FORT BRAGG, N.C. — The return of the steady tromp of 16,000 jogging soldiers this week means the rhythm of life is right again at Fort Bragg, home to the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division.
All-American Week is back at the base, a renewal of the 82nd's traditional homecoming that was canceled last year because the entire division was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The celebration also provides a balm this year, which follows a particularly tough one for the division — the 82nd lost 87 paratroopers in 2007. About 150 members of "Gold Star" families, relatives of those killed, are to join President Bush today for the division's review ceremony and a rededication of a growing granite memorial to the 82nd's fallen.
Among those to be remembered is Andrew Perkins, a 27-year-old sergeant whose father clings to the stories of his son's heroism in Samarra, north of Baghdad. How he grabbed the fire extinguisher. How he rushed into the explosion three times. How the equipment was melting in his hands before a second blast hit.
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"I'd go to Samarra if I could just to stand on the same ground," Weldon Perkins said.
He has come instead to Fort Bragg, to stand among the dozens of other fathers without sons, wives without husbands, children without parents.
"Did I come here to get some closure? Yep. Am I getting it? Yep. And it surprises me how easy it is coming to me," Perkins said. "It helps that I am talking to guys who knew him."
The 82nd Airborne's 87 fatalities last year are more than in any other year since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Three separate times in Iraq last year, seven or more paratroopers were killed at once. Sgt. Andrew Perkins died March 5 with six others outside of Samarra.
The paratroopers were on patrol when their lead truck hit a roadside bomb. The blast killed four of the paratroopers almost instantly. Perkins and two other paratroopers searched the flaming wreckage for survivors, a second bomb detonated — killing them and wounding several others.
Bush will attend the division's review ceremony today, then head across the massive post in central North Carolina to help rededicate the division's memorial for paratroopers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memorial is being expanded; there is no more room for the names of the dead on its original granite pillar.
Along with Bush, the division invited more than 400 "Gold Star" family members. More than 150 are expected to visit Fort Bragg at some point during All-American Week, said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a division spokesman.
"We see ourselves as one large family joined together by some very tragic circumstances and uniquely linked by our devotion to the memory of our fallen paratroopers," Earnhardt said. "Now, we are able to spend time together in a more festive setting at All-American Week, and we all benefit from pausing and remembering our fallen paratroopers."
Perkins and his wife Liz arrived Sunday from their home near Albuquerque, N.M. They had never visited their son at Fort Bragg, but on Monday, it was easy for Perkins to imagine his son singing the cadence among the long formations of paratroopers trotting down Longstreet Road, 16,000 strong, in the run that kicks off All-American Week.
Perkins and his wife spent the rest of the day touring the post. They saw the barracks where their son lived and the buildings where he trained to be a soldier before deploying for Iraq with the division's 3rd brigade.
A trip to the memorial followed the next morning.
Perkins spotted his son's name at the top of the column and slowly reached up to rub his hand over the letters etched deep into the gray rock. Standing at her husband's side, tears welled in Liz Perkins' eyes as she saw her stepson's name.
"It is beautiful, but I hate that it was built," Perkins told Capt. Brennan Goltry, the officer spending All-American Week escorting the Perkins around Fort Bragg.
"I miss my son so much. There is an eternal pain that words cannot describe, but I'm comforted that I am walking on the grounds that meant so much to Drew," Perkins said.
This year, almost all the paratroopers are home. The run, the commander-in-chief's visit, the week of visitors — all are a break of sorts for the paratroopers, including Perkins' colleagues in the 3rd brigade. They returned from a 15-month tour in Iraq last September and have been training in recent weeks for a return to Iraq.
They got the formal orders Monday, the same day as the division run. The 3,500-member brigade will deploy to Iraq in the fall along with seven other major Army units.
"Andrew's life was not lost in vain," Weldon Perkins said. "I now realize that while my world stopped, theirs continues."
