Bob Woodruff paid a surprise visit to the old office Tuesday, marking his first visit to the ABC newsroom since he was critically injured by a roadside bomb Jan. 29 while on assignment in Iraq.

Per coworker accounts, it was a tearful, happy reunion as nearly 100 friends and colleagues, including producers, editors, camera operators, correspondents and executives, crowded around the veteran journalist to welcome him back to the New York studio after an absence of nearly four and a half months.

"It's the first time many here had seen him, and he was greeted by a spontaneous round of applause," Jon Banner, executive producer of World News Tonight, wrote on his blog. "You could literally see the emotion in each hug. There was barely a dry eye."

In a video clip posted at ABCNews.com, a healthy-looking Woodruff, sporting a shaven head as the result of surgeries doctors performed to save his life, chatted with coworkers and smiled warmly as he told them how much they meant to him throughout his ordeal.

"Missed you all?missed you all," he said. "I woke up in this hospital and I looked up and I thought about you guys and I thought about everything that I wanted badly to come back to.

"Man it's good to be here."

Woodruff said he was unconscious, or rather "asleep" for 36 days after the explosion, which left him with life-threatening shrapnel wounds to his head and body.

"Bob is the luckiest guy in the world as his surgeons have said," said his wife, Lee. "I also think that a large part of the healing is about being surrounded by people who care about you and love you and he's had that from everyone here."

Banner noted that Woodruff was in great spirits.

"He cracked a few jokes and there were a lot of laughs. He talked about his rehabilitation, his desire to get back to work, and how wonderful it is to be able spend more time with his four children," he wrote. "Suffice to say, there are a lot of happy faces around the newsroom today."

And no doubt there will be among World News Tonight's viewers who tune in to tonight's broadcast as fill-in anchor Charles Gibson will offer a more in-depth update on Woodruff's visit and ongoing recovery.

Woodruff, 44, and cameraman Doug Vogt, 46, were embedded with Iraqi troops in Iraq, standing in the open hatch of a vehicle, when a roadside bomb went off.

Vogt's injuries were less serious and he is recovering at his home in France. Woodruff spent nearly three months in various hospitals before he was well enough to check into a private rehabilitation closer to his home in Westchester County, New York.

With Woodruff sidelined for the foreseeable future and World News Tonight coanchor Elizabeth Vargas expecting her second child, ABC News boss David Westin tapped Gibson to take over as sole anchor of World News Tonight last month.

Woodruff isn't the only high-profile American journalist to be seriously hurt in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier was almost killed when a car bomb exploded on the streets of Baghdad where she was working. Two of her crew died in the attack while Dozier sustained severe injuries to her head and legs. She survived and stabilized after receiving emergency treatment and, after being evacuated to a military hospital in Germany for further treatment, she has since returned to the U.S. to begin what's expected to be a long recovery process.