UPDATE: The arrival time has been updated to 3:30 p.m.

Forty soldiers from the Washington National Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team will arrive at McChord Air Force Base tomorrow morning.

The brigade of 3,500 soldiers – 2,400 of whom are from Washington – was mobilized in August and deployed to Iraq in October, where it primarily performed convoy security missions.

A charter airplane from Fort McCoy, Wis., will land at McChord at about 3:30 p.m. A bus will take the soldiers to Wilson Gym on North Fort Lewis, where they will be reunited with their families.

More information on how to attend the homecoming ceremonies is here.

Military Times is reporting the Post-9/11 GI Bill might not be so sweet for National Guard soldiers who have been mobilized:

According to the (National Guard Association of the United States), 30,000 to 33,000 National Guardsmen who served during the post-9/11 era in homeland defense roles don’t qualify for the generous program, which completely covers the full in-state cost of a college education for nearly everyone who has served more than three years on active duty since Sept. 10, 2001.

The group says that’s because the Guardsmen were activated in a Title 32 status — which governs Guardsmen activated for federal duty under the control of a governor, but paid with federal dollars — instead of under Title 10, under which troops, no matter what their affiliation, are on full-time active service under the control of the president. The legislation that enabled the Post-9/11 GI Bill provides the benefit only to those who were or are in a Title 10 status.

The VA Puget Sound has sent one of its public affairs officials to Fort McCoy, Wis., to cover the demobilization process for the Washington National Guard's 81st Brigade Combat Team. Here's the homepage for Shane Suzuki's work -- he's shooting photos and writing some blog posts.

An excerpt from yesterday:

A quick success story from Tommy Carson, an employment transition counselor here. He just stopped by to tell me the story of a soldier who, in the best of situations, would be considered incredibly unlucky - until he came to the team of professionals who helped him get his life on a new and better track.

While deployed to Iraq, his girlfriend began seeing someone else. Sad, but not uncommon. The only problem is, they have a child. In many cases, this means the soldier loses everything and is sent into a depressing downward cycle.

This is where this new model of conversation and hands on transition assistance comes into play. Instead of sitting through a bunch of briefs with phone numbers to call and then sent back to a depressing situation on his own, this soldier talked about his lack of job, home and family to one of the counselors here. Now, instead of coming home to nothing, the counselors here found him a place to stay, a new job to return to, and has heard from his daughter that she wants to live with him because she doesn’t like what her mother did.

This Domino Effect of a returning soldier’s life falling apart one piece at a time is what, in many cases, leads to the terrible news stories we’ve all read in the press. This intervention thankfully averted a terrible story we will never have to hear.

According to Tommy, "These information stations and the people sitting behind them these opportunities are life changing and life altering. That’s why we are here, that’s what this day is all about."

The folks at VA Puget Sound also have launched a Twitter feed (@vapugetsound). And while you're logging on Twitter, don't forget to add the TNT's military feed (@tntmilitary).