A Happy New Year for Military Families

Millington, Tn - For more than an hour, military families waited in anticipation of their loved ones coming home from duty.

Text messages were going out to get up to the minute updates on their arrival at the armory in Millington.

"He's been gone for a year," said Kattie Gray.

Specialist Rodquis Gray's mom was bursting with excitement at the thought of having her middle child back in her arms. She let all that excitement out once the bus he was riding on from Camp Shelby in Mississippi, pulled up and let him off.

Gray is one of 20 Tennessee Army National Guardsmen from the 230th Sustainment Brigade who returned Wednesday from a mission moving troops and equipment out of Iraq.

"It's been a long year. We worked hard and got the mission complete. We shut down Iraq," said Specialist Gray.

These soldiers arrived back in the U.S. on December 28.

They originally left their families and deployed in December 2010.

Specialist Jeremiah Jones was greeted by his wife Lindsey and 3-year-old son Alexander.

Lindsay says having her husband away for so long, was tough, "the first half of his deployment he lost one of his friends and wasn't able to come home for that."

"Then me and him (Alexander) got in a car wreck. Hard going through that without your husband."

Now all together again, both the Jones and Gray families are looking to make up for lost time.

"We didn't take the Christmas tree down because he still has his presents," said Kattie Gray.