Jeff greets son Alex, home from war, Sept. 12, 2007
Over at the VA’s blog, VAntage Point, an old salt who once served in the Navy writes about what it’s like to have his Army son fighting far from home – and then coming home.
“Every night when I went to bed, I prayed that a pair of Army officers wearing dress uniforms and bearing tragic news wouldn’t ring my doorbell before dawn,” Jeff Horton writes. “…Alex and his unit finally returned to Fort Lewis. It was the second greatest feeling of my life to hug him tight, only behind the time I first held him seconds after he was born. But soon a strange thing happened to me. I suddenly lost nearly all of my tightly focused interest in the war.”
He has some interesting pointers for parents of homecoming troops (his son now contributes to that VA blog), as well as for the rest of us.