My name is Shayla and I am a graduate student in the Department of
Communication Studies at the University of South Dakota. I am writing
this because I am currently working on a research project for a class that I
am in called Qualitative Research Methods. My research project is on
communication patterns between soldiers and their
spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends during deployment.

I am currently trying to locate spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends of deployed
soldiers to interview for this project and I am wondering if anyone would be
willing to answer the 8-10 questions that I have? Your identity would not be
revealed in my project and you can back out at anytime if you do not want to answer
the questions. If you would like to be interviewed for my project, you can either
reply here, or you can email me at shayla.waugh@usd.edu.

I appreciate any help that you can give me. One of the reasons that I chose
this research topic is because my boyfriend will be deployed to Afghanistan for a year
in September. We are having a baby this July and I want to learn as much
about communication patterns during deployment as I can.

Thank you for your time.
Shayla

Good luck Shayla. Just trust in this, your significant other will be making every attempt to communicate as often as possible while he is over there. You must accept however, that there will be times when weeks can pass without a word.

Communications into and out of combat areas are tightly controlled for obvious reasons. Can't have our troops running around all over the countryside giving away thier positions with a call from mom, wife or GF can we? Not to mention that with a little technology, cell phones can be tracked or pinpointed by the GPS chips.

If you are going to send him stuff while he is over there, don't send bright clothing. My mom, bless her heart sent me a Tenn Tech bright orange sweat shirt! May as well have painted a big arse 'shoot me' target on my chest!

Keep yourself busy with the lil' one, too. Tell him/her about what daddy is doing over there. The Gunny is right that communications will be few and far between even for you his woman. Best thing to do is sit tight and keep the phone next to you. Turn off the news as it will only serve to make you nervous. Send him tons of deodorant, and try to find stuff like Adidas due to the fact that it works, and does not contain aluminum. A great site use as a guide as to what to send him is http://www.lovethetroops.com/carepackage.html