For Spc. Shawn Mott, it happened on his first night home at a restaurant in Fairbanks, where the 172nd Stryker Brigade’s home base of Fort Wainwright is located. “The waitress walked up to me and I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for like 15 minutes going ‘What do I want?’” says Mott. “Having choices is overwhelming to me. All I ate in Iraq was chicken tenders and fries.”
After nearly a year and a half of combat duty, the returned soldiers of the 172nd are trying to adjust to life at home in Alaska. The Army has prepared the soldiers for the big things—how to watch for symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, how to reintegrate themselves into family life after what has been for some an unbearably long absence. But for the soldiers of the 172nd, who started arriving home last weekend, it’s the little things that have caught them by surprise.
Still, the big things are what matter now, and it’s been a joyous return. On Wednesday morning, as more units from the 172nd returned via Kuwait, the main road in and out of Fort Wainwright was lined with welcoming banners, illuminated by temporary floodlights. One 4-year-old boy, Trevor Erickson, the son of Sgt. 1/c Craig Erickson, was dressed up as Mr. Incredible. “Dad missed Halloween, so he thought he’d dress up for him,” said Shannon, Trevor’s mom.
After the emotional roller coaster families went through last summer, when the Army announced only a few days before the soldiers were scheduled to come home that the Stryker Brigade’s deployment would be extended, some families were not ready to believe it was happening until the troops stepped off the bus. Then the crowd erupted into cheers. Members of the Ninth Army Band played “God Bless America” as the soldiers lined up on one side of the hangar and the eager families on the other. Despite the early hour, wives and girlfriends were dressed up for their soldiers. The women were wearing low-cut blouses, skirts or flashy jeans. With the order to fall out, the two groups ran toward each other, merging in a flurry of hugs and kisses, laughter and tears. Some wives leaped into their husbands’ arms, while other soldiers scooped up their eager small children, spinning them about. “You guys are getting so big,” Sgt. Brian McCumber said as he hugged his four children.
Brian’s wife, Jami, said she’s seen a marked change in her kids’ behavior in the past few weeks as they have been preparing for their father’s return. “They’ve been very proud of their dad. They can’t wait to see him,” she said before the buses ferrying the soldiers from the airfield arrived. “It’s been a long 16 months. They’ve been acting so much nicer to each other.”
Duane Leventry, a nine-year Army veteran, says he surprised by how “weird” he finds the adjustment to life at home after only a few days. This is Leventry’s third return—he served previous tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and has been gone for three out of the past five years—but so, far, it’s the hardest. “I thought, ‘I’m the old pro, the guy who has it all together,’” says Leventry, “I thought I’d just jump back into it.” Instead, says Leventry, he finds himself confronting not only intense jet lag, but also complicated emotions. “Sometimes, I’ll be driving, it’s euphoria, you are so glad to be back. At the same time, we’ll go into the store, I’ll constantly be watching people. Or on the road, I’ll constantly be watching people,” says Leventry. “You are used to always watching out for yourself, watching out for your buddies. Even now, I’m kind of set to where I can watch the door, watch people around me. It’s going to take time to get used to crowds of people. Sometimes, people will get too close and I’ll step back, ‘It’s nothing on you man, just give me some personal space.’” One of his first nights home, Leventry went to sleep on the couch in the middle of the night. “I wasn’t used to sleeping comfortably in a bed,” he says. “It was almost like I needed a small amount of pain to sleep.”
Leventry’s wife, Kelly, says so far her main concern about Duane’s homecoming has been laid to rest: 3-year-old Alexia has responded to her father with hugs and joy. When Duane was home for a brief R&R last Thanksgiving, she kept her distance. When Kelly and Alexia made their way through the crowd at Duane’s homecoming with Alexia on her shoulders, Alexia recognized her father immediately—Kelly had been showing her lots of pictures—and reached down to hug the top of his head. Duane cried. Father and daughter have bonded. Kelly says she is overjoyed to have her husband home.
Still, there are adjustments. Duane became extremely fit during the deployment, and “is already after me,” she says, to go to the gym and buy healthier food. She didn’t attend the Army’s PTSD briefings—she’s been through them on Duane’s previous deployments—and she knows to give Duane time to adjust. “He’s definitely different,” Leventry says. “He’s real quiet, not as outgoing as he was before.” For now, she is content to listen and see how her husband unwinds with each passing day. “We try to stay away from talking about the bad stuff unless he wants to,” says Kelly. “The only thing he’s really talked about is that he wanted to show me … all the reports he got from his higher-ups, the awards and commendations he got while he was over there.”
Next month, Leventry, 27, will leave the Army and intends to apply for the Anchorage police force. He never planned on a military career, but says the long, stressful deployments “definitely contributed” to his decision to leave the service. He was supposed to have gotten out in October but couldn’t because of the extension.
Shawn Mott, 26, still hasn’t decided whether to re-enlist. He is drained by his 16-month tour and says some of the worst stress of his time in Iraq came after the 172nd was suddenly transferred to Baghdad and had to deal with the resentment of other Army units already in the capital. Rivalries quickly developed between the members of the elite 172nd and the Fourth Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne. The Stryker soldiers were furious at their last-minute extension and felt they’d been diverted to Baghdad because the other units hadn’t done their jobs. The other units seemed to resent the swaggering, informal style of the Stryker soldiers. “It was a real culture clash,” Mott says. “Me and the Army don’t get along too well right now.”
For now, Mott is both reveling in his reunion with his fiancée, Nina Herrera, as well as dealing with feelings of “weirdness” at being out of Iraq. When Mott arrived in Fairbanks on Saturday after a 13-hour flight from Kuwait, there was no one to greet him: “There was no one to hug,” says Mott. “It was lonely.” Nina was home in Seattle, unsure of his return date, and his family was in Texas. The barracks at the 172nd’s home base at Fort Wainwright were full, so Shawn and a roommate were housed in a Fairbanks hotel, where they holed up against the minus-40-degree temperature. One of Mott’s first ventures into town was to buy cold-weather gear at a local outfitter. “I was practically tearing the uniform off,” he says. “After wearing it for over a year, I couldn’t stand it one more minute.”
Since Nina’s arrival in Fairbanks on Sunday, the young couple has been staying at a hotel, while Nina searches for an apartment and Shawn tries to find transportation. For now, he and several other soldiers have to take a taxi from downtown hotels to report for duty on base. There have also been briefings about how to drive in the civilian world after spending more than a year in their heavily armored Strykers. “In Iraq we own the roads,” says Mott. “We drive on the right side, we drive on the left side. We run into cars, we don’t run into cars. They tell us, ‘You don’t get to do that stuff here.’” And Mott plans to make good on a promise. He and Nina had to postpone their Sept. 16 wedding when the 172nd was suddenly extended. Next week, they plan to go to the courthouse and get married.
With Robinson Duffy in Fairbanks
