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It's up to the community to welcome single soldiers home

Jul- 7-2006 » Filed Under: Homefront

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By Michelle Cuthrell

As I was cleaning out my garage this week--one of the many endless tasks I'm trying to complete before my husband comes home from Iraq next month--I stumbled across a box from 1st. Lt. Devin Hammond.

Besides being a great friend of ours, Devin is also a single soldier. That means, among other things, that he has no one to ship his boxes home to, no one to maintain his car.

So throughout this deployment, I've tried to pick up the slack and make things easier on him. He mails his extra Army gear home to my house, his car sits in the front of my driveway. I start the vehicle and maintain it as best I can so that storage and car maintenance are two less things this soldier has to worry about when he returns home from a yearlong deployment. [...]

And yet a missing ring on that left fourth finger sometimes means that they might not be appreciated, welcomed or loved upon as much when they return from a completely selfless and stressful year away.

After receiving Devin's e-mail, I wrote some of my other single soldier friends, asking what we as a community and we as an Army family could do to make their homecoming just as special as those of the married soldiers.

Spc. Juan Gomez said he'd love to share lunch or dinner with local families--or nice, single girls, he joked--upon his return to share his experiences and pass along stories from this past year. Coming home to an empty room is not the highlight of redeployment, he said, and he'd love to spend some time in fellowship with others.

Cpl. Matthew Hall said he'd love to attend some kind of homecoming party and music concert in Fairbanks--something fun that single soldiers could look forward to and participate in to help relax after this stressful year away.

Devin simply wrote, "When you see that soldier, congratulate him and welcome him home. It will do wonders for his morale."

That's the least we can do.


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