The occasion was a lu'au yesterday evening, organized by the families of the Guard's Charlie Company, 193rd Aviation Regiment. Several hundred soldiers and family members attended the celebration.

"It's great to get out of the uniform. We wore that and the PT (physical training) uniform for a year," said Lopez, 34.

As 2,200 Hawai'i Guard and Reserve soldiers with the 29th Brigade Combat Team begin a year of duty in Iraq, more than 200 soldiers with Charlie Company, 193rd Aviation, are glad theirs is in the rear-view mirror.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Elmer Somera, 33, said he doesn't want to go back to Iraq anytime soon.

"If I can help it, no," said Somera, who's from 'Ewa Beach. "The worst part was just missing Hawai'i. It was a long tour."

The company flew 6,240 combat hours ferrying troops and supplies out of Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad, where the 29th Brigade Combat Team is based.

Noah Tory, 4, of Kunia, sat on the shoulders of his grandfather, Clifford Lanias of Mililani, with Clifford's wife, Pamela, at their side. The Lanias' daughter — Noah's aunt — is Spc. Heidi Lanias of Mililani. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

The 15-square-mile base with two runways is nicknamed "Mortaritaville."

"Every day, about, we'd get hit with a mortar," Somera said.

Lopez said the alarm sounding a rocket or mortar attack would be heard about every day over the first six months.

"But you wouldn't always see (the explosions) or hear them," he said. "I'm glad it was a big base, because if it was smaller, it would be a lot easier target."

Spc. Jessie Rodriguez Jr., 32, from Hilo, Hawai'i — one of about a dozen citizen soldiers from the Neighbor Islands — spent about three weeks in Baghdad's "Green Zone" in December.

"It was pretty scary," he said. "There were three car bombs, a lot of rocket and mortar attacks, small-arms fire. You could hear it almost every night. I was glad to get out of there."

He's looking forward to being demobilized and returning to his wife and two kids in Hilo. For now, he lives in barracks.

Rodriguez, who works at a small Army and Air Force Exchange Service store in Hilo, advised the soldiers who just arrived in Iraq to take part in some of the programs offered at Logistical Support Area Anaconda, the U.S. camp at Balad Air Base.

For those who lived and worked on the base, every day was like being in the movie "Groundhog Day" — the same thing over and over. Getting involved in activities helped.

The base offers indoor and outdoor pools, a weight room, and martial arts, dancing, aerobics and boxing classes.

"Makes the time go faster," Rodriguez said.

Jaime Cabuag, 20, said the year away from her husband, Spc. Lowen Cabuag, also 20, was hard. Their son was only 6 months old when he left.

The 'Ewa Beach woman said her advice to families with soldiers deployed now to Iraq is to "be patient."

"You hear all these stories, because you want to hear badly from your soldier to clarify what's going on," she said. "It's everything from rumors of affairs to you watch CNN and see all these bombs."

One time when she was on the phone with her husband, she heard a siren go off, and he suddenly said, "I gotta go."

"I didn't hear from him for three days, so it's kind of nerve-wracking," she said.

Like others, she has a different perspective on life after her husband went through a long deployment to a war zone.

"I appreciate things a lot more," she said. "There's all these tragedies that happen, like the Marines (who were killed)."

One of the Hawai'i Guard Chinooks went down in a hard landing in April. No one was seriously hurt, officials said.

Capt. Joseph Tolentino, 32; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Clyde Pelekai, 33; and Nick Ishii, 38, went to Campbell High School and worked and flew together.

"It made it easier to fly and do missions," Tolentino said. "We knew how each other's personalities were. Since I knew these guys, I could talk story in the cockpit, what we were going to do when we got home."

Tolentino remembers a rocket that whizzed past 30 to 50 feet beneath his Chinook on June 30.

"All you see is light and it was super fast. You could hear it, too," he said.

Somera had a different form of excitement: He helped deliver $29 million in U.S. currency.

On another occasion, Charlie Company flew $1.65 billion in cash to Kurdish-held Irbil in the north.

But last night they were enjoying being back, and they feasted on kalua pork, chicken long-rice noodles, poi, squid luau, rice and macaroni salad in the cavernous hangar set up with folding tables and chairs.

Lopez had a Heineken in front of him — and not the nonalcohol version sold on U.S. bases in Iraq.

The Royal Kunia man, who works on the helicopters full time for the Guard, said he's still adjusting to the time zone here, and life back with his wife and three kids.

The family got a new house and new car while he was gone.

His 3-year-old already is "giving me direction around the house," he said. "Just telling me, 'No Daddy, this doesn't go here, it goes over there.' "