Dual-military families."For Nicholas, Erika and Logan Stewmon, seeing Mom and Dad both home together is getting to be a very strange thing," observed a February 18 article in Stars and Stripes Stars and Stripes nickname for the U.S. flag. [Am. Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 8567] See : America . Their father, Chief Warrant Officer Brain Stewmon, flies an AH-64D AH-64D Apache Attack Helicopter, D version, with Longbow radar improvements Apache Longbow longbow Leading missile weapon of the English from the 14th century into the 16th century. Probably of Welsh origin, it was usually 6 ft (2 m) tall and shot arrows more than a yard long. helicopter for the 6th Squadron of the Illesheim, Germany-based 6th Cavalry Regiment. His wife, Captain Michelle Stewmon, is a nurse for the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Wurzburg. "Brian Stewmon returned late last month from an 11-month tour in Iraq," notes the paper. "He got home just in time to kiss his wife goodbye and send her off on her own yearlong deployment." The Stewmons are representative of a small but growing number of "dual-military families" that are "taking a double-barreled hit from the Army's supercharged su·per·charge tr.v. su·per·charged, su·per·charg·ing, su·per·charg·es 1. To increase the power of (an engine, for example), as by fitting with a supercharger. 2. operations tempo the past two years." Servicemembers who marry understand that one or the other may be deployed. However, "Operation Iraqi Freedom, with its one-year tours and large personnel demands, has boosted the burden on dual military families to something no pre-9/11 soldier could have imagined." Predictably, many dual-military families have chosen to sacrifice "money and a career to keep some stability in the household" by having one spouse--generally the mother--leave the service. But Army stop-loss orders (essentially a form of conscription conscription, compulsory enrollment of personnel for service in the armed forces. Obligatory service in the armed forces has existed since ancient times in many cultures, including the samurai in Japan, warriors in the Aztec Empire, citizen militiamen in ancient ) have "ended that option for many troops. Others have long-term commitments because of medical or pilot training." |
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