Battle-Ready on the Home Front

When Cindy Roth’s husband was a company commander in the Gulf War 14 years ago, she received a grand total of one letter from him. The Army provided virtually no information about his unit and only token assistance with the fears and anxieties faced by the wife of a soldier at war.

Today, with Lt. Col. Bob Roth on his way to fight in Iraq, the lines of communication between the battlefront and the home front are much better.

Last week, Cindy Roth sat at a conference table at battalion headquarters, flanked by the wives of soldiers from all seven companies in the battalion her husband commands. With them were a captain and sergeant, both provided by the Army with orders to keep the spouses informed and help them deal with the demands of military life.

The spouses and soldiers are part of a “family readiness group,” the Army’s name for tightly organized units designed to support soldiers’ families. The readiness groups have replaced informal coffee klatches and baby-sitting clubs with a structured framework managed by spouses, parents and commanders. They are, in effect, an army at the rear.

“What a difference,” Roth said. “Back during the Gulf War, anything that got done was done by the wives. There was no real Army support. Whatever information we got, we got it on our own.”

Roth is co-leader of the readiness group for her husband’s battalion. Within that battalion are seven other readiness groups, one for each company. There are more than 200 such groups at Ft. Stewart.

Historically, the Army has been colossally indifferent to soldiers’ families. Wives whose husbands were sent to fight in Vietnam were kicked out of base housing. As recently as the Gulf War, the Army made no special effort to ease the burdens of spouses left to deal with housing, children, paperwork and medical crises.

“There’s an old Army saying, and it was pretty much true: ‘If the Army wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one,’ ” said Carolina Rodriguez, an officer’s wife at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Rodriguez is paid by the Army as a coordinator for Army Community Services, which assists and trains family readiness groups.

The FRGs, as they are known, reflect the Army’s belated realization that today’s professional soldiers are more likely to be married and to demand help for their families.

These soldiers are sent to war as part of a unit, rather than as individual replacements as in Vietnam, leaving behind thousands of units’ spouses and children at bases stateside.

The readiness groups emerged after the Gulf War, when families struggled to cope with long separations by forming loosely organized family support groups.

“FRGs were started as an initiative by wives,” said Lt. Col. Ty Seidule, who teaches history at the U.S. Military Academy. “Then the Army realized they were pretty effective, so it eventually got behind them.”

Today, the groups console families of soldiers killed or wounded in action. They help families negotiate the often exasperating military bureaucracy, trace missing paychecks or chase down veteran benefits. They relay information from commanders in the field, such as what the soldiers are doing and their living conditions. They track and squash rumors -- particularly about troop movements and casualties -- that often sow panic among families.

Even though the readiness groups are not designed to be baby-sitting clubs or taxi services, leaders often find themselves helping a spouse find a sitter or a ride to a doctor’s appointment. The groups have also been called upon to help start balky lawnmowers, rescue cats from trees and assist spouses locked out of -- and sometimes locked in -- their own homes.

The groups are not supposed to solve all problems for spouses, but to advise them on where to go for answers or assistance. Their most important role is to provide a reassuring, calming presence during times of stress.

“We’re morale boosters,” said Sarah Judge, a group co-leader whose husband, Capt. Paul Judge, commands a company in Roth’s battalion. “The most important thing is you can’t panic -- or let others panic.”

Members of Cindy Roth’s readiness group are swinging into high gear this month. Their soldiers left two weeks ago for Iraq, part of a mass deployment by the 3rd Infantry Division, which spearheaded the assault that toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003. The deployment will last about a year.

For many of the spouses, it was the beginning of their second long separation in three years because of the Iraq war. The leaders of the readiness groups were already fielding panicked calls, most from younger wives coping for the first time with their husband’s war zone deployment.

Some callers seek information; others offer it. With e-mail and cellphones now ubiquitous, group members sometimes complain of information overload -- even soldiers’ parents and siblings call and write.

As the group met at the nearly deserted battalion headquarters, Sgt. 1st Class Rogelio Gonzalez took a phone call from a soldier’s wife who hadn’t received her husband’s military paycheck. Gonzalez guided her through the secure military website that tracks soldiers’ finances.

Gonzalez is an FRG liaison officer, the bridge between spouses and the battalion, passing on information and answering questions. He’s required to attend all readiness group meetings. The position was created after the unit’s 2003 deployment to Iraq.

Gonzalez reports to Capt. David Chen, who commands the battalion’s rear detachment, a skeleton crew left behind to maintain the battalion’s presence on base.

Chen, who served in Iraq in 2003, is Lt. Col. Roth’s representative at Ft. Stewart. Chen passes on information from Roth, communicating with him by e-mail for routine matters and by secure telephone for sensitive information.

The communication then flows from Cindy Roth’s battalion readiness group to the company groups.

At the meeting, Chen had a brief message from Roth; the battalion was at a desert camp in Kuwait, preparing to enter Iraq: “He says everybody made it safely -- and it’s very windy there.”

Roth and other commanders are rated by their superiors on how well they manage their readiness groups. The ratings are part of their fitness reports, which help determine promotions.

At a recent training session at Ft. Bragg for new FRG leaders, Rodriquez, the Army Community Services coordinator, listed the goals of readiness groups: Building morale. Providing accurate information. Reducing the stress of deployments. Promoting self-sufficiency. Linking families with military and community agencies.

Rodriquez asked the leaders to list what a readiness group should not be. Their answers: a clique, a day-care service, a private club, a gossip chain or “your mother.”

Leaders can be the spouses of privates or colonels, although in many cases the wives of commanders or senior noncommissioned officers step forward to volunteer.

“FRG leaders don’t get paid,” Cindy Roth said. “They get phone calls and complaints day and night. They get yelled at. But nobody wants to do without them.”

Sometimes, Roth said, she doesn’t agree with decisions her husband makes, such as limits on information or activities permitted for the group.

“He just tells me: You’re not the commander,” she said. “And I don’t want to be the commander. Being the FRG leader is hard enough.”