March 29, 2024
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Soldiers return, grieving their lost city

BANGOR – The first planeload of 100 weary Louisiana National Guardsmen touched down here Friday morning, returning from the carnage of Iraq on their way to their home state that has been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The soldiers clambered off the plane to go through U.S. Customs before their charter flight from Kuwait departed again for Alexandria, La., where they face the task of finding scattered families.

“It’s good to be back,” said Pvt. Joshua Dumas, 23, of Slidell, La.

At Bangor International Airport, elderly members of a U.S. veterans group waved flags and offered the soldiers cell phones and chocolate chip cookies.

“Some of them don’t know what they’re going back to,” troop greeter Evelyn Bradman said Friday. “They made quite a few phone calls.”

After seeing 35 of their group killed in Iraq, members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team prepared to take care of relatives injured or made refugees, or, perhaps, mourn family members killed by Katrina and its devastating aftermath.

Bill Knight, organizer of the Maine Troop Greeters, referred to the incoming troops as the “shovel gang” in light of the work they’ll soon face to dig up the rubble left in Katrina’s wake, including one soldier who lost everything.

“He said somebody sent him a picture of his house, and it was all torn to pieces,” Knight said.

For Spc. Nathan Faust of Chalmette, La., it’s a total loss. His family home is flooded to the peak of the roof. His fiancee’s home in Plaquemines Parish is at least as devastated. He said his uncle, the warden at the Orleans Parish jail, was trapped in his office by riots for 30 hours in knee-deep water.

“All my stuff, all my family, everyone’s homeless,” said Faust, his worry-lined face making him appear older than his 23 years. “I want to move out of the city and start over someplace else. I can’t put my life on hold for two years and wait for the city to get back on its feet.”

The 100 returnees were mainly soldiers from the New Orleans-based 1st Battalion, 141st Field Artillery Regiment, which left Kuwait on Thursday night on a charter flight. The few hundred remaining battalion members are expected to fly home from Kuwait over the next few days.

Since Katrina struck, soldiers knew their homecoming would be a complicated affair. They would trade one disaster zone for another.

“‘Bittersweet’ isn’t the word for it. It’s worse,” Sgt. Joe Partin, 34, of Harahan, La., said.

Before their flight to Alexandria, the soldiers were processed out of the war zone at Camp Victory, Kuwait. A U.S. Navy customs official who briefed the glum Louisiana residents tried to whip up some fervor for their flight home.

“Are you all happy to go home?” the Customs agent yelled. A few troops replied with a halfhearted “hoo-ah,” the Army’s standard rallying cry. The agent tried again, louder, and failed to raise enthusiasm.

“I’m going to be in your place in 2 1/2 months, and I’m going to be going nuts,” he admonished the Guardsmen.

Later, when informed that he was addressing troops from New Orleans, the Customs agent apologized, Partin said.

“Normally, we’d be yelling and screaming,” Partin said in an interview aboard the plane.

Partin, like everyone else, had been gearing up to celebrate his homecoming with friends and family. Now those people are scattered, some of them hundreds of miles away.

“We were so pumped up, so high, so ready to see our families and friends,” said the soldier, his head shaved, feet tucked under a camouflage blanket. “We all wanted to go back to a sense of normalcy.

“Now we’re going back to chaos. It’s very anticlimactic.”

The chartered Boeing 757 stopped in Budapest to change crews and then in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel.

Soldiers streamed into Shannon’s airport bar and ordered pints of draft beer and glasses of cognac – their first drinks in almost a year. Some gathered around a television showing news reports of their devastated city.

Sgt. Charles Unruh, 24, and Pvt. Larry Alston, 35, carried beers in one hand and double-shots of cognac in the other.

“To the big dogs,” Alston said with a growl as the pair clinked glasses and drank.

“It’s been six months for me,” Unruh said, sipping his beer.

Nearby, Sgt. Andrew Hines, 26, of New Orleans and Sgt. Johan Mackay, 25, of Kenner toasted with pints of beer.

“To a safe flight home,” said Mackay. Told it was time to reboard, Mackay said “happy Mardi Gras” and gulped his beer.

Both men said their families had fled New Orleans – Hines’ to North Carolina and Mackay’s to Houston. Neither soldier was certain where he would live on return.

“They still can’t locate one of my aunts. But she’s OK, we think,” said Mackay, who swaggered with a burly weightlifter’s build. Mackay said he’d had enough of Army life for a while.

“I’m done. I love the Army, but I did my time,” he said. Mackay said Guardsmen who hadn’t served time in Iraq were better suited to the hurricane relief duties that many believe await the returning unit.

The hurricane, Faust said, “was like a bad dream.” He had been looking forward to getting back to work, plinking away at his bachelor’s degree, and perhaps going to law school after graduation.

He planned to marry his fiancee in Southern Oaks, a big wedding hall on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

“That place is underwater. My fiancee’s wedding dress is underwater,” Faust said. “It’s all surreal. I figure we’ll go to a justice of the peace, and when life gets back to normal, we’ll have a big wedding.”

As Faust spoke with tight-lipped intensity, in the seat in front of him, Alston, just returned from the airport bar, was cracking jokes and carrying on.

“How good will it feel to get back to the crib after 11 months of disaster in Iraq?” Alston shouted, then asking a passing flight attendant for vodka and cranberry juice. The flight attendant declined, citing the soldiers’ M-16 rifles at their feet. “We can’t have drinks because we got guns? Hell, we ain’t got no magazines,” Alston shouted.

Some soldiers guffawed. Faust did not even smile.

Pvt. Joshua Dumas, 23, of Slidell also lost the house he and a group of friends rented on the flood-prone shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Asked where it was now, Dumas said: “Probably at the bottom of the lake.”

Unlike the others, set adrift without a compass, Dumas has a plan.

The redheaded Army medic is also a guitarist and saxophonist and now-homeless roommates are band members. His group, Euphonic, plans to buy a motor home and tour the United States, playing in bars from coast to coast. The Federal Emergency Management Agency relief check will help fund the plan.

“Everything is lining up,” he said. “We may even get some extra cash.”


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