Homecoming

Sunday, the Delta Co. 4th CEB came back to Knoxville from a 7-month deployment to Iraq on missions that included minesweeping, bunker building and demolition.

Before the buses pulled in, I talked to two wives who were waiting. Both had given birth while their husbands were gone, and both Marines were on the phone with their wives during the delivery. Both men met their children, one son and one daughter, for the first time Sunday. Both men are barely older than I am. And both men had to leave the country knowing that they would be leaving their wives to care for the children alone.

So it's clear why, when the Marines cautiously stepped off the buses still wearing camo and carrying M16 assault rifles, I was swept up in the same wave of emotion that flooded the wives (and mothers, fathers, girlfriends, sons and daughters). I wanted to capture the moment with the cell phone-sized Flip video camera; I wanted to show everyone who wasn't at the Marine Corps Reserve Center what it's like to embrace a lover and an infnant after missing the entire pregnancy.

But I didn't realize that I would be on the verge of crying myself, as the troops wove through the crowd.

It was almost enough to keep me from doing my job properly. For starters, it's hard to hold that tiny camera steady anyway. Throw in a choked-back sob, and that's a recipe for shaky footage.

Second, I felt like I was destroying the unity. I would love to be the omniscient, omnipotent reporter: hearing all the stories at once, seeing all the tears fall in unison, feeling all the sighs of relief - without a single person noticing my presence.

That's not the way news works, though. When there is a story, you cling to it and try to extract every bit of useful information - all without annoying, berating or otherwise insulting your subject.

It is a draining process, then, to come back to the news desk and condense all the worries and reliefs of the past seven months into a 15-inch story, devoid of 95 percent of the raw emotion that surrounded the homecoming. I can't give you the American flag flapping in the breeze; I can't give you the snowflakes sticking to the desert camo fatigues; and I sure as hell can't give you drool of 14-week-old Derrick Sloan on the front of his tiny cheap white cotton homemade T-shirt.

But they were all there Sunday, and they won't be forgotten.


P.S. I was scared out of my mind when I arrived at the reserve center. Two Marines, both carrying loaded M16s, stopped me; one put his hand on the hood of my truck as if he would personally stop me if I tried any funny business. He questioned the media presence, and when a man carrying a fully automatic machine gun doubted my legitimacy, my first instinct was to tip my (imaginary) hat, throw the truck in reverse, and head home.