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Posted: 6:40 AM- With a company of Black Hawk aviators and aircrew members due safely back in Utah later this week after a year of duty in Iraq, this was supposed to be a time of great joy for the tightknit family of soldiers comprising the Utah Army National Guard's 211th Aviation battalions.

Instead, that family is mourning the loss of two soldiers from the unit's 1st Battalion, killed Monday night when the AH-64 Apache helicopter they were piloting crashed in Utah County.

Clayton Barnes and James Linder were both mid-career aviators who had been combat tested over the mountains of Afghanistan during a yearlong deployment in 2004 and 2005. Fellow pilots said the two were close friends, dedicated soldiers and loving family men.

It was the first fatal helicopter crash involving a Utah National Guard aircraft since 1985, when a UH-1 Huey crashed, killing two aircrew members. Officials said all Guard helicopters in the state will be temporarily grounded until a review of maintenance and safety procedures has been completed.

Barnes, whose Guard call sign was "Buddha," lived in Payson. He inherited his call sign from his father, a career Guard helicopter pilot who had flown in Vietnam. A recent graduate of Brigham Young University, he was about to begin dental school at the University of Utah. Fellow fliers said Monday's flight was the last one he'd been scheduled for before transferring to a Guard dental unit.

"Of course, he had a number of last flights," said David Gunghei, Barnes' company commander. "I thought I'd been on his last flight with him a month ago."

But while Barnes obviously didn't want to give up flying, he was about to do so knowing it was the right decision for his family, Gunghei said.

"He always enjoyed flying - he had a close call back in flight school during his first flight in an Apache, a critical malfunction when the tail boom came off," Gunghei recalled. "Most people would say, 'that's it,' but not Clayton.

"He wasn't getting out because it was the safest thing to do. He was getting out because he knew, once he began dental school, he wouldn't have time to do that, to fly and to be with his family."

And with three young children and another due this winter, family was Barnes' top priority, friends said.

"He wanted as many kids as he could afford," fellow pilot Stewart Smith said. "And with that dental thing, well, we figured he was going to be able to afford a lot."

Linder, whose call sign was "Da Brain," lived just blocks away from the West Jordan airport where the 211th is headquartered and was a well-respected instructor pilot. The father of three children had given up a job as a prosthetics engineer to devote more time to training other aviators. And he was called "Brain" for a reason.

"He was the smartest guy I ever knew," said Mark Farmer, who was the commander of Linder and Barnes' unit in Afghanistan. "If anyone had a question about Apaches, about aerodynamics or anything related to flight, it was far better to go to him than to go to the manual. He knew it all."

Linder was also among the most thoughtful and compassionate men in the unit, fellow aviators recalled.

While Linder was among the pilots who were giving Barnes a hard time for giving up his job as an attack-helicopter pilot in favor of pulling teeth, he also coordinated the younger aviator's going-away party and collected money to purchase a glass plaque for the departing teammate.

"It brings a smile to my face when I remember how good of friends they were," said pilot Jared Jones.

Jones said losing Barnes and Linder was like losing part of his own family. And while the community will rejoice when their other family members return, this week - among 211th's 2nd Battalion are several pilots who deployed to Afghanistan with the fallen fliers, including company commander Micah Tebbs - the accident has left Maj. Gen. Brian Tarbet feeling as though he has taken "a punch in the gut."

The state's top Guardsman said Tuesday the sorrow felt throughout the state's military community would be "tempered only slightly" by the safe homecoming of the Black Hawk team from the unit's 2nd Battalion.

Taking note of the irony of how soldiers can survive combat unscathed while others die performing routine training, Tarbet noted that the business of soldiering is a dangerous one. That observation was echoed by Lt. Col. Scott Robinson, who led both fallen pilots to Afghanistan in 2004.

"Even in the best of times, what we do is perilous - it is dangerous business," he said.

Robinson choked back tears as he remembered the men as "brothers."

"There is no way to describe these men, for me, other than 'brothers,' " he said. "They have saved my life and they have watched my back."