Posted on 01/23/2010 8:42:06 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE -- Less than five minutes before Airman 1st Class Eric Rigsby, 24, stepped off a plane that brought him from Afghanistan to his the Air Force base in Sumter, his wife could barely talk about his return.
"I'm so glad," Jill Rigsby said, choking up. "It's been a long time."
The couple's first deployment sent Eric Rigsby and more than 200 other airmen from Shaw's 79th Aircraft Maintenance Unit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in early October 2009, where they became part of the 79th Air Expeditionary Force deployment.
Troop Commander Maj. Langdon Root said the men integrated with Army forces to help with counterinsurgency measures.
"The kinetic aspect of our job is flying airplanes," he said. "Most of these men are the maintainers that work on the aircraft, they do 98 percent of the work out there."
Root was greeted warmly by his family, including 3-year-old Kylynn.
"She's grown a lot in (four) months," he said.
Tech Sgt. Michael Wardlow was greeted warmly by his wife, Connie; daughter, Gabrielle, 2; and son, Seth, 8.
"It's great to have him home; she has been asking about him," Connie said about their daughter. "We have pictures all over the house, and she asks about him every day, even more so in the last few days because she knew he was coming home.:"
Like Jill Rigsby, Master Sgt. Maurice Toole found his homecoming hard to express.
"I couldn't tell you in words how I feel," he said, greeting his wife, Jennifer, son, Maurice Toole II, and daughter, Paris.
"We've been married for 12 years, and he was gone for our anniversary," Jennifer Toole said. "But he sent me flowers while he was overseas. It was harder than the other times we've been apart, but we made it."
Asked what made the deployment harder than any prior separation, she said she was more worried about her husband this time.
"This was the second time he's been deployed, but this was different because he was in a war zone," she said.
Leni
Thanks Leni.
We just sent a bunch out to Iraq.
I pray for their safety now.
JJ
Airmen return from Afghanistan, going from air conditioning to air conditioning. Air-men? Hardly. When I was in the Reagan Army, Air Force often got extra pay when forced to billet alongside Army troops - “substandard housing”. In Gulf War one, Hackworth wrote and reported about Air Force pilots yawning and stretching as they climbed down outa the air-conditioned buses that brought ‘em from their hotels to their flight line. Marine pilots had already been up outa their foxholes right alongside their flight line for hours and hours. And I was just talking to a Gulf II vet, a Marine who recounted the near-tearful dismay the air-men would show when he and his jars would steal and keep some of the USAF tent-affixed air conditioning units.
Glad they are home but we don’t call it the “Chair Force” for nothing. 4 months deployment is hardly a blip compared to the 15 month long tours the Army is/was pulling. My dad is retired Air Force and my husband is former AF. Our youngest is Army and he is thrilled to have AC and a bed this deployment.
Sounds like the Army needs to rethink their deployment plans.
Since the AF has implemented the Air Expeditionary Force plan, Airmen know when they are likely to be deployed, the length of their deployment, and the time they will have before they deploy again.
It’s not set in stone, but it usually happens.
JJ
Sounds like the Army needs to rethink their deployment plans.
~~~
My house-mate’s son has been back in Iraq since Oct.
(3rd tour)
The 2nd.BCT.10th.Mtn. stayed over 18 months last time,,,
(Mahmudiyh)
They were told that they had been taken off the rotation
list and would stay at Ft.Drum,,,Not,,,
Thankfully he got to come home and see his new son at
Christmas,,,
He’ll see him again next Oct.,,,
I won’t believe it till I see it though...
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