Troops Caught in Cycle of Homecomings and Goings

Ft. CAMPBELL, Ky. -- By 2 a.m., families holding sleeping children and U.S. flags had filled the hangar’s bleacher seats, and when a sergeant grabbed the microphone to announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, the plane will arrive in 10 minutes! Ten minutes!” a roar went up and the band started playing “America the Beautiful.”

Outside, the temperature was plunging toward zero and a westerly wind whipped across the tarmac. “Helluva welcome for guys who’ve been sweatin’ in the desert,” someone said. The chartered World Airways DC10 whined to a stop 30 yards from the hangar. Three soldiers scampered up the stairs of the passenger ramp, and the families began chanting, “Open the doors! Open the doors!”

In a moment, the first paratrooper appeared silhouetted in the jetliner’s door with his M-4 rifle and duffle bag. Then another and another -- 270 in all, soon to be embraced by loved ones and surrounded by signs that said, “I Love My Uncle,” and “Thank You, Steve,” and “You’re Our Heroes.”

The advance party of the 101st Airborne Division was home from Iraq. The rest of the 19,000-member unit will follow in February and March.

“I just prayed and asked God to take care of Ken and my prayers are answered,” said the Rev. Kenneth Chester, whose son, a sergeant, was on the plane. Chester held the hand of his grandson, Austin, 7, who, like his returning father, wore camouflage fatigues.

Across the country there will be many joyous welcomes like the one at Ft. Campbell this month as the U.S. military rotates 130,000 troops out of Iraq after a year of combat. But, because fresh troops are being sent in to replace them, for every family reunited, another will be torn by the pain of separation and the uncertainty of war.

A significant number of the 110,000 personnel headed to Iraq as replacements are National Guardsmen and reservists, who now account for 60% of the Army’s troops in Iraq and play a more integral role in national defense than ever before.

Here and at other bases, the returning troops and the replacements pass in the night, as they’ve been doing for months, strangers on a shuttle that links the United States and Iraq.

Even as soldiers who stepped off the returning flight at Ft. Campbell shared laughs and tears with their families, in a barracks a few miles away, a unit of Kentucky National Guardsmen was rising in the bone-chilling predawn air for live-fire marksmanship training on Range 51. It would be one of their last exercises before flying to Iraq. No bands or families or farewell ceremonies would mark their departure.

“What advice would I give guys heading over?” Spc. Hazino Cherry asked in the hangar. “I’d tell them to expect the worst. Keep rumors to a minimum. Drink plenty of water. Stay out of the mental danger zone. Be a positive person.”

“Yeah,” said Spc. Joshua Thomas. “If you dwell on the hellish situation you’re in, it’ll get you down. You’re in danger but my morale stayed very high. We liberated the Iraqis. I was proud of that. Even if there were no WMD [weapons of mass destruction], we’re doing the right thing.”

Although the U.S. public remains divided on the war, it was difficult to find any 101st veterans of Iraq who doubted the merit of the mission. Unlike the Vietnam War when many soldiers came home full of self-doubt soldiers returning from Iraq seem to be doing so with pride of accomplishment.

“I don’t think I talked to a single soldier who said the president lied about why we went to war,” said Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. “Of course, like most military people, I’m apolitical. You do what you’re told. If you think about reasons too much, well, you just can’t afford to. If you can’t tolerate what’s going on, you get out of the military.”

“I’ve seen kids wave at us and I’ve seen kids spit at us,” said Sgt. 1st Class George Barrett, “but I have no doubt we’re doing the right thing. There’s a lot of negative stuff on TV. And there’s a lot of progress on the ground. In Mosul, we got the university going again and we got the electricity back on. We’re bringing democracy. If things keep headed in this direction, I think the war is winnable, but it won’t happen overnight.”

As the reunion at Ft. Campbell was winding down, Capt. Kerry Greene, a chaplain, watched the soldiers disappear into the darkness, bearing passes for three days off post . He knew the 101st would stay put for awhile. He also knew the division would get a new mission some months down the road but had no idea where it would take them. Maybe back to Iraq.

“I’d say there’s a bigger adjustment to make coming home than there is in going over,” he said. “After six months, a family learns to take care of things on its own. There’s a new routine. Things change in the house. I came back and we had a new baby in the house. You have to integrate back into the family and the community. You come back hoping things are the same, things will be right. But you never know.”

On the road between the arrival hangar, where the returning troops were greeted with pumpkin pie, bags of popcorn and cups of steaming coffee, and Range 51 where the replacement troops were going through drills, a sign announced, “310 Deathless Days” and listed last year’s fatalities at four.

It was a peacetime message that referred to traffic fatalities at home suffered by members of the 101st. Had it referred to deaths in Iraq, the number would have been 59, including 17 in a helicopter crash in November, the most suffered by any unit in the war.

Lt. Brian Dawson’s Kentucky National Guard platoon arrived at the range with the dawn. Its members were among 1,200 guardsmen and reservists at Ft. Campbell -- and 25,000 throughout the eastern United States -- preparing to deploy to Iraq. Dawson’s troops include teachers, firefighters, mechanics, pharmacists, salespeople and university students, to whom Kentucky awards full college tuition for joining the Guard.

For more than a month,, trainers had run the citizen-soldiers through an “Iraqi village” with a mosque and angry “demonstrators,” held live-fire exercises and staged realistic mock convoy ambushes and roadside bomb explosions. There also were lessons on a few basics of Iraqi culture and Islam. Even with 35 new members in the platoon, Dawson said he was pleased at how the unit was forming as a single entity and how people were working together. His unit had already been “validated” -- certified as ready for combat -- and would be headed to war in a matter of days.

“Sure, there’s apprehension,” he said. “But if I didn’t feel there was some sense of being scared, I’d be scared. There should be a fear factor. Without it, you’ve got overconfidence.”

In the foxhole in front of him were Sgt. Melanie Schatz, a cashier, and Cpl. James Smith, a shipper in the dental industry. Past the coils of barbed wire on the perimeter, targets popped up from behind shrubs -- a cutout of a human figure representing an enemy; another representing a friendly civilian. In staccato bursts of gunfire, the soldiers brought down the enemy figures without harming the friendly ones.

“Ever since 9/11, we kind of knew we’d be going over,” Schatz said. “It took two years but this really didn’t come as a surprise. I feel prepared. The brush-up training at Campbell really helped.”

“I’m ready, too,” said Smith. “Do I feel resentment that my life’s been disrupted, that the Guard’s shouldering a big load these days? None whatsoever. I just want to get the job done, and done right, and get back home.”