," said Master Sgt. J.D. Riley, a Pentagon expert on enlisted personnel issues. Currently, he said, about 50 percent of soldiers leave at the end of their first term. The greater worry is that more seasoned soldiers -- especially the senior sergeants who are the backbone of today's Army -- will start leaving in unusually large numbers, as they did during the latter part of the Vietnam War. It is too early to tell if Iraq will provoke such an exodus, but some Army experts are concerned by internal Army data indicating morale problems among troops serving there. "He's getting out," Erika Storm said of her husband, a seven-year Army veteran who is a mechanic for Bradley Fighting Vehicles in the 4th Infantry Division. "As good as the Army is, he doesn't want to tear himself away from his family." The most vulnerable spouses are also those newest to the Army. Shyla McLaughlin said she and her husband will "definitely" leave the Army as soon as they can. "I knew there were chances of deployment, but I didn't know how hard it was going to be," she said. But some Army wives hope their husbands will stay. "This is the first time my husband has said, in 12 years, that he's ready to get out," said Candice Foster. But if she has anything to say about it, she said, "he's going to stay in." A steady paycheck, good benefits and a safe environment in which to rear children all combine to provide a powerful lure. Those who intend to stay in especially cite the powerful sense of comradeship they have developed over the past year with other Army wives -- the "sorority of separation" to which Anne Torza referred. "This life is an adventure," she said, "and we're in it together." In military terms, they have achieved unit cohesion.
