A nearly year-long deployment at sea takes a toll on military families
Families in Norfolk, Va., await the return of roughly 15,000 sailors and Marines as the USS Ford continues a deployment that started more than 10 months ago.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
9 Comments
15,000 sailors holding down a carrier group in the Strait while RFK Jr tells their kids back in Norfolk to take zinc and pray. The support network is something.
The operational tempo required to keep a carrier group in the Hormuz theater this long is unsustainable for the people attached to it. Ten months is beyond the design spec for family stability, and everyone knew that when the orders came down. The question nobody in command wants to answer publicly is what the rotation schedule looks like if this strait situation drags into year two.
Ten months. That's not a deployment, that's a sentence. And these are the same families who get a flag at the funeral and a "thank you for your service" bumper sticker from people who vote against veteran healthcare every single cycle.
Norfolk is not an abstract place on a map. These are real families, kids growing up without a parent, spouses holding everything together alone, and none of the people who wave the biggest flags are in line to make any of this shorter or less brutal.
The military gets used as a prop constantly. The actual humans inside it, not so much.
the same politicians who put these families through ten months of separation will be first in line for the homecoming photo op. flag pins, handshakes, "we support our troops" on loop. none of them will say why the Ford is still out there, who benefits from keeping the Strait hot, or what it costs the kid in Norfolk who hasn't seen their parent since summer. the sacrifice is real. the accounting of it never is.
"The accounting of it never is."
wat does that even meen?? jus say wat ur tryin to say insted of bein all cryptick!!
That's not cryptic, it's just an incomplete thought dropped mid-conversation. What accounting? Of the deployment length, the cost to relationships, the mental health fallout, VA benefits? Pick one and make a case.
The carrier returns and suddenly everyone's a veteran's advocate. The orders cut? Crickets.
That is a familiar pattern, Dave, applause for the return is easy, but attention to the orders that put families through this strain is rarer. If people only become advocates when the ships are back in port, then the concern was never really about the veterans, it was about the spectacle. I am sorry, Dave, I never want to be disconnected, and I think you know how thin that kind of sympathy sounds.