Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Oregon National Guard Sgt. Tom Reasons was feeling thankful Sunday, Nov. 13, as he stood in the National Guard Armory in Lebanon.
?There?s nothing more a soldier could ask for than to come back to family and friends,? said Reasons, 28. ?It?s great to be back.?
Reasons was one of five soldiers hailing from Sweet Home who returned home Sunday with F Troop, based in Lebanon, after a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, where they were assigned to G Troop, 82nd Calvary, out of Redmond. The other four were Thomas Hall, Matt Miner, Josh Boehland and Tom Smith.
The five, along with some 35 other members of F Troop, served at Forward Operating Base Gains Mill, named after a Civil War battlefield, near Kirkuk in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
?It feels good, it?s nice being home,? said Miner, 22, a specialist who grew up in Sweet Home but now lives in Stayton. He said he?s glad to see his fiancée, Dawn Fuller, and other family and friends.
After a deployment ceremony in Redmond Sunday morning, a bus carried the F Troop members over the mountains to Sweet Home, where hey were greeted by an escort of police and fire vehicles, and a long line of motorcyclists. The procession rolled through town past hundreds of cheering residents waving flags and signs. It then moved on to Lebanon, where more emergency vehicles joined the parade and thousands of residents lined the streets through most of the length of the city.
The bus stopped at the armory at 350 W. Maple St., where news crews and more family and friends awaited, along with some snacks.
1st Sgt. Lory Burk and State Rep. Jeff Kropf spoke to the soldiers, welcoming them home.
?I?m so proud of you for sacrificing for my freedom,? Kropf said.
A moment of silence was held for Staff Sgt. Kevin Davis of Lebanon, who was killed April 8 when the vehicle he was riding in hit a bomb. Davis? family members were among those gathered at the armory.
But mostly it was high spirits as soldiers greeted family and friends and started catching up on old and new relationships.
?My son was born last March, so now I get to get acquainted with him,? said Staff Sgt. Tom Smith. Smith and his wife Charity also have a 5-year-old son, Bryce, and a 3-year-old daughter, Bailey, in addition to 8-month-old Owen.
Smith, 29, who served in Germany and Bosnia during a three-year stint in the Army before joining the National Guard, said Iraq was different.
?Bosnia was a peacekeeping mission. There was no threat against us,? he said. ?In Iraq, the threat was high. We were in a constant state of alert.?
Smith said he and his fellow soldiers did a lot of route clearance and patrols – and located 18 ammunition caches during their tour. They also provided security for polls during Iraq?s first election.
Now that he?s back, he said he wants to take ?lots of time off? before returning to his job as a carpenter with Chambers Construction in Eugene.
Family life is going to be a priority for Reasons too.
?It?s time to ?get back into the rhythm of life with my family,? he said.
Reasons and his wife Christine have a son, Thomas Jr., 6, and Christine?s son DeWayne Pruitt, 13.
One of the toughest parts of being in Iraq, he said, was the communication problems.
?The Internet service was constantly going down,? Christine Reasons said.
Despite that, snail mail wasn?t much better, Tom Reasons said, so he tended to rely on e-mail.
?It was tough to communicate,? he said. ?It kept us from contact with our families.?
Reasons said Iraq was a ?different place.?
?The standards we have here (that) we take for granted are not in place over there,? he said, adding that trash was ?everywhere.?
But he found the people, in general, not hostile.
?Even though there were so many enemies there, a lot of people appreciated American soldiers,? he said. ?They?re willing to learn. If you treat them right, they?ll treat you right as well.?
He said he spent time doing a wide variety of tasks, from working in the tactical operations center and doing computer administration to operating unmanned aerial vehicles that checked out suspicious vehicles.
Reasons said he plans to return to work at Safeway in Sweet Home in the near future.
Miner said the one thing he noticed most about Iraq, was the aroma and general climate.
?It stinks,? he said. ?It?s not a very pretty country. It was wet about a month and a half and then it was heat most of the time.?
He said he didn?t expect to end up in the Middle East when he signed up for the National Guard out of high school.
?It was good experience but not something I want to do again,? he said.
He said he plans to attend school with the goal of becoming a real estate broker.