This is a weekend for homecomings up and down the Front Range.
Fort Carson continued a three-day celebration Saturday as soldiers came home from Iraq.
And today at Buckley Air Force Base, 1,500 Colorado Air National Guardsmen will gather to celebrate the return of more than 250 airmen from the 140th Wing who also were in Iraq.
Things kicked off Friday in Fort Carson as 150 soldiers in a military police battalion arrived to a raucous 8:30 a.m. ceremony to greet loved ones.
At 10 p.m. Friday, the post greeted another planeload of soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team who wrapped up a year of work in Iraq. The brigade was responsible for an area around the southern port city of Basra and also had soldiers on patrol in the northern city of Mosul.
Two more flights of returning soldiers were due in Saturday, and another is expected today.
In the coming days, as the rest of the brigade comes back, Fort Carson’s population will swell to levels unseen since 2003, with three full combat brigades of soldiers on the post at once plus thousands of support troops.
In Aurora today, state and local elected officials, family members and friends, as well as employers of the deployed airmen of the 140th Wing, will attend a picnic at the Aurora Sports Complex.
The Colorado Guardsmen were from nearly every unit in the 140th Wing.
