Dean Hagerman remembers a rocket landing right outside a building he was in just a few days after having arrived in Iraq in early December 2004.

Hagerman was one of the people who were mobilized in May that year as part of the Idaho National Guard’s 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team (the largest deployment of Idaho National Guard soldiers in state history, though other states are part of the team).

And this weekend in the Treasure Valley, brigade members are gathering to commemorate the mobilization, honor the fallen and celebrate the friendships forged.

“I’m not going to say it was hell, but it was rough and challenging. We bonded in that experience (of deployment).“

The United States attacked Iraq in March 2003 in part because of then-President George W. Bush’s false assertion that the Middle Eastern country had weapons of mass destruction, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Hagerman said their mission was to provide stability and encourage democracy.

This weekend’s events started Friday and will continue until Sunday. Former Governor Dirk Kempthorne spoke to former brigade members on Saturday.

During the weekend, people will remember soldiers such as Carrie French, from Caldwell, who died at age 19 in 2005 in Iraq.

“It’s an opportunity to heal,” Hagerman said. “The remembrance ceremonies are a more somber event, but the rest of it, it’s meant to be a party, to enjoy each other’s company, catch up on what’s going on with people’s lives.”

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LEWISTON, Idaho — An Idaho judge has entered a not guilty plea on behalf of an escaped prisoner charged with killing a man while he was on the lam for 36 hours.

Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty if Skylar Meade, 32, is convicted of the murder charge in connection with the shooting death of James Mauney. Meade was arraigned on the charge in Nez Perce County on Thursday. When 2nd District Judge Michelle Evans asked if he was ready to enter a plea, Meade’s defense attorney Anne Taylor said, “your honor, he intends to stand silent.”

Declining to enter a plea is a right that is protected by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and Idaho court rules state that when defendants exercise that right, a judge will enter a not guilty plea on their behalf.

Meade has already been sentenced to life in prison in a separate court case after pleading guilty to the March escape from a Boise hospital, where prison officials had taken him for treatment of self-inflicted injuries March 20.

Prosecutors say that as correctional officers prepared to take Meade back to the prison around 2 a.m. that day, an accomplice outside the hospital began shooting.

Two of the officers were shot by the accomplice, and a third was shot when a police officer mistook him for the shooter and opened fire, according to police. All three survived.

Meade and the other man then fled, investigators said, first driving several hours to north-central Idaho.

Mauney, an 83-year-old Juliaetta resident, didn’t return home from walking his dogs on a local trail later that morning, and his body was found miles away.

Police say that soon after, the two men headed back to southern Idaho. They were arrested in Twin Falls.

— Associated Press