Soldiers Return, but for Families, Iraq Battlefields Are Not Far Off

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For Soldiers’ Families, Battles Are Not Far Off
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times



Soldiers kissed the ground at Fort Drum, N.Y., after returning from Iraq.


By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: November 3, 2007


FORT DRUM, N.Y., Nov. 2 — The last time Bobbi Plautz welcomed home her husband, Travis, from Iraq, he was a changed person. He listened to different kinds of music and craved different kinds of food. He stayed up all night and wrestled with nightmares.

“He came home and had a 5-month-old baby and was overwhelmed,” Mrs. Plautz said of her husband, a staff sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division. “But he slowly got back to being the guy I married: funny, playing practical jokes.”

As she waited in a gymnasium close to midnight with her son, Zander, now 3, and scores of other families bearing balloons and signs, Mrs. Plautz was preparing herself for another period of readjustment.

Hours earlier, the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division’s Second Brigade had spilled off a jet at a nearby airfield, some bending down to kiss the ground, others whooping into the cold night air. But despite the joyous homecoming, the 120 soldiers who landed Thursday evening — a fraction of the 3,500 Second Brigade soldiers returning to this sprawling military base this fall — were about to take on a new and uncertain challenge: the return to normalcy.

Coming home from war is always fraught. But for these soldiers, it is all the more so because of the length of their deployment, which was extended midtour from one year to 15 months. For almost half the soldiers, it was at least their second tour, which meant some had missed the birth of a child or been apart from spouses for most of their young marriages.

As the soldiers stepped off the plane, they carried, along with their oversized packs and M-4 rifles, a good deal of emotional baggage: the division reported that 52 members of their brigade were killed on this tour; two are still missing. The extension of their tours was especially hard.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/nyregion/03return.html?_r=1&oref=slogin