After T deployed, care packaging got a little more serious. The things I was sending before were, in all honesty, more for my enjoyment than his. It was stuff that he could’ve easily went to Walmart and just got himself. That’s not really the case anymore seeing that hes on a sub these days.
Continue reading Deployment Diaries: What to Send in a Care Package
Every deployment and situation is different. You may go through a deployment and have decent communication the whole way through or there could be periods of time where you haven’t received any kind of communication for weeks or maybe months.
It would be an understatement to say that going with no emails or phone calls is hard. It’s hell. I had no idea if he was okay, I missed his voice, I missed telling him about my day and his advice, I missed hearing about his day and I hated that I couldn’t comfort him or celebrate his successes.
It’s a test of your patience and of your relationship but there are ways to make it through.
Continue reading Deployment Diaries: How to Go Weeks Without Speaking to Your SO
*For the safety of my sailor and his boat, there are no dates, locations or names posted. The article has been written and posted after his underway was long done and over. OPSEC for the win.
I have been very fortunate in the fact that, for the first two years of this adventure, I have been able to speak to my sailor on the daily minus bootcamp of course. I actually forgot what it was like to not speak to him for more than 24 hours. After he graduated from all of his schooling, he came home for a month of leave, left for his first duty station and shortly after came the first underway. For those of you that don’t know, underways are like mini deployments that only last maybe a month or two at most.
This was like bootcamp all over again. And it sucked. He said his goodbyes over text to me and that was it. So began the first underway.
Written by Randy, a sailor himself, married to another sailor and is now the father of two sailors:
“I was a nuke ET and an instructor in BS (90-99), now father to a nuke EM in the sub fleet. You’re blog about the significance of a SO that is your best friend and a partner that compliments your skill set making you a great team is essential. More importantly I’ve found that truly the most important thing is ‘open and honest communication’ at all times, especially where stressful jobs and distance come into place.
I moved insanely fast (as many nukes do) when I met my wife. It was Feb. 93. Within a couple weeks we were exclusive, within a month or so, we found an apartment together, engaged a month after that and married in July 93. I left San Diego in Sept. of 93 on my first 6 month run, like no other, because I was never coming back, changing home ports to Newport News, VA at the end to decommission.
hisfirstmate.wordpress.com 