Claudia Joy’s Experience with Deployment

Yes, I realize it is only a television show but I was so happy to see that they showed Claudia Joy having a hard time with General Holden’s deployment as well.

For whatever reason, I think many people assume the spouses of higher ranking enlisted and officers have an easier time with deployment. I’m not even sure what the logic is behind it as it certainly doesn’t make any sense.

Their husband is leaving the same as everyone else in the unit. But I think we expect them to handle it better.

Maybe because we assume they’ve been through it so many times before so they should be used to it (that never happens – or at least it didn’t for me).

Or maybe because we assume the higher ranking you are, the less likely you are to be exposed to dangerous situations. This, again, is insane since they’re still in a war zone.

On my husband’s first deployment, I was totally unprepared about what to expect and hadn’t had a chance to meet anyone prior to him leaving. He arrived when his unit had just left for deployment so I missed any pre-deployment briefings, etc.

Add to that the fact he was special ops where you’re basically not allowed to talk about anything and I was completely in the dark.

During this particular deployment, we routinely received phone calls every Friday about injuries. It got to the point where we all said we were going to quit answering the phone on Fridays because it was always bad news.

Luckily, it was “only” injuries and we didn’t lose anyone on that deployment. Not that any injury is considered lucky, but I think we will all take injuries versus the alternative.

On one of the Friday phone calls, we learned that it was an officer who had been injured.

The chaplain called a meeting for the wives of my husband’s company because we had been getting so many of these phone calls. At the meeting, I saw many going up to an obviously shaken wife to comfort her as she was upset over her husband’s injuries.

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took until that moment for it hit me we are all the same. Regardless of the rank of our soldier, or how long he’s been in, or what number deployment this is, we all have the same fears and worries.

We all love our husbands in the same way and we hold them as tight as possible before they board that plane. We all worry for their safety and countdown until they return home.

Knowing what I do now, I can’t believe I ever thought there would be a difference between how wives of different ranks of soldiers deal with deployments.

I stupidly assumed that the Colonel’s wife (or insert rank) would have it easier just because her husband was a Colonel. That was a naive assumption on my part.

I’m happy that the show handled it like it did and showed not only Roxy having a hard time dealing with the impending deployment but also Claudia Joy. Regardless of the job and rank our soldiers hold, deployments take their toll on all of us.

And it’s not as if once you’ve been through X number, they suddenly become easier. Even if you figure out how to deal with it better, I would never qualify a deployment as easy.

I was basically a brand new Army wife at that point as my husband left within just a few weeks of arriving at his unit.

While I’m certainly not happy the injuries occurred, I am glad that I was able to gain that perspective early in my experience as an Army wife. Rank really doesn’t matter in the world of the spouse, no matter what the context may be.