Career Soldiers Latest Worry: You're No Longer Needed...Now What?

For thousands of career-military troops who endured combat and family separations during a dozen years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the end of hostilities brings a new directive from the government — your services are no longer needed. 

Even as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday that future budget reductions cut "so deep, so quickly, that we cannot shrink the size of our military fast enough," pink slips were already on their way to soldiers.

Army Maj. Timothy Hyde is among several hundred
officers being reviewed for possible job loss.

In its first effort to thin the ranks under budget pressure, the Army is letting 3,000 G.I.s go in order to thin ranks to 490,000 by the end of next year. 

Ten Army officers — colonels and lieutenant colonels — learned while serving in Afghanistan in January that they would be forced to retire later this year. 

And those are just the first firings. Tens of thousands more must be cut in the years ahead, and the services readily admit those separations won't all be voluntary

Maj. Timothy Hyde, at home with his family.

"Everybody who's getting looked at right now ... has to really start thinking about, 'Well, what if?' " says Army Maj. Timothy Hyde, married and the father of two, who is among several hundred officers being reviewed for possible job loss. 

"I'll be disappointed if I get selected for early separation," says Hyde, a public affairs officer who served in Iraq. "But I have my faith and my family to fall back on." 

Activists who support troops and their families worry that a lingering war strain on an all-volunteer force — evidenced by record behavioral and physical health issues, marital struggles and even suicide — is now compounded by worry over job security.

"We're seeing the legacy of stress as part of the military way of life," says Joyce Raezer, executive director of the National Military Family Association. "People won't have time to find a break, because they will remain too worried about their future." 

While the U.S. military downsized after previous wars, Iraq and Afghanistan were fought with a relatively small, all-volunteer force required to deploy again and again during more than a decade of conflict, says retired vice admiral Norbert Ryan, president and CEO of the Military Officers Association of America. 

"We're doing this (job reduction) on the very backs of the men and women and their families that have carried the other 99% of us for the last 12 years," Ryan says. "A lot of these people have borne the brunt of this war."

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