A soldier’s diary - part five

This is the final excerpt from Sgt. Dull’s diary

November 5, 2004


 (This was written in Fallujah) This is the third time they told us we were going home. This is the third time I told my mom and dad I am coming home. I can’t bear to tell them it’s not true this time. Each time we are told we can go home, we get another mission. I understand that our Brigade Combat Team is competent and they need us, but we are tired. It has almost been a year. We need to get some sleep.
(A couple of weeks later: September) We are really going home. We are packing up and getting ready for the long trip back to Kuwait, but we don’t care. Motivation and morale are both higher than ever! Everyone is smiling. We can’t stop talking about what we will do when we get home. We are mostly looking forward to using a real toilet, sleeping in bed, having a fan, it not being 120 degrees, trees, grass, no sand and mostly... friends and family.
(The day after I got home) After days of travel by humvee, bus, airplanes and another bus, I see the entrance to Fort Stewart, Ga. I know that my mom and grandpa and grandma are in the gym waiting for me. I don’t know how to feel or how to act. I get out of the bus and kneel down and feel the wet grass.
It feels like heaven. There are beautiful trees all around, and it is raining. I haven’t seen rain for almost a year. We get ready to enter the gym and hear a band playing our Army song. It felt somewhat like I was on a winning championship team or something. We are in formation and someone is saying something... I am just looking for Mom and Gramps and Gram. I can’t see them. They let us go. Everyone is running, hugging, crying. I just stand there, and then it happened. I cried.
I cried for all of my friends that didn’t get to come back, I cried for what we did and saw, I cried for the love of my country and I cried because I saw my family that I was so lucky to see once again. I looked around and all of my [fellow soldiers] had the same tears as I did.
I ran to my family and we didn’t want to let go. My grandpa and I exchanged rosaries, and I still have that rosary he gave me hanging above me every night as I sleep. Thank you God for letting me come home.