The coaches were already idling at the curb outside, ready to take him and his comrades on a series of long, slow steps to Iraq. And Gabe Fasbender wasn't about to lie about how he felt.

"This," he said, "is the worst day of my life."

Elena, 14 months, squirmed in his arms. Roman, 8 weeks, squirmed in the arms of his wife, Kristin. The Hastings couple stood in the gym of the armory in Inver Grove Heights in the last minutes before a major deployment of Minnesotans began. Fasbender and about 500 others were about to board the buses that would take them to the airport.

"I'd rather go now, when they're this young and they don't understand," said the formerly stay-at-home dad, who is about to begin a life about as far from home as you can get. "I'd rather have gone before I had 'em, but this is fine."

It was a room intense with emotion: tears, strained faces, hugs, awkward last words. But little about it was quite as poignant as the youngest families: the tiny children racing about on the hardwood floor, finding other children, seemingly oblivious to the reality of what was about to take place.

Sgt. Rob Schultz of Lakeville was asked about his two kids, the eldest of whom, in his arms at that moment, is all of 3. How much of this were they registering?

"Hopefully none," said the career Army man, awaiting his second deployment to the region but the first to Iraq.

On the other end of the gym, Spec. David Denasha of Duluth held onto his 3-month-old, Emilio, at the end of what his wife, Lynn Begay, described as a "six-day road trip" across two states, saying goodbye to family and showing off their new son.

"I'm proud of him," Lynn said of her husband. "He's doing what he wanted to do." He's been a soldier of sorts since high school, she added, through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. "But the baby makes it very hard."

Formal send-off ceremonies had taken place earlier in the week; this occasion, beginning about dawn on Thursday, was a time for private, family farewells: long hugs and tender kisses, a pair of days before Valentine's Day.

There was about an hour for that before a tall man with a big voice strode in and called out that it was time to move on. Then everyone streamed out onto snowy grass, amid the fumes of a long line of coaches, bags stowed into cargo holds and men and women in camouflage climbing onto buses.

Thursday's group was the first of more than 1,000 soldiers who are heading off on a yearlong mission. The rest were set to depart this morning.

The 34th Red Bull Infantry Division soldiers are based in Rosemount, Inver Grove Heights, Faribault and Stillwater. Most of them have been to Iraq before. First stop will be Fort Lewis, Wash., for three months of training, and then it's on to Iraq, where they will stay until February 2010.

David Peterson • 952-882-9023