About 120 Maine soldiers who have been serving in Iraq for the last year are expected on Sunday to be back in Maine.

The Maine Army National Guard’s 152nd Field Artillery Battalion now is at Fort Dix, N.J., where soldiers are completing active duty paperwork and other military debriefing procedures.

Members of the Maine Air National Guard will be flying down Sunday to get the soldiers and bring them home, Maj. Pete Rogers, Maine Army National Guard spokesman, said Tuesday.

Rogers couldn’t pinpoint an exact arrival time for the Waterville-based battalion, but said the soldiers are expected to be in Bangor sometime between 1 and 2 p.m.

After being flown to the base, the soldiers will be bused directly to the Bangor Civic Center for a homecoming celebration.

Family and friends should not go to the airport, but instead should plan to be at the Civic Center around 1 p.m., Rogers said.

The field artillery soldiers who are returning are one battery of the 152nd Battalion. They were called to active duty in January 2004 and arrived in Iraq in mid-February last year.

The soldiers, who originally were trained to provide field artillery fire, were retrained as military police soldiers before leaving for Iraq.

Their primary mission while deployed was to serve as guards at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, Rogers explained. The soldiers later were split into two groups and performed detainee operations in different areas.