How do you know when you're on deployment with the French Navy and not the US Navy...(the little things that a wife not being on the ship can wrap her mind around)...
. When you have these under the tables of the bar on board. Lots and lots of kegs.
2. When you have a BAR ON BOARD!!!!!
3. When your flight briefing room has a baguette bag refilled every morning from the baker on board.
4. When your helicopter has a pointy-nose.
5. When your Christmas Eve program started with a cocktail hour and was followed by Mass.
6. When your ship has a "escale famille"---FAMILY PORT VISIT.
#6 is the best on this list for me. Because in two days I'm leaving France and flying to United Arab Emirates to have five full days with my husband. It might be called a "family port visit", but I wasn't fooled. My kids are NOT coming. My suitcase with bathing suits and summer dresses has been packed for over a week. There aren't words to describe how excited and ready I am go and have time alone with him.
If it was the US Navy, if there was such a thing as a "family port visit," he'd undoubtedly have duty or some sort of watch obligation for some of the time. Not so in the French Navy. He will be completely free--completely able to relax with me poolside at our splurge of a hotel. Merry Christmas to me from the French Navy.
I always have a "deployment song". The song on repeat in my car. Seriously, I don't know how many times I've listened to this one. But I'm about to experience the second verse..."And so I'm sailing through the sea, to an island where we'll meet"...
I'm counting on this trip to make the four and half month deployment "worth it". Which brings me to difference number 7--
7. With the French Navy a four and half month deployment is considered long. US deployments are more like six, seven, twelve months separations. I really am "lucky".
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