One street in the eastern Iowa town of Epworth is home to three of the 640 soldiers who returned from Iraq this week. The three National Guardsmen were in the unit that spent the last 16 months in Iraq. Carrie Habel of Epworth says there’s no rush to take down the "welcome home" signs in their yard.
"My daughter keeps telling me that, ‘Daddy’s home and doesn’t have to go back to work at the Army ever again,’" she says. Having her husband home again is a bit hard to comprehend sometimes. "We are still kind of (asking), ‘Is it real?’," the soldier’s wife says. "It doesn’t feel real. We were sitting outside…having a cup of coffee and we just kind of looked at each other and it was like, ‘Wow, is this real?’"
Sergeant Todd Habel has a project in his basement that he wants to tackle. "Put my home theater in and a bar in down there, so I want to finish that off and you know, spend time with the kids and I’m sure my wife will want to go shopping," Habel says of his priorities. Habel and neighbor Russell Herr), who’s also a sergeant in the Guard, plan to take some time off and return to work in civilian life in a couple of months. Herr, though, will have a different employer because the company he works for was sold while he was in Iraq.
"It will be strange…I think it will be all right though," Herr says. "It will take some getting used to, just like getting used to the family again." The three military families on the same block in Epworth, including neighboring soldier Rob Schwenvinger and his wife, all went fishing together on Thursday.