This was the year President Bush won re-election, the Boston Red Sox broke the curse, Republican icon Ronald Reagan died and U.S. forces battled a bloody insurgency in Iraq.

But for troops across Europe, any one of those headline-grabbing events took a distant second to more personal moments.

A difficult deployment, an emotional homecoming, the painful loss of close friends and a miraculous survival of a bomb attack are just some of the events servicemembers remember most from 2004.

Staff Sgt. Adam Hart said he will never forget the day the Humvee he was riding in was rocked by a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. On Dec. 23, the explosion shot a large piece of shrapnel, hitting Hart in the back of the neck, grazing his spine and lodging itself in his throat.

Doctors saved Hart’s life, and he now has the shard of triangular metal that nearly killed him. But the architect from Shreveport, La., said, from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany where he was being treated, that the attack and his extraordinary survival is not nearly as memorable as the bond he formed with the group of soldiers he served beside.

That will stick out forever.

“Those guys have become a second family to me,” said Hart, who has since flown to the States while his comrades are still in Iraq.

Soldiers in some military units weren’t as lucky as Hart.

Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four, which is based in Port Hueneme, Calif., but has Seabees deployed throughout Europe and Iraq, lost two of its own this year.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Kerrick Adams died unexpectedly in October. The assistant crew leader broke his leg while deployed to Dukat, Albania, working on a school renovation project. He went into cardiac arrest two days after surgery and died. In September, a mortar attack killed Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Knott, a steelworker with the battalion, while working in Fallujah.

“That was the most shocking thing to us,” Petty Officer 2nd Class Palwasha Newell said from Rota, Spain. “These are the people you know and stuff and you’re thinking, ‘We’re all in this, nothing is going to happen to us.’

But once they died, it was shocking. Still I can’t believe it. Whenever I look at their picture, ‘I’m like, no, they’re not dead.’ ”

For many servicemembers and their families, deployments and the war in Iraq dominated their lives in 2004.

Air Force Master Sgt. Kevin Dixon of Buffalo and U.S. Air Forces Europe’s European Mission Support Squadron in Stuttgart, Germany, served three months downrange before returning to his family earlier this year.

“It was just stressful not knowing if you were going to wake up," Dixon said. “When I came back it felt good to be back on German soil. I went home to the States the next day and it felt even better to be on U.S. soil.”

For Sgt. Robert Spencer, October 2004 marked the end of his deployment to Kuwait.

“It was great to get back to my family and to have my family here with me in Germany,” said Spencer, from the 109th Transportation Company in Mannheim. He was delivering mail to Bamberg’s Warner Barracks last week.

“It was the high point of the year. Even while I was deployed, it was awesome to get all the letters and videotapes from my family. It was a great year overall; nothing bad happened to me,” he said.

Master Sgt. James Payton of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 279th Base Support Battalion in Bamberg, said he was thankful for the people he worked with throughout 2004. However, Payton said the deployment of 1st Infantry Division soldiers from Bamberg put a damper on the year.

“With them being gone, there is an emptiness of brotherhood within the community that is very noticeable,” he said.

Some servicemembers marked the year with personal achievement.

Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four surprised Petty Officer 1st Class Brent Robinson in Rota by naming him its combat coordinator, a position responsible for training Seabees in combat and survival skills. He helped the unit revamp its program and rewrote its instructions.

The program proved its worth in November and may have saved lives. After a Marine unit got into a firefight in Iraq, a Navy Seabee with the group used the communications skills he learned in the program to instinctively call in a medical evacuation over the radio.

“It’s really a mission-critical position, and I really didn’t expect it to come my way and I was hand selected for it,” Robinson said. “It was an honor.”

For servicemembers like Seaman Apprentice Samantha Byrd joining the military in 2004 was the biggest change in their life and the most memorable moment. Byrd, 20, of Hayward, Calif., worked in retail and was going to college before she decided to join the Navy. In June, she went to boot camp. She’s now deployed with the Seabees in Rota.

“A lot of people that I met and the experience I’ve had are just incredible to me and I still have four more years ahead of me, so I’m really excited to see where that’s going to take me,” she said.

With 2004 behind them, some servicemembers are looking ahead to next year.

Army Sgt. John Arquette, the operations sergeant with the 51st Transportation Company in Mannheim, Germany, and his family celebrated the end of a yearlong deployment to Iraq in February. But he already is making plans to go back. His unit returns early this year.

“I don’t know about other families, but our family only seems to have grown stronger after the deployment,” said the soldier during a ceremony on Sullivan Barracks Wednesday to send his unit back. “It gives us something to build on and lets us know that we can do this. It’s going to be so much easier the second time around.”

His wife, Jennifer, said the upcoming deployment is bringing the family back around full circle with a homecoming at the beginning of the year and a deployment at the end. Now she said she’s prepared to be a single mother again and raise their two children while her husband is gone.

“It’s not too bad,” she said. “Plus, next time it should be much easier. I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a piece of cake, but it is doable.”

Reporters Charlie Coon from Stuttgart, Rick Emert from Bamberg, Jessica Inigo from Darmstadt and Ben Murray from Darmstadt, all in Germany, contributed to this story.

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