Security

If you have ever visited a military base, you know that the first thing you have to do is go through a security check.  If you're a military member or dependent, all that means is showing your ID.  If you're a civilian, it might mean a full vehicle inspection.  Either way, they do it for one reason: safety. 

When my husband and I lived in Charleston, we lived on base.  Only there, you didn't have to go through a gate to get to the housing portion of the base (or the Commissary, Navy Exchange, etc).  I thought that was great! Who wants to have to go through a security check basically every time you leave your house? Not me. 

I had only been living there for about a month when 2 men were stopped outside the base for speeding.  It turned out that they had explosives in their trunk and a laptop with video instructions on how to build bombs.  That's when I got scared, and that's when I found out that officer family housing was way back in the secure part of the base, behind the gates.

I know that military officers make more money than the enlisted members do.  I know that they deserve it for the most part.  They've had more training, a higher degree, or a specialty that enlisted members don't usually have.  But does that mean that their families deserve to be more safe and secure in their homes than enlisted families?

Now we have moved to a new base, and once again our house is behind a gate, but that gate is open to the public (i.e. no security check).  According to the newsletter we got yesterday, not only do we need to worry and keep an eye out for things like terrorism going on, but now we have to worry about our homes being broken into.  There have been 2 break-ins in military housing in the last month. 

How does this make sense? We have a gate, if they would just put a security guard there we would be a lot safer. But the military families who live on base in hopes of having some extra security while our spouses are gone 3-9 months each year, are just out of luck because the base wants to keep our gate open so it will less of a hassle for people to get to the golf course.

Our spouses fight for this country.  They miss being home, they miss their children growing up.  They miss holidays and birthdays and family vacations.  They do it to keep this country safe.  So why can't they at least have the peace of mind that their families will be safe while they are out doing this important duty?

The base newsletter's brilliant advice to us was to "lock your doors." Duh.  Who doesn't lock their doors anymore? I grew up in a town of less than 500 people where everybody knows everyone else, and we STILL locked our doors every night.  Plus we all know locked doors are such a deterrent.  Because thieves don't know how to pick locks or smash windows to get what they want!

The whole situation is just leaving me with that prickly feeling on the back of my neck.  I know this worry, this paranoia, will eventually go away.  But for now, I'll be peeking out of my peep hole and checking the badges of the maintenance men (and cable guy and furniture delivery people) at least twice before letting them in.  

This is an original Deep South Moms blog post.

Cassie writes more about military life in her blog Southern Domestic Goddess.