SCHOFIELD BARRACKS — The four Hawai'i Army National Guard soldiers, M-4 carbines at the ready, stood bunched up behind a wall, swayed several times back and forth in unison, then burst through a door firing blanks at a poster of an enemy fighter with a pistol in his hand.

The rocking motion let the last soldier know when the first was about to go through the door.

"Dead space to the left! Check that dead space!" shouted Sgt. Captain DeKoning, a 26-year-old firefighter from the Big Island, while gesturing at a bookcase that was askew against a wall.

Maj. Rusty Topf, a training instructor, told the team to point the muzzles of their weapons where they were looking.

"That's how you clear — not with your eyes, with the muzzle," he said.

Come October, the 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team hopes to be completely in sync for an approximately nine-month mission to Kuwait and Iraq — its second to the theater since 2005.

Yesterday's practice was part of stepped-up training the 1,200 Hawai'i National Guard soldiers are receiving here before leaving beginning Aug. 19 for higher-level exercises at Fort Hood in Texas.

They'll be joined in Texas by about 500 Army Reserve soldiers from the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, who are now in California.

Guard officials estimated that 98 percent of the 127 soldiers taking part in the room-clearing drill yesterday at Schofield's Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain, or MOUT, site had been to Iraq or Kuwait before on the yearlong 2005 deployment.

The MOUT site, located in the back reaches of the Wahiawa post, has a dozen or more cinder-block buildings with up to three floors, and lots of rooms and stairways.

Clearing rooms of enemy fighters is not something the citizen-soldiers did a lot of in Iraq, or have done since in training.

The Army requires all deploying soldiers to go through 44 "warrior tasks" and "battle drills," including room-clearing, qualifying with a weapon, evacuating casualties, and reacting to fire, ambush and roadside bombs.

The skills are particularly appropriate for the unit conducting the training yesterday, the 1st Squadron, 299th Cavalry Regiment.

The Big Island-based unit's 600 soldiers, along with about 500 from the Reserve's 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, will be escorting convoys far into Iraq from Kuwait. Those soldiers need to be prepared for the full range of possible combat scenarios.

"It's been a long time since we did clearing of a building," said Spc. Lexamar Lagundi, 29.

A certified nurse's aide at Hilo Medical Center, Lagundi deployed in 2005 to Iraq with the Hawai'i National Guard and manned a checkpoint at Camp Victory in Baghdad.

"It's a good learning experience," Lagundi said of the Schofield training. "This will maybe help save our lives in Iraq — doing the proper procedures in the buildings."

Col. Bruce Oliveira, the 29th Brigade's commander, previously said the Hawai'i soldiers would be traveling in Iraq in armored Humvees and even more heavily armored "mine resistant ambush protected" vehicles, or MRAPs, on convoy security missions as far north as Mosul.

In Kuwait, where the 29th Brigade will have security and management responsibilities, Hawai'i soldiers will be at camps Buehring, Virginia and Arifjan, as well as Kuwait Naval Base and Ali Al Salem air base.

About 200 soldiers from the 45th Fires Brigade, from Oklahoma also will be under Oliveira's command.

In preparation for Kuwait, the National Guard doubled up its usual two weeks of annual training, with the first round of full-time training from June 14 to July 2.

The second round started July 21, with the soldiers moving into shelters at "Area X" at Schofield. A departure ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. Aug. 16 at Aloha Stadium, and the actual mobilization for federal duty will be on Aug. 19. Flights to Fort Hood will begin that day.

Spc. Christopher Babila, 27, a soldier from Kona who works in construction, was among those going through the training yesterday in full combat gear. He was in Iraq in 2005 and doesn't mind going back.

"I'm not going to get out (of the National Guard) because we've got to do this type of thing," said Babila, who is single. "That's what we chose to do."

Sgt. Kun Sigrah, a pool installer in Kona, has six kids.

He, too, was in Iraq in 2005, working at Al Faw Palace at Camp Victory and in a guard tower.

"No problem," he said about going through another deployment. He's been in the Guard for 14 years.

"Hopefully, I can make it to 20 (years) or beyond," he said.

Sigrah said his family is "OK with it. My wife is very supportive."

His kids have been through it before.

"We've got family to help take care of them, so it's not too bad," he said. "Lot of relatives and friends that support them."