A U.S. Blackhawk helicopter went down yesterday in Afghanistan. 11 people died, including two Navy SEALs and an explosives expert. So what do I say here, on a public blog? I want to talk about it, but I don't want to talk too much about what Zac does, or where he works and, hence, why this is important to me.
I went to an ombudsman conference a couple of weeks ago, specifically for ombudsmen from commands that are Navy Special Warfare commands. Special Warfare includes groups likes the SEALs. The conference was a three-day affair, and two of the modules that we covered came to mind last night as I was watching the news: 1. Operational Security (OPSEC) and, 2. the events from last August 11th, when a Chinook helicopter went down, killing a large number of Navy Special Warfare members.
As a military spouse, you hear a lot about OPSEC. You've probably heard about it in this form: "Loose lips, sink ships." The idea is that there are bad guys out there, and the easiest way for them to gather information about our military is to simply monitor their families and what they are saying and posting on the internet. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle for the bad guys. If they take little pieces of information from a number of sources, they can get a pretty clear picture what's happening in the fleet. It also puts families at risk. If some bad guys really wanted to crush the morale of sailors and their families, it wouldn't be hard. All they have to do is find that invitation you posted on Facebook to a picnic for the ship's families. A large concentration of families in one place at one time? Sounds like a target to me.
Does this make me sound paranoid? Yes, some. But it's the truth. And it's not just the truth for military members. Did you just post on Facebook, "Woo hoo! Heading to Las Vegas for the weekend!"? Well, you just told people that your house is empty. Social media is a wonderful thing, and I love using Facebook, but we all need to be aware that if we choose to share certain bits of information with the world, those bits of information can be used for good or bad. You don't get to control that information once it is released.
OPSEC is even a bigger issue in the Special Warfare community. With ships, it's pretty easy to have a bad guy posted at different ports around the world watching ships come in and out. There are certain things that you just can't hide about ships. But in Special Warfare, the very nature of their missions is clandestine and covert. In order for them to be successful, there can be no information released about where they are going and what they are doing. We, as family members, shouldn't be making the bad guys' jobs easier.
I am thinking a lot about OPSEC as I type this. So if I sound vague, there's a reason.
I originally saw the note about a helicopter going down in Afghanistan yesterday, before any details about who was on board was announced. My first reaction? "Please don't let it be our guys." Maybe that's a horrible thing to think, after all, it's somebody's guy on that helicopter. Someone just lost a husband, dad, brother, son. But for selfish reasons, my first reaction was hoping that it wasn't anyone we knew. As the afternoon went on, I received an email from another one of the Special Warfare ombudsmen out here in SoCal. I felt my stomach drop when I read that, indeed, some of them were "ours". And by ours, I'm going to purposefully be vague and say West Coast Special Warfare. (At some point the news will release all of their names and where they worked. That's not my job.)
Rewinding a couple of days, I went to an ombudsman training Wednesday night. I ran in to one of my fellow Special Warfare ombudsmen there. We made small talk for a few minutes, I'm not even sure about what. Fast forward to Thursday afternoon. It was her command that lost the two SEALs. We all got an email from the commandant, letting us know what happened. He mentioned that the appropriate people have been notified and that the command and ombudsman were taking care of the families. Jesus. 24 hours prior to this, we were chatting about nothing and now she's helping two families deal with the death of their sailor. It's hard to wrap my head around.
This caused me to think of that other training module I mentioned above, the one about the Chinook crash last August. Some of the ombudsmen that had to deal with that tragedy were also at that conference. They talked about what happened and what role they played in helping the families. But what struck me about their presentation was that moment when one of them said how hard it was. Because as an ombudsman, you're a spouse of someone in that command. That means that if it wasn't your husband that died, that it was probably your husband's friend. Maybe his best friend. And the wife that lost her husband? That might be your best friend. You might go get Starbucks together to pass the time while your husbands are deployed. Maybe your kids play together. What I'm getting at, is that ombudsmen aren't some disinterested third-party that provides information and referral services. We're a part of the individual command family. And, on a larger scale, we're all part of the Special Warfare family.
Yesterday we lost some of ours. The grief won't be contained to just their individual commands. It will be shared by all of us. Hopefully that makes it an easier load to bear.
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