Husbands, wives, children and parents waited in a hangar at Kalaeloa last night, counting the final minutes until Hawai'i's soldiers returned home from Iraq.

Eighty-five members of the 29th Brigade Combat Team had landed at Hickam Air Force Base late yesterday afternoon after nearly 11 months in Iraq.

Part of the largest deployment of Hawai'i-based citizen-soldiers since the Vietnam war, the men and women were checking in their weapons and traveling by bus to Kalaeloa as their families waited.

Jayme Quemado, 6, and her brother, 8-year-old Jimmy, carried a "Welcome Home" sign for their mother, Hawai'i National Guard Staff Sgt. Rachel Betancourt. Kisses and hugs were planned, the children said.

"And we have lei," said Jayme.

She and Jimmy had been living with their grandparents, Michael and Que Quemado. Their father, Master Sgt. Jimmy Ruiz, was in California, about to be redeployed to the Middle East.

"We might have fireworks for her," the younger Jimmy said.

At the other end of the hangar, Lourdes Ruiz waited with her 17-year-old son, A.J., and cradled a dozen yellow roses on her lap for her returning husband, Sgt. Dominador Ruiz, an Army Reservist with Hawai'i's historic 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry.

"We're excited," she said.

They were also relieved; Sgt. Ruiz is a Purple Heart winner. He'd had a few too many close calls with roadside bombs, as far as his wife was concerned.

"After the third one, I told him, 'Honey, you have to come home,' " she said. Sgt. Ruiz told her that wasn't possible.

"I'm just glad he is coming home alive and not missing any of his body parts," Lourdes said.

A military band tuned up on the other side of the hangar, and Gov. Linda Lingle arrived to greet the troops and thank their families. A little boy edged forward with a sign that read: "Welcome Home, Papa."

"There's the bus!" a 442nd mom cried, and the crowd jostled forward a little.

Then the soldiers marched in, lean and solemn in their desert uniforms, eyes distant and sad as Brig. Gen. Vern Miyagi asked them to observe a moment of silence for those missing among them; four members of the 100th Battalion and one Hawai'i Guardsmen had been killed.

The soldiers stood a little stiller at attention now than they had a year ago, and the band played "Hawai'i Pono'i" and the national anthem. Their families — even the small children — seemed to freeze as well.

Then the ceremony was over and the soldiers were released. After the slightest pause — a moment of mutual awe — the two groups came together.

"I'm back with my family and it feels great," Betancourt said between hugs from her children.

"I am very happy," Ruiz said, clutching his yellow roses.

Reach Karen Blakeman at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.