For Staff Sgt. Tyler Detwiler, the war was a remote combat outpost called Spera near the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The mission -- to disrupt enemy movement to and from Afghanistan -- made Spera and his fellow American and Afghan soldiers a frequent target of enemy gunfire and mortar rounds. Reachable only by helicopter, troops showered once a week, and human waste had to be burned regularly.

"We were on our own out there," said Detwiler, a Flanagan native.

Hundreds of miles away in relatively calm northern Afghanistan, his brother, Sgt. 1st Class Adam Detwiler, part of the same Pontiac-based Illinois National Guard unit, was training Afghan National Police (ANP). He didn't see any combat. Through interpreters, teaching the young police force simple things like physical training and how to properly conduct roll call was difficult enough.

The Detwilers and most of the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team recently returned from their tours in Afghanistan, many serving around nine months during the deadliest time of the eight-year war. Eighteen Illinoisans have been killed since September 2008.

On paper, their larger mission was two-fold: Train Afghan army and police; and secure provincial reconstruction efforts or headquarters.

Yet the soldiers had their own view of the war, from each outpost, each training site, each Humvee. The sum of their work -- from small-scale relationship-building to fighting off ambushes -- will play out over the next year, as the U.S. expands its mission into even more dangerous parts of the country.

Making progress

Adam Detwiler, 28, who now lives in Knoxville, Tenn., with his wife and 3-month-old son, said if the war is like football -- a game of incremental progress -- then the end zone is a self-sufficient and sovereign Afghanistan, even if the 33rd didn't get there itself.

"But if I pushed the ball down the field two or three yards," said Detwiler "... that's the main goal, to keep pushing that ball toward the end zone."

His 24-year-old brother, who is now attending nursing school, said the dozens of attacks near Spera - including a Taliban ambush in March that lobbed 50 mortar rounds into the outpost - were a strong enough indication that their efforts were working.

"If you weren't doing anything, if you weren't a thorn in their side, they wouldn't attack you," he said.

Beyond fighting

Col. Michael Haerr of the Illinois Guard, who previously spent a year in Afghanistan, said the challenge is teaching the Afghans how to run an army or police force - not how to actually fight.

"You might think: How does a Guardsman that's a student at (Illinois State University), a farmer in Flanagan, or a worker at Caterpillar mentor the police?" said Haerr, of rural Eureka. "The mere fact that our soldiers read and write and present a disciplined image gives the Afghans something to model."

For Adam Detwiler, the language barriers at his ANP basic-training site were frustrating. A five-minute conversation could turn into a 25-minute ordeal, he said, adding, "It teaches you patience, it really does."

Encouraging ANP commanders to expand the physical-training program beyond "running in circles for an hour" was a success for Detwiler. Afghans weren't experienced with long-term planning.

"A lot of it was trying to get multiple parties to sit down together and talk about logistics, why you need to plan for the future," Detwiler said.

Building connections

Because U.S. trainers were spread so thin, Staff Sgt. Ted Stoops, also part of the Pontiac unit, said he pinpointed one thing -- marksmanship -- to work on with his Afghan National Army counterparts in northern Afghanistan. Yet the ANA leadership repeatedly allowed training to fall to the wayside if a separate mission came up, he said.

"From a military standpoint, you can't do that. You 'gotta make up for it," said Stoops, 30, of Bloomington. "We got them more training, but we didn't break them of bad habits."

Stoops said he became very close with an army captain named Fez, whose home he once visited after a mission.

"He knew how much effort we put into helping him and his mission, that he would turn around and do the same for us because of the sacrifice we made for him," said Stoops, now a Heartland Community College student.

Col. Scott Thoele, the 33rd's commander, said relationship-building is the primary message he's relaying to his brigade's replacements, who took over Aug. 29.

"It's all about the people, and the people you're fighting with," Thoele said in an interview from headquarters just east of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

'They had their thing'

Some members of the 33rd saw an average of three or four combat engagements during the tour, said Haerr. And those who didn't aren't complaining.

"That'd be awesome, but I didn't have that party going for me," Stoops said. "I had my thing and they had their thing. Everybody had a different experience."

Like Cpl. Josh Eilts, 21, of Heyworth, who secured civilian-led provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) as they traveled from village to village, helping build roads, schools and water-delivery systems.

In his final months in Nuristan province in northeast Afghanistan, improvised explosive devices and other attacks were constant, he said. An IED ripped apart a truck and injured five soldiers from his platoon near their forward-operating base, Kala Gush.

"It was incredible to see this truck, which is just mangled parts, and knowing that all these guys lived," said Eilts, part of a Bartonville-based unit.

Despite the threats, the focus was on winning over skeptical Afghans. That was as simple as approaching civilians with a weapon slung behind your back, he said, or by giving writing utensils as gifts to young Afghans who, he said, "just had a fascination with pens." The work within the villages is what Eilts is most proud of, he said.

"Not a lot of people can say they've walked in the mountains of Afghanistan," Eilts said.

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