Fayetteville Today

About 150 Fort Bragg soldiers returned to their home base after serving five months in Poland to help support Ukraine after Russian troops invaded the country in late February.

The families with children are especially happy to see their loved ones back home.

“Things are stressful when they're gone, because it's just one parent here,” Eve Jones, who has two young children, told ABC 11 News. 

She talked about the things her husband missed out on while he was deployed.

“So, yeah, we did working and school and birthdays, Christmas. All of those things happened while they're deployed,” Jones said, according to ABC 11 News. “When he walked through the door, it was just joy. My kids have their dad back, I have my husband back. We can now become one again.”

Another father didn’t have to spend the whole five months overseas because his wife had a baby about a month into the deployment. Capt. Dakota Wright came home on leave for the birth and the immediate days afterward, but then he headed back to Poland.

This week, he came home to a 4-month-old son who was much bigger than he was last time they saw each other.

“(I) got to see him born, and then (the Army) brought me back to Poland,” Wright told ABC 11 News. “So I got to see him when he was really, really, really small, and now he's huge, holding up his own!" 

His wife, Dare, is looking forward to better times ahead, now that she’ll have help taking care of an infant.

“I'm just so thrilled to see him, and I'm so excited to see him with Tommy, and that's just the best,” she told ABC 11 News. “It's the best feeling in the world.”

Chase Jones, Eve's son, has been longing for some father-and-son time.

"Me and Dad used to play Minecraft a lot together, and now that he's back we can do it again,” the boy said, according to ABC 11 News.