Oakwood City Manager Stan Brown has returned to the United States after serving in Iraq since December as part of the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

He is spending this week with relatives in North Carolina and plans to return to work on Monday, said Patti Doss-Luna, assistant city manager.

Brown returned on June 7, his birthday, and met informally with city employees on June 15, Doss-Luna said.

“We just had a little lunch for him here,” she said.

City officials have talked about holding some kind of public welcome for Brown, who earned the Bronze Star Medal during his deployment.

“We just haven’t put anything on paper yet,” Doss-Luna said.

Brown, a lieutenant colonel, earlier this year took command of 1,500 U.S. troops as the senior U.S. official in Basra, assisting with transition of the Iraqi province from the British military.

He also served as the master planner in that area of Iraq, overseeing an engineering team conducting numerous key construction projects.

Oakwood’s city manager for more than five years, Brown was commended for “superb leadership, technical and tactical expertise, and commitment to excellence contributed greatly to the overall success of the command” in receiving the Bronze Star.

In previous deployments, Brown has served in Kuwait and the central Asia country of Kyrgyzstan.

A member of the 628th Civil Engineer squadron at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, he led an engineering team that designed and built more than 40 projects valued at more than $29 million within five months, Army officials said.