thedrifter
04-29-07, 06:01 PM
Final journey to home's embrace
April 29, 2007
By JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
TWENTYNINE PALMS, CALIF — Under a desert moon, the men of the 1/24th Reserve Marines assembled Sunday morning to go home – at last – after a rugged seven-month tour in Iraq’s Anbar Province.
Formed up not long after midnight, the men got one last cautionary lecture before boarding the white buses that would carry them to March Field for their flights home.
"You’re going to have a lot of expectations that aren’t going to be met,” First Sgt. Bryan Taylor said. “Listen to the people at home. Listen to them more than anything else. Show that you care. They have a lot to tell, just as you have a lot to tell them.”
The 1/24th was called to active duty almost a year ago with training in the California deserts. The 800 or so men of the Michigan-based unit – bolstered with about 200 men from other states -- left their families, jobs, schools and towns to serve half-way around the world connected by occasional phone calls and e-mails.
Twenty-two men were killed and more than 40 were seriously wounded in and around Fallujah, scene of some of the fiercest fighting.
The men’s deployment and families’ homefront experiences were chronicled by the Free Press as Michigan’s Band of Brothers.
Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holidays saw the men grinding out daily patrols and ambushes, but with mountains of packages from home. Extra convoys had to be marshaled to carry the packages to the scattered outpost and Forward Operating Bases.
Surrounded by more food than they could eat and enough toiletries to keep a full army daisy-fresh and sunshine-sweet, the Marines shared the gifts with Iraqi schools and families hard pressed by the rigors of the war.
And on Sunday, those men all but leapt on the buses to leave the sunburned sand and scrub of Twentynine Palms, the huge Marine training base in the Mojave Desert.
By 8 a.m. on a hazy southern California morning, Charlie Company was – what else – lining up again. But now the men were leaning forward, anxious to board the jetliner for Lansing.
They trooped on board getting a last good-bye from Laura Froehlich, the 58-year-old Air Force veteran who’s personally welcomed or sent off, every service member passing through the airfield in the past four years.
“I can’t let them go without wishing them good luck,” Froehlich said.
Most of their gear and baggage was shipped ahead, and the men were allowed little more than their sun-bleached desert camo and a small backpack draped with flip-flops and running shoes.
For most, plans were just one word: home. That word held the promise of parents and wives; kids and hugs and home cooking; their own beds and indoor plumbing with flush toilets.
The men of Charlie marched up the stairway, and the jet door closed at 8:26 a.m.
It started taxiing at 8:30, and five minute later, it was climbing through the morning sky as Headquarter and Service Company marched from the mammoth hanger to board their plane to Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township.
Their jet was soon filled and launched. It was followed in quick time by Bravo Company bound for Saginaw. Alpha Company was the last to lift away, and the huge hanger was empty.
The Marines were on their way back to factories, law offices, firehouses, police patrol cars and salesrooms.
And of course home.
Ellie
April 29, 2007
By JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
TWENTYNINE PALMS, CALIF — Under a desert moon, the men of the 1/24th Reserve Marines assembled Sunday morning to go home – at last – after a rugged seven-month tour in Iraq’s Anbar Province.
Formed up not long after midnight, the men got one last cautionary lecture before boarding the white buses that would carry them to March Field for their flights home.
"You’re going to have a lot of expectations that aren’t going to be met,” First Sgt. Bryan Taylor said. “Listen to the people at home. Listen to them more than anything else. Show that you care. They have a lot to tell, just as you have a lot to tell them.”
The 1/24th was called to active duty almost a year ago with training in the California deserts. The 800 or so men of the Michigan-based unit – bolstered with about 200 men from other states -- left their families, jobs, schools and towns to serve half-way around the world connected by occasional phone calls and e-mails.
Twenty-two men were killed and more than 40 were seriously wounded in and around Fallujah, scene of some of the fiercest fighting.
The men’s deployment and families’ homefront experiences were chronicled by the Free Press as Michigan’s Band of Brothers.
Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holidays saw the men grinding out daily patrols and ambushes, but with mountains of packages from home. Extra convoys had to be marshaled to carry the packages to the scattered outpost and Forward Operating Bases.
Surrounded by more food than they could eat and enough toiletries to keep a full army daisy-fresh and sunshine-sweet, the Marines shared the gifts with Iraqi schools and families hard pressed by the rigors of the war.
And on Sunday, those men all but leapt on the buses to leave the sunburned sand and scrub of Twentynine Palms, the huge Marine training base in the Mojave Desert.
By 8 a.m. on a hazy southern California morning, Charlie Company was – what else – lining up again. But now the men were leaning forward, anxious to board the jetliner for Lansing.
They trooped on board getting a last good-bye from Laura Froehlich, the 58-year-old Air Force veteran who’s personally welcomed or sent off, every service member passing through the airfield in the past four years.
“I can’t let them go without wishing them good luck,” Froehlich said.
Most of their gear and baggage was shipped ahead, and the men were allowed little more than their sun-bleached desert camo and a small backpack draped with flip-flops and running shoes.
For most, plans were just one word: home. That word held the promise of parents and wives; kids and hugs and home cooking; their own beds and indoor plumbing with flush toilets.
The men of Charlie marched up the stairway, and the jet door closed at 8:26 a.m.
It started taxiing at 8:30, and five minute later, it was climbing through the morning sky as Headquarter and Service Company marched from the mammoth hanger to board their plane to Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township.
Their jet was soon filled and launched. It was followed in quick time by Bravo Company bound for Saginaw. Alpha Company was the last to lift away, and the huge hanger was empty.
The Marines were on their way back to factories, law offices, firehouses, police patrol cars and salesrooms.
And of course home.
Ellie