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The kind of bravery she showed is just one of the qualities required to cope as an Army wife - as I've found out myself from personal experience, along with patience, handiness with DIY jobs and the ability to exchange and trade white goods.
When I married into the Army 16 and a half years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. First of all, my husband had been planning to leave. However, here we are, almost two decades on, still being constantly moved around from one place to another, following our regiment's standard.
In the meantime, there have been numerous deployments, many house moves and years, accumulated, living apart due to the requirements of his job. We take the mickey out of him saying he has spent more time away from our three children than with them. I'm too nervous to do the calculations to figure out whether that's actually the case.
For the majority of the personnel I've encountered who've reached this point, the main reason they've persevered for so long is because serving is genuinely a calling. They take pride in it is a deeply ingrained aspect of who they are. By the same token, it's often a part of their families too, whether that's by choice or not.
What this arrangement looks like varies from one family to another. There are those who have decided to live apart, allowing the non-deployed spouse to focus on their career, providing the children with a stable home environment while the deployed partner is away in whatever country they're serving in. This option gives the deployed partner a chance to work towards buying their own home and building a community in one place. However, this can be a lonely and challenging situation, especially if there are children involved and the deployed partner is effectively acting as a single parent.
More often than not, the family moves in a convoy. Navy careers change every 18 months to two years; you get perhaps six months to a year's notice – sometimes less – as to where you're moving to next. That time will then be spent in a rush of attempts at preparation.
You have to consider whether you can take your job with you wherever you go, or if you'll need to find a new one. In our case, the first two years of our married life were spent in a country where the visa restrictions meant I wasn't permitted to work. I found ways to gain some experience without being paid, and during that time, I also had a baby.
You see if you can get yourself added to the "patch" Facebook group where you're moving to, so you can ask about schools and nurseries for the kids, angle yourself onto waiting lists and hope that by the time you actually relocate there might be a spot available.
Or you put your neck out and put the children in boarding school; try to figure out where in the country would be the most convenient in the long run – until you get posted to the other side of the country, or even another country altogether is where you end up being sent. You've got to put on a brave face and pretend you're all right with this, even as you sew name labels onto their uniform and count down the days until their next long weekend and they're allowed to come home.
You don't have a clue what your new place will be like, obviously. The Facebook group might give you an idea of the options available, or let you know which homes are likely to come up soon, and what the basic floorplan is. You try to figure out if your furniture will fit or if you'll need to flog some of it or put things in storage. You're hoping the house will be in a reasonable condition, and not one of the (many) military properties that are riddled with damp and mould.
Mostly, the first time you see the house is the day the moving truck arrives. When you get there, there'll be an oven, but nothing else is provided: you'll have to bring your own household appliances. There's a lot of bartering that takes place.
Sometimes, you're doing everything on your own because your partner is either away on deployment or busy with pre-deployment training. As an Army wife, you end up doing lots of things by yourself. I managed to get through a full nine-month pregnancy while working full-time and taking care of two other young children at home, all without any help. I was fortunate that my husband was back in time for the birth, but many of my friends have had to welcome babies on their own, or their partners have had to leave for deployment just days after the baby was born.
There's all the other things you get used to taking care of on your own: handling the kids; sorting out the hassle of a dishwasher that's leaking (I once managed to flood the flat below ours in a rush of misplaced confidence); putting up shelves; arranging school collections and doctors' consultations. A lot of the time you're not quite sure where your partner is or when they might call next. Typically, that phone call comes in the middle of a bath time or at a particularly awkward moment, but you answer because you don't know when the next call might be, and you try to sound cheerful.
At the back of your mind is a nagging concern that one day you might receive an unsettling phone call, reporting that something has gone wrong. You might try to push this thought aside, viewing it as a pointless exercise. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean that your children aren't giving this the occasional quiet consideration.
My eldest son once asked me, 'What will happen if Daddy dies?' I replied, trying to reassure him, that it wasn't going to happen. He persisted with the question, so I eventually told him that it would be extremely difficult if it did happen, but we would have to cope with it somehow. He then asked me, 'Do you think if he died I could have his watch?' I was caught off guard and didn't know how to react, whether to be amused or overcome with emotion.
You build a network of other women because they're the only ones who truly get it. Sometimes they're geographically local, living on the same estate, making it easy to meet up for a glass of wine and a good old moan; sometimes they're just a quick WhatsApp message away ("Talk to me Goose," responds one friend whenever I send her a frantic "Arghhh!"). These are the women you can turn to for help; the ones you're not embarrassed to be honest with because they understand where you're coming from; they've been in similar situations themselves.
One mate keeps a letter she drafted to her husband two years ago when things were particularly rough, telling him she was planning to leave if things didn’t sort themselves out. It's a relief to know I'm not the only one who's written a similar missive. You don't share these details with the wider world because, to them, you need to appear as though everything's okay. "I don't know how you do it," said one non-military mate to me once – but what choice do you have?
To be honest, we, the wives and families, don't have a choice.
We didn't enlist in the military and, to be honest, the military doesn't really think about us – we're more of a hindrance to be sorted out; unfortunate by-products. But we're involved too. We're in this thing together, even if we're not keen on it.
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