CFB PETAWAWA, Ont. — Both men are longtime soldiers at CFB Petawawa, 160 kilometres upriver from Ottawa. Both did three tours of Afghanistan, including two during the harrowing combat mission in Kandahar. And now, both are trying to put Afghanistan behind them.

The parallels between Sgt. Norm Godin and Warrant Officer Sean Benedict are striking. But Godin seems more conflicted than his friend about the end of the combat mission.

As long as the mission continued, it provided a focus for the incessant training and exercises, says Godin, 36. "You were moving toward something very, very specific. Now that we don't have that, it's hard to be as focused."

He also misses the excitement and sense of camaraderie the mission offered. "You're getting to see new things, getting to put your training to use. You create close bonds with the guys you're over there with. You come home and all of a sudden, you're split up."

On the other hand, Godin lost too many friends to bullets and bombs. "After a while, you just need a bit of a break," he admits. "So it's nice for it to be wrapping up."

Benedict, 39, agrees the transition period is more pronounced after a deployment to Afghanistan than for other missions. "It lingers. You just have to learn to identify and deal with it."

Since the last big deployment from CFB Petawawa ended in December 2010, keeping the troops motivated has been a preoccupation of Col. Simon Hetherington, commander of the base's 4,000-strong 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group.

"I've got men and women who joined the army with that idea of excitement, going to combat, and now it's not happening," he says. "So what do we do?"

The answer, Hetherington says, is to remind his troops that there's more to being a soldier than fighting the Taliban.

"My focus is to get back to the core competencies. We've gone through seven years of focus on counter-insurgency operations. We need to get back to that general purpose combat capability."

To that end, Petawawa soldiers did "full spectrum operation" training last year in Wainwright, Alta. — everything from dealing with humanitarian crises to mid-intensity combat.

Other troops are training in the United States, or gearing up for an exercise in Norway. Hetherington plans an exercise in the Arctic in about a year. "We've got a generation of soldiers who have yet to sleep in an Arctic tent," he says, "because we haven't had the time to do it."

Another 110 Petawawa troops have just left for Afghanistan for an eight-month assignment as part of Canada's ongoing training mission there. But that should be the last group from the base to go there, Hetherington says.

Any deployment is stressful for the family members left behind. Benedict's wife was relieved when the combat mission ended. Godin promised his wife he wouldn't volunteer for tours with other units.

Claudine MacInnis understands. Her husband, Jim, a major in the Royal Canadian Regiment, went to Afghanistan in 2003 and 2008. And two of her sons served there at the same time in 2010.