With a few days to go before deploying to Afghanistan with Joint Base Lewis-McChord's Company A, 51st Signal Battalion, Spc. Daniel Patton hadn't yet had the talk with his 3-year-old daughter explaining where her father was going.

"I'm not even sure what to say," said the Louisville, Ky. native.

And Spc. James Frey was still coming to terms with the fact the yearlong deployment is going to be tough on his three-month-old son, Bradley, but perhaps even tougher on himself.

"It's a little upsetting that he's not going to know who I am when I get back," said Frey, a Soldier from Camden, N.J. "But you have to prepare yourself for that kind of stuff."

Soldiers from the unit gathered June 3 in front of the headquarters on JBLM North to case the colors for a ceremony in preparation of the deployment.

Approximately 130 personnel will deploy with the company to northern Afghanistan, where it will maintain critical communication infrastructure for Regional Command-North. The 51st Signal Battalion is part of the 42nd Military Police Brigade at JBLM.

"There is always a little bit of nervousness, but I'm excited more than anything," said Frey, who previously deployed to Iraq.

Several Soldiers said one good thing about the deployment is that they will be in a place where they can easily communicate with their families back home. But that doesn't make things any easier due to the fact many have young children they're leaving behind. Capt. Jonathan Perez, who took over as company commander since December, also has a three-month-old. He and his wife have been married going on three years, and - including his previous deployment to Iraq - he will have been be away for two of them.

"She's a trooper," he said of his wife. "I'm kind of in the same shoes as some of my Soldiers with young children. (Our unit leadership) is just going to try to keep (the Soldiers) strong and motivated, and have a strong Family Readiness Group and support system that will assist their families while we're away."