In North Carolina, a soldiers' welcome

The families came early to the hangar at the Asheville Regional Airport. They waited expectantly - seemingly interminably - for the C-130 cargo plane to descend out of the clear North Carolina sky as the wind rustled through the hickory and elm outside.

Finally the plane taxied in, the hatch swung open, and Army Spc. Traci Adams poked her head out - waving an American flag. Sgt. Dave Ponder rushed to his family and hugged his son, Zeke, for the first time. The boy cried. Two other sergeants showed - to their families' wonderment and perhaps distress - their matching scorpion tattoos in Arabic script.

In the human tableau at the hangar here, a year's worth of anguish and heartache and worry was distilled to a moment of hugs and looks and embraces. Another group of American soldiers had come home. Finally.

At a time when the tours of many soldiers are being extended, the return of Charlie Company to the rumpled hollows of North Carolina was particularly poignant.

The members of Charlie Company had spent 12 months patching up soldiers and orphans In Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. The military medics received a hero's welcome as hundreds of well-wishers cheered their small column, first at the hangar, and then as they marched along the tulip-lined sidewalks of this tiny college town in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Toting stained pillows and hoisting old college backpacks, the 120-member company from the 161st Area Support Medical Battalion returned unscathed and a world wiser, and they looked more bewildered than heroic. As the country faces a bittersweet reckoning of homecomings and soldiers' funerals in the deadliest month of the war, Charlie Company now faces the long adjustments between Middle East desert and their hometown Appalachian hills. Indeed, the possible lingering effects of the war are still not known, and their hero status may soon wear thin, some experts worry.

But for now, families here have been most concerned about giving their long-gone wives, husbands, sons, and daughters a proper welcome. "You may not feel like heroes since you weren't getting shot at every day or fighting in Fallujah," Col. Rick Rogers told them as he choked back tears. "But to Americans, you are heroes."

Yet even as Boy Scouts and blue-haired ladies waved roses and flags, the V-word - Vietnam - hung in the air like a chilly mist. In fact, organizers made a conscious decision to bring the celebration to Mars Hill instead of facing potential antimilitary protests in downtown Asheville, which has a noisy antiwar contingent.

"When we came back from Vietnam, there was nothing like this for us," says veteran Carl Mumpower, the vice mayor of Asheville. "These folks come home as assets, not liabilities. They're going to make their communities stronger."

Still, the seeming parallels to past conflicts - and the potential of returning soldiers being booed by crowds - indicated a tentative public-relations situation, a fine line between orchestrating patriotic emotion and shielding soldiers from abuse.

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