Jennifer Arroyo greets her husband, Pfc. Jesus Arroyo, at an arrival ceremony for soldiers of the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division on Feb. 8. Photo by Nina Peacock

Editor's Note: With some 3,500 soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division now returning, our military freelance writer Nina Peacock explores the many ways in which Fort Richardson Army Post has prepared for their homecoming. This is the second in a series of four articles on the 4-25. Her first article, which ran Feb. 4, explored how the military is helping soldiers and airmen cope with post-traumatic stress and other challenges associated with war.

It was 8 p.m. at Fort Richardson Army Post when there was a buzz of activity in and around Buckner Physical Fitness Center on Feb. 8. Outside, parking spaces filled, and people emerged from their vehicles holding signs and balloons. Inside, Family members and friends of the 130 soldiers about to return sat waiting on the gym's bleachers.

Jennifer Arroyo, wife of Pfc. Jesus Arroyo, came with her children and her husband's parents. This was to be the end of his first deployment.

"I just want to grab him already!" she said, then laughed. She felt "too many emotions. I'm nervous, excited – everything."

Shelley Moser, at the gym with her children and waiting for her husband, Lt. Rob Moser, captured the ceremony's meaning.

"For me, it's the beginning of coming back together again. It's the first step of coming back together, and the ending of their time over there."

That's why, since October 2009, some members of the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division's rear detachment have planned for this occasion as 3,500 soldiers begin to return. There are about five planners who make the soldiers' homecoming an event. They coordinate the arrival ceremonies, said one of the planners, Capt. Jibriel Means, which require the work of more than 100 personnel to execute the details. Sometimes the planes bring smaller groups of soldiers home; other times they carry up to 300.

Every soldier who returns with the 4-25 will get a ceremony like this one. It's a signifier that their deployment is done.

A lot of moving parts

At 8:16 p.m., the narrator made an announcement.

"The buses have been loaded," he said. "The ceremony will begin in approximately 15 minutes." Cheers erupted from the crowd. About two hours earlier, the soldiers had landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base and began inprocessing, where they are accounted for and their weapons are turned in.

Means and his staff created a system to alert family members of where their soldiers are every step of the way in that process – when they load onto the busses, when they cross into Fort Richardson, and when the busses arrive.

"Everybody's so anxious, so you definitely want to feed them whatever information that you have," he said.

There are seven details of the welcome-home ceremony, Means explained. A detail is an area of responsibly assigned to a person or group of people working to make the ceremony happen.

There are two baggage details – people assigned to make sure all the baggage gets off the airplane, and others assigned to make sure they all get unloaded at the gym. Other groups are assigned to details that coordinate the soldiers' transportation and set up everything in the gym, including shoveling the snow. Soldiers off the airplane go to a Joint Mobility Center, where two assigned groups take their sensitive items, like weapons, and make sure everyone that was supposed to come on that flight actually arrived.

Earlier, a group coordinated the ceremony's speakers and VIP seating. Finally, there's Means's staff, making sure everything goes right – and "putting out fires" if it doesn't.

"It's just a lot of moving parts to make sure that everything is synchronized into one, to make sure the heroes get the welcome that they deserve," he said.

Means and his staff coordinate the homecoming tightly so when the soldiers return, all they have to do is follow directions.

"We want them to do as minimal work as they need to do. We can take on all the nitty-gritty hard work that needs to be done," he said.

Beth Pritchard, head of the Army's Family Readiness Group for the Alpha Company 4-25 Brigade Special Troops Battalion, is one of the leaders calling soldiers' families when she knows they will arrive. There are 106 soldiers in Alpha Company. Their arrivals will be dispersed over various flights, so Pritchard makes a lot of phone calls for each ceremony.

Family members can also go online to see when a soldier will return, but the most reliable way of knowing is to call an 800 number that is consistently updated. Arrival and ceremony times often change, sometimes several times within a couple days.

"That's the biggest part: making sure we get the information out to all the families, that yes, your soldier is coming home, right now, and you need to be there," she said.

It all comes together

Finally, it all comes together.

At the gym, the narrator announced, "The buses have arrived." Family and friends stood, and the band began to play.

The soldiers walked single-file through double-doors in the back of the gym. They dropped their bags and marched behind a row of flags, then marched the length of the gym and lined up into three rows. Means's men showed them where to assemble. In the crowd a mother told her children, "I see him!"

When they were all lined up, everyone stood for the national anthem. The chaplain spoke an invocation, and Maj. Gen. William Troy was that night's speaker. He got to the podium and joked, "It's been suggested I keep my remarks to less than 20 minutes." After all, the families were eager to reunite.

After a brief thank-you, and a performance by the band of the Army song, the crowds were released, and the gym erupted with the sound of feet running off the stands and screams as families shared tears and long embraces.

Staff Sgt. James Allred and his stepfather surprised his mother, Melody Allred, by flying her to Alaska from Wisconsin for the ceremony.

"I came home from work one day, and there the tickets were to come to Alaska for the homecoming.... It's his third trip over," she said. Melody and James leaned on each other's shoulders. It was the first time she'd been able to welcome him home in person.

"Words can not even begin to tell you how I've been feeling since I've got the tickets," she said. "It's a long trip and hopefully it's the last one we'll ever have to attend."

Better here than there

By 8:43 p.m., it's all over.

Soldiers have picked up their bags and a few of the scattered crowd remained, speaking and catching up. Soldiers returned home with spouses or family if they live in the area, and the single soldiers returned to recently build barracks at Fort Richardson.

Pritchard and other FRG members decorated the barracks with welcoming signs and put food in the soldiers' freezers and refrigerators. She said they do this, "to make them feel like they're coming home to something better than where they were."

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, February 18, 2010.