National Guardsman Jim Gordon spends time with Tyler and Taylor Strayer, his neighbors, the day he arrived home from a year-long deployment. The Strayers told their mom they wanted to meet a real soldier.

“We went to Camp Shelby in Mississippi and the mission was cut by almost 67 percent or 900 troops,” Gordon explained. “Myself and 17 soldiers were then assigned to Task Force Buckeye and sent to Kuwait and then Bahrain. There were four separate missions for 500 troops with the main focus on entry control. We had four guard towers and were a quick-reaction force.”

Bahrain is a small island country situated near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is an archipelago of 33 islands, the largest being Bahrain Island, at 34 miles long by 11 miles wide. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain by the King Fahd Causeway. Iran lies 120 miles to the north of Bahrain, across the Gulf. The peninsula of Qatar is to the southeast across the Gulf of Bahrain.