http://www.oralhistory.ws/tpl/norton_audio.php?file=d958419acdaa312c8b0e60f510635bc48b0051a5.mp3

National guard and reserve units in Louisiana were activated in December of 1990 to serve in Desert Storm. One was the 527th Engineering Battalion. Merel Branam was a full-time warrant officer when his unit was activated for about six months. Along with Merel was his son, Wayne, who formed one of 10 father-son duos who served in Desert Storm with the 527th. Their homecoming was far different than the indifferent, and often hostile, confrontations of anti-war demonstrators toward soldiers returning from Vietnam two decades earlier: