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Back from Iraq

Jan- 9-2007 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

By LISA BEISEL, Annapolis Capital

Army Sgt. Brendan Tompkins stepped off a plane at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport Dec. 19 to a midnight homecoming with a dozen relatives. He rode home in his mother's Ford minivan through quiet streets, amid twinkling Christmas lights and glowing nativity scenes.

"It was kind of like a relief - like, wow, I'm home," the 21-year-old Severn resident said. "It's been a long time."

And a long way from the dangerous streets of Baghdad.

Just weeks earlier, Sgt. Tompkins was driving an armored Stryker vehicle, dodging civilians and bullets while tracking down insurgents setting off IEDs.

Soldiers on patrol stood atop the eight-wheel vehicle or walked next to it while Sgt. Tompkins and a medic rode inside.

From this vantage point Sgt. Tompkins saw his bunkmate get shot by a sniper through the hip, tearing an artery. His orders prevented him - the only trained driver - from getting out to help.

When other soldiers got his friend into the vehicle, Sgt. Tompkins took off, speeding down the streets to a clinic. He could hear his friends yelling and praying in the back.

"In my mind, he should have died," he said. "With a situation like that, you don't have time to think about it. It was just amazing. You see something like that happen to someone close to you, and it opens your eyes to it. This is life and death every day. It's so random that you're just rolling the dice."

That's how the 2003 Northeast High School graduate describes his time in Iraq - breathtaking change in a minute.

"You've got your days out there where you have fun, tell jokes, and then there are days when a bomb goes off next to you and you're shaken up for two days," he said. "You have to (keep going). It's your job - you have to do it. You don't have time to be scared or nervous."

His story is like those of many others returning from the Middle East. It's a story about readjusting to life at home, deciding what to tell his family and where his life goes from here.

Cathy Watts, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs, said veterans are having varying degrees of difficulty adjusting to civilian life.

"Some of them come back and move on with their lives. It just depends on each individual experience," she said. "There are all kinds of extremes, from moving forward to long-term (post-traumatic stress disorder) and medical issues."


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