By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WHITE OAK - Standing tall in the living room of his family's home, Tim Nash lifts his year-old daughter, Caroline, high over his shaved head. Her eyes grow to the size of saucers and she laughs as only an infant in the safety of her daddy's strong arms can laugh.

Tim waited a long time to be able to do this with his first child.

First Lieutenant Tim Nash of White Oak of the 478th Combat Engineer battalion with his wife Johanna and their one year old daughter Caroline. (Glenn Hartong photo)

A year ago, when Caroline was just days old, Tim left his wife, Johanna, and newborn to go half a world away. The 28-year-old is a first lieutenant in the 478th Engineer Battalion's Bravo Company. He left Cincinnati in February 2003 first for the sand storms and Scud missile alerts of the 478th's Kuwaiti base camp, then for the combat zone of Iraq.

"She was what kept me going," says Tim, now home and settled back into his civilian job as a Hamilton County sheriff's deputy. "I just kept thinking of getting home to my wife and baby."

Tim wondered then, at a base camp near al Nasiryah, what Caroline would be like when he finally returned to their brick home on a quiet White Oak street.

"I thought it would be like adopting a 6-month-old baby," Tim says. "She'd be this little person who didn't know me."

While Tim was gone, Johanna's mother came from Florida for a couple of months to help her daughter cope with a newborn.

"I felt guilty leaving," says Tim. "But I had no choice in the matter.''

ONE UNIT, ONE YEAR LATER

• Special section home • After time apart, family returns to normal • Coming home, changed by war • Finding purpose, perspective • Voices from the survey • Slideshow: A year in Iraq • Six weeks of war: Interactive timeline • Reconstruction of Iraq

In Iraq, the young soldier was doing a job he had prepared himself for since he was a boy in Colerain Township and realized he wanted to be a police officer or a soldier. He was an ROTC student at the University of Cincinnati and earned a degree in criminal justice.

Tim ended up doing both jobs - full-time police officer patrolling the streets of Sycamore Township and part-time soldier in the U.S. Army Reserves.

In the months Tim was in the desert, Johanna missed her husband and feared for his safety in Iraq, watching the news reports and seeing the danger that continued to follow American soldiers, even after Saddam Hussein's regime fell.

Johanna was already used to a certain amount of uncertainty and fear.

"I'd been married to a police officer, a sheriff's deputy, for a couple of years," she explains. "A police officer's wife knows the stress of having a husband who goes to work and can be in harm's way at any time. That made this a little easier."

To help keep her mind off her own problems, Johanna worked as a volunteer for the 478th's Family Readiness Group, making phone calls to other military families to keep them in the loop with news of the 478th in Iraq and practical information, such as changes in their Army post office addresses.

"It helped me as much as the people I talked to," Johanna says. "I realized I was not alone.''

When Tim came back, he said he slipped easily back into civilian life, although he says he had some trouble at first "switching out of the Army mode and into the deputy mode."

"I sat in my cruiser and couldn't remember my password for the on-board computer," Tim says. "And driving a Humvee is not the same as driving a police cruiser. You don't have to floor it in a cruiser all the time to make it go."

But mostly, he says, he was just happy to be back and introducing himself to the little girl he holds in his arms as he gets ready to go to work.

"Her face always lights up when he comes in the door," Johanna says. "She loves her daddy.''

About the series

The series One unit, One year later explores the impact Iraq war duty had on soldiers of the 478th Engineer Battalion, Army Reserve, of Fort Thomas.

Wednesday: War delays the dreams of Hamilton couple Sgt. Anthony and Erica Harmon.

Thursday: Sgt. Mike Grob's 14-year-old daughter struggles with her father's absence.

Friday: Jimmy Wright died in Iraq. Now, his Delhi family finds solace in the son he never met.

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E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com