PHOTOS BY Takaaki Iwabu - tiwabu@newsobserver.com
Soldiers get a high-five from their commander near the end of a four-mile run. More than 14,000 ran in the "Return Run" Thursday at Fort Bragg to celebrate the return of the 18th Airborne Corps Headquarters.
FORT BRAGG -- Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick closed the book on the 18th Airborne Corps Headquarters' involvement in Iraq with a ceremony Thursday where he said it's harder to end a war than to start one.
Helmick, commander of the corps and Fort Bragg, was among the first troops into Iraq in 2003 and was among the last out in December. Corps personnel were constantly deployed to Iraq during the nearly nine-years-long conflict, and it was 18th Airborne Corps Headquarters staff that oversaw the last year of combat; the handing over of security responsibilities to U.S. contractors and the Iraqi government, its police and military forces; and the return home of hundreds of thousands of pieces of military equipment from 80 bases across the still-violent country.
By last Thanksgiving, a month before they were to be gone completely, Helmick visited troops at the remaining bases in Iraq and found them back to the basics. No Internet, no dining facilities. They were having bologna sandwiches for the holiday, and they were fine.
"No one in the world could do what we did," Helmick said of American troops, who he said had liberated a country and helped build its police and military "from the ground up, from nothing."
Doing so, he said, showed the world, "America will honor her commitments. America means business."
Earlier in the day, more than 14,000 soldiers ran four miles on base in cadence, accompanied by motivational music and the firing of howitzers. The 6:30 a.m. run and the 4 p.m. ceremony served as a final, formal homecoming commemoration for the corps, which has held dozens of more emotional homecomings during the war in Iraq as thousands of troops deployed and came back.
The last ones came in December, when 750 members of Corps Headquarters returned, their mission complete. President Barack Obama visited Fort Bragg as troops were arriving in December to thank them and their families for their sacrifice.
'It was worth it'
On Thursday, Helmick noted the nearly 4,500 servicemen and women who died during the conflict and the 30,000 injured, and said he has asked himself more than once, "Was it worth it?"
Helmick said he looked at what the U.S. military, including his troops, had done: They built bases. They captured Saddam Hussein. They built and trained Iraqi security forces, and worked with them to catch terrorists, including ones Helmick said were trained and financed by Iran. They ushered in an elected government and then handed it the reins.
In the final calculation, he said, "It was worth it."
The departure of troops from Iraq, except for fewer than 200 who will remain to work with the U.S. State Department, was itself historic. The United States has never ended a war in this way, Helmick said; we still have troops in Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea.
Iraq marked the first time, he said, that the United States had turned a country back over to its own newly elected officials.
Even as they watched the retiring of the corps colors, some at the event thought of those still at war or on their way. Two brigades of soldiers from Fort Bragg are scheduled to go to Afghanistan this spring, though Pentagon officials said this week that combat troops will be pulled out of that country by mid-2013.
Jeanne Im, whose husband, Lt. Col. Peter S. Im, commander of Corps Headquarters and the Headquarters Battalion, came home in December, said, "I'm glad mine is back, but I'm still mindful of the troops that are still there. And I'm waiting to see what's next."
