Staff Sgt. Craig Holland walked into Bismarck's airport Friday to a son that's four or five inches taller than the last time he saw him. And to a wife, Kim Holland, who shed more than four or five tears. And to many more than four or five friends.

"It's all about family and friends," said Craig Holland, an Army Reservist who was happy to be back in "God's Country," North Dakota, after a 10-month stint of water-well drilling in Africa with the 916th Engineer Detachment.

Well, it's almost all about that.

There was one other thing. The next thing he wanted to do after the airport hugs and kisses was to hit something.

"Hit the BK (Burger King)," he said.

He wasn't the only soldier with a handful of hamburger on his mind.

Bill Gedrose, 41, of Bismarck, another of the nine soldiers of the 916th who returned Friday, had McDonald's on the mind.

"It's the simple things that you miss," he said.

Sgt. Amber Thomas, 23, of Bismarck, said that after months in Kjibouti, Africa, she knows for sure that "the United States in the best country in the whole world."

Djibouti is located in eastern Africa, south and southeast of Ethiopia. Much of it is a vast wasteland with virtually no arable land.

She said people had to walk miles with jugs for water. But then her unit drilled five water wells in villages' centers .

When the water gushed, "The look on their faces. They were in awe. I'll never forget it," she said.

"It was so great," she said.

Holland said the unit's mission is "more of a humanitarian thing."

"Our job is to win the hearts and minds of the locals," he said.

The unit was mobilized in March 2003 to support Operation Enduring Freedom.

Thomas said entire families live in one-room huts that are about the size of a typical master bedroom here.

"They are on top of each other, literally," she said.

Women wash clothes in small trays and hang them on the trees to dry.

Djibouti's temperature was in the 90s when they left. Holland had no coat at the Bismarck airport. She was wearing pants, and two layers on top, a light shirt and a new sweater bought in Denver, Colo. She was about to leave the airport into subzero temps that way. But at that moment, anyway, it didn't seem to faze her.

And neither was her mom's suggestion that the family take a vacation together - someplace warmer, perhaps?

"I'm not going anywhere," Amber Thomas told her mom, Shirley Thomas.

Right now, anyway, there's no place but home.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com.)