By Edward Lee Pitts, Military Affairs

CAMP SHELBY, Miss. - The 278th Regimental Combat Team is leaving for war.

Deployment day arrived here Friday for the 4,000 soldiers of the 278th regiment as aircraft bound for the Middle East began taking off from a nearby undisclosed location.

"Today is the right day for us to move forward," said Lt. Col. Mark Hart, the regiment's 1st Squadron commander, before soldiers filed onto buses for the ride to the airport.

"We have a task before us, an undaunting task for some, but for us it is just a task. The enemy better hear our coming," he said.

The flights, scheduled to last through the weekend, will ferry the Tennessee-based National Guard unit to Kuwait, where the soldiers will rendezvous with their equipment and begin preparations for a convoy into Iraq in coming weeks. The 278th is scheduled to spend a year somewhere along Iraq's border with Iran.

"There is a nervous tension in the air," Lt. Joe Minarick, of Oak Ridge, Tenn., said early Friday while soldiers lugged their overstuffed bags to the pickup site. "Everybody has the preflight jitters a little bit. All the guys are joking and smoking a little more than they used to."

Lt. Minarick's platoon with 1st Squadron's Deacon Company was in the first wave of soldiers to board the chartered commercial jets. The flights mark the end of nearly five months spent training here and in California's Mojave Desert.

"The reality has set in," Lt. Minarick, 29, said. "We are actually getting on a plane. We are actually going to Iraq. We are actually doing this mission."

The 278th soldiers now must endure a 22-hour flight, including two refueling layovers. Each soldier will take two MREs, or meals ready to eat, for the trip and must board the plane carrying M-4 rifles and wearing heavy body armor and Kevlar helmets.

"It is going to be a long trip," lamented Spc. Matt Jaggers, of Cleveland, Tenn. "I'll probably try to jump out of the plane once or twice."

Once in Kuwait, the soldiers will have to hit the ground running while brushing off the wearying effects of the long flight and the nine-hour time change.

The 278th will be entering Iraq at a time the U.S. offensive in Fallujah has led to increased violence. November already has become the second-deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since the war began.

Despite the harsh reality, Lt. Brian Powell, 33, of Seymour, Tenn., said the 278th is ready to face the dangers.

"You hate to see any of us from the 278th going out on a mission and coming back minus one, but you try to prepare for that," he said. "We will do what we have to do and rely on God, guts and instinct to do it."

Soldiers here praised the job the Marines did in Fallujah with relatively light causalities. They said that historically most armies that attack an urban area lose nine men for every one the town's entrenched defenders lose. The 278th soldiers said they are not worried about insurgents fleeing from Fallujah to areas soon to be under their control.

"If they come to our area we will deal with them there," Lt. Minarick said.

Some in the regiment, conditioned by the summer's endless exercises inside mock Iraqi villages, joked they couldn't be sure they actually would end up in Kuwait by this weekend.

"There is a possible chance we are going now," Sgt. Mark Byars, 37, of Smithville, Tenn., said with a grin while lounging among a large stack of green duffel bags and desert camouflage backpacks. "It's looking real good, but it might be another drill after all."

However, the 278th's weapons are now missing the yellow blank firing adapters. The rifles now can fire real bullets.

After a Veterans Day send-off ceremony attended by thousands of family members and dozens of dignitaries, the soldiers spent their last week here on the firing range, conducting more urban combat drills and packing for this weekend's journey.

They spent most of Friday relaxing. Some kept busy wolfing down their last bags of Doritos and other junk food. Others passed the hours playing spades or poker. Staff Sgts. Foster Young, of Sparta, Tenn., and Rod Rogers, of Maryville, Tenn., squeezed in one more game of horseshoes.

Throughout the afternoon soldiers sneaked away with cell phones in hand looking for a quiet spot to have a final conversation with loved ones back home. Spc. Nathan Vincent, 45, of Cleveland, Tenn., kept putting off talking to his wife, Gina, for the last time. He said cutting off all contact with his wife would be like taking someone off of life support.

"You get so used to talking every day," he said.

Soldiers milling around the camp Friday said they hoped to find cheap phone cards in Iraq. Several boasted they would be bringing brand new laptop computers to Iraq, early Christmas gifts from family members hoping to get plenty of e-mails in return. "I was on active duty for 9 1/2 years, and this is a lot harder," said Staff Sgt. Jackie Barbston, 40, a truck driver from Rutledge, Tenn. "Then it was a way of life. You lived in the shadows."

Staff Sgt. Barbston now joins the other citizen soldiers in leaving behind a civilian life with wives, children and regular jobs, a life they will not rejoin again for at least a year.

"Hopefully we will be back here in one year doing the same thing in reverse," said Sgt. James Ingram, 40, of Cleveland, Tenn., already yearning for his homecoming.

E-mail Lee Pitts at lpitts@timesfreepress.com