And they all came home.

Every single one.

After more than a year over there.

Time to party.

"We went over with 20 and we came back with 20," said Maj. Jocelyn Baker, unit commander of the 129th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment during a Saturday welcome-home and awards event with Gov. John Hoeven and other officials at the Raymond J. Bohn Armory in Bismarck.

"You put your lives on the line,"Hoeven said as he thanked the soldiers sitting in a crowd of about 150 well-wishers in the armory's auditorium.

The 129th MPAD has 20 soldiers, 14 from the Bismarck detachment and six from the unit's headquarters in Rapid City, S.D. In that 20 are an Ohio soldier and a Minnesota soldier who filled two vacancies in the unit.

The soldiers served for 15 months as public affairs writers, bloggers and videographers in the field, some based out of Qatar. While in Qatar, the soldiers - several of whom have media backgrounds - traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations tracking down stories about individual soldiers and events. Stories would then be sent to the Associated Press and other outlets. Information was put on Internet blogs, and soldiers also assisted the New York Times, CNN, the BBCand Al-Jazeera.

The closest life-threatening situation for a 129th soldier happened in September 2006 when Sgt. Nicholas Pavlik, 22, of Columbus Ohio, was shooting video in a Humvee that was part of a convoy in Afghanistan's Kamdesh district.

"We were sitting ducks," he said.

On purpose.

The convoy was serving as a decoy to draw out any enemy fire before another convoy - coming up behind Pavlik's - arrived.

Pavlik said all of a sudden from a mountain about 100 yards away, small arms fire started and rocket propelled grenades were launched.

He said that although the convoy did get hit, the enemy's aim wasn't good at times. He noticed bullets pelting some water that was about 50 yards from the convoy. "They had horrible aim,"he said.

He said the time under fire "felt like an hour."

"But it was really about five or six minutes,"he said.

It stopped when the U.S. Air Force, called in to help, dropped a bomb.

"I've never been so happy,"he said.

At Saturday's ceremony, Pavlik received a combat action badge.

The unit was mobilized for active duty in April 2006 and returned in June, after 15 months of deployment.

That was quite long enough for Emma Dodds, 6, of Grand Forks.

Her dad, Sgt. 1st Class David Dodds, 35, of Grand Forks, remembers her reaction when he got out of the car and greeted her after a 15-month absence.

"She went from complete joy to tears in seconds," he said.

He said she had never experienced tears of joys before and was confounded by it.

His other daughter, Eliza, 2, was only 1 year and two weeks when he was deployed. But he said his wife, Jennifer Dodds, 32, was active in keeping his memory alive by keeping his pictures all over the house and on the computer and would frequently quiz Eliza about who that man was.

Jennifer Dodds said Emma helped by insisting on having frequents talks about Daddy.

David Dodds said unlike a lot of kids their age, they know, for good or bad, "so much more about the world, life and death,"he said.

But for today, here's to life - all 20 of them.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)