The first of Hawai'i's citizen-soldiers deployed to Iraq should be back home in early January after one more potentially dangerous hurdle — tomorrow's parliamentary elections, officials said.

Lt. Col. Colbert Low, who commands the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, at Logistics Support Area Anaconda north of Baghdad, said the first "main body" of his more than 700 troops should arrive in Hawai'i in the first or second week of January.

Others will quickly follow, and Low expects the last group of 100th Battalion reservists to be finished demobilizing by the first week in February.

"I tell you, it's a relief. Everyone's so excited," said Sharleen Acierto, whose husband, Sgt. 1st Class Glen Acierto, 33, is in Tikrit working as a battalion liaison to the 3rd Infantry Division.

"The whole year, the beginning of it was a drag and it was long, and now that (the return) is coming, it's 'Oh, my gosh, do I have time to finish up the house? Get everything ready?' I'm hearing the same thing from everyone."

More than 1,500 Hawai'i National Guard and Reserve soldiers are winding up a historic year in Iraq. A group of more than 400 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 487th Field Artillery, and the 227th Engineer Company recently returned from Kuwait.

The Iraq and Kuwait duty represents the first time the soldiers' parent unit, the Hawai'i National Guard's 29th Brigade, has been sent to war since Vietnam.

Maj. Chuck Anthony, spokes-man for the National Guard, said the 100th Battalion "Go for Broke" soldiers are the first Iraq contingent scheduled to return home.

"We expect to have most everybody back by the end of January," Anthony said.

Acierto said her husband, a Honolulu police officer who works in Kaimuki, and other Hawai'i soldiers are packing up and selling or giving away TVs, refrigerators, fans and other accumulated items.

"I know my husband has about seven crates to send home," said Acierto, who also is the "family readiness group" leader for the battalion.

An active-duty field artillery battalion from a mechanized division is replacing the 100th Battalion. The Go for Broke soldiers operated in the mixture of Sunni and Shiite Arab farming villages on three sides of Anaconda, working to stem rocket and mortar attacks on the 15-square-mile U.S. air base.

"We need to keep focused on our mission," Low said yesterday by e-mail. "It is not over until it is over. One of our patrols just discovered another (roadside bomb) a few minutes ago. There are people out there trying to kill or injure our soldiers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

Iraqis tomorrow will choose a 275-member Parliament to serve for the next four years, and increased violence has accompanied the election. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb blast northwest of Baghdad yesterday, and a candidate for Parliament was assassinated.

Like other task forces, the battalion will be responsible for providing quick-reaction forces and secondary triage teams today through Friday, a day after the election.

Low said the battalion has confiscated or destroyed more than 400 weapons, including AK-47 rifles, more than 15 mortar tubes, hundreds of artillery rounds, mortar rounds and rockets, and more than 50 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and homemade rocket launchers.

"We are attacking the insurgents like the police in the U.S. attack drug trafficking," Low said. "We attack the financiers, the middleman suppliers, and the ultimate users. We have been effective. The number of combat-effective insurgency cells have been reduced as a direct result of our soldiers' efforts."

The 100th Battalion has taken the most casualties of the Hawai'i-based forces in Iraq. Four soldiers with the battalion have been killed: Sgt. Evan S. Parker, 25, of Wichita, Kan.; Sgt. Wilgene T. Lieto, 28, and Spc. Derence W. Jack, 31, both of Saipan; and Staff Sgt. Frank Tiai, 45, from American Samoa. More than 45 Purple Hearts have been awarded for wounds, most from roadside bombs.

The returning Hawai'i Guard and Reserve soldiers will transition to Kuwait to wait for airlift home. After they reunite with families in Hawai'i, they will have a day or two off, and then report to Schofield Barracks for briefings and counseling before demobilization.

"The sooner you can get them demobilized, the quicker they can get back to their lives," Anthony said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.