We all struggle, and life is tougher in the military.
Thank them all for their service, but where´s the virtue in this story?...it only adds to the misery.

Long deployments are not a new thing. We routinely spent 9 months a year underway and that was with Reagan´s 600 ship navy.

Our families weren´t so whiny then, though.

What´s new about this? My spouse spent 22 years in the Navy, much of it in the Med and Viet Nam in 7-9 month deployments.
The grateful Government returns the favor by ignoring his widow´s claim for DIC for service related death benefits, and final expenses reimbursement for 14 months now..still waiting.

In the early ´60s, our sister ship the USS Betelgeuse (AK260) went into the yards and the yardbirds screwed up, causing additional months delay before going for an ORI. Meanwhile, we made all her trips to Europe as well as ours. We lived through it as have other crews.

As SK3 on the USS Alcor AK-259

Good Gawdalmighty. Our "heroes" are turning into whiners and wimps? Try World War 2 you turkeys. Try World War 1 while you´re at it. "Heroes" my butt.

In the early 90´s, my brother spent several loooonnngg deployments on a nuclear sub, all without whining (I find my claustrophobic self looking for windows just thinking about it!). What is it with the milquetoasts that mothers and fathers are raising these days??!!!

I am a brat, and not having learned my lesson I enlisted. I promise you dependents ´whined´ just as much, there are just more public outlets.
The short of it is spouse knows what´s coming and doesn´t like it and can´t do anything about it so some ´writer´ clucks about it to make a buck.

did a tour in Vietnam 72, then did a tour to Italy where I was always going somewhere where it would be reported that I died in a training accident, came home after 8 years. My mom & dad only saw me twice in that 8 years. I knew not to get married after I got a dear john letter during my Nam tour and a hate letter signed by over 300 classmates from high school... but hey I got spit upon by the hippies in San Francisco so all wasn´t bad. /s Off

Right on, #6, where, unless one was KIA or seriously WIA, deployments were for "the duration". Don´t forget 12-month ground combat deployments to Vietnam.

In the late 70s we in the Navy´s Seabees routinely saw 8-month deployments and 6-month homeports. Really out of balance. But of course we were dealing w/ a global Cold War at the time.

I married A when he was still in the Navy, knowing there was a possibility, admittedly slight, that he could be deployed before the resignation of his commission became effective. If these wives didn´t want to risk long periods of separation they shouldn´t have married sailors.

I once heard a chaplain ask an unhappy sailor complaining about his "loss of liberty",

"When you went to the recruiter, was there a picture of a ship on the poster?"

While it´s true that recruiters will tell their prospects whatever they want to hear, it´s still also true that nobody holds a gun to their heads to make them sign on the dotted line. When you sign up in the Navy, chances are more than good that you´ll be spending some time on a ship of some sort. Ships don´t just take a Caribbean cruise and come back to port 2 weeks later. TheDad went to VN for a whole year, fergoonessake. Get over it.

Try the boomer wife life. 3 months at sea no contact excePt maybe a short 20 something word family gram 3 months at sea two and a half home for four years .or a fast attack in the med at the height of the Lybia episode that was supposed to be 5 months but became seven. No face book no email

Posters, think twice before using the broad brush. A carrier crew means 10,000, maybe 20,000 relatives -- not even counting relatives of CBG escort-ship crews. Poke around and you´ll find any opinion you want. Maybe even a web post put up during a down moment? Plenty of relatives and friends stand strong. And not every "complaint" [which just might be a correct observation that hey, it can be hard] means the source whines endlessly.

Thanks to all for their service.

[Full disclosure: son of a US Navy sailor; father of a CVN77 Plankowner; father-in-law to a 4-times-deployed 688-boat sailor.]

There is no draft, therefore it´s entirely your decision. However it´s also your right to complain; I just don´t want to hear about.

As Pres Obama continues to convert the military from a war fighting organization to a social justice organization you will see more people in the military playing the victim card. Tragically, someday a lot of good men and women are going to die unnecessarily because our military will not have the training or equipment it needs.

Same old story, different decade. We were issued the right to complain with our seabags. We exercised that right and then got on with the job. It will ever be the same and I am forever grateful that someone took over my watch when it was time to leave and that the will to serve is still strong, if painful for us and our loved ones.

My daughter is Army. She deployed to Iraq as one of the last units to do 15 month deployments. Groups that arrived after them got to leave before them, because deployments were changed to 9 months after that.

My son is a Marine. He is going to deploy on a Navy ship soon, but we don´t know which one or for how long.

Please don´t be so hard on our troops or their families. We NEED to know about the multiple deployments. We NEED to know if things are wrong.

Smile and a ´hand salute´ to #2.

Remember "Family Grams" ? What were those - 20 or 25 words... and you got a whopping FIVE of them to cover a deployment.

On my last WestPac, I received all of them. On the same day. As we were returning to San Diego.

I´m glad the technology exists (emails, Facebook, etc) to the point where members of our Armed Forces can stay in touch - but these folks need to realize that they really don´t know how good they´ve got it.

And as I ´complain´ about the ´Family Gram´ generation of the service, I know too well that the generation prior to mine were lucky to have any communications at all with their loved ones. "Deployments" in WWII could last years - that is, if you made it home alive.