Rohan Gunaratna

Greeters at BIA Welcome Troops Home for Holiday
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR - For a planeload of troops headed back home after a year in Afghanistan, Fourth of July parades and fireworks were beside the point. For them, July 4, 2006, is the day they returned to American soil.

Some 250 members of the U.S. Army 53rd Infantry Brigade deplanned at Bangor International Airport shortly after 4 p.m. after a 19-hour flight from Manus Air Base in Tajikistan.

They were met by about 75 troop greeters from Greater Bangor, who cheered and whistled as the weary soldiers entered the terminal, and who offered them hugs, hospitality and free cell phone use.

The troops had about a two-hour layover in Bangor. Their final destination was the Fort Stewart military base in Savannah, Ga., where they would spend several days before going home to their families.

Spc. Katoria Smith, 22, of Memphis, Tenn., called her grandmother right away. "She's been worried about me," she said. Smith, a financial specialist who worked in an on-base bank, said she was rarely in any danger during her tour of duty. "A couple of times, IEDs [improvised explosive devices] went off so close to us they shook the buildings," she said. "It was scary, but i wasn't ever really in danger."

Among her experiences was a trip to a local orphanage to distribute clothing, pencils, books and other items donated by service members' families. Smith said the people she met in Afghanistan were "very nice", but she was clearly delighted to be headed home to her family and her boyfriend.

While many soldiers socialized in groups, ordered a beer or watched the soccer World Cup in the airport bar, 1st Lt. Jose Otero of Orlando, Fla., sat reading a dog-eared copy of "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror" by Rohan Gunaratna.