BUT SOMETIMES TIMING is everything...my guess is these guys from the 3d ID were too far along in the redeployment process to be halted. They say its better to be lucky than good.

More than 400 soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division came marching home Tuesday night, over a parade ground sodden with rain and heavy with anticipation and into the yearning arms of family and friends.

The battle-toughened men and women returned to this Army base in the piney wilderness after a year in the Middle East, fighting Iraqi soldiers, boredom and the uncertainty of when, finally, they could come home...

...One family's joy, though, was tempered by the frustration and longing endured by the families of the roughly 16,000 3rd Infantry soldiers who remain in Iraq. The mechanized 3rd was initially expected home in late May or early June.

But military leaders decided the war-experienced 3rd was needed to maintain order in the newly liberated nation.

Those families must wait another two months, at least, until their loved ones return home.

Susan Conroy, whose husband, Jason, commands a company of soldiers