I know many people who have rented and then moved back. As part of the military community, this is extremely common, since there are often few places we can go so we end up circling back a lot.
I didn't vote on the poll, but we rented our place because 1) we left at a point where there was a huge drop in the market. We could have easily sold (we weren't underwater thanks to a very large downpayment), but we didn't want to sell low. And we didn't want to be priced out of the area (or any area, for that matter) if there was a recovery--or a recovery and another boom-- while we were living overseas. (This turned out to be a very good decision as the property has increased by about $125k in 6 years, an is finally worth more than we paid for it.) And 2) because there are very few areas Husband can be stationed and so it was highly likely we'd end up back there. So we rented at a small loss. Our plan wasn't necessarily to move back, but it was one possibility, so I'm not sure where we fall in the poll and thus I didn't vote.
Now, 6 years later, we realize that even if we end up back in that city, we wouldn't move back to that house (no yard at all, and we'd like a dog). We did end up back in that city for about 8 months, and would have considered moving back in, but the timing the the lease was awful so we'd have had to move someone out and let it sit empty for ~5 months before we arrived, which would have been stupid.
But, as I said, we know many, many people who have kept a house, executed a set or two of orders (generally 24-36 mo. each), and then moved back in to their house when re-stationed in the same place. It's fairly common in our community.