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The Family Readiness Program
62 Plays1 year ago
Host: Jason M. Kelly
Guests: Leah Nahmias and Elliott Nowacky
Audio Engineers: Jason M. Kelly and Kelly Kerr
In this bonus episode, Jason talks with Elliott Nowacky and Leah Nahmias about Elliott's experience in the Family Readiness Program, which is a system that supports military families during deployment.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, I'm Jason Kelly, and this is the Justice and War in American History podcast, which I co-host with my colleague Ray Habersky.
Focus on Family Readiness Program
00:00:11
Speaker
Today we have a special bonus episode. It's on the Family Readiness Program, which is a military program that creates a system to support military families during deployment.
00:00:23
Speaker
My colleague, Elliot Nowacki, worked in this program. And a few weeks ago, when he and Leonomius and I sat down to discuss women and gender in the experience of war, we had this extended conversation about the family readiness program. And we decided it was worthy of its own episode. And so that's what you're listening to today. I hope you enjoy.
Elliot's Personal Family Story
00:00:51
Speaker
This caretaking piece is really important. And Elliot, I want to throw this to you. We're going to jump out of time for a moment, because one of the things that's so obvious in this document, and Elliot, I think you've already mentioned this, is that one of the things that the women in this article and the organizations in this article are talking about is taking care of the folks left behind. And this is something for the organizations to do for these
00:01:17
Speaker
nonprofits, as it were, to jump in and fulfill a role that either has been ignored by the government or can't be taken care of by the government. But Elliot, this has changed over the course of the 20th century. And so this is this is an area where you're an expert. And I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about how this caretaking and relations between military government and families has changed maybe even over the last 50 years.
00:01:46
Speaker
Okay, thanks for the question. So I'm going to start out with a personal anecdote. My father was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1952, and he got drafted in Pennsylvania and was sent to engineering school in Virginia and then was sent to France to Verdun for two years.
00:02:07
Speaker
My mother was pregnant when my dad left. They were in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. To the best of my knowledge, my mother never received any communications from
History of Family Readiness Groups
00:02:17
Speaker
the military, from the unit. My dad was assigned to, of course, because they were in France.
00:02:22
Speaker
And there was no such thing as the Family Readiness Group, which I'm going to come to here in a moment. So I learned of this when I interviewed my father before he passed away in a series of interviews to get the family history. And this is one of the things that will always remain in my mind. He was allowed two phone calls per year for 10 minutes from the base where he was at there in Redon. And so he was able to speak to my mother at least two or three times before he returned.
00:02:51
Speaker
The other thing I remember is that when he out processed in Pennsylvania, the sergeant handed him $5 and said good luck. Speed forward to Desert Shield Desert Storm. This is really when what's now called the Family Readiness Group, at least in the Army, I cannot speak for the other services, but in the Army it became very apparent.
00:03:15
Speaker
especially in Germany, because we never thought in Germany we'd be deploying our military equipment and personnel to another place in the world, which was the Middle East. It was always the Cold War, and we're going to fight the Soviets along the Czechoslovakia and East German border, and the Cold War. So this is the late 80s, early 90s.
00:03:36
Speaker
This woke up a lot of people because they realized how unprepared they were, especially because the units were being deployed to a different geographical location.
Elliot's Role and Training in Family Readiness
00:03:45
Speaker
And as my understanding, in the next few years, after Desert Shield, Desert Storm, the Army and the other services began developing policies for what is now called in the Army, again, the Family Readiness Group. There's actually a manual for this that you have. It's an Army manual.
00:04:02
Speaker
But that didn't come till later. So what's the so what of this for me? So I was a company commander. My first training in family readiness group operations was in 1996 when I was a company commander, battery commander at First Cavalry Division Artillery at Fort Hood, Texas. So I attended a commander's course for a week and part of the instruction was you're in charge of your family readiness group. So this means that there has to be
00:04:30
Speaker
a phone roster of the spouses, their telephone numbers. This is pre-iPhone, pre-internet, really. No emails, no websites. And you need to have meetings every once in a while to talk to everyone to see how things are going. So I did that. My next experience was very brief. I wasn't actually involved in it too much. But in February of 2003, I was, speed forward, I'm now a major and I'm serving in an artillery battalion in Babenhausen, Germany.
00:05:00
Speaker
The brigade and the battalion headquarters were both on the same base. The brigade commander and his sergeant major call a meeting. And at that meeting, it's at the theater in Babenhausen, Germany, and it's open for all the spouses and soldiers. And at that meeting, he puts up on the slide, we're deploying, and we can expect to be gone for a year. I remember when the slide went up, we anticipate being gone for a year and hearing the gasps and the cries in the audience, sitting in the back, towards the back.
00:05:29
Speaker
So I won't spend a lot of time on that. I was in Iraq 20 years ago. I was not involved in these kinds of family readiness things too much. But where I really became involved in this was in 2005 when my commander at 5th Corps Artillery, I'm now in Heidelberg, Germany, picked me to be the rear detachment commander for 185
00:05:52
Speaker
person unit that was going to deploy to Iraq in late December 2005. So in the summer of 2005, I attended one week, a full course on nothing but family readiness group operations. It was required for all of the rear detachment commanders to attend this
Challenges in Supporting Military Families Abroad
00:06:10
Speaker
course. So ranks could be captain, could be major. In a few cases, there were lieutenant colonels. So all the units that were deploying in 2006 from Germany, they had to have rear detachments.
00:06:22
Speaker
The USERA commander, so USERA for our non-military listeners is US Army Europe. At that time was a general, a three star general by the name of BB Bell, very dynamic and high energy person. I don't think I ever met him in person, but I heard him speak and on the radio, the Armed Forces Radio Network there in Europe, very high energy. He basically said, you will attend this training to all the rear detachment commander designees.
00:06:49
Speaker
you have the most difficult job in the US Army. And I'm going to come to some examples about that in a moment.
00:06:55
Speaker
So from December 2005 to February of 07, I was the rear detachment commander for 5th Corps Artillery just outside of Heidelberg, Germany in a smaller city called Schretzigan. Again, 195 personnel deployed to Iraq. Approximately half of them were married. Many of those who were married, of course, with children. Some of our soldiers were single mothers and fathers as well. That's a whole other can of worms of who takes care of the child or the teenager when they're gone, and I'm not going to talk about that today.
00:07:25
Speaker
So it was me, if my memory serves me correctly. My first sergeant was an E-7. Obviously not going to mention any names here. I have fond memories of our collaboration together. And then 10 to 12 enlisted personnel. So I'm the senior person, and my E-7, the first sergeant, is the senior noncommission officer.
00:07:47
Speaker
Our job, two things, take care of all the issues that come up with the spouses, whatever they may be, and help them as best we can. And then we did have most of our vehicles were left behind, but we had a contract with German contractors to maintain those vehicles. Because obviously, these 10 to 12 enlisted soldiers and myself were not gonna be keeping vehicles maintained in the motor pool. So there was a German contract for that.
00:08:14
Speaker
The interpersonal dynamics, here is what I would like to spend my remaining time on. I thought about this for a while, some general comments. So the thing you need to keep in mind from my perspective is that I was trained as a field artillery officer and then as a Russian Foreign Airy Officer.
00:08:33
Speaker
I received no training in psychology other than these required trainings as a company commander, which was just a few hours and then later a week. And all of a sudden, I am now responding to spouses with problems. Here are some general observations.
00:08:52
Speaker
Some of the spouses were more independent than others. Some of them I actually didn't see the entire time their husbands or wives were gone. Hats off to them because they're not required. They were not required to interact with me.
00:09:09
Speaker
It was a handful, but I was really proud of those folks. I never said anything to them, but they were independent operators. Remember, we're abroad. We're in a country where a lot of people speak English, but once you go off the bases and you go into the stores, it's all in German. One of the reasons I was selected to stay back is because I speak German and spent many years there.
00:09:33
Speaker
a skill that assisted
Controversial Policies and Family Support Programs
00:09:35
Speaker
me greatly in this job. And I won't go into some stories about that, but it did. The other trend that I remember, or issues that came up, we had spouses with teenage boys. And I had to get involved a couple of times with issues with the teenage boy rebelling. Now, I want you to think about that. I am not connected to this family, and I'm being asked
00:10:03
Speaker
to perhaps talk to the young man or the young men, spend a little time with them, didn't spend a lot, and interact with the spouse who is having some serious issues with the husband not being there. This was very difficult and this didn't come up in any of the training manuals that we went over, of course, right?
00:10:23
Speaker
The other thing, and I really need to mention this, because this really got under my skin. Initially, we were told, my first sergeant and I, and you all are going to, without the military background, we're going to be like, you have to be kidding me. But this is really what the policy was.
00:10:39
Speaker
The policy established by the USERA commander was within a year, I may be getting the facts wrong here, but you had to go and inspect the quarters of all of the people who stayed behind.
00:10:54
Speaker
So I want you to think about that. You're asking someone, an officer, me, the rear detachment commander and my first sergeant, or potentially the leader of the family readiness group who was a non-commissioned officer's wife, because I would never go to somebody's quarters by myself, right? That's obvious. To go to, you know, 90 different quarters and walk around inside someone's house.
00:11:19
Speaker
I did a few of those and I stopped. And I stopped because it was extremely unreasonable and it made a lot of the spouses very uncomfortable. In fact, I'll never forget one spouse came up to me after the very first meeting after the unit had deployed to Iraq and she got really almost in my face and said, Major Nwaki, if you think you're coming to my home, you got another thing coming. They were aware of this policy.
00:11:46
Speaker
So we did a few, mostly at the officer level. I may have done one non-commissioned officer's residence. My first sergeant or the spouse who led the family readiness group was always with me. I never went anywhere, obviously for obvious reasons, by myself. Or if I met with the spouse, I had to meet with the spouse one-on-one. It would be in a public place, obviously, right?
00:12:08
Speaker
So that was one of the things that I did not like. I didn't agree with the policy and I don't believe that my colleagues who were also rear detachment commanders in other parts of Germany actually executed this and went and visited all the residents. I just think it was too difficult.
00:12:25
Speaker
To the Army's credit, we were given the opportunity with the chaplain. Interestingly, the chaplains didn't come up, I don't think, in any of these discussions. I don't remember Lieutenant Colonel Narg mentioning chaplains, but we were given funding through the Fifth Corps chaplain to have two retreats for the spouses.
00:12:46
Speaker
One of them was near Stuttgart. I'm remiss, I do not remember the name of the town. It was a beautiful place. The other one was towards Ramstein Air Base, but again, I can't remember the name, unfortunately. These were amazing events. They were usually four days, so for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
00:13:06
Speaker
Folks arrive on Thursday night. The chaplain had a complete program. I attended, but I was not a presenter. And he had just people come in and talk. And it was really, I was just amazed that they made these events available for the spouses. And the other units had the opportunity to do these too. So that was pretty cool.
00:13:28
Speaker
The other thing, just to finish up, I did have to make a couple of hospital visits to spouses who had given birth to children, which was an interesting experience. One of those was in a German hospital in Heidelberg, and I was the unit commander, and so I believe, if I remember, I took a small gift or some flowers to the spouses.
Technology in Family Communication
00:13:54
Speaker
And then finally, one of the more interesting things and when we look back now with the technology, it seems a little
00:14:01
Speaker
little odd, but we had a video teleconferencing screen in our headquarters. And early on, we realized that we could use that to connect with the conference room at Alfa Palace in Baghdad or Iraq. And then we developed, of course, you can see where this is going. I can't remember if they were monthly or bimonthly opportunities for the spouses to sign up.
00:14:27
Speaker
for a time of 15 to 30 minutes with their spouse on the screen, of course, with the door closed. It was just the spouse and the soldier on the other end speaking. I have horrible memories. Sometimes these would start and then we would lose the connection and we would have spouses come in and they were extremely agitated.
00:14:48
Speaker
with me and with the folks, my first sergeant and the communications folks and this is completely out of our control of course. I lost a lot of sleep over these kinds of things not working and I always had a lot of angst before we did these because I was never sure if the connection was going to be good or not and it was just yeah very stressful.
00:15:09
Speaker
But now, of course, this is not an issue with Skype and Zoom. And soldiers who are deployed should not be having any trouble communicating with their spouses in a private setting.
Geographic Challenges for Military Units
00:15:21
Speaker
So I know that's a really long answer to your question, but I felt I needed to dive down. I could write a book about that year. I kept pretty good notes in my planner that I used at a time, a paper planner. And maybe I'll do that someday. But thank you for allowing me to share this with you. Thanks so much, Elliot.
00:15:39
Speaker
I mean, it's really good to hear the specific ways in which the military is thinking about this. And kind of my awareness of how much conversation happened in the Afghan and Iraq wars around the need to
00:15:55
Speaker
like for society to kind of wrap around the entire family of deployed troops. And I think a lot about how, so it's great to see the military doing that. That was also kind of a call to all citizens, right? And I feel like the Obama administration had that kind of, I don't know, stronger together, right? It was about like how do we kind of welcome veterans home.
00:16:17
Speaker
And I think it's interesting too, right, like the awareness that the transition home will be healthier and easier hopefully for everyone if we're kind of being thoughtful and mindful of the family during the deployment.
00:16:35
Speaker
and thinking about those needs. Now to take it way back, something out, not in the readings, but I was John Bodner's student at IU, and I remember in his Love and War in American Film class, the kind of messaging that's happening in war films is often to women on the home front about what are the proper ways to be a supportive spouse while troops are deployed and when they come home,
00:17:02
Speaker
And, you know, how much anxiety exists in a family around a long deployment, right? Not only fear for safety, but just fear for like the marital bond, right? The parental bond. And so how much work has been done kind of both in this really compassionate way other than the home inspections. I don't know if I would like that either, Elliot.
00:17:25
Speaker
But also, you know, the messaging, the propaganda side of things in different wars to try to address that anxiety and tell women how to work through that in a very non-questioning, patient way. So anyway, those are other kind of gendered experiences.
00:17:47
Speaker
And I would like to just throw out some other things for our audience to consider. A lot of this, the family readiness group, depends on what kind of unit you are. And by this, I mean, is it an active duty Army unit? Is it a reserve unit? Or is it a National Guard unit? Because the reserve and the National Guard units have a much more difficult mission here, because the people who comprise those units are spread all over a state, and in some cases, a good part of the United States at various states.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so I can't really speak to how they deal, you know, how they've dealt with it over the, you know, since 9-11 essentially, or even during Desert Storm, Desert Shield, but that's a much more difficult problem because you've got people geographically dispersed where if your unit oversees the spouses that are usually there right there in the military community, and then of course here in the United States, they're usually, they live on or near the base.
Improving Soldier Reintegration
00:18:46
Speaker
And I would also say, from my discussions with my fellow veterans over the years, being overseas stationed and having your children over there is much different than being here in the United States. Well, because of the language and you're in your own country.
00:19:02
Speaker
So the difficulties in getting things, getting around, taking trips, and all this is much easier to weave in something that Leah said that I also think is important to mention. So in 2006, 2007, when the unit that I was overseeing the rear detachment commander was in Iraq, each soldier there was given two full weeks of R&R leave. So they did have the opportunity to come back.
00:19:32
Speaker
Unfortunately, because of the number of people, some of them had to start coming back just three months into their deployment, which meant then eight months away. And they started the roster almost immediately after they got there figuring out who's going to go and who's, you know,
00:19:48
Speaker
factor in high school graduations, prom, kindergarten, these kinds of things where the unit commander down there, the core artillery commander and his staff did a great job making sure that the soldiers' wishes could be
00:20:06
Speaker
Accommodated to the best of their ability and I'm sure there were some who just didn't get that opportunity But they did their they did their best and finally I'll say you you made a good point lay at the beginning of your comment just a minute ago about reintegration so The army and again, I can't speak for the other services, but they figured out very quickly in 2003 and 4
00:20:29
Speaker
that just allowing a unit to come back, to meet in the gym, to be reunited with their spouses, and then everyone goes on leave is not a good way to do business. So by 2007, or late 2006, 2007, when the unit I was managing came, or overseeing the rear detachment came back, along with other units from Heidelberg, the soldiers had to go through what was called reintegration process.
00:20:55
Speaker
And if I remember correctly, it was at least a week. They were given medical review, got to meet with the psychiatrist, looking for PTSD. I don't know how effective that may have been if you've only get 15 or 20 minutes with the psychiatrist from the Heidelberg Hospital.
00:21:12
Speaker
but they made an effort. There was effort, you know, they get their POVs back, they get their rights to drive again. Unfortunately, many soldiers from across Europe and probably from across all of the services lost their lives when they would come back and not have this kind of decompression training. And they would go back, especially come back to the states and they'd have a lot of money because they are not taxed.
00:21:39
Speaker
and not spending a lot of money when you're in Iraq or Afghanistan. They would buy motorcycles and there were many, many fatalities because they want their freedom and they would get on these motorcycles and not getting the proper training. There were several deaths, I know, in Germany due to safety and operating motorcycles without proper decompression and training.
00:22:01
Speaker
So I have to assume the Army and the other services have continued this. So people who are coming back today from Iraq, we still have soldiers in Iraq and nothing in Afghanistan anymore. But even if you're on a regular deployment, not in a combat zone, you still, it's my understanding, have to go through this reintegration training before you release to go on leave.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:22:26
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this special episode of Justice and War in American History. We hope you enjoyed it. I hope that you're also subscribed to the podcast through your favorite podcast provider. If you're not already, please go online, follow us, subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, feel free to give us a rating that helps us reach more people.
00:22:48
Speaker
Finally, if you're interested in the program itself, because there is a larger program beyond the podcast, feel free to go to our website. It's at justiceandwarseminar.org. That's justiceandwarseminar, all one word, dot org. Again, thanks for listening and thanks to our sponsors, the National Endowment for the Humanities for making this program possible.