Airmen welcomed back by loved ones

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A dozen airmen from the 315th Airlift Wing's Security Forces Squadron returned to Charleston Thursday afternoon after nearly eight months of security duty at Kirkuk Air Base in Iraq. Watch »

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

Patricia Potter (left) and her sister Lorri Havard watch Thursday as Potter's son Joseph Arnold returns from a deployment in Kirkuk, Iraq.

The Post and Courier

After nearly eight months of nerve-frazzling security duty in Iraq, and a long, anxious plane ride back home, Airman 1st Class Joseph Arnold of Charlotte was temporarily struck speechless by what he saw when he stepped into the Charleston International Airport on Thursday afternoon.

About a dozen family members — mother, grandmother, aunt, sisters, wife, son — swarmed him, all wearing T-shirts with his name and picture on them. His grandmother, Joan Chavis, had them made for the occasion.

Arnold quickly recovered, although he fought back tears as he spoke.

"This is amazing," he said. "Family is what it's all about, it really is. That's why we do what we do, for the family."

Arnold was one of 13 returning members of the 315th Airlift Wing's Security Forces Squadron, a reserve unit stationed in Charleston that sent a crew to Kirkuk Air Base in Iraq in January. Their job was to check everyone and everything coming off the base, as well as guard the perimeter.

Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, is often in the news as one of the country's most strategic and potentially volatile regions. About 40 percent of the country's oil reserves are near the city, and ethnic tensions are simmering to a boil.

Arnold, 28, joined the Air Force shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. This was his first assignment in Iraq, and he hopes to make the Air Force his career.

His enthusiasm gives family members mixed feelings.

"He volunteered, honor and duty," his aunt Lorri Havard of Winston-Salem, N.C., said. "He was the first boy born in the family with all these girls, so we're a little protective of him."

She understands the call. She spent 14 years in the Army, seeing combat in Desert Storm. But she hates to take a chance on losing him.

"I know he still feels a connection with the other guys he left behind over there," she said. "It's making us a little nervous. But once you get home, sometimes that might change things."

All the family members interviewed Thursday said they worried constantly about their men. That includes Lisa Cardinal, a full-time Air Force reservist whose brother was one of the returning crewmen.

"I worried about him every day," she said. "I'm just glad that he's safe. It was difficult."

Her brother, Tech. Sgt. Scott C. Boone of Goose Creek, returned home a day early but was there to greet the other 12. This was his third rotation in Iraq and probably his most dangerous.

"Sometimes it (searching vehicles) was pretty scary, because you never knew what was inside of them," he said, adding that nothing serious ever got through their defenses. "The scariest thing was the rocket attacks. They were very unpredictable. You'd be sleeping at night, and all of a sudden the alarms go off."

He was greeted by his wife, Stacey Boone, and 3-year-old daughter, Olivia.

"When I was leaving, she could say 'Yes' and 'No,' " he said of Olivia, "but now she can have a full conversation with us."