Uniform by uniform, teary eye by teary eye, soldiers are turning up at the airports to hugs, home for Christmas from war-torn Afghanistan. Each reunion is a heartwringer.
Not every military member over there is a soldier, though, and not every job is fighting. Somebody, after all, has to pay for it.
So among the soldiers who landed in Charleston last week was Siamak “Mak” Araghi, a civilian Army Corps of Engineers finance officer, who volunteered for months of duty at an occasionally bombed headquarters near Kabul. His Summerville family waited at the gate, his 8-year-old daughter Salma as close as she could get.
Sam Araghi, Mak’s 13-year-old son, said his dad getting home before Christmas was the best gift he could get this year.
Read it all and you have to love the picture.