Since 2008, there have been more than 1.8 million deployments of US soldiers, more than a million of whom left at least one family member behind.

Really think about those numbers.

It’s staggering to realize just how many people there are praying a family member can make their way back home.

Oftentimes, soldiers leave a spouse or even children behind, which adds to the trauma both the deployed person and their family have to deal with in the years to follow.

In the case of very young soldiers, it is usually parents and siblings who wait for them to return from deployment.

Brothers in arms are brothers in life.

The family of the deployed soldier, especially during the first deployment gradually starts developing the skills needed to cope with the fact that their loved one is away from home and possibly at risk.

But they certainly learn to live with that and it kind of gets better with time.

“Strengthening the support system, keeping busy and staying active, and making plans to break up the time” are only some of the ways the family uses to cope with the deployment stage.

As the day of the return home approaches, however, all the family feels is excitement and they usually keep themselves busy preparing to be reunited with their deployed soldier.

The worst part of having a loved one in the Army, though, is being away from them during the holidays.

They’re painfully aware of who’s missing.

While all the other family members will be having fun and exchanging gifts around the Christmas tree, their son, daughter, spouse, or sibling will be spending those special days in a hostile environment.

This is what sisters Eden and Jordan Komar believed would be the case for their family a few years ago, when their elder brother, Bradley, had been deployed.

He’d been gone about a year.

The high-school students were in the school cafeteria when reporters arrived and explained to everyone that they were going to ask random students to send holiday wishes to deployed soldiers.

Eden and Jordan were sure to be some of the first to be approached by the reporter because- guess what- it was all part of a surprise their brother had planned for them.

You see, Bradley had just returned home for the holidays and his younger sisters knew nothing about it.

In fact, they thought they were going to spend the holidays without him, and they were truly sad about that.

He was hiding a Christmas surprise.

But the young man returned home just in time for Christmas, and what he wanted the most was to make his sisters happy.

So, he (possibly with the help of his parents) arranged for him to appear right when the reporters were asking Eden and Jordan to send some wishes to soldiers overseas.

His timing was impeccable.

Just when the girls started talking to the camera, U.S. Army National Guardsman Sgt. Bradley Komar started getting closer to them.

Suddenly, he was right behind them.

He said “Hey, guys”!

It took the girls a second to realize it was actually their brother.

Once they did, they started screaming and the three of them hugged so tight.

The students around them started cheering for the reunion of the three siblings.

It was definitely a precious moment for all involved.

See Sgt. Bradley Komar make his sisters’ Christmas dreams come true in the video below!

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Source: YouTube – KMBC 9, Deployment Psych