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thedrifter
02-04-08, 06:19 AM
Welcome home: Iraq veteran returns to Shiprock after three tours
By Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Article Launched: 02/04/2008 12:00:00 AM MST

SHIPROCK — Not every returning warrior gets personal advice from a Navajo Code Talker.

One of the elite group of Marines joined the welcoming party Saturday for Sgt. Lyn Karl Thomas, who returned last month from his third tour of duty in Iraq.

"I would have worn my uniform today, but I don't have one," Code Talker Samuel Sandoval said. "It's been 60 years since I've been back."

Thomas has been back for two weeks, but veterans already are calling on him to return to his roots and bring the benefits of the outside world to the reservation.

"I enlisted in the Marines not knowing what I was getting into," Sandoval said. "Many of us had never seen beyond our own home on the Navajo Nation."

Sixty years later, Sandoval's experience still is not unusual; many young Navajo still don't have the opportunity to leave the reservation, he said.

Thomas, 28, joined the Army for stability, he said. After graduating from Shiprock High School, he worked for a year, then enlisted in the Army.

"I was going to join the Marines,"
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he said, "but they were out to lunch when I went to the office, but the Army office was open."

Thomas was deployed to Afghanistan following Sept. 11, 2001, and in February of 2003, he was part of an invasion force into Iraq. Thomas went on to serve two more tours in Iraq, spending a total of three and one-half years there as a combat engineer.

"I think Iraq likes me," he said. "I'm proud of what I do, and I support the cause in Iraq."

The two warriors have a lot in common, Sandoval said. They both left a peaceful tribe for foreign warfare.

"The Navajo language does not have any terminology for military or these weapons," he said. "We had to live in the world, but we had the Navajo world when we came back."

It was the Navajo world that welcomed both warriors, though the method has changed slightly, Council Delegate Leonard Anthony said.

Tradition calls for a four-day ceremony in which the warrior is cleansed and restored before returning to civilian life. In a traditional ceremony, a soldier leaves his uniform outside when he enters a hogan and emerges four days later a different man, Anthony said.

Saturday's two-hour celebration was something of an abbreviated version of the traditional welcome, but the essentials still were intact. Local musicians beat on drums and sang memorial and honor songs, and veterans and citizens saluted the American flag.

"It has a lot of western thought in it now," Anthony said of the ceremony. "But this soldier has seen the war activities, the artillery shelling. For us here, we can provide songs to lighten the emotional activity of his mind."

It's a ceremony used for any returning heroes, said Lester Light, a Vietnam veteran and commander of the Shiprock Chapter Veterans Organization.

"We try to fulfill their needs," he said. "They need comfort when they come home and understanding of where he's been in the foreign country facing those hardships."

Thomas, who is stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, has more military service in his future. He originally enlisted for four years, but later decided to pursue a career in the military.

"I don't do it for money, but for the soldiers," he said. "And I do it for the simple fact that only a small percent of the population is in the military, and less than one percent of that is Native American."


Alysa Landry: alandry@daily-times.com

Ellie