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I knew my turn would come eventually. past media escorts and wave, too. Flags and 5
Deployments were the reality of military service posters would dance past as I reached the main
in the post-9/11 era. I wanted to go; I wouldn’t crowd. The shouting, the colors and the patriotic
feel like I was fulfilling my duty otherwise. I music would build into a bubble of emotions. section three
didn’t think about the possibility of not coming Then I would see my family at the same time
home — the idea was too vague, too surreal, too they saw me. It would be just like all the home-
terrifying — but I dreamed about my homecom- comings I’d witnessed. It would be perfect. /
ing. I had been in the crowd and on the fringes, When I flew back from Afghanistan in March
and someday I would be on the plane. I would 2010 — almost exactly 19 years after my mom
hear people cheering as the front door creaked came home from Saudi Arabia — I was the only Lauren Kay Johnson
open and the Florida sunlight or moonlight military passenger on my commercial airliner. I
spilled into the cabin. It would take forever to had traveled by helicopter from a small Forward
unload. My family would grow impatient, like Operating Base near the Pakistan border, then
thousands of families before: Where is she? left some of my deployed unit at Bagram Air Base,
Everyone looks the same! What if she’s not there? the military’s main hub in Afghanistan, where
Then I would make my way out the door, down their home units required additional paperwork
the stairs, and onto the tarmac to be funneled prior to departure. Others had flown with me to
through the outstretched hands of the base com- Baltimore-Washington International Airport,
manders and city leadership. The scene would where we were herded through a small crowd
probably be overwhelming, a sea of arms like of USO volunteers whose cheers and unfamiliar
the legs in my memory. But it would be heart- faces were as genuine as they were jarring; then
warming to get such a reception. Commanders through customs, then to separate terminals
I’d worked with would pat me on the back, for separate flights back to wherever home — or
maybe even offer a hug or a high five. Welcome home base — might be, barely registering that
back, LT, they’d say, We missed you! Working my after nearly a year of living, eating and working
way down the line, I would see my colleagues together, depending on each other for survival,
hovering by the media, and they would grin and those jetlagged, bewildered moments might be
wave. The reporters might recognize me from the last we ever shared.

This is a photograph of a
welcome home ceremony for
soldiers returning from Iraq in
2005.
How would you describe the
tone captured in this image,
and what elements convey
that tone? How does this
picture compare to some
of the returns that Johnson
describes in her narrative?

Scott Olson/ Getty Images

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