Hi Mom! I’m moving to Germany!
Getting the news your spouse has been assigned to an overseas location is an extremely exciting time! Before you start to panic about selling the house, download the Rosetta Stone app, or begin Marie Kondo-ing your possessions, you probably cannot wait to call and share the news with your family and your besties, right? Stateside friends will promise to visit, military spouse friends might cross their fingers a little tighter for a similar assignment sooner or later, but one call will probably be particularly tough. No matter how long you’ve been a military spouse living away from home, telling your mom you’re moving thousands of miles away from home will probably be the toughest call you will have to make.
Hello! I’m Jessica and my husband is a C-130J pilot. We have been married since 2010, two weeks after we found out he had been assigned to fly C-130Js. After being stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base for 6 years my husband was reassigned to Ramstein Air Base and we made the move to Germany.
The C-130J journey will start at the schoolhouse located in Little Rock, AR. Here, your spouse will spend at least 6 months learning all about flying this specific plane! This training consists of 5 months spent completing a combination of classroom time, JMATS (J (as in C-130J) Maintenance Aircrew Training System), and simulations, which will ultimately prepare the pilots for the final month of actual flying in the C-130J. Some days are “normal” 8-5 days, and other days they show up, click through a few trainings, and head on home. When the flight simulation trainings (SIMS) start they have alternating time slots, which means they either show up during the day or during the night. When my husband was doing SIMS, especially the night slot, we rarely saw each other. It may seem unreal, but out of these 6 months of training they will only fly the actual C-130J airplane 9 times – and these flights all occur during the last month of the schoolhouse training (weather permitting). They will be mostly local flights of varying lengths, flying both “day flights” and “night flights” to ensure all of the training requirements are met and appropriate instruments can be utilized. During the flight phase of the training they learn to plan flights, do preflight briefs, and post-flight debriefs with instructor pilots. Flying days during the training will be long and can be a stressful and humbling time. Ultimately the school house instructors are pushing the new pilots to be the best they can be.
Being new in town is always tough, add in being a newlywed and a brand new milspouse with a lot of alone-time (thanks to the ever-changing AF training pilot schedule) I took charge and devoted my time to making our new neighborhood our home. I explored the area, got lost, found my way back to the main drag, established which Kroger would be “our” grocery store, stumbled upon a great church, and decided my new happy place was a shopping district with adorable boutiques, a cupcake bakery, and a wood-fire pizza joint. In the meantime, I found a part-time job with a flexible schedule (at aforementioned cupcake bakery), because it worked for us.
When my husband joined his first squadron he finally worked those 8-5 days he had been looking forward to since college, unless he had a chance to fly, and life started to seem a little bit more ‘normal’. When he did fly he either had day flights or night flights – day flights are nice because they are usually home for dinner. Night flights were tougher because they usually need to sleep all day so they can fly late into the night. Trying to keep the house quiet/maintain your daily routine can be a struggle. Most of the flights his squadron was tasked with kept him local- meaning he flew in the area and came home at night. My husband deployed for the first time after about 6 months of being part of the squadron. He was gone for 4 months. He was gone for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year celebrations. While he was away I worked full-time, sang in church choir, stayed active in the squadron spouses group, and traveled home for Christmas on my own. I was very thankful for the job with the flexible scheduling. In all we spent 7 years stationed in Little Rock; enduring one more six month deployment, some squadron hopping, and an 8 week TDY for Senior Officer School. During this time I took advantage of the Great Plains IDEA, Interactive Distance Education Alliance, online education program to receive my masters degree.
Our latest adventure has been being assigned to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Making the move to Germany is a bear, but at least for us, has been absolutely worth it. The life of a C-130J pilot here is very different than it is stateside. For starters, they technically won’t usually deploy. Which seems like a huge plus, however, this is because the flyers are very active, and will be gone on missions quite a bit, sometimes for weeks at a time. Another difference in the day to day is to abide with German “quiet times” local flying is done by 10 pm every day. For spouses it is typically difficult to find a job in your career field. Jobs are available but it may be something you really didn’t envision yourself doing in your mid 20s-early 30’s. I have chosen not to work to keep my schedule open for any last-minute trips we can sneak in. Being involved in the squadron spouses’ group is a big deal here because if you don’t speak the native language it makes it difficult to make friends outside of the military community. The spouses in our spouses group here have become family away from home. They are always willing to lend a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, and they give the best travel advice!
My last little tidbit of advice is probably pretty common knowledge in the Air Force community but I think it is always worth sharing. When you’re part of the AF Family the world is actually a pretty small place- don’t burn your bridges!
MEET JESSICA
