KINGSPORT, Tenn. – Tara Spears smiled when her Blackberry chirped Tuesday with a text message – it was her husband, letting her know what time he’d be home.
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Staff Sgt. John Spears and about 120 other soldiers with the Tennessee National Guard’s 278th Armed Calvary Regiment passed through Knoxville on a bus that was bringing them home from a seven-month deployment in Iraq.
Soon after, the bus pulled into a parking lot at the unit’s armory in Kingsport – to the welcome of friends and family members who’d been waiting for hours to celebrate the soldiers’ safe return.
“I’m kind of speechless,” Tara Spears said when asked what was going through her head when the bus carrying her husband arrived at the armory. “It just doesn’t feel real.”
Also known as the “Bootleggers,” soldiers in the 278th Calvary left the Tri-Cities in December to spend three months training at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Miss.
They went to Iraq in February to start a deployment that was originally scheduled to last about 12 months. The deployment, John Spears’ second to Iraq since the war started, got cut short because of President Barack Obama’s planned troop drawdown.
Even though it was shorter, Tara Spears said, her husband’s second deployment was harder than the first one, which had lasted 19 months from 2004 to 2005.
“It’s just been stressful,” said Tara Spears, who lives in Bristol, Tenn., with her two sons, ages 6 and 7, and her 11-year-old stepdaughter. “The kids are older and they understand a lot more about what’s going on.”
But then, she said, every deployment is stressful because one parent ends up doing the job of two. In addition to taking care of their children by herself, Tara Spears said she also must do her husband’s chores, such as mowing the lawn.
That’s why she’s thankful the Bootleggers have friends and family members who work together like an extended family during a deployment the same way its members become brothers while their in combat.
Technology also has come a long way in the five years since her husband’s first deployment, and that’s helped out a lot too. During the Bootleggers’ 2004-05 deployment, Tara Spears said she was lucky if she could talk to her husband once a week. This year she’s been able to use her Blackberry and Skype, an Internet-based video telephone service, to talk to her husband every single day that he’s been gone.
“The Internet was a little pricey, but it was worth it,” said John Spears, who also enjoyed having the new technology to keep in touch with his wife. “Skype was probably better than the phone service was over there.”
While Tara Spears was waiting for her husband at a table inside the barracks, Church Hill, Tenn., native Bill Webb was waiting for his son in a lawn chair he set up on a concrete platform overlooking the building’s driveway.
His son, Sgt. First Class Jeffrey Webb of Kingsport, was returning from his third trip to Iraq: with the Bootleggers on their 2004-05 deployment and for 12 months in 1991 as part of the troops that fought in Operation Dessert Storm.
Bill Webb said he still had a hard time being without his son, even though this most recent deployment was Jeffrey Webb’s third trip to Iraq and he had some idea of what to expect.
“Son, you don’t ever get used to it,” Bill Webb said, adding that with his old age he was missing his son this time even more than he had in the past.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
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