The smallest of the five Armed Services at about 45,000, the Coast Guard is organized into small operational units of 20 to 100 personnel. A few large shore units have 400-500 assigned, and the Coast Guard Headquarters staff is about 2,000. As a result of thisunit size, married family housing is very limited, and most Coast Guard families live on the economy, where they depend on one another and their community churches for support during frequent separations. 
Like the other services, Coast Guard personnel deploy frequently as ships and embarked helicopter crews routinely deploy for up to 30 days at a time on drug and fisheries enforcement patrols from the Bering Sea to the Caribbean. At units with a Search and Rescue mission, personnel spend every third or fourth day on duty for 24 hours, ready to respond to calls for assistance within 30 minutes
A number of Coast Guard personnel are currently deployed to Afghanistan supporting the other services with such Coast Guard expertise as packing, customs, and hazardous material shipping and storage. Several Coast Guard Cutters are on patrol in the Persian Gulf helping interdict vessels infiltrating Iraq, and preventing piracy, smuggling, and terrorist attacks on oil wells and terminals. Coast guard aircraft were also deployed there to track oil spills during the war. In 2004, a young Coast Guardsman, Nathan Bruckenthal, died along with 2 Navy sailors while intercepting a waterborne suicide attack on an Iraqi oil terminal. He left behind his wife and a young daughter, who was born after his death. Two Coast Guard officers recently qualified as Navy SEALS, and are assigned to operational SEAL Teams - three others are currently in training.
Coast Guard families are subject to the stresses of deployment like any other military family. Although the pace of Coast Guard operations has accelerated since 9/11, the number of deployments hasn't increased significantly, and as a result, Coast Guard families have been less affected by the war on terror than their DOD counterparts, even though Coast Guard missions put their loved ones in harms way on a daily basis.
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