I know some of you guys hate these, but I'm a sucker for them when done right. Till today. Here forward, any and all filmed family military reunions can eat a bag of dicks. For douche-chills effect only, this may be worth skimming thru....

The dopey woman cries like the dude has been deployed in Afghanistan for the past 2 years....so does he for that matter....he's still in bootcamp.
My fantasy is that there is a very irritated Drill Instructor off to the side chomping at the bit to make this dude "pay"....

I commend that young man for joining the Army but don't think I would of done that while I was in Basic Training.

I'm surprised that is allowed during Basic Training.

When they presented the check to the wife, my evil side thought; now's she's gonna write the
Dear John letter, and file the paperwork!

And yes, that was a bit much for a 2 month separation (IMO).

If they're acting like that at 2 months, that relationship isn't going to last "if" he deploys. I say "if" because he and/or she will do everything to ensure he doesn't deploy.

Longest I went without seeing my wife was 9 consecutive months. 12 month deployments, you get 2 weeks of R&R but no R&R for the 9 month deployments.

When my wife and I hear about couples having a difficult time after being apart for a few weeks, we laugh.

quote:

Originally posted by tgtshuter:
When they presented the check to the wife, my evil side thought; now's she's gonna write the
Dear John letter, and file the paperwork!

Something like that is enough to make a guy kill himself. Had a kid who did that when I went through basic at Benning in early 2009. Killed himself at the M16 range.

Yeah, all the wankers who get to leave deployment for the birth of their kids.

Pansies, the lot of them.

Then try it without email / snapchat / Facespace, with maybe a phone call every couple of weeks.

Jesus Wept.

Between October of 1985 and April of 1988, I saw my wife for a total of 33 days.

Family problems required her to return to Maine while I was in Charleston, got 30 days PCS leave and then spent 16 months in Iceland unaccompanied. Came back stateside for a CMS (Classified Material System) school in Rhode Island and managed a weekend at home before heading back to Iceland.

No internet, one phone call a month.

Amazing we didn't both commit suicide... [/sarcasm]

I can't bear that. That little kid has a bright future in soap opera.

There should be a warning at the beginning of that video for people with diabetes.

That video made me puke.

$25,000 and she stared singing:

Dear John, oh how I hate to write, dear John I must let you know tonight
That my love for you has died away like grass upon the lawn
(Skeeter Davis)

That's some insane shit. That would not have passed when I went through Boot Camp. Then again it was the USMC Boot not this co-ed Army BS.

During Desert Storm, while aboard the USS Ranger, we laughed at how stateside women cried because hubby had been gone a long and tumultuous four weeks and were not expected home for at least another four.

We were already two months at sea and at least another four months to go.

Don't these shows 1099 your ass immediately after generously giving you something? I think at 12 people would watch E.D.if she stopped giving away stuff.

When I went to Iraq for the invasion in 2003, we had one satellite phone in the battalion. Each Marine rated one satphone call home for the deployment. Time slots were given out to junior enlisted first, up the ranks to the officers. As far as I could tell, among the officers the final few slots were allocated according to whoever was closest to the headquarters and had easiest access to the phone. In any case, I got one of the shittiest time slots available, a weekday at about 11am back home. I made the call knowing my wife would be at work, left a message on the answering machine, then went back to my platoon and spoke to her next from aboard ship on the way home about four months later. I thought about the British guys who went to North Africa in 1940 and didn't come home again until 1945 and I didn't feel so bad.

Of course we did end up divorced a few years later.

Kids in the ranks today get anxious when they go to the field for a week without their phones and can't access their social media accounts.

I did a total of 11 years active duty, army, spent more than 9 years of that watching the E/W German border. Had been in Germany for about 2 years when I got married.

I was in commo and spent a LOT of time sitting on hilltops doing relay duty.

Did a year in Iran, alone, then back to Germany for another 4 years.

One time I figured out how much time I actually spent with my family, not counting the time in Iran. Of my 9 years in Germany I spent about 65% of my time away from my family.

My ex-fiance left me because of communication issues during her deployment to GITMO. (Yeah, I know...)

Screwed me up badly enough that I pretty much cut everyone out of my life entirely when I went on my own deployment to HOA. Made the deployment itself easier, but when I was hurt and sent to Ft. Belvoir...not so much. Three months without seeing a soul aside from my docs...and then once I was released, I got to stand there, hidden away while my company got a huge "welcome home" from friends, family, and the rest of the battalion.


So I get it. It's rough.

But you know what, you signed up for it. It's what the job entails. Sure I'm a bit bitter about my whole experience, but I still re-upped for at least another 5, and I hit my first 8 years next week.

I haven't gone on so much as a single date since that fiasco (going on 3.5 years now), but I can't really picture having a family anymore at this point either.