The Foreign Service Journal, March 2009

M A R C H 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 and didn’t return for years at a time, with nothing more than “V-mail” to maintain ties. A generation ago, I spent 14 of the first 15 months of married life as an Army officer in Korea. During that period, we made do with snail mail and recorded tapes — telephone calls were too difficult and expensive to contemplate. Was I happy about it? Of course not, but I was doing im- portant work — and glad that I had not been assigned to Vietnam where Army buddies died. In the latter part of my career, my wife and I spent two years assigned to separate posts in Canada. Hap- pily, we were able to see each other regularly (and my ambassador suggested that we “have a honeymoon every weekend”). But I didn’t expect any sympathy for sepa- ration (even though I was caring for a teenage child by myself), any more than a couple living and working in Washington and New York City would think that separation was a dire trial. David T. Jones FSO, retired Washington, D.C. I F T ROUBLE C OMES , M AKE U SE OF I T Like many Foreign Service families, we have faced separated assignments due to evacuations and service at an unaccompanied post. For us, the two most memorable were my tours in Yemen from 1990 to 1991 and in Pak- istan from 2006 to 2007. On the eve of the Persian Gulf War, my wife, Fiona, re- turned to Scotland following a mandatory evacuation of de- pendents and stayed with her own family outside Inverness, F O C U S I made a personal commitment to write a postcard to our youngest daughter each evening before going to bed.