Most of the soldiers with a North Dakota National Guard unit that served a year in Afghanistan have returned to the United States.

Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk, the Guard commander, said he met 114 members of the 188th Air Defense Artillery's Security Forces as they arrived at Fort Lewis, Wash., on Thursday morning.

"Every single one of them had a grin from ear to ear," Sprynczynatyk said.

The soldiers will be at Fort Lewis for about a week to go through the demobilization process and then will return to North Dakota. The unit is based in Grand Forks and Bismarck.

Twenty-nine soldiers with the 188th still are in Afghanistan, helping hand off the mission, Sprynczynatyk said.

"Every indication is the rest of the unit will arrive here at Fort Lewis in six or seven days," he said.

The demobilization process for the smaller group is expected to take only about five days, Sprynczynatyk said.

The Guard brought 35 soldiers from North Dakota to Fort Lewis to speed up the demobilization process for the returning soldiers.

"I don't know of any other states that do that," Sprynczynatyk said. "We learned early on (in the war on terror) that it certainly made a difference in the outprocessing … to have people here to help."

The 188th Security Forces soldiers have been on active duty since December 2005. They are credited with more than 1,200 successful missions in Afghanistan. Soldiers did everything from border security work to rebuilding schools.

Thirty-nine soldiers with the 188th's J-LENS unit returned home in early February. They were replaced in Afghanistan by soldiers from another unit of the 188th, called RAID.

Four members of the 188th have been killed in Afghanistan since last June.

While the 188th Security Forces come home, other Guard soldiers are preparing to leave.

Guard officials scheduled a send-off ceremony Friday for 45 members of a Bismarck-based engineer brigade headed for duty in Iraq. They are to leave Bismarck on Saturday night for training in Indiana.

One hundred and ten soldiers with the 817th and 815th Engineer Companies are being selected for a mobilized unit that will be designated as the 817th and will serve in Iraq as part of a larger battalion of Guardsmen from across the nation.

About 250 soldiers with the 817th and 815th units in Jamestown, Edgeley, Wishek and Lisbon were put on alert in mid-February.

"By Tuesday next week, we hope to notify everyone on what their status is," Sprynczynatyk said.

The 817th soldiers are expected to leave North Dakota this summer, to serve for one year. The military has not released the exact mission.

A homecoming celebration is scheduled Saturday in Minot for more than 120 soldiers of Company A of the National Guard's 164th Engineer Battalion, who returned from Iraq late last year.