What is a deployment? 

by Bobby Ganton 

What is a deployment? It’s a hot topic during the presidential election cycle for some reason (Vance, cough, Walz, cough). Is a three-month training rotation to Eastern Europe a deployment? I wager no.  Does it suck being gone from your family for three months, living out of a bag and eating shitty food and getting to Skype three times a week with your kids? Yup. Sure does, no question. None of my civilian friends know that scenario. They leave their kids for a long weekend, and are emotional wrecks upon their return. They can’t imagine being separated for more than a few days. A week gone was no big deal when I was in. Being separated for a weekend doesn’t even register on my emotional Richter scale. 

I served a measly four years as an Officer in the Army. It was the best of time. While my schedule was an easy schedule compared to many I know who had multiple year-long deployments during the GWOT heyday, over the course of four years I was gone a bit. In chronological order, a two-month training, a handful of weeks in the field, a month training, another month training, nine months doing Route Clearance in Afghanistan, another month of training, and then back to the civilian world. I missed the birth of my oldest. I missed holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. I’d do it all again, though, in a heartbeat. I loved it. Especially my first deployment. 

Through all the time gone, through all the talk of deployments, training, ‘in support of,’ who did what, there is, in my mind, a single metric that decides if it was a deployment or not. 

Were you issued live rounds you carried every day?

It’s a yes or no question, and it’s the same answer to the question “did you deploy.”  

No live ammo? You’re separated from family and home. Which is a big deal, do not get me wrong. I’m not here to shame anyone who didn’t deploy. Not everyone is in control of their own schedule after they raise their right hand, and many I know did all kinds of amazing, wild, tough training all over the world that I didn’t do, and may have not been able to.

But carrying live ammo every day, that is the line. That’s the great divide, between deploying or not.  Route Clearance, door kickers, medics, reporters, mechanic, the job doesn’t matter, the combat load does. 

Former Captain Bobby Ganton 

562nd Engineer Company

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on August 16, 2024.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.