TOWN OF NIAGARA — The Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station tarmac was filled with many families waiting to be made whole again on Wednesday.
For arriving Air Reserve members returning from a deployment, it was an opportunity to get back to a normal life.
“We’ve been envisioning this since the day we left,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Abels, one of the many 914th Air Refueling Wing unit members returning home. “It just makes the satisfaction of finishing things over there for our part and coming home even better.”
Four KC-135 aircraft landed at the air base on Wednesday morning, bringing back 80 members of the 914th after more than four months of deployment. They were on refueling missions supporting American aircraft and their allies in the Middle East, having to respond at a moment’s notice.
Operations Group Commander Col. Jay Butterfield said their initial deployment in April was supposed to last for 90 days, but they received an unplanned extension, and it ended up stretching out to around 130 days.
“It’s something that’s initially seen as unpleasant,” Butterfield said. “I think once everybody understood the why, the attitude improved dramatically.”
For Abels, who pilots the stratotankers that refuel other airborne craft, this was his sixth military deployment. Each one gets more difficult the older he is because he gets settled into a routine, and then this drastic change comes along.
His experience flying military aircraft was on both ends of that exchange, in the plane performing the refueling and the plane receiving the fuel.
“For different phases of life, the challenges change too,” said Abels, who planned on getting pizza and wings with his wife and three children. His downtime will also be spent helping direct the 2026 Thunder Over Niagara Air Show next year.
Butterfield said that for the next few days, the returning troops will have their psychological and physical needs evaluated, along with time to spend with their families. After two weeks of leave, the reserve members will transition to their civilian jobs.
The reset phase lasts six months, with the unit’s next deployment scheduled for the spring of 2027.
“It’s a great day to be part of the 914th and show them that the reserves care about them,” Butterfield said.