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This time, families hope it's for real

Nov-22-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

By TATABOLINE BRANT, Anchorage Daily News

After a year-long tour in northern Iraq and a dangerous and controversial four-month extension in Baghdad, the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team is finally coming home, military officials said Tuesday.

The 3,800-person unit, which has lost 26 soldiers in the 16 months it has been gone, is scheduled to return to Alaska in waves starting Saturday, U.S. Army Alaska spokesman Maj. Kirk Gohlke said.

Most of the troops will be flying into Fairbanks, where the brigade is stationed at Fort Wainwright. About 200 will return to Fort Richardson. Officials hope to have all the soldiers back by Dec. 5, Gohlke said.

Families worn out by the long, stressful separation could hardly contain their excitement Tuesday that they were days away from being reunited with their loved ones. Many of them had heard the news over the past few days. Others remembered the last time the troops were due home and prayed this time the news was true.

Laura Smerbeck, 26, said her husband, Staff Sgt. John Smerbeck, called her Tuesday morning from Iraq to remind her he would see her soon. Smerbeck said her husband, who is on his third Middle East tour, told her: "I'm coming home. I'm coming home. ... I beat the odds, and I'm coming home."

"I'm ecstatic," Laura said in an interview from her Fairbanks home. "It's about time." She said the last time her husband saw his son, Christopher, the boy weighed 8 pounds. Now he weighs 20. "He's going to be amazed by his son. He's huge now."[...]


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