FRG-filled Week

We've had the first marriage meltdown of the deployment.

A soldier came home on midtour leave to discover that his wife had spent all of their money on her live-in lover and was neglecting their child.

She quickly agreed to a divorce and to give him custody. He made arrangements for his mother to take the toddler, but at the last minute, mom's boyfriend nixed the idea. The father-in-law is a registered sex offender, so that eliminated the in-laws.

The Platoon Sergeant, who is a top-notch soldier, asked him mother if she could take the child for the rest of the deployment; the amazingly kind and generous lady agreed.

I had once helped this wife get groceries when we were anticipating a storm. We knew that she was a little on the irresponsible side, but had no warning that the situation had gotten this bad. She had moved out of state during the deployment, though, so she was somewhat off of our radar.

The soldier spent his leave getting divorce and custody paperwork done and transporting his child back to our area.

Last night we had our Officers' Wives Coffee--normally this is a social gathering for all of the Officers' and First Sergeants' wives...but very few officers in our Battalion are married and of those who are, their spouses just don't seem interested. So, we usually have about four to sixe people show up. Still, it is nice to get together.

Then, this morning was the Battalion steering committee meeting, or as our new fearless leader likes to call it, the Battalion "Huddle." These are always fun...two of the FRG leaders are not married to the commanders and do not get much support from the commanders. Also, we discovered that at least one soldier is not on the Rear D commander's list. I do not understand how the military can have such a poor record keeping system.

Then we discussed the Video Teleconference Call that FRG and Battalion leadership was supposed to have. We are hoping to turn this into a call for families...we'll see how that goes.

Well, that was my FRG-filled week.