The Never-ending War

Every two or three years a battle happens for military families who are PCSing.

That battlefield is your home, and the casualties are not only your possessions, but your sense of calm, serenity, and sense of right and wrong.

I’m talking about moving.

Some battles are so epic, it spawns a Facebook group with thousands of members consisting of military families that have faced moving horror stories. They turn to this group not only for retribution solutions, but also to simply share their grief, anger, and bewilderment.

In my short military life, we have only “suffered” two moves; however, if there is one common discussion you will have with friends you make or colleagues your spouse works with at your new duty station, it will be about the troubles both they and you suffered during the most recent move, as well as previous moves.

These discussions are fruitful for learning tips and tricks to make your next move go better. And like most things in life, what doesn’t get better with practice? Unfortunately in this case, you are practicing with all your possessions, including irreplaceable family heirlooms!

For folks on their eighth, tenth, or more move, they have figured out not the ‘”right way” but the way that is right for them. I met one veteran who informed me that he sold 90% of his belongings before departing a duty station and simply bought new items at the next station because he knew many items would be destroyed during the move.

There are also the families that furnish their home primarily with IKEA furniture. They do this because, as we know, when the movers destroy your cherished piece of furniture, the repair or replacement payment is a fraction of your actual monetary loss. If your items are from IKEA, it will sting less. Not to mention it is easier to file a damage report on an IKEA item as you are quickly able to find replacement value on their website.

Then there is a friend of ours who did it himself using a couple of temporary manual laborers under his direction and a trucking pod. While moves like this may not always go right, at least the control is in your hands.

The mistakes are your mistakes.

Only being a member of the military family tribe for four years, moving is one of those areas where I am holding my ground and refusing to let the military change me, hence my use of the word “battle” for what ensues when we PCS. And when I say change me, I mean wear me down. We will see how long that lasts.

I have met many military families on their upteenth move who simply don’t fight the system for compensation that is rightfully theirs. Their spouse is at a new job at a new duty station and do not usually have the hours it can sometimes take to enter the moving damage claim into the system. Furthermore, some families are so tired of being paid pennies on the dollar for what they are actually owed that they would rather not file and save the insult of offered compensation.

If you are relatively new to military life like me, then you might still be figuring things out based on your experience and the advice of those with far more moves under their belts. Unfortunately for us, our two moves consists of a contiguous United States (CONUS) move and an outside contiguous United States (OCONUS) move. This meant some lessons were brand new for our second move and couldn’t necessarily be expected.

If you have never moved OCONUS, you may not know that the packing process can be different from when, for example, you move from Fort Bragg to JBLM. Rather than box all your possessions, then truck them to a distribution hub where it is forwarded to your new home via tractor trailer, in an OCONUS move, they have large wooden crates placed on a truck outside your house. As they fill boxes inside your house, those boxes are placed in the crates and when each crate is full, the final side is nailed shut and those crates are not opened again until they reach your new international home.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to go.

Here’s a protip for someone about to complete their first OCONUS packet: Before the moving trucks leave your house, scan the trucks for any of your possessions not crated. Imagine our surprise in Germany when our beautiful kitchen island table—the one that helped sell our North Carolina home—was uncrated. Well, I should say, when the tabletop was uncrated. The two legs which held shelves and cabinets had obviously been tossed into one of the moving trucks and not into one of the crates.

Our situation was a little unique. The moving company underestimated how long it would take to move the items from our home into the crates lined up on the trucks outside on the street. As night fell, the moving company sent other teams of packers and movers who had finished the jobs they had been working on that day. So what did we have?

We had three or four different crews from the same company scrambling as fast as they could to complete our pack. Scrambling as fast they could because it was night time but also because I’m sure management was not happy the payroll on our job was going through the roof with these additional employees assigned to our move. Clearly there were individuals not trained in OCONUS moves working that job that simply tossed some of our possessions into their trucks thinking these items would be combined with the other items back at their main facility.

That brings me to another point. When you hire a moving company yourself, you decide which company will move your possessions. That choice will depend partly on cost but will also depend partly on your belief in how well they can do the job. Unfortunately, the United States military, like much of the government, is required to put services like these out to bid and must go with the lowest qualified bidder in many cases. Our next move will most likely be OCONUS, but the move after that will probably be CONUS. When that time comes, I hope to follow in the footsteps of our friend who did a Do It Yourself (DITY) move. Until then, I will use the lessons learned that I have written down in a file labeled Military Moves After Action Review/Report (AAR).

For all those about to PCS or who are in the middle of their PCS right now, use this move as an opportunity to complete your own AAR. Too often we prepare for a move with nothing more than a note on a calendar when the movers will arrive. Why? Why don’t we write a detailed plan outlining what will and will not happen during our next move? Doesn’t this seem like the least we can do when handing over all our earthly possessions to complete strangers?

You will learn new lessons on each move, and many of those lessons will be soul crushing; however, there is no reason you need to relearn the same soul-crushing lesson twice. Sit down after each move and write down how things could have gone differently through your words and actions. Then when you are preparing for the next PCS, open up this file or take out the piece of paper and read it over before the movers arrive. Then read it again. It wont solve all your problems but it will solve many of your problems.