BANGOR – When the Maine Army National Guard helicopter carrying 1st Sgt. Steve Curtis touched down in Karbala, Iraq, in December 2003, a mass of injured Polish and Korean soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians, greeted the crew.

Suicide bombers and mortar attacks had struck the city, and the Bangor-based air ambulance unit had heard on the flight to the scene that there were “mass casualties.”

“Until we got on site we didn’t realize the magnitude of the attacks,” Curtis recalled in an interview this week. “It was chaotic trying to get everybody on board.”

He was part of the first Maine Army Guard unit to deploy to the Iraq war. The unit returned to the states in April 2004.

Now Curtis, 53, knows his unit is likely to be redeployed in January 2008, and despite the sometime chaos of Iraq, he is willing to go back.

The Defense Department has rescinded its old 24-month time limit on active duty by Guard or Army Reserve members, so Curtis’ air ambulance unit, now called the 1-126th Aviation, has been told it will deploy again in January 2008.

Under the old policy, the unit’s helicopters, equipment as well as soldiers who hadn’t previously deployed would have been mandated to serve the 2008 tour.

But this time the two-thirds of the unit’s soldiers who have already served their time will be required to return to Iraq.

Approximately 100 to 140 soldiers are chosen to deploy.

“We don’t have a good feel on how the unit has reacted yet,” said Maj. Brian Veneziano, the company commander. “If we’ve got to go, this is the best way to go. We are going to be deploying with more experienced people, who have already been there.”

In the unit’s first deployment to Iraq, it evacuated more than 1,000 patients and participated in 600 medical evacuation missions – all without any safety mishaps or crashes.

Curtis lives in Stacyville and commutes to the unit’s base near Bangor International Airport.

He recalled the unit’s mission with pride and took pains to praise his fellow soldiers.

He has extensive experience.

He was on active duty with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from 1981 to 1984 and was deployed to Grenada and the Sinai Peninsula, both in 1983. He served in the infantry reserve from 1984 to 1986. As a Guard member, he served in Bosnia [1999-2000] and Iraq.

In fact, Curtis has delayed a possible promotion, which would move him to a different role, in order to serve the 2008 tour with his unit.

He said he wanted an opportunity to be in the field with the rest of his unit one more time as first sergeant.

“To me it was no question I was going to go,” Curtis said. “I wasn’t going to abandon the unit. I put on a uniform to serve my country.”

Confident that his wife, Kelley Curtis, would support his decision, he committed to the deployment before speaking with her. He decided to break the news to her over the phone.

“I could tell by his voice, he had a lift in it,” Kelley Curtis said in an interview. “He gets very patriotic. I knew he was going to deploy.”

Although Kelley Curtis said she is used to her husband’s deployments, she sympathizes with younger Guard families because she remembers her husband’s tour in Bosnia.

“Bosnia was the hardest,” Kelley said. “Brady [their youngest son, now 15] was 8 and crying, clinging on to Steve’s legs. He didn’t want to let go.”

Neither Brady, nor Shea, 18, their oldest son, has a desire to go into the military, but she said they respect what their father does.

Deployments now are easier, too.

“I don’t know,” Steve Curtis said. “In a strange way they may feel more secure because dad is out there protecting them.”