For his nine months at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Jason Chaloux drew impassive stares from some of the men he guarded.

He’d ask them if they felt all right and their expressions would go blank. He’d pass their 6- by 8-foot cells and they’d ignore him.

Among his charges were Saudis, Iraqis and Afghanis, detainees of the U.S. hunt for terrorists.

“In a way, it was the same as it is here,” said Chaloux, who returned to work Friday as a guard at the Androscoggin County Jail.

“I did all the basic things,” he said. “I worked the block.”

It was far from an ordinary situation, though.

Chaloux, a 27-year-old Lewiston native, was in his third year as a jail guard when he recieved a call on June 2, 2003, from his bosses in the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion.

He was going to be a military police officer, he was told.

“That was on a Monday,” Chaloux said. “On Friday, I was on my way to Missouri.”

He attended military police school at Fort Leonard Wood. Then, he went to Fort Dix, N.J. From there, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, a small patch of America on the east side of Cuba.

Parts of Chaloux’s work there are secret. Details about the detainees and their accused crimes are closely guarded by the military.

However, Chaloux was able to say that conditions for the prisoners were similar to those at U.S. jails. His work was much like it is in Auburn, making sure the people have food, medical treatment and a bit of exercise.

“About half of them spoke English,” Chaloux said. “Some could have talked all day long. There were people there from all over the world.”

Policies discouraged Chaloux from chatting with the detainees.

Doing his job required some interaction, though. Some of it was as simple as a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for the non-English speakers.

Among his most baffling conversations were complaints about the cold by Middle Eastern detainees. That was despite the tropical temperatures of the Caribbean, which typically peaked at 95 degrees, Chaloux said. The detainees were kept in prefabricated cells without air conditioning.

“They’d be complaining about the cold, and I’d be sweating like crazy,” he said.

For him, the nine months in Guantanamo Bay passed quietly. No one was allowed to leave the base. When Chaloux wasn’t working, he often spent time at the gymnasium. Others learned to scuba dive or went to the bowling alley.

“We pretty much made the best of it,” he said.

He also kept in touch with his wife, Katie, and friends via e-mail. He read the newspaper on the Internet.

When he read that his guard unit in Lewiston was mobilized last winter, he was shocked. They were sent to Iraq.

“I couldn’t believe they were going,” he said. “I felt like I should be with them.”

He also waited for news of his colleagues from the Auburn jail. Three guards were called up in late 2002, more than six months before he was summoned.

Joe Rawls, Reggie Littlefield and Jeremiah Ayotte, all corrections officers at the Androscoggin County Jail, are still in Iraq.

The three are part of the 94th Military Police Company, which drew the attention of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins when family members complained about the Pentagon’s decision to extend the company’s stay.

“It’s not fair,” Chaloux said. “They should be here.”

The group is scheduled to return home in August. Two other guards, Joshua Abbott and Joshua Robinson, have also been called to active duty, said Capt. John Lebel, the jail administrator.

Chaloux plans to welcome them all. He will also prepare himself to be called to duty again.

“It’s just a matter of time,” he said.

Come October, he will have the option of quitting the service. He has heard some others vow to leave when they can. But he won’t, he said.

“I just can’t bring myself to do it,” Chaloux said. He imagines his nephews or the children he and Katie might have.

“I don’t want them to have to deal with this,” he said.