Home for the Holidays : Seabees Get Warm Welcome on Return From 7-Month Assignment in Europe

POINT MUGU — After seven months in Kosovo and other parts of Europe, Rick Cook proudly cradled his youngest daughter, Rita, who will be a year old this month.

He gently stroked her bright-red locks as she nestled into his chest, which was still covered in battle fatigues.

“I’ve kind of missed most of her life so far,” said the lieutenant commander, who is executive officer of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 stationed at Port Hueneme.

“I’m looking to make some of that up.”

Cook was among about 350 Seabees who poured off a plane at Point Mugu’s Naval Air Station on Monday morning and collided with a crowd of families in a frenzy of hugs and cheers.

Spouses, mostly wives, stood eagerly clutching flowers. Their children, now a tad taller and many a bit more articulate than

they were seven months ago, stood nearby. One child waved a sign reading, “Welcome Home Daddy.”

A portion of the Seabee battalion was stationed in war-ravaged Kosovo and the surrounding area for nearly seven months as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s peacekeeping force in the region. The Seabees built bridges and barracks, connected electricity and water, and restored or built roads.

“We worked so hard for seven months--so hard at what we did,” said Cook, 38. “Now, to finally be done with it . . . it’s almost indescribable. It’s just wonderful to be home for the holidays.”

Members of the construction group returned to their families with stories of nights spent lying in cots, listening to the pop, pop, pop of nearby fighting.

The battalion rolled into Kosovo just after the Serbs--who left a trail of burning homes and destruction behind them--rolled out.

The whitewashed walls of homes were scorched from fires set to drive Albanians out of the area, Cook said, adding that the destruction was specific and well-targeted; neighboring dwellings, presumably those of Serbs, were left untouched.

Families wandered the roads pulling their possessions in horse-drawn carriages, he said.

*

“It takes a family about 10 years to build a home over there,” Cook said. “To realize that’s all gone in a matter of hours is hard to see.”

Children constantly ran up to the U.S. convoys shouting, “NATO! NATO!” he said.

To the Seabees, said Cook, “all the kids laugh in English. They all smile in English. I’m just happy my kids don’t have to go through what they did.”

The Seabees didn’t worry too much about their own safety, Cook said, because the Army provided protection. And the fight in the region was between Serbs and Kosovars; foreign forces--unless they intervened in the fighting--were mostly left alone.

“I was really glad we had a lot of firepower around and nobody was going to bother us,” Cook said.

Rob Wright, 22, a second-class petty officer who works as a mechanic with the battalion, counted the days until he could return to his mother and girlfriend. He stood triumphantly with them on Monday.

*

Wright told of the time he rode for 19 hours in an equipment convoy with an Albanian translator. The young Albanian, who was trying to make his way to the United States, came from a well-to-do family, Wright said, which meant his parents made about $4,000 a year.

When he wasn’t working, Wright read letters from home, perused all-too-familiar snapshots--and obsessed about going home.

For his mother, Rhonda Wright, 45, and girlfriend, Suzanne Whitehead, 32, things weren’t much different.

“It was horrible while he was gone,” Rhonda Wright said.

Such is the life of a Seabee and the people around them. The four battalions at the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme deploy worldwide every seven months, said base spokeswoman Linda Wadley.

It’s a routine that neither Felicite Hamilton nor her two children, Ian, 4, and Destinee, 3, have warmed to.

“This is our first deployment,” Hamilton said as she eagerly awaited her husband, Robert, near the runway. The two children have grown considerably since their father left.

*

“They always ask for him,” she said.

Cook watched as his four children swirled around him with the energy only kids can express. His son, Christopher, scanned the area for items to use to build a toy truck with his dad.

During his father’s absence, the 6-year-old had collected screws, nails, scraps of wire and anything else he could get his hands on.

“I missed my Daddy,” Christopher said, proudly displaying a hunk of copper wire he found on the pavement and grinning to show a row of missing front teeth.

“They understand Daddy’s gone for a while,” Cook said. “But he’s going to come back.”