Television coverage over the weekend showed sailors returning to jubilant cheers and tears as their ship docked in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after an absence of almost 10 months.

In San Diego, two other Navy missile cruisers that took part in the war with Iraq came home Friday to joyous reunions, the ships met by private boats and other naval vessels whose signalmen flashed “Welcome back.”

“Glad to be back,” the USS Shiloh signaled in return.

The scenes were eerily reminiscent of another April – in 1991 – when a 747 landed at Bangor International Airport and hundreds of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne put their feet on U.S. ground after spending seven months in the sands of Saudi Arabia and in Iraq.

On that Easter Sunday 12 years ago, there were flags flying and banners waving, feet stomped and fists raised in support. And yellow ribbons everywhere. Over the cheers and applause, we could hear the cassette tape of Bruce Springsteen bellowing “Born in the USA.”

“Welcome home. We thank you,” we strangers told those servicemen returning from the Persian Gulf who stopped over at the local airport before heading on to Fort Bragg, N.C., and more cheering crowds.

It was a memorable day for many of us eastern Mainers who spent an Easter afternoon welcoming home our fellow Americans.

It was especially meaningful for me as my thoughts drifted further back in time, to a muggy, hot summer day in 1968 when a war-weary Seabee battalion flew into Gulfport, Miss., and slowly – soberly – one by one, stepped from the plane.

They, too, were tanned and strong and lean. And they had fought for more than 13 months in the jungles of Vietnam. They had survived the December Tet offensive by diving into trenches as mortar rounds exploded around them in DaNang. They had seen friends maimed – and killed – by land mines.

But when they finally came home, they had no music or flags or banners or aisles of hand-shaking strangers to greet them; only their families who stood on that sizzling tarmac and waited to embrace them with loving arms.

There was no victorious homecoming for Vietnam vets. To the contrary, all across the country they were mocked and scorned, and had it not been for the shame of it all they would have been forgotten.

Since 1968 – and since 1991 – our country mercifully has changed. We may not have grown wiser about war itself, but we have learned the nation can be divided yet stand united behind our troops. We can protest military action, yet support our military.

We can mourn the deaths that have occurred during the past month in Iraq. We can give thanks for the safe return of our servicemen and women.

We can celebrate their homecoming while we pray in earnest for the peacekeepers left behind.