Give a ‘hero’s welcome’ this Memorial Day

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Scott T. Sturkol
  • 319th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. (AFPN) --  Over the course of the past two years, I’ve been on two deployments that took me to Afghanistan and Iraq and nearly everywhere in between.

After completing each of those deployments, I was able to come home to family and friends to what seemed to me like a “hero’s welcome.” I, however, do not feel like a hero.

Why? It is a fact that came to me once again as I was returning home from my most recent deployment to Uzbekistan just a few weeks ago.

I was heading home from that deployment on what some call the “freedom bird.” The plane made a stop in Germany for a short refueling layover. While there, I ran across numerous Army troops who were returning to the United States from their deployment to Tikrit, Iraq.

While waiting in line at the terminal exchange to pay for a desert camouflage pillow I wanted for the remaining flight home, I noticed in front of me an Army first sergeant who was in charge of the Army troops while they were waiting for a separate flight. So as is my nature, I struck up a conversation with this first sergeant.

I asked him about his group of Soldiers and whether they were going home or going forward to a deployed location. He told me they were all from a unit from Fort Stewart, Ga., and they were heading home for “rest and relaxation” after seven months in Tikrit. That meant they would be going back.

I talked with him for several minutes before he said something I will never forget. He said, “I wish all of our Soldiers were coming home with us.”

Immediately, I knew what he meant. He talked about Soldiers from his unit who died during combat action and of others who were wounded. He told me that on his ride home to that point he had been thinking of every one of those Soldiers and their families. I have to admit, he had me thinking of those Soldiers all the way home too.

My thinking and revelations from that chance meeting are still with me today along with many other memories of people I knew and have lost from my life because they gave their lives for my freedom.

The 2,000 or more miles that I flew on that plane until I got my welcome at home allowed for a lot of soul searching. I thought about the Air Force firefighter who died while trying to save some Iraqi children from a fire and how this Airman was honored throughout the area of responsibility by his fellow firefighters.

I also thought about a C-130 aircrew member who lost his spouse due to illness while he was deployed and how he went home to be with his two children who no longer had their mother. Little do we think of it sometimes, but families are just as important to a warfighter as the tools of his or her trade. Families and friends, especially of those who have lost a loved one during wartime, have to be the “heroes of home” and my never-ending salute goes out to them.

Most importantly, though, my heroes are those with whom I served who never came home to the welcome I received when I came home. That is why each year I mark Memorial Day as a special day.

Memorial Day was established just so we can remember our fallen comrades -- our brothers and sisters in arms who never came home to see the tears in their spouses’ or parent’s eyes, or the welcoming smiles of children.

I encourage you to think about that and take time this Memorial Day to honor the heroes who never came home. Give them the “hero’s welcome” they deserve.