Last California Guard unit home from Iraq

For 10 months Theresa Bruzzone kept herself as busy as possible -- helping her family, starting a business with her sister -- anything to keep her mind off her husband in a war zone in Iraq.

On Friday, the 23-year-old Monterey resident was able to stop worrying about the man from Millbrae she married shortly before he shipped out in March. Spc. Chris Bruzzone, 24, was part of a smiling National Guard unit, the men and women of the 297th Medical Company, dropped off in San Mateo to a cheering crowd.

"I always knew he was safe," Theresa Bruzzone said, standing in the gym at the National Guard Armory on North Humboldt Street. "He's really smart."

The group -- with members from Cupertino to San Francisco and Millbrae to Hayward -- is the last California National Guard unit to come home from the war in Iraq. In October, President Barack Obama announced all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Soldiers said that news brought them home about a month ahead of schedule.

Even before the doors of their white bus peeled open there were tears, American flags, welcome home signs, but most of all the rush of relief. Everyone had come home -- not a single one killed or wounded. About 4,483 American fighters have died in the war that started in 2003, according to icasualties.org. Of those killed, 26 were guard soldiers. One of their ranks, Spc. Sean Walsh, 21, of San Jose, is to be buried

Saturday.

The group of roughly 70 soldiers consisting of medics and medical technicians, was not on daily patrols of dusty streets that might conceal a handmade bomb or a nest of armed insurgents. But they lived and worked in a war zone, primarily in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Their base was routinely hit with enemy rocket and mortar fire.

While the unit did its work in a dangerous place, families back home had to figure out how to carry on with lives that were missing a central piece.

Kim Nodora, 36, of Hayward had to keep up with 6-year-old daughter Angelina and 14-month-old son Kai, but also handle a leaky roof and a freak accident on the freeway that left her with two flat tires. She had to do it without her husband, Capt. Donald Nodora, the unit's leader. The worst part, though, was living without the touch of her husband at the end of each day.

"Hugs are therapeutic. It's totally true," she said as he sat next to her balancing the wiggling kids on his knees.

While the Guard is a full-time job for Nodora, most of his troops are in the military part time. So in addition to leaving behind kids, spouses and friends they had to take off from work. Federal law obliges employers to let soldier-workers take leave. As a result, among the soldiers who arrived Friday there were professional nurses and even caterers.

Maribeth Cambridge, of Cupertino, said she is looking forward to going back to her job as a registered nurse at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. After months of long periods of boredom, coupled with intense anxiety over her safety and the next severely injured patient she would help treat, she is looking forward to normal life.

But she will not look at life the same. The experience left with her with an even more acute sense of the brevity and the sanctity of life.

On April 30, the day before her 30th birthday, Cambridge had a few moments to wonder if the two soldiers sitting with her in a bunker would be the last people she ever saw. They could hear enemy rockets flying into the base and then they could hear the firing of the defensive rocket mounted atop their bunker. The launching of the defense rocket meant only one thing, an enemy missile was headed directly at them.

What came next? "Silence," she said.

The sound of the air raid sirens that sent the soldiers running for bunkers would seem an unpleasant reminder of those scary moment, right? Apparently not for some soldiers who recorded the wailing warning with their cellphones, said Spc. Victorino Bis, a San Francisco resident. Someone even thought it was funny to let loose the recording after everyone had landed safely back in the United States.

"Your heart just jumps," the 25-year-old student said. "But then you remember, 'OK, you're not there anymore.' "

Contact Joshua Melvin at 650-348-4335.

Source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_19458844?source=rss

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