Tens of thousands of military families dread getting the knock on the door. Anyone who has sent a loved one to war knows exactly what that knock means. An unexpected knock on the door and suddenly your life changes. Waiting for you is a soldier or Marine or sailor or airman waiting to tell you that your loved one is never coming home again. That is the news every military family fears. It is the nightmare that keeps them awake at night and haunts them during the day. Losing someone you love in war is the worst news you can get. But there is another piece of news that runs a strong second, and that is finding out that the deployment has been extended.

The Pentagon has just announced that it will extend the deployments of all active-duty Army units in Iraq from the current twelve months to fifteen months. Defense Department officials also said that Army troops will be home for at least twelve months between deployments. This news has to be a hefty blow to both our soldiers and their families. You can never predict when a deployment will be extended. Military families spend months watching one day on the calendar. They build their lives around that one day when their loved one is scheduled to come home. They might not always have the exact day the unit will return, but they have an idea. Maybe it’s only a one or two week window, but it enough to give them hope. When life back home gets tough, when the kids and the bills and the stress of war catches up with them, they look at the calendar and quickly calculate how much longer they have to go. How many more months or weeks until their service member comes home.

For our troops serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, each day that passes is one day closer to going home. It is one more day they have survived. So when a deployment is suddenly extended, it is much more than a change of schedule. Extending a deployment throws all of the plans and hopes of both our troops and their families into chaos. Suddenly the months seem longer and the light at the end of the tunnel grows dim. There may be valid reason for extending a deployment, it may be the best military decision, but it is devastating to the soldiers serving and the families waiting.