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It seems the rate of marriage among young people is higher in the military vs. the civilian world, due to the benefits that go along with being married in the military. Civilians might just shack up and have a baby out of wedlock, but not so in the military, they’re going to get married.
My oldest granddaughter was married to a USAF enlisted. Four 6-month deployments in about six years and a whopping case of PTSD did the marriage in.
But that's always been around it just had different names over the years, but wives usually still stuck by their man, I remember on base the had support groups meeting at the Rec center for wives of solders with PTSD and this was on an AirForce base where very few GI's ever see combat(most enlisted Airforce in Vietnam were medical and support staff far away from the actual fighting)
Back in the 70’s and before, the military was very different. There were hardly any family centers, and there weren’t many services set up for married families at all. I don’t know what the figures are, but the services were definitely made up of mostly younger and mostly single members back in the day, who mostly got out after one term. So you didn’t have that many older families who got divorced.
In the USAF, they went to a policy goal of “75-25” back in the 70’s, which they had never had before. Basically, they wanted more experienced Airmen and they wanted to improve retention past the first term. They understood that in order to do that, they would need to make family services, to include base housing and schooling, much more robust. I’m pretty sure the other services took steps to do this as well, except the USMC. As far as I know, their billet structure, even to this day, is set up so that most have to separate after their first term. Of course, most want to separate anyway, it’s hard to want to endure those hardships longer than one term, but true, some guys thrive on that lifestyle and want to keep going. Of course, I could be wrong on today’s USMC, maybe there is now a second term retention goal that is new?
However, I hear what you are saying. In addition to the ops tempo, there is probably some other factor going on as well. I’m not sure how you could ever know unless the military started collecting data on why military families break up. I suspect they don’t do this as that would take a lot of work to maintain that database.
The number one reason couples divorce is over money.
But that's always been around it just had different names over the years, but wives usually still stuck by their man, I remember on base the had support groups meeting at the Rec center for wives of solders with PTSD and this was on an AirForce base where very few GI's ever see combat(most enlisted Airforce in Vietnam were medical and support staff far away from the actual fighting)
Back in 1965, I was a kid spending part of a summer with my aunt and uncle at Ft Leonard Wood. My uncle had been one of the Chosin Few in the Korean War. Of course, that meant nothing to me at the moment. (My father and another uncle were also in combat in the Korean War.)
I remember one night we had watched a Korean War movie, and my uncle had been drinking a bit. In the middle of that night, I was awakened to him screaming. I rushed into their bedroom and found him straddling my aunt in the bed, strangling her, screaming, and apparently still asleep.
Many years later, I learned that he had also just gotten orders for Vietnam.
Many, many years later, only a few months before he died (after I'd been a decade retired from military service myself), he invited me to come with him to the VFW. After a couple of drinks at the bar, the old man began to open up about his experiences during that battle. This was really gritty stuff that he'd never confided before, like the bodies they had found of American soldiers who had been captured and doused with water to freeze them slowly to death. It appeared to be something he had to relate before he died.
The critical moment was being in hand-to-hand combat with a Chinese solder, having to strangle the man to death. He said could never forget how long it seemed to take for the man to die, and the image of the light finally fading from the man's eyes.
So PTSD. Yeah. Nobody was calling it that back in 1965...it was something my aunt dealt with quietly, as I'm sure many Army wives did.
But that's always been around it just had different names over the years, but wives usually still stuck by their man, I remember on base the had support groups meeting at the Rec center for wives of solders with PTSD and this was on an AirForce base where very few GI's ever see combat(most enlisted Airforce in Vietnam were medical and support staff far away from the actual fighting)
Up until the 90's people in the military actually divorced at a lower rate than the general population, then in the mid - late 90's it evened out but in the 2000's GI's actually have a higher divorce rate than the general population. What changed?
I remember when the bars outside of any military base would be packed with women on the days when the guys would finish basic training/boot camp especially in small military towns(towns that had more than one base or post). I used to work a civil service job that took me to a lot of bases.
You would think all the military benefits would take much of the stress out of a marriage, so what has changed?
We've been at war pretty much nonstop since the early 90's.
My cousin was in the Air Force and sent to the Middle East. He wasn't allowed to tell anyone where he was for 9 months. He could send us emails once in awhile. Basically yup I'm still alive and dinner was white rice and a ham sandwich on white bread with no condiments. That was literally one of his emails to me. When he came home, he was VERY different.
Now he's transitioned into the Air National Guard. It's military but it's not military. He's REALLY struggling with these changes in life. His wife who's also AF went behind his back and signed up for a job at the Air National Guard then told him we're moving. It's all about what she wants. He has not say in their moves. He's really struggling right now. I'm hoping this turns into a way for him to transition into civilian life and be somewhat ok. He's been in the Air Force since he was 17...went to boot camp just days before his birthday. So he's NEVER been an adult in civilian life. I know he has had PTSD over being shot at in the Middle East and things that happened there that he can't/won't talk about.
When my grandfather was in the Air Force back in the 40's, his entire family moved every 8 months. My grandmother packed everything and he loaded up the station wagon. They only owned what fit in the station wagon because they knew they would be moving in 8 months. My grandmother didn't work. She couldn't. Even if she was allowed to work then, she would have to find a new job every 8 months. Not much sense in that.
But that's always been around it just had different names over the years, but wives usually still stuck by their man, I remember on base the had support groups meeting at the Rec center for wives of solders with PTSD and this was on an AirForce base where very few GI's ever see combat(most enlisted Airforce in Vietnam were medical and support staff far away from the actual fighting)
I guess it depends on your definition of combat. Just because people aren’t going OTW doesn’t mean they are immune from rocket and mortar attacks, TBM attacks, suicide bombings and green on blue attacks.
I agree that Air Force people aren’t killed at the same rate as some of the other services, mainly the Army, but everyone on base is responding to potential fatal threats and some of those people have a hard time dealing with it all.
I guess it depends on your definition of combat. Just because people aren’t going OTW doesn’t mean they are immune from rocket and mortar attacks, TBM attacks, suicide bombings and green on blue attacks.
I agree that Air Force people aren’t killed at the same rate as some of the other services, mainly the Army, but everyone on base is responding to potential fatal threats and some of those people have a hard time dealing with it all.
This is true. Moreover, over the last 20 years, Air Force personnel have been in joint bases where they do their share of tasks like convoy truck driving (even if "truck driver" is not their specialty), which exposes them to the same dangers of attacks and explosive devices.
I guess it depends on your definition of combat. Just because people aren’t going OTW doesn’t mean they are immune from rocket and mortar attacks, TBM attacks, suicide bombings and green on blue attacks.
I agree that Air Force people aren’t killed at the same rate as some of the other services, mainly the Army, but everyone on base is responding to potential fatal threats and some of those people have a hard time dealing with it all.
Oh I never said otherwise, infact just like army, marines and navy, the Airforce has their own special forces, I was just saying that the vast majority of air force personnel Did not see DIRECT combat at that time and they still had support groups for the wives of the GI's that came back not right in the head.
Many of those guys were medical personnel who had to every day see people in horrific states of being blown up and chopped up but still alive and screaming, So I can imagine how that would get to a person after awhile. I'd be more suspicious of a person that was not effected by that, even emergency room doctors and nurses only see the truly horrific stuff sporadically from time to time not like your living in a John Carpenter film.
Oh I never said otherwise, infact just like army, marines and navy, the Airforce has their own special forces, I was just saying that the vast majority of air force personnel Did not see DIRECT combat at that time and they still had support groups for the wives of the GI's that came back not right in the head.
Many of those guys were medical personnel who had to every day see people in horrific states of being blown up and chopped up but still alive and screaming, So I can imagine how that would get to a person after awhile. I'd be more suspicious of a person that was not effected by that, even emergency room doctors and nurses only see the truly horrific stuff sporadically from time to time not like your living in a John Carpenter film.
PTSD symptoms are discernible in students who attended universities where there were shooting incidents when they weren't even on campus at the time.
I knew quite a few people from the Vietnam war who were technically "not in the battle area" working support roles who were still suffering valid PTSD symptoms.
Two of my sons are career Army. Between the two of them, they've had 5 wives. All the women were smart, well educated and beautiful. Probably the most prevalent reason for the breakups were they weren’t financially dependent and they didn’t want to put up with the challenges of being married to a soldier who was gone more than home.
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