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While they enjoy many advantages, military kids negotiate multiple schools, relocations and repeated deployments growing up. In this photo by Joshua Armstrong, U.S. Air Force Emily Adams embraces a family member following graduation from Preparatory School for the United States Air Force Academy.
Colorado Springs, CO. (July 13, 2022). Military kids grow up fast, are resilient and adaptable, and enjoy many advantages. They are well-travelled, receive a good education and enjoy free health care, safe housing, and parents with steady incomes. They are, nevertheless, children and subject to the same emotional roller coaster as other kids.
While civilian youth navigate first dates, bullies and school gossips, military kids must also contend with frequent relocations and long periods of separation from a parent during multiple deployments. The impact of repeated, back-to-back deployments has been called the “Military Families Syndrome”, a term coined during the Viet Nam War to characterize the behavioral and psychological problems of children of deployed parents.
According to Dr. Michael Faran, a psychiatrist, retired colonel and chief of the Child, Adolescent and Family Behavioral Health Office at Army Medical Command, "Kids often experience more anxiety and some studies suggest about 30 percent of children will have difficulties as a result of deployment. Dr. Faran cited increased rates of depression and anxiety, a decrease in academic performance, and sometimes the use of use of drugs and alcohol as evidence of this phenomenon.
Experts say military kids often suffer from separation anxiety, depression, excessive worry, sleep problems, and other physical complaints both during deployments and after parents return home.
This is especially true for children whose parents come home from war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, or who suffered a traumatic brain injury. For these children, multiple deployments mean family upheaval, personal chaos, and parents whose personalities change when they return home.
Read more: “MILITARY FAMILY SYNDROME”; MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS’ ADVERSE EFFECT ON KIDS
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In the photo by Navy Electronics Technician (Nuclear) 2nd Class Leland T. Hasty II, Senior Chief Sonar Technician (Submarine) Donald Mattes reunites with his family after seven months at sea, returning to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam from deployment with the 7th Fleet. Senior Chief Mattes hails from Crown Point, Indiana and is assigned to the Virginia-class fast attack submarine the U.S.S. North Carolina.
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI. (July 12, 2022) So, who are these Americans military families and what is their world like?
First, and this cannot be emphasized enough, less than one percent of Americans serve on active duty in our armed forces.
Currently, there are 1.6 million American active-duty military families serving at upwards of 750 military installations around the world. Half are married with just over 36 percent having young children (under 5 years of age) according to the 2020 Demographic Report by Military Source One. Military spouses remain overwhelmingly female (90 percent) and are young (68 percent under 30 years of age) are most are just starting their families.
Service families have higher divorce rates than their civilian counterparts, mostly due to the frequent deployments, long separations, and constant worry unique to military life.
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In this U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Isaac Cantrell, a “military brat” is fitted with a helmet during a tactical demonstration/community relations event at Kapolei, Hawaii. Service kids like these endure the instability and emotional separations common to military life.
Kapolei, Hawaii. (July 15, 2022). I was born at the U.S. Army’s 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany with a big green US stamped on my first diaper. The son of an Army officer, I would grow up a “military brat” until joining the Army myself at age 17, as is often expected of military youth. Army families were big in those days (ours had seven kids), and we learned early that we were “different” from our civilians hosts at whatever duty station we ended up.
Ours was an existence of radical change, constant uncertainty, and the instability of packing up our lives every three years. We marveled at folks who grew up where they were born and would live out their lives in one place. Military kids had to adapt to strange environments, quickly make new friends while settling into a new school every couple of years. This meant short courtships, fast friends and quickly passing enemies in the formative years that shaped our view of the world.
As kids, we had a saying “The first year you get to know someone, the second year you get to liking them, and the third year you say goodbye.” If you ask a civilian; “Where are you from”, they usually have a very specific answer. I went to three elementary, two middle and two high schools from Hawaii to Florida, never feeling “at home” anywhere. To us, home was where we laid our proverbial hats.
We grew accustomed to routine relocations, but we never got used to our father’s deployments during the Viet Nam War. Dad did two tours, each lasting nearly two years, during which we were glued to our television every night following nightly casualty reports as civilians do the weather.
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In this photo by Construction Electrician Dylan Slater, Steelworker 3rd Class Samuel Wojtowicz and Steelworker Construction Man Elam Winston take measurements of the exterior of An Tho Ninh Dong Primary School in Vietnam during a renovation project in support of Pacific Partnership 2022. Navy combat engineers used their skills to improve local conditions while honing their preparedness for the next disaster.
PHU YEN, Vietnam (June 21, 2022). It was the day after Christmas, 2004, and the beaches of resort towns across the Indian Ocean were jammed with tourists escaping the cold.
At 8 a.m., a magnitude 9 earthquake ripped a hole in the bottom of the sea sending massive waves toward these unsuspecting shores. The resulting disaster, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, was the deadliest in history claiming an astonishing 230,000 lives.
Read more: FROM DEADLIEST TSUNAMI IN HISTORY A HUMANITARIAN PARTNERSHIP FORMED
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In this U.S. Army photo, Specialist Dennis Egloria, a combat engineer from the 18th Engineering Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment drives a robot through a simulated street searching for explosives at the National Training Center, California.
National Training Center, CA. (June 28, 2022). We have become all too familiar with the term Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and the terrible carnage they have wrought on our troops. According to the humanitarian group Action On Armed Violence, there were an estimated 172,000 casualties worldwide from IEDs in the past decade (IEDs Past, Present & Future, Overton 2020). Beginning with the first roadside bomb attack in Iraq in 2003, these devices have killed or wounded over 21,000 American servicemembers.
Facing this threat is America’s combat engineers.
The first recorded use of IEDs begins with the invention of gunpowder by the Chinese in the 9th century. Looking for a life extending elixir, the Chinese instead discovered an explosive substance they could pack into tubes to hang outside the walls of their forts. When an enemy reached their gates, someone would light the fuse and, bang, no more enemy.
During the Civil War, IEDs were employed by Confederate soldiers at the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862. Realizing the Union Army was about to overrun their position, the rebels cleverly buried munitions under the Union front causing numerous casualties and also allowed the Confederates to escape.
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In this U.S. Army photo, Specialist Richard Rodriquez of the 475th Engineering Company from Ponce, Puerto Rico, conducts construction operations while guarded by Sergeant Norbert Prats during a combat support exercise at Fort Hunter Liggett, California. The 475th has a proud history of fighting America’s battles from Normandy, France on D-Day to battles in northern France and the Ardennes-Alsace region. In 2007, the unit moved to Puerto Rico where these engineers stand ready to serve when their country needs them.
Fort Hunter Liggett, CA. (July 1, 2022). In this real-life scenario, an infantry unit manages to liberate an airfield from enemy hands but predictably most of the roads and facilities have been reduced to rubble. That’s when commanders call in the combat engineers.
Combat engineering battalions not only deal with explosives, but they are also highly skilled construction teams able to rapidly build airfields, construct housing and repair ports and bridges. One platoon, for example, is dedicated to the building trades, including carpentry, plumbing and electricity while another handles heavy equipment jobs using steam rollers, back-hoes, road graders and large cranes.
Engineers can quickly repair roads, clear obstacles, and create infrastructure in a matter of days, tasks that would take a civilian crew weeks to accomplish.