I gotta agree with the having a plan. You enlist knowing what your decision leads to. Civilians have to factor in their careers when planning a family.
Found this about duel parent deployments
Robert and Katrina Elbert each had passed the 10-year mark as soldiers when they tied the knot.
“Neither one of us thought about getting out because of the time we already had invested,” Robert Elbert said.
Deployments never posed a particular problem because they usually traveled at different times — until they landed together in 11th Aviation. Now that they work in the same company, they often go away together.
They keep a constantly updated family-care plan, which the Army requires for soldiers with families. “We’ve always had someone who could take care of [our son],” Katrina Elbert said.
Maj. Scott Bemis, the regiment’s personnel officer, said a unit cannot afford to leave one parent behind when it deploys because often the soldier is critical to the mission. He said it is a commander’s responsibility to make sure family-care plans are in order so a soldier’s children can be cared for even on short notice.
“A soldier who doesn’t have a family-care plan can be chaptered out of the Army,” Bemis said. “But that doesn’t help the unit much, because it still loses the soldier’s services.”
For the Elberts, leaving their son for an uncertain deployment certainly hurt. When Katrina Elbert’s parents, Walter and Dorothy Jones, flew to Germany on short notice to pick up the younger Robert, it was inconvenient and expensive, but they were grateful.
“They thanked us for giving them the opportunity to take care of our son,” Katrina Elbert said. “We said, ‘No, thank you!’”
But the Elberts know they owed something to the Army, too.
“It’s true, we miss our son. But we have a job to do,” Katrina Elbert said.
“In the civilian sector you may have a job, and you have to go on a business trip. Well, this is our business trip.”
Of course, most civilian business trips don’t last six months, and they don’t involve armed hostilities. Even though the Elberts know this conflict could put them in harm’s way, their religious faith makes them believe their son will not be left an orphan.
“We’re not afraid,” Katrina Elbert said. “We know the Lord is going to bring us home safely.”
They have decided they won’t work in the same unit again. The difficulty of preparing together for deployments, and then leaving their son behind, is something they don’t want to repeat.
