Mideast tour ends for Maine soldier

EAST MILLINOCKET – The snow was knee-deep when Greg Libby tied a brand-new yellow ribbon on the maple tree in his front yard.

On Saturday, his eldest son, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Christopher Libby, patiently waited to pluck the now drooping, brownish bow from a low branch while his mother, Mary, readied her disposable camera.

With one tug the ribbon was gone, Mary snapped her picture, and the young soldier was home – for at least a while.

“There were times when I was definitely tired of it,” Libby said earlier in the family’s living room where he sat next to his 15-year-old brother, Matt, and watched an amateur video of his arrival Friday night at Bangor International Airport. “I don’t think I could have done it if not for the people I was with.”

It’s a scene repeated throughout the country as troops return from Iraq after months in the desert, where many will be replaced by reservists, who already make up about 15 percent of the 130,000 troops in the region.

To allow more soldiers like Libby to return home and see their families, U.S. Central Command late last week began its Rest and Recuperation Leave program, with the first participants arriving in Baltimore on Friday. After a two-week leave, the soldiers will return to Iraq.

Libby, who is not part of the program, instead will return to his home base of Camp Pendleton in California after completing what became a nine-month tour of duty in the Mideast.

Libby, a communications expert with the 7th Engineers Support Battalion, was not the only one looking forward to his long-awaited homecoming, delayed when he volunteered to stay longer to allow a fellow communications expert with a wife and new baby to go home sooner.

“Chris, tell him about the time …,” Libby’s excited 11-year-old brother, Eric, began several times during a recent interview at home, tucked away in a neatly kept neighborhood across the street from Katahdin Paper’s East Millinocket mill, where Greg Libby works as a papermaker.

Libby was quick to tell the story of his brother’s choice, including the time he and his commander got lost in the desert on the eve of the Iraq invasion and spent the night there watching Iraqi missiles fly toward Kuwait and U.S. Patriot missiles intercept them on several occasions.

“It was a little like watching fireworks,” said Libby, who returned to base the next morning.

“Saddam wasn’t supposed to have those Scuds either,” Eric matter-of-factly added.

Postwar Iraq also left a lasting impression on Libby, who pulled from his wallet a note written by a doctor who worked with Libby’s company in the war’s aftermath.

“I keep it because it’s a good thing that happened,” Libby said, carefully refolding the worn piece of paper in which the doctor thanks the troops for their friendship during the difficult time.

Just as Libby’s homecoming eagerly was anticipated by his family, so will those of thousands of other soldiers who on Friday began returning to the States as part of the R&R leave program.

In the first large-scale home leave program since the Vietnam War, soldiers on 12-month combat tours are being allowed to return home for two weeks. As the occupation of Iraq has developed, soldiers there have seen their tours of duty lengthened far beyond what they anticipated. Military commanders approved the program to boost morale.

But the logistics of the program have run into criticism from some military families concerned with the cost of flying their relatives home from Baltimore, the only drop-off point for the returning troops.

Jan Hogan of Eagan, Minn., said nephew Chad Krandall is to come home today after drawing No. 1 in the lottery within his 142nd Engineer Combat Battalion of the North Dakota National Guard. He is in Baghdad.

Hogan checked air fares and found it would cost him $1,200 to fly from Baltimore to St. Paul, the nearest big airport to his home in Gwinner, N.D.

Closer to home in Hermon, Cheryl Thibeault echoed Hogan’s concerns. Her husband, a member of the 112th Army National Guard medical unit based in Bangor, is scheduled to come from Kuwait in early October for his two-week leave.

Because of uncertainty about exactly when he could catch one of the crowded military flights from Kuwait to Baltimore, tickets from Baltimore to Bangor were expensive – approaching $1,000.

Thibeault worried that the expense could pose a hardship for some soldiers’ families, who would be responsible for paying for commercial flights from Baltimore.

“You’ll have some people really digging deep to pay for it,” said Thibeault, who instead bought a round-trip ticket from Kuwait to Bangor even though it cost about $1,200.

U.S. Central Command Public Affairs Officer Maj. Mike Escudie said Sunday that he has heard several financial concerns similar to Thibeault’s.

He said the military had “imminent plans” to increase the number of military flights from Kuwait and add more destinations, including Atlanta and Los Angeles, to make the trips home easier.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.