Home after year in Afghanistan, platoon adjusts: ‘I’m not used to the peacefulness’

After year in Afghanistan, platoon savors home

WATERTOWN, N.Y. — Just hours after they arrived home from a year-long deployment in Afghanistan the clock struck midnight, and soldiers of 2nd Platoon, Apache Company of the 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry Regiment, gathering at their local bar, Fat Boys, hugged each other, shouting “Happy New Year” and “I love you.”

Amidst the celebration stood Olivia Nammack, 26, and her husband Spc. Don Johnson, 28, locked in a kiss and a long embrace.

Nammack felt “relaxed for the first time in 12 months and just so happy,” she said later.

The 2/87, part of the 3rd Combat Brigade 10th Mountain Division, based in Fort Drum, N.Y., was originally slated to deploy to Iraq but was re-routed to Afghanistan instead, departing in late 2008.

These soldiers represented U.S. forces’ first major push into Logar and Wardak provinces, where heavy anti-coalition resurgence helped make last year the worst for deaths among NATO forces since the war began in 2001.

In an attempt to secure Kabul from falling back into the hands of the Taliban, the US bolstered forces with the deployment of the 3/10 in Logar and Wardak Province, less than 30 minutes from the capital, from approximately 500 troops in 2008 to 3000 in 2009. The brigade was the first substantial illustration of the America’s new military focus in Afghanistan.

A year later, the troops’ return home has brought myriad emotions as they readjust to normal life.

Playing his turn on his 6-year-old stepdaughter Ariana’s guitar video game as she runs circles around the apartment, Spc. Mike Schmidt said, “Now that I’m home it feels like only yesterday I left, but when I was over there in Afghanistan it felt like I was gone three or four years.”

The 23-year-old acknowledged, “It’s overwhelming. It still feels a little weird.”

His wife Jackie said she noticed how Ariana handled the separation: “It definitely got harder as it went on. The last few months were the worst for her. She would talk a lot more about missing him.”

The soldiers of 2nd Platoon balance the routine tasks of re-entry — finding apartments, continuing the artwork on an old tattoo or getting mani/pedi’s with the wife at the mall — with deeper emotional and physical readjustments.

“I’m not used to the peacefulness here,” said Spc. Todd Beatty, 30, looking out the window of his new home, the barracks on base. “I slept better over there than I do over here. Probably cause I was drained tired back in Afghanistan and it’s just too quiet here. I’m hearing gunshots sometimes in my sleep.”

The platoon leader, 1st Lt. Mark Hogan, 24, sitting in his vacant apartment waiting for the movers to show up, reflects while drinking his first beer: “It feels really surreal now, almost like I never left. Like the whole year in Afghanistan was just a dream.”

For Pfc. Daniel Neer, 20, who came back early after being injured by a bomb in the dangerous Tangi Valley of Wardak province, a scar the length of his neck is a constant reminder.

“The shrapnel went an eighth of an inch from my artery. I came close, really close. I think about how close I came on a daily basis, hourly basis, every time I feel my throat. I’m glad to be alive, lucky be alive. If that hit my artery I wouldn’t be here, I would have bled out on the field,” he said.

“Everything’s different now. The little things that bothered me before don’t bother me anymore. You get a whole new perspective on life.”

Following a lobster and clams dinner with some of the platoon, who think of themselves as a second family, the idea of coming home is starting to sink in for the soldiers.

“It’s a lot of disbelief that I’m back for good,” says Spc. Johnson, “In the beginning, it felt like I was home, but not for good. Now it feels like I’m home and I’m not going anywhere.”