At what point in your military career does it become harder to return home than it does to deploy?

Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen - I was on the bubble. I hadn't deployed as much as a lot of people especially in other services but it was starting to become the norm for me. But I think this is a reason for a lot of our pilots exodusing the AF. They keep throwing money at it but that isn't the problem. As you said they come home from a deployment and immediatley go into training mode now which includes numerous TDY's in support of other ops or training situations so when they are home they really aren't home. I recently talked to a pilot who was at 18 years and he walked out the door to Southwest. He had been deployed so much as a heavy pilot and then they were getting ready to task him again with a 365 and he said that's it. He got immediately hired by Southwest, looks like he will get into a reserve unit in a support role where he can finish and get his retirement and be at home and watch his kids grow up.

Lt Col Scott Shuttleworth Have known quite a few just like him. There are so many variables that contribute to someone getting out short of 20 but can't argue that deployments don't factor in.

True. In 18 yrs of service I was single for the first 14 yrs. The last four was hard on the wife and daughter but I didn’t notice a difference. I think more veterans that were married early on their careers felt the impact of separation of leaving or coming home.

Don't forget paying bills. I had family handling my finances while I was gone last time, and never once had to think about monthly bills. That was pure heaven.

I didn't miss the adrenaline at all. I had (and still have if truth be told) an excruciating difficulty relating to people whose main concerns now seem so trivial as to be inconsequential to me. They looked at me like I was the problem, and I looked at them like they didn't even know what their problems were...

What a blasted melancholy subject.