Click here to learn about the new, free Red Cross support group for military families.

With the American Red Cross you are never out of touch … around the clock …around the world.

The American Red Cross Services to the Armed Forces (SAF) links military families separated by conflict and tours of duty. Each year, we deliver more than 1.4 million emergency messages to military installations and family residences around the world each year.

Last year, your local Red Cross provided SAF services to 561 men and women of the Armed Forces and their families.

The American Red Cross has been delivering emergency messages for military members since the Spanish-American War. The Armed Forces rely on the American Red Cross for messages of births, as well as solemn news of family illnesses or deaths. The American Red Cross sends messages quickly, anywhere in the world, including to ships at sea, embassies and isolated military units.

The American Red Cross provides the following services for the Armed Forces:

• Emergency Communications: Keeping military personnel in touch with their families during family emergencies such as death, serious illness or the birth of a child. American Red Cross emergency messages provide military personnel and their commanders with fast, reliable information to help them make decisions about emergency leave, deferment, compassionate reassignment, and hardship discharge. The American Red Cross transmits more than 1.4 million emergency messages each year to members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families.
• Financial Assistance: The American Red Cross verifies the need for financial assistance when an urgent personal or family crisis arises – that is, when you might need financial assistance for emergency travel, burial of a loved one, or urgent health and welfare needs such as food and shelter. Then the Red Cross acts as a disbursing agent for the Military Aid Society.
• Counseling: Providing counseling, information, referrals and other social services to military families. This role is becoming increasingly important as more community based military, such as National Guard and Reserves are called to active duty.

Active duty service members stationed in the United States, and their immediate family members, can call the Armed Forces Emergency Service Center for help seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

For assistance, please call (888) 737-4306.