Navy ignores IA families, critics say

[unhappycamper]

The families of some individual augmentees say the Navy isn't doing all it could to help dependents during the unusual deployments. Here, an IA who served with Navy Provisional Detainee Battalion 2 in Iraq greets her family.


Navy ignores IA families, critics say
By Chris Amos - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 25, 2008 5:48:51 EDT

Maggie Haas has endured three deployments. Each one was hard, but she says the support she received from the Navy and from other Navy families helped her endure.

But the fourth deployment was different. Instead of deploying with a P-3 squadron, her husband, Lt. Cmdr. James Haas, went to Iraq as an individual augmentee. He was one of two sailors attached to the Army’s 3,000-member 3rd Brigade Combat Team, where he worked with an electronic warfare unit that jammed roadside bombs.

Haas said she doesn’t know what a brigade is. She didn’t know why the Navy would send a pilot to help an Army unit search for roadside bombs in Iraq. She didn’t know where in Iraq her husband was and was unsure of who she should contact if she needed assistance. And although she lives within a half-hour drive of one of the largest concentrations of Navy installations in the world, she felt the Navy had abandoned her.

Haas is one of the people the Navy — which is rolling out a series of programs to make the process easier for sailors and their families — is trying to help.

“There are a million IAs here,” she said last fall. “I just don’t know anybody. The times before, I had other Navy wives and kids. We got together at least once a month, if not more. We had parties and holidays together. Now, it’s just me and our kids. It would be nice if we felt like we were in the Navy.”


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/03/navy_iafamily_032408w/