The shop managers, supermarket workers and bus drivers who as members of the Royal Irish Regiment's 2nd Battalion battled the Taliban for six months in the unbearable heat of the Afghan desert returned to the arms of their loved ones who desperately hoped and prayed they would return safely.

RELAXED SCENES AT FERRY TERMINAL ARE A GLIMPSE OF HOW ULSTER COULD BE

MoD STANDS BY FERRY DECISION

Side-by-side, more than 80 fresh-faced youths and middle-aged fathers trooped out of the Stena terminal as the sun began to rise in the eastern sky behind them.

In a measure of the improved security situation, despite the dissident republican threat, they travelled home on a public ferry and wore their immaculate uniforms in public — something military personnel in Northern Ireland are normally banned from doing.

One family said that they were disappointed that the soldiers were returning in darkness through a civilian ferry terminal, where in previous years they were welcomed back on the runway of RAF Aldergrove with a military band and ceremony.

But the MoD — which had initially planned to fly the troops into RAF Aldergrove at 5.45am on Sunday — said that it had chosen the fastest means of getting them back to their families after that plan fell through on Friday.

Privately, some soldiers spoke of problems with air transport out of Afghanistan which saw them ferried between several middle eastern and Mediterranean countries before arriving back in the UK.

And, although they spoke with enthusiasm, the soldiers admitted they were exhausted after the energy-sapping tour of the battle-torn southern Afghan province.

But their eyes shone at seeing the families they had been separated from for months, a few of whom drove from as far away as Portstewart, leaving in the middle of the night, to be at the harbour for their arrival.

Leaving the port on coaches, the men travelled to their TA bases across Northern Ireland — to Newtownabbey, Enniskillen, Portadown, Ballymena, Londonderry, Armagh and Newtownards where their families were waiting.

At Abbotscroft TA base in Newtownabbey, where the commanding officer Lt Col Andrew Cullen, personally welcomed his troops home, the soldiers were reunited with families they hadn't seen for months.

To the piped sound of Killaloe, the regiment's regimental march, the soldiers filed out of the coach and collected their rucksacks from the hold before being mobbed by wives, girlfriends, parents and children.

Remarkably, none of the more than 100 Ulster TA soldiers who have now returned from Afghanistan sustained injuries which are still being classified by the MoD as serious.

However, although physically fit, the images of battle will linger for many.

Lt Col Cullen described how many of his soldiers had undertaken the "gruesome task" of protecting the airborne medics flying in to retrieve critically wounded casualties on the front line.

Sometimes the part-time Ulster soldiers provided critical care to the wounded and dying, on one occasion carrying an injured Afghan National Army soldier for more than a mile.

But within weeks the men who yesterday said they had come to respect the Taliban's fighting capability in their contact with the bearded fighters, will be back at work, stacking shelves in Tesco and laying bricks on building sites.