Annissa Hackney

Keeping tabs on a loved one’s whereabouts and well-being in Iraq can be like playing a game of “Telephone,” says Annissa Hackney, whose husband is deployed in Iraq with the Marines.

“Sometimes it can get distorted from when someone tells my husband, and then when he turns around and tells me. Or maybe he might forget to tell me something,” said Mrs. Hackney, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Michael Hackney, is in the Chattanooga-based “Mike Battery” Marine reserve unit.

To cut down on miscommunication, each Marine unit has with a Key Volunteer Network to serve as an information and referral service. Mrs. Hackney coordinates the Mike Battery’s network, which has 25 volunteers to stay in touch with the 157 deployed members’ families.

The Key Volunteer Network is helpful to units across the country, she said, but especially so in units such as Mike Battery, a reserve unit that does not have regular contact with a military base. Mrs. Hackney receives information directly from the unit’s commanding officer, and she and her volunteers can relay it immediately.

“It’s a Christmas tree-type formation,” explained Lt. Col. Eric Merkle, who serves as Mike Battery’s spokesman and oversees the program from the unit’s office off Amnicola Highway. “The assistance can be the form of phone and e-mail contact. But in addition to being an instrument of information, it can become a network of assistance if spouses or parents need help.”

Key Volunteer assistance can range from providing the unit’s mailing address abroad to answering questions about health care coverage to serving as a sympathetic ear or hosting a holiday party, Mrs. Hackney said.

This becomes a very important source of support as deployments wear on, said 1st Sgt. Devron Holman, the unit’s family readiness officer.

“A lot of families are expecting to hear from their Marine in country often,” he said, “but that depends on how much access they have to a computer or phone.”

Mrs. Hackney said the network helps her endure her husband’s fifth deployment.

“I don’t have to wait for my husband from Iraq to find the time to take a break, and either send me an e-mail, write me a letter, or a phone call, or whatever to let me know what’s going on with the unit,” she said. “I get firsthand information, and I know it’s correct information.”