CHESTER, Pa. — Iliana Sanchez had everything in place two weeks ago for her husband's leave from Iraq.
The yellow ribbons were on the porch railing, the American flags in the front yard, the yellow-and-white mums in pots alongside. And Iliana, two dress sizes smaller from stress and worry in the eight months Jose Sanchez has been away, had put in for vacation from her job.
But by the time Jose actually walked off a plane at 11:30 Wednesday night and into his wife's waiting arms, he had been delayed four times by one bureaucratic snag or another. The ribbons had gotten rained on. The mums were starting to wither. Iliana's vacation was almost used up. And even as she watched her husband clasp her 6-year-old daughter's hand in his huge one, Iliana's relief and joy were muted by anxiety over what her husband had seen and done in the war, by frustration at the delays in getting him home, and by the knowledge that she would be at the airport in 15 days sending him back to the fighting.
The Pentagon is worried too. Two weeks into the most ambitious home leave program since the Vietnam War, thousands of military families are struggling with how to cope when Johnny comes marching home again -- then marches back the way he came.
At the Pentagon, officials say they expect some soldiers not to show up for their flights back to Iraq, and they expect others to be so deeply torn at leaving their families again that they will have trouble coping when they return to the war.
But with 130,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq in a military occupation that has become prolonged and bloody, and with tension mounting among service members and their families over yearlong deployments, military officials said they had little choice but to institute the program in an effort to boost morale.
"At first, I didn't encourage him to come home, because I didn't want to say goodbye again," Iliana, 38, said in an interview at her home. As she spoke, her little girl sprawled across her lap, showing a visitor a mouth filled with gaps where she'd lost teeth in Daddy's absence. "I'm alone now and he's not here and it's very different. I don't know what to expect when he comes back. I know he loves us and misses us, but he has seen things and done things in this war that have changed his spirit. I'm afraid that when he comes home he's going to realize how different he is."
