Coming home to what they deserve: a free country

In April 2003, at the beginning of the war in Iraq, I wrote about yellow ribbons tied around Bradford pear trees flanking U.S. 460 that runs through the two Bluefields. “I know why the yellow ribbons are there,” I said. “It’s the two communities' way of saying to the soldiers fighting overseas, ‘We miss you and hope that one day soon we can welcome you home.’ "

For the soldiers of the Virginia Army National Guard’s 276th Engineer Battalion Company B that homecoming was last Wednesday.

As their bus made its way down U.S. 460 to the armory on the campus of Southwest Virginia Community College, they passed the faded, jaded ribbons, now camouflaged as tree trunks.

Time and nature have sucked the color out of the ribbons. Pale, drenched by rain and snow, faded by sunlight, weathered by wind, they are more reminiscent of war than hope and return.

Travelers on U.S. 460 probably won’t notice the faded ribbons, but Wednesday they could not miss the new, bright-yellow ones that marked the soldiers’ path home. They were tied to bridges, road signs, mailboxes and poles. People draped their front doors with flags, hung red, white and blue ribbons on their mailboxes, and planted flags on the banks in front of their homes. Auto dealerships flew flags from the antenna of their cars-for-sale. It was a hodgepodge of greetings synchronized by the colors of patriotism.

Soldiers who used GPS devices to find their way through the alien deserts of Iraq only had to follow the trail of Michael’s ribbons to find their way to their loved ones waiting anxiously and eagerly for them in the armory’s parking lot. Helping the group pass the time were the media: newspaper and TV reporters, who had come to record the historic return.

It was a dramatic and deserving welcome for a group of men and women who performed the ultimate sacrifice: they gave up their jobs, families, and sometimes their lives to go to the other side of the world to help other people in trouble. No event plays out stronger in world history than a soldier’s homecoming. There’s the famous quote by Spartan mothers to their sons, “Come home with your shield or on it.”

My mother remembers well my dad’s return from World War II in August 1944. There was no public announcement, no grand entrance, no band or reporters. There was also no prior notice.

Her story goes like this:

“Two of my sisters and I lived with my parents in Blue Ridge (a few miles east of Roanoke on U.S. 460) while our husbands were overseas,” she said.

“We were one of the few families who had a phone. You got the first chance to get a phone if someone in your family was in the war. When Bill was in the states, I would call and leave a message for him to call me back. Sometimes he would, but many times he never got my message,” she said.

But they wrote every day, especially when he was stationed in England, flying bombing missions over Germany. She kept all of his V-mail. They were innocuous epistles of “Hello,” “How are you?” and “I hope you have received my letters for I know how you worry.”

“He couldn’t say anything,” she said. “The letters were censored. They couldn’t take the chance that letters would be intercepted by the enemy.” The letters didn’t arrive every day either. Most of the time there were long periods of time between letters and then they would all arrive at the same time.

The end of letter writing came with a phone call one August morning. It was Western Union calling to tell her that Bill would arrive at the Roanoke train station that night. When he stepped off the train, about 30 family and friends from Blue Ridge met him with applause. “He was in his Air Force uniform,” she said, “and wearing a big, happy smile on his face. There was only one other soldier with him -- the Fuller Brush man’s brother- in-law.”

That was his homecoming after three years of active service, 33 bombing missions over Germany, and D-Day participation. “There were no ribbons or flags,” she said. “We did have a little blue flag that we bought at the five and ten cent store. People hung them in their windows and put gold stars on them to show how many family members they had serving in the war. Ours hung in the front room window and it had three gold stars on it.”

“I wish I had kept it,” she said, “but it hung there so long that the sun faded it and it fell apart.” Shredded like the yellow ribbons that have hung for so long on the Bradford pears that line U.S. 460 in Bluefield 61 years later.

She tells all who await the return of loved ones from war to preserve their memorabilia, like flags, ribbons, emails, and letters, for homecomings are special times in history.

Dear Readers, this is my last column for Roanoke,com. I thank you for your support and your feedback over the past five years. It's been fun, but the time has come for me and for Roanoke.com to do different things.

With much appreciation,

Carol Hart