· let us know if you know someone who’s coming back soon from Iraq, or someone who has to stay.

Cathy Siegel said she got the best birthday gift on Thursday.

It was her husband Rick’s first full day at their York Township home after he served 13 months as a platoon leader of military police in Tal’Afar, Iraq.

Rick Siegel, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves, was in the 88th Military Police Company out of Fort Eustis, Va., which included nine reserve units from several states and was the last of combat operations to leave Iraq, he said.

“My birthday present is just knowing that he’s home and he’s safe,” Cathy Siegel said.

Rick Siegel, who started his military career as a U.S. Marine in 1990, said part of his job in the last year was to train and advise Iraqi police in preparation for the Obama administration’s plan to remove U.S. troops and shift Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn next month.

“I believe when we left, we’d accomplished our mission . . . They have to take charge,” he said of Iraqis. “America should be proud of what the soldiers did over there.”

Rick Siegel was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for heroic or meritorious achievement. He’s eligible for promotion to captain in November.

“We brought everybody home,” he said. “It was all teamwork.”

His work also included time spent in Iraqi villages for humanitarian missions such as giving school supplies and other gifts to children.

“If you win the kids over, the hearts, minds, they will give you information,” Rick Siegel said of intel such as the location of an improvised explosive device. “These kids are going to be the future . . . of Iraq.”

Rick Siegel said he has the next 90 days off before he has to begin actively drilling as a reservist. During that time, he plans to resume his work as a police officer in Lancaster and Cumberland counties.

He said he’s happy to be home.

“Thirteen months is a long time,” he said.

Cathy Siegel said the class of fourth-graders she teaches in the Southern York County School District were pen pals with her husband while he was away.

The couple’s daughter, 14-year-old Emily and her fellow students at Dallastown Area Middle School collected many school supplies for her dad and other soldiers to give to the kids in Iraq.

Emily said when her dad left for the mission, she covered her bedroom with some 400 Post-it notes and removed one each day as a countdown to his return home. She was relieved when she took the last note down, she said.

“It felt good knowing he was coming home and it’s not just Mom and me anymore,” she said.

<a href="http://www.ydr.com/premium/ci_15831231tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.ydr.com/premium/ci_15831231Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:28:28 GMT 00:00″>Family welcomes dad, husband home from Iraq

Tags: meritorious achievement, rick siegel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Pen Pal Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.