La. National Guard company returns from deployment in Middle East

PINEVILLE – Christmas came a day early for the Louisiana National Guard’s 1023rd Engineer Company, as they arrived home to eager friends and family at a welcome-home event at the Monroe Regional Airport-Century Link hangar Dec. 24.
More than 150 soldiers with the 1023rd, headquartered in Bastrop with detachments in Monroe and Clarks, completed their 10-month deployment to Kuwait, with additional missions in Iraq, Jordan and Afghanistan.
The soldiers provided vertical engineer construction operations in the Kuwait theater of operations in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Freedom Sentinel and Inherent Resolve.
Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard, waited with the eager crowd to welcome home the unit. This is the first time since 2002 that the Louisiana National Guard does not have a unit deployed to a combat zone.
“There’s not a better feeling in the world than to see your kids’ faces [when you return from deployment],” he said.
During the course of their deployment, the 1023rd completed numerous vertical projects in the four different countries. In Kuwait, the engineers helped update the Kuwait Naval Force facilities on the Kuwait Naval Base with extensive plumbing renovations, including shower and latrine facilities.
They also worked on the first joint construction effort between Kuwaiti Navy and U.S. Army engineers to build pavilions, decks and other morale, welfare and recreation facilities for U.S. and Kuwaiti forces. At Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, the unit stood up housing and shower facilities for 800 allied troops and built a new water well, a new USO facility, a post exchange and a larger dining facility and expanded base defense.
Marines, soldiers and Danish forces lived in tents, but after the work of the 1023rd, they had new and improved amenities and two-person rooms.
The reunion between Staff Sgt. Chad Lawless and his wife, Angela, of Swartz, , was particularly special as Lawless met his 6-month-old son, Levi, in person for the first time.
Angela Lawless said the day her husband left was one of the hardest days of her life, but her other two children, Lily, 4 and Luke, 2, kept her going and positive.
“I was so sad, just devastated; that was my best friend,” she said. “But there are no more tears. I’m just ecstatic. This is the best Christmas present ever.”