news-record.com

On April 14 at the deployment ceremony for the N.C. National Guard’s 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, members of the Old Hickory Re-enacting Association were there to display the uniforms and equipment of the 30th from the World War II era.

“The coliseum holds about 9,700 people,” Michelle Hyatt wrote. “An additional 3,000 were inside the adjacent Exposition Center watching the ceremony on the big screens.”

She said some family members were left outside the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville.

“Many were on cell phones speaking with their son or daughter who were inside the coliseum informing them that they could not get in,” she wrote. Some soldiers left the coliseum to join family members on the road “to be with them instead of inside at the ceremony without them.”

Guard spokesman Maj. Matthew Handley told the Fayetteville Observer the arena had not been as crowded in 2004, the last time the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team went to Iraq.

Hyatt witnessed one mother hugging her son goodbye. “Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her body shook in anguish and the hug she gave her son was as if she wanted to become him and go in his stead — it was that tight,” Hyatt wrote.

“The soldier stood firm for his mother and spoke words of comfort to her, assuring her he would return,” she reported. “As she turned her head for a moment to wipe the tears from her face with her fingers, the soldier quickly wiped his eyes with his hands so she wouldn’t see his tears. When she returned her face to his — he again stood strong for his mother.

“As I watched this moment of another person’s life unfold in front of me, I knew in his mother’s eyes that this soldier was and always will be, strong for his mother and for our country.”

— Michelle Hyatt, Staff and Wire Reports