BANGOR – For a planeload of troops headed back home after a year in Afghanistan, Fourth of July parades and fireworks were beside the point. For them, July 4, 2006, is the day they returned to American soil.

Some 250 members of the U.S. Army 53rd Infantry Brigade deplaned at Bangor International Airport shortly after 4 p.m. after a 19-hour flight from Manus Air Base in Tajikistan.

They were met by about 75 troop greeters from Greater Bangor, who cheered and whistled as the weary soldiers entered the terminal, and who offered them hugs, hospitality and free cell phone use.

The troops had about a two-hour layover in Bangor. Their final destination was the Fort Stewart military base in Savannah, Ga., where they would spend several days before going home to their families.

Spc. Katoria Smith, 22, of Memphis, Tenn., called her grandmother right away. “She’s been worried about me,” she said. Smith, a financial specialist who worked in an on-base bank, said she was rarely in any danger during her tour of duty. “A couple of times, IEDs [improvised explosive devices] went off so close to us they shook the buildings,” she said. “It was scary, but I wasn’t ever really in danger.”

Among her experiences was a trip to a local orphanage to distribute clothing, pencils, books and other items donated by service members’ families. Smith said the people she met in Afghanistan were “very nice,” but she was clearly delighted to be headed home to her family and her boyfriend.

While many soldiers socialized in groups, ordered a beer or watched the soccer World Cup in the airport bar, 1st Lt. Jose Otero of Orlando, Fla., sat reading a dog-eared copy of “Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror” by Rohan Gunaratna.

Otero, 32, said his primary mission in Afghanistan was to teach American and Afghan troops how to spot IEDs. If insurgents have rigged a remote control device or planned a suicide bomb attack, there may be people nearby acting suspiciously, he said. For a pressure-sensitive IED buried just beneath the surface of a roadway, “the earth may be a slightly different color, or there may be signs that the soil has been disturbed,” he said.

Despite the subtlety and stress of detecting IEDs, Otero said, the units he trained had successfully avoided many devices and had suffered no fatalities. Otero said he was going home to his wife and 3-year-old son.

Looking a little dazed, Sgt. Mike Neveitt, 50, of Pinellas Park, Fla., blushed when asked what he would do first when he got home. He recovered nicely though: “I’m going to spend some time with my wife,” he said. Neveitt, a medic, said he spent time at a military base in the Afghan capital of Kabul as well as farther south in Kandahar. In addition to treating illnesses common to the area, he attended to soldiers with combat injuries.

Afghan troops sometimes sought his help as well.

“We try to teach them to rely on their own resources,” he said. “But they want American medicine.”

Neveitt, who has 21 years of military service to his credit, said one out of every four first-time mothers in Afghanistan dies in childbirth because of infection or hemorrhage. Women who seek medical treatment of any kind often refuse to let a male doctor see any part of their bodies, including their faces.

“It’s like they’re aspiring to be a Third World country,” he said, shaking his head.

Greeters on Tuesday mingled with the troops and socialized among themselves. Patrick Pelletier of Bangor said he had greeted about 20 flights, including troops leaving for their deployments as well as those coming home. Pelletier, 15, said at least one soldier he saw off for deployment in Iraq came back home through Bangor and recognized him. “That was pretty cool,” he said. Pelletier said he intends to join the military when he’s old enough.

Ronnie Bradman of Bangor, who with his wife, Evelyn, has helped orchestrate many of the welcomes of the 1,668 troop flights greeted at BIA since 2003, said he gave up viewing a holiday Red Sox game to come to the airport. “This is really one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever done,” he said, looking at the troops relax in the terminal.

Watching the homecoming with teary eyes were Judy Brown and Ches Sullivan of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Brown said the couple was vacationing in the Bangor area and heard about the troop greeting.

“We had to come and see,” she said, wiping her eyes. Brown’s son serves with the Canadian forces and recently returned from Afghanistan, she said, making the American troops’ reception especially poignant.

“As far as I’m concerned, these are all our soldiers,” Brown said. “They’re fighting for all of us.”