Waving small American flags, family and friends welcomed home Sgt. Stephen Lovett of the Mississippi Army National Guard from an eye-opening tour of duty in Iraq.

Lovett, 44, a train conductor for Kansas City Southern Railway in civilian life, returned to his home off U.S. 80 Monday.

His unit with the 155th Infantry Company C spent six months providing visibility presence along main supply roads leading to Baghdad and training members of a new Iraqi army.

&#8220Communication was the biggest challenge,” Lovett said, pointing out that the only link between members of his unit and the men they were training was an interpreter.

Lovett, one of the interpreters and three other guardsmen nearly found themselves on the wrong side of a roadside bomb one day in October, referred to by the military as an improvised explosive device.

While patrolling a four-mile stretch of road near a patrol base about 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Humvee they were in rolled over the device, destroying most of the vehicle but leaving the four men alive.

&#8220It happened so quick you can’t react,” Lovett said.

A guard truck that was trailing the Humvee took the men to a checkpoint. Only the interpreter was injured, Lovett said.

Ronda Lovett, his wife of 19 years, said he gave the credit to a higher power when he called to relate what happened.

&#8220He said that I should be talking to a dead man right now and that the hand of God is what’s letting me talk to him,” she said.

While he was there, members of Lovett’s church, Bible Holiness, sent letters and food to him overseas.

&#8220We wrote to him until they wouldn’t let us write to him anymore!” said Charlotte Kappler, whose Sunday school pupils joined Lovett’s daughters Kayla, 17, LeAnn, 16, and Magan, 14 in welcoming him home.

Kayla, a senior at Warren Central High School, may be following in her father’s example of service to country. She recently applied to West Point.

As for daughter LeAnn, also a student at Warren Central, she oozed pride for her father.

&#8220I’m proud of him for being there, and I’m just happy he’s home,” she said.

In Lovett’s previous 26 years with the Guard, the closest he had ever been to foreign shores was California, during the first Gulf War in 1991. This time, as he served overseas, he witnessed a number of cultural differences.

&#8220I noticed a lot of different things, but one of them was how men and women just don’t associate together,” Lovett said.

Regardless of a successful mission by Company C to help train new Iraqi soldiers and police forces, the unassuming Lovett took a quick seat on the arm of his sofa upon walking into his house for the first time since July 2005.

&#8220I’m real relieved to be home,” he said.

The 155th Infantry began as the First Mississippi Regiment and was handed its first commission on June 1, 1798, by then-territorial Mississippi Gov. Winthrop Sargent. It is the seventh-oldest infantry in the United States from point of service. Company C, 1st Batallion, is headquartered in Biloxi.

Leading up to the Dec. 15 elections, Company C handled four urban areas south of Baghdad in its area of operation-Eskan, Haswah, Hateen and Iskandariyah.

A month before the elections, &#8220local control” was declared in its area of operation based on successes in training the new Iraqi army and police forces.