Can you describe how you felt coming home from a deployment or combat?

I had deployments with two different spouses, my first deployment I felt alone. We flew into Ft Benning, GA lay in the evening, had a five minute speech from the post Commander and then was placed on a 96 hour pass. I had to find my own way to Atlanta, GA airport, costing me the $100 cash I had on hand, for the taxi ride just to miss my flight. 6:30 the next morning I started my flight to Cincinnati, Oh in dead silence the whole trip because I was still in my desert fatigues, once we arrived I was one of four soldiers that was escorted off the plane first. Just so happened that my mother in-law came to pick me up, she was screaming her head off, which made me feel embarrassed. I didn’t feel normal until I could get out of my uniform, so we stopped at a mall and did some shopping. I didn’t get to see my wife until the next day, and the first thing she asked me for was a divorce. What a welcome home from Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
In 2004 I was deployed Bosnia Herzegovina, I wasn’t suppose to go on that deployment, but the CG asked for me to be his Supply Sergeant because of the pre deployment inventories I did on his task force inventories. With 3 feet of snow on the ground leaving Bosnia, my trip was somewhat better than my return from Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I was met with open arms of my second wife and my son after being gone for a year, on top of that I had my wife’s blessing to go on the Mobilization since the CG requested my present on the mob. I will have to give MG Wright credit, he didn’t have to ask, but he did, and to show his appreciation he had coffee with me every Tuesday morning just to check up on me.

I felt like life passed me by :/

Relief, sadness, joy, thankfulness, humbled. Battle tested.

I distinctly remember flying back to Washington state from a connecting flight from the Atlanta airport after being deployed on a carrier for most of 2018...there were people swarming all around me, and I felt strangely disconnected from my body, from society even. For most of that year, I had been part of a small community on a ship, isolated from the rest of the world by water all around us. It was completely surreal, and unlike anything I'd ever felt in my life. I felt like I'd been ripped from a close-knit family and thrown in among a bunch of privileged strangers in an airport who probably couldn't even fathom being uncomfortable or making the sort of sacrifices people in the military make every single day, and every time they deploy.

so weird, seeing my daughter after 18 mos away from her.

I always felt especially proud of being an American when I returned from both. On the flip side, I was always amazed (continue to be after many, many years) at how nonchalant (unknowing? unappreciative?) too many of our citizens were for being lucky enough to live in the greatest country on earth - far from perfect, but the best of the rest.

I was lucky I serve on two ships but did not have to do a med cruise

Bad and cheated because I was just released from jail after a court martial ruling which found me guilty for going AWOL but discharged. I was not allowed to get any of my things in the company as I was lied to that my things would be sent to my address. I am now filing to have my discharge ungraded after fifty years. My psychiatrist asked the Army to discharge me a year before my arrest, arrest and trial yet that that was ignored as I was punished because I accepted the offer. Finally I was not sent back home because I had placed a change of address just to have things mailed to my sister's so I received enough money to my sister's two thousands miles from home.

Coming home is the hardest part, it's a whole new world. You've changed and not only you but everyone around you has to adjust back to the normal life. You will never be the same no matter where you deploy, if it's combat you will always leave part of yourself there. The brothers who didn't make it back and the ghosts that haunt your dreams.

I came home from my first deployment to OIF in 2003. While going through the demobilization process at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, my senses picked up on something when outside yet it took me a while to figure it out. It was hearing leaves rustle in the wind. That, along with green grass and trees just filed my senses after being in the desert for so many months.