LEWISTON – Greg Vaillancourt planned to spend this week saying goodbye.

By next weekend he would leave home, first for New York, then for the Middle East. Until then, he would open presents with his family, hold his wife and hear his son’s prayers at night.

“I was going to be gone for two Christmases,” Vaillancourt said.

Not anymore.

On Tuesday, Army officials decided to delay the departure of the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineering Battalion. The citizen soldiers will leave after the holidays, giving about 500 men and women Christmas at home.

Among them are 100 or so members of Charlie Company, based in Lewiston and Norway. They expect to be gone for 18 months.

“It’s the best present I could have had,” said Spc. Vaillancourt, a 26-year-old drywall foreman from Mechanic Falls.

Moments after he heard the news, he called his wife, Amy. “My prayers have been answered,” she told him.

Local Army officers have been working to organize the change for a while, said Capt. Michael Mitchell, Charlie Company’s commanding officer.

The group was set to go to Fort Drum, N.Y., for training before going overseas. It still will, but some of the training that would have been done at the base will instead be done here. Besides, Fort Drum would have been closed for three days around Christmas, time better spent at home than several hundred miles away.

“They will leave very soon after the New Year,” said Maj. Peter Rogers, director of public affairs for the Maine Army National Guard.

For Sgt. Scott St. Pierre, it means he will be home in Hebron with his wife, Darlene, and their two boys, Devin, 9, and Drew, 7.

More than anything, they’ll be able to share little moments, said St. Pierre

“It’s more time to just talk, play Nintendo or be together,” he said.

It will be a bittersweet extension.

While they will be able to spend extra time with families and friends and celebrate the holidays together, it will draw out the painful good-byes.

Sgt. First Class Normand Roy of Lewiston said he was grateful for the extra time. People on the street or in local stores have been coming up to him, sometimes speechlessly, to shake his hand or say goodbye.

At home, there’s an added level of frustration. His wife and teenage children are tense about the assignment. Maybe they can use the extra time to talk openly about their fears or sadness, Roy said.

“The families are making sacrifices even more than us,” said Roy, who has been in the guard for 24 years.

The frustration is everywhere, added Vaillancourt. He’s shaken, too.

“I can go from laughing to crying to laughing again in the space of 30 seconds,” he said. He knows his son will change so much while he’s gone.

His son, Trent, is two. He doesn’t know what’s going on.

“We tell him, ‘Daddy’s at work,'” said Amy Vaillancourt.

This Christmas will be special, though.

Since Greg and Amy became a couple six years ago, they’ve had their own ritual for the holiday. They spend Christmas Eve with her family. Christmas morning is for Amy, Greg and Trent. Christmas afternoon is for his family.

The best moment will be Christmas morning, said Greg.

“I just want to hug my wife and kiss my son and tell him, ‘I love you.'”

dhartill@sunjournal.com

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