Sent to me by an old friend.
Our soldiers will soon all be home from Iraq here at Ft. Campbell, KY. There were 600 soldiers who came home yesterday. I will send portions of a human interest story that was recently in our local newspaper here.
I did not identify the soldier by name.


BROTHERS' reunite


It was a day Staff Sgt. ---- has thought about a hundred times--to be able to stand before his fellow soldiers of his unit as they got off the plane from Iraq. The task was not easy for Staff Sgt. ----, who lost his legs in a rocket-propelled grenade attack Nov. 7 in Mosul, but he was more than determined to be there for the "brotherhood."


Nothing would have stopped me from being here today," said ---- as he stood at Campbell Army Airfield in the cold with the help of crutches, wearing a clean, crisp desert camouflage uniform and desert boots that fit snugly onto his prostheses. The infantry, airborne, air assault and ranger tabs neatly sewn on his uniform are a tribute to what motivates this soldier in life, work and using his legs again.

"This learning-to-walk thing is difficult," he said as he struggled with a few slow steps on crutches and included an about face. "It's getting better. This has been my goal to be here to greet them in uniform." His wife was close by with a wheelchair to offer relief if he needed it--the same place she's been since he came back to the United States. He shook hands and shared hugs with many of the 280 troops that arrived Saturday. Oftentimes soldiers would huddle around waiting for their turn with smiles big and bright.

.......that he was even standing at the airfield less than three months after the attack is a miracle in itself, said his father on telephone........"he has the doctors all baffled." As the soldiers lined up in Hangar 2 waiting for the word to go home, Smith again stood alongside his unit and proudly sang the Screaming Eagles division song. It was a day he will never forget. It was a day he was supposed to come home on that plane, too. "The last time they saw me I was all messed up. Those guys saved my life......how many times do you have buddies that put a tourniquet on your leg to save your life?" He will return to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. next week to continue his physical therapy and rehabilitation.