2010/01/16:Cap Times: 750 Guardsmen from 32nd Brigade welcomed home

750 Guardsmen from 32nd Brigade welcomed home
By SAMANTHA MARCUS | La Crosse Tribune | Posted: Saturday, January 16, 2010 8:30 am | No Comments Posted

Members of the 32nd Brigade wave to friends and family members at Volk Field as they returned from their tour in Iraq. DICK RINIKER — La Crosse Tribune

Katie Gerke remembers standing on the street corner trying to catch just one last glimpse of her sons’ faces on a cold January day. This morning, she was trying to catch the first.

Gerke’s sons were among the 750 troops from the Wisconsin National Guard’s 32nd Infantry Brigade returning Thursday and Friday from a yearlong deployment to Iraq. Despite the cold and early hour — the plane landed about 1:30 a.m. Friday — the tent was packed with military families eager to spend a short time with their soldiers before the troops traveled to Fort McCoy for five days of demobilization.

Among the troops in the early-morning arrival was Company A, 32nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion from Onalaska.

Gerke’s sons, 21 and 24, were more than 6,000 miles away from home in Iraq, but at least they were together, the West Salem mother said. “Both of the guys are strong. They knew what they were getting themselves into.”

Michael Bahr, the younger of the two, said it was comforting to know Dylan Bahr was nearby, even if they saw each other only once a week.

“I joined (the National Guard) because I wanted to be on this deployment with him,” Michael said. “I found out he was deploying again and I wanted to go with him.”

Gerke said she mostly connected with her sons through their significant others, Dylan’s wife and Michael’s girlfriend.

“I did get the obligatory dead or alive call every other week or so,” Gerke said.

The women were by her side Friday morning at Volk Field in Camp Douglas as her two sons and other Wisconsin Guardsmen returned from the yearlong deployment.

Most family members awaiting the troops’ return were able to breathe a big sigh of relief when calls started coming in Thursday afternoon saying the soldiers had touched down in Maine.

“When he called and said they’d landed, it was the best three-minute phone call of my life,” said Jennifer Jackson, a Taylor native, of the call from her husband.

He has a home still lit with Christmas lights awaiting him in Wisconsin Rapids.

Jackson put Christmas on hold until his return. The couple purchased the new house during her husband’s August leave.

“He missed out on all the closing, the moving, the packing, the painting,” she said. “It’s ready for him. He can just come home and relax and get back into civilian life.”

The two will also be adjusting to married life. They wed in an intimate ceremony on Aug. 28, just a few months after he proposed to her via webcam from Kuwait. “I thought right away he was joking,” Jackson said. “But then I saw his smile ...” It was a proposal befitting the pair, who met in a Yahoo chatroom 10 months before his deployment.