Reintegration process helps Airmen return home

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Bryant Davis
  • 366th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
MOUNTAIN HOME AIR FORCE BASE, ID --  In early October, several hundred Airmen from the 389th Fighter Squadron and 366th Maintenance Group returned from a deployment to Southwest Asia. Each Airman walked off the plane, received a hand shake from the Wing Commander and then many ran into the arms of their loving and excited family members.

Unit homecomings are always special, but how do these Airman leave the stress and long hours of the deployment behind?

The following day, returning Airmen saw a team consisting of experts and agencies that came together as part of a reintegration process. All Airmen coming home go through this process, regardless if they come home in a big group or as an individual. It's a crucial step in returning to the day-to-day lives left behind several months earlier.

"Reintegration training is important - it improves and sustains individual Airman readiness," said Col. Michael Lawrence, 366th Maintenance Group commander. "Reintegration is a team sport involving helping agencies from Airman and Family Readiness, Chaplain Corps, Medical Group, key spouses and many others. All of these agencies make and continually make crucial contributions to our readiness, and this return was no exception."

Military member aren't the only ones needing support, families are a crucial audience to the reintegration process, but getting them involved can be difficult. However, the 366 MXG and other agencies work hard to provide family members the same resources that military members receive.

According to Lawrence, before members of the 366th MXG returned home, commanders, key spouses and supervisors met with families to explain the schedule of events associated with the return, provide numbers to MXG information hotlines and professional briefings during the reintegration process.

A challenging aspect of the reintegration process is every deployment is unique. Each military member will come home with different experiences, but there are consistencies regardless of where the Airman deployed.

"Separation is never easy and it doesn't matter if the individual is single or if they're married and have a family - separation from what you know and what you're comfortable with is never an easy thing," said Tech. Sgt. Travis Hughes, 366th readiness NCO. "The biggest problems they have is communication, number one, when you're in a deployed location it seems that people have a different approach to communication, it's very one directional, it's do this now - not how, what, where, when, why. The problem is when they come home and they're stuck in this method of communicating with their family, it comes across as being brash and angry."

According to Hughes, the AFRC works with commanders to give redeployers and their families resources to successfully deal with unexpected issues - whether it's communicating or adjusting to a house where it may seem that everything has changed, the kids act differently, the house may have been rearranged, even appearances can be different.

AFRC employs a Military and Family Life Counselor and a Family and Life Program coordinator, and they provide educational based assistance with families for everything from skills building to communication.

Another resource for those coming home is the Wing Chapel, where chaplains can provide guidance for a person's spiritual fitness or just a quiet place to reflect, it's also a place where all information shared is privileged and confidential.

"Our main goal when working with redeployers is to listen to them," said Capt. Lance Schrader, 366th Fighter Wing chaplain. "The Airman are the experts on what they are going through, so we try to listen to them and help them process what they are going through."

According to Air Combat Command's Comprehensive Airmen Fitness program, spiritual fitness is about having a sense of purpose and meaning in your life, it's essential to an individual's resiliency as esprit de corps is vital to a unit's mission accomplishment.

The reintegration process isn't complete once a returning Airman completes the necessary briefing, these helping agencies and experts are available to deal with challenges or unexpected issues that may arise long after the military member has returned home.

The experts who provide these vital services to redeployers say their programs are constantly evolving to better meet the needs of the Airmen coming home.

"I've been in the Air Force more than 20 years and the Air Force is much better at reintegration than it used to be - and we keep getting better." Lawrence said, "Reintegration matters, just like our Airmen do - that's why we do it."