FARMINGTON – When the War in Iraq started, Nancy Pond plugged in an electric candle in honor of her 21-year-old son, Chris Gordon, who was stationed in Kuwait.

On Monday night, with her son finally by her side, that flickering flame was extinguished.

“It’s been really hard so it’s wonderful to have him home,” said Pond, who picked Chris up at the airport in Boston at 12:45 p.m. Monday. She hadn’t seen him since noon July 7, 2002, and when her son walked off the plane, Pond started crying. “I started to have heart palpations when I saw on the arrival screen that his plane had landed. And when I saw him, I burst into tears and just went running.”

Pond, who often wears a T-shirt bearing a photo of Chris in his Army duds asking God to bless the troops and her son, said she is proud of Chris. “How could I not be?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “He looks good, and really healthy to me. I just think he looks fantastic.”

Chris’ stepmother, Terry Gordon, agreed. “He looks like a man,” Terry said, also growing emotional. “It’s funny what little tiny things grow up to be.”

Last Wednesday, when Pond got the call that her son would finally be coming home, she decided to throw him a welcome home bash. He didn’t have any idea until he saw the welcome home signs hanging on telephone polls up and down his street, and saw the cars in his driveway.

Five generations of his family showed up for the party as did friends and members of Chris’ church, armed with dishes of steaming shepherd’s pie, deep bowls of pasta salad, an American flag cake. There were lots of hugs, kisses and tears.

They left with a burden of worry lifted from their shoulders.

Chris has been stationed as a specialist in Kuwait at Camp Doha with the Army’s 20th Brigade since last September. He didn’t see any action, but he sure felt it when the missiles rocked Kuwait City.

“It was really, really freaky. It shook the barracks,” he said, his face tanned by the hot Kuwait sun that baked American troops at temperatures of more than 130 degrees.

When the air raid warnings went off, he had three minutes to put on his gas mask, protective suit and body armor and hunker down in a cement bunker deep in the sand. “It was scary,” he said about war. “A missile could land on you any minute.”

When he first arrived overseas, Chris said people were skeptical of American forces, throwing rocks at them. Once the war started, things changed, the people of Kuwait started waving American flags and even women would lift their burkas and smile and give the troops thumbs up.

Although it was scary, Chris said he would go again if he had to. He got opportunities over there that men his age wouldn’t get in America. Like the chance to try camel meat. “It’s like everything else,” he jokes. “Tastes like chicken.”

Humor aside, he is “relieved to be home,” even if it is just for a few weeks. Then he will head back down to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and continue his service, which ends in the summer of 2004.

In the meantime, he has big plans. Mainly sleeping, eating some home-cooked food – preferably lobster and steak – and hiking and fishing with his family. He will also speak at his church, Fairbanks Union, and to his mother’s second-grade class at Cushing School.

“It was great to be back on American soil. It’s a pretty good feeling,” he said.

And when asked what is the best part about being home, Chris scans the yard, the long tables of food, waves at a passing car, kisses his niece on the cheek and, smiling with relief, says, “Everything. And no sand.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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