A hug and a homecoming.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Coming home.

The words are so powerful someone once made a movie and called it just that: "Coming Home."

The Oscar-winning 1978 film starring Jon Voight and Jane Fonda was about coming home from war.

You can come home from college, you can come home from summer camp. You can run away and then come home.

But there's nothing quite like coming home from war.

U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Jason Daugherty came home from war Friday morning to little fanfare other than the hugs and kisses and tears of his family and girlfriend, and a muffled, smattering of applause from security personnel working behind glass at the Eugene Airport.

As the war after the War in Iraq continues, U.S. soldiers such as Daugherty, a 2002 graduate of Sheldon High School, continue to trickle home with an uncertain future ahead of them.

There are no ticker-tape parades. No formal celebrations. No surety.

There are still about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and the military has told them they can expect yearlong deployments. About 600 members of the Oregon National Guard based in Cottage Grove will begin training in October for their mission that will begin next spring.

The Associated Press reported Friday that 179 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the war began in mid-March, 32 more than died in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Sixty-five of those soldiers have been killed since President Bush declared major combat operations over May 1.

"What people don't realize is that there's been more aggression from the Iraqi people since we said the war was over," Daugherty said, as he sifted through items in his old bedroom on Primrose Avenue in the Bethel neighborhood.

Still, Daugherty believes that the Bush administration made the right decision to go to war. "You talk to the people over there, and you hear their stories," he said. "It's horrible over there. I definitely think we made the right call."

"I told him he was crazy"

A member of the Marines' Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment whose story was featured on ABC's "Primetime" Thursday night, Daugherty arrived back in the states Aug. 10 after four months in Iraq. He flew into March Air Force Base near Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego.

He's on 30-day leave and goes back to Camp Pendleton on Sept. 22, when he will begin training again. Possibly for a return to Iraq. Or maybe to Korea, he said.

A member of Sheldon's 2001 league champion soccer team, the soft-spoken Marine with olive skin and dark hair and eyes never dreamed his life would take this route.

"I just didn't think I'd ever see war," he said.

But nine months after graduating from high school, there he was, in full battle gear, inside an armored assault vehicle, heading north in the Iraqi desert.

He had planned to go to college, maybe at the University of Arizona or Arizona State University. Then his best friend since seventh grade, Marcus Johnson, joined the Marines in February 2002, right in the middle of senior year.

"I told him he was crazy," Daugherty said. "I told him, `I'll never join up with you.' '

College plans began to fall through when he realized his family couldn't afford the tuition of the Arizona schools. As graduation neared, Daugherty's future was looking like Lane Community College, which he found less than thrilling.

So Johnson took him down to the Marines recruiting office near Valley River Center.

Daugherty joined, along with another high school buddy, Jeremy Orr. All three entered under the Marines' "buddy program." They endured three months of boot camp together that began last October, then entered Infantry School together at Camp Pendleton in January.

They finished on March 10, a week before the war began.

A look ahead

The trio wanted to stay together, but it doesn't work that way in the Marines, Daugherty said. All three ended up in different battalions; Daugherty got Fox 2/5 - and war.

Established in 1914, it is one of the Marines' most decorated units. The battalion has seen action in all major wars since World War I where, legend has it, the Germans dubbed them "Devil Dogs" for their ferocious fighting.

The battalion left for Kuwait in January to prepare for war. Daugherty flew there with other new enlistees in late March. Once there, they underwent more training. Meanwhile, the battalion had fought its way into Baghdad as part of the force of U.S. troops who toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in early April.

Daugherty met up with the company after they left Baghdad. Only one member of Fox 2/5 was killed in combat, 1st Sgt. Edward Smith, 38, a 20-year veteran of the Marines.

After Baghdad's fall, the 200-soldier battalion kept up patrols in south-central Iraq and were put in charge of Ar Rumaythah, a city of about 100,000 about 100 miles south of Baghdad.

For the next four months, they endured temperatures that soared above 120 degrees, trained a new local police force, repaired utilities and performed raids on Baath Party officials and Saddam sympathizers, Daugherty said.

And chaos ensued.

"We came in and took over the country so fast and so furiously, and they expect us to rebuild it just as fast," Daugherty said. "And when that doesn't happen, they get angry and irritated."

Yes, he was shot at, he said. And he fired shots, too. But as he sat in his family's living room Friday, nuzzling with his 6-year-old sister, Megan, and his girlfriend, Sheldon senior Lacey Ward, it was clear he wasn't eager to go into details.

His mother, Kim Daugherty, said she can't imagine what her son and his comrades went through. "I know you'll tell me about it when you're ready," she said.

"There's some stuff you don't want to hear," he replied.

Kim Daugherty, a single parent, attended her son's graduation from Infantry School in March, saw him ship off to prepare for war, and then didn't hear from him again until a phone call in May.

"You live on `No news is good news,' ' she said.

Jason Daugherty said he intends to relax during his monthlong stay in Eugene and, with the money he earned fighting for his country, hopes to buy a used BMW and drive it back to Camp Pendleton.

He plans to go to college on his G.I. Bill after his four years of service. But it won't be a military career for him.

"I think it'd be kind of cool to be a history teacher," he said.

CAPTION(S):

Jason Daugherty, 19, is embraced by his mother, Kim, at the Eugene Airport on Friday. His girlfriend Lacey Ward and sister Megan wait for a hug.