Returning MPs receive warm welcome home

Stepping outside the Quad-Cities Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf, Sgt. Nick Sommers didn't seem to mind Thursday's drizzly gray weather.

"I can deal with the weather," he said. "I'm home. No more sand."

Sommers and his unit, the 130-soldier strong 339th Military Police Company of the Army Reserves, returned to the Quad-Cities after a one-year deployment in Iraq.

While many soldiers walked quickly past with family and friends after a reunion that was closed to the public, Sommers, 26, an electrician from Moline, stopped to talk. He doesn't expect to return to work until December because of accrued leave. Until then, he said he plans to spend time with family and friends.

Signs, with individual soldiers' names on each one, lined State Street near the convention center to greet the unit on its return. The soldiers were escorted from the Quad-City International Airport in Moline by the Patriot Guard Riders.

The homecoming ceremony was closed to the media and public at the request of the soldiers, said Major Corey Schultz, of the Army Reserves public affairs office.

"The unit made the decision," she said. "They wanted to get off the bus, greet their families and go home."

One of the soldiers in the unit, Justin Pollard, of Altoona, Iowa, left the ceremony surrounded by family and three military police soldiers who blocked onlookers as he loaded his gear into a sport utility vehicle and drove away without comment.

Pollard is charged with first-degree murder in Polk County for the 2005 hit-and-run death of a woman in the parking lot of a home improvement store in Altoona. Pollard was charged in 2006. Prosecutors dropped the charge in 2007 after a judge ruled a surveillance tape could not be used at trial. The FBI is conducting a new analysis of the videotape.

He was arrested in New Jersey when the 339th returned to the United States, but was released and allowed to return to Iowa with his unit.

Schultz said she talked to the commander of the 339th and was told the decision to close Thursday's ceremony was made before Pollard's arrest.

The company also was deployed to a prison in Iraq in 2004 and to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2001.