OPINION: Welcome home, fortunate soldiers

Peggy Brown, an editor at Newsday, lives in Huntington.

Not even a Grucci fireworks extravaganza could make this a better Fourth of July for me.

For eight months, my firstborn son - my Army specialist son - served in the war zone of Iraq. But, two weeks ago, I joined hundreds of cheering moms and dads, brothers and sisters, grandparents and kids rocking the bleachers of the Magrath gym at upstate Fort Drum, headquarters of the famed 10th Mountain Division. David was home at last.

Many of the families there have a long tradition of military sacrifice and service and hail from communities where it's almost taken for granted. But on much of Long Island, it seems these soldiers hardly enter the consciousness of those without a connection to the military.

Vietnam, the war of my youth, was inescapable. But now, the day-in, day-out trials of our soldiers aren't front-and-center in most of our daily lives. These warriors seem almost forgotten, nearly invisible here - it's rare to see uniformed soldiers around the Island, and rarer still for people to stop them to say, "Thank you," as they do elsewhere.

During the Vietnam War, I was on the "anti" side. Many years later, when David enlisted during another unpopular war, I had to re-evaluate my assumptions about the kinds of people who joined up. Unlike during the Vietnam conflict, no one needs to fear being drafted to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. Our soldiers are volunteers, like the Minutemen who helped give birth to our nation 235 years ago at Lexington and Concord, fighting for our freedom and security.

At Fort Drum, heroes seemed to be all around us. As we waited breathlessly to see our sons (and a few daughters), the doors of the gym burst open and blinding sunlight streamed in. The brass band began to play, and then some 300 newly returned Iraq war veterans in camouflage uniforms marched in, to the delirious screams of the crowd.

The soldiers stood in formation, singing the national anthem, the 10th Mountain Division Song and the Army Song; the chaplain spoke, and then Fort Drum's commanding general welcomed his troops home in a blessedly brief speech, calling them "heroes." The crowd broke and the families - including wives and girlfriends with babes-in-arms who'd never seen their daddies - thrilled to a moment they'd feared would never come.

But even as I ran to my surprised and elated son, hugging him tight until I knew he was really there, my tears of joy were tinged with sorrow. For I thought of the two young men in his battalion whose parents would never hold their sons again - one, murdered on guard duty by an insurgent firing a rocket-propelled grenade; the other, having taken his own life, a too-common tragedy in this army of volunteers. And I wept for them both, and for their families.

So on this Fourth of July, as you go to your barbecues and ball games and beach parties, please remember our soldiers who are putting themselves in harm's way.

Welcome back the ones who return, and mourn the ones who never will.

And, if you see one in uniform, don't forget to say, "Thank you."