Home sweet home

Image courtesy: Lee Craker

Wednesday will be a special day at New York's Fort Drum, where many members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division will return home from their fourth deployment to Iraq. The brigade had been in Baghdad since October.

According to The Post-Standard, Vice President Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, will be on hand to personally thank the soldiers for their service. Regardless of our varying political opinions, the Bidens know how it feels to have a loved one deployed overseas. Their son, Capt. Beau Biden, served in Iraq from September 2008 to September 2009, with a brief return to the United States to see his father sworn in as vice president. His dad reciprocated with a July 4, 2009, visit to Iraq, and returned again this past Independence Day for a visit with troops that is pictured above.

It is difficult to comprehend the burdens that multiple deployments cause for our nation's military families. Many of the returning volunteer warriors from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will not only be embracing their loved ones, but thanking them for taking care of the kids and paying the bills during another difficult year. Troops will also remember fellow service members who didn't make it home, like 20-year-old Spc. Brushaun Anderson, who died in a non-combat related incident on New Year's Day.

The combat mission in Iraq will formally end on August 31. The debts we owe to the men and women who served there cannot be paid off in our lifetimes.