For the past year, Sgt. 1st Class Tim Bookout’s top priority was to help ensure the best care possible for wounded soldiers in Iraq.  

Saturday night, he accepted a new mission: Reuniting with his wife and their two children, and seeing to happy obligations, from his son’s upcoming graduation from Army basic training to a late Thanksgiving dinner.

“For Christmas, we’re going to be a whole family again,” said his wife, Jeri Bookout.

A crowd in the hundreds gave an effusive welcome Saturday night as members of the 10th Combat Support Hospital returned to Fort Carson after their yearlong mission in Iraq.

The 285-person unit was responsible for providing advanced medical care for the wounded in a half-dozen locations in Iraq, including Ibn Sina Hospital, nicknamed “Baghdad ER” for its frantic pace as the first stop for soldiers battered by bombs and gunfire.

The unit performed 1,332 surgeries, achieving a 98-percent survival rate among more than 1,200 patients it admitted, according to information supplied by 10th CSH.  Soldiers were given access to a full range of medical services, including behavioral health treatment, physical therapy and radiology.

Violence dropped sharply in Iraq over the past year, and this fall, the unit oversaw the transfer of Ibn Sina to Iraqi doctors. The hospital had been one of the military’s busiest trauma centers since shortly after the Iraq invasion. The operation involved uprooting medical staff to a new hospital at Sather Air Base near the Baghdad International Airport.

“We planned for it a long time, and we had the support we needed,” said Command Sgt. Major Dennis Pearson.

Among the crowd of well-wishers Saturday night were nearly 30 members of the First Baptist Church of Peaceful Valley in Colorado Springs, where Staff Sgt. Sean Froslie is a congregant. A church deacon called his wife, Jennifer, on a weekly basis to offer help for her and the couple’s four children, said fellow congregant Amy Crump, who held Froslie’s 8-month-old daughter, Savanna, while the group waited for the soldier to arrive.

“He had to leave three or four days after she was born,” Crump said, looking down at the sleeping child.

For the Bookout family, surviving the past year took “work.”

“This was our first (deployment),” Jeri Bookout said. “We just worked hard and prayed everday. We took it day by day.”

Her plan for today: Preparing lasagna, her husband’s favorite dish.

—Call the writer at 636-0366.