Troops Return, Elated but Changed

Scott Halbleib of the 443rd, surrounded by family members, gets a long-awaited hug from daughter Lindsey, 12, after he and his fellow MPs are dismissed to their families at Fort Lee. (Michael Lutzky -- The Washington Post)

It is almost 6 a.m. by the time the soldiers reach Fort Lee, just outside Richmond, where they will spend their last week on active duty finishing up paperwork and going through psychological counseling called "decompression." Bennett assembles them in the parking lot. It's dark and freezing, a damp, heavy cold they had forgotten in the desert. Bennett says they will line up outside the gym where their families are waiting. When the band starts playing, that's their cue to march inside.

The gym has been decorated with red, white and blue signs that say "We've Missed You!" and "Hooahh! Well Done 443 MP." Lucas knows there will be no one to greet her. But the family members of many other soldiers -- parents, spouses, children -- are sitting anxiously in the bleachers, their eyes on the door. Amy Bennett is sitting in the front row with her in-laws.

While an Army official gives a speech about the history of the unit, the soldiers wait outside, huddled together, shivering shoulder to shoulder.

Finally, the band begins to play. The door opens.

They are officially home.

"You'll be old news in a matter of days," the counselor says.

It is two days later, a chilly Monday morning. The welcome-home decorations have come down; the families have gone home. But before they can leave, the soldiers are cautioned about what lies ahead.

Soon the novelty of the homecoming will wear off, says Kimberly Evans, an Army counselor. Your families and friends won't keep clamoring to hear your stories, she warns. You won't be treated like a war hero forever.

"You have to figure out, 'Where do I now fit in?' " she says.

Lucas shifts in her chair.

"I don't think I'm crazy or anything," she says. "But I need some time. I have to get back into my routine. I have to become Mommy again."

Even after just a couple of days back in the United States, there are signs that the war is sticking with the soldiers. Some of them spent the day after the welcome-home ceremony at the mall but found it strange and disconcerting. There were too many people, one soldier complains after leaving one of the counseling sessions. "One guy cut my mother off. I wanted to kill him," a specialist says. "I had to leave."

Later, at lunch, another says she wanted to strangle the waitress at Red Lobster who couldn't seem to get anything right. How hard is it to take down a few orders?

That pent-up anger, that tension, is going to stay with them for a while, chaplain Jim Robinson says to another group of soldiers. You don't just leave it behind once you get on the plane, he says.

"You have a road to travel," he says. "You saw death and you saw destruction. Some of that is going to stick with you."

Robinson, who counseled the sailors who survived the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, speaks slowly in a soft tone. He says that even at home, the place they have been dreaming of for months, everything may seem so backward that the war may feel more familiar.

"About three or four weeks from now, you are going to hit a wall and you're going to say, 'I wish I were back in Iraq.' "

The last day of active duty. The soldiers line up in formation, and Bennett turns to face them. He tells them to watch out for each other. They are a family, he says, and no one else can really understand what they have been through. Bennett dismisses them and they disband, leaving in spurts and rushed goodbyes, taking their own road home.

That afternoon, Lucas slips the key into the front door of her Fort Meade home. Her neighbors have looked after her house for her, and they have turned on the heat and some lights and even left a few things in the refrigerator, bottled water and cans of Sprite. Lucas almost dances through her living room, into her kitchen, past the couch, the dining room table, over her hardwood floors, delighted to have running water so close by.

The photograph of Phranci taken at Easter four years ago is still on the wall by the stairs. She is frozen in time, a picture of happiness in pigtails.

The house is warm and tidy, almost exactly as Lucas left it. Almost, but not quite.