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thedrifter
06-02-03, 06:19 AM
Local Marine Welcomed Home From War In Iraq



By: By BILL JONES/Staff Writer
Source: The Greeneville Sun
05-31-2003

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A young U.S. Marine returning home from duty in Iraq got a hero’s welcome here Friday evening.

Dustin Covington, a 23-year-old mechanic just back from duty with the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq, received a surprise welcome from dozens of friends and family members.

They were gathered in the parking lot of the Ashway Pentecostal Holiness Church at the corner of the Asheville Highway and Starlite Drive shortly before 7 p.m.

“It was awesome!” Covington said later of the welcome, which featured a Greeneville fire engine, a police cruiser, about 35 flag-waving friends, and a large American flag suspended from the boom of a bucket truck furnished by the Signs Plus sign company.

After the initial welcome in the church parking lot, according to Dustin’s mother, Carolyn Holt, the small convoy carrying Dustin traveled through a virtual gauntlet of yellow-ribbon bows along Starlite Drive en route to the family residence on Hogan Avenue.

Impromptu Celebration

A party attended by 30 to 40 well-wishers followed at the Holt residence. The impromptu celebration featured a large sheet cake decorated like an American flag and bearing an inscription that said “Welcome Home Dustin.”

The cake, Mrs. Holt said, was donated by the Food City supermarket on the Asheville Highway.

Some of the yellow bows that had been placed along Starlite Drive and Hogan Avenue were donated by Holley Creek Florists, she added.

Mrs. Holt said she did preliminary planning for the welcome-home celebration. But other family members completed the arrangements while she journeyed to North Carolina to pick up her son at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base.

Carolyn Holt said she learned only this past Tuesday night in a telephone call from Dustin that he and other members of his Marine Corps unit were being flown back to North Carolina from Kuwait.

Dustin, who was graduated from Greeneville High School in 1999, had been in the Marine Corps since October 2001 and had served in Kuwait and Iraq for the last four months.

Mrs. Holt said she was greatly relieved that months of “fearing that someone might come to my door and tell me my son wasn’t coming home” were over. Iraq Combat Described

Lance Cpl. Covington said his unit had been in Kuwait before the U.S. invasion of Iraq began.

When in Iraq, he said, while he never had to personally fire a weapon in combat, his unit did receive enemy artillery and small-arms fire on several occasions.

Fortunately, he said, the unit suffered only one death in 26 days of fighting that carried the unit from the Kuwait border all the way to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

Covington explained in an interview Friday night at his home that he was assigned to perform maintenance on Marine Corps LAVs (light armored vehicles) during the push through Iraq.

He said he drove a Humvee, a Jeep-like military all-terrain vehicle, that followed behind a column of armored vehicles during the push across Iraq.

Asked if he had thought he would be going to war when he joined the Marine Corps, he said he hadn’t really considered that prospect.

“It’s always a possibility,” he said. “But you don’t really think about war when you enlist. You just think about all the training you’ll be doing and things like that.” Thanks Community

Covington said he wanted to become a Marine because of the “pride and honor” associated with the Corps.

The young Marine also said he wanted to thank the people of the community.

“I just really appreciate the support that everyone has given me and all the things that they sent over there for me and the other Marines that I was with,” he said.

“We got a lot of packages when things started slowing down.”

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Sempers,

Roger