‘It feels great to be home’

As the nine buses carrying some 475 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers rolled in to the Lane Events Center on Friday, and the hundreds of family and friends behind the metal fence erupted in cheers, Cpl. David McGuffey Jr. knew right where he wanted to be. And fast.

In the arms of his wife, Abra.

It was almost as if he flew off his bus before the wheels had stopped moving.

“It feels great to be home,” said McGuffey, a 2001 Dallas High School graduate who lives with his wife in Keizer and plans to return to his job as a Portland police officer.

Abra McGuffey, a sixth-grade teacher, just cried and held her husband, who left for training last May and had been in Iraq since July.

“You’re home!” she said, clutching a small U.S. flag. “You’re home, you’re home, you’re home.”

McGuffey and the others of the 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Battalion 162nd Infantry were all demobilized Friday at the Lane Events Center after 10 months of duty in Iraq and Kuwait. Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Peter DeFazio, Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken and others spoke at the ceremony attended by about 4,000.

“It has been a long 10 months since you deployed into the heat of the Iraqi summer,” Kulongoski said as the soldiers stood during the entire hourlong ceremony. “And I speak for all Oregonians when I say we are so glad to have you home.”

Kulongoski visited the battalion on Veterans Day in November in Iraq.

“There was no doubt you would make us proud and represent Oregon with the finest of skill and honor — and you did,” he said. “During your tour the U.S. scaled back its forces in Iraq and increased them in Afghanistan. Your efforts to secure convoys and bases facilitated one of the largest movements of troops and materials since World War II. And your presence and support allowed the Iraqi people to continue to build their government and economy.”

The “citizen soldiers” were part of a broad mobilization of about 2,700 Oregon Army National Guard troops who left last spring for two months of training in Georgia before going to Iraq and Kuwait. The soldiers have been arriving home across the state this month after about a week at Fort Lewis, Wash.

In Iraq they provided convoy security for the delivery of goods and services, guarding about 6,000 convoy missions covering more than 90,000 square miles.

Another 400 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers remain in Iraq and will arrive home this fall, Guard spokesman Capt. Stephen Bomar said. And there will be future deployments as well.

While soldiers such as McGuffey will return to their previous jobs, many others face the prospect of looking for work or returning to school.

“It’s a relief to be back here,” Spc. Nicholas Geraghty of Vancouver, Wash., said, as he held his 6-month-old daughter, Aubrey. Geraghty was able to come home on leave when she was born last fall, but he had not seen her since she was a week old. “It’s been a long week up in Fort Lewis, but now we’re back to our families and friends,” he said, as he visited with his girlfriend, Melissa Brinley, and his parents, Corey and Claudia Rose.

Two members of the 2nd/162nd did not return home Friday. Spc. Taylor Marks, 19, of Monmouth, and Sgt. Earl Werner, 38, of Amboy, Wash., were killed on Aug. 28 when an explosive struck their convoy in Rashid, Iraq.

“Our success did not come without a price,” Command Sgt. Maj. Paul Warnock said during the ceremony. “Two of our own made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our great nation. Earl Werner, Taylor Marks and their families will forever be with us as we live with the freedoms they stepped forward to uphold.”

Spc. Janna Bloom, 20, a Thurston High School graduate, said she met Marks but did not know him well. She was at Camp Adder on Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq during her deployment, while Marks and Werner were farther north when they were killed.

“It feels really good to be home,” said Bloom, who deployed last year as Janna Sweet and then married a fellow Oregon Army National Guard soldier, Brenin Bloom, during training in Georgia.

“You must have grown 5 inches,” Janna Bloom’s grandmother, Carol Sweet of Mitchell, told her as she hugged her in the events center parking lot before Friday’s ceremony.

Bloom plans to attend Lane Community College in the fall.

DeFazio spoke during the ceremony about the historic inequities “between the recognition given to our Guard and Reserves and our full-time Army. Those distinctions are no longer relevant in the modern world. You’re doing identical missions and providing an identical service and (making an) identical sacrifice,” he said.

“I know that almost half of you are coming home to look for work or educational opportunities,” DeFazio said. “We’ve done well in the 21st century for education with the GI Bill. But we’ve got to do better on employment opportunities for you.”