Fort Carson Colorado

They battled for 15 months in Baghdad and Mosul, losing 15 soldiers in some of the fiercest fighting since the invasion of Iraq.

Tuesday afternoon, many in the ranks of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had tears in their eyes as they greeted loved ones during a Fort Carson homecoming ceremony. The brigade is out of danger now with all but 250 of them back in Colorado.

“It’s like Santa Claus, Valentine’s and the Super Bowl all rolled into one,” Col. John Hort shouted with an emotion-choked voice.

Hort, the brigade’s commander, is slimmer than he was when the brigade left for war just after Thanksgiving, 2007. He led his brigade through the battle of Sadr City last spring, an intense two-month fight that left 700 Shiite militiamen dead.

Now, for the first time since 2003, Iraqis can walk through the eastern Baghdad neighborhood in relative safety.

Iraqi troops have taken control of the area after American forces wrested it from insurgents. Markets have reopened and factories have resumed work, an important step in an area where unemployment was at 50 percent or more last year.

For Hort, though, that was yesterday.

“It’s like a big weight got lifted off my shoulders,” he said.

Lt. Col. Chris Johnson was just as happy.

His 3rd Brigade battalion spent their 15 months in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and what was the last bastion of al-Qaida violence in that country. Violence there has dropped 75 percent since the battalion took control, Johnson said.

“You wouldn’t recognize it,” he said.

The time in Iraq took its toll, though on soldiers and their families.

Hort said the next two weeks will be dedicated to watching soldiers identified as “at-risk” for trouble on their return to ensure they get the help they need to reintegrate with their families and society.

“We’re very focused on our high-risk soldiers,” Hort said.

Hort said that will include learning from other units that have returned and had to deal with crime, family problems and war-caused mental illnesses.

But the colonel has other priorities, too.

Like other soldiers in the brigade he gets four days off before he has to return to Fort Carson to start the medical checks, paperwork and training in how to readjust to life in America .

“It’s going to be four days of drinking Corona and playing basketball with my kids,” he said.
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By Tom Roeder The Gazette