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Originally Posted by Sun-Sentinel
By Dianna Cahn |South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 5, 2007
He was the first to step off the bus and into the pressing crowd that strained forward as it waited — much the same crowd of mothers and fathers, siblings, wives and friends that six long months ago could barely contain their emotions as they sent their men off to war.
Lance Cpl. Carter Allen dove into the arms of his childhood best friend, then pressed through the crowd of loved ones reaching out for their own to the back of the room, where his wife, Erika Komara, waited.
Finally Allen, of Palm Beach Gardens, leaned over to meet his daughter for the first time. He took the 2-month-old into his arms, lifted his sunglasses and kissed three times the little baby dressed in hearts for her daddy. Then he kissed his wife again.
In a Thursday filled with "the good kind of tears," as one mother put it, proud U.S. Marine and U.S. Navy families welcomed home 28 of their men returning from Iraq.
The boisterous group that turned out to greet Staff Sgt. Rob Locy of Boynton Beach included his mother, father and two sisters all wearing Marine T-shirts and a contingent of fellow town firefighters from Palm Beach.
Across the room, the family of Lance Cpl. Andrew Reger, 22 of Pembroke Pines, sat patiently, sharing their own quiet pride for a third-generation Marine.
But even in the joy of homecoming, the burden of war was never far from the minds of those gathered at the Marine Reserves building west of West Palm Beach. Relatives of the 26 Marines and two Navy medical corpsmen were there to welcome home the detachment of the 4th Air/Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO), a unit that has deployed six times since the war began in March 2003 with no fatalities.
For retired Marine Ross Reger, who heard World War II stories from his Marine father, hearing war stories now from his son takes its toll. His son, he said, came home more reserved from his first deployment to Iraq.
It will take time to see how much the second deployment changed their son, added his wife, Paula Reger.
"You have to be affected," Ross Reger said. "We have such a great life over here. Even without the war, there is such a difference."
All the men who came home Thursday are part of an elite company of volunteers eager to serve their country, said 1st Sgt. Steve Rice. They are part of a highly trained, specially equipped unit that infiltrates enemy lines to be the eyes of U.S. military bombers.
"We are the group who walk the bombs onto the targets," said Rice, one of the commanders at the 4th ANGLICO. When the planes are in the air flying bombing runs, "we are on the ground giving the coordinates to the pilot."
For Jamie-Lee Berman, 21, of Loxahatchee, wife of Sgt. Dan Berman, Thursday was an anxious day as she waited for her husband of six months and three weeks to come home.
The two met through mutual friends on MySpace, and Berman proposed in November. They married just weeks before he left for his third deployment in March and will have a formal wedding in February, a full year later.
She was shaking as she waited. She'd had her makeup and nails done, after scrubbing the rooms in their house, even though her mother had arranged a weekend away for them.
"I feel awesome," she said when she finally got to see him. "I feel complete again."
For Berman, being married meant this deployment was mentally his toughest. It's difficult, he said, being apart from your best friend.
"There are so many things you wish you could be a part of," he said.
For new father Lance Cpl. Allen, that same thought was constant.
"It was hard. I struggled with it every day. But I couldn't let it affect how I perform my job," he said.
Standing a few feet away, Bill Simonet, 23, of West Palm Beach, did a little dance surrounded by friends and family. War might be tough, he said, but nothing gets him down.
"I am too pleasant of a person," Simonet said.
Still, he said, this deployment — his second following a stint in Iraq in mid-2004 — was "a lot more challenging" than the first.
"A war can be as difficult for the family at home as the soldier away," Simonet said. "Family support — without that, it can be a very lonely, long and drawn-out experience. As long as you have people at home, you can tackle anything."
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