By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

The plan to pull 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia that President Bush is expected to announce today has some Cincinnati families happy that their loved ones could be back on American soil.

But they don't believe it will happen anytime soon.

"We've probably got a long wait ahead," said Karen Flinn of Glen Este, whose son, Spc. Christopher Flinn, returned this summer after more than a year of combat duty in Iraq and is now with his 1st Armored Division in Germany.

"This is going to take some time."

President Bush, in a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention this morning, is expected to announce the military restructuring. About two-thirds of the 70,000 troops that will be relocated to bases in the United States will come from Europe - especially Germany, where the largest contingent of U.S. forces in Europe is located.

The changes could mean that the 1st Armored Division, along with the 1st Infantry Division, are headed back to an Army base in the states.

Flinn said her son, who is 32, returned to Germany last week after spending nearly a month on leave in the United States.

"He told me he thinks they will be redeployed to Iraq in July 2005, and that when they come back from that deployment, they'll probably be coming back to the U.S. instead of going to Germany,'' Flinn said.

Patrick Schmalle of Cleves, whose 20-year-old son is a specialist in the 1st Armored Division and a veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, said the soldiers of his son's unit have been hearing "for quite some time" that the 1st Armored Division might be pulling out of Germany.

"After the last tour in Iraq, they thought they might be loading the equipment and bringing it back to the states instead of Germany," Schmalle said. "But that didn't happen."

Spc. Schmalle is scheduled to come back to the United States in November, where he will take a sergeant's exam, his father said. Schmalle's boyhood friend and fellow soldier in the unit, Spc. Dale Thomas, also of Cleves, hasn't heard anything about when he or his unit might be returning,, Patrick Schmalle said.

"Nobody knows for sure when the division is coming back for good," Patrick Schmalle said.