Published Monday, June 01, 2009

Soldiers home for leave

By Winston Skinner

The Times-Herald

About 30 soldiers are back home in the local area until Wednesday -- enjoying a last break with family before returning to Camp Shelby, Miss., and then Afghanistan.

"They got here Saturday night about midnight," said Norma Haynes, a community volunteer who has worked to support the members of the 48th Infantry Brigade Bravo Company Second Battalion.

"Everything went fine with the trip home," said Newnan Police Chief Douglas Meadows, who worked with Haynes and others to arrange for the soldiers' transportation from Mississippi to Newnan.

Haynes said it was heart-warming to see the military personnel exiting the bus and being greeted by family -- many of them children. "It was the sweetest thing," she said. "It was so emotional watching them."

Several other people boarded the bus at Camp Shelby. "Others got off at different points," Haynes said.

The bus will be leaving the Jackson-Pless Armory on Armory Road next to Newnan High School on Wednesday.

Haynes is asking local folks to bake homemade cookies for the trip. Cookies need to be taken to the armory and left at the bus on Wednesday between 4:30-5 p.m. Haynes said she knows many people are vacationing, but she hopes local cookie bakers will come through so the soldiers can leave town "with the love that this community so freely gives."

If there are excess cookies, soldiers will share them with their comrades at Camp Shelby.

The bus must leave promptly at 6 p.m. in order to get the soldiers back to the camp before their leave ends. The bus ride lasts about six hours.

Money that was raised earlier this year may provide a meal for the travelers as they return to their base.

In May local citizens donated more than the $3,071 needed to run the bus to Camp Shelby and back. Families of some of those in Mississippi were able to travel there, but -- without the bus ride -- many others would not have been able to see their loved ones for a long time.

Bravo Company has been headquartered at the Jackson-Pless Armory. Local residents lined downtown Newnan's streets to see them off on April 11 as they headed for Camp Shelby.

Bravo Company will be leaving Camp Shelby for a year in Afghanistan on Saturday. "God bless those precious men and women who are sacrificing so much for us," Haynes said.