[pmulcahy11b]

I think people would find it disturbing how little attention is given to getting the families of servicemen/women, or noncombatants in general, out of the way. I've been out of the loop at that level for a while, so I don't know how they handle it now, but it used to be a sort of "jam them on whatever plane or ship is available," approach, and every family has a bug-out bag ready.

You might also have a situation like Saigon in 1975 -- you have to fight off civilians who you don't intend to evacuate (or even allied personnel). Families might have a really hard time trying to get to evac points. And remember, airfields are major targets in the opening hours of just about every World War 3 scenario. In Sir John Hackett's The Third World War, there is a very ugly scene about a plane full of evacuating families going down at an airfield in Germany (IIRC, after a nearby MRL rocket hit while the plane was taking off -- been a while since I read it). That's bound to have a major effect on morale.

One player I in a game I GMed once played a 20-year-old girl (by 2000) who was a US dependent at the beginning of the Twilight War. The player had the PC driven by a determination to find her father -- she already seen the rest of her family in Germany die. Interesting character workup process there...