Silver Spring family throws hero’s welcome for young Marine

Silver Spring family throws hero’s welcome for young Marine

22-year-old returns home for a visit after seven-month tour in Afghanistan
by Jeremy Arias, Staff Writer

Jeremy Arias/The Gazette Lance Cpl. Grant Romano Gates (left) and his mother, Donna Romano (right), celebrated Gates' return from a seven-month tour of duty in Afghanistan last week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday in Silver Spring.

For one Silver Spring family, the holidays came early this year as Lance Cpl. Grant Romano Gates returned home from a seven-month tour of duty in southern Afghanistan with the U.S. Marine Corps.

“He’s my sloppy kid, it’s so obvious that he’s here; his things are all over the place,” said a smiling Donna Romano, Gates’ mother, as she watched her son make himself a plate of food in her living room Sunday afternoon. “But I don’t care.”

Gates, 22, left home almost a year ago to begin training at Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego. Within months of arriving in California, Gates’ unit — 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment — was deployed to Afghanistan, Gates said. A machine-gunner in the infantry regiment, Gates spent most of his time in the Sangin Valley of the Helmand Province, a long sliver of land on Afghanistan’s southern border with Pakistan, where clashes between the Taliban and U.S. or NATO forces still are common.

“People ask me, ‘Why would you ever want to do this?’” he said Sunday, reflecting on his time overseas. “It’s what I wanted to do when I first joined, what I’ve always wanted to do. We did a lot of good out there; we took a lot of casualties, but I know overall that we did a good job out there.”
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