Fort Carson soldiers return to waiting families, friends

The last time Abby Blanton saw her daddy, she was 6 weeks old. Now, older and wiser at 13 months, she wasn't so sure what to make of the big guy. She was happy to cling to Mom as she sized up Dad.

"I'm going to take some getting used to," said a grinning and soft-spoken John Blanton, and that was fine by him. After 12 months of duty in Operation Enduring Freedom in one of the diciest regions in Afghanistan, the Army chief warrant officer 4 said he is ready for one long tour of normalcy.

That stateside tour began at 7:47 p.m. Monday in a hot and stuffy Fort Carson Special Events Center, where 140 soldiers from a cross-section of units within the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, staged their  homecoming ceremony.

The 140 represent the first sizable contingent of the 4th BCT to return from Afghanistan since the team's deployment about a year ago. A much smaller advance detachment arrived in April. During the next two months, the rest of the team's 3,500 soldiers will come home, in wavelets of 150 here, a few hundred there.

On Monday, bedsheet welcome-home banners hung on Fort Carson's chain-link fence facing Colorado Highway 115 near the Post's main gate. As the sun dipped behind Cheyenne Mountain, a convoy of six buses, flanked by a police escort, rolled into view. At the gate, waiting police cars lit up and howled, and swarmed the convoy all the way to the events center parking lot.

There, the soldiers fell into formation and at 7:40, marched 4 abreast into the gym to loud country music and even louder screams. Some family and friends in the bleachers wiped tears as they also held videocameras aloft. The four rows of soldiers stood at parade rest.

Following the invocation and national anthem, Fort Carson Commander Maj. Gen. David Perkins provided a few quick words of praise.

"What you went to do is what the most selfless of people do when they are given a great gift, and that is to share it," he said. "You went there to share it with millions of people that have never known peace, prosperity, freedom, and liberty."

After three minutes, even the general couldn't hold back the tide. A quick "Dismissed!" was issued, and the families poured out onto the gym floor.

It was a scene that will be repeated dozens of times in the coming weeks.

While in Afghanistan, the 4th BCT assisted the Afghan national army with security, governance and peacekeeping operations in Kunar province, an impossibly rugged and remote region of Afghanistan's eastern frontier. It borders Pakistan's western federally administered tribal areas, where elements of the Taliban, al-Qaida and native tribal factions are dug into cave networks.

The 4th BCT also conducted police assessments south of Kunar, in the Nangarhar province, to help conduct elections, create partnerships with local doctors, and run training academies for the Afghanistan national police, according to the Army.

But that year is behind him now, and Blanton said his next objective is to ease back into life at home with his kids — Katie, 17; Tyler, 15; Emily, 9; and Abby — and his wife, Lisa.

"I've got to take it slow and find out where I fit into her routine," Blanton said. There's a honeydo list waiting for him, and Tyler's garden — a small farm, really — of corn and potatoes, to tend in the backyard of their northeast Colorado Springs home.

The routine, Lisa Blanton said, "is all around the kids. Keeping things normal as possible."