Help Needed for Military Spouses – Especially During Deployment Times

This week An Army Wife’s Life blog is having a giveaway contest for MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (see tinyurl.com/5gay8z ). To be eligible for the giveaway, people must leave a question for me. And after the giveaway is over I will answer some of the questions.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the comments, most of which fall into the following categories:

What prompted you to write a book about this era? Was it personal experience?

Was your info on the four different wives taken from the lives of family and friends or of strangers? Are you portraying yourself in one of the four women?

Yet there’s another category of questions, of which the following is representative:

My very good friend's husband is in the army and in Iraq at the moment. She is struggling with army housing and medical issues (she is pregnant with her second child and they are at a new base where she knows no one). She is seeking advice and assistance and doesn't want to stress her husband during their limited contact. What is the best way her friends can support her long-distance?

As I have not been a Mrs. Lieutenant since 1972, I have no idea what the answer is to this question. And because I felt this question deserved an answer as soon as possible, I turned to Candace, the blogger of An Army Wife’s Life.

Here is part of Candace’s response, which I’m including on this blog in case this information can help other military spouses:

For financial and medical issues, the best thing for her friend to do is to first contact Rear D. Sounds like what she needs primarily is the correct power of attorney forms and, working with legal, they are the only ones that can make that happen during a deployment.

After the medical and housing issues are straightened out, if she needs financial assistance, Rear D should know about what's available on that specific post. There are a ton of programs at most posts, but not all are service-wide.

If she doesn't get anywhere with Rear D, then I always recommend Army One Source or Military One Source – they have masters-level consultants answering the phone 24 hours a day to provide free information to military families and should be able to help her develop a plan and figure out who to contact.

Candace also said that two of the sites included on www.mrslieutenant.com in the support military families section would be good:

• Operation Homefront (www.operationhomefront.net)
  Provides emergency assistance and morale to U.S. troops, their families, and wounded warriors.

• CinCHouse.com (www.cinchouse.com)
  Operation Homefront's online community for military wives and women in uniform.

I hope that this information can help any other military spouse who needs help. And I also hope someone will leave a comment here telling me what Rear D is.

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Rear D, Army One Source, Military One Source, An Army Wife’s Life, Operation Homefront, CincHouse.com, Mrs. Lieutenant