I may be totally out of order here...

[Skinit]

But I wanted to ask the wives and partners of today's soldiers what it's like being married or with a member of the forces? I wanted to know what difficuties you and your partners face?

I realise it's a masive question and that people might not want to share with me..but I'm writing a play and hoped I could get some input from people who understand life in the forces.

I know there are some redundancies being announced...so the future is not certain for people, but what is life like after active service? How do men and women deal with things when they get home?

Hope I'm not prying...

Google is your friend Skinit

Sorry didn't see then next page!

I would have thought you were just affirming my decision to Google perarduaadinfinitum!

I have also spent time at the same place as happylander and can confirm that at times (many and often) it is indeed extreme however the staff there were the ultimate in professionalism at all times (give or take the odd one or two on a bad day)

Medics, from experience, also deal with things differently - we have a different sense of humour which helps us cope with these things.

Do some people not cope? Or is it a team effort in helping one another if an individual find something hard?

I would say by the time you get to the point of working somewhere difficult you have experience and your own coping skills but very much team support. Everyone needs to deal with things differnetly - some talk, some isolate themselves, some run and get fit, some smoke - differnet strokes for differnet folks

there have been huge changes in the last couple of years due to a slight increase in mental health issues, so if it set in the current day you need to be aware of the support systems and checks in place to look out for mh issues and deal with any difficulties. sometimes ptsd etc doesn't cause a problem until 6 mos after deployment.

they were all over the news a year or so ago. or you might want to look up combat stress etc, which will give you a slightly diff viewpoint.

or the aff website, which gives info on dealing with post-deployment from a spouse's pov.

tons of stuff on the web really.

Thanks so much madwoman....I will look now using those phrases.

Yes the very sick sense of humour does help. My non-medical friends do find it bizarre

Skinit - you've never heard of Camp Bastion? Seriously?

You obviously pay no attention to any news reports of our fallen soldiers then.

Or any attention to the news about Afghanistan full stop!

Skinit you are writing about service life and you have never heard of Camp
bastion are you for real