The convoy of five Humvees rolled down a dirt road when a voice boomed across the radio.

“Indirect fire! Indirect fire! Roll through! Roll through!”

Spc. Shane Sotocole mashed the accelerator. The vehicle jerked forward. Dust from the convoy darkened the bright sky.

The same voice on the radio had a different message seconds later.

“Gas!”

Sotocole hit the brakes as the Humvee skidded to a stop on the side of the road. He and two passengers, Sgt. Terrell Fox and Sgt. Terry Meyers, unzipped green pouches attached to their belt. They slipped black gasmasks over their face.

A minute later, the same voice announced an all-clear. The three soldiers, members of the Washington National Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team, removed the masks. Meyers, sitting in the passenger seat, turned to his colleagues and nodded.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s gonna save us over there,” he said.

Over there. Iraq.

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Spc. Antonio Shepard returned from a deployment with the Virginia National Guard two months ago, spending his year in the Middle East as a gunner on convoys running supplies from Kuwait into Iraq.

Time for a long, relaxing break, right? Nope. Shepard is heading back.

The 23-year-old Atlanta native transferred last month to the Washington National Guard and joined the 1st Brigade, 161st Infantry Regiment.

“I just want to knock another deployment out before I finish school,” he said. “I won’t be going any more after this, so I can focus on classes instead of thinking about deploying again.”

Shepard is one of about 35 “interstate transfer” soldiers, brigade commander Col. Ronald Kapral said. Many of these Guardsmen transferred because they want to deploy, but their Guard unit might not be scheduled to for year

“We’ve had people drive here from Georgia and Tennessee just to fight with the 81st,” Kapral said.

Spc. Raymond Hearne had served with the Washington National Guard before accepting a job offer and moving to Coos Bay, Ore., last year. He kept in contact with his colleagues and transferred when he heard his old unit was deploying.

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Choose your comparison. Chances are they’ve heard it.

Refugee camp? Can of sardines?

“Yep. Yep,” said Cpl. Brandon Truman of Tacoma. “We’ve made them all.”

Truman, a member of the 81st Brigade’s 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry Division is one of about 300 soldiers sleeping in a massive tent during exercises at Yakima Training Center.

Another tent on the grounds is the temporary home of almost 1,000 Guardsmen.

The tents are stuffed with row after row of cots, many just inches from each other. Duffel bags, shoes, backpacks and other personal objects cover the floor. Soldiers are constantly chatting to each other, talking on cell phones, napping or reading.

Sounds bad? Many Guardsmen seem to prefer tent living – this is the desert, and the tents have something the barracks don’t: air conditioning.

“It’s really nice in until morning – then it can get too cold,” Cadet Jay Ladines of Cheney said. “But I’d rather be in here than the barracks.”

Other factors remind soldiers that this ain’t the Ritz. Truman said it one person can catch an illness and spread it to everyone else. It can remain noisy until pretty late. And the bathrooms are outside, several hundred feet away.

It's our last day at the Yakima Training Center. Today we're going to head to a range to watch soldiers practice on a .50-caliber machine gun.