We’re in absolute shock. He’s appealing based on his employment situation and the fact that he’s due to start college in September, but there are no guarantees. He would be sent over for a ten month tour, which raises even more questions about whether I would even want to stay here that long by myself or try to start the visa process over when he got back if possible (needless to say at this point I’m trying not to think if he got back).
People in his unit have been in Iraq as volunteers since the beginning of the war, some of them going for multiple tours. The situation over there has become so bad, however, that they are now starting to ‘draft’ soldiers as hardly anyone will volunteer to go. From what I hear, the conflict is the last in a long line of issues that has decimated the ranks of the British military itself to the point that it can’t even be considered an army anymore, but is now so small it’s technically a defense force.
