LEONARDTOWN – At the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.S. Army needed more people, and called on other branches of the military to fill in.
In the Individual Augmentee program, individuals are pulled from commands in the U.S. and deploy on their own to augment units overseas.
While spouses normally have a support group when a command deploys together, IA spouses are often left with little support, and for longer periods of time.
One Air Force spouse, Natalia, whose husband recently left for a year deployment, has a support system through her job on the nearby Navy base. She prefers to be referenced by her first name for safety reasons.
But another, Nancy Williams, felt completely alone when her husband deployed for 15 months.
While there is an IA Spouse Support Group on the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Williams said few people attended events.
Both spouses fear the same thing: What their husbands were missing.
(Capital News Service video by Jessica Wilde)