LEWISTON – Sgt. 1st Class Normand Roy seemed so much older the night he returned to America. He was grayer and thinner. Deep lines carved his face.
That February night, as he walked into the airport terminal at Fort Drum Army Post, some of his soldiers were still waiting in the Middle East to come home.
“Wonder why I lost weight?” Roy asked recently. “These were my guys. They were my job.”
Roy, 42, led a Maine National Guard platoon in Iraq for 11 months. He sweated the desert heat and the war-time stress.
Today, he knows he did well, as did every member of the 133rd Engineer Battalion. But when he arrived in the northern city of Mosul, he was sure of nothing.
“This is only a part-time thing for us and here we are,” said Roy, who had joined the guard 20 years earlier and had never before been in a war zone. On weekends and during annual exercises, he’d been a soldier. But most of the year he worked for the city, part of a water and sewer crew at Lewiston’s Public Works Department.
When they arrived in Mosul wearing their still-new desert uniforms, they looked at the weary men and women who’d been there a while and wondered if they’d be like them, Roy said.
Things changed with the first mortar attacks.
Like rocks thrown over a high wall, the mortars fell haphazardly, never picking out a specific target.
“They were meant to scare us,” Roy said. Shells thudded to the ground and exploded with a boom.
“At first, everybody would run around,” he said.
Soon, the soldiers learned when and where to run. They’d dash to U-shaped concrete bunkers. They grew accustomed to the volleys. Sometimes, a whoosh in the air alerted the soldiers that a shell was coming.
“Sometimes, you’d hear nothing at all,” Roy said.
The soldiers learned to deal with the possibility of a sudden barrage as they settled into the daily life of combat engineers.
Being engineers
The battalion sent groups all over northern Iraq. They made improvements to U.S. bases, built roads and schools.
Many of Roy’s days were spent checking on maintenance, scheduling work and doing inventory.
“When the group was out, any message was welcome,” he said. He’d watch for e-mails from his soldiers, sometimes assigned to other groups in distant locations. He’d catch updates by secure radio or telephone.
“You watch over your platoon,” he said. “For anything that happens to them, you’re totally responsible.”
Sometimes, he went along.
Typically, a work crew would be sent out with two trucks – Humvees with machine guns – protecting every vehicle.
It wasn’t fun, but it could be thrilling, Roy said. They raced through stop lights and if something blocked the road, they shoved it aside. Crazy cars filled the roads and the highways.
“Iraqis are the worst drivers in the world,” Roy said.
If a divided highway was blocked, drivers would cross the median and keep going, heading directly into oncoming traffic.
“I saw it happen,” Roy said.
Rising casualties
The thrills were few, though.
When members of the battalion were killed, Roy grew more protective.
“You’re like the father and mother of all of these guys,” he said.
They also had siblings of a sort. Every soldier had a battle buddy, someone who would know where he or she was, whether in the latrine or sleeping on a cot.
When word came of an injury or death from mortar fire, there was always a quick count.
The stakes rose in April 2004, when a 23-year-old soldier from Portland, Spc. Christopher Gelineau, died after a homemade bomb exploded into his Humvee. Eight months later, a suicide bomber struck a crowded dining hall, killing two more of the battalion’s soldiers, Sgt. Thomas Dostie of Somerville and Staff Sgt. Lynn Poulin of Freedom.
The attacks shook everyone, Roy said.
Soldiers lined up for hours to call home, to allay the fears of loved ones over news of a death in the Maine unit.
Roy and the other leaders in the battalion, commissioned and noncommissioned alike, did what they could to ease the stress.
On Christmas Day, four days after the attack, the battalion leaders took over guard duty in Mosul. Roy and another sergeant spent the holiday in a tower overlooking the perimeter of the base.
He’ll remember it every Christmas for the rest of his life, he said. And though he missed his family, it’s not a bad memory.
He was with a friend. And like so many times during his 11 months in Iraq, he found simple things to enjoy.
Guys would marvel at seeing children play or seeing stars in the night sky.
Often, Roy would watch – really watch – the sunset. There were few clouds and mountains rose in the distance.
“Sometimes, your eyes would play tricks with you and the sun would seem bigger,” Roy said. “But you know it’s the same sun.”
When he returned to Fort Drum, he watched it again.
“That was my freedom sunset,” he said.
Back home
All of his guys made it back, finally.
Three weeks after Roy’s return, the last six members of his platoon came home. When they arrived by bus at Fort Drum, Roy was there.
“That was my promise to myself,” he said. He could see the men elbowing each other as they spotted him through the windows.
It was the proudest moment of his service.
“You did your job, and you made it back,” he told them.
It’s something he has to tell himself, too.
Today, with all the men and women from his platoon home safe, the lines in Roy’s face look less pronounced. The weight’s come back. And with his hair grown out a bit, he even looks a little less gray.
And he’s adjusting.
He tries to be less of a platoon sergeant when he’s at his home in Lewiston. Sometimes, he catches himself pushing too hard as he watches over his daughter, Jessica, 17, or his son, Jonathan, 15. The bad times are when he doesn’t know where they are.
It becomes easier each day. Time helps.
And he struggles with the term “veteran.”
Roy fought in a war zone, endured mortar attacks and knew men who were killed by the enemy. Yet, he doesn’t feel like one of those guys from World War II or Korea, the old men he knows at the American Legion hall.
“They tell me I belong,” Roy said. “I guess it’s true.”
Comments are no longer available on this story