Soldiers back in Brownsville after deployment

After his 23-year-old son deployed to Iraq a year ago, Charlie Lewis of Harlingen felt a flutter of fear every time the phone rang.

Cristina Blanco of Lyford stopped watching the news when her son was sent to Iraq three days before his 21st birthday.

Brownsville resident Cindy Medrano gave birth to her son while her husband was in Iraq, who took part in the event via Skype.

Family members anxiously waited for the return of soldiers from the U.S. Army Reserve 370th Transportation Company Wednesday, telling stories of fear, long separation and relief that the company composed of Rio Grande Valley men and women returned home safely.

About 90 soldiers from the company returned to the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Brownsville after a year deployment in the Middle East.

“When you have a soldier that deploys to a war zone, you worry about every unidentified car in the driveway,” Lewis said while waiting in the Reserve Center parking lot to see his son.

Every death on the news, every phone call and every unknown visitor worried Lewis and his wife, Mary, during the time their son, Robert, was in Iraq. But the pair smiled widely on Wednesday.

When the two buses carrying the soldiers entered the U.S. Army Reserve Center flanked by police on motorcycles, the group of some 200 family members and other supporters cheered loudly, displaying homemade signs.

Many wore red, white and blue, and several families donned matching T-shirts with photographs of their soldier. One small child ran around in a camouflaged army outfit and hat.

“It feels amazing. There’s no better place to be than home,” Specialist Leni Cepeda, 21, said standing in the Army Reserve Center after stepping off the bus that brought the troops from Valley International Airport.

Cepeda lived in a tent in the Iraqi desert for the past year. The soldiers in the company worked about 18 hours a day, every day, he said.

“Here I live like a king,” he said of his home in Sebastian.

The 370th Transportation Company moved soldiers, weapons and other supplies around Iraq, Lt. Fernando Reyna said.

“There’s a lot of danger. Transporters often get hit with IEDs,” he said.

Reyna said several of the soldiers have driven more than a million miles in Iraq, as they have been deployed multiple times.

Daniel Figueroa, a 14-year-old from Sebastian, raised his grade in geography class for his dad’s return. He was failing because he couldn’t concentrate on his schoolwork.

“It adds a lot of stress to the day,” he said of his dad’s deployment. “You can’t help but wonder what he’s doing.”

But his mother told him his dad would be disappointed, so Figueroa studied hard and improved his marks, just in time to see his father Wednesday.

Brownsville resident Cynthia Mendez stood waiting for her husband with her 14-month-old son, named Eulalio after his father. As her eyes teared up, the 25-year-old woman said her husband hasn’t seen his son since Eulalio was 2 months old. She sent her husband photographs to chronicle their son’s growth.

“But it’s all better now,” Mendez said, smiling.