Editor’s Note: Following is a story from a Minnesota newspaper about troop greeting at Bangor International Airport. It is reproduced by permission.

Tired from six months of military duty, jet-lagged after getting up at 4:30 a.m. in Bosnia and after a sleepless night, Capt. Jason Griffith stepped off the plane to a warm, flag-waving homecoming from people he doesn’t know in a city 1,500 miles from home.

For an hour, Griffith, of Rochester, Minn., and 104 others basked in the warmth of a Bangor, Maine, welcome.

Since 1991, veterans, family of veterans and people who wanted to thank soldiers for their service have come at all hours to the airport in the city of 33,000 to greet returning military. They bring strawberries when in season, candy, a chance to call home, and best of all, smiles, hugs and thank-yous.

“We were thrilled, very surprised,” said Griffith, a member of the 2nd Battalion, 136th Infantry of the Minnesota National Guard. It was his second time coming back to the States in Bangor, and his second time getting the welcome. But he said he had forgotten about it until he saw someone waving a flag at 8 p.m. Feb. 22.

No one was supposed to even know they were coming back because troop movements are secret, he said. But the informal group knew and was there again.

Griffith said he was in Bosnia on a peacekeeping mission in the country that has been shredded by war and hatred. He has many pictures showing bombed homes and mass graves. He proudly showed other pictures of tons of old rockets, rifles and other weapons that have been seized and destroyed to help the peace.

Despite helping, it’s still six months away from home in an unfamiliar country. He was happy to head home.

And those in Bangor are happy to welcome them, said Sylvia Thompson of Bangor, who has been part of the informal homecoming group. She said she is the widow of a man who served in Vietnam. When her husband returned, “It was just the children and I who showed up at the airport to pick him up. He didn’t get a welcome,” she said.

She wasn’t one of those greeting Griffith, however, because she was injured in the line of duty around Christmas. “I guess they shook my hand so hard, they pulled my arm out of place,” she said.

The group brings food, cheer, welcome, hugs and the phones, she said. In return, they often get tears.

While many greeters are from the VFW or American Legion, “We’re just Americans,” Thompson said.

Said Griffith: “I think we should have been thanking them for their service rather than the other way around.”