After a little more than four months of serving as the lone head of her household, McChord Field spouse Tiffany Costley was ready for a much-needed break.
When her pilot husband, Christopher, left on a 120-day deployment with the 4th Airlift Squadron, Costley was in the early stages of her pregnancy. In the early morning on Jan. 6, significantly further along, she waited for the squadron's return at the McChord passenger terminal. She arrived for the return wearing a special shirt with the phrase "I'm here to pick up my daddy" emblazoned across her pregnant belly.
"It was very difficult ... I had to take care of the house and everything," said Costley, as her 3-year-old son Drew sat next to her eagerly awaiting his father's return. "At the end of the day, you can't just sit around and be pregnant. You have to take out the trash ... you have to do all the manly stuff, too. It's very exhausting. I'm ready for it to be over."
Making things even harder was the fact it was the Indianapolis, Ind. native and her husband's first deployment. The couple spent four years at a training base before coming to McChord in July 2009.
"I don't ever want to be pregnant during another deployment," Costley said with a laugh.
Spouse Katie Leicht learned she was more independent than she thought she was while her husband Jordan, a captain, was away on his first deployment.
"I didn't think it was as bad as I thought it was going to be originally," said Leicht, who helped pass some of the time by visiting her family in Southern California during the holidays. "I had a really good support system ... a lot of good friends, and we always got together. But it was still different not to have him there (during the holidays)."
Costley and Leicht were reunited with their husbands shortly after the Boeing 757 commercial airliner touched down at McChord in the early hours of Jan. 6. Spouses held up signs and balloons and pajama-clad infants held off sleep as spouses greeted each other.
"I hadn't heard her voice in almost a month between our busy schedules and everything," said Capt. Jordan Leicht shortly after embracing Katie.
The 4th AS - made up of about 120 airmen - was deployed as the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron to an overseas contingency location in the Middle East. It supported a wide variety of missions, including the delivery of M1A1 Abrams tanks into Afghanistan, life-saving aeromedical evacuations, transporting several distinguished visitors including the Secretary of Defense, and airdropping more than 16 million pounds of supply bundles to remote forward operating bases.
"The way that we did business was professional," said Lt. Col. Ira Cline, commander of the 816th EAS. "Guys were just knocking it out. It can be a grind. I was very impressed. I was very proud of them."
During the deployment, the C-17 squadron flew 2,204 sorties (totaling more than 12,900 hours), moved more than 48,000 passengers and delivered more than 91.4 million pounds of combat sustainment cargo for U.S. military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and operations in East Africa. The deployment also included a historic airdrop on Dec. 10 as one C-17 surpassed its two-millionth flight hour.
Leicht participated in that flight, as well as a special air drop on Christmas Eve to a remote forward operating base in Afghanistan.
"I'd saved up a bunch of goodies that family had sent me and stuffed those in the bundles we were dropping for the troops," said the young captain. "It was special ... definitely a highlight."
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