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Holding the job does not mean you can not fill it with someone temporarily. You would not have to make everyone do double duty. You just have to give the deployed person back his/her job when they come back. I fail to see how that would be an incredible hardship. You could interview for a temp with the understanding that the job was until the other person returned from deployment.

You just have to give the deployed person back his/her job when they come back. I fail to see how that would be an incredible hardship.

Okay, I'll explain. In my own case, a temp worker coming in would be all but worthless. To replace my current primary employee in one of my businesses—whether permanently or for a year—would take me 9-12 months of daily training. Since I own other business interests I have to take care of, this means that something would definitely have to suffer. It's definitely not a matter of just "hiring someone to fill in." Utterly impossible. And no one worth hiring is going to take the job anyway with the understanding that they're gone as soon as someone else gets back home. I don't mean it sarcastically in the least when I say that you fail to see how it's a hardship because you're not the one trying to make it work. Thankfully it's not an issue in any of my present circumstances, but holding a job for someone, no matter how noble the reason, would be a practical impossibility.