As I was preparing to leave on deployment, it crossed my mind that this time around was very different from my previous deployments while on active duty with the Navy. Sure, this time around I’d be in-country and not on a ship, but that wasn’t the biggest difference.
For the 10 years that I served on active duty, my life revolved around active duty. I knew that I’d move every 2-3 years and didn’t settle down or dig many roots in to the local communities where I lived. As a reserve officer, the Navy is not the first and foremost driving factor in my life now and over the past 7 years I’ve settled into a community, become involved in various organizations and activities and hold a fulltime career outside of the Navy. Preparing for this deployment meant freezing many of those responsibilities in my life for nearly a year.
This is not an easy task and led to some intense leadership lessons as I worked towards my deployment date. One of the most beneficial books I read while preparing to hand over my civilian responsibilities is a book I’d recommend to any aspiring leader called “Do Nothing: How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader ” by J. Keith Murninghan.
I’ve often thought how valuable it would be for our Navy if those on active duty had a better understanding of the life of their reserve brothers and sisters.
While on active duty, I completely underestimated the reserve component and certainly didn’t understand the finely tuned work/life balance in which this group excels. Today, my understanding of reservists and their civilian careers, stress control management, life balance and openness to learning and adapting strikes me as an essential skill set that the whole Navy could benefit from. While preparing for this deployment, I sat through no less than three sessions (approximately 9 hours) of Navy operational stress control training.
Our military has been at war now for the past 17 years, pretty much the length of my career. During this time it is estimated that over 2.7 million men and women have deployed overseas to support our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the end of March, the Navy reported that there were 3,183 Reserve Sailors mobilized with “boots on the ground” either as individual augmentees or as part of units supporting missions on the ground. These reservists make up roughly 85% of the Navy’s boots on the ground support at any given time. Reserve support for these non-traditional Navy deployments jumped significantly in 2013. At this time the reserve component of the Navy started assuming more mobilizations than active duty for the first time. It jumped from three times the number of active duty mobilizations in fiscal year 2013 to 5 times as many today.*
The reserve component is critical to the ongoing sustainability of today’s military requirements. Many reservists have deployed and can expect to deploy multiple times during their Navy career. While I was attending the Navy Deployment Readiness Training, I spoke with a Navy Commander who was preparing for his ninth deployment to the middle east. Many here in training with me are on a second, third or fourth deployment. Last night I spoke with a Navy nurse who has been in the Navy for 7 years and is heading out on this, her 3rd deployment. This time around she’ll be in Afghanistan, but her prior deployments included a year supporting operations in Guantanamo Bay and then a deployment aboard the USNS Comfort (T-AH 20), one of the Navy’s two hospital ships.
During our closing ceremony at the Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training (NIACT) command this week, the commanding officer, Captain Grant Staats (also a mobilized Navy Reservists) told the audience of volunteers, friends, family and Sailors that he always struggles with saying goodbye to his wife and sons. But he asks himself, “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”
*Source: Information received from Commander Navy Reserve Force
