From the S&S archives:
'Right here waiting for you' — Tears of joy welcome soldiers home

TERRI CRIST HARDLY felt the light spring breeze on her bare arms while pacing the asphalt parking lot.

She hugged her daughters, checked the time, smoked a cigarette, paced back and forth, checked the time, sat down, stood up, checked the time, smoked another cigarette, paced, and checked the time again.

For the fourth time in three days, groups of wives, children, girlfriends and best friends had filled the PX parking lot at Lucius D. Clay Casern in Garlstedt, Germany. They chatted quietly and anxiously while waiting for the buses bringing nearly 2,000 soldiers from the 2nd Armd Div (Fwd) back from the gulf war Tuesday night, Wednesday morning and several times on Thursday.

Most of the families had come hours before the scheduled arrival of their soldiers. On Thursday, Terri Crist was looking forward to the return of her husband, Sgt. Dennis Crist, a mechanic with Co B, 498th Support Bn, who was due in at 5 p.m., then 3:30 p.m.

But at 10 a.m., Terri received a call from someone who said the soldiers already were arriving. She piled the kids into the car and raced across town thinking she was late. False alarm. He wasn't due until 2:15 p.m.

"I just hope I don't knock him down," she said of the expected reunion with her husband, who'd been gone four months. "It's the longest we've been separated in eight years. We missed our eighth anniversary.

"It's the longest we'll ever be apart again," she vowed.

She checked the time, smoked, paced and checked the time again.

Balloons — tied to cars, baby strollers and children — bobbed in the breeze. Most were printed with "I love you" and "Welcome home," words that appeared in a myriad of forms and sizes all over the post. Expressions of love and admiration for the community heroes were bannered on windows, posters, on doors and hand-held signs.

Terri's close friend and neighbor, Kitty Youngs, patiently held a video camera, waiting to record the Crist reunion. "I'm going to shoot this, then I'm out of here, Terri. I can't take much of this," she said. it would be the second reunion in two days she'd recorded for friends.

"I've cried about 20 times today, and I haven't even seen anybody come home today," Kitty Youngs. Her husband, Spec. Stephen Youngs, is in Crist's unit, but isn't due home for another week.

"You want yours back as bad as they do, and when people say it's only another week ... it's a long time when you've been separated for five months."

As time passed painfully slowly, people looked for buses on Patton Drive, which was flanked by 50 American flags waving gently in the wind. Terri Crist checked the time again, hugged her daughters, Cadena, 6, and Shanna, 3, and shifted from one foot to the other always moving and restless.

Soldiers were in the crowd, too, many in uniforms with fresh combat patches on their right shoulders.

PA 2 Steven Bilbo and Spec. Carl Merfert were waiting to greet their fellow artillerymen from the 3rd Field Arty. Bilbo left Saudi Arabia in March on emergency leave. There was no mass homecoming to greet him. he said.

"I know how I felt when I got back," he said. "It's kind of sad when you get off the bus and there's nobody there because your family is in the States. The single guys, the ones who live in the barracks, they're the ones who need this."

Merfert, shouldering a video camera, said his roommates are teen-agers and were practically sent straight from boot camp to the war. They didn't have time to make friends in the area, find girlfriends or get settled before they deployed.

Wives of soldiers from the 498th Support Bn worked hard to ease the bleakness of the barracks and draped them in banners and posters and ribbons to welcome them home.

''We tied yellow ribbons on every fence pole on the road leading up to the company," Kitty Youngs said. We put up banners and signs saying 'welcome home — we're glad you're back.' Somebody told us there were 300 rooms in the barracks, so we tied 300 yellow ribbons by hand to put on all the nameplates."

They found out later they made about three times as many as needed.

Cheers of joy and screams of relief filled the air at the announcement, that the first buses had reached the gate Families pressed up against the white cloth tape marking the bus loading zone, looking for signs on the buses indicating units and then looking for faces.

Suddenly, children and wives and girlfriends were leaping into soldiers' arms.

Terry Crist wasn't tall enough to see over the crowd and couldn't find her husband. She did find someone who had been on the same bus with him, who assured her he was nearby.

"I'm not believing this," she said in frustration. "Where are you?''

But Dennis found Terri and the girls and his face beamed as he tightly hugged them all at once.

Kitty Youngs got it all on tape and watched bravely for a moment. Then she, too, embraced him tightly, and cried, hard.

Then she quickly disappeared.