776th to Visit Home This Week

Some Tri-Cities National Guardsmen will get to spend time at home with family before they deploy to Iraq.

News Channel 11 confirmed today that one-hundred one members of the 776th Maintenance Company will come home Wednesday night.

Half of the one-hundred one guardsmen will arrive on a military training flight around 7 p.m. at Tri-Cities Regional Airport.  The other half will fly into McGhee Tyson Air Base in Knoxville at the same time.

According to a Bob Cable, a local businessman who helped arrange the visit, the 776th will return to Indiana for continued training on Sunday.  The company reportedly will travel to Kuwait, then to Iraq, possibly by the end of the year.

This type of visit is highly unusual.  Cable said the visit was made possible by Elizabethton community members working with legislative and military contacts in support of the 776th and connected families.