Advice to New Wives on Decoding Military Jargon

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Advice to New Wives on Decoding Military Jargon
Sarah Smiley, Copyright 2004

Sea bag. Spouse Club. Duty. DITY. Det.

If this looks like Greek to you, you’re not alone. Deciphering the strange and confusing jargon of the military takes time and patience.

To make life easier, here’s a brief crash-course lesson in military terminology.

Let’s start with “sea bag.” Ask your spouse and he will probably tell you this is a standard-issued bag used by military personnel to transport clothes and uniforms.
And he is correct. Well, almost.

For the sake of clarity, I like to describe the sea bag as a deployment time capsule a husband brings home and dumps on the living room floor. Open the bag and you will find undershirts that are smelly, wrinkled and gray (even though you could swear they were fresh and white when he packed them six months ago), and an assortment of gifts—knick-knacks and tacky clothing in all the wrong sizes—lovingly handpicked for you in a foreign port.

(I’ve heard legends about women opening the sea bag and finding lavish jewelry, but so far this is just a myth to me.)

Now let’s tackle DITY. DITY is an acronym for a “do-it-yourself” move, which technically means you pack and move your belongings by yourself, without the aid of a moving company.

You will recognize the DITY move when your husband asks, “Honey, can you spend the next two weeks sorting through all our belongings and begging the grocery store for boxes while I cleverly and conveniently disappear to finish up my important check-out procedure on base?”

Which brings us to the word “duty.” The word seems straightforward and simple enough: a position of watch filled at regulated intervals by military personnel. And this is what your spouse will want you to believe. After all, he believes it!

Soon you will learn, however, that duty is actually an unavoidable work commitment that somehow pops up unexpectedly on weekends, anniversaries, holidays, and your son’s first day of school. How these scheduled duty shifts always sneak up and surprise my husband, I do not know.

The title CO is an especially important acronym to learn. This stands for commanding officer, and he/she is your husband’s boss—the head honcho. In front of the CO it is advisable not to call your spouse “pooky” or “bear,” or to mention that he threw-up on his first T-34 flight.

Another common abbreviation used in the military is det (a.k.a.: detachment). This, your husband will tell you, is a scheduled, brief period of time in which his unit or squadron leaves the home base for training.

Don’t be fooled.

Look for the meaning of det under its more common name: “impossible unpredictability.” When your husband claims to have a det in one week that will last “only 5 days,” be prepared that he will probably actually leave tomorrow and be gone for two weeks. Never trust the det schedule, and be leery of anyone who claims to know the det schedule.

And finally, there is the spouse club. Your husband might refer to this group as the official military “rumor mill.” The spouse club, however, is an essential refuge from loneliness when your husband is deployed, and then a reasonable excuse to escape from too much together-time when he gets back.

The spouse club also is an excellent source of information (such as why the squadron really calls your husband “Dancing Bear”), and a means to clarify facts (like the truth behind that questionable picture of your husband in Greece).

(WARNING: Anything you reveal at a spouse club meeting may be used against you. Use discretion.)

Husbands and wives have been arguing for years over the meaning of most of these words. For the most part, his definition and your perception will eventually vary greatly.
There is one exception, however, and that is the term “orders.” Husbands and wives unanimously agree about the cut-and-dried nature of this word. Orders, unfortunately, means exactly what you think it means: Your spouse is being ordered to do something. It will often be used in sentences like: “Yes, honey, I thought we’d be moving to Virginia too, but now I’m being ordered to Japan,” and “My orders have changed; we’re moving next week.”

There’s just no getting around orders, no matter how you define the word.

Good luck, stay flexible, and don’t believe everything you hear. Especially about the det schedule.
 
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