Married Life in the War Zone

Military life can be extremely stressful, even when you're not in a combat zone.

There are usually a lot of long hours in order to get the mission accomplished, often done days and weeks on end. Even stateside, military members sometimes don't get to see much of their family for extended periods. And when deployed overseas to remote areas or combat areas, spouses and family usually remain stateside.

Fortunately, I didn't get married until the final year of my 10 years of service, and that last year was all stateside. But from my married friends I saw the tremendous stress and strain, and I saw far too many of their marriages go up in smoke.

Things are undoubtedly even worse now than when I was in the military in the mid-1980s and 1990s. Our military is now post-Cold-War-drawdown, meaning it is far smaller than it once was, yet with the War on Terror the military is spread thinner than ever.

So I considered it welcome news when I read from Yahoo News that the Army is now allowing married military couples to reside together in Iraq:

In a historic but little-noticed change in policy, the Army is allowing scores of husband-and-wife soldiers to live and sleep together in the war zone — a move aimed at preserving marriages, boosting morale and perhaps bolstering re-enlistment rates at a time when the military is struggling to fill its ranks five years into the fighting.

This is certainly an unusual development in the annals of military history, but then, never before have their been so many women and so many married people in the military. While the traditionalist in me raises an eyebrow, I think that given the circumstances, it's for the best.

Military people have the most important job in the country: defending their country. While they're still human, they need to be able to concentrate on the military mission; it can mean life or death for many. And while a married domicile in the combat zone may bring its own distractions, I think that in the long run it may be a positive thing.

As some of the testimony in the article cited, having your spouse nearby to bare your soul to, to cry on their shoulder every now and then, to get some affirmation from, can be a tremendous boost to the spirit wounded and weary from the strain of long hours and some unpleasant duty.

When I was in the military, we complained that the brass seldom did anything that made sense for the troops.

Maybe for once, they've proven us wrong here.