‘‘Welcome home, welcome home,” volunteer Denny Politano, 72, said with a steady cadence, standing by the entrance as the troops exited the blue bus that transports them from the airstrip to Malcolm Grow Medical Center. Some hobbled out of the bus, with casts on their hands or feet. Others were wheeled out on stretchers. One soldier had staples holding together a wound in his shoulder. Another’s jaw was wired shut, and hairline cuts crosshatched up and down his arms.

‘‘Thanks for all you’ve done,” Politano said to one patient in a wheelchair.

Most of them shook Politano’s hand and gave a quick smile, before they were shown to their rooms.

The Red Cross, which has had a volunteer presence at Andrews for more than 50 years, has seen its role as official greeter become increasingly vital as thousands of wounded men and women have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan requiring extended care in military hospitals.

Its volunteers are the homecoming crew. They act as personal butlers to the troops, and devote countless hours trying to make the hundreds of wounded who arrive every month feel comfortable, welcome and appreciated.

Politano and the others say they do the job because they just want to show gratitude to young Americans who have risked everything.

‘‘We just enjoy meeting people, and helping people,” said Politano, who lives in Clinton. ‘‘Each flight is a little bit different ... It’s a way of trying to say thanks to them.”

Politano and his wife Charlotte are both retired Air Force, and have been volunteers since 1994.

Before the Iraq war, they would see patients from American bases in Europe, who had gotten sick or injured on the job. They came in five or six at a time, three days a week. Since 2003, the injured have been arriving in groups as large as 40.

The volunteers hurried to accommodate each of the 30 patients returning from war May 23.

Senior Airman Joshua Brooks, 21, came in on a stretcher with one basic request – a bowl of chili.

‘‘I told you I’d come back,” volunteer Felicia Hilleary said to Brooks as she brought him the chili once he was settled in his second-floor room.

‘‘Sounds great,” Brooks said. Brooks, who is from Kentucky, was in a four-vehicle convoy in Baghdad when his car was hit by a projectile explosive. He returned to the States with shrapnel in his left leg and hand.

The volunteers also offered him a selection of homemade quilts, made especially for the troops at Andrews. Brooks picked the red, white and blue one, designed by a 90-year-old woman in Utah who used to live in Prince George’s.

‘‘It’s nice to know that people care, and are concerned about what you’re doing and what you’ve done,” Brooks said.

‘‘They think this is the best facility in the world ... they don’t wanna leave,” said Hilleary, of Lothian, who has been volunteering since the Vietnam War. She said she started when her children first went to school.

‘‘I figured I had from 9 to 3 to play. I became a Red Cross volunteer,” she said.

During Vietnam, the flights came in throughout the night. She said the volunteers have more to offer now.

The three receiving troops last week offered them hot soup and cold drinks, and gradually ushered them into a cozy lounge with PlayStation 2, Internet access and a plasma TV. They provided the badly injured with specially-tailored, Velcro breakaway pants, shirts and boxers that they could wear around their casts. They gave others toiletries and quilts.

The encounters with the injured are almost always brief, since Andrews is just an entry point. The seriously injured patients go directly to Walter Reed Army Medical Center or Bethesda’s National Naval Medical Center. The others typically spend less than 24 hours at Malcolm Grow before they are shipped out to bases throughout the country.

‘‘We’re the hidden part of the Red Cross. You just don’t see us,” said Julie Myers, the paid staff member for the Red Cross operation.

About 60 volunteers work on the Andrews hospital, including 25 who receive the wounded soldiers weekly.

‘‘We could not do this mission without them,” said LaDonna Bowen, public affairs director with the 79th Medical Wing. ‘‘They just make them feel really warm and comfortable. They anticipate the needs of these patients. They know, looking at them, what they need.”

By the time the troops arrived, the volunteers had prepared an assortment of cookies, candy, movies, magazines and ‘‘American Idol’s” Taylor Hicks CDs in the lounge, which was renovated in 2005 with money donated by local businesses. Seven black leather armchairs fanned out around the entertainment center, and patients shuffling into the room were directed to the adjacent computer station for Internet access.

‘‘Welcome home,” Charlotte Politano said to Army Pfc. Marcos Garcia, 23, as he walked into the lounge. She gave him a hug, and showed him immediately to the kitchen.

‘‘You ask us, we’ve probably got it,” she said.

‘‘Wow,” Garcia whispered.

Garcia, who is from Kissimmee, Fla., was wounded in a mortar attack in Iraq, one month after he arrived. The next day, he was scheduled to head to Fort Lewis in Washington state.

Diane Minor, the Red Cross community development officer for Prince George’s, said the volunteers do whatever they can to make the troops feel at home - even if they’re not there yet. She and Myers recalled how one volunteer drove a patient’s wife to Bolling Air Force Base in the District so she could get her clothing, and catch the bus in time to meet her husband, who had gotten sick, at Walter Reed.

‘‘They give them that nice human touch,” Minor said. ‘‘They’re just a warm non-judgmental face that’s there to help.”

E-mail Judson Berger at jberger@gazette.net.