Come and join me in a whinge - feeling very sorry for myself

[SemperEadem]

DH was told 3 weeks ago that he was being sent on Operations.

We are not with battalion at the moment so this entails a house move before deployment.

Ridiculous amounts of toing and froing before we finally get our move in date which is next week. We have to hand our old house over 2 days later and then he flies 2 days after that .

We have a 2 year old DS and no family around to help with the move so my DH thinks it best that DS goes up north to be with my family on Monday night as the packers arrive Tuesday. Purely so he isn't too disrupted by the move and stresses of having to stay in a hotel, have no entertainments whilst packing and unloading the new house.

He will then drive me up north at the end of the week, see DS for a couple of hours before having to turn around and drive back down to leave.

I just want to cry. Why couldn't they have left us where we were so the last week together isn't spent in a haze of moving house stress?

Don't see why they are making you move. An RAF type here went off on deployment for 6 months, and his wife stayed here in Brussels in the SSFA, no problems.

It must be cheaper for them not to move you? Just think of how you want to spend the disturbance allowance!

I would accept the new MQ before you move and use that as your march in (we did); get all the stuff out of your old house (move early) and have cleaners in before the move date and get the buggers round to do the march out early. They've embuggered you; do it right back.

I am sorry but I don't understand this. My DH is RN and is off on an Op Tour for 6 /7 months very shortly. This means that we are "safe" in our MQ while he is away. If he is posted elsewhere when he gets back we may no longer be entitled to MQ here in London.

Can you query this? Get your DH to ask? It does seem pretty rude.

My guess is they are moving you back to Battalion so you have the support of being around people whose partners are also away in the same place. Battalion is also where most of the in house support groups are based. No reasurance to you right now I know but it might be later.

When my hubby last went I drove from Sussex to Kent to drop the children off and then upto ... up north somewhere where he was doing some training to have one last evening together. Could you arrange to have the last night on your own in a hotel so you you get to relax and spoil yourself before he goes? DH and I managed to get so relaxed 9 months later DS 3 came along .

It's a challenge now but having the new house to sort and new friends to make may keep you busy enough to make the time go faster. DH came home 3 weeks before DS 3 was born and running around after 2 and being preg with no. 3 certainly took my mind off it!

Feel free to whinge as much as you want, it takes someone special to stay at home and keep the family ticking over while DH is away and still be there when they get back.

Good luck with it all.

Thanks all for your messages.

It is a total embuggerance having to move but I think Carrie is right. This was only meant to be a 2 year posting - an 'e' posting I think its called, and so we were due a move in September.

They then took forever deciding what to do with DH as the company he is with was battling to keep him here. We were under the impression that the move was to take place in the New Year.

However, one of his colleagues was injured in Afghan and he needs replacing - hence my DH being called back to battalion so that he can take his place and also a very quick house move.

I wish somebody had realised that leaving me and DS here would have been much better. My DH did put it to them but alas - the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand

As is the Army way - too many separate people got involved, i.e, DE sort the housing allocation out - took them a while, we accept, movers have to be arranged (all by differing people and nobody speaks to each other), so we are now in a situation whereby the house is sorted etc and the next available flight out there is a few days later and they are putting him on it.

If they knew it was going to be so tight then they should have save a lot of time, effort and hassle and just let us stay put until he returns.

Oh well c'est la vie - got my military wife head back on today

My db (RN) is off to Afghanistan tomorrow. My dsil got a load of stuff about parties etc for the wives and kids but all were at Aldershot (she lives in Cornwall), and with a comment on there that the Brigadiers wife will be keping all the Army wives in the loop - RN and RAF wives have to look at the RN and RAF websites for info. Typical!