Families
They also serve who only stand and wait.
John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent, 1673
The ones who waited
A posting is served by a whole household. The person who deploys carries the rank and the kit, but they are not the only one doing the waiting, the moving, the packing up of a house again, or the explaining to a seven year old why a parent is not at the table.
This page is for partners, parents, children, brothers and sisters — anyone whose life was arranged around somebody else’s service. You do not need to have served to write here. You need to have been there for it.
These are not second-hand stories. A deployment looks different from the kitchen than it does from the vehicle, and the view from the kitchen has been written down far less often. That is the gap this page is for.
Reading is open to anyone. Posting needs an account, because this place is looked after rather than left open — and that is as true for families as for anyone else here.
Nothing here yet. If you have been the one waiting, yours would be the first — and the one that tells everybody else this page is for them.
If any of this has been hard to read, the support page lists people who will talk to you at any hour. Those lines are for families too, not only for the person who served.