It's been said that an army may travel on its stomach, but it moves through a morass of paperwork. There's a form for everything, and nothing gets done until the proper form gets filled out. I wouldn't be surprised if some soldiers are happy to finally get on the plane to head into the combat zone, if only because it means that they've finally finished all their pre-deployment paperwork. (Little do they know what awaits them when they arrive.) The paperwork for deployment isn't limited to the soldier, either. Us spouses get to do some too. Yesterday, I had to update what is probably the most disturbing form I've ever encountered: the "spouse preference form." This innocuously named sheet of paper is the form that you get to fill out to make it easier, should it become necessary, for the Army to inform you of your loved one's injury or death.
The form is painfully thorough, but that's to be expected. The army has had plenty of experience in notifying families, and over the last few conflicts they've managed to work most of the bugs out of the process. They know what information they are going to need, and they do their best to make sure that they have it.
The form requests several important pieces of information. For example, they make sure that they know what (if any) religious preferences you have, and whether there is a particular member of the clergy that you'd like to have accompany the Army's representative who delivers the news. (If you don't specify one, the duty chaplain has the dubious privledge of helping to deliver the news.) They need to know other things, too. It's important that they know what school your children attend, and who other than yourself has permission to pick them up. They also need to know where you work, and what hours.
There's one part of the form where they ask you to list the names of two or three friends that you'd like to have with you. If you ever need to fill this form out, I'd guess that part might give you a bit of trouble, because you're going to be asking a lot of those people if worst comes to worst. They will be contacted by someone from the unit at about the same time (or just before) you are being notified. They'll be told about the situation, and brought to your house if necessary. The goal is to get them there quickly, because the people who deliver the news try not to stick around for too long, and the military tries to make sure that you won't be alone for the first day or two. I can't think of anyone who I am friends with that I'd want to inflict that on.
Finally, there's the other side of the form. There, there on the other side of the form, away from everything else on the form, there is nothing but blank white space. It's there that you are instructed to draw a strip map showing how to reach your house from the base. Because, after all, the whole notification process would get thrown way off if the unfortunate dude with the duty gets lost on the way to deliver the bad news.
I'm telling you all of this for a reason. It's not a criticism of the form, or of the Army for having such a form. I'd expect that having all of that information clearly detailed ahead of time makes the whole process go smoothly, and that's a good thing - it's going to be hard enough for everyone involved without any added complications. The reason that I'm telling you this is to try to show you just a small part of the way that deployments to a combat zone affect not just the deploying troops, but those left behind.
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