Moving Bases

Image: Saifee Art, Unsplash

What is ‘home’ when your address changes every two years? When your bed is temporary, your neighbours rotate, and your children learn to say goodbye almost as often as they say hello? For military personnel, home is rarely a fixed location marked neatly on a map. Instead, it becomes something more fluid, anchored in people, regiment, routine, and memory. It is carried rather than inhabited. It is assembled and reassembled, sometimes in married quarters, sometimes in rented flats, sometimes in distant barracks thousands of miles away.

Military life is defined by movement. Transfers, deployments, exercises and overseas postings are not exceptions but expectations. Yet the emotional impact of this movement varies depending on circumstance, rank and family life. Consultant psychiatrist Dr Walter Busuttil, who served in the Royal Air Force for 16 years and later worked extensively in veteran mental health services, understands both the professional and personal dimensions of this mobility. Reflecting on his own service, he explains, “I moved around a lot; there are positive things about moving around, and you meet a lot of people, you have different experiences, but it’s very disruptive for your family, especially if you have young children needing to attend school.”  His words capture the duality of military movement: opportunity and instability existing side by side.

He is careful to clarify that relocation in itself does not typically cause mental illness. “It can cause problems with adjustment and marital issues, and it can affect people’s well-being as such, but not mental illness.” The distinction is important. Movement does not automatically damage the mind, but it does require constant adaptation. For some, adaptation becomes second nature. For others, it is a quiet, ongoing strain.

For Mr Jai, now an Air Commodore in the Indian Air Force, relocation was rarely a burden. It was an adventure. “Moving frequently was always exciting for me; every new posting felt like a fresh adventure,” he says. “Emotionally, it never felt burdensome; instead, it kept life dynamic and full of energy.”  Flying across mountains, deserts and coastal regions transformed geography into exhilaration. The thrill of the aircraft and the discipline of the service overpowered any discomfort that might have come from packing up once again. Stability, for him, did not come from permanence but from purpose.

Yet even within enthusiasm, there is nuance. Constant movement every two years could be challenging, he admits. It was marriage that softened the edges of relocation. Sharing new cities, climates and cultures with his wife made each transfer meaningful rather than isolating. Stability, he realised, came less from a fixed address and more from shared experience. In that sense, home shifted from being a place to being a partnership.

This emotional anchoring in family appears repeatedly across conversations with service personnel. Mr Jai reflects tenderly on what home means to him now: “Home is where my family is. Wherever my wife carefully arranged our belongings, the house slowly transformed into a space filled with memories. I realised that home is not tied to geography, it is wherever my wife is.”  There is something deeply revealing in this statement. The building itself is secondary. What transforms space into home is the careful arrangement of objects, the layering of memories from previous postings, the quiet labour of turning temporary housing into somewhere warm and recognisable. Souvenirs collected from different cities become emotional threads stitching together a life lived in fragments.

Mr Raj, who served nearly 29 years in the Indian Navy, expresses a similar sentiment. “I have always believed that home is where the heart is; being together always means being at home.”  For him, the predictability of transfers was accepted early in life. Once movement becomes an expected rhythm, it carries fewer emotional shocks. Port cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Kochi became recurring chapters rather than disruptions. Over time, returning to a previously served location felt like coming back home. The repetition of place created familiarity; familiarity created comfort.

Still, he acknowledges a subtle emotional undertone. “Though one always felt a tinge of sadness leaving one’s home whilst going off to another.” That tinge of sadness is perhaps the most universal emotion in military mobility. Acceptance does not erase attachment. Soldiers learn to detach efficiently, but detachment does not mean indifference. Every departure carries a quiet ache, even when the next destination promises opportunity.

For some soldiers, however, home is not primarily family or city; it is the regiment itself. Dr Busuttil observes that many will say, “My home is in the army. It’s my rifle, and my pack, and my bed- that’s my home.”  This statement speaks to the powerful identity formation that occurs within military structures. For individuals from difficult or unstable backgrounds, the army can represent safety, order and belonging. The regiment offers routine, hierarchy and community. It offers clarity of role and purpose.

Military training reinforces this sense of structure. “You’re basically told how to live,” Dr Busuttil explains. “There’s a huge routine that’s deeply ingrained. I don’t think that routine is going to be disruptive wherever you are sent.”  Routine becomes a portable form of home. Whether stationed in snow conditions, desert terrain or coastal bases, the rhythm of military life remains consistent. Wake up at a fixed hour. Prepare equipment. Follow orders. Train relentlessly. In unpredictable environments, predictability is protection.

This idea is supported by research. The UK Ministry of Defence’s Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (2022) highlights that structured training and unit cohesion are key contributors to resilience and morale among serving personnel. Similarly, the Royal British Legion’s 2018 UK Household Survey of the ex-service community found that strong unit bonds and peer support were among the most positively cited aspects of military life. These findings suggest that belonging within the regiment functions as a psychological stabiliser, particularly in high-stress environments.

Yet the story does not end with service. If moving during service requires adaptation, leaving service can feel like the most destabilising move of all. “That is the harder thing,” Dr Busuttil says of the transition to civilian life. “You lose your unit, you lose your friends, you lose your support network, you lose your rank and your self-respect, and that is when many people do break down.”  The losses he lists are not physical but relational and symbolic. Rank carries identity. Regiment carries belonging. Without them, home must be redefined once again.

Research from Forces in Mind Trust (2021) emphasises that transition is a particularly vulnerable period, especially for those without stable employment or secure housing. In many ways, this is not just a professional or financial shift, but a disruption in the very idea of home. The loss of institutional structure often means the loss of a familiar environment, of people, routines, and spaces that once felt grounding. Without that, individuals may struggle to recreate a sense of belonging. Dr Busuttil notes that alcohol, often integrated into military culture as celebration or commiseration, can mask deeper emotional struggles during service. Once routines change and support networks shrink, these difficulties may surface more clearly, particularly when the feeling of ‘home’ is no longer as immediate or accessible as it once was.

And yet, for the majority, service remains a positive and formative chapter, one that shapes how home is understood rather than diminishing it. “The evidence is that having served in the military is actually very good for your mental health,” Dr Busuttil explains. Many leave with strong organisational skills, discipline and leadership qualities, but perhaps more importantly, they carry with them a redefined sense of home, one that is not dependent on a fixed place. Employers often value ex-military personnel for their adaptability and resilience, traits that are closely tied to their ability to find familiarity and comfort even in unfamiliar environments.

What emerges, then, is not a singular definition of home but a layered and deeply personal one. For some, home is the spouse who carefully arranges familiar objects in unfamiliar rooms, turning temporary spaces into something meaningful. For others, it is the regiment that offers structure, solidarity and a sense of belonging that cannot easily be replicated outside service. For many, it is both. It lives in the memory of shared meals in mess halls, in the quiet comfort of returning to loved ones after long deployments, and in the enduring bonds formed through shared experience. It is also the understanding that even years later, as Dr Busuttil reflects, “The Air Force is still somehow part of my home.”

For soldiers, home becomes less about permanence and more about presence. It is found in shared laughter in a mess hall, in late-night phone calls across time zones, in the quiet ritual of unpacking the same photographs in yet another unfamiliar room. It lives in friendships forged under pressure and in families who learn to bloom wherever they are planted. Constant movement may reshape their geography, but it does not diminish their capacity to belong.

In the end, soldiers understand something many civilians spend years trying to learn, that home is not built only with bricks and cement, but with loyalty, memory, discipline and love. It is not defined by how long you stay, but by how deeply you connect. And even when the uniform is folded away, and the postings come to an end, the feeling of home, rooted in service, sacrifice, and shared experience, remains.