FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Keanu Anderson was hugged by his dad, Blackhawk helicopter pilot Glenn Anderson, at Honolulu Airport yesterday. Anderson was one of 97 soldiers from Schofield Barracks returning from the Middle East.
Soldiers back from Iraq
relish simple pleasuresA hug from a child and the prospect of a
day at the beach fill homecoming with joy
Schofield Barracks Capt. Scott Hocutt remembers only one thing about traveling the infamous Road to Baghdad.
Dust.
"Lots of dust, everywhere," remembers Hocutt. "It was just a bad road."
The Army officer was one of 97 Hawaii-based soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division to return home last night. He said during the long road trips in Iraq he'd sometimes be up for 36 hours straight, just riding through the desert.
Unlike the dust, sleep was hard to come by.
"Sometimes we just collapsed wherever we were," he said.
Hocutt, along with the rest of the contingent from the 25th Infantry, was in the Middle East to provide support to the Army's 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, Ga., and the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky as they marched into Baghdad. Members of the 25th Division left about three months ago and returned to Hawaii last night on eight different commercial flights.
"I was so sick the whole time he was there," said Marcela Anderson of her husband, Blackhawk Pilot Glenn Anderson. Marcela said once she saw on the news that a Blackhawk that was shot down and thought the worst.
"I was just waiting for a phone call ... for someone to knock on my door. Scary times ... I'm just glad he's back."
Her husband recalls his first missions as "pretty intense there ... especially at first."
"I flew 75 hours total... sometimes eight hours straight."
Hugging his wife and his two-year-old son Keanu, Anderson declared his plans for today.
"We're going to the beach," he said, with a smile.
Besides pilots, the 25th Infantry also sent engineers, logistics, artillery and military intelligence personnel to support troops.
Some of the soldiers such as Capt. Kurt Lumbert had longer, more official sounding titles like "Weapons of Mass Destruction Defense Officer."
"Just in case Iraq deployed chemical weapons, my job was to make sure we had a plan to deal with them," he said.
That included organizing drills and making sure soldiers got their masks on in time, as Sgt. Deeva Hughes learned.
"It was very stressful," said Hughes. "When we first got there, there were all these SCUD attacks and I was putting my mask on every five minutes and I didn't know what was going on."
But Hughes said even more stressful than that was being one of the only women sent to the Middle East by the 25th Division.
"I miss my own bathroom, my own shower ... and you know how men don't listen to you?
You just can't talk to them about anything."
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