PENOBSCOT (AP) – An Army National Guard sergeant is back home more than two years after being critically injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

Harold Gray can neither move by himself or talk because of head and back injuries he sustained in the attack the day after Christmas in 2004. On Saturday, family members and friends drove him home to Penobscot from Togus Veterans Center in Augusta, where he had been since July 2005.

Fire engines and ambulances joined in the procession at different towns along the way. When he arrived at the Penobscot Fire Department, Gray was wheeled out in his wheelchair and greeted with a sea of hugs, smiles and tears.

Gray’s family is ready to take on his full-time care. His wife, Laurie, had a 16-foot-by-27-foot addition built onto their home specifically to meet his needs.

She said her husband’s arrival home is the start of a new chapter.

“It is a day to get life back as normal as it can be,” she said.

Gray, a carpenter by trade, was wounded while traveling in a convoy near Mosul while serving with the 133rd Engineer Battalion.

He was first treated at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington before being moved to Togus.

Laurie Gray’s son, Shawn Allen, 22, said his mother married Gray in 2004 right before he left for Iraq.

Although Gray can’t move by himself or talk, there is hope for improvement because he has been responding to his wife in the hospital, Allen said.

Sgt. Daniel Trojecki of Bangor came to see his friend on the last leg of his long trip home. Trojecki, who served with Gray in Iraq, said it was an exciting moment to watch him finally leave the hospital.

“This definitely is not a somber moment,” he said. “He’s made it this far, and now he’s finally going home.”