U.S. Troops Back Home From POW Guard Duty
Military police from the North Carolina National Guard returned home Saturday, seven months after they began guarding Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan.
About 250 loved ones gathered at the Army post awaiting the return of members of the 211th Military Police Company.
No one knew exactly when the unit would return to U.S. soil. A hoped-for July return was postponed until August, then September. The unit has been given two weeks’ leave before it has to return to duty at Ft. Bragg.
“It’s a new beginning for us,” Geraldine Shields told the Asheville Citizen-Times as she waited for her husband, Nathan, a staff sergeant. “We’ve never been apart in 20 years for more than two weeks. I learned to be a stronger wife. I had to learn to deal with more.”
In December, 106 members of the unit were activated. They left for Afghanistan in February to guard more than 100 detainees in military prisons at the Kandahar and Bagram air bases. Officials released few details of the 211th’s missions.
“There aren’t too many jobs more important than what they were doing,” said Capt. Robert Carver, a Guard spokesman. “They were key in finding out what was going on in the world of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
The unit is one of only a few nationwide that specializes in guarding prisoners of war, Carver added.
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