Home Again, Home Again

Here are the promised pictures of Blake's homecoming. We met Dusty in Killeen at the main gate about 5:30 to meet Blake and his group who were supposed to arrive at 6:30. However, the first thing we heard when we got there was they were about 2 hours late. As it turned out, it wasn't a whole two hours, but rather an hour and fifteen minutes late. Blake arrived at the gym at 7:45. We stayed around, met his NCO whom we had heard so much about from Blake, finally found his bags, and took off back to Austin.

Blake wanted to have his first meal home at Outback, so we went to the one on Lamar St. It was late, but we were early enough to get served and enjoy our meal. Blake had only one thing on his mind: steak.

Blake and Dusty both stayed over the weekend, but had to get on the road Sunday afternoon. Blake had a great time visiting with the neighbors, shopping at the San Marcos outlet mall, and visiting our church. It was the very best Father's Day ever for me.

We roared at some of the stories he told us of meeting personalities at the USO shows. He met the cast of The Unit, and had his picture taken with Dennis Hasbert (see below) who also makes the Allstate commercials. When he was shaking hands with Hasbert, he said, "You're in good hands." The picture taken shows Hasbert looking down at Blake. He said, "You're a smart-ass, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," Blake replied.

When Blake met David Robinson, former center for the San Antonio Spurs, he looked up at him and said, "I thought you would be taller." Robinson, Blake says, cracked up.

Other things Blake told us about the stay were "riding in Blackhawks (helicopters) is cool," and (I know you'll appreciate this BJ), "Chinook pilots are the craziest people in the Army." Apparently, he spent a lot of time in helicopters while he was deployed.

We also heard about the "Great Voice in the Sky" who made announcements immediately preceeding controlled ordinance detonations. Such as, "There will be a controlled detonation in 5 minutes." 5 minutes later, BOOM. No big deal, right? Until you hear, BOOM! Then 2 or 3 minutes later, "The explosion earlier was a controlled detonation." That's just not right!

One other thing we learned was that in early May the entry I made titled "Reality Check" was not the whole story. He was actually on the base that was overrun and took part in the firefight. No wonder he was so shook up when he called. Good grief, I'm glad he didn't tell us all that when it happened. This was all part of our "education" as we learned that while for the most part, it was in a good area, he was by no means as safe as he led us to believe.

Well, here are the pictures:


Dusty found him first, but Mom was right behind. She was overjoyed to see him again. This whole episode in the gym was very touching. 300 men who hadn't seen their families in a year. It was something.


When you can finally get a picture of the two of them stopped long enough for the camera shutter to snap, you usually get a pretty good shot. This one was one of my very favorites. Dusty was a big help over the weekend, and Blake was thrilled to see him again.


30 hours in the air from Kurgystan to Killeen. He said he had left at 9:30 that morning local time and had arrived at 7:45 the same evening. Talk about globe trotting.

Blake says "Good-bye" to friends he had traveled with and prepares to start the task of finding his bags in all of the mess that had been unloaded from the 5 buses that had brought them all to the gym. There were 300 duffel bags, 300 back packs, 300 assault packs, and the only difference in any of them was the name on each. Talk about a mess trying to find your luggage.


Blake finds his laptop bag first and then goes about the task of finding his other bags. It took about 20 minutes to find them all. What a mess. But it was so good to have him home again. Now, he's at Ft. Hood until mid-October when his unit transfers to Ft. Knox in Kentucky. I wonder if he can get assigned duty polishing the gold bars. That would be nice duty.