Crowds Embrace Navy SEALs : Homecoming: Hundreds greet elite warriors in unprecedented welcome at North Island base.

Aboard a military plane flying to San Diego from the Persian Gulf, Lt. Warren Inouye marveled Sunday at the prospect of seeing his new baby son.

Chief Petty Officer Barry Richardson wondered whether his wife was really divorcing him.

Petty Officer 1st Class Kerry Fischer, 30, envisioned hugging his four children and his wife, Julie.

At North Island Naval Air Station, emotions ran high and the wind blew hard as family members of SEALs, who deployed Aug. 8, waited. And waited. And waited for planes that were several hours late.

In an unprecedented welcome ceremony Sunday for the Navy’s most secretive warriors, about 300 people strained for a glimpse of two planes carrying home Seabees and the SEAL commandos--ending seven months of anxiety.

At 2 p.m., two planes arrived. A sleek Hawaiian Air commercial plane brought 210 members of Naval Beach Group One. And a green, bulky military C-141 carried 115 SEALs who had been traveling for 30 hours.

“It’s just like the SEALs to come in a plane like that,” joked Julie Fischer, who was meeting her husband, Kerry. But for Fischer and the other families of SEALs, the homecoming--replete with a band, flags and banners--was unprecedented. Usually SEALs come home from clandestine missions in the night or in the middle of the day with no fanfare. They arrive by bus. There’s no welcome.

And the SEALs were as stunned as their families. Petty Officer David Albonetti, a SEAL for five years, could recall no homecoming that resembled this one.

“We sacrifice a lot and it’s overlooked. This,” said Albonetti, 29, scanning the crowd, “this, is a big hoo-yah thing.”

Albonetti and his companions strode across the Tarmac in their boots and desert uniforms. The security officers tried vainly to keep waiting families corralled, off the runway area. But as soon as the men sprang from the plane, the families surged forward, crying, screaming and cheering.

“It feels great. It seemed like forever,” said Lt. Brent Kuykendall, who had called his sister at 5 a.m. Sunday to let her know he was arriving. Asked what he missed most during his desert stint, Kuykendall replied: “Women, beer, music . . . life.”

To surprise her brother, Laura Kuykendall had hired a gray stretch limousine that was waiting to take the family to his San Diego home. Laura Kuykendall had originally planned on her brother arriving Sunday. Then Navy officials informed her that he would arrive instead on Tuesday. So she canceled the limousine. Her mother Marian, a Hemet resident, halted her preparations to bake lasagna and chocolate chip cookies.

But with the early morning call, the family was jolted into action. Marian Kuykendall baked the lasagna and cookies at 5:30 a.m. Sunday. They re-booked the limousine and had enough time to write up two signs: “Welcome Home Brent, Cold Beer Waiting” and “Brent, Babes Await.”

Shaun, 10, and Matthew, 12, bounded across the apron as soon as they spotted their father, Petty Officer Kerry Fischer. The youngsters left their mother, Julie, holding 7-month-old Ryan and 6-year-old Tanner to weave their way through the crowd. But as soon as Julie Fischer caught up with the boys, her husband wrapped her in his arms.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for seven months,” said Kerry Fischer, stroking his wife’s arm as he hugged her and the baby, who had grown eight teeth and learned to crawl since he last saw him.

Clutching Ryan in his arms, Fischer marveled, “He was so tiny when I left, now look at him. Just to hold him is the greatest.”

The homecoming, however, was not joyous for everyone. Barry Richardson learned that his truck had been stolen from his driveway Sunday morning and that his wife, Bonnie, seemed determined in her resolve to get a divorce.

“It’s been a long trip,” Richardson sighed. “I was wondering who, if anyone, would be here and what I could expect.”

In tears before his arrival, Bonnie Richardson explained that she could no longer endure the strain of separations in which she and her husband seemed to grow apart.

“I spent six years married and half of it alone, and I’ve created a life for myself,” said Bonnie Richardson, a nurse. “He’s a good guy, but it just doesn’t work.”

During the last seven months, Navy SEALs--an elite group that prides itself for its clandestine sea, air and land missions--have rescued downed pilots and snared floating mines. They crept ashore on the Island of Qaruh, the first Kuwaiti land that was recaptured by the U.S. military and allied forces. During the assault, three Iraqis were killed and 29 were taken prisoner.

SEALs also were the first ashore on the small island of Maridum, after a U.S. pilot spotted a message written in stones in misspelled English: “SOS We Serrender.” The Iraqis had placed 25 men there but were unable to resupply them. Since U.S. military officials were uncertain whether it was a hoax, they sent in the SEALs.

“We were given a number of missions and we carried them out,” said Capt. Ray Smith, commander of Naval Special warfare Group One, who was the senior officer in charge of the SEAL contingent. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster.”

Smith and his men struggled with the weather and the brutal climate, where temperatures sometimes reached 120 degrees. Food and water were difficult to obtain, he said. They worried about security, threats of chemical warfare and terrorism.

“We just didn’t know what to expect of the Iraqi force and what they were capable of doing,” Smith said.

The men who returned home Sunday were among the first Navy personnel dispatched to the Persian Gulf and represent about half of all the SEALs who were deployed in the area, said Lt. Cmdr. Bob Pritchard, a SEAL spokesman. The rest of the men are expected to return this week, he said.

Petty Officer Albonetti was stationed near a Saudi mosque that would ring with prayer five times a day, waking Albonetti and his colleagues every day at 5 a.m. with the early ceremonies.

Especially when the SEALs first arrived, some men had time to perfect their Yahtzee and card playing, they said.

“The hardest thing was the isolation,” said Albonetti of his seven-month stint in the desert. “You couldn’t get away and there was no release. There were no other places to go. No women, nothing.”

To entertain themselves, the SEALs adopted two dogs: Jake and Arnold. The dogs would go and steal shoes, fetching them back to their American masters--a feat the SEALs insist they did not train them to do but one that amused them immensely.

Second Class Petty Officer Mark Waldener, 27, explained: “You don’t take stuff for granted anymore, like hot food, running water, and vegetables.”

The SEALs were never able to discuss their activities in their phone calls or letters home. And family members could only listen to the news of war, trying to decipher what might sound like a SEAL mission.

“It was really scary,” said Julie Fischer, 30. “It’s always hush-hush, get out of here. I don’t know what they do and they are never able to say over the phones.”

Senior Navy officials said they were proud of the SEALs’ performance and thrilled that there were so few injuries. For the first time in an American conflict, no SEALs were killed.

“I am elated, we lost men in Vietnam, in Grenada and Panama. None in the Gulf--that is superb,” said Rear Adm. George Worthington, commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command.

Adm. Robert J. Kelly, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, said: “The country is going to throw them one hell of a party.”

Until the planes landed, the hours seemed to stretch on and on for the waiting families. The crowd waved flags and touted signs. One woman carried a sign that read: “All Single Sailors Come Here for Hug.” Robin Gibson, 39, waiting for her husband, Fred, an electrician with the Beach Group One, waved a placard that read: “Where’s the Dustbuster?”

Sherrill Lang’s stomach felt like it had been tied in triple knots. She had a friend hiding scissors so they could cut the tape restraining the crowd and dash across the Tarmac.

Karen Inouye kept her 6-month-old baby, Seiji, sheltered from the wind as she awaited her husband, Warren, who had left two weeks before his son was born. “It’s hard to believe today is actually here,” she said.

While tending her brood of four children, Julie Fischer envisioned her husband’s return. “I’m taking him home and locking the door,” she said.

Awaiting her husband, Misty Lewis, 26, reminded herself of the words she told her son when he was born eight months ago: “You are not joining the military. I don’t ever want to go through this again. Be a quarterback for the Raiders.”