Jan 2, 2006
Soldiers return home from Iraq
FAYETTEVILLE - About 260 soldiers who spent nearly a year providing security and reconnaissance in Iraq and supporting coalition forces have returned to Fayetteville.
"It’s just wonderful," Staff Sgt. Malcolm Knight said, "so wonderful to be home."
The soldiers, who are members of the 3rd Attack Battalion, 3rd Aviation Brigade, were greeted Saturday by family and friends in a hangar at Simmons Army Airfield.
About 90 members of the unit are pilots, and the rest are mechanics and support personnel, said Capt. Todd Thornburg, rear detachment commander.
The soldiers flew more than 20,000 hours since their deployment began last year. During that time, three members of the unit, Capt. Joe Lusk II, Chief Warrant Officer Keith Mariotti and Chief Warrant Officer Steve Shephard, were killed.
The deaths were hurtful, but "I think it made us stronger as a unit," Thornburg said.
For many of the soldiers, Saturday was their last homecoming at Fort Bragg because most will transfer to Hunter Army Airfield at Fort Stewart, Ga., this year.
Constella Jacobs, who waited Saturday to greet her husband, Sgt. Reginald Jacobs, said she and her three children are looking forward to moving to Savannah, near Fort Stewart.
The year has been hectic without her husband, said Jacobs, who attends school full time and cares for her three children, ages 14, 9 and 5.
Jacobs said deployments are hard for children.
"They really don’t understand the whole concept," she said. "After the weeks and the months, it starts to get redundant."
Sgt. Phillip Hernandez held his 2-year-old son, P.J., Saturday morning. P.J. was just three months old when his father left, and he celebrated his first birthday when his father returned briefly on leave.
"He won’t even look at me," Hernandez said, adding that his son had changed drastically since he left.
Hernandez’s wife, Josefa, said her husband has been gone for a lot of P.J.’s development.
"As soon as he left, he started walking. He missed that," she said. "He was in pull-ups before he left. Now he’s potty-trained."
The year 2006 couldnÂ’t have started worse for Al Jokisch.
Early morning on Dec. 29, a government vehicle parked in his driveway on Oak Island revealed his worst nightmare.
A day earlier, his son, Aaron Forbes, a combat engineer stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, died when a roadside bomb exploded near the Humvee he was driving in Baghdad. HeÂ’d been in the city only four days.
To date, 2,175 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.
“The most gut-wrenching thing I had to come across was seeing the government vehicle in my driveway,” Jokisch said on New Year’s Eve. “It was just like, ‘Oh God, no.’ ”
His 24-year-old son – a father, a husband – was gone.
Forbes, who was assigned to Fort Hood’s 1st Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, had been deployed to Iraq on his son’s birthday – Dec. 2. It was his second deployment to Iraq.
Two weeks earlier, he had finalized the adoption of 5-year-old Alex – his wife Brittany’s son.
HeÂ’d bought a charcoal-colored, 2006 Ford Expedition that he couldnÂ’t stop gushing over.
Life was looking good.
That wasnÂ’t the case five years ago.
In 2001, ForbesÂ’ mother, Marjorie, died of cervical cancer when she was 43.
That summer, his oldest sister, 21-year-old Alecia Forbes, died suddenly of what was deemed natural causes.
It was a heartbreaking year for Forbes.
But the following year, life took another turn.
He met his wife when he answered an ad looking for a roommate on Hilton Head Island, S.C.
“It was like love at first sight,” Jokisch said.
Eager to find a steady job, he followed in the footsteps of both his parents by enlisting in the Army in March 2002 before the war started.
Not long after finishing boot camp, Forbes married his first love. Less than two weeks after he got married, he was deployed to Iraq for about 10 months, his father said.
But he kept in close contact with his father, calling five times a day every day of the week when he wasnÂ’t in the field.
“He’d say, ‘Hey dude. What you doing?’” his father recalled. “We talked about every kind of thing. Him adopting Alex. His marriage.”
Forbes lived on and off with his father on Oak Island for four years.
A social person, he towered over his fellow soldiers at 6 feet, 6 inches. “There wasn’t a person at Fort Hood that said anything bad about Aaron,” Jokisch said.
Though it was difficult to be away, Forbes told his father that the Iraqis were good people.
Still, it was difficult to cope with the reality of what his son was doing. “Like a parent, you want them to be safe,” he said. “I told him, ‘Aaron, you’re a tall guy. Bend over. Don’t be so tall. Don’t be the main target. We had to joke like that to keep from going nuts over it.”
Forbes is also survived by younger brother, Kenny, and his half brother, Joshua. Funeral arrangements are pending the return of ForbesÂ’ body.
Veronica Gonzalez: 343-2008
veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com