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sister’s prediction, March 12, 1991, was the earli- nuzzling my face into her permed curls and the 5
est. The rest of us hoped but doubted she was world was whole again.
close. We only got a couple days’ notice that she By the time I joined the Air Force in 2006,
was exactly right. As suddenly as war had deployments were predictable. So were home- section three
swooped into our lives, it ended. Preparations comings. At Hurlburt Field, an Air Force Special
were frenzied. We spent hours hunched over Operations base on the Florida panhandle and
bright sheets of poster board, tracing letters and one of the main suppliers of pilots and Special /
gluing glitter onto signs. There were trips to Forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle had
Party City to buy a trunk-load of yellow ribbons clockwork regularity. Once a month, a con-
and American flags. We must have alerted the tracted aircraft took hundreds of troops away. Lauren Kay Johnson
relatives, the elementary school, my Girl Scout Once a month, an aircraft brought hundreds
troop, and Mom’s college roommate, because back. Because of the consistency, or perhaps in
hordes of them showed up at McChord Air Force spite of it, the base turned each homecoming
Base in Tacoma on the morning of March 12. into a fanfare event.
We stood behind a chain link fence, a crowd The public affairs office where I worked
of hundreds, watching the empty runway. My played a prominent role in the planning of “Oper-
sister and I held homemade signs. My brother, ation Homecoming.” We invited local and regional
just two years old, didn’t understand where media and always had takers. This was a military
Mommy had been or why; he just knew today was town, and everyone loved a feel-good story, espe-
the day she was coming home. He coiled his tiny cially when the date fell near a holiday. (Of course,
hands around the fence and rocked back and for every planeload that came home in time for
forth, back and forth, eyes glued to the tarmac. Christmas another left just before, but we focused
His expectant face, framed by a puffy black and on the positive.) Local civic leaders were invited,
red jacket, became a popular clip on local news too. Mayors, school administrators, presidents
segments. of chambers of commerce, and business owners
I don’t know how long we waited before we formed a receiving line with base leadership to
heard the drone of an approaching aircraft. The shake hands with each returning hero.
crowd hushed, twisted heads frantically and The events were always the same. The sun 15
shielded eyes from the sun, pointed at a dark was up or down, or somewhere in between. We
speck on the horizon, then erupted into a gathered in the east hangar or the west. Patriotic
cacophony of cheers. The dark speck got bigger music played on a loop. A female reporter wear-
and turned into a plane that drifted slowly across ing too much makeup drew approving looks from
the landscape. As it inched closer, the mob grew the men in the audience. There were American
wild. We screamed and shook the fence. My dad flags and yellow ribbons and a huge crowd of
scooped up my brother. Someone, a grandparent family and friends. Everyone looked anxious.
maybe, grabbed my hand. Reporters yelled into Children held hand-painted signs: “Welcome
their microphones. We were supposed to stay Home Daddy!” “We Missed You Mommy!” Some
behind the fence, but when the plane landed and sat on cement barricades that flanked the walk-
the first camouflaged figure emerged, we stam- way to the flightline. Others ran giggling through
peded onto the runway. All I could see were legs. the throng. A few slept in parents’ arms.
Jeans and khakis and sweats, then a trickle of Some wives and girlfriends dressed up. They
camouflage moving upstream, then a pair of legs wore short skirts, even in December, when tem-
that stopped and dropped a bag and bent and peratures dipped into the 20s and wind rattled
hugged and cried, then I was in her arms and through the gaping hangar. Once, a woman wore
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample. 197
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