When a group of U.S. Army National Guardsmen were deployed last year, they left the county far behind them - or so some of them thought.

After an explosion in April, two of the soldiers from the National Guard's Alpha Co. 1/112th unit were taken to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Although that trip took them closer to home in the geographic sense, the soldiers said they also felt closer in spirit after an unexpected visit from an unknown friend.

The soldiers, Chad Barnhart of Mount Chestnut and Paul Statzer of Butler, were wounded when an improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated outside their operating base near Tikrit - destroying Barnhart's eardrum.

Statzer's injuries included losing a substantial part of his left frontal lobe, his left eye, part of his skull and damage to his voice box.

Former Butler County resident and retired Army Col. Frank Varljen heard about the soldiers from his sister, who still resides in the Butler area. Varljen and his wife, Luise, live in Virginia.

Varljen then began paying visits to Barnhart and Statzer at the medical center in Washington.

"I got a phone call from my sister … that a relative of Joe Sepich got wounded in Iraq," said Varljen of the connection to Barnhart through Sepich, Chad's grandfather.

"We both played baseball and where we used to live, there was a baseball diamond. … We used to play on that ball diamond quite often."

"I've lived here in Virginia for 25 years now, and I was in the Army for 30 years before that," Varljen said of the limited contact between families in recent years.

"It's that connection of families that counts. My dad and (Sepich's dad) were (also) very good friends."

As Croatian immigrants, the fathers had worked in the limestone mines around Winfield, where Varljen and Sepich grew up.

"When you grow up with somebody, that memory stays a long time."

"When I first met him he was in Paul's hospital room," Barnhart said recently while home on a 30-day medical leave. "He grew up with my grandfather. He said, 'Yeah, I grew up and went to school and played baseball with your grandfather.'"

"It makes it a small world. It makes it very comforting," he said.

"That didn't surprise me at all," Sepich said of his childhood friend's presence at Walter Reed. "I know Frank from way back. He's a very caring person, and of course, he himself was in the service."

"I feel great about that, because not everybody would do that," he added.

Both soldiers said they hoped to say in touch with Varljen.