At last, soldiers home

First it was airplane trouble, then the weather.

For the past week, circumstances beyond their control kept soldiers from the 242nd Ordnance Disposal from a well-deserved homecoming at Fort Carson.

They wanted to see their spouses, kids and parents again after deploying 12 months ago to help in the fight against improvised explosives in Afghanistan.

What they got was a week’s worth of bad news and long nights at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany — as if hunting for live bombs weren’t harrowing enough.

On Saturday night, few seemed to dwell on the delay.

“It feels good to be back, meeting my daughter for the second time,” Spc. Peter Tudor said with 9-monthold Evangeline in his arms and his wife, Jessica, at his side.

The gymnasium at the Fort Carson Morale, Welfare and Recreation Center thundered with applause as the 18 men and women entered in formation, in a ceremony that had to be rescheduled every day since Monday.

“First it was a part for the plane that they had to get fixed, then I’m not sure what it was,” said Sgt. Edward Jackson, who reunited with wife, Shannon, and their two children, 5-year-old Shamaar and 4-year-old Shaniyah.

The unit left for Bagram, Afghanistan, in March 2007 and worked at the battalion level assisting ordnance disposal teams across the country.

The unit ensured the bomb disposal teams had the supplies, equipment and personnel needed to fight IEDs.

Col. Karl Reinhard, commander of the 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal group, credited the group with eliminating 600 IEDs, 115,000 unexploded “ordnance items” and 90 munitions caches — the caches alone accounting for 1.2 million pounds of hazardous explosives, he said.

Family members had different ways of coping with the delay while waiting for the soldiers to return.

Danielle Morrison of Newport, N.H., watched “a lot of TV” during her weeklong stay at a La Quinta in Colorado Springs while waiting for her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Neil Morrison.

On Saturday afternoon, Shelly Cossette sat her son, 11-month-old Preston, in front of a video of her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Cossette, reading from two children’s books — “Guess How Much I Love You” and “Goodnight Moon.”

“We wanted to give him some idea of what Daddy looks like and sounds like,” she said.

For one wife at Saturday night’s ceremony, the wait is not yet over. Command Sgt. Maj. Joseph Hubbard stayed behind in Germany with the unit’s cargo, allowing everybody else to change to a commercial flight. He’s due back Monday.

“We’ve had 28 years of this,” his wife, Suzanne Hubbard, said. “It’s nothing new.”