NYC-based guardsmen home from Iraq duty

Guardsman Noel Mateo is greeted by his sister Mya Guzman,... — Guardsman Noel Mateo is greeted by his sister Mya Guzman, 7. (Apr. 8, 2011) Credit: AP

By MARTIN C. EVANSmartin.evans@newsday.comApril 9, 2011

One by one, the convoy of motor coaches hissed to a halt in front of the Harlem Armory, disgorging their human cargo of green-garbed National Guard soldiers.

Max Janis, 9, stood with his mother, Yvette, by the armory's Fifth Avenue entrance. The third-grader's father, Sgt. Timothy Janis, had been in Iraq for most of the past year.

"It's really amazing to see them all," Max said, as the troops filed into the armory.

Members of the New York Army National Guard's 442nd Military Police Company, based in Jamaica, Queens, returned home Friday from a nine-month deployment, during which they trained Iraqi police officers.

It was a tour of duty that simultaneously demonstrated the decreasing deadliness of America's eight-year military commitment in Iraq, and the continuing personal toll exacted from U.S. troops and families.

"It's been difficult -- like being a single parent," Yvette Janis said. "When your husband is deployed, you have to do everything -- the house, raising your child. And you worry. Thank goodness for Skype," the Internet chat and phone service.

There are now 47,000 troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon, down from a peak of nearly 170,000 after the war began in 2003. Only 16 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq so far this year, according to the website icasualties.org, a pace that would make 2011 the least deadly since the war began.

Many of those returning Friday expressed relief at what they said was an uneventful deployment with no serious injuries.

But according to several of the people who greeted the 138 returning troops -- many of whom offered balloons, hand-painted signs, the occasional whispered promise and, for Spc. Brian McGee, 24, of East Meadow, an eight-passenger limo -- the deployment had exacted a toll.

Bonnie Kandell, 26, said worry about the safety of her brother, Spc. Matthew Clennan, shadowed her during the months he was deployed.

Now that Clennan is home, Kandell is alarmed that his lingering uneasiness, conveyed to her in recent days, may be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I'm glad that he has decided to go in to see someone for it," said Kandell, of Middle Island. "He still feels as if he is still in it, still in war, even though he's home."

Yvette Janis said her son became distracted in school after his father was deployed.

"The other kids would say, 'Where's your Dad?' We would talk and I would say, 'Tim is going to be back,' " she said.

Timothy Janis, 44, a Mattituck native who lives in Sunnyside, Queens, seemed at ease as he reacquainted himself with his son.

Max pulled a handheld game console from his pocket and fired it up.

"Dad, I got the Steamboat," he squealed, referring to a character in a video game.

Janis, a New York City fireman, put his arm around Max's shoulder and peered into the screen. For several moments, father and son were lost in "WWE Legends of WrestleMania."

"Actually, I hate video games," Janis said a few minutes later. "But if he likes it, I like it."