Sudden troop deployments "shattering" for military families amid Iran threats
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, thousands of service members are stationed, ready at any moment for the call they're being deployed. As the saying goes, when the president calls 911, the phone rings at Fort Bragg.
That phone rang when the Pentagon sent more than 3,000 additional soldiers to the Middle East to protect against any possible revenge attacks from Iran. CBS News' Chip Reid spoke with two women who just saw their husbands sent to the region. Both families had just an 18-hour warning before their husbands had to leave home.
Rachelle Hertle and her husband, Sergeant Alexander Hertle, were visiting her family in Ohio when he got the call to head to the Middle East. Just like that, Hertle told Reid, her family life went from normal to chaos.
"The previous two deployments were all planned and so we had time to get ready this one was-- this one threw us for a loop," Hertle said.
Sergeant Hertle is one of thousands of servicemen and women of the 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in parachute assault operations, responding to emergency crisis situations anywhere in the world.
Rachelle Hertle said she admires her husband for what he does.
"I cannot imagine leaving my children and I know that it breaks his heart," Hertle said. "But this is what we decided as a family we would do. That we would do that we would be a military family."
Jill Jaragoske's husband left for the Middle East on Sunday.
"It's just sad, everything he's going to miss, it's sad," Jaragoske said. "Your heart is swelling with pride, you're so proud of him, but it's shattering at the same time, it is the most unexplainable feeling I can't even really describe it."
"We're at home getting our support system together and being ready for him to be gone," Hertle said.
Hertle and her husband have one biological son who is 8 and three foster children.
"My children have finally bonded with a man that wants to be their daddy," Hertle said. "And if he were not to come home, how would I tell that to them?"
"This is what military families go through all the time," Reid said to Hertle.
"It is," Hertle said. "But we often don't say it out loud."
For security reasons, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division have been told they can't use their cellphones while they're deployed and troops are not allowed to tell their family members where they are. This mission, amid rising tensions with Iran, means they could be away for up to nine months.