FORT HOOD, Texas — About 100 troops with the California National Guard will return home from a 9-month tour in Afghanistan.
The troops have already landed safely at Fort Hood in Texas and will make it back to California later this week.
The troops with California’s 40th infantry assisted with U.S. and NATO forces in Southern Afghanistan starting in 2017. This was the 40th’s first combat mission since the Korean War in 1952.
This is the second rotation of troops to go and return from California’s 40th infantry to the war-torn country.
“We were able to open areas in complete collaboration with our Afghan National Security Forces to enable humanitarian operations into areas that had not received some relief,” said Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley, who heads the South Command. “We were able to provide the appropriate planning and which led to the security environment for [a] very successful election.”
Smiley is still recovering from a gunshot wound he received during an attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan last October. During the insider attack, two high-profile Afghanistan police and military leaders were also killed and several others injured.
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