Soldiers Question the Defense Secretary About Long Deployments

Soldiers Question the Defense Secretary About Long Deployments
Washington Post
By Walter Pincus
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Outside the military, not much attention is paid to the personal problems of families caught up in the endless rotational deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan that mark serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.


Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates dealt with a handful of those problems in a town hall meeting at Fort Drum, N.Y., in front of Army units that either were coming from Southwest Asia or preparing to go there.

Many of the questions focused on disparities among units when it comes to "dwell time" -- time spent at home between deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. With 130,000 troops remaining in Iraq through the end of the year and 68,000 more scheduled to be in Afghanistan during the same period, pressures on military family life have grown.

An Army sergeant opened by pointing out that one brigade has alternated between one year at home and one year deployed over the past five years, whereas another brigade in the same division has been spending two-year stretches at home. He asked whether anything could be done to even out the dwell time.
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Soldiers Question the Defense Secretary About Long Deployments