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.

I felt a tremendous amount of freedom when I hit the 20-year mark in the Army and retired.

OldArmyCT said:

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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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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.

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.

clarythedrill said:

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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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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.

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.