TOPSHAM – As families on every side hugged and cried, Catherine Millay spent excruciating minutes searching for her son.

All she wanted was to find him among the 56 Marines in identical brown uniforms and give him a hug. Finally, she did.

“She jumped out and tackled me,” Lance Cpl. Geoffrey Hewey of Farmington said. “Then, she strangled me.” A moment later, his fiance, Melinda Silva, followed. She carried their daughter, Rylee, 22 months old.

Hewey held them both while Millay stood by and cried.

After seven months in Iraq, watching out for sniper fire and roadside bombs, Hewey and the other members of Company A, 1st Battalion of the 25th Marine Regiment, returned home Thursday.

At least 800 people were waiting.

Children from nearby Mt. Ararat Middle School lined the road. At the entrance to the Marine Reserve Center, loved ones stood with signs reading “welcome home” and “ooh-rah!” Motorcyclists from the Patriot Guard revved their engines.

Others just stood and watched.

“From my heart, I feel like it’s the least thing I can do,” said Les Gibson of Lisbon, a veteran of the first Gulf War who stood by the Marine Reserve Center with a tall flag.

“It meant a lot to me when I came back,” he said, smiling despite a sharp wind. “And it’s not that cold.”

No one gave up, despite the fact that the Marines arrived almost 90 minutes later than scheduled.

Irene Grondin of Sabattus, whose son Trevor was among the returning Marines, stood inside an open garage with her parents, her daughter and a variety of relatives.

A pair of twins held identical “Welcome Home Trevor” signs while Trevor’s sister, Colette Levesque, exchanged text messages with him, giving 20-plus family members regular updates on his progress toward Topsham.

She merely wanted to hug her brother, she said.

Also waiting were several members of the unit who came home early. One came back because his wife was pregnant. Another, Cpl. Lucas Reardon of Falmouth, returned because he was badly wounded in an explosion.

“I wish I could be riding the bus, too,” said Reardon. He couldn’t.

About midway through the tour in Iraq, he was in a Humvee that was hit by an improvised explosive device, detonated by a simple string.

“The armor saved my life,” said Reardon. But the concussion from the blast threw him hard, damaging an ear drum and causing bleeding inside his brain.

Tall and strong, Reardon bears no visible scars of the injury. But he has regular headaches, he said.

His experience was not as rare as he wishes it were. In all, 11 people from his 1,000-Marine battalion were killed during the tour of duty. None came from this group, Alpha Company. There were other injuries, though.

Reardon said every Marine who returned Thursday had seen action – whether during a patrol or while manning a checkpoint – during the time in Fallujah and its surrounding area, known as Anbar Province.

The knowledge had worn on families.

As she waited for her fiance, Melinda Silva talked about her relief in knowing that he was all right.

But she would feel even better when she could see him.

Melinda hung near Geoffrey in the moments after their reunion. So did their daughter, Rylee.

When he left home, she’d only just begun walking and talking. She watched shyly as he stood with her mother and grandmother.

Then, all of a sudden, she leaned over to her father and gave him a hug and a kiss.

“That was really special,” the Marine said.