Showered with hugs and kisses, soldiers return after tour in Iraq

By John M. Guilfoil, Globe Correspondent

HUDSON -- Several hundred people gathered in the cold rain outside the Elks lodge here early this morning, waiting for their loved ones, members of a National Guard unit returning from a deployment to Iraq.

The 186 men and women assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion of the 181st Infantry Regiment of the Massachusetts Army National Guard were returning after a one-year tour.

The largest unit of Massachusetts troops deployed during the Iraq War had been surrounded by danger in Baghdad, but no one was killed or wounded.

"We were successful," said the unit's commander, Captain Steve Rooney of Nashua, N.H. “We did not take any casualties even though we made a lot of contact with the enemy.”

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