It's a long way from Clamtown to Afghanistan, and back.

Clamtown Boy Scout Troop 755 convened a Court of Honor Sunday for West Penn Township Police Officer Glenn Laninger, an Army reservist who returned last month from a tour of duty in Afghanistan."As a Boy Scout you're taught respect for the flag and our country," said Scoutmaster Dale Osenbach. "Those that live in the township are proud of him, and we are lucky to have him as a police officer here."In Afghanistan, Laninger served as a construction equipment operator, working on projects such as road reconstruction, building or restoring culverts, and mounding earth into protective walls around military installations and towns.Weather conditions ranged from snow to extreme heat, with months of days with temperatures around 120 degrees.The 2006 Tamaqua Area High School graduate, who is married with two children, said performing the work wasn't the most difficult part of his service.Seeing the living conditions for Afghanistan families was the hardest."At least the little kids over there don't know what they don't have," Laninger said. "But I knew what kinds of things they'd never have."Their future is living with war," he continued. "And that's about it."Laninger enlisted as a reservist in 2008, and took part in drills and training one weekend a month, and several weeks a year. He returned from a one-year deployment to Afghanistan on March 11.When members of the community found out he was returning to West Penn Township, they pulled together a celebration in just a couple hours."I flew into Harrisburg and we took a bus to Reading, which is my unit's headquarters," Laninger recalled."Then we were driving north on 309 and were met at the top of the Clamtown hill by trucks from the West Penn Fire Company, the Tamaqua Police, and West Penn Police, and they escorted me to my mother's (Cathy Stametz) house in Tamaqua."While Laninger was deployed, his wife Jessie and children, Bradley and Roxie, were active with Troop 755, participating in fundraisers."We'd (Troop 755) like to thank his wife Jessie for her unwavering support of her husband while he was abroad," Osenbach said during the Court ofHonor."We need to keep in mind the ones that stay home, and are there for our soldiers to return to."Local businessesdonated food for the Court of Honor: Wal-Mart in Hometown, and Subway, Boyer's IGA and Dominoes Pizza in Tamaqua.