Oct. 24, 2005

TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press

GULFPORT, Miss. - After nearly a year of battling insurgents, building schools and choking on desert dust, a Tennessee-based National Guard unit started coming home from Iraq Monday.

An advance party of 154 members of the 278th Regimental Combat Team arrived at Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport to find green grass, clear skies and temperatures some 50 degrees cooler than what they endured in Diyala Province near the Iranian border.

"It's nice to have to put on a jacket again," said Capt. Tony Miller, 40, of Knoxville, Tenn., as he rejoined his wife, Renee, 39, who sported a camcorder and a pin that read "I love my soldier."

She said she quit her bookkeeping job Friday to make up the year she lost with her husband.

"There were times when I was like 'it's never going to come,'" she said of her husband's homecoming.

A band played "Rocky Top," an ode to life in Tennessee, as the troops disembarked, still clad in their chocolate-chip camouflage and packing sidearms and assault rifles.

"Volunteers!" Tennessee National Guard Adjutant General Gus Hargett shouted after the troops, haggard and red-eyed after 40 hours in transit, had assembled and snapped to attention.

"Hooah!" they responded en masse.

"I want to thank you," Hargett said. "I love all you guys ... let's go see our families. God bless you."

"Hooah!" they shouted again, and scooped up their gear.

Only a half-dozen or so family and friends were on hand to greet the troops in Gulfport.

The Knoxville-based 278th has nearly 4,000 members from an array of states, including Texas, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. Wisconsin's contingent flew directly back to that state for demobilization; the rest off the 278th is expected to arrive in Gulfport in waves through mid-November.

The team that landed Monday had to go directly to Camp Shelby, near Hattiesburg, Miss., to set up demobilization procedures for the rest of the unit, and hotels in that area are booked through the end of the year in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, making it tough for loved ones to visit.

The 278th's missions included rooting out insurgents, rebuilding water mains and schools, training the Iraqi army and providing security for the January elections in Iraq, said the unit's executive officer, Lt. Col. Wayne Honeycutt of Erwin, Tenn.

Fourteen members of the unit were killed, he said. Two were killed in a 24-hour battle with insurgents in April, after the 278th busted an insurgent training ground.

"One of the few times they actually stood up and fought," Honeycutt said of the insurgents.

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