Hi all..

Friday I got a call from our FRG leader telling me who she was and confirming that I was who she was calling and then she followed this by saying, "I want to assure you that your soldier wasn't among the injured" and then went on to tell me that there had been an IED attack (now mind you that as she is attempting to talk, she is sobbing to the point where I had to tell her to stop and take a deep breathe)and then she told me that the name of the soldier KIA along with those that were injured. She said she was sorry for crying but I was number 5 on her list and she was going to be calling everyone on the contact list so that we knew about this and that there would be a Red message in our inboxes.

I should mention that I am a crossing guard for our elementary school and got the call just mins before the building emptied and you can't lose it in front of a bunch of little smiling faces. So I had to deep breath myself for an hour until I could run home and jump online. I am thinking that was pretty much one of the longest hours of my life considering I knew my Hubs had just left for a mission the night before.

Get done with crossing..rush home, jump online, open Red message email and huge sigh of relief (followed by huge rush of quilt for feeling that relief)because yes there had been what she stated. The only problem is that while yes it was OPSEC/PERSEC . The unit involved was currently in Stan, not in Iraq with the other 2 units. She isn't the leader of the first unit anyways. More importantly I am wondering if this is even something that she is allowed to do. The contacting all of the family members I mean. I know back when hubs was NG and I was an FRG Co-leader and we had KIA's/injuries, information such as this was handled by the Casuality Asst. and the Rear Det NCOIC (hubs was it then)and we (FRG) were not allowed to contact all the families of all the soldiers. So I am wondering if it is different for AD FRG. I am now kind of ticked off because I think what she did was totally unnecessary and I am sure has caused quite a few family members unnecessary stress which in turn will most likely cause the soldiers some stress because I am sure many of them got emails about it. So before I go to the next meeting and have a talk with her, I just want to know if this is indeed something that she was allowed to do or not.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: theainjmtant,

In the dark ages when I was an ombudsman we were not allowed to do that. If requested we might have been asked to come to the home after notification to see what help we could do for the family such as getting wives to help with the kids, cook meals, etc.

As for notifications, even that their husband was okay when something happened, that was not part of our "job".



Mom

I know other people that have gotten phone calls about what happened to other guys in their husband's units. I think one of the first crucial matters is that she was sure to say "Your husband is FINE", but ... In terms of security, if you got a message about it then I'm sure she's allowed to talk about it. It's safer to talk about things over the phone then send them over the internet! Maybe it's just an Army thing, maybe it's a more recent thing because of Afghanistan & Iraq ... I don't know any policy per se but this is definitely not the first time I've heard of it happening.

I've noticed this disturbing trend as well.
My friend next door has received TWO calls so far. They are automated messages stating that someone was injured/killed in the unit and the other was was naming them. And all I can do is say WTH?!?!!? Why would they do that?!
I guess I don't understand what the possible reasoning for that is. People are stressed out enough as it is, do they really think it's a smart decision to call and tell people this stuff???
And here's the thing--it's the Commander telling these people to do this!

Here is how our Rear D Commander is going to be doing it: HE IS THE ONE that will make ALL notifications ONLY. If one of ours is injured, he will call the spouse and let her know. He will tell her as much info as he can, what's being done to treat him, and if she is needing to hop a flight should he be moved to Germany.
In the event one of our guys is killed, he will contact our CARE Team (which is what Carrie's referring to. That's what they call it now) and ask if that person is available for X hours. At no time is the name of the soldier given unless the CARE member says YES. If it's a no, CO says thank you and hangs up. Once he's got our CARE Team in place, he coordinates with the Casualty people so that everyone arrives at the spouses house at the same time or time frame.

At NO time will a mass email be sent out to ALL the spouses freaking them out about an injury or death! We don't do that at all.
At no time should this sort of business be on the shoulders of the FRG Leader. That is NOT one of their jobs.
It is ONLY the job of the Rear D CO and the CNO's.


grrrr....can you tell this is a sore point for me???? I think that news article last week set me off on this rant.

on post here the Battalion FRSA does send emails-but its 24 hours after the Causuality team have done notification of next of kin-and the purpose is to recruit other spouses to assist the spouse of the fallen soldier-although by the time that time frame has passed word will have gotten out anyway. I do not believe they call anyone-not sure since my husband is not actually stationed here. But definately nothing goes out til that 24 hours has passed.

Yeah, there's no recruiting of spouses to do any of that. We take a course on post for CARE Team, it's a requirement in order to be on the Team, and we're called by Rear D Commander only.
All our info is taken into account: kids/no kids, pets/no pets, ages of kids etc.
Say if one of our guys is killed, he's got a wife with 2 kids ages 12 and 17 with pets. Commander would likely call me before the gal on the Team that has no kids or pets. It's about matching the CARE Team person with the family as closely as possible. A Team member would have a more difficult time relating to the spouse's needs if the spouse has teens and the she didn't....if that makes sense.
And we're told that we're not to call or talk to anyone else about what's going on. It's confidential until/unless the widow specifically asks for another spouse to be called.

Well she only managed to scare 24 family members with her call because her 25th (luckily..) was to an AD spouse that would have been deployed had she not gotten prego and realized when she heard the names, that not only were they not part of our unit, but that they weren't even in the same countries and she told her to stop the calls immediately and then got off the phone and called our Rear Det.

Did get a chance to talk to hubs by IM this morning and he said that she might not be our leader for much longer as this was a major screwup on her part and some of the higher ups were really ticked off because this caused alot of stress and panic that shouldn't have been caused had she followed the rules. Plus she has been starting some gossip and rumors among the wives from stuff she hears from her husband and it has apparently caused a few marital issues among some of the soldiers. That one I already knew about because I had a couple emails from 2 of the wives on my hubs PSD team and they wanted to know if I could get the truth from him. I was glad to be able to tell them that the rumors were pure BS but still, it just makes a wife hurt to hear that kind of crap even if she does find out it is untrue.

The next meeting should be interesting though..

quote:

Plus she has been starting some gossip and rumors among the wives from stuff she hears from her husband and it has apparently caused a few marital issues among some of the soldiers.

For that reason alone she should be 'fired'.
Good FRG leader does not engage in gossip, period.
In fact, I brought something up to my FRG Leader, she took down the info, checked with the Rear D CO, and was able to diffuse the situation. The following meeting it was brought up by the Rear D CO-without naming names or being accusatory in tone-throughout the whole battalion FRG's and made sure that everyone was aware of how gossip can spread like wildfire, how hurtful it can be, and how it can panic the hell out of the ladies--and we have a LOT of young wives, most are freshly married. --I say ladies because our unit is all males, no females.

Apache, good thing the one gal caught on, told her to stop the calls, and contacted the Rear D!!!

Yeah we got lucky that she called a soldier that actually caught on that our unit wasn't even involved in this to begin with. Course in talking to my hubs last night, it still caused some issues with his soldiers because they were getting emails from their family members that were upset.

Now as for the gossip..hubs said that there was a meeting with the senior NCO's and the Officers in charge regarding the spreading of rumors of married soldiers being too friendly with their female counterparts and KBR workers off duty. FRG's husband (he's a SFC)was called up to the carpet and was told that any and all gossip he was spreading to his wife would cease immediately or they would feel it necessary to encourage their soldiers to tell their wives about his (SFC) seemingly revolving door so that the gossip could hit his home. Apparently that issue has already been brought up with the SFC but his defense was that he and his wife have an "open" marriage during deployments.

My hubs said that you would think some of these people were still back in high school by the way they act. Oh and yes, FRG leader is going to be replaced due to her making the phone calls and the gossip issues.

Hand to God, the whole high school behavior is like rampant! Ugh...it's one of Bobby's biggest pet peeves. Supposedly professional people--and not even talking about the lower enlisted--acting like jokers and can't figure out why the others don't respect them or listen to them.
Gossip is just so incredibly destructive, it's horrible stuff.

Glad the FRG leader is getting canned for her behavior!! If no one else is qualified, it may just fall on the Rear D CO to handle for the remainder of the deployment--like he don't have enough to do...

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Hand to God, the whole high school behavior is like rampant! Ugh...it's one of Bobby's biggest pet peeves. Supposedly professional people--and not even talking about the lower enlisted--acting like jokers and can't figure out why the others don't respect them or listen to them.
Gossip is just so incredibly destructive, it's horrible stuff.

Exactly one of the biggest pet peeves for my hubs as well. He says he isn't sure if it is because he is usually older (he's 46) than many of those that are in charge or what the deal is but he said the lack of professionalism sometimes just makes him steam.

And yes the gossip is really getting on his nerves big time over there. They have females in their unit and he said that it has gotten to the point (because of gossip going thru the internet to back home)where the majority of married soldiers such as himself just have made it a point to not interact with any of their female counterparts when they are off duty. One of the female soldiers is a computer wiz and the one that most of them turn to when they are having problems with their laptops..she won't go into any trailor unless the door stays open and there are 2 soldiers in the room because she says that she doesn't want anyone starting any rumors that might get back and hurt her husband.

Thankfully we have no females where my hubs is at this time.
The computer gal is smart to have things set up that way. Not just safe for her marriage, but for her as well. Gotta love a gal that protects her marriage--that says a lot about her.

There were a couple of deployments where my husband had some women on his crew on purpose. He was told to be "the dad" because they were newbies and it was their first deployment.

I never worried about him on deployment and never heard any rumors either. But then again I didn't do a whole lot with the other wives in the squadrons. Part of that was because of the rumor mill. I didn't want to listen to it and didn't want to be fodder for it either.

It was funny because the "rumors" he would hear about me were along the lines of "my wife ran into your wife at the grocery store yesterday". LOL

Yeah, I lead such an exciting life! ROTFLOL



Mom

"It was funny because the "rumors" he would hear about me were along the lines of "my wife ran into your wife at the grocery store yesterday". LOL"

Funny you should say that. Just yesterday Bobby asked me if the FRG leader had come to see me at home the other day. She did because she sweetly offered to bring me some dinner because I couldn't stand long enough to cook anything--back thing again.
Anyhoo, he asked me about it and I confirmed. Apparently her hubs mentioned it to Bobby since she mentioned it to him, and he wasn't aware that she was going to stop by.
Hope that's about as 'exciting' as my life gets too.

Something to bear in mind with any phone call from someone you do not know personally. There are some whacked out liberal anti-american groups that will "prank" call spouses with B.S. about things they learn on the internet (ex. AP News "road side bomb kills 4")...they do it only to put spouses into anguish. REMEMBER it isn't hard to learn about where a neighborhood is deployed, or an individual is deployed. If you get a phone call from anyone you do not know, get thier phone number when they call, and tell them you'll call them back, and hangup. Trust me, it only takes $10 and a yahoo msgr account to make anonymous phone calls. There are ppl that hate the military, hate America, and will do whatever they think they can do to hurt you.

Let me super simplify it for you: If the decal on your car/truck/suv is BLUE, your an officer. If it's Orange, your enlisted. If it's Black, you are a contractor. Heck, if you have a decal on your car windscreen everyone with 1 10th of a brain knows you are military.

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Let me super simplify it for you: If the decal on your car/truck/suv is BLUE, your an officer. If it's Orange, your enlisted. If it's Black, you are a contractor. Heck, if you have a decal on your car windscreen everyone with 1 10th of a brain knows you are military.

Just fyi-while you are right about the decal-the colors and designators are dependant on branch and installattion-and some air force bases dont decal at all.

quote:

Originally posted by 17106860:
Let me super simplify it for you: If the decal on your car/truck/suv is BLUE, your an officer. If it's Orange, your enlisted. If it's Black, you are a contractor. Heck, if you have a decal on your car windscreen everyone with 1 10th of a brain knows you are military.

Not all vehicles have decals anymore, the AF has actually gone away from them now, so what you are saying isn't true. It might be for your branch, but not the Navy. White is contractor, red is Enlisted, blue is Officer

and we even have green decals too....