Soldiers almost home

<p>Homeward bound from their high-risk mission in Afghanistan, a Petaluma-based company of California National Guard soldiers will begin reuniting this week with their wives, girlfriends and family, bringing to a close a year of separation and anxiety.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>Pulled from their civilian lives and communities, about 40 local men from the 235th Engineer Company are returning to relationships spent a world apart and to the challenges of melding lives, not only physically but psychologically.</p><p>“I've lost so much sleep,” said Julie Elkins, 25, of Santa Rosa, fiance of Spc. Phil Dana, who proposed in Hawaii during a brief leave in August.</p><p>The first contingent of soldiers is expected to arrive today at the Petaluma Armory, escorted by police from the San Francisco airport and greeted by a flag-waving throng of loved ones. A second group is scheduled to arrive Thursday. The third and final group of the 150-man company, which is still on the ground in Afghanistan, is to come home to the North Coast on Nov. 23.</p><p>Some of the soldiers have shared with family members their accounts — by telephone or e-mail — of the violence they endured: the firefights, bomb blasts and at least 60 combat wounds. There were no fatalities; two soldiers were sent home with serious injuries.</p><p>Other men avoided telling their loved ones about the realities of an increasingly violent war, with the casualty rate in Afghanistan now higher than it was in Iraq during the “surge” of 2007.</p><p>The 235th's mission involved combing 6,200 miles of Afghan roads for buried bombs that have become the Taliban's most deadly weapon.</p><p>Capt. Cory Marks of Ukiah, commander of the 235th, said his company's route-clearing mission is “the tip of the spear.”</p><p>The risks are high, Marks said in an e-mail, but are no deterrent.</p><p>“It's a mindset, the idea of our infantry brothers getting blown up because we were not in front of them, it's something that we refuse to let happen,” he said.</p><p>After 11 months at war, the focus has shifted.</p><p>“Now that I am waiting to go home, I am thinking of nothing but her and seeing her again,” Sgt. Dan Caddy of Cotati said in an e-mail two weeks ago, referring to his wife, Lindsey, 25.</p><p>The feeling is mutual.</p><p>“Thank God he's coming home now,” said Lindsey Caddy, who hasn't seen her husband since dropping him off at the airport last December. Living alone for the first time in her life, she discovered a new inner strength.</p><p>Cora Moore of Rohnert Park said she never stopped worrying about her son, 41-year-old Sgt. 1st Class Randall Moore.</p><p>That long period of worry will end the moment she and her husband, Richard Moore, set sight on their son when he gets off the bus today in Petaluma.</p>