A Company, 890th returns to Picayune

Picayune Item (Picayune MS) ^

[fatrat]

A Company, 890th returns to Picayune

By WILL SULLIVAN/Item Managing Editor The emotions ran deep Saturday, in Picayune, along the side of the road from Interstate 10 to Picayune and in a hospital room in Washington, D.C., as A Company, 890th Engineer Battalion returned home from a year in Iraq.

Where the public goodbye had been long, tearful and agonizing, the public welcome was relatively short so the unit's members could get reunited with their families.

Spc. Carl Sampson, who had been severely wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, listened to the welcome by telephone from his hospital bed in Walter Reed Army Hospital where he had just come out of intensive care after undergoing reconstructive surgery, said his mother, Shirley Sampson, from Washington.

"His Dad and my other son were there to greet the troop ... and my son got the idea of calling on his (cellular) phone and holding it up so Carl could hear the welcome. ... He was able to participate (in the return) on the phone," Mrs. Sampson said.

Mrs. Sampson said she, Carl Sampson and her daughter-in-law and others in the room became tearful as they listened to the noise of the return along Memorial Boulevard and U.S. 11 and the welcoming ceremony at the armory.

"All of us here, we were just crying," she said.

"We've just been so thankful to the support of the people of Picayune and of the whole Pearl River County," Mrs. Sampson said. She said Carl Sampson has come a long way but "still has a long way to go. He's been blessed."

People welcoming the troops home lined the road from where the convoy came down off I-10 onto Mississippi 603 all the way to the armory, said Butch Weir, editor of the Poplarville Democrat, who rode in the escort that picked up the buses carrying the troops at the Mississippi Welcome Center on I-10 in Jackson County.

"It just got thicker and thicker, the closer you got to Picayune. It was like a funeral procession; we didn't pass a moving car. People pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. Some stopped in the middle of the road. Some of the older people were standing out by the road with their hats over their hearts as the buses passed," Weir said.

Picayune Mayor Greg Mitchell, when he addressed the members of the unit, estimated that there must have been 15,000 turned out to greet the guardsmen. He read a short resolution passed by the city council commemorating the unit and delcaring March 20 as Operation Iraqi Freedom Day.

Brig. Gen. Hudson Holliday of Poplarville said the 890th had more than met the standards required of it, "they set new standards. ... When America goes to war, it has lots of soldiers to choose from and it always chooses the best."

Company commander Capt. Rick Weaver thanked the families for coming out to greet the soldiers and said, "Over the past several months, my soldiers have accomplished many tasks.

"Because of the hard work of the men and women standing in front of you," he told the crowd assembled to greet the guardsmen and women, Americans and Iraqis are better off today," he said.

The nearly 100 members of the company was called to active duty Feb. 10, 2003, shortly before United States forces assaulted Iraq at the order of President George W. Bush, after that nation refused to comply with United Nations resolutions calling on it to more fully comply with inspectors seeking to learn if that nation still retained the weapons of mass destruction it agreed to destroy more than a decade earlier.

[fatrat]

amazing welcome home for 890th engineering company. a county of about 40k residents, the turnout for this welcome was estimated at 15k

[SandRat]

Some more of our guys and gals came home.

[Chapita]

Says a lot for the Picayunians! No wonder this is a Republican county.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

The emotions ran deep Saturday, in Picayune, along the side of the road from Interstate 10 to Picayune and in a hospital room in Washington, D.C., as A Company, 890th Engineer Battalion returned home from a year in Iraq.

 

People welcoming the troops home lined the road from where the convoy came down off I-10 onto Mississippi 603 all the way to the armory, said Butch Weir, editor of the Poplarville Democrat...

 

"It just got thicker and thicker, the closer you got to Picayune...People pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. Some stopped in the middle of the road. Some of the older people were standing out by the road with their hats over their hearts as the buses passed," Weir said.

Brig. Gen. Hudson Holliday of Poplarville said the 890th had more than met the standards required of it, "they set new standards. ... When America goes to war, it has lots of soldiers to choose from and it always chooses the best."

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890^th Engineer Combat Battalion
(Heavy)
MSARNG

 

 

 

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[blackie]

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[WKB]

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[Alamo-Girl]

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