MPs end 15-month deployment in Iraq

By Spc. Aaron Carpenter, I Corps Public Affairs

It was the best way to start the week for the families of about 150 Soldiers from the 170th Military Police Company as they returned home from a 15-month deployment early Monday morning.

The Dragonslayers made their way into Soldiers Field House around 5 a.m. for a no-nonsense ceremony — and the rush to their families and friends was on.

“She just called me and said I’m coming in,” Evan Becker said of his wife’s phone call a couple of hours earlier.

Evan and Wileen are both military police.

The two were married late last year during her leave and this is Wileen’s first deployment since the two met in 2005.

“Our unit was actually getting ready to leave and we had to move buildings because the incoming unit took over,” Evan Becker said.

He said they ended up moving into the same building as Wileen’s unit and the two took it from there.

Timothy Ragland also has a lot to look forward to as he reunited with his wife Conny and his son Daniel Lee, 3. “This is the first time they (Timothy and Daniel Lee) can actually spend some time together,” Ragland said. She said Daniel Lee already knows what they’re going to do.

“He wants to go swimming with him, he wants to eat pizza with him, we want to go to the park, the zoo, the aquarium and so on.”

She said she doesn’t have specific plans because she tried that last time when she picked him up during his leave. “I planned not to be excited and to stay calm but as soon as I saw him ...”

Second Lt. Timothy Black came to the ceremony to see the Soldiers from his old unit.

“They have convinced me to stay in the Army,” Black said.

He initially deployed with them but returned early to attend Officers Candidate School and receive a commission. “It’s (170th MP Co.) the only unit I’ve been in, but I think it’s a great unit,”

he said. He is supporting them because they supported him for the past three and one-half years.

Jim Hand attended the ceremony as a family friend of Chris Collinsworth and as a retiree. Hand said he was very proud of how cohesively the Army has been working together and taking care of one another as they always have.

“The American Soldiers have always been there, this is just another example,” Hand said.

The 170th MP Co. deployed in May 2007 to Iraq’s western al-Anbar Province to train and mentor Iraqi police.

The Dragonslayers founded a police academy, the Hammurabi Training Center, to further develop the country’s rapidly expanding professional police force.

The company provided advisory and administrative support for the instructors at the center and also trained Iraqi police at other locations throughout western al-Anbar Province.