A tip of my cap to yall who have done a deployment.

1,162 Views | 9 Replies | Last: 15 days ago by CAVGrunt97
Quo Vadis?
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9:09a, 10/23/24
You have my respect.

I have been living in Abu Dhabi for the last 6 months, coming back for 10 days every 2 months to see my wife and kids. This is the last "leg" of my time over here with one month left. I am feeling very sorry for myself because I miss working in my home office and especially miss my church and mostly my family.

I cannot imagine how tough it must be to be in a war zone instead of an office and a 5 star hotel. No one is shooting at me; I'm in no danger, the biggest inconvenience I have is traffic, I get room service and they even let me hookup a PS5 in the hotel room.

You guys are all heroes in my eyes, and like the poem says, I hold my manhood cheap in your presence
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clarythedrill
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3:47p, 10/23/24
Thanks for that. I will say that what got me through my deployments was being around my guys everyday. When you get back you actually miss being around them 24 hours a day, or at least I did.

P.S. I don't think we were/are heroes, just Soldiers who did our job.
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OldArmyCT
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4:39a, 10/24/24
AG
Vietnam was a year, your only break was a 5 or 7 day R&R, if you made it that far. People rotated in and out all the time so a good portion of the unit was both new guys and old guys. Unless you were a lifer once is all you went. I could not have handled multiple deployments like you newer guys have been getting. And the Army wonders why they have a recruitment problem.
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Tanker123
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8:40p, 10/29/24
I felt a tremendous amount of freedom when I hit the 20-year mark in the Army and retired.
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PanzerAggie06
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In reply to OldArmyCT • 11:02p, 10/29/24
AG
OldArmyCT said:
Vietnam was a year, your only break was a 5 or 7 day R&R, if you made it that far. People rotated in and out all the time so a good portion of the unit was both new guys and old guys. Unless you were a lifer once is all you went. I could not have handled multiple deployments like you newer guys have been getting. And the Army wonders why they have a recruitment problem.
The deployment cycle at the height of operations in Iraq/Afg was brutal. Train for a year, deploy, return for reset and maybe have two to three months of slower operations before bouncing right back into training for the next deployment. It was a lot easier on officers as we, normally, would have more time off between deployments than the enlisted side of the house. What was hilarious, in a very sad way, was that senior leadership always acted completely flummoxed as to why morale was generally pretty low when all this was going on. A blind/deaf person could have seen why but apparently when one makes O5 they lose any, and all, common sense.
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Fly Army 97
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1:14a, 10/31/24
Interesting post. Deployments/rotations/TDYs all differ, but sometimes when it's a slow moving one....it can remind you more of home than a high-intensity time away. What you are describing is quite the norm for many folks who are currently on rotation...maybe not a combat deployment...but they are busy with intermittent times of 'down time', and I used that term loosely.

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JABQ04
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In reply to clarythedrill • 7:50a, 10/31/24
AG
clarythedrill said:
Thanks for that. I will say that what got me through my deployments was being around my guys everyday. When you get back you actually miss being around them 24 hours a day, or at least I did.

P.S. I don't think we were/are heroes, just Soldiers who did our job.



I definitely remember how crappy the conditions were for my 1st deployment during the Surge, but man I miss the quiet times of hanging out at our outpost and tossing horseshoes, watching a bootleg movie with 8 other dudes on a laptop or the conversations we had trying to stay warm around our trash fire (which now we know was bad for our health) when it got cold and snowed in Iraq in early '08. For as ****ty as those days were, there were some good times.
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JABQ04
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In reply to PanzerAggie06 • 8:00a, 10/31/24
AG
That schedule was brutal. I enlisted and did AIT, reported to JBLM in May of '07, and was sent down range to my brigade 60 days later. Did 12 out of their 15 months deployment, home for 13 months, deployed again for a year after our deployment got accelerated by a year, home for 15-ish months, get sent to Korea for a year, home for 7 months and catch a trip to Afghanistan for 9 months. All with just under 8
years of active duty time too. Then CoC wonders why an up and coming E-6 wants to ETS…..it was always after this deployment, or after this rotation we can help you get drill, recruiting, AIT instructor, etc….had several ALC dates cancelled. Finally just said I'm done, it's not fair to the wife and kids so I'm out.

Not complaining, just stating facts in my scenario. I know tons of folks who had it worse and for longer.
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Iraq2xVeteran
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8:40a, 11/5/24
AG
Thank you for starting this thread. I left for basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri in July 2006 and then did AIT at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Because I changed jobs, I spent over a year in AIT. I reported to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii in November 2007, just in time for my brigades' 15-month deployment from December 2007 to February 2009 and from June 2010 to May 2011. After 5 years and my 2nd deployment, I left the Army in August 2011.
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CAVGrunt97
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8:41p, 11/5/24
AG
Combat is of course something altogether different but as a good friend of mine has said (while both of us were on active duty - he still is), gone is gone. If you have important people in your life on the other side of the world it can get rough after a while.


We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well, and live!
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