Being photo editor this semester has limited my chances to actually shoot, but I had time today, and soldiers were coming home from more than a year in Iraq. My co-worker got the better shots showing the emotion of families reuniting, but nonetheless it was such an interesting experience. I haven’t been in such an emotionally charged environment for a long time. To see families get back together after missing someone in Iraq, well I can hardly imagine. Needless to say it was exhausting just to see it all happen, and puts things in perspective. These people here have experienced the horrors of war, what goes on in their minds is something I hope to never know. They have an inner will that needs to be respected and revered no matter what your stance on politics here are, and the wives and mothers here could talk for hours about why their man is better than any one you know, and they’d probably be right. What a morning.

The patch on the pack reads “caution stay 100 meters back or you will be shot” and is then repeated in arabic.

wow.

The man who’s feet you see in this photo is a Vietman Vet.
He came out to welcome the soldiers and one of them was the son of a friend’s. “It was very different when I came home” he said.