Edmonton based soldiers return home from Afghanistan

A group of about 90 Edmonton based soldiers returned home from Afghanistan Friday morning.

Soldiers were greeted by family, co-workers and a canadian classic, Tim Horton's coffee.

The 11 month deployment was the first rotation of Operation Attention, a mission used to train Afghan national security forces, getting them ready to take the lead in 2014.

"We call them Roto-Zeros, it's the army jargon for the first rotation of a new mission, and although it's a natural extension of what we've been doing down south for the past 10 years, frankly we'd have never have been able to do what we've done without the terrific work by our predecessors," says Colonel Peter Dawe.

He says starting something from scratch, in a new area is always an exciting time.

"It can be very demanding and sometimes a little frustrating, but all in all a terrific experience and very gratifying."

Dawe says the mission has been challenging due to the cultural divide but the forces they were training responded well.

'It's coming along and they've made tremendous progress and we've seen it even over the last 11 months."

Although soldiers are happy to be home, Dawe says they will miss some aspects of the mission.

"You can't do that advisory work that our people did so well without building these tremendous rapports with their counterparts. So I think a lot of them will miss the tremendous people they worked with."

Dawe says most soldiers will now be spending some time at home, enjoying time with their families.