Email received from Elle Cievie…(used with permission)
One of the biggest lessons I learned during my husband’s deployment was to avoid the rumor mill at all costs. My husband’s unit left in March 2003. By May, the rumors were already surfacing and making the rounds through FRG phone rosters that the guys would be home by June. June came and the rumor was August… then October… then Christmas.
There were a few wives in the troop who were so distraught over the changing news that they were having trouble functioning on a daily basis. During all of this, I was one of three people in our FRG who was calling everyone twice a week to pass along the “OFFICIAL” word as to what was going on with the soldiers in Iraq. Sometimes I would be on the phone with some wives 2 & 3 times a day because they had heard yet another rumor and didn’t know what to believe.
A lot of heartache could have been avoided if everyone was warned in advance about rumors. I think a good tip would be “Don’t believe it until you see it.” Once my husband called me and told me what was happening, I would take that as something real… and most of the what my husband told me was completely different than the rumors I’d heard the day before from another wife.