Three South Shore families with loved ones serving in the Massachusetts National Guard agreed to let Patriot Ledger readers follow their lives at home while those loved ones serve in Iraq. This is part of an occasional series on those families as they live, cope, love and wait.

STORY BY NANCY REARDON
THE PATRIOT LEDGER

QUINCY

Being the wife of a military man, Nicole Sykes of Quincy has become accustomed to an environment in which things run like clockwork. So when 90 Massachusetts guardsmen arrived home from Iraq a half-hour early, she was caught a bit off-stride.

Sykes was running late to meet her husband, Sgt. Adrian Gunn, and his unit, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 181st Infantry Regiment of the Army National Guard, which just finished a 10-month tour of duty.

“He called me on my cell phone and said, ‘We’re here. Where are you?’ I said, ‘Hold on! We’re five minutes away!’” Sykes said.

When she entered the gymnasium at the Cambridge armory on Wednesday, Sykes didn’t dive into the sea of family members and camouflage uniforms. Instead, the petite 26-year-old stood apart from the hectic scene and patiently surveyed the crowd for a familiar face.

After spotting each other, Sykes and Gunn enjoyed a long hug. A few feet away, at least 30 boxes of pizza and dozens of cans of soda went untouched as couples hugged and children danced excitedly around their parents.

The Wollaston couple’s most recent separation was the shortest of Gunn’s tour. Gunn, 36, left for Iraq in late August but was home on a two-week leave last month. He returned to the war in Iraq on Feb. 17.

LISA BUL/The Patriot Ledger

Massachusetts Army National Guard Sgt. Adrian Gunn gets a hug from his father Paul, a Scituate resident, after Gunn’s unit arrived at the armory in Cambridge.

When he last left home, Gunn had a beard and was about 10 pounds lighter than normal. When he arrived back in Massachusetts on Wednesday night, he was clean-shaven and, his wife said, even thinner.

“We’ll help you gain that back tonight,” she quipped.

Sykes hoped her husband would be up for Mexican food at their favorite Mexican restaurant, La Paloma in Quincy.

“And maybe a few margaritas,” Gunn added.

Gunn’s father, Paul Gunn of Scituate, traveled to the armory with Sykes but stood apart from the couple, allowing them to enjoy the first moments of being together again. He said he wanted to let them enjoy dinner by themselves, too, but was planning have a family-reunion cookout in a few weeks.

Gunn arrived in the United States on Friday, but his company spent a few days at Camp Shelby in Mississippi before making the last leg of the trip to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford.

“When he called from Kuwait, that’s when I was happy,” Paul Gunn said. “Then he called from Mississippi and I got happier, and it was then that I stopped worrying.”

Making a long-distance relationship work wasn’t new for Sykes and Gunn, who married in 2004 but met 10 years ago, when Sykes still lived in her native Canada. In the past 10 months, they have stayed connected by talking on the phone two or three times a week and via the Internet.

“We’ve actually spoken less in the past few days since I arrived home,” Gunn said. “We had more access to phones in Iraq than at Camp Shelby. I had to borrow cell phones all the time.”

Gunn joined the National Guard in 1998, after eight years in the Army. Now that he’s finished his first tour in Iraq, he won’t be eligible to be deployed again for two years.

“I’m just looking forward to not going back any time soon,” Gunn said. “I think I won’t take the everyday things for granted right now, and it’s kind of nice to have no one trying to kill you.”

The base he was at in Iraq came under lots of rocket fire, and there were several IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the roads they he and fellow soldiers traveled, he said.

“We were lucky we were never hit by any of them,” he said.

He plans to take a few weeks to relax before starting a job as a National Guard recruiter.

“We’re just looking forward to moving on with our lives,” Sykes said, holding onto her husband’s arm.

“It’s like pushing the ‘Pause’ button for 10 months,” Gunn said. “There’s so many things you talk about on the phone; now we can do them.”

Nancy Reardon may be reached at nreardon@ledger.com.