WESTBROOK (AP) – About 500 family and friends cheered and waved red, white and blue signs as the first wave of soldiers from the largest Maine National Guard unit to be deployed to Iraq returned home after a year away.

The crowd, kept behind yellow caution tape, erupted as members of the 133rd Engineer Battalion’s Bravo Company dressed in desert camouflage fatigues arrived in three buses and then marched into the gymnasium at Westbrook High School.

Three more buses with members of Alpha Company continued onward to Belfast. Most of the other soldiers from the 500-member unit will return to Maine on Friday and Saturday. Another 22 soldiers remain in Kuwait, tying up loose ends.

Rita Lajoie of Lebanon was joined by her 68-year-old husband, a veteran of the 133rd as they waited for their son, Sgt. Mitch Lajoie.

“I haven’t been able to sleep or eat since he’s been gone. I have lost 25 pounds,” Lajoie said inside the gymnasium. “I feel like I’m going to jump right out of my body. I can tell just how close I am to my kid.”

After departing the buses, the soldiers were first kept in the gymnasium lobby while the crowd shouted “Let them in” and stomped their feet. They then waited through the singing of the Star Spangled Banner and brief remarks from a National Guard officer before they were allowed to charge into the waiting arms of family and friends.

Sgt. Michael Mowry’s young son marked the occasion with red, white and blue spiked hair and 133rd painted on the back of his head. “It has been a long-awaited arrival,” said Lisa Morris of Limerick, who waited with the boy for Mowry.

Sgt. John Dennett, 56, of North Berwick, said the homecoming was a contrast to when he served in the Vietnam War in 1968 and 1969.

“We didn’t get this the last time,” he said. “When we were coming home from Vietnam, we weren’t met by anyone. But everywhere we stopped this time, people would come up to shake our hands. It was a real different feeling.”

Sgt. Chris Barnaby sat and talked to his son, who joked that his father was famous judging from the people who wanted to talk with him. He said it was “unreal” to be home.

“But it’s nice to know I can go for a walk here and not get shot at,” Barnaby said. “No matter what they say, without the support of your family and friends, it’s all for nothing.”

The 133rd represented the largest Maine National Guard deployment since World War II. The unit was based in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where its mission included construction projects ranging from new roads and bridges to school renovations.

But the assignment did not come without a cost. Three members of the unit were killed during the year the soldiers spent in Iraq.

Spc. Christopher Gelineau, 23, of Portland, died when a roadside bomb destroyed his Humvee in April. Sgt. Thomas Dostie of Somerville and Staff Sgt. Lynn Poulin of Freedom were killed when a suicide bomber struck a crowded dining hall on Dec. 21.

Troops earned 35 Bronze Stars and 42 Purple Hearts, and the entire battalion has been nominated for a Meritorious Unit award, officials said.

The 133rd’s lumberyard in Mosul served as a clearinghouse for building supplies being shipped across northern Iraq, and several of the soldiers took it upon themselves add armor plating to trucks and heavy equipment.

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