Guard unit comes home
Trish Welch said her husband didn’t talk about what he did, but she knew his duties could wear on him. After he returned several years ago from a more combat-heavy deployment to Iraq, she said, her husband had nightmares for months.
Riley Altermayer stood on the grass, cradling her stuffed Dalmatian, dressed in her pink tutu, waiting impatiently Wednesday for the late arriving bus from Mississippi.
“Where is she?” Riley said, jumping in place. “I wish she was here right now!”
Her mother, Sgt. Sara Anderson, was one of 120 Louisiana National Guard soldiers from the 415th Military Intelligence Battalion who came home Thursday after an 11-month-long deployment in Afghanistan.
The three buses arrived in Carville to rows of U.S. flags and printed and hand-made welcome home signs.
The soldiers, still in fatigues, got off the buses, just as impatient as the families who had been waiting for them under cool, sunny November skies.
Anderson immediately grabbed her daughter and lifted her up in a big hug and kiss. She then turned to her mother, Gina DiVincenti, and hugged and kissed her too.
“My heart was pounding,” Anderson said, describing her feeling as the bus approached. “I had the whole thing figured out in my head.”
The soldiers were a mix of first-timers, like Anderson, and veterans of previous deployments.
Gov. Bobby Jindal, who was also present to greet them, said that this battalion had fought in Iraq, had worked during Katrina, helped with the BP oil spoil and most recently served in Afghanistan. He noted that they returned after this tour of duty without casualty or injury.
“This is one of the talented units in the military,” Jindal said.
The returning soldiers conducted interrogation, analysis and counterintelligence operations.
“It is an important mission,” Jindal said. “They truly help to save lives when they’re in action.”
Trish Welch and her family got up at 4 a.m. to make the 2½ hour trek from Ragley, north of Lake Charles, to be at the Gillis W. Long National Guard center in Carville, where her husband, Sgt. Stanley Welch, was scheduled to arrive Wednesday morning.
The family had signs ready, some good-naturedly joshing the sergeant who is turning 30 on Saturday and for coming home where a birthday celebration awaits.
“I gotta make him feel old,” daughter Devann Welch, 12., said
Trish Welch said her husband didn’t talk about what he did when they got a chance to talk, but she knew his duties could wear on him.
After he returned several years ago from a more combat-heavy deployment to Iraq, she said, her husband had nightmares for months, and she hopes his return is easier this time.
The toll of having a spouse away for so long and potentially in harm’s way spurred her to help other spouses by serving on what’s known as the Family Readiness Group.
Trish Welch said some people mistakenly think that her separation is the same as other more commonplace kind of separations, such as people with spouses who work offshore. The fear of something happening, the protracted length of the separation, the difficulty maintaining regular communication just makes it different, she said.
“They don’t understand the pressures you have to deal with,” she said.
Some of the spouses she talks with were present Wednesday.
“Trish is my life support,” said Vanessa Clements, of Metairie, who waited Wednesday for her husband, Corey.
John and Toni Tullier, of Baton Rouge, were on hand Wednesday, though, their son, Paul, had suggested that they could probably skip it.
“He said it’s not going to be much of a ceremony, and I said, ‘We’re coming anyway,” Toni Tullier said.
Paul’s wife, Holly, and his two children also didn’t want to miss anything. They visited him in Mississippi this past weekend, where the 415th stopped and then followed his bus over to Baton Rouge from Mandeville, Toni Tullier said.
Brandin Sullivan and his daughter, Jayla, made the trip to Mississippi as well. Sullivan’s fiancé, Staff Sgt. Liz Cypriot, an 11-year veteran of military service, was returning from her second tour of duty overseas, but the first since meeting Sullivan, who works as an electrician in Baton Rouge.
Cypriot said she’s glad to be home; the trip back from Afghanistan was getting old.
“It was a very long five days,” she said.
Besides the two have a more pressing issue; they have a wedding to plan for just five months from now. He proposed to her in June when the battalion was home for two weeks, the only time they returned during that year away. She showed off the sparkling ring he’d bought for her.
“We could really do nothing,” Sullivan explained as far as the wedding planning. “We had to wait until she came home.”
Many of the waiting families talked about what they were going to cook for their returning loved ones for Thanksgiving.
John and Toni Tullier listed several food items awaiting, including fried turkey, corned beef and pork, none of which their son would have anything to do with
“He likes to cook, but we want to let him relax,” Toni Tullier said.
Lisa and Michael Swilley had a warm reunion after their long time away.
The couple subsisted all year on twice-a-day phone calls, with the sergeant able only to talk to his wife for about 15 minutes apiece. Lisa Swilley said she sometimes gets asked how she does it.
“It’s based on the foundation, on the love you have for each other,” she said.