Lt. Col. Don Wingate, returning Tuesday night from Iraq, is hugged by his daughter, Erica, and son, Dylan, at Nellis Air Force Base while his wife, Andrea, left, watches. Members of the 99th Security Forces Group filled in for Army military police patrols in southern Iraq. Photos by Craig L. Moran. Airman 1st Class J.T. Grimes is greeted by his mother, Laurel, and father, Tom Grimes, left, after arriving Tuesday night at Nellis Air Force Base.

Wearing a Santa Claus hat and standing with two anxious children at her side, Andrea Wingate tried to remain calm Tuesday night as she waited for her husband to walk off a plane that had just brought him and his troops home from Iraq.

"I'm trying to hold back the nervous breakdown that I so justly deserve," she said of the half-year ordeal that sent Lt. Col. Don Wingate and 75 security forces airmen from Nellis to fill in for Army military police patrols in southern Iraq.

"I'm just so very happy that they're back and that they're safe," she said.

For other families and troops who had gathered on the chilly, darkened ramp at Nellis Air Force Base, the homecoming of the 99th Security Forces Group was not only a time to cheer and celebrate but it was also a time for a couple of the airmen to hold their babies for the first time.

For Airman 1st Class Brandon Byers, it was a time to reunite with his tan, camouflage-clad buddies he had left behind at Camp Bucca after an explosion ripped through his Humvee during a patrol on Oct. 16.

"It's the closing of a chapter for me to be honest with you," Byers, 22, said. "It's closure, and it's a very nerve-wracking experience. It's good to know that no one else got hurt."

Byers returned to Nellis in a wheelchair on Nov. 6 with shrapnel wounds to his left leg, right wrist and hand, the result of an improvised explosive device that detonated while he was manning a .50-caliber machine gun in the Humvee's turret.

"I was hobbling, and now I'm walking and feeling good," he said about his rehabilitation. "My job right now is to heal. I do what I can, and soon as the holidays are over, I'm actually going to request to have some kind of light duty, to feel like I'm a part of something and do something.

"I'm not going to let this stop me. I haven't yet, and I've exceeded the doctors' expectations and I plan to keep on doing so," Byers said.

Senior Airman Jason Lee Geldrich held his 7-week-old son, Jason Geldrich Jr., for the first time and was all aglow standing next to his wife, Rebekah.

"I'm a little scared right now. I don't even know what to say. ... I'm just happy to be home," the 21-year-old Geldrich said. "He looks exactly like I did when I was born."

Wingate, who commanded the Nellis forces and about 125 more from other units, said he was relieved to see Byers again "walking around doing well."

"It was tough," Wingate said about the incident. "You train for it. You don't want it to happen, (but) those kind of things do happen over there. But everyone reacted. The systems were in place to get him air (evacuated) real quick and get him the care he needed."

Early on in the deployment, Wingate said, his troops experienced "a lucky miss" with an improvised explosive device that detonated near one of the trucks. "It kind of woke up the crews. But with that one, it brought it right home," he said of the explosion that wounded Byers.

Wingate said his unit conducted hunts for explosive devices on supply routes. Two Air Force security forces squadrons were at Camp Bucca to help with security patrols outside the barbed wire and inside the prison camp.

"The Army has requested additional forces to meet the requirements because they're short MPs," he said. "The security forces fill those requirements. ... We're supporting the Army in their mission."

Tech Sgt. Brian Slater's wife, Nancie, was glad that her husband's third overseas deployment was finally over and that they could go forward with what she described as "the chaos" of moving to another Air Force base, Travis, in Northern California.

"They're never the same, and they're never easy. But we make it. We do OK," she said.